Lucent Carbon (extract)

by

Russell Blackford

(First published 1997 in Eidolon)

"Corinthians?" the underkid said.

I was sitting on a molded bar stool in the Blue Oyster Room, up on the 95th floor of the Rose Flower's immense free-form structure, that frozen geyser of pink glass rising over the Sydney CBD. Music played, and I watched the video wall: Lucent Carbon, the fashionable dragon singer—she was one of my heroes. Starch-shirted waiters poured drinks. The place was noisy with clientele speaking several languages. Heavily morphed dragons with hairless, illuminated scalps hunched around their drinks, like starving peasants from a Bertolt Brecht play. Bored underkids in T-shirts and black jackets sheltered from the winter streets, hustling deals from table to table, stool to stool, while beautiful young salaripeople with long, shiny hair sat straight and brave, chattering over cocktails, pretending to be ultrabrights. Some glanced my way, sensing, perhaps, that I was the real thing. Tinted rays from a bright, cold sun streamed through the rosy armorglass. I took my eyes from the video wall, just for a second, looked the underkid over. "What?" Lucent Carbon's synthesized music—gongs, drums, and oriental flutes—filled every corner. "Were you speaking to me?"

"I said, I'm selling Corinthians."

I wasn't feeling unkind, but I shook my head, and laughed. "No. I'm sorry." My contact was already three minutes late, so I glanced at the door. Anything illegal made me jittery—but, then again, I'd be jittery for all Eternity. "I'm not in the market."

He looked down at his chest, avoiding my eyes. The kid was maybe fifteen, already taller than me by ten centimeters, his surprisingly handsome face disfigured by niobium implants and badly-treated acne. "They're going cheap, lady." I sighed at that. On the high-resolution video wall, Lucent Carbon danced, lean and sensuous in her tight, fish-tailed sheath of glittering, sea-green fabric, high-heeled mules on her feet, an iridescent golden band planted about her depilated head. She sang her theme song, "Red Rider", with a voice like little bells.

I laughed again, nervously, and finished my drink, a single malt whisky. "No." And I stood to walk away. Corinthians blended several cheap drugs into a mind-altering gestalt that promised the purest feelings of faith, hope and charity. The flat pink tabs with the blue "C" on top were supposed to be great for sex: believe totally in your loved one for a few hours and forget tomorrow. Not for me. At that moment, my contact finally entered the bar, an upload Technician from Japan. I recognized him at once, and waved to him as I headed toward the door.

The kid followed me. "Really cheap."

This was starting to be harassment. I turned for a moment and glared. "I have what I want. Really. Scram, pal." Dark, lank hair fell over his eyes. "Give me a break," I told him. "I said to scram. Please don't annoy me."

He looked at me almost pleadingly.

"I could hurt you if it came to that," I said. He was bigger, but I had better genes, for money made it so.

Again he looked down, but then he finally got the message; he shrugged and turned back to the bar. I sighed loudly, then straightened my shoulders. When the Technician reached me, I offered my hand, businesslike. "I'm Idol Le Saint," I said. "I'm glad you made it." The newcomer put down his Qantas bag and looked to the bar; I glanced over my shoulder for a second, lowering my hand as I followed his gaze. The adolescent pusher was talking urgently to a young dragon gal perched on one of the high stools. I shook my head quickly. "It's not a problem."

The Technician smiled and I offered my hand once more. This time he took it. "I am glad to be here. Truly." Like many genuinely strong men, he did not grip firmly on the handshake. His palm, his fingers were very warm, as soft as glove leather and large for those of a small man. I liked the feel of his hand immediately. He squeezed softly, then let me go.

"I'll take you to meet the boss," I said. "He's expecting you."

"Thank you, Ms Le Saint."

In a quite literal sense, I am unnaturally beautiful. Unnaturally—because my genes were shaped that way before I was born, sculpted like an ornamental hedge. In my case the result was more than ornamental, but lots of men can't see beyond physical beauty. I was well-dressed for our rendezvous—warm layers of microfiber and purple velvet—and my hair was perfectly coifed in a severe, golden bun. But the Technician showed no sign of being intimidated. He simply half-shrugged as he picked up his bag and looked me straight in the eye. With six-centimeter shoe heels I was nearly as tall as him and, of course, I held his gaze. "They call you Peccadillo?"

"Oh, yes. They do. I am enchanted to meet you, Ms Le Saint." He gave a grin, half shy, half mischievous. In his profession, true names were never exchanged; like pop musicians, he and his kind relied on whimsical handles for day to day use; on artfully constructed IDs to facilitate their international travel; strings of memorized alphanumeric code to transfer large sums from willing clients into digital cash lines maintained in Switzerland. For a week's work, a Technician with this man's skills could charge a fee that would support a clerical worker for a year.

I offered my best smile, one ultrabright to another. "And you can't imagine how pleased I am to meet you!"

"I think I can."

"What?"

"Just joking." Peccadillo was a short, skinny man—skinny until you noticed the way his brown, hairless forearms bulged with muscle. He wore his blue-black hair in a pony-tail. Like me, he was in his late twenties I guessed, though we both looked even younger. He was a first-generation ultrabright, physically perfect, no genetic propensities for disease, possessed of an extraordinary intelligence quotient. His loose, concrete gray T-shirt was inscribed with the message: "LIKE A SCALPEL". No implants or body jewelry, no tattoos, nano-illuminations, or cosmetic scars, were visible on his exposed skin. Except for his muscle development (made more obvious by his small frame) and the extreme symmetry of his facial features, he was a picture of normality. Still grinning, he said, "Then take me to your client."

"Take you to my leader?"

"Whatever you call Mr. Chung."

"All right," I said. "Let's go."

He glanced at the video wall. Lucent Carbon's band was playing an oriental version of Ultraflare's data-dot hit "Skin Dragon". "I love Carbon," Peccadillo said. He touched my arm gently with his free hand, which he left there, just lightly. "Never fear, beautiful Idol; I know we must hurry." There was no explanation of how he got here; two days before, I'd arranged the meeting place via an intermediary in Kenya; as promised, here he was. He must have taken the Kilimanjaro sub-orbital to the Timor Hub without being recognized by Interpol software. That was part of his trade. Then from Darwin to Sydney.

Though he obviously knew the way, I led him from the room, smoothly withdrawing from his touch, though it left a nice feeling behind. "Everything is arranged for you."

"Of course. Thank you." The elevator descended swiftly to the ground floor, telling us, when we stepped out, to have a nice day. Peccadillo laughed gently. His accent was British if anything, not Japanese. "Mr. Chung will have a worthy edification."

"Yes." I sucked on my lips at that. Edification: that was the word they used, the euphemism. These Technicians never said death, but the law assumed personality uploading—edification—was exactly that: death itself. I was devoted to Mr. Chung's wishes, whatever they might turn out to be, but I thought about what I was doing. I was about to kill client, my friend.

On the Sydney streets it was sixteen degrees Celsius. Peccadillo was under-dressed for the winter, but he seemed not to notice the cold. I waved down an oyster-shaped taxi cab, whirring toward us along George Street, and we jumped in the back. "Where to?" the Vietnamese driver said through a security mike.

As the taxi left the kerb, its electric motor humming quietly, I gave some succinct directions. We took the harbor tunnel to a corporate address in North Sydney. Once there, I paid the cab driver, entered the dark, armorglass structure through a revolving door—Peccadillo following close behind—and stepped up to the uniformed security guard in the foyer. I swiped my security pass through a magnetic reader under the guard's watchful eye, though this was a formality, since she knew me well. "Hello, Carmody," I said to her. "Peccadillo's with me."

"No problems, Ms Le Saint." Carmody was skinny as a whip, skinnier than Peccadillo. She was smart and alert as always, helped along by a Ghalib-Liechti infusion apparatus implanted within her. Hers was a portable version: held safely in her body cavity was a sac of high-octane drug cocktail leaking slowly into her vascular system via a catheter in her thigh, all this controlled by a nano-sized floating chip, keyed to her body signs and diurnal rhythms. Except for the use of an internal drug sac, the smart infusion apparatus resembled the one being used with Mr. Chung's illness. Carmody gestured for Peccadillo to hand over his bag, which she ran through an X-ray-based Stealth Probe.

I walked between the metal posts of a skin scanner and into the elevator lobby, Peccadillo still close on my heels. He gathered up his bag and we stepped into the silvery elevator. As its door closed, I keyed my ID code into a touch-pad. "Good afternoon, Ms Le Saint," the elevator's voice said--the voice of an Asian woman with a trace of American accent, perhaps a Filipina. Thirty seconds later, we exited on the 70th floor, then took stairs to a roof-top helipad where a pilot was waiting in a royal blue copter. Its multi-media system was playing Lucent Carbon's deceptively innocent music, the same concert as in the Blue Oyster Room.

We flew to a 300-ton corporate vessel at anchor in the harbor, the River Eden. "Who was the child following you?" Peccadillo said.

"In the bar?"

"Yes."

"Just an underkid. He tried to sell me some Corinthians."

"Did you buy?"

"Not my drug of choice."

"I see. Do you have a drug of choice, Idol?"

"That's something I tell my friends."

"Then I'll ask later." His awareness seemed to roll inward as the copter landed. Truly, though, he was a splendid animal.

There was work to be done. We lived among the last generation of mortals, but Peccadillo and I were the first generation of gods. Contrary to the Law's strictures, we had clients rich enough to join us in a world without death.

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