‘Do I have affluent and gullible written in conspicuous neon letters on my forehead?’ Quirrenbach said.
‘It’s our clothes,’ I said, pushing another urchin back into the throng. ‘I recognised yours as being Mendicant-made, and I wasn’t even paying you much attention.’
‘I don’t see why that should make much difference.’
‘Because it means we’re from outside,’ I said. ‘Beyond the system. Who else would be wearing Mendicant clothing? That automatically guarantees a certain prosperity, or at least the possibility of it.’
Quirrenbach clutched his luggage to his chest with renewed protectiveness. We pushed our way deeper into the bazaar until we found a stall selling something which looked edible. In Hospice Idlewild they’d treated my gut flora for Yellowstone compatibility, but it had been a fairly broad-spectrum treatment, not guaranteed to be any use against anything specific. Now was my chance to test exactly how non-specific it had been.
What we bought were hot, greasy pastries filled with some unidentifiable, semi-cooked meat. It was heavily spiced, probably to disguise the meat’s underlying rancidity. But I had eaten less appetising rations on Sky’s Edge and found it more or less palatable. Quirrenbach wolfed down his, then bought another, and finished that one off with equal recklessness.
‘Hey, you,’ said a voice. ‘Implants, out?’
A kid tugged the hem of Quirrenbach’s Mendicant jacket, dragging him deeper into the bazaar. The kid’s clothes would be graduating to raghood in a week or two, but were now lingering on the edge of dilapidation.
‘Implants, out,’ the kid said again. ‘You new here, you no need implants, misters. Madame Dominika, she get them out, good price, fast, not much blood or pain. You too, big guy.’
The kid had hooked his fingers around my belt and was dragging me as well.
‘It’s, um, not necessary,’ Quirrenbach said, pointlessly.
‘You new here, got Mendicant suits, need implants out now, before they go wacko. You know what that mean, misters? Big scream, head explode, brain everywhere, get real mess on clothes… you not want that, I think.’
‘No, thank you very much.’
Another kid had appeared, tugging at Quirrenbach’s other sleeve. ‘Hey, mister, don’t listen to Tom — come and see Doctor Jackal! He only kill one in twenty! Lowest mortality rate in Grand Central! Don’t go wacko; see the Jackal!’
‘Yeah, and get free permanent brain damage,’ said Dominika’s kid. ‘Don’t listen; ev’ryone know Dominika best in Chasm City!’
I said, ‘Why are you hesitating? Isn’t this exactly what you were hoping to find?’
‘Yes!’ Quirrenbach hissed. ‘But not like this! Not in some filthy damned tent! I was anticipating a reasonably sterile and well-equipped clinic. In fact I know there are better places we can use, Tanner, just trust me on this…’
I shrugged, allowing Tom to haul me along. ‘Maybe a tent is as good as it gets, Quirrenbach.’
‘No! It can’t be. There must be…’ He looked at me helplessly, willing me to take control and drag him away, but I simply smiled and nodded towards the tent: a blue and white box with a slightly cambered roof, guylines attached to iron pins driven into the floor.
‘In you go,’ I said, inviting Quirrenbach to step ahead of me. We were in an ante-room to the tent’s main chamber, just us and the kid. Tom, I saw now, had a kind of elfin beauty; gender indeterminate beneath tattered clothes, the face was framed by curtains of lank black hair. The kid’s name could have been Thomas or Thomasina, but I decided it was probably the former. Tom swayed in time to sitar music emanating from a little malachite box which rested on a table set with perfumed candles.
‘This isn’t too bad,’ I said. ‘I mean, there’s no actual blood anywhere. No actual brain tissue lying around.’
‘No,’ Quirrenbach said, suddenly making a decision. ‘Not here; not now. I’m leaving, Tanner. You can stay or follow me; it’s entirely up to you.’
I spoke to him as quietly as I could manage: ‘What Tom says is true. You need to have your implants out now, if the Mendicants didn’t already do it for you.’
He reached up and rasped a hand across his scalp stubble. ‘Maybe they were just trying to scare up business with those stories.’
‘Perhaps — but do you really want to take that risk? The hardware’s just going to be sitting in your head like a time-bomb. Might as well have it out. You can always have it put back in again, after all.’
‘By a woman in a tent who calls herself Madame Dominika? I’d rather take my chances with a rusty penknife and a mirror.’
‘Whatever. Just so long as you do it before you go wacko.’
The kid was already dragging Quirrenbach through the partition into the room beyond. ‘Talking of money, Tanner — neither of us are exactly flush. We don’t know we can afford Dominika’s services, do we?’
‘That’s a very good point.’ I grabbed Tom by the collar, hauling him gently back into the ante-room. ‘My friend and I need to sell some goods in a hurry, unless your Madame Dominika is given to charity.’ When that remark had no effect on Tom, I opened my suitcase and showed him some of what was inside. ‘Sell, for cash. Where?’
That seemed to work. ‘Green and silver tent, ’cross market. Say Dominika sent you, you no get major sting.’
‘Hey, wait a minute.’ Quirrenbach was halfway through the gash now. I could see into the main room, where a phenomenally bulky woman sat behind a long couch, consulting her fingernails, medical equipment suspended over the couch on articulated booms, metal glinting in candlelight.
‘What?’
‘Why should I be the guinea pig? I thought you said you needed to have your implants removed as well.’
‘You’re right. And I’ll be back shortly. I just need to convert some of my possessions into cash. Tom said I could do it in the bazaar.’
His face turned from incomprehension to fury.
‘But you can’t go now! I thought we were in this together! Travelling companions! Don’t betray a friendship almost before it’s begun, Tanner…’
‘Hey, calm down. I’m not betraying anything. By the time she’s finished with you, I’ll have got enough cash together.’ I clicked a finger towards the fat woman. ‘Dominika!’
Languidly, she turned to face me, her lips forming a silent interrogative.
‘How long will it take with him?’
‘One hour,’ she answered. ‘Dominika real quick.’
I nodded. ‘That’s more than enough time, Quirrenbach. Just sit back and let her do her job.’
He looked into Dominika’s face and seemed to calm slightly. ‘Really? You will be back?’
‘Of course. I’m not stepping into the city with implants still in my head. What do you think I am, insane? But I do need money.’
‘What are you planning to sell?’
‘Some of my own goods. Some of the stuff I lifted from our mutual friend Vadim. There’s got to be a market for that kind of thing or he wouldn’t have been hoarding it.’
Dominika was trying to pull him onto her couch, but Quirrenbach was still managing to stay on his feet. I remembered how he had impulsively changed his mind when we began looting Vadim’s quarters — at first resisting the theft, then throwing himself enthusiastically into the process. I saw a similar sea-change now.
‘Dammit,’ he murmured, shaking his head. He looked at me curiously, then cracked open his own case, riffling through sheet music until he reached a set of compartments below it. He fished out some of the experientials he had taken from Vadim. ‘I’m no good at bartering anyway. Take these and get a good price on them, Tanner. I’m assuming they’ll cover the cost of this.’
‘You trust me to do that?’
He looked at me through squinted eyes. ‘Just get a good price.’
I took the items and placed them amongst my own.
Behind him, the bulky woman hovered across the room like an unmoored dirigible, her feet skimming inches from the ground. She was cradled in a black metal harness, attached to one wall by a complexly-jointed pneumatic
