Mardock Scramble

“Marketplace?” said Oeufcoque.

“Intelligence from the police that’s just come in. About the assassins Boiled hired. They were well known among the human-body-part-fetishist community, apparently. They sold off quality body parts.”

“Hmm.”

“They’re the ones who deserved to be torn limb from limb. I think so, anyway, and I’m sure Balot thinks so too. But Balot doesn’t consider it to be our job to do so. She doesn’t have to tear them limb from limb to be satisfied or achieve closure. That’s a good thing, surely? That’s not to say I’m pleased that our old hideaway is now in ruins, of course. But even that can be fixed up one way or another with reparations from the Broilerhouse when we manage to solve this case properly.”

“That’s true, I suppose.”

“I also feel that we definitely did the right thing in strengthening the girl. As per usual, someone had been systematically tampering with the Ham & Egg circuits. An inside job, most probably—a mole taking money to look the other way, not caring in the slightest whether the people bribing them were murderers or fetishists,” said the Doctor.

“So what’s happening about the inside man?”

“The police are on the case there—it’s out of our hands. You’re looking at serious money to try and bail out someone involved in hacking a public network. I’m sure there are plenty of police looking to their next bonus, eager to pin down the mole.”

Still, Oeufcoque didn’t seem entirely satisfied, and he remained sitting on the table.

“Talk about wishy-washy, Oeufcoque. Anyway, what do you think?”

“About what?”

“The girl, of course.”

Oeufcoque scratched his head with his small paws. “I really hope that her reason and ambitions will triumph over her negative impulses. That’s her real job, to make sure that this happens. Our job is to give her room to develop by protecting her from harm and helping her to recover all her legal rights and privileges. It may be that this sort of work is what I was looking for all along.”

“You see yourself as a social worker? If you can’t stand the heat you can always get out of the kitchen. Just find another line of work,” said the Doctor.

“No—overdependency on social welfare can lead to lives being snuffed out in an instant. The Broilerhouse always overcomplicates things, and they will always need PIs to solve their cases, one way or another. I want to be useful as a deterrent against an everlasting cycle of violence, to protect lives. That’s what Scramble 09 is for.”

“Then what exactly is your problem?”

“I’m not comfortable with the idea of forcing the girl to use me as a weapon, even with the threat of a clear and present danger…”

“And that’s why we’re looking for a chink in the enemy’s armor—to help us solve this case in the quietest way possible. What’s wrong with that?”

“Doctor, I’m a living tool, and you’ll never really understand me.”

“Huh?”

“I’m constantly on the lookout for a user. I want someone like Balot to be using me. I had thought that I’d never again be able to entrust myself to someone else’s hand completely…”

“So?”

“I’m disturbed by the fact that the girl wants to become a PI after we’ve solved this case.”

“Well, I’m glad of that.” The Doctor took his eyes off Oeufcoque for a moment, sipping his coffee.

“What’s there to be glad about, Doctor?”

“Have you heard of the marriage blues, Oeufcoque?”

“No, what are they?”

“They’re when you wear yourself out worrying about something that you’ve already decided. Obsessing about things like self-centered emotions, whether you’re feeling all right, whether something is inevitable or whether it’s happenstance.”

“Are you saying that I’ve got the marriage blues?”

“I think that would be a pretty astute diagnosis, though I do say so myself.”

“What’s the cure?”

“Patience. You just wait to see how events unfold.”

Oeufcoque looked the other way and exhaled silently. “That’s a tough one.”

“Well, it’s a problem that’s been plaguing us since the beginning of history, so you’re in good company. Just do your best.”

The Doctor poked Oeufcoque’s shoulder. He wasn’t particularly encouraging.

02

Dawn was just about to break when the giant silver egg landed on the rooftop of the Broilerhouse.

Bathed in the purple glow of sunrise, the Floating Residence known as the Humpty-Dumpty stopped in midair at a point precisely one meter above the rooftop, and a crack opened up on one side. The crack turned into a number of symmetric hexagonal openings, and part of the shell that had opened up now transformed into a ramp that extended down to the roof.

The Doctor and Balot stepped out onto the ramp.

The wind was strong, and the three-ply metal fencing that surrounded the rooftop was rattling.

Balot headed into the building and called up an elevator. Not by snarcing it, but by pressing the call button.

The Doctor sent the Humpty back up into the sky, then followed after Balot in great strides. “Right, let’s go.” He leapt into the elevator. “We have to be low-profile from here on out. Well, relatively speaking.”

He was in a sprightly mood. The cheeriest Balot had ever seen. He was dragging a large trunk behind him, and Balot had a bag hanging from her shoulder.

“You’re in high spirits, Doc,” Oeufcoque observed, as a choker around Balot’s neck. His tone of voice was, unusually for him, relaxed—lazy, even.

“Bring it on! Literally and metaphorically, I mean. I’m not about to pass up the opportunity to make some noise—it’s taken long enough to talk you into gambling. Let’s head on in with the mindset that we’re going to break the bank.”

“Sure, but our aim isn’t actually to bankrupt Shell, you know.” As Oeufcoque spoke, the fabric of the choker warped around the edges. He seemed to be yawning. This tickled Balot’s neck, and she gave an involuntary squirm of the shoulders.

“I’m not a morning person. It brings out my true nature,” Oeufcoque blurted out, and the elevator had arrived.

They were in the first-floor lobby, where they could see various justice department officials heading this way and that. Many of them stayed in the building overnight, and a large group of people had congregated in the cafeteria for their morning dose of coffee. Balot and the Doctor left the building through the lobby and hailed a taxi.

The taxi drove off and headed uptown. During the ride, the Doctor referred to his PDA incessantly, humming a jaunty tune as he did so. A list of numbers was scrolling across the display, and these caused the Doctor to smile, as if he were looking at the figures of a particularly healthy bank balance.

Before long the taxi pulled up at a motel. An airport motel.

They entered the lobby to find that their rooms were ready, rooms that the Doctor had reserved using the Humpty’s NetService. The Doctor and Balot went into their adjoining rooms, as if they had just arrived by air and were about to head into the big city later. Well, they had just been flying, of course, but not in the manner that a casual observer would have assumed.

Their bags contained mostly clothes. Once she was in her room, Balot took a dress from her bag. She’d had Oeufcoque make it for her based on pictures from an online catalog. She brushed it down and hung it up neatly on a hanger before taking some shoes and accessories out of the bag and lining them up on the motel desk.