Standard pinplants sat just above the ear, lined up with the ear canal, on either side or both. Woven into the skull with nano-wires, they provided a good location to access both the temporal lobe, where short term memory resided, as well as the frontal lobe, which tied together many higher brain functions the pinplants augmented. It was connected to other areas, as well, though mainly for the monitoring of auditory input.
The new design was behind the ear, directly behind the ear canal, and tied directly into the Wernicke’s area, which dealt with written and spoken language. It was linked to the temporal and frontal lobes, too, but had major connections to the hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex, both areas associated with long term memory in Humans. The new design had made Nemo quite excited, but he’d never explained why. He’d just taken the new pinplant nano-infrastructure Sato had provided and installed it.
The pinplants said they were fine. Well, that’s good. Next he ran a feature not found in standard pinplants: real-time recall. He could play back exactly what he was seeing, thinking, hearing, even tasting. The playback showed him walking down the promenade, talking with Rick, when he suddenly stopped. Stopped and…nothing. He hadn’t thought about anything.
The image of the university lab was a fresh echo in his mind’s eye, despite the pinplants not showing the memory. No record meant the memory hadn’t fully formed in his cognitive center. Then where had it come from, and how had it gotten into his consciousness? It had been Talus. He was sure of it. But he’d never been to Talus. Had he?
Rick was still looking at him with his glowing blue eyes, no doubt analyzing his physical condition. “I’m fine,” he said. “I think it’s the new pinplants.”
“The ones Nemo installed before you left the Hussars?”
“Yes,” Sato said.
“They’re unusual, from what I understand.”
You have no idea. Sato stood, steady in the light gravity. “See, no problem.”
“Okay,” Rick said and gestured to the promenade. “Lead on.”
As Sato continued, he could feel Rick’s gaze on his back, watching. For the first time, he wondered where his new companion’s loyalties might lie and whether he was grateful for being brought back to life. You’re better off with me than the other copies of you, Sato thought. He’d gotten Nemo to agree not to bring the other clones to life. Only Nemo’s word wasn’t worth the flashes of light it took to convey them. Nemo always did what Nemo wanted to do.
An image of a Wrogul floated toward him as if out of a dream. He was screaming something.
Sato shook his head to clear it, then reached up to brush his hair to the side to cover it. Rick didn’t speak, so he must have bought the cover. Trying not to think about much except their destination, Sato led them toward the merc pit district.
“It’s funny,” Rick said as they passed the gaudily marked facilities.
“What’s funny?” Sato asked.
“I was a merc for more than a few years, but I’ve never been to a merc pit. Funny, huh?”
“I suppose,” Sato said distractedly. He was looking for signs of what must exist near any merc pit, especially in a relatively out of the way place like Karma. Once again, he didn’t know how he knew what to look for; he just did. What he didn’t notice was how many eyes tracked them intently as they passed.
* * *
Rick couldn’t quite figure Sato out. In so many ways, he was as knowledgeable and smart as any of the great scientists from Earth’s past. But he seemed to have the wisdom and street smarts of a 12-year-old boy from Terre Haute on his first visit to the Houston startown. He’s going to get himself killed.
Not long after Sato’s ‘incident’ on the ring’s promenade, he found what he’d been looking for. It looked to Rick like the door that used to lead into a merc pit or maybe a little restaurant. At some point in the past, there had been a fire. Space stations took fires very seriously, like any spaceship. Fires could devastate a space vessel in ways a terrestrial fire could never do.
Whatever the cause, some basic repairs had been done, though the storefront had never been reused. Now as he considered it, Rick had noticed a lot of empty storefronts, and not just in the merc pit area. He’d heard there was a small city down on the planet and wondered if it was in relation to an economic issue. Space stations that dealt in trade were usually immune from local economic fluctuations.
Sato leaned against the wall just down from the burned storefront and seemingly watched the crowds shuffle past. Rick took up a position a short distance away to limit the possibility of anyone noticing them together. His electronically enhanced hearing began to pick up sounds inside, and Rick thought he understood now. What didn’t make sense was how Sato had known to look for something like this. It didn’t fit with his behavior.
After a short time, an elSha stuck its reptilian head out of the crumbled doorway and looked at Sato with a single independent eye. “What do you want?”
“Thought we could do some business,” Sato said casually.
The elSha looked Sato over dubiously. Sato was dressed in a Winged Hussars-style uniform, minus the patches and name tape. Black coveralls weren’t exactly distinctive, but another Human might have noticed the green stripes down the arms and legs. “What do I
