They would eventually be heading back that way, back through that makeshift toll gate on the stairs, and he wouldn’t be in such great shape then, so he had removed a potential threat. And, though he needed to be utterly ruthless to achieve his aims, to be honest he enjoyed being able to blow away any scum found in his path. Did that mean he was a sociopath? Just as the four corpses behind him had demonstrated, the quicker civilization disintegrated, the sooner its veneer was peeled away from those prepared to discard their social conditioning to survive. Of course, it was Smith who had peeled away Saul’s social conditioning in an adjustment cell. In this case the blame was his.
‘Dr Bronstein?’ he enquired.
Bronstein had once been a fat man, so now the skin of his face hung in loose folds, just as his newly outsize clothing hung around his body. He sat in a deckchair, smoking a cigar, his feet up in front of him on a crate marked with All Health’s logo of a caduceus set against a world map. A bottle of clear moonshine and a glass rested on a couple of crates stacked beside him.
‘Yup, that’d be me.’
‘Business slow today?’ Saul asked, looking around.
On the market stalls behind, a pathetic amount of food was on display, while the best business was being conducted out of the back of a transvan. It contained bags of homegrown tobacco, in strong demand because everyone knew that when you’re smoking you don’t feel so hungry. Here and there lolled guards armed with very up-to-date assault rifles – underworld enforcers. Over to the right, behind an area almost fenced off by car bodies, lay piles of engine parts and burnt-out computer-locking mechanisms. Pillars of tyres formed the entrance to this zone, but no one was currently doing any business there. Saul guessed that the car-breaking business must be on the wane. Over to the left the open side of the car park overlooked the urban sprawl, now lost in the hazy polluted distance. There were plenty of people about, he noticed, but none by the mobile hospital except Bronstein himself.
The doctor inspected the end of his cigar. ‘It’s a matter of priorities.’
‘Really?’
‘You got enough cash for lung wash and a relining you now spend it on bread.’
Hannah stepped forward. ‘I didn’t realize that All Health was charging for its services now.’
‘All Health?’ He eyed her wonderingly. ‘I stopped working for them once they told me to carry on reusing syringes after the sterilizers broke down.’ He waved his cigar at the vehicle behind. ‘I’m private now, and this set-up is my pension plan.’
‘Won’t they miss it?’ Saul gestured at the vehicle.
‘Amazing what records can disappear when you M-bullet a bowel cancer for the right official.’ Bronstein drew on his cigar again and let out a long stream of smoke. ‘So what can I do for you?’
‘You’ve got the full auto-surgery with telefactored instruments, clean box and full life-support?’ Hannah asked.
‘Yup.’
‘Nerve-sheath scouring and microtools?’
‘Yup.’ He looked slightly puzzled and wary now.
‘Sigurd biotic tools?’
‘Fuck me, lady, this is an AH unit not a Committee hospital.’
‘But you must do implants here, so what do you have available?’
‘Some Sigurd,’ he admitted, stubbing out his cigar and taking his feet off the crate, ‘and old Clavier biotics.’
‘That should do it.’
‘So what’s the deal?’
‘Cerebral implants,’ she said.
He grimaced. ‘I do some, but nothing after the Net Chips.’
‘Not a problem. I’ll operate and you can assist.’
‘Lady, no one uses my stuff.’
Saul unshouldered his backpack, opened it and took out a heavy parcel wrapped in newspaper, tore the end open and showed Bronstein the contents. At first he’d considered bringing the considerable sums of cash he’d accumulated, but since a bag of tomatoes now cost upwards of four hundred Euros, he would have needed a transvan to carry the necessary payment. However, there’s something people always fall back on in times of hardship: gold. He’d got five bars in the pack, all he’d been able to lay his hands on over the last two years, and hoped he wouldn’t need to hand over them all. The doctor let out a low whistle and slowly stood up.
‘Best we go inside,’ he said.
The driver’s cab and living quarters took up the entire forward compartment of the All Health trailer bus, the rear section accommodating the surgery itself. The rear door led first into a small office-cum-waiting room, with a desk and computer, but with all the chairs intended for customers and most of the surrounding space taken up by stacks of supplies. Most of the crates bore the All Health logo, but some boasted the blood-red stamp indicating reserved government property. Once they were all inside, Bronstein closed and locked the door then moved over to perch on the edge of his desk.
‘Cerebral implants,’ he said.
Saul took the briefcase out of his pack, rested it on the desk and snapped it open. Bronstein peered inside for a moment, then reached in to pick up the cigarette-packet-sized container for the organic interface, studying the blue LEDs along one edge, then the miniscreen that ran a convoluted screen saver.
‘Organics,’ he said, as he turned to regard Hannah. ‘You’d better know what you’re doing, lady, because I don’t
