“Certainly, sir. Can we assume sir is not a novice in this field?”
I grinned at the machine. “We can assume that.”
“Then perhaps sir would care to tell me what his preferences in the past have been.”
“Smith & Wesson 11mm Magnum. Ingram 40 flechette gun. Sunjet particle thrower. But that wasn’t in this sleeve.”
The green receptors glowed. No comment. Perhaps it hadn’t been programmed for light conversation with Envoys.
“And what exactly is sir looking for in this sleeve?”
I shrugged. “Something subtle. Something not. Projectile weapons. And a blade. The heavy one needs to be something like the Smith.”
The mandroid became quite still. I could almost hear the whirring of data retrieval. I wondered briefly how a machine like this had come to wind up here. It had clearly not been designed for the job. On Harlan’s World, you don’t see many mandroids. They’re expensive to build, compared to a synthetic, or even a clone, and most jobs that require a human form are better done by those organic alternatives. The truth is that a robot human is a pointless collision of two disparate functions. Artificial intelligence, which really works better strung out on a mainframe, and hard-wearing, hazardproof bodywork which most cyber-engineering firms designed to spec for the task in hand. The last robot I’d seen on the World was a gardening crab.
The photo-receptors brightened slightly and the thing’s posture unlocked. “If sir would care to come this way, I believe I have the right combination.”
I followed the machine through a door that blended so well with the décor of the back wall that I hadn’t seen it and down a short corridor. Beyond was a long, low room whose unpainted plaster walls were lined with raw fibre-glass packing cases. There were a number of people working quietly at points up and down the room. The air carried the businesslike rattle of hardware in practised hands. The mandroid led me to a small grey-haired man dressed in grease-streaked coveralls who was stripping down an electromag bolt-thrower as if it were a roast chicken. He looked up as we approached.
“Chip?” He nodded at the machine and ignored me.
“Clive, this is Takeshi Kovacs. He’s a friend of Mr Bancroft, looking for equipment. I’d like you to show him the Nemex and a Philips gun, and then pass him on to Sheila for a blade weapon.”
Clive nodded again and set aside the electromag.
“This way,” he said.
The mandroid touched my arm lightly. “Should sir require anything further, I shall be in the showroom.”
It bowed fractionally and left. I followed Clive along the rows of packing cases to where a variety of handguns were laid out on piles of plastic confetti. He selected one and turned back to me with it in his hands.
“Second series Nemesis X,” he said, holding out the gun. “The Nemex. Manufactured under licence for Mannlicher-Schoenauer. Fires a jacketed slug with a customised propellant called Druck 31. Very powerful, very accurate. The magazine takes eighteen shells in a staggered clip. Bit bulky but worth it in a firefight. Feel the weight.”
I took the weapon and turned it over in my hands. It was a big, heavy-barrelled pistol, slightly longer than the Smith & Wesson but well balanced. I swapped it hand to hand for a while, getting the feel of it, squinted down the sight. Clive waited beside me patiently.
“All right.” I handed it back. “And something subtle?”
“Philips squeeze gun.” Clive reached into an open packing case and dug inside the confetti until he came up with a slim grey pistol almost half the size of the Nemex. “A solid steel load. Uses an electromagnetic accelerator. Completely silent, accurate up to about twenty metres. No recoil, and you’ve got a reverse field option on the generator that means the slugs can be retrieved from the target afterwards. Takes ten.”
“Batteries?”
“Specs are for between forty and fifty discharges. After that, you’re losing muzzle velocity with every shot. You get two replacement batteries included in the price and a recharging kit compatible with household power outlets.”
“Do you have a firing range? Somewhere I can try these out?”
“Out the back. But both these babies come with a virtual combat practice disc and that’s perfect parity between virtual and actual performance. Warranty guarantees it.”
“All right, fine.” Collecting on a guarantee like that might prove a slow process if some cowboy used the resulting unhandiness to put a bullet through your skull. No telling when you might get re-sleeved, if at all. But by now the ache in my head was beginning to get through the painkillers. Maybe target practice wasn’t the thing right at that moment. I didn’t bother asking the price either. It wasn’t my money I was spending. “Ammunition?”
“Comes in boxes of five, both guns, but you get a free clip with the Nemex. Sort of a promotion for the new line. That going to be enough?”
“Not really. Give me two five-packs for both guns.”
“Ten clips, each?” There was a dubious respect in Clive’s voice. Ten clips is a lot of ammunition for a handgun, but I’d discovered that there were times when being able to fill the air with bullets was worth a lot more than actually hitting anything. “And you wanted a blade, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Sheila!” Clive turned away down the long room and called out to a tall woman with crewcut blonde hair who was sitting cross-legged on a crate with her hands in her lap and the matt grey of a virtual set masking her face. She looked round when she heard her name, remembered the mask and tipped it off, blinking. Clive waved at her and she uncoiled herself from the crate, swaying slightly from the shift back to reality as she got up.
“Sheila, this guy’s looking for steel. You want to help him out?”
“Sure.” The woman reached out a lanky arm. “Name’s Sheila Sorenson. What kind of steel you looking for?”
I matched her grip. “Takeshi Kovacs. I need something I can throw in a hurry, but it’s got to be small. Something I can strap to a forearm.”
“All right,” she said amiably. “Want to come with me? You finished here?”
Clive nodded at me. “I’ll take this stuff out to Chip, and he’ll package it up for you. You want it for delivery or carry out?”
“Carry out.”
“Thought so.”
Sheila’s end of the business turned out to be a small rectangular room with a couple of silhouette cork targets on one wall and an array of weapons ranging from stilettos to machetes hung on the other three. She selected a flat black knife with a grey metal blade about fifteen centimetres long and took it down.
“Tebbit knife,” she said inconsequentially. “Very nasty.”
And with every appearance of casualness she turned and unleashed the weapon at the left-hand target. It skipped through the air like something alive and buried itself in the silhouette’s head. “Tantalum steel alloy blade, webbed carbon hilt. There’s a flint set in the pommel for weighting and of course you can bash them over the head with that if you don’t get them with the sharp end.”
I stepped across to the target and freed the knife. The blade was narrow and honed to a razor’s edge on each side. A shallow gutter ran down the centre, delineated with a thin red line that had tiny, intricate characters etched into it. I tilted the weapon in an attempt to read the engraving, but it was in a code I didn’t recognise. Light glinted dully off the grey metal.
“What’s this?”
“What?” Sheila moved to stand beside me. “Oh, yeah. Bioweapon coding. The runnel is coated with C-381. Produces cyanide compounds on contact with haemoglobin. Well away from the edges, so if you cut yourself there’s no problem, but if you sink it in anything with blood…”