"I don't know." Coren stared at the door, then looked at Capel. "Don't wait for an apology. "
"I won't. I just wish I understood what just happened here." He pressed a hand against Coren's chest. "You can explain it to me, can't you?"
"Maybe. Where do you want me to start?"
"First things first," Capel said. "Given Mikel's reaction to it-what's a cyborg?"
Coren flashed a half-smile. "Well, as I understand it…"
Twenty-Five
The corpse on the table smelled cloyingly sweet. Baxin, Sipha Palen's pathologist, directed a squad of devices while speaking aloud his findings for the recorders.
"-lungs are permeated by clusters of nodes which seem to function as storage systems for long-term oxygenation. Secondary vascular system routed through what appears to be a secondary spleen suggests waste gas disposal follows complimentary pathways for storage in…what the hell is that?"
He fidgeted nervously and glanced at Derec and Palen, who watched from the other side of the isolation screen. Baxin was perspiring slightly. His fingers worked a keypad, and the small scavengers moved on and through the body of the cyborg.
"The muscle structure is a complex interleaving of polymers and protein. Molecular bonding seems to be cyclodextrous…we have polyamide bonding along single-chain amine nitrogen…looks like it uses adipic acids to facilitate the protein interactions…"
Baxin looked at Derec and shook his head.
"I have no idea what I'm looking at," he said. "This thing looks like it's made of nylon and nylon analogs."
"Myralar?"
"Yes, I'm finding a lot of that in the joints and the valves. A second pancreas that looks like an organic polymer factory…it's producing hexamethyline diamine instead of insulin…I don't even know why it was brought here."
"This doesn't look like the being in the recovered memories," Palen said. "The skin looks…normal, I suppose."
"Oh, that," Baxin said. He took a pair of forceps and lifted a layer of skin from one pectoral. Instead of the red and gray of organic tissue, the underside looked like graphite. "There's a layer of composite that seems to be electrolytically active. If I run a small charge through it, the material shifts to the exterior derma." He dropped the layer and shook his head. "It causes problems-skin irritation and infections from the look of it. That's the source of the rough complexion."
"In your opinion," Palen asked, "is it at all human?"
Baxin shrugged elaborately and surveyed the body. "Sure. There's blood, oxygenation, amino acids…I'm seeing some alternate building blocks in part of the DNA, like fluorotryptophan…but it's at least as much a machine… a very odd machine…" He grabbed a hand and held it up. "The musculature in key areas has an underlying carbon isotope structure that responds to pressure by forming a kind of sheathe. The best comparison I have is calcium deposition in bones under stress. But that takes days or months. According to the projections I've got here-" he pointed at his monitors "-this responds instantly by creating a kind of exoskeleton which can be reabsorbed." He shook his head. "In my opinion, the only thing that would define this as primarily organic is that you'd have to grow all this. You couldn't add it onto an already extant organic structure."
"Not at all?" Derec asked. "I mean, how early would you have to start?"
Baxin sighed and glanced at the readouts on the bank on monitors beside him. "Well, there are some problems. I've got an organ here that looks like a gall bladder, but as far as I can tell it's strictly for the isolation of ammonia, which seems to be produced as a byproduct of a polymerization process. The ammonia would still be toxic if released generally, so it's flensed from the system and fed back into the one of the spleens for venting. It's not a perfect system-I'm seeing excess carbonic carbonyl in the duodenum that seems to be ingested to compensate for an imbalance. I'm thinking that most of this secondary polymer system was introduced before puberty, probably in infancy. You could overcome some of these problems by starting with a base genetic template and growing one from scratch, but I wouldn't be able to tell you how. Probably the rate of breakdown would overwhelm it at that stage, so starting later might compensate for some of the flaws. "
"You don't sound too certain, " Palen said.
"There'd have to be certain preconditions," Baxin said. "I'm not good enough for this, Chief. I'm guessing. You need someone who understands sequencing and gene therapy."
"What about the brain?" Derec asked. "Is it wholly organic?"
"No…well, yes…I mean, it's oxygenated, but what I'm seeing is the presence of protonated oxygen. That would limit cell absorption considerably, except that there's a monomer fiber strung along the vasal matrix that's drawing particles from a small isotopic shunt in the hypothalamus. "
"What kind of particles?" Derec pressed.
"Positrons."
Derec sensed Palen looking at him. "All right," he said. "When you finish, I want the brain sent to the positronics lab."
"The whole thing should've been sent there to begin with," Baxin complained. "Sorry. I'll let you know when I've completed my autopsy. "
"Thanks, Doctor," Palen said. "By the way, the masking ability-"
Baxin laughed sourly. "That's the only thing that's easy to explain. The clothing. It doesn't have it built into itself. It just wore military tech. "
Derec walked away from the theater. Masid leaned against the wall by the exit, arms folded over his chest. Derec heard Palen's heavy tread catching up to him.
"Your assistant, " Masid said, "just called to say you should come to the lab ASAP." Derec nodded in response.
"So, just what is that thing?" Palen demanded as the three of them stepped into the corridor outside the morgue.
"A cyborg," Derec said. "What I was afraid of."
"Where did it come from?"
"I have no idea."
"Are there more of them?"
"There's no reason to think this one is the prototype. Why use it for something as risky as slipping into a police station to murder someone if it's the only one? No, there are others. " He glanced at Palen. "What did your Brethe dealer find that got her killed by one?"
Palen glared at Masid. "I don't know," she said. "We didn't get a chance to debrief her."
"Where was she when you picked her up?" Derec asked.
"Settler section, dockside," Masid said. "She used to keep a flop there, in the service section."
"Has anybody looked at it since she died?"
Palen nodded. "It had been tossed, pretty thoroughly. None of her associates shed any light on what she was into."
"Was she actually dealing Brethe?" Derec asked.
"Absolutely," Palen said. "Only way to keep her cover valid. "
"Who was her supplier, then?"
Masid nodded. "A local boss named Metresha, who also has a finger or two in the baley traffic."
"Has anybody talked to her?"
"Not yet," Palen said. "She's offstation right now. I didn't want to move on her till we had some solid information about these deaths."
"Does anybody know when she's coming back?"
Masid shrugged. "Metresha is rather hard to keep track of. No one is really sure what she looks like-she tends to work through intermediaries a great deal. I gather the docks are being watched?"
"The Settler ship that was supposed to pick up those baleys is in dock now," Palen said. "Metresha always shows up when a cargo is being moved."
"Have you heard from Lanra?"
"Not since yesterday."
"I want to talk to Ariel," Derec said.
"I want to know where that robot is," Palen said.
Derec glared at her. "You might want to ask your new prisoner about the cyborg. He knew its name, after all."
"We're letting him think things through a while longer," Palen said. "Do you want to be there when we question him?"
"It might be useful to have someone there who knows a little about robots," Derec said sardonically.