Huw slouches off toward the entrance in a black mood, the teapot clanking at his hip. This isn’t going quite the way he’d imagined, and he’ll be damned before he’ll share a refectory table with that sanctimonious Swedish Girl Scout, much less Sandra and her gender-bending (and disturbingly attractive) friend. Someone is quite clearly doing this in order to get under his skin, and he is deeply pissed off. On the other hand, it’s a long time since breakfast—and there must be somewhere that serves a decent goat curry in Tripoli.
Mustn’t there?
It is insanely hot on the sidewalk outside the court, hot and crowded and dusty, and even with his biohazard burka pumping away heat as fast as it can, Huw is sweating. His skin itches everywhere, but especially on the shoulder, where he can feel his skin crawling every time he thinks about the glowing trefoil tattoo.
The court is located in a district full of bleached white shells, buildings thrown up by massively overengineered mollusks. Unable to breathe without oxygen supplies, having erected a habitable structure, they die in order to provide a delicious moving-in feast for the residents. It’s cheap favela architecture, but durable and far better than the tent cities of a previous century; snail cities have power, recycling services, bandwidth, and a weird kind of hobbit-ish charm. Some of the bigger shells have been turned into storefronts by various cottage professionals, and Huw is drawn toward one of them by the mouthwatering smell of roasting meat.
There are elaborate cast-iron tables outside the shell-front, and cast-iron chairs, and—luxury of luxuries—a parasol over each. There are people inside the shell, but the outside tables are deserted. Huw wilts into the nearest space and puts his teapot down on the table. “You,” he grunts. “Universal translator for anyone who comes my way. I expect service with a smile. Capisce?”
“Your wish is my command ,” pipes his djinni.
A teenaged girl in a black salwar kameez, white face paint, and far too much eye shadow and silver spider-jewelry saunters over, looking for all the world like a refugee from a goth club in Bradford. “Yeah? Whatcher want, granny?”
“It’s mister,” Huw says. “You the waitress?”
“Yeah,” she answers in English, staring at him idly. Her earrings stare too—synthetic eyeballs dangling from desiccated optic nerves. “You a tranny?”
“No, I’m a biohazard. What’s on the lunch menu?”
“We’ve got a choice of any cloned meat shawarma you fancy: goat, mutton, ox tongue, or Rumsfeld. With salad, olives, cheese, falafels, coffee or Coke. Pretty much anything. Say, are you really a biohazard?”
“Listen,” Huw says, “I’m not wearing this fucking sack because I enjoy it. Your Ministry of Barbarian Affairs insisted—”
“Why don’t you take it off then?” she asks. “If they call you on it, just pay.”
“Pay—”
“What’s wrong with you? You one of those dumb Westerners who doesn’t get baksheesh?” She looks unimpressed.
Huw stifles a facepalm. I should have known. ... “Thanks. Just get me the goat shawarma and falafels. They’re cloned, you say?”
She looks evasive. “Cloned-ish.”
“Vatmeat?” Huw’s stomach turns.
“You’re not a racist, are you? Nothing wrong with being vatted.”
Huw pictures a pulsating lump of flesh and hoses, recalls that the top-selling album of all time was recorded by such a being, and resigns himself to eating vatmeat rather than getting into a religious argument. “I’ll take the goat. And, uh, a Diet Coke.”
“Okay.” She turns and beams his order to the kitchen, then wanders over to the bar and begins to pour a tall drink.
Huw takes a deep breath. Then he pinches the seal node on his burka and gives it a hard yank. As gestures of defiance go, it’s small but profound; he feels suddenly claustrophobic, and can’t stop until he’s tugged the whole thing off, up and over his head, and yanked down the overalls that make up its bottom half, and stomped them all into the gray dust under his boots.
The air is dry, and smells real. Huw finally begins to relax. The waitress strolls over bearing a large glass, loaded with Coke and ice cubes. As she gets close, her nose wrinkles. “You need a bath, Mr. Biohazard Man.”
“Yeah. Well. You tell the Ministry.” Huw takes the drink, relishes a long swallow, unencumbered by multiple layers of smart antiviral polymer defenses. He can feel the air on his face, the sunlight on his skin. He puts the glass down. Wonder how long I’ll take to work up a suntan? he thinks, and glances at his wrist. He freezes.
There’s a biohazard trefoil on the back of his hand.
Huw stands up, feeling dizzy. “There a toilet here?” he asks.
“Sure.” The waitress points him round the back. “Take your time.”
The bathroom is a small nautiloid annex, but inside it’s as chilly and modern as Sandra Lal’s. Huw locks the door and yanks his tee and sweatpants off. He turns anxiously to check his back in the mirror over the sink—but the trefoil on his shoulder has gone.
It’s on the back of his hand. And it itches.
“Shit,” he says quietly and with feeling.
Back at the table, Huw bolts his food down then rises, leaving an uncharacteristic tip. He picks up the bundle of dusty black biohazard fabric and strolls past the shops. One of them is bound to be a black market nanohacker. His hands are shaking. He isn’t sure which prospect is worse: finding he’s got a big medical bill ahead, or trying to live in ignorance.
“Teapot,” he whispers.
“Yes, sir ?”
“Where’s the nearest body shop? Doesn’t have to be fully legal under WIPO-compliant treaty terms, just legal enough.”
“Bzzt. It is regrettably not possible for this humble unit to guide you in the commission of felonies, O Noble Sirrah—”
Shake. “There is legal and there is legal,” Huw says. “I don’t give a shit about complying with all the brain-dead treaties the Moral Majority rammed through WIPO in the wake of the Hard Rapture. I just want somewhere that the local police won’t arrest me for frequenting if I pay the usual. Whatever the usual happens to be around here. Can you do that? Or would you like to tell me where the nearest heavy metal reclamation plant is?”
“Eeek! Turn left! Left, I say! Yes, ahead of you! Please, do me no injury, sirrah!”
Huw walks up to a featureless roc’s egg and taps on it. “Anyone at home?” he asks.
A door dilates in the shell, emitting a purple-tinged light. “Enter,” says a distinctly robotic voice.
Inside the shell, Huw finds himself in a room dominated by something that looks like a dentist’s chair as reinvented on behalf of the Spanish Inquisition by H. R. Giger. Standing beside it—
“Does your sister work at the diner along the road?” he asks.
“No, she’s my daughter.” The woman—who looks young enough to be the waitress’s twin, but wears medical white and doesn’t have any body piercings that blink at him—looks distinctly unimpressed. “And she’s got an attitude problem. She’s a goth, you know. Thinks it’s so rebellious.” She sniffs. “Did she send you here?”
Huw holds up his arm. “I’m here because of this,” he says, dodging the question.
“Aha.” She peers at his trefoil. “Do you know what it is?”
“No, that’s why I’m here.”
“Very well. If you take a seat and give me your debit token, I’ll try to find out for you.”
“Will there be any trouble?” Huw asks, lying back on the couch and trying not to focus on the mandibles descending toward him.
“I don’t know—yet.” She fusses and potters and mumbles to herself. “All right, then,” she says at length. “It’s in beta, whatever it is.”