“I’ll get that analysis started,” Derebought said, and Tatian nodded.
“Great.”
Reiss had left his battered jigg outside the office’s back entrance, as usual. Tatian followed him out into the rutted alley, wrinkling his nose at the smell of rotting seaweed, and lowered himself into the open passenger seat. Reiss kicked the motor to life and brought the jigg out into the main street at a relatively decorous pace. Traffic was heavy, as always, heavier as they reached the warren of alleys and narrow lanes that led into the Souk, until the jigg was barely moving as fast as a person could walk. He could feel Reiss’s weight tipping the jigg from side to side as he scanned the passing shays, and he braced himself against the edge of the car as the jigg accelerated suddenly, darting through the gap between a three-up and a shay piled high with bales of fonori. Reiss steadied the machine almost absently—he was, Tatian reminded himself, a very good driver—and swung out and around a slow-moving caleche before the driver could do more than open his mouth to shout. And then they had made the turn onto Kittree Row, the traffic vanishing almost magically.
The buildings were low and long, like most of the buildings in Bonemarche, but instead of the usual open bay at street level, most of them showed blank faces, closed off from the street by gray-painted doors. They looked almost metallic, but Tatian knew they would be wood or cast clay. Each one was marked with a house mark like a sign—a wave, a crudely drawn crescent moon, a top-hatted skeleton—and most had a bar of black paint running horizontally across the door. Stiller was a Black Watch clan, and most of Bonemarche’s population were at least nominally Stillers.
The jigg slowed, pulled sideways into the shadow of a building distinguished by a painted star and a wide band of green paint. Massingberd was a Green Watch clan, Tatian remembered, and loosely allied with Stiller against Stane. The door was propped upon a balk of wood, raised maybe a meter to let the breeze in, and Reiss leaned out of the jigg to touch a button on the wall beside the doorway. For a long moment, nothing happened, and then the door began to rise, jerking along its tracks. Reiss ducked forward slightly and brought the jigg into the bay. The engine was very loud in the confined space.
“Æ,” he called, and flicked the engine off completely. “Starli, are you there?”
There was a little silence. As Tatian’s eyes adjusted to the light—the bay was well lit, but seemed dim after the brilliance of the street—he could make out a knot of mostly men, gathered around a stand-alone diagnostic unit. They said nothing, watching the jigg, and then a woman pushed her way through the group, wiping her hands on a bright blue rag. One of the men switched off the diagnostic unit, and another reached halfheartedly for a tool kit that stood open beside a disassembled jet-car frame.
“So what’s up, Reiss?” The woman—Starli, she must be—came fully into the light, stopped perhaps three meters away, her arms folded across her breasts. She was tall, even by Haran standards, her long hair tied up in a square of blue-and-green-and-pink print fabric, and Tatian caught himself looking again to see if she was really a fem.
Reiss said, “You remember the other day I asked if you still did work on off-world implants? My boss is having problems with a connection, and I wondered if you could help.” He nodded side-ways. “Ser Mhyre Tatian.” The off-world names sounded harsh amid the flow of franca.
Starli nodded, some of the tension easing from her stance. “Mir Tatian. I’m Starli Massingberd.”
“Honored, mirrim,” Tatian said, and knew better than to offer his hand. “Reiss tells me you repair implants.”
“For kittereen racers, yes.” Starli tipped her head to the side, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes tightening either in contemplation or the beginnings of laughter. “And you should know I’m not licensed.”
“Reiss told me. He also said you were good.”
Starli smiled then, a quick baring of teeth. Tatian was suddenly aware again of the hovering technicians, pretending to work while they listened. “He’s right, mir, and good costs money. But I give discounts for metal, and I’m willing to make terms.”
“And I,” Tatian said, “would like to hear what you can do for me before we start talking prices.”
Starli’s smile widened, became for a fleeting instant genuinely amused. “Fair enough. Will you step into my office, mir?”
Tatian looked at Reiss, who said quickly, “I’ll wait here.” Tatian nodded, and the younger man moved to join the technicians, who relaxed at his approach.
The office was tucked into a corner, a square room that had obviously been an afterthought. The walls were glass brick, the cheapest of Hara’s building materials, half clear, half translucent, and in the instant before Tatian followed her into the milk-white room, he could see how the interior lights glowed through the walls, like radiant ice. It was an odd image, on a planet as warm as Hara, and he was smiling as she shut the door behind them. Starli gave him a curious look, as though she wondered what had amused him, but said only, “What’s your system, then?”
Tatian shrugged out of his suncheater, laid his arm on the battered desktop, turning his wrist to expose the control plate on the inside of his right forearm. “Inomata Cie., parts and bioware.” Their implants were the standard throughout the Concord Worlds; if you didn’t wear Inomata’s implants, you wore their clones.
Starli grunted, switching on a powerful viewlens, and tugged it down toward his arm. She turned away and rummaged on shelves crowded with bits of equipment to produce a black-foam cradle and a set of multicolored cables. “Have a seat and let me run a few quick tests. No charge.”
Tatian nodded, and pulled a stool close to the desk, sat down opposite her. He placed his arm in the cradle, plate uppermost, and Starli pulled the viewlens closer still, its thick edge blocking his sight. He could feel the heat of the lights, and then, more distantly, the click of the plate release. He tilted his head slightly, wanting to see what she was doing, but the viewlens was still in his way. Starli saw the movement, however, and glanced up, a quizzical expression on her face.
“Do you want to watch?” Most people don’t, her tone implied.
Tatian said, “Yes. If you don’t mind.”
She shook her head. “No problem.” She pulled the viewlens down and slightly to one side. “How’s that, can you see all right now?”
“Thanks.”
Starli mumbled an absent acknowledgment and leaned close over the lens. Now that the flesh-toned plate was removed, Tatian could see the shallow cavity, and the gray, faintly spongy surface of the interface box, with its remote reader, circular i/o port and the quintet of smaller needle ports surrounding it. Flesh welds bound it into place, the ridged scars normally concealed by the protective plate: Frankenstein welding, the cheapest kind of implant surgery. Starli fanned a handful of fine wires and plugged them deftly into the needle ports; watching her certainty, Tatian began to relax. She was more like a mem than most women, certainly more so than the fem he had briefly suspected she might be, stolid and quietly competent in her work—but that was an old stereotype, and just as untrue as all the less flattering ones. Prane Am had been a technician, too, and a good one, and there was no mistaking her for a mem.
“All right,” Starli said, and plugged a jack into the main port. “Tell me when it hurts.”
“Right now,” Tatian said, and winced as more static sang along his nerves.
Starli murmured something, squinting through the viewlens. Tatian could see blue lines and pale pink shapes drifting in the glass, but it was impossible to read their message at this angle. Static ebbed and flowed along his arm, was replaced briefly by numbing cold, and then the sensations vanished.