Tris had shaken her head.
"Older than you."
"That's not so difficult."
"Older than me," added Doc Joyce, ripping the spider in two and dropping both bits on the floor, where the halves became spiders in their turn and scurried away, in exactly opposite directions.
"Really?" Tris said. She said it mostly because Doc Joyce seemed to expect a reply.
"Yeah," said the Doc. "Older than me, older than you, older than everyone in RipJointShuts added together." He smiled. "These days replicators are so small most people don't even know they exist. These came over on the SZ Loyal Prince."
"You're talking about smoke?" Tris looked puzzled. "You know, you buy time in a clinic and that smoke just rolls over you, mending as it goes..."
"Clinics are pointless," Doc Joyce said. "Most people are born already prepared."
"On the worlds?"
Doc Joyce nodded.
"So why do they come here?"
He'd looked at her, that time he was shaving her head to open her skull, slight smile twisting his lips as he wondered whether to say more.
"You can tell me," Tris said.
"You know, Tristesse," said the man, "maybe I can." He took a long look at the naked girl strapped to his mixing desk. "You remind me of someone," he said, then stopped himself. "When you get to my age everyone looks like someone else."
Tris could see the logic in that.
"People come to me," the old man said, "because they've tried everything else and because I have a reputation." The Doc shook his head, a gesture meant to signify his acceptance that this idea was absurd. "I don't cure them because they're not ill. I change them. Not always into what they want. That's what brings them here. The risk."
Imagine that someone has cooked thread noodles, the tiny almost translucent kind so that they are too flexible to snap like dry twigs but need another ten seconds or so to become properly soft. Then imagine that person taking a fat handful of those noodles and twisting, so that some pop, others half rupture and a few, mostly in the middle, stay whole.
This was the muscle inside Tris's shoulders.
The spiders worked swiftly at a level below human sight. First they cut away damaged tissue and then they knitted new muscle into place. It would have been possible to repair the original, but even with neural blocks Tris would be reluctant to climb until the stiffness had gone and by the time this happened the girl might be unwilling to climb at all.
A risk Doc Joyce felt reluctant to take. For his uncharacteristic kindness now had a price. It was obvious, at least in retrospect. The kid needed major repairs and he needed someone who could climb three klicks of wire and finesse open the hatch of a racing yacht.
All Tomorrow's Parties was currently berthed off the Chinese Rocks. Its owner was an off-world racer who owed Doc Joyce for a couple of complex augmentations, a debt he'd proved very bad at paying. In the circumstances Doc Joyce might even throw in some extra fullerene tubes.
The kid was going to need all the smarts she could muster.
CHAPTER 29
Marrakech, Summer 1977 [Then]
In the days of the old Pasha a French general had been trapped in a Saharan fort under attack by Berber tribesmen. At lunch, when this attack began, the General was interrupted by an aide-de-camp who wanted to know his commander's orders.
"What are they armed with?"
"Cannon," said the Lieutenant, his face sombre. "And rifles. New model Martini-Henrys." This was a time when most tribesmen still carried muskets and swords, against which the stamped earth walls of the fort would have been completely secure.
"Thank God," the General announced. "I thought you were going to say fire hoses."
When Moz came by the house in Derb Yassin to make his peace with Malika he told the joke to Corporal ould Kasim and the old man had called it stupid. So Moz told it to Malika on their way across the street to Dar el Beida, where Moz was painting the entire place, very cheaply, for German boys who'd bought it from the dog woman's family and were moving out without ever having really bothered to move in.
Unfortunately Malika had needed the joke explained, which was embarrassing for both of them. And then, while Moz stirred paint in a plastic trough, Malika asked Moz who'd told him the joke.
"It was that Englishman, wasn't it?"
This was a sore subject. Almost as sore a subject as it was between Moz and Sidi ould Kasim, who'd announced that this friendship with the foreigners was exactly what he'd expect from the son of a whore. Moz still wore a split lip from the brief and fruitless altercation which followed.
"What do you want from them?" asked Malika, and her voice was so strained that Moz wondered exactly what ould Kasim had been saying about him. "Look at you!"
Moz wore a pair of bondage pants from Seditionaries, with the straps cut so they didn't interfere with his work. Celia had been about to throw them out. And Moz's hair was now dyed black and spiked on top, the way Jake wore his.
"I like it," said Moz.
"Well, I don't." Malika scowled. "And those shoes are silly."
The shoes had crepe soles, fat laces and were made from red suede, brothel creepers, Jake called them. Neither of them mentioned the watch. The gold Seamaster was something else. Something beyond Moz's dreams. For a start Celia had given it to him.
"So," said Malika. "I suppose you want to say sorry?"
"That's unfair."
"No it's not," Malika said. She'd come with her red hair tied back, although she'd tied it so clumsily that it made her...
"And what are you staring at?" Malika added crossly.
"Just looking," said Moz.
"At what?"
"That ribbon, the shirt, your eyes..." Moz sighed. "And you're right," he said. "My shoes are silly. They're meant to be silly. They used to belong to Jake."
Malika wanted to say something about Jake, about Moz's story that Celia was Jake's sister because Malika didn't believe that for a minute. Only Malika didn't say anything because her mind was still stumbling over the first part of Moz's reply.
"What about the ribbon?"
He said nothing.
"Come to that," said Malika, "what about my eyes?"
Moz shrugged inside his ripped, oversized T-shirt and turned back to his trough of paint. Hassan would be coming before evening prayers to check how the job was going.
"I know what you want," said Malika. "And I'm not going to do it." She put down her broom and kicked a dustpan out of the way. "You don't really need me here anyway."
"Wait." Moz winced at the way his voice shot up. Although he was too anxious even to be embarrassed for long. "Don't go." He needed her help to do what Hassan demanded. Taking the parcel was the only way for Moz to make peace after his fight with Hassan yesterday and even that might not be enough.
"My eyes," Malika demanded, feet planted wide apart. "What about them?"
You have the eyes of a cat, Moz wanted to say. Eyes so amber one could look for the whole of history to be trapped inside them. They were many things, her eyes, but there were those in the Mellah who thought human was not one of them.
"Tell me..."
Malika was already too grown up to be wearing what she was, one of her father's old shirts as a dress. Pretty soon they'd stop being friends. At least the kind of friends they used to be. And this was probably the last summer they'd be able to talk like this. He'd seen the way Hassan stared at her. Moz knew what was coming and Malika knew also. Moz could see it every day in those eyes.