Lois Bujold - Cryoburn

Miles’s brows rose. “Is that, um… all right? Medically?”

Raven shrugged. “If the use-by dating is fairly conservative, yes.”

It was not, Miles supposed, a choice between discarded fluid and fresh, but between discarded and none. He was reminded again that this place was a parasite operation, clinging to the underbelly of a more functional economy, without which it could not continue to exist. Granted, if its host economy functioned rather better, it wouldn’t need to exist.

Medical sensors blinked timing lights. Ako withdrew the tubes and sealed the entry and exit incisions with plastic bandage, and carefully lathered the skin with ointment. She and Medtech Tanaka horsed the body into a sort of plastic body-glove, then joined forces with Tenbury to shift it all onto the float pallet, where Tenbury covered it more corpselike with a sheet. He guided the pallet out the door. “Want to help me, Jin?” Tenbury asked hopefully over his shoulder. Jin, planting his feet, doggedly shook his head. Tenbury sighed and trundled his burden away.

Ako turned to the clean-up process, Raven leaned against a counter, and Miles found a stool to perch upon. While the medtech folded her arms and listened dubiously, Miles embarked on much the same pitch as he’d presented to Madame Suze, heavy on the implication that Suze had sent them over here with her full blessing. Since Tanaka seemed susceptible to the boy, Miles also unleashed Jin for a judicious blast of heartfelt imploring.

As a result, her frown at the end seemed more technical than political. “We haven’t had most of that section open for years. A lot of the equipment that wasn’t stripped out when the place was decommissioned went later.”

Palmed and pawned or sold, Miles presumed.

“But I do maintain… huh. I think we’ll have to go up and take a look around.”

Not a flat no, impossible, then. Good so far. “That’s what Raven is here for,” Miles assured her. “Suze said—is that her first name or her last, by the way?”

“Both,” said the medtech. “Susan Suzuki.”

“Have you been working with her for long?”

“Since the beginning. There were three of us put the scheme together—Suze, her sister, who was assistant to the comptroller, and me. We roped in Tenbury pretty quick, though.”

“A younger man then, was he? You were critical for the cryoprep, obviously. Did you have any plans for the other end of things, the revivals?”

She blew out her lips in a short laugh. “At the time, I didn’t think we’d go more than a year before we all ended up in jail. I figured it for more of a hopeless protest than anything. Then the street people started coming in, even more desperate than we were, and we found we couldn’t quit. Couldn’t betray them as everyone else had.”

“The world is made by the people who show up for the job,” Miles agreed.

Medtech Tanaka eyed Ako, who had finished cleaning up and drifted over to listen in. “That’s a true thing. Ako and her great-aunt used to run a cook-shop. The usual—the old woman grew ill, the medical bills bankrupted them, the shop failed, they were evicted… came in to us. Ako’d never finished school, but she knew how to clean and wasn’t afraid of work, so I took her on.” Earnest but timid Ako, Miles guessed, would never have gained entry to, let alone graduated from, any medtech academy. This place gave a whole new dimension to the term unlicensed .

“Shouldn’t we take Raven-sensei upstairs now?” Jin urged.

They mounted one floor to the corridor directly above, which had apparently once been a fully-equipped cryorevival facility, with half a dozen operating theaters, a recovery room, and some intensive care booths. Most of it was dark and dusty and, indeed, sadly stripped, but Medtech Tanaka apparently maintained one operating room for procedures more demanding than what antibiotic ointment, surgical glue, and bracing advice would cover. She and Raven fell into intense but by no means discouraged tech-speak, medical division, which ended with sending Jin downstairs to bring back Tenbury for more consultation.

“Who is the owner-of-record for this place?” Miles asked the medtech while they were waiting. “If it was legally abandoned, I’d have thought the city would have seized it for back taxes by now.”

“There have been a couple of supposed owners, over the years. The city won’t seize it for the same reason the current owner, poor slob, can’t unload it. Legal liability for two or three thousand destitute cryo-corpses. He was a contractor, who bought it for what he thought was a song and only then discovered what came with it. Suze has him under control for now. We think the biggest current danger is that he’ll try to solve his dilemma through a spot of arson, but we keep a watch.”

“It doesn’t sound like a very stable situation.”

“Never has been. We just try to go from day to day. Surprising where you can end up, that way.”

Raven, Miles noticed, was listening intently to all this, not in the least appalled. Well, Jacksonian-trained, after all. The Hippocratic Oath, if he’d ever heard of it, was likely only considered a guideline there.

Tenbury came back, and there followed a lot more tech-speak, then visits to other chambers with some alarming thumping and crashing. Miles sent the fretful Jin back to his roof to supervise the loading-up of his menagerie. When the noises of inventory at last died away, Raven returned.

“Well?” said Miles. “Go or no-go?”

“Go,” said Raven. “There will have to be some prep, but I find these people are good at improvising. And the physical impediments are made up for by a delightful lack of paperwork.”

“How soon will you be ready for me to make my snatch? I’ll probably want you along on the insertion, by the way, in case we run into any snags that are medical rather than security-related. How do you feel about risking arrest, by the way?”

Raven shrugged. “I’m sure your brother will extract me if you can’t. In any case, you can make your switch any time. Madame Sato can just as well wait here till we’re ready.”

“My time is not infinitely elastic.” Besides his wanting to go home, of course, there was no telling what can of worms would be emptied onto his plate with the revival of Jin’s mother. Miles was getting itchy to know.

“You can take that kid back to the consulate. I expect I’ll be working late here,” Raven went on. “I can get back to my hotel by public transport.”

Miles pointed to Raven’s consulate-issued wristcom. “Check in first. Secured channel. I’ll want a report. And it may be better to send Johannes to pick you up.”

“Actually…” Raven hesitated. “I think I will want to stop back at the consulate anyway. Can I use your secured tight-beam links to report in to my boss on Escobar?”

“Lily, or Mark?”

“Both. Though I’m not just sure where Lord Mark is, right now. Do you know?”

Miles shook his head. “His enterprises have become rather far-flung. I don’t track him daily. Are you arranging bail in advance?”

“Well, that’s a thought, but mainly because I may have found some elements of interest to the Durona group, here.”

“If they impinge on my investigation, I want to be fully apprised. Or even if they don’t.”

“Understood.”

Miles waved him back to work, and made his way back down through the basement maze and up to Jin’s rooftop.

As they unloaded the van, Consul Vorlynkin came out to see what all they were dumping in his back garden. Mina danced ahead of him and pounced on Lucky with an excited cry, rubbing her face in the soft fur. “Lucky! I thought you were dead!” The old gray cat endured the hug, but wriggled free promptly. “Do you still have your ratties, Jin?”