Elizabeth Bear - Hammered

“Well”—Charlie tapped the interface off—“no. Or, more precisely, somewhat less alive than a sea squirt is, after it becomes sessile and eats its brain. No—”he held up a hand to forestall questions. “That was a digression, and never mind the biology lecture right now. What I’m saying is that the thing has a rudimentary nervous system. What it means? Well, there’s still research to be done. More interesting—”

Valens cut him off. “More interesting, you’ve discovered something that could revolutionize the treatment of spinal cord injury patients, if we can figure out how to use it. Is that where you were going with this?”

“Yeah,” he said with satisfaction. “If we can figure out how to make these things, and make them safe for human use, not only can we fix what’s broken… but, Fred. We may very well be able to make people smarter or faster, cure or fight a whole raft of neurological conditions… These babies are hot.”

“So I see.” Valens clapped him on the shoulder. “Send me the report. I’ll contact Dr. Holmes at Unitek, and make sure you receive the credit your work is due. Charlie…”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.” The colonel turned, springy on the ball of his foot in light gravity, and left.

8:30 P.M., Sunday 10 September, 2062:

Hartford, Connecticut

Sigourney Street

Abandoned North End

Razorface stopped under the rustred metal awning, left hand on the pull of the big blue door. Derek and Rasheed waited across the street, leaned up against the brick of a tenement building beside the parked Bradford, which Razor planned on wheeling inside as soon as he got the bays open. The three of them should have been the only people around.

Razor glanced right, where three rolling metal bay doors were closed and locked in the cinder-block wall of the shop. Flaking paint scrolled across them. Razor knew the mural said something about auto body and appliance repair, but he wasn’t sure exactly what.

“Might as well come on outta there,” he said, taking his fist off the handle. And damned if it wasn’t that cracker detective, Mitch, with the Polish last name, stepping out of the shadows of a doorway down the street and strolling up Sigourney with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his ratty corduroy pants and a cigarette hanging off his lower lip like he’d been intending to come over and say hi any minute.

Razorface felt his nostrils flare, and grinned. Goddamned cops in my neighborhood. What is the world coming to? The pig didn’t even look him in the teeth when he smiled, and he had to give Kozlowski that. He was cool.

“Razorface,” the cop said, drawing first one hand and then the other slowly out of his pockets and showing them empty. “Seen your boy Emery over in West Hartford the other day talking to a 20-Love. You keeping a close enough eye on him?”

Fucking cops, just trying to stir up shit. Razorface grunted and turned away.

Mitch kept talking. “Maker isn’t home. And I need to talk to you about Mashaya Duclose.”

“I got nothing to talk to nobody about,” Razorface answered, setting the key card Maker had given him to the reader. The lock flicked back and Mitch’s brow crinkled. Razorface’s boys started moving forward from their place across the street, and Mitch took a slow step forward.

The pig’s voice dropped and leveled, dead calm. “Where’s Maker, Razorface? And how did you get her key?”

Razorface paused with the door half open. “Visiting the fam,” he said. “I’m feeding the damn cat. Gonna bust me for it?”

“Her family.” Mitch reached up and caught the door before Razorface could quite step inside and pull it shut behind himself. Over Mitch’s shoulder, Razor saw his boys coming up on the cop. He shook them off with a minute jerk of the head, turning his attention back to the weedy little policeman, who was still talking. “Sister maybe? Black-haired gal about so tall?”

Razorface snarled silently, stepping through the door. “How much trouble Maker in, piggy?” Damned if he wanted to care, but he owed her. Owed her enough to come down himself to feed her goddamn cat because he knew she wouldn’t want anybody but him poking around in her stuff, when by rights he’d rather set fire to the stupid animal.

The cop shrugged. “Let’s go inside and talk about it, shall we?”

Their eyes met, pit bull and terrier coming to some unspoken agreement that didn’t involve either one backing down. Ten long seconds later, Razorface stepped away and gestured Mitch through the door. There was no way he was turning his back on a cop.

Inside, he entered the code Maker had given him into the security system. A pressure seemed to come off his eardrums when the sonics powered down, and he made sure the door was locked behind them. Then he followed Mitch into the shop.

It looked just as it had before they left for New York. He saw Mitch examining things in that cop way of his, and grunted, bending down to unlock the ratproof safe holding the cat food. There was still a couple of days’ worth in the automatic feeder, but Razorface topped it off anyway, ignoring the cop. He suspected Mitch was trying to get under his skin.

It wouldn’t do to show it was working.

Boris came out from under the Cadillac and started winding around the cop’s ankles, and Razor shook his head. Typical. Who was doing the feeding? And who was getting the thanks? He saw it as more or less a metaphor for the workings of the world, now that he thought about it.

Course, it might have something to do with the cat smelling Razorface’s Rottweiler on his pants. Maybe.

“So what the hell do you want?” Enough quiet time. He wanted to get the conversation over with and get home to Leesie, although he wasn’t about to let any of the boys know that. His jaw ached, as it did more and more these days, and his chest ached, too, no matter how much iron he lifted. The air sucked, was all it was. Better here in Maker’s shop, though — she kept the scrubbers going.

Mitch opened his mouth to talk, met Razorface’s eye dead on — and stopped. His jaw worked twice, and just as Razorface was about to turn around on his bootheel and stomp out, words followed. “Can we quit bullshitting each other and work together on this?”

Quiet and sharp. And Razorface started to snarl something about not needing no help from no fucking cops, and Maker’s gone, she’s gone with somebody she hate. Somebody she scared of. Scared for me because of.

He heard his own voice saying, “Fuck yeah.”

Mitch got real quiet then, and looked down at his loafers. “It’s bigger than street level. I think there’s a fucking corporation involved. That won’t stop my boss, if he can get good evidence — the chief is a straight-up arrow, and the commissioner, Dr. Hua— Well, you know about her. She’s a bulldog. But I’ve been flat told to keep my nose out of this before I wind up fired and dead, not necessarily in that order. And I know — I know in my bones, man, this all has something to do with Maker, and we need to figure out, you and me, we need to figure out what and why and how. Because I don’t goddamned know if we can trust her, and I don’t know either if we can solve this without her. So we’re on the same goddamned side.”

Razorface thought about it, hard and slow, rubbing at a cramped muscle along the left side of his neck. Wrong to let this cop in here like this.

My kids’re dying. My baby’s aunt, this cop’s old lady, she dead, too.

I thought she was working with this cop. But he’s worried what she was up to.

Maker gave me the key. She trust me, I should trust her. But maybe she want me to look, couldn’t explain. ’Cause some things you can’t explain.