Neal Asher - The Departure

‘Yup, that’d be me.’

‘Business slow today?’ Saul asked, looking around.

On the market stalls behind, a pathetic amount of food was on display, while the best business was being conducted out of the back of a transvan. It contained bags of homegrown tobacco, in strong demand because everyone knew that when you’re smoking you don’t feel so hungry. Here and there lolled guards armed with very up-to-date assault rifles – underworld enforcers. Over to the right, behind an area almost fenced off by car bodies, lay piles of engine parts and burnt-out computer-locking mechanisms. Pillars of tyres formed the entrance to this zone, but no one was currently doing any business there. Saul guessed that the car-breaking business must be on the wane. Over to the left the open side of the car park overlooked the urban sprawl, now lost in the hazy polluted distance. There were plenty of people about, he noticed, but none by the mobile hospital except Bronstein himself.

The doctor inspected the end of his cigar. ‘It’s a matter of priorities.’

‘Really?’

‘You got enough cash for lung wash and a relining you now spend it on bread.’

Hannah stepped forward. ‘I didn’t realize that All Health was charging for its services now.’

‘All Health?’ He eyed her wonderingly. ‘I stopped working for them once they told me to carry on reusing syringes after the sterilizers broke down.’ He waved his cigar at the vehicle behind. ‘I’m private now, and this set-up is my pension plan.’

‘Won’t they miss it?’ Saul gestured at the vehicle.

‘Amazing what records can disappear when you M-bullet a bowel cancer for the right official.’ Bronstein drew on his cigar again and let out a long stream of smoke. ‘So what can I do for you?’

‘You’ve got the full auto-surgery with telefactored instruments, clean box and full life-support?’ Hannah asked.

‘Yup.’

‘Nerve-sheath scouring and microtools?’

‘Yup.’ He looked slightly puzzled and wary now.

‘Sigurd biotic tools?’

‘Fuck me, lady, this is an AH unit not a Committee hospital.’

‘But you must do implants here, so what do you have available?’

‘Some Sigurd,’ he admitted, stubbing out his cigar and taking his feet off the crate, ‘and old Clavier biotics.’

‘That should do it.’

‘So what’s the deal?’

‘Cerebral implants,’ she said.

He grimaced. ‘I do some, but nothing after the Net Chips.’

‘Not a problem. I’ll operate and you can assist.’

‘Lady, no one uses my stuff.’

Saul unshouldered his backpack, opened it and took out a heavy parcel wrapped in newspaper, tore the end open and showed Bronstein the contents. At first he’d considered bringing the considerable sums of cash he’d accumulated, but since a bag of tomatoes now cost upwards of four hundred Euros, he would have needed a transvan to carry the necessary payment. However, there’s something people always fall back on in times of hardship: gold. He’d got five bars in the pack, all he’d been able to lay his hands on over the last two years, and hoped he wouldn’t need to hand over them all. The doctor let out a low whistle and slowly stood up.

‘Best we go inside,’ he said.

The driver’s cab and living quarters took up the entire forward compartment of the All Health trailer bus, the rear section accommodating the surgery itself. The rear door led first into a small office-cum-waiting room, with a desk and computer, but with all the chairs intended for customers and most of the surrounding space taken up by stacks of supplies. Most of the crates bore the All Health logo, but some boasted the blood-red stamp indicating reserved government property. Once they were all inside, Bronstein closed and locked the door then moved over to perch on the edge of his desk.

‘Cerebral implants,’ he said.

Saul took the briefcase out of his pack, rested it on the desk and snapped it open. Bronstein peered inside for a moment, then reached in to pick up the cigarette-packet-sized container for the organic interface, studying the blue LEDs along one edge, then the miniscreen that ran a convoluted screen saver.

‘Organics,’ he said, as he turned to regard Hannah. ‘You’d better know what you’re doing, lady, because I don’t pay compensation here.’ Next he picked up the box containing the teragate optic socket and examined it in puzzlement.

Hannah gazed through the glass window beside them at the operating theatre. Saul had also inspected this room and been glad to find it spotlessly clean. No used syringes, pus-soaked dressings or bloodstains on the floor, like you’d usually find in an AH hospital.

‘I know what I’m doing,’ she replied firmly.

Bronstein turned to Saul. ‘I take it you’re the recipient?’

‘Yes,’ Saul confirmed.

Bronstein pointed to a door adjoining the window. ‘Clean port through there. You strip, depilate your head and take a shower, making sure you use the small cleaning head on your mouth, nose, ears and anus, then dry yourself with the fibresept towel and put on some disposeralls. You okay with that?’

‘I think I can manage,’ Saul replied, ‘but we’ve yet to agree a price.’ He felt more than a little edgy. Though he’d undergone implant removals previously in places like this – having done most implantations himself – those had all been under local anaesthetic. He didn’t like the degree of trust involved in going under full anaesthetic and letting someone take a scalpel to his head. Yes, Hannah would be doing the procedure, but if Bronstein found the bag of gold attractive enough, Saul had no doubt that he might choose his moment to take her down. Disposing of two corpses would be no problem for him and, as they had witnessed on the way here, no one would be investigating their disappearance.

‘Two of those gold bars will cover it,’ Bronstein replied. ‘One more, maybe, if there’s any complications.’ He gazed at Saul steadily. ‘But that ain’t your main problem right now, is it?’

‘I don’t follow you,’ Saul said.

‘You armed?’ Bronstein asked.

‘Why do you want to know that?’

‘Because, if you are, you can take whatever weapon you’ve got through the shower with you.’

That would not be a problem for the automatic Saul was carrying, since it had been over a hundred years since damp could affect the firing of a modern weapon.

‘A lot of good that’ll . . .’ Saul paused and looked at Hannah. ‘You mean I’ll be conscious during the operation?’

She nodded. ‘You don’t ever attach up such hardware to an unconscious brain, or you get activation problems.’

‘I see.’ He took out the three bars of gold and set them down on Bronstein’s desk, then headed straight for the door. As Saul went through, Bronstein was already picking up one of the bars to feed through the narrow throat of the kind of scanner a jeweller would normally use. Doubtless many of the doctor’s clients now paid him with precious metals or with gems.

The short passageway beyond the door terminated at the shower booth, with a plastic box on a low shelf beside it for the client’s belongings, and coathangers arranged above. Saul stripped and placed all his clothing in the box, along with his boots and backpack, but he retained the automatic as he stepped into the shower to inspect its complex controls. He first dealt with his head, the dyed hair dropping as powder into the shower tray from the high-speed tungsten-carbide heads of the shaver pad. Next he spread depilating cream over his scalp from a spigot beside the shaver recess, and following the instructions on a screen just above the spigot, he waited until the timer hit zero before turning on the shower itself.