Mona Lisa Overdrive

43 - Judge

The woman led them to a hovercraft parked inside Factory, if you could call it parking when the front end was mashed up around a concrete tool mount. It was a white cargo job with CATHODE CATHAY lettered across the rear doors, and Slick wondered when she'd managed to get it in there without him hearing it. Maybe while Bobby the Count was pulling his diversion with the blimp.

The aleph was heavy, like trying to carry a small engine block.

He didn't want to look at the Witch, because there was blood on her blades and he hadn't made her for that. There were a couple of bodies around, or parts of them; he didn't look at that either.

He looked down at the block of biosoft and its battery pack and wondered if all that was still in there, the gray house and Mexico and 3Jane's eyes.

"Wait," the woman said. They were passing the ramp to the room where he kept his machines; the Judge was still there, the Corpsegrinder ...

She still had her gun in her hand. Slick put his hand on Cherry's shoulder. "She said wait."

"That thing I saw, last night," the woman said. "One-armed robot. That work?"

"Yeah ... "

"Strong? Carry a load? Over rough ground?"

"Yeah."

"Get it."

"Huh?"

"Get it into the back of the hover. Now. Move."

Cherry clung to him, weak-kneed from whatever it was that girl had given her.

"You," Molly gestured toward her with the gun, "into the hover."

"Go on," Slick said.

He set the aleph down and walked up the ramp and into the room where the Judge was waiting in the shadows, the arm beside it on the tarp, where Slick had left it. Now he wouldn't ever get it right, how the saw was supposed to work. There was a control unit there, on a row of dusty metal shelves. He picked it up and let the Judge power up, the brown carapace trembling slightly.

He moved the Judge forward, down the ramp, the broad feet coming down one-two, one-two, the gyros compensating, perfecting for the missing arm. The woman had the rear doors of the hover open, ready, and Slick marched the Judge straight over to her. She fell back slightly as the Judge towered over her, her silver glasses reflecting polished rust. Slick came up behind the Judge and started figuring the angles, how to get him in there. It didn't make sense, but at least she seemed to have some idea of what they were doing, and anything was better than hanging around Factory now, with dead people all over. He thought about Gentry, up there with his books and those bodies. There'd been two girls up there, and they'd both looked like Angie Mitchell. Now one of them was dead, he didn't know how or why, and the woman with the gun had told the other one to wait ...

"Come on, come on, get the fucking thing in, we gotta go ... "

When he'd managed to work the Judge into the back of the hover, legs bent, on its side, he slammed the doors, ran around, and climbed in on the passenger side. The aleph was between the front seats. Cherry was curled in the backseat, under a big orange parka with the Sense/Net logo on the sleeve, shivering.

The woman fired up the turbine and inflated the bag. Slick thought they might be hung on the tool mount, but when she reversed, it tore away a strip of chrome and they were free. She swung the hover around and headed for the gates.

On the way out they passed a guy in a suit and tie and a tweed overcoat, who didn't seem to see them. "Who's that?"

She shrugged.

"You want this hover?" she asked. They were maybe ten kilos from Factory now and he hadn't looked back.

"You steal it?"

"Sure."

"I'll pass."

"Yeah?"

"I did time, car theft."

"So how's your girlfriend?"

"Asleep. She's not my girlfriend."

"No?"

"I get to ask who you are?"

"A businesswoman."

"What business?"

"Hard to say."

The sky above the Solitude was bright and white.

"You come for this?" He tapped the aleph.

"Sort of."

"What now?"

"I made a deal. I got Mitchell together with the box."

"That was her, the one who fell over?"

"Yeah, that was her."

"But she died ... "

"There's dying, then there's dying."

"Like 3Jane?"

Her head moved, like she'd glanced at him. "What do you know about that?"

"I saw her, once. In there."

"Well, she's still in there, but so's Angie."

"And Bobby."

"Newmark? Yeah."

"So what'll you do with it?"

"You built those things, right? One in the back, the others?"

Slick glanced back over his shoulder to where the Judge was folded in the hover's cargo space, like a big rusty headless doll. "Yeah."

"So you're good with tools."

"Guess so."

"Okay. I got a job for you." She slowed the hover beside a ragged crest of snow-covered scrap and coasted to a halt. "There'll be an emergency kit in here, somewhere. Get it, get up on the roof, get me the solar cells and some wire. I want you to rig the cells so they'll recharge this thing's battery. Can you do that?"

"Probably. Why?"

She sank back in the seat and Slick saw that she was older than he'd thought, and tired. "Mitchell's in there now. They want her to have some time, is all ... "

"They?"

"I dunno. Something. Whatever I cut my deal with. How long you figure the battery'll hold out, if the cells work?"

"Couple months. Year, maybe."

"Okay. I'll hide it somewhere, where the cells can get the sun."

"What happens if you just cut the power?"

She reached down and ran the tip of her index finger along the thin cable that connected the aleph to the battery. Slick saw her fingernails in the morning light; they looked artificial. "Hey, 3Jane," she said, her finger poised above the cable, "I gotcha." Then her hand was a fist, which opened, as though she were letting something go.

Cherry wanted to tell Slick everything they were going to do when they got to Cleveland. He was lashing two of the flat cells to the Judge's broad chest with silver tape. The gray aleph was already fastened to the machine's back with a harness of tape. Cherry said she knew where she could get him a job fixing rides in an arcade. He wasn't really listening.

When he'd gotten it all together, he handed the control unit to the woman.

"Guess we wait for you now."

"No," she said. "You go to Cleveland. Cherry just told you."

"What about you?"

"I'm going for a walk."

"You wanna freeze? Maybe wanna starve?"

"Wanna be by my fucking self for a change." She tried the controls and the Judge trembled, took a step forward, another. "Good luck in Cleveland." They watched her walk out across the Solitude, the Judge clumping along behind her. Then she turned and yelled back, "Hey, Cherry! Get that guy to take a bath!"

Cherry waved, the zippers of her leather jackets jingling.