Bear Head by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Author:Adrian Tchaikovsky [Tchaikovsky, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781800241572
Google: M9TyDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B08DJBQ1M8
Goodreads: 55037555
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2021-01-06T23:00:00+00:00

14

[RECOVERED DATA ARCHIVE: ‘HONEY’]

Unknown channel: …

Sitting there in the stark light, against the stained concrete wall, that was all I got. The Shambles was heavily screened. When they built it, they’d known most Bioforms had comms headware. They’d known that, back in the days of the Pound, attempts to simply disable that ’ware on a case by case basis hadn’t worked; easy enough to reactivate the protocols. They’d wanted a secure prison where the inmates didn’t have 24-hour phone privileges. And then they’d set the cells underground and walled in two feet of reinforced concrete and that was the icing on the incommunicado cake, frankly. So there I was, trying to get a line out, trying to find something live in the Shambles to piggyback off. Trying to hack into the personal systems of my captors, even. And getting nowhere. Even they were cut off, if they came anywhere near me. They had to go out on the street for a signal.

And I remembered the Shambles. There had been real spikes of hysteria about Bioforms, around the time the place was built. And there had been Bioforms who’d reacted to their newfound rights and freedoms by taking advantage of them, or who had just failed to integrate into human society. And we’d worked out systems and methods and buffers since, but it had been a turbulent time. And when one of us crossed the line, the human law had come down hard. This was before Rex had become a champion who was such a Good Dog.

The Shambles was where we were sent to die. I mean, technically it was just a holding cell, but twenty-nine Bioforms died in the Shambles. They died resisting arrest, mostly, and what, the human police and guards asked, were they supposed to use against an eight-foot cyborg dog that was resisting arrest, save for overwhelming force. And it’s amazing how much the marks on some poor mutt just tied to a chair and beaten to death look like the marks on a rabid monster brought down by heroic law enforcement officers. Especially when the judge rules that all those rope burns about the wrists and neck are somehow inadmissible evidence. It’s cases like that which Keram John Aslan built a career around, and he did well out of them because the world was turning. Because of Rex, and because of me, and all those other Bioforms who made themselves paragons to skew the public-perception window back towards the middle ground.

When they discontinued the regular use of the Shambles, Aslan and I had a little celebration. It passed beneath most people’s notice but to us it was a major victory.

And now here I was.

Unknown channel: …

Maddening, really. Someone was trying very hard to reach me, and they couldn’t get through. All I had was the sense of a pending connection, an absence that meant more than simply nothing there. Negative comms pressure. Nine-tenths of me wanted to reach across the gap, because it was Aslan, it was Gemima Gray or some other HumOS unit, it was Bees.

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