The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 2 by Jonathan Strahan

Author:Jonathan Strahan [Strahan, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781534449640
Publisher: Gallery / Saga Press
Published: 2021-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

I lay it all out for her, all the blocks I’ve been stacking and rearranging in my head for the past three days, ever since I got wind of Quini’s little storage problem. Like I said before, he’s a well-rounded businessman: narcotics, guns, malware. Usually none of the product stays in Barcelona long, and while it’s here it’s circulating in a fleet of innocuous cars driving randomized routes.

But he recently got his suckers on something very rare, something he hasn’t been able to move yet, and it’s so valuable he’s keeping it in his own home. He even felt the need to get himself a new security chief to keep tabs on it. Which might have been a good idea, except his old security chief was awfully unhappy about her loss of employment.

I helped her get shit-faced last night at a wine bar and when the Dozr kicked in I dragged her to the bathroom and cracked into her cranial implant. She had some decently feisty defenseware, but I got what I needed—specs and layouts for the house, patrol maps, intrusion countermeasures—then wiped a few hours of data from her aurals and optics to cover my tracks. I also got confirmation on what exactly Quini was storing.

You heard what it is? I ask Nat. What he’s got in the safe room?

She picks over the last of the mussels. I know the rumor. People are saying it’s a Klobučar.

I’m not much for gene art, not much for sophisticated shit in general, but even I know Klobučar, the Croatian genius who struck the scene like a meteor and produced a brief torrent of masterpieces before carving out her brain with a mining laser on a live feed.

Anything with a verified Klobučar gene signature is worth a fortune, especially since she entwined all her works with a killswitch parasite to prevent them being sequenced and copied. But Quini is the furthest thing from an art fence, which makes the acquisition a bit of a mystery and explains him seeming slightly panicked about the whole thing.

Damn right it’s a Klobučar, I tell her. And we’re stealing it.

That’s not my area of expertise, Nat says. Like, not even close.

It’s mine, I agree. But you know Quini. You know his habits. And because you’re a clever one, I think you must have some of his helix bottled up somewhere.

She gives a low laugh in her throat. You think I keep a DNA catalog of everyone I fuck?

Probably only the ones that might be valuable later, I say. “Bazza?”

“Gazza,” she admits.

The safe room is coded to Quini himself, nobody else, I say. I can spoof the signature from his implants, but for fooling the bioscanner we need to get creative.

Nat takes a small sip of water and swishes it around her mouth. You know what he’ll do if he catches us, she says.

I know, I say. I’m not a yugga.

She frowns—maybe the babelware can’t handle that kind of callback. So long as you know, she mutters.

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