Moses loved the night. Not because he could see better in it-which he could due to various enhancements in his cybereyes-but because that was when the snakes crawled out onto the sidewalks.
Moses loved to watch the snakes.
Pink, grass-green, blue, day-glo yellow, purple, they slithered into the low spots still filled with rainwater from the late afternoon deluge. They shimmied into splotches of beer and butted up against pretzel pieces puked from the drunkards tossed out of bars along Western Avenue. They slipped into puddles of piss provided by Seattle's vagrants.
Reflections from the neon signs was all they were, so his chummer Taddeus had said.
But Moses thought they looked like real snakes-beautiful, colorful, electric, eclectic, squirming, mesmerizing, fireworks-come-to-ground-just-for-his-very-own-pleasure snakes.
He stood on the corner of Western and Seneca, eyes locked onto a thick cherry and grape striped snake that twisted seductively in the water pooled between his size-eleven feet. He liked this city because it rained almost everyday.
The snakes only came out for the water.
"And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water." Moses liked that particular Exodus quote because of the water part. His father was a minister in Renton, a fire-and-brimstone Baptist… or was that Lutheran… who'd named all his children after significant folks from the Bible. Ruth was the oldest, followed by Jacob, Abraham, and Isaac. Moses was the youngest, and the only one who'd remained wholly human. Father said it was a sign that Moses was destined for great things. Moses thought it was a curse. He didn't have his sister's naturally-keen hearing or Isaac's tough skin. He didn't have Abraham's fine-looking tusks or Jacob's affinity for magic.
So he had to turn to tech to compensate. And tech was damn expensive.
He touched the tip of his boot to the pool, sending out a ripple that made the cherry-grape snake dance.
The snake had crept down from the overhead neon sign advertising "Live Nude Dancing Elves." Moses idly wondered if any place advertised dead ones. He tapped his foot and the snake wriggled faster.
Moses hadn't given the snakes much thought until a handful of months past. That's when the microscopic vision subsystem implanted in his cybereyes malfunctioned. The series of minute optical lenses, designed to magnify objects up to a thousand times their normal size, splintered during a fight with a trog razorguy. Moses, who'd emerged battered but victorious, had been on a run with Taddeus and a few others into the Barrens, and they didn't pull enough nuyen from the job to get his lenses replaced. Didn't matter-he was kind of glad he hadn't, as rather than magnify the snakes they now enhanced their color and sometimes spun pieces of them away like one of those toy kaleidoscopes kids looked into. The cracked lenses made the snakes breathe, too-Moses saw their sides moving in and out, and when he cocked his head just right, as he was doing now, he could see their tongues flicker from between their invisible fangs to taste whatever interesting things were in the water.
In fact, Moses hadn't realized Seattle's sidewalks had snakes until the lenses cracked.
"Move it!" This came from a muscle-bound troll who cursed and stepped off the curb to get around Moses. "Go stand somewhere else, you ugly vatjob!"
Moses flicked his tail at the oaf, but the troll was quick, already on his way down the street. Moses liked his tail-it was one of his favorite modifications. A meter and a half long, covered with tiny lizard-like scales with mirrored surfaces, it had a built-in light at the end that he sometimes read by. It was one of those balance tails, weighted and grafted onto the base of his spine and keyed to a processor that monitored his center of gravity.
He'd gotten his shaped dermal plating at the same place he'd bought the tail-from his trusted ripper doc. Paid almost full price for the plating and had it stylized with ridges at the elbows, bumps across his forehead for the heck of it, and made to look like he had great abs and a broad chest.
Made him look better than human.
It was decorated just above his heart-not with tribal art or hieroglyphs like most favored-but with "EXD 3:6" in reference to the Bible verse: "Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God." Moses hadn't been able to find a verse that at the same time mentioned Ruth, but then she had a whole book devoted to her.
He had Doc add a wet sheath over the top of the plating some months ago, save for the spot on the chest with EXD 3:6 on it. It was a variant of a dermal, but modified to feel cool and slippery, sexy, glistening… sort of like snakeskin.
The cherry-grape snake writhed faster as Moses continued to stare.
The sheath was great because thugs had a hard time grabbing onto him. He'd tried to get a chameleon modification with it, but Doc said combining those features was a few years away. So he settled for adding a near-meter-long head of fiber-optic hair, bright orange with a cascading effect of yellow and red at the tips to make it look like fire. Because he styled it often, it was wearing a little thin in places and sections of it needed to be replaced.
That's why Moses had come down here tonight… to get some nuyen to pay for more hair and some other enhancements. He had his heart set on getting some horn implants. He'd been fitted a year or so ago for bull horns, but decided they were a little too big, and too expensive. Last week he'd put some second-hand goat horns on layaway, at the same place he'd get the hair replacements-from his trusted ripper doc. Bright, white horns with a mother-of-pearl glaze-fixed implants, as the retractable ones were a little out of his price range. Doc promised that the horns wouldn't itch.
Some of Moses' other implants did, and scratching them in public had gotten him banned from more than one establishment. The penile implant was the worst, with its mentally-controlled gel reservoirs and synthetic skin that he had some sort of allergic reaction to. He hoped he could remember to ask Doc for some more ointment for the rash.
"Nuyen," he said. "Came down here to get me some." He repeated "nuyen" until it became a mantra that twisted in time with the cherry-grape snake. "Nuyen for the tech-fix."
"What's he starin' at, ya think?" The speaker was an elf, a live one, but she wasn't nude or dancing. She was wearing a sand-colored plastic dress that crinkled when she crossed her arms in front of her probably-enhanced chest.
"The puddle. Maybe he lost something in it." Her companion was also an elf, face painted garishly and lips three times any natural size. "Didja lose something in it, mister?"
"Lose? Lose yourself. Get lost," Moses said. They stood too close to the water and made it harder to see the snake. He heard the sand-colored dress crinkle as the pair strolled away. The snake could swim freely now.
An ork peddler walked by, selling hot soyjerky. Passersby commented on the spicy smell. Moses couldn't smell it. He couldn't smell anything.
Moses had a direct neural interface connected wirelessly to the various built-in computers nested in the implants that allowed diagnostics checks-and said checks told him several things were either malfunctioning or were overdue for maintenance… his failed nasal receptors for example. They'd been out of whack for the past eighteen… or was that eighty… months. His enhanced taste buds didn't register anything either. He could be eating… well, pretty much anything… and not hurk it back up because of the taste. He only ate to keep his strength up and because his super thyroid implant demanded it.
"Should get 'em fixed," he said. "Maybe."
He'd need a lot of nuyen for the repairs. He had Kevlar bone-lacing with RFID sensor tags, a blood circuit control system, and a datajack engraved with elaborate Japanese kanji-signs that he couldn't read… it was a used model and so he hadn't been picky.
"Nuyen," he said. "Sashayed down here to get me some."
The encephalon he'd went under the knife for six or so months back hadn't helped. Hardwired into Moses' brain, it was supposed to boost his information-processing. It only seemed to scramble things now. At least the math subprocessor unit whirred along without a problem; he could calculate rent and utilities in a nanosecond, and it doubled as an alarm clock. His internal GPS worked without a proverbial hitch, too. It's how he found his way to this corner without making a single wrong turn. Too bad he hadn't thought to load his sister's address into it. What was her name? Ruth. Yeah, that was it.
"Ruth. Nuyen. Nuyen. Nuyen."
The radar sensor was another matter. It was supposed to emit terahertz and ultrawideband radar in frequency pulses, analyzing Doppler and bounced signals. It never had worked right-another piece of used equipment he probably shouldn't have had installed without first asking Doc for some sort of warranty. At least it functioned as a motion detector, except that it never registered the snakes. He'd remember to ask Doc for a warranty on the pearlized goat horns.
Once more he thought about taking what little nuyen he had stashed away-coupled with what he was going to score tonight-and spending it on repairs to his existing systems. But he really wanted the goat horns, and he was being good by repairing at least one of enhancements-his fiberoptic do. Besides, if he spent all his nuyen on repairs, he'd never be able to afford the cyberfins he'd been thinking about. Saw an advertisement for them a couple of days back… or was that a couple of weeks… or months?
His memory played tricks sometimes.
"Nuyen," he said. "Came down here to get me some."
His regular ripper doc could implant the webbing between his fingers and toes so he could manage the butterfly and backstroke in record time. Of course, Moses knew he'd have to take swimming lessons first.
The two elves returned, the sand-colored plastic crinkling a little louder.
"Geese," Moses pronounced them. It was the right neighborhood for hookers. The women were looking for someone to dock with-for nuyen, naturally-their gander probably somewhere close by for safety. Moses wouldn't mind docking with the one with the overlarge lips, but he needed to save his cred for the hair replacement and the fins… and to fix something. What attachment was he going to repair? Besides, his father had taught him to stay away from those kinds of women. They were sinful. Moses was SIN-less
"And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with the fathers; and his people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither thy go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them. Deuteronomy thirty-one-sixteen."
"Talking all Biblical. Still looking in the puddle, he is," big lips said. "Yo, Clint." She sidled up to Moses. "You interested in a little whoring, maybe we-"
"Get lost," Moses said.
"S'matter, don't like elves?"
"Live nude dancing elves," Moses said, looking up at the sign again.
Big lips shuddered and swayed down the street, arm-in-arm with plastic dress.
"Tadd would've spent his nuyen on them geese." Moses missed his old chummer.
The last time they were together Taddeus told Moses he didn't discriminate enough, that he bought pre-owned cyberware on the black market when he should be shopping at legitimate places. "The legal clinics won't deal with the stuff you're putting in your brain," Taddeus had said. "Who knows where that stuff came from? I oughta turn your doc into the authorities." Tadd said other things, too, but Moses hadn't had his data filter turned on, and so could only remember a few sentences.
Ripper docs, shadowclinics, Taddeus wouldn't have anything to do with them, Moses knew. But then Taddeus didn't have near the modifications as Moses. Taddeus wasn't quite better-than-human. Tadd was still mostly human.
Moses had been better-than-human for several years.
"Nuyen. Nuyen. Nuyen."
He liked his ripper doc 'cause he could pick up modifications that weren't exactly legal, and he never had to supply an ID or SIN. And it wasn't like he had these things done in a back-alley filth parlor with half-used, unsterilized medkits at the ready in the case of accidents. It wasn't technically a black clinic or a body bank. His Doc had a real medical degree and operated out of the basement of a tattoo parlor, a real high-end underground clinic. Moses had done his research before going under the knife. Doc hadn't had his license pulled for any of the usual reasons-too many malpractice cases or amputating the wrong limb. He'd simply experimented a few times on a few unwitting and later protesting patients… and got caught. Moses wasn't unwitting; he underwent each modification with both insect-like compound cybereyes wide open, and he didn't care when Doc suggested a little muscle doping now and then or a little trial genetic infusion.
And Doc was a real ecologist, as green as they came. He believed in recycling-bioware implants, nanoware, cyberware, augmented limbs. Because Moses bought most of his stuff second-hand from Doc, he could afford the integration system for all his simsense and networking devices and the bundle of skillwires with multi-functionality. He wouldn't have been able to buy tricked-out cyberears if they'd come right off the assembly line.
Moses thought he might ask Doc if those ears could be tweaked just a bit, so he could hear the snakes. The cherry-grape one might have some juicy secrets to share. He glanced back down at the puddle. Yep, the snake was still there.
Doc was good at providing discount prescriptions. Moses had to take three… or was that four… pills a day to stave off biosystem overstress, and another couple pills to treat his temporal lobe epilepsy. The latter malady was an acceptable side effect of having so many cyber implants. Doc said the condition was chronic and degenerative and that if it got much worse Moses would need corrective gene therapy or maybe a little brain surgery. If Doc was going to go back in Moses' brain, maybe he could finesse something with the memory center or somesuch. Moses really wanted to remember his sister's address.
Taddeus had called Moses an aug-ad, an augmentation addict, and said he wouldn't go on anymore runs with him until he got his head straightened out. Moses figured Tadd just didn't understand about not being satisfied with being human. Moses was almost there… satisfied… but not quite. He just needed a few more adjustments. He had mood swings because wasn't quite happy with things they way they were now. Sure, he was better-than-human, but he could stand to be a little bit better than simply better-than. Tadd was probably just pissed about the mood swings. He'd be back. Him and the others would come crawling to Moses for help on another dip into the shadows.
Crawling, like the cherry-grape snake was crawling. Moses watched it slither to another puddle. He followed it.
"Gotta go this direction anyway," he said. "Up the hill." His internal GPS told him he had two more blocks to go, all uphill. "And the Lord said unto Moses, Get thee up into this mount, and see the land which I have given unto the children of Israel."
Two more blocks up, around the corner, and then down an alley and he'd have plenty of nuyen for the hair and the swim fins and… what was he going to have fixed? His fang implants? Only one of those had snapped off.
"Two more blocks for the nuyen."
The snake obliged him, slithering along as if a guide, though a few storefronts later it changed color, turning yellow now, and then green. When it split in two and turned sky blue, Moses realized it wasn't the same snake, and it wasn't nearly as pretty. He'd go back and find the cherry-grape one later, after he scored his nuyen.
One more block. "Just one more, and what-"
Just short of the next corner Moses saw the rude troll who'd called him a vatjob. He was leaning over a human woman sporting rabbit ears and a fox tail, vulching her, maybe hitting her up for drugs or nuyen or…
"Oh, it's the vatjob." The troll turned to face Moses and stuck out his jaw to look menacing. He had a submachinegun in his right hand, barrel pointed at the pavement. The other passersby on the sidewalk gave him a wide berth. "Mind your own business. Bit-brain bakebrain whackjob nutjob vatjob." The twin blue snakes cavorted around the troll's big sandaled feet.
Moses cleared his throat: "And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting a human… er Hebrew, one of his brethren. Exodus two-eleven."
"Definitely a nutjob vatjob." A line of drool spilled over the troll's lower lip and extended to the pavement, striking the head of one of the blue snakes and sending Moses' temper flaring. "This is between me and Foxy Foxtail, so move it." The troll raised the gun in threat.
"And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand. Exodus two-twelve."
"What are you talking about you-"
"King James Version." Moses' wired reflexes kicked in and he bent and pulled a combat knife from a sheath in his boot and hurled it using all the strength in his synthetic cyberarm. Should have been wearing body armor, Moses thought as the troll dropped to his knees. The troll shouldn't have relied only on a secure long coat that he hadn't even bothered to button. Moses threw a second knife from the other boot, finishing him.
"And he killed it," he quoted. "And Moses sprinkled the blood upon the altar round about. And he cut the ram… err, troll… into pieces; and Moses burnt the head, and the pieces and the fat. Leviticus eight-nineteen and twenty."
The fox-tailed human squealed and sprinted across the street, leaving Moses to stare at the twin blue snakes undulating in the spreading troll blood.
A lone goose in a barely-there skirt screamed and drew Moses' attention away from the snakes.
"Nuyen," Moses said. "Nuyen. Nuyen. Nuyen. Came down here to get me some." He kicked the submachinegun away. Moses didn't care for guns. Sure, he could use them, and he had a smartlink for a heavy pistol he lost on a corp-run. But he preferred knives because they didn't make as much noise. He turned the troll over and retrieved his knives. He shoved them back in the boot sheathes, more worried about speed than the blood, and rifled through the troll's pockets as gawkers came to stand over him. "A credstick. Good. Got me some nuyen I wasn't expecting. Not a whole lot on it, though."
"It's the puddle guy." The goose in the crinkly dress was back.
Couldn't she find someone to dock with? Moses wondered. She was pretty enough. Maybe she ought to lower her price.
He slapped the side of his head with his palm, rattling the GPS just enough to get him back on track. "Around the corner. Down the alley," he said. "Later," he told the elf-geese. Then he was gone, his wired reflexes giving him a boost of speed that took him around the edge of the all-night pharmacy, down half a block and into the alley. He didn't hear any sirens, but he figured sooner or later someone would call about the troll bleeding out on the sidewalk. It had been self-defense, hadn't it? The troll had been carrying a gun, after all.
There weren't any snakes at the mouth of the alley. There was plenty of water for them, as Moses sloshed through one puddle after the next as he made his way around trash receptacles sitting outside the backdoors of bars, sex shops, and diners. But there weren't any neon signs, and it was the signs that gave birth to the best snakes. Moses felt better when there were snakes around. Moses was supposed to have snakes.
"Exodus four-three and four," Moses said. Why was it he could remember the Bible verses so easy but not the color of the whatever-it-was he had on layaway with Doc? "And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it. And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand." He sucked in a deep breath and went farther down the alley. "Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me."
A cat hissed and shot in front of him, disappearing behind crates stacked at a barber's back door.
"Hurry with this," Moses told himself. He wanted to get the nuyen and get back out on the street. Find that cherry-grape snake again and ogle it a little longer before he visited Doc and had… what was that he was going to the clinic for? "Hair." He was pleased that he remembered that. "Hair and-" Hair and something else. He'd put his mind to it after this was over. Put his head to it. "Head. Head. Head."
Moses scratched the bumps above his eyes and brightened. "And he put the mitre upon his head; also upon the mitre, even upon his forefront, did he put the golden plate, the holy crown; as the lord commanded Moses. Leviticus eight-nine."
What was his sister's address? Eight Nine something. Ruth, right? Yeah, Ruth. Wither-though-goest-Ruth.
Halfway down the alley, that's where the GPS tugged him.
"Didja bring the nuyen?"
Moses stopped, peering into the shadows, insect-like compound cybereyes separating the grays and blacks and finding the man… dwarf… thickset, grubby-looking. They all were dirty-looking, the ones who dealt in these sorts of things.
"Did you bring the beetles?" Moses returned.
The dwarf stepped away from the wall.
And the good ones were rich.
"Nuyen. Nuyen. Nuyen," Moses whispered. His ears whirred and clicked, picking up the dwarf's heartbeat and the slow slap of his shoes in the puddles sadly devoid of snakes. Moses needed snakes. Picking up the dwarf's breathing. Insect-like compound cybereyes with heat-sensors finding the dwarf, finding rats scurrying along in either direction, finding garbage piled up outside the back door of a Chinese restaurant, finding things he didn't want to get too close a look at. Finding nothing else.
For once, Moses was glad he couldn't smell anything.
"Did you bring the beetles?" Moses repeated. He heard the faintest of whirring and clicks. The dwarf was checking him out, too. "I'm alone. No guns."
"I know."
"The beetles." Moses added a hint of desperation to his voice, like he was a junkie in desperate need of a fix. He was, but not for the beetles. He remembered the goat horns he had on layaway. If he didn't pay them off and get them installed soon, he'd lose his deposit. "Did you bring the beetles?"
"Better than life," the dwarf cooed, stepping closer.
"Better than human," Moses said, thinking about the horns and the fins and echolocation bioware and maybe some extended volume for his lungs and elastic joints for his knees.
"Better than anything," the dwarf said. "Yeah, I have beetles. You have nuyen?"
Moses pulled out the troll's credstick. Good thing he'd run into the troll. He'd forgotten his meager credstick back at his place. He hadn't forgotten it the last time he pulled this stunt, or the time before that or before that. Had to have a credstick to make them think you were actually buying something. Had to have the black market contacts to get the names and locations of beetle-sellers. Better-than-life chips were still illegal and you couldn't buy them just anywhere. He didn't want the chips, just the credsticks the beetle-seller would have on him. It was a theft that would never be reported. Moses had done this a dozen times. Or was that two dozen?
"Yeah, I got the nuyen. Let's see the chips first." Moses waved the stick higher. He knew the dwarf had some sort of enhanced vision that would let him pick out the details. "Why don't you-"
The back door of one of the bars opened, spilling sickly-yellow light out into the alley and reflecting off the puddles. Moses caught a glimpse of a snake, but it wasn't a pretty one. Only neon bred the pretty ones. He tried to look away, but it was a snake, and Moses was supposed to have snakes, wasn't he? Maybe if he cocked his head he could see it breathe. Maybe if-
The dwarf barreled into him, fist slamming into his stomach, plating absorbing it, but the momentum sending him back. Moses' tail lashed out, whipping around the dwarf's muscular forearm. It was a cyberlimb, all metal, no flesh, fingers ungodly strong and grabbing at the tail, squeezing, breaking some of the mirrored scales.
"Damn you!" Moses cursed. He couldn't afford to have the tail fixed, not with all the other plans for modifications. Not unless the dwarf had lots and lots of nuyen for selling beetles. Moses' bone lacing made him strong, and he used that might now to bull-rush the dwarf, bringing his knee up into the smaller man's chest, pushing him down into the puddle to smother the ugly, yellow snake.
The dwarf had dermal plating, too. So Moses changed his tactics, pounding his fists against the dwarf's wide, ruddy face.
Voices intruded, maybe the man who'd opened the back door and birthed the ugly snake. Someone with him, voices panicked at what was transpiring in their alley. Make it fast, Moses thought. Don't need someone calling Lone Star. Not that he was doing anything illegal. This was self-defense. The dwarf started it. Moses just intended to finish it.
"And Moses said unto the Lord in Exodus four-ten, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou has spoken unto they servant; but I am slow of speech, and slow of tongue. But let me be fast of fist. Let my wired reflexes fly."
Moses pounded harder until he heard bone crunch. The dwarf didn't intend to just stay down and die, though, struggling frantically to reach something at his side, succeeding, and pulling free a heavy pistol that he shoved up against Moses' side. The dwarf fired three times, the first two bouncing off the dermal, but the third punching a hole in the plating and sending a round deep inside.
Moses registered the pain, but shoved it to the back of his mind and continued to pound, listening to voices spilling out in the alley, listening to the dwarf curse, and hearing another round fire and find its way inside. Then he heard the dwarf cough and felt blood spit up against his face and onto his lips. Good thing he couldn't taste. Dwarf blood would probably taste bad.
The dwarf heaved once beneath him, and then fell still. Moses dug through his pockets, finding credstick after credstick after credstick. Twenty five of them-his math subprocessor unit counted things instantly. The proverbial motherload. He shoved them in his own pockets. They wouldn't all fit, so he stuffed the extras in his kangaroo pouch, which had been a handy modification. Then he pushed off the ground, one hand pressed against his wounded side.
The voices came closer, accompanied by feet slapping through puddles filled with ugly yellow snakes. The backdoor to the bar was propped open wide and sickly light poured out.
"Are you hurt?"
"Who are you?"
"What happened?"
There were more questions from the quintet of barmaids and bartenders. Moses ignored them all and whacked his free palm against the side of his head, kicking in the GPS and tugging him back out the alley, onto the sidewalk and around the corner of the all-night pharmacy.
Maybe he should go in the pharmacy, he thought. Buy some painkillers and bandages.
But Doc's wasn't terribly far away, five or six blocks tops. Doc could repair the damage from the dwarf's slugs, put him under for that and do some modifications and hair-grafting at the same time. He certainly had enough nuyen on all these credsticks. Get it all done at the same time. Had the dwarf shot up some of his computer interfaces? Were more systems damaged?
"Nuyen. Nuyen. Nuyen. Got me lots of that." Moses staggered up the street, past the body of the bled-out troll that was still lying on the curb, passersby walking around it. No sign of Foxy Foxtail, whom he probably saved.
Lightning flickered high overhead, followed by a boom of thunder that drowned out the music spilling from bars and sex shops. It would rain soon, thank the Lord, Moses thought. Rain and fill the low spots so the snakes would have more room to swim.
He watched the snakes as he went, pushing himself between the throng out on the sidewalk, struggling to watch the snakes between all the feet. Bright blue, grass-green, violet, day-glo pink, chartreuse, they shimmied all along Western Avenue. Moses followed the cherry-grape one, and with his free hand fingered one of the many credsticks in his pocket.
How had he gotten so many credsticks?
What was he going to spend them on?
Hair, he remembered hair. He came down here to get him some of that. Hair and… hair and… pearlized goat milk for his sister Ruth. Intreat me not to leave thee, Ruth. Where thou lodgest, Ruth.
"Where do you lodge?" Moses mused.
He'd deliver the milk tonight, if only he could remember her address.