Four soldados de mecánico biológico on leave: the circuitry etched into their faces was tinted battle-red; the thinking machine nodes melded to their temples were steel gray. The soldados stood out like novae amid Puerta del Sol's eternal stew of turistas, grifters, whores, pickpockets, and homeless. The crowd displayed the proper respect. Everyone, even scrawny gangbangers with chips the size of gruntships on their shoulders, gave the soldados a lot of room. Fernando, Jorge, Enrico, Anita. Two seasoned veterans, two wet-behind-the-ears replacements. Fernando thought Enrico and Anita looked like children. Was it possible that replacements got younger every year?
Or was he getting older?
On leave, money hot in their pockets: ten hours ago they'd been on the moon, fighting the newHumans.
They'd won the battle.
Lived to fight another day...
Puerta del Sol had ten thousand ways to separate a soldado from his pay. This part of the city, so close to the launching fields, was a favorite spot to find excitement. Enrico couldn't wait to get drunk. Anita was obsessed with finding a man. Jorge wanted to volunteer for the job, and Fernando found himself wanting something else.
"The Golden Ox is down this street." Jorge steered the group away from the main boulevard, into the shadowy confinement of a back alley. Mostly he steered Anita. Fernando hung back.
"You with us or not?" Jorge wanted to know.
"Not." Fernando broke and ran, twisting through labyrinthine streets until he didn't know where he was. After that he wandered, just being.
Puerta del Sol was peppered with genetic castoffs. Dios only knew where they came from. Glassheads, doublebrains, psychworms, mentalmorphs. They lived in shadowy, nameless side streets, scratching out marginal livings doing just about anything for a peso.
A doublebrained fortuneteller beckoned to Fernando from the entrance of a tent hanging from the wall of a pawnshop like a spider web. Madame Mantis, in hand-stitched letters of silver thread. Her oversized skull was swathed in a sheer scarf the color of the night sky. She had an enormously fat body, but her hands were so thin the fingers could have been sticks.
"You want to know your future?"
Fernando hesitated, then said, "Why not?"
The interior of the tent reeked of fried food and incense. It contained a couch, a wooden chair, and a crystal orb yellow with age. Fernando handed over a few pesos and the doublebrain blew gritty dust into his face.
"Nanos," he said, stifling a sneeze.
"To help us move into synch," the seer answered. "I can't walk into your future until we both occupy the same mental plane."
Fernando shrugged. Ten percent of his brain tissue had been replaced by thinking machines. A few nanos weren't going to hurt.
He experienced a moment of fogginess.
"Is that normal?"
"Don't be afraid."
The seer concentrated on the orb.
"What do you see?"
"You will die while still a young man," Madame Mantis said, which surprised him. Fernando expected to hear the usual crap about long life and prosperity.
He shrugged. "I'm a soldado."
"Your death will not take place on the battlefield."
"Where then?"
"A quiet place." Madame Mantis stroked the orb as though it were a living thing. "I see a cottage and garden."
"Ridiculous."
"A dead woman is there with you. I see a name. Rosa."
Fernando felt electricity.
Rosa.
Madame Mantis cackled. "She will be directly responsible for your death."
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