by Sean Platt
“Sit down, Jimmy,” said Kate. She crossed and recrossed her legs. She’d stopped in the restaurant’s bathroom and doffed her underwear just before allowing Jimmy to drag her into the kitchen. The staff was gone, the place closed for the night. She knew they would be alone and knew that Jimmy was a guy like any other, not quite immune to a beaver’s hypnotic flash no matter how angry he got.
But Jimmy didn’t look over or even acknowledge her. He gripped the table harder, leaning forward, looking across the kitchen at a rack of hanging Plasteel sauce pans.
“Let me get this straight,” he repeated, leaning on “straight” as heavily as he was leaning on the butcher block. “You left fifty fucking meterbars of dust in a scrap yard on the moon?”
“It sounds so good when you repeat shit.” Kate reached out with one long leg and kicked at a chair beside Jimmy. It skittered back with a metallic chattering. “Sit down, and stop being so fucking superior.”
Instead of sitting, Jimmy’s eyes met Kate’s with murder. Kate wasn’t sure if it was the loss of the dust, the news that one of his runners had killed a federal inspector, or Kate’s own smart-mouthed, unapologetic attitude that was causing it, but she knew a slap was coming before Jimmy pivoted. But she’d encumbered herself with the crossed legs, and couldn’t back away in time. Jimmy’s hand rocked her head to the side, hard, and she was momentarily blinded both by pain and her own blonde hair. It stayed in place while her neck spun, wrapping her like a mummy as the chair tipped back and spilled to the ground.
“This is not a clerk job! I am not a Directorate manager!” Jimmy bellowed. He reached down, grabbed a fistful of Kate’s hair, and dragged her upright. She tried to get her legs under her but was wearing tall heels that danced beneath her like the wobbly legs of an animal trying to stand on ice.
Jimmy was strong, with enhanced musculature. Kate felt her hair rip, followed by a series of sensations that were even more daunting as he pushed her onto the table: the cool surface of the Velastack butcher block table against her cheek, the weight of Jimmy’s left hand on her back, and a jangle from the cleavers hanging above as he took hold of one with his right.
“You’ve got a shuffling ID, cunt!” Jimmy yelled. Kate could see a metallic flash above her as hair settled into place. “You’re off-record! You could vanish tomorrow, and nobody would know or care! Do you really think there’s anything stopping me from cutting your fucking head off with this thing right now?”
Kate knew better than to struggle, so instead she held her palms up as far as they could go, which wasn’t far considering the way she was pinned.
“Okay, okay! Noah Fucking West!”
After a long moment, she felt Jimmy’s hand snatched from her back and decided she had permission to rise. She did, slowly, keeping her hands visible. A moment later, she was back in the chair, her hair tousled and scalp bleeding. She realized with irritation that the assault had knocked her boobs sideways and that she wouldn’t be able to adjust them without looking cheeky. Why had she gone big? Small tits had to be so much easier.
“Fifty meterbars.” Jimmy rested the edge of his huge cleaver against the tabletop.
“I’ll make it up to you. I have money.” It was technically true, but not very. The refurb that had changed Doc to Kate had used up just about all she had — everything she’d slaved for through decades as Thomas Stahl and had earned by Doc’s sweat and blood — but she did still have a small savings. A very small savings, not remotely enough to cover fifty meterbars of Lunis and a ditched shuttle. But dealing with the credit discrepancy was ten steps down the road, and Kate really only had to move one at a time. Once free of Jimmy, she could try any number of options, the most obvious of which was to run. She could settle in Old Chicago, maybe. What the hell; on record, it was District Two, but they still called it the Second City because the place was such a party.
“This isn’t about the money,” Jimmy said. “This is about the shortage of dust.”
His eyes were still livid, but something in his manner had relaxed. If Kate had to guess, it was probably resignation that she was seeing. Whatever was going to be fucked had already been fucked. He could be angry about the fucking, but there was little point because the die was already irrevocably cast. She remembered what he’d said about the dominoes, about how important this shipment was, and how its failure would tip things that could not, under any circumstances, be allowed to tip.
“Maybe I can go back for it,” she said. It was an absurd suggestion, but she had to come up with something. She couldn’t stop eyeing the heavy cleaver in Jimmy’s hand. She knew he had a temper, and that he’d killed others before.
Kai had gotten Kate the smuggling gig through her old pal Stanford (he of the Beamer-filled apartment building, subsequently cleared of suspicion within Kai’s levels of tolerance), and the man seemed to know endless acres of lowlifes. Stanford didn’t know who Kate had once been; all he knew was what Kai had told him (and supported through a virtual sheaf of falsified files) about Kate being an excellent operator with a reputation for being a rock star in her trade. Doc already knew about Omar’s problems on the moon, with his prime runner having been pinched, so Kai and Kate had angled for a position within Omar’s company. Doc — now as Kate — had wanted to keep Omar close, and already knew his operation inside out. Her first job with the company had been a home run that had reinforced her phony rock star reputation with a genuine rock star success. The job fit Doc’s old strengths, from duplicity to rapport skills to salesmanship…or saleswomanship. The only sharp edge — literally, in this case — was Jimmy and his murderous temper.
“How the fuck are you going to go back for it? Are you suggesting flying up alone then coming back with an unregistered and unticketed shuttle that somehow got there all by itself? Your window to get off with that particular rig has passed. They have you coming back, if they know how to look for you. So you go back and pull a shuttle out of your ass? You think they won’t strip it to the screws?”
“Maybe I could recover a little bit at a time. Take a worm.”
“Dammit, Rigby. We need all of this dust now. You know how many trips it would take you to smuggle all that dust down a handful of centimeterbars at a time? You think they won’t get curious about how often you’re headed up there? Oh, and there’s just the matter of the dead inspector. I keep forgetting that little wrinkle.”
With a start, Kate realized that she’d pretty much forgotten about Inspector Levy too. Whatever Sector 7 was, it had allowed “Levy,” with Kate pulling the strings using his voice, to expunge her visit.
“Oh, right,” said Kate.
“You have to stay here. The shuttle has to stay there — and without a proper conveyance, the dust has to stay there too. We could send up another man, but…”
“You can’t send up someone else!” Kate blurted, cutting him off. “That’s my commission!”
Jimmy paused then turned the cleaver around on its tip, making it spin. His angry outburst seemed to be over, but he hadn’t returned his blade to the rack. His relatively calm menace was somehow more unnerving than the fury he’d displayed when angry.
“You’re worried about your commission? Really?” said Jimmy. “You got pinched. Then you killed the fucking inspector. You think that’s not going to cause big problems for our entire industry? They’ll quietly increase security across the board then make a big announcement. Earthbound customs will gear up, and the public will be outraged. You know how they handle these things. They’ll drag his family out, do sweet pieces about how he was just a working Joe doing a job…”
“He was dirty! He wanted to fuck me then let me go!”
“So why didn’t you just do it? Take one for the team?”
Kate rose in her chair then forced herself to sit when Jimmy raised his non-cleaver hand.
“You’re paid well for taking a little moon ride, Rigby.” An edge slipped into Jimmy’s voice. “If you wanted a clean and squeaky job, you could have gotten a Direct
orate office gig.” He spread his hands, the cleaver winking in the overhead light. “This is what you chose. Someone wants you to suck dick to grease the wheels, you swallow the cock. The tests we had you do before that first run pegged your morals as ‘pliable.’ That’s a valuable result, and we don’t see it often. It means you have a moral code, but that you’re utterly convinced it supports whatever you’re doing at the time, no matter how much the situation’s needs might change. It basically means you’re fucking crazy, or a narcissist.”
“He wanted to fuck me.”
“What, like you’ve never been fucked? How about if I told you that I’d let you get back to work — no harm, no foul — if you gave me a little something?”
Kate felt her mouth open, unsure how to respond. But before she could, Jimmy raised his hand and waved it at her dismissively.
“Oh, relax.” He pointed to a ring on his finger. “I’m happily married. Unlike you, I don’t have pliable morals. That’s why I’m the boss and you’re the fucking runner.”
Kate considered questioning Jimmy’s morals (how did being married justify his life as a thief and murderer?) but glanced at the cleaver in his hand and decided not to.
“Look. You’ve landed us in a lot of shit. A shitheap of shit. Now, thanks to you, an entire colony of Organa junkies will run dry.”
“Organas?” Kate almost wanted to laugh. Who gave a shit about Organas?
“Yes, Organas, and don’t you for one fucking second presume to question this operation. You’re a fucking lowlife soldier. That’s it. You run dust, you lie, you steal, you do whatever you have to do to get the dust back because that’s why you exist. If the inspectors line up with their dicks out wanting to blow a load in your mouth, you take it and come running back to me with cum and the words thank you dripping from your lips. You’re my little bitch, got it? You don’t get to make decisions or question anything. You do as you’re told because if you disappeared one day, nobody would notice or care. We clear?”
Reluctantly, seeing no benefit in snark, Kate slowly nodded. But she didn’t like this at all and wasn’t used to being a lackey. She’d always been Enterprise and hated the Directorate ethic. She made the rules; she didn’t follow them. She would play for now then do what she could to shuffle the deck later — through Jimmy, through Omar, through whomever she could reach. Doc Stahl had never been anyone’s bitch, and Kate Rigby wouldn’t be either.
“You don’t need to know the details, but let’s just say you’ve caused a lot of problems with this little fuckup of yours. Problems with the Organas going cold, problems with our suppliers and buyer alike, problems with your cover on the moon, problems with the feds. You think they don’t know who the smugglers are? Sure they do; we’re just not a big enough problem most of the time to warrant what it would take to close our doors. You might have changed that. Because you fucked up, and now it’s up to you if you want to be part of the solution.”
“They had new security! Why the fuck didn’t anyone tell me about the new nanobot shit?”
Jimmy slammed the cleaver into the table. It stuck handle-up, quivering.
“How did you not work around it?” Jimmy countered, his temper again slipping. “That’s why we hired you! Things come up! Unexpected things! We know what we know, but your job is to deal with what we don’t! So in this particular case, what do you do? You fuck the inspector instead of killing him!”
Kate sighed noisily, slowly shaking her head. “Well then. What are you going to do with me?”
“I’m not sure yet. I want to kill you. It won’t solve anything, but it’ll make me feel better.”
“You can’t kill me.”
“Sure I can. You’re nothing but a problem. You’re useless. You can’t run back to the moon, and if we keep you alive, we have to hide and protect you. Maybe you don’t know how business works, but we don’t collect liabilities. You were hired as an asset, and now you’re the opposite.”
Kate inhaled, held it, kept her mouth shut, then exhaled in a huff. Time to play her ace.
“I want to talk to Omar,” she said.
Instead of blustering at Kate’s request, Jimmy smiled. He tapped his head beside his eyes, through which she realized Omar had been watching the meeting all along.
“Well, that’s good,” he said. “Because Omar wants to talk to you, too.”
Air connections in the mountains near the Organa compound were flaky even when they were good. Sometimes, you could get a mobile signal everywhere, including in the hand-dug cellar that Scooter had spent a summer excavating so he could make root beer. Other days, you couldn’t get one at the top of the tallest hill. The most reliable places to find connections (which shouldn’t have mattered within a technophobe population, but which everyone somehow knew regardless) were usually at the gate, where Crumb used to stand…and, ironically, near Leo’s house.
Today, the signals were scattered and unreliable. Leah didn’t want to start tapping her mobile’s screen the minute she and Crumb (sorry…Steve) arrived, but the uncheckable, constantly pinging handheld felt like an unscratchable itch. York had already seen her obsessing over the mobile and might be willing to give her a mercy pass, but others wouldn’t. Leah was already a pariah among those hypocritical bastards, and she didn’t want another lecture from Leo. He knew she had her mobile, of course — and Leah, in turn, knew that Leo had one of his own — but rubbing it in the compound’s collective face was a bad idea. To the mountain Organas, using the occasional piece of technology was like masturbation: everyone did it, but you were supposed to know enough to keep it private.
Checking her messages would be an especially bad idea right now, she reminded herself, brushing the mobile in her pocket as if encouraging it to stay put. No matter what Leo tried to pretend, the Lunis supply was dangerously thin. Leo himself had looked frazzled and unfocused the last time she’d seen him, and the patina of peace that normally glazed the hippies’ expressions had worn through to show some of the rough, threadbare material beneath. They were wearing brave faces, but she knew they were jonesing. It made Leah feel guilty for scoring in the city. She’d only had enough credits for a few moderate doses and had taken them all herself rather than bringing any back. But what the hell; the others never come to her defense.
But still, the phone’s itch was maddening. She had to get away. She left York and Dominic to get reacquainted (York to meet Dominic for the first time with a clear head, Dominic to meet the body he’d saved with another mind inhabiting it) and walked toward Leo’s. Being careful to stay out of sight (she didn’t need a discussion with the Organa leader; she needed to answer these fucking messages before someone blew a gasket), she circled the building while holding her mobile in the air.
Nothing.
Knowing she was wasting time, Leah paced the village, glancing down at her handheld as she hid it in the folds of her sarong. She passed person after person, looking up and smiling at each. She was given half smiles in return. It was easy for Leah to feign amity; she wasn’t hurting just yet. But the same wasn’t true for the others in the village. She saw red eyes. Long faces. Twitchy muscles and a few nervous tics. From a distance, she watched as two men walking past each other had an accidental collision. After running into each other, the first shoved the second hard in the chest and kept walking. The second yelled after him. Leah couldn’t make out exactly what he said, but she somehow doubted it was “Lovely morning, isn’t it?”
Just how low was the supply? How far down had Leo ratcheted the rations? Did he have emergency stores somewhere? Leah hoped that if he did, he hadn’t stored it anywhere obvious. She also hoped that Leo was carrying the personal shield she’d brought him, that he’d junked in disgust, and that she’d later seen sitting on his desk. She had decided not to call him on his hypocrisy then and was glad now that she hadn’t. At some point, needs would supplant idealism, and when that happened, all eyes would turn toward the one man who might be holding out on the rest of them. It was a matter of whe
n, not if.
She shook brewing thoughts of violence from her mind then looked down at her phone. Still no connection. Not at Leo’s, not at the gate, not in the common, not on the hill. The sky was clear, but it didn’t seem to matter. Clear days, overcast days — whether any given conditions would yield a clean signal (sometimes strong enough for video chat, sometimes too weak for simple text) — was always a matter of chance.
“Goddammit,” she said.
Sighing, Leah walked back to the Organa barn. She’d just hiked all the way up with Crumb. She wanted to lie down and nap — ideally swinging in one of the common hammocks like a true dreadlock-headed granola-muncher. But she couldn’t keep ignoring the pings. They’d stopped, and that made things worse. It probably didn’t mean that the sender had stopped pinging. It probably meant that he or she was still trying but was now getting undeliverable replies. Anyone with an issue important enough to hit her this often would go apeshit if they got undeliverables. Only the Organa went off-grid regularly. To non-Organas, leaving the Beam umbrella was like asking the world to make them blind. They didn’t simply avoid it; they literally couldn’t understand it.
Leah entered the barn and, casting a glance at Missy, looked one final time at her handheld’s screen. She saw the pings but couldn’t even open them. A ping only delivered a header. It was a notification and nothing more. Each was tied to a message (a ping had to be about something, after all), but she couldn’t access any of the messages without a connection. But the messages themselves were only part of the issue. If the matter was as urgent as it seemed to be, she might need video or port-to-port communication, and she couldn’t get that here.
She slid Missy’s saddle onto her back and mounted up then nudged the horse onto the trail toward Bontauk.
Almost two hours later, Missy walked into the back end of Vance Pilloud’s overgrown field, and Leah, on her back, guided the horse around the fence remnants and toward the house’s shell. Leah looked at the place with its few standing walls and couldn’t suppress a chill. The last time she’d been here, she’d knocked down a barrier inside Crumb’s head — now York’s head — that had felt as fragile as Pilloud’s old walls.