by Joe Ollinger
I grab my phone and slip it into the little concealed pocket on my shoulder strap. As I step out the door and into the shabby, dinged up hallway, I feel naked somehow, leaving my house without the weight of my sidearm against my hip.
I sit silent in the cushy passenger’s seat of Kearns’s luxury sedan as he drives out of the city and into the bleak of the desert countryside. The sun has gone down, leaving only fading shades of soft red in the sky, skittering across the thin, high clouds. Long shadows streak across the orange-brown hardscrabble dirt, cast by the low-lying, reddish shrubbery and the occasional tangled blush cactus. It’s quiet this far out, and in every direction but behind us the desert stretches out to the mountains, where the purple-indigo hues of dusk have crept high above the jagged horizon. The larger of our two moons, Snakeyes, has risen, its irregular edges lined in silver. The only road visible now is the one we’re on, one of the eight “highways” that emanate from Oasis City. The buildings become very sparse outside the city limits, and out here, we’re only passing one building every kilometer or so, usually a farm or a manufacturing complex, all cheap and simple and utilitarian. Development on Brink has been slow, even in the Oasis Basin, due to limited supplies of water.
Kearns and I have both been quiet, except for a short bout of initial small talk right after he picked me up. But as the last light of day fades from the sky, giving way to a sparkling blanket of stars against the jet-black overhead, I ask a question that’s been bothering me. “Was today the first time you met Aaron Greenman?”
He glances at me quizzically. “No. Why?”
“He seemed pretty familiar with you.”
“I gave a presentation or two to him back when I was still working for SCAPE,” Kearns answers defensively.
“You were pretty high up, then.”
“Not really. There were two VPs and a president between us. This job was a step up for me. Not in terms of pay, I mean, but I still see it as an advancement.”
“I don’t know much about Aaron Greenman,” I confess. I did some cursory research on Greenman this afternoon but didn’t get very deep into it. “There anything you can tell me?”
“Hmm.” Kearns furrows his brow, thinking. “I don’t know anything that hasn’t been publicly available. He was born here, in Oasis City. Dad was an accountant, mom was a genetic biologist. Both born on Mars, both died fairly young . . . What else? He went to BPU, got a doctorate in economics there, donates to the university regularly, has a few buildings named after him on campus. He supported President Qing in the last election. He started a few charities, including the one he’s throwing this party for.”
I don’t even remember what the invitation said. “Which is?”
“The Decompression League. It provides free services to people suffering from illnesses and mental conditions resulting from space travel.”
“So gravity shock, immune-adaptation syndrome, space madness . . . ”
“It’s called ‘Isolation Disorder’ now,” he corrects me.
In the illuminated swath cut in front of us by the car’s headlights, I see a large building down the road, growing closer. “Is that the place?”
“It is,” Kearns responds. “Greenman Ranch.”
“‘Ranch?’ Isn’t that a little pretentious?”
“Don’t tell him that.”
“I’ll remember not to mention it.”
As Brady turns into the long, circular driveway, I see the true scale of the place. Built in a monolithic “planetary colonial” style of straight lines and flat, unbroken surfaces, it’s got to be the largest single residence I’ve ever seen. Three stories, and a tower in the back that must be a hundred meters tall. A cactus garden sits in the central circle, blooming with the exotic flowers of imported dry-weather plants, and little fenced-off pockets of green surround the place, stretching far beyond the mansion. To water so much flora the land must sit on top of a natural reservoir, which itself might be worth millions of units.
As Kearns creeps his car up in front of the big front doors, a tone sounds, and an electronic voice asks, “Auto-valet requests control of your vehicle. Approve?”
“Approve.”
The doors open automatically, and we both step out. I straighten my dress, shuffling a bit in my seldom-worn formal flats as Kearns comes around the car. The doors close, and it drives away slowly, parking itself among the long rows of others in the front yard.
“Shall we?” Kearns asks.
He looks good in his tuxedo—natural, at ease, maybe even upper class. He’s slim and in shape for a bureaucrat, much taller than the average Brinker, and his sandy brown hair is combed neatly. As he flashes a smile of healthy white teeth, he seems almost charming, a far cry from his corporate yes-man past and paper-pushing, number-crunching present. Maybe this is his natural environment; he seems like the type who grew up wealthy.
I follow him to the front door, and even though it looks like the old-fashioned kind you open manually, it folds aside for us. We enter a little atrium lined with cylindrical stone columns, the sounds of the party audible through the second set of doors. No one’s here to check our names against a guest list, so I assume it’s being done electronically, using the signals from our phones. I grow a little bit tense as we cross to the other side of the room, not sure what to expect.
The doors open into a vast space, something like a ballroom, with high ceilings, light pink carpets, and white stone walls filigreed with a subtle powder blue pattern. Well-dressed, well-to-do men and women socialize, drink, and eat, as a live strings ensemble plays waltzes next to a mostly-empty dance floor, which glows with a soft blue light. The first few steps into the party are intimidating, but after less than a minute, I’m lost amidst the mingling people, just another anonymous face in the crowd, and though I don’t feel like I belong, I’m no longer afraid that someone will recognize that I don’t fit in and confront me about it. Kearns, meanwhile, just glances around, aloof. I’m starting to suspect that he’s smarter than his sometimes clueless expressions suggest.
“Damn,” I say softly, “Greenman spares no expense.”
“Try not to act crass,” he responds.
For a second I’m annoyed, but then I realize that I wouldn’t be here if not for the auditor, so I bite back my words. “What’s the matter,” I joke, “scared the farm girl will embarrass you?”
I realize immediately that he doesn’t know what I mean by “farm girl,” but I don’t bother explaining further as we wander through the crowd. I see a few people I think I recognize—politicians and newscasters and business executives—and one man, Cory Hu, who’s definitely on the Commerce Board.
“You know,” Kearns says quietly, leaning close, “you still haven’t told me what your plan is.”
“I want to confront Aaron Greenman about that SCAPE pilot, Frank Soto,” I answer, truthfully.
“I doubt that will be productive. SCAPE has policies about employee privacy that allow for only minimal compliance with government investigations. They generally don’t turn over evidence unless they have to.”
“Either he’ll cut through the red tape for me and have the file handed over, or he’ll brush me off,” I answer, “Either way I get important information.”
“What information do you get if he refuses?”
“That he’s not going out of his way to help.” Spotting two more members of the Board, Paul Reed and Cynthia Kwell, I change the subject, “Looks like the whole Commerce Board is here.”
“Why shouldn’t they be?”
“Greenman represents off-world interests that the Commerce Board is supposed to negotiate against. For the import quotas and all that. That’s not . . . ” I wish I was better at articulating this political stuff, but Kearns is an expert in economics, and it’s going to be impossible for me to sound smart, “It’s a conflict of interest.”
“Board members are important people. Anyone who’s anyone is here. No conflicts of interest.
I think I saw Jennifer Lee when we came in.”
Lee is the owner of a Brink-based company that competes with SCAPE’s business in interstellar food stores. Spacer food, they call it, or long haul food.
Before I can say anything else, a waitress in white tights and a tuxedo jacket approaches with a tray of drinks. I notice, for the first time, that the liquid in the champagne flutes is not champagne, not even synthetic champagne. It’s a thick, opaque white.
“Vanilla malt?” offers the waitress, as though she’s already said it two hundred times tonight and has run out of different syllables to emphasize.
It’s got to be coconut milk or palm milk or something. Substitutes are pricey enough; there’s no possible way it’s the real thing. Hesitantly, I take one from the tray, holding it delicately by the neck, and take a sip.
It’s phenomenal. Sweet, thick, cold, and silky smooth, with an interesting dry flavor I can’t place. I doubt I could describe it to someone who’s never had real dairy, and now I understand that descriptions I’ve read of its taste never managed to capture it. “Is this real?” I blurt out, shocked, even though I know the answer.
Kearns smiles, smug. “Never had real milk, I take it?” He takes another measured drink from his flute. “Mm. Amazing.”
How much did Kearns make when he was working for SCAPE? How much can he be making now? Trying to put my curiosity about the auditor’s backstory aside, I survey the room, looking for Aaron Greenman but unable to locate him. Taking another sip of the dairy beverage, I let myself enjoy it, feeling guilty about it only in the most abstract sense.
“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” I muse, “There are people two kilometers away selling their teeth so they don’t die of starvation or a calcium deficiency, and this party probably cost fifty thousand bones.”
Kearns shrugs, dismissive. “Same as it’s ever been. Even in communist regimes.”
Communism. A form of government invented in the couple of centuries before interstellar travel, it’s been extinct for over two hundred years, except for a brief period on Titan Colony when a group of refinery workers calling themselves communists overthrew their corporate-centric mercantile government and redistributed its assets among themselves. From the little I know, historians don’t agree on whether the refinery workers were actual communists or not, as they didn’t live long enough to do very much. All of them were killed when the colony was retaken.
“You know,” I say, trying to sound smart and educated, one of which I’d like to believe that I am, the other of which I most certainly am not, “I read somewhere that there’s enough calcium on Brink for everyone to be healthy.” I’ve always wondered if that was true or just leftist propaganda. Kearns probably knows.
He shrugs again, more thoughtfully this time. “And in ancient times,” he says, “there was enough gold, and in the twentieth century there was enough food, and in the twenty-first there was enough clean water. Economics abhors an even distribution of the most precious resources. It’s just against human nature. When all individuals desire something and some are better equipped to obtain it, not everyone will get an equal share. Just be thankful our currency is a hard commodity and not some imaginary thing that can be manipulated by people who already have a lot of it.”
I pause, unsure how to respond to Kearns’s intellectual cynicism. I wonder what he meant by “better equipped to obtain it.” Is that some kind of social Darwinist line? The “imaginary thing” comment must refer to what they call “paper money,” which is now only used by the larger, more oppressive governments on Earth. I’ve never quite understood the distinction between it and every other kind of cash—something about restrictions on currency supply and interest rates that doesn’t really apply on Brink where the currency is tied to a commodity because the commodity literally is the currency.
I savor the last few drops of the malt and set the empty flute on a tray carried by a passing waiter—who is wearing a regular tuxedo, which I think is pretty obnoxious, given the fact that the waitresses are in tights and jackets. I still haven’t spotted Greenman, and I’m starting to worry again that we’re not fitting in here.
“Want to dance?” I ask abruptly.
“Dance?” Kearns asks, “You serious?”
“Only if you are,” I answer, challenging him.
He sizes me up for a second, then downs the rest of his malt. “You’re on.”
I lead the way toward the dance floor, walking among the wealthy guests of the party, overhearing snippets of conversations only the true upper crust would have. Investment risks in hydrocarbon drilling on the far side of the planet, exobiota markets for Brink wildlife, which senators to back in next year’s race. As we near the dance floor, I finally notice that the reason it’s glowing blue is that it’s transparent, and underneath it is a tank of water that must be ten meters deep, at the bottom of which is an evenly illuminated floor, shining softly upward. Dozens of giant jellyfish, a meter or more wide with intricate, dangling tentacles, drift and float languidly through the water, diffusing the light and glistening in it. Stepping onto the surface creates the sensation that I am suspended on a field of liquid light. It’s disorienting and overwhelming and strikingly beautiful.
The band transitions into another classical waltz, and Kearns holds his arms out, a skeptical look on his face. I step close, right hand high, and bend my left arm over his elbow, careful not to get too close or comfortable. I don’t want this bland rich boy getting the wrong idea. But then again, I tell myself, what does it matter, really? With any luck he’ll prove useful, and then I’ll never talk to him again.
He leads in a simple, stiff three-step, and I follow, thinking back to the dance lessons I took when I was a little girl. My parents burned all their money coming to this planet and starting a hydroponic farm, but they didn’t abandon their upper-middle-class/lower-upper-class aspirations, and of course they put their only daughter through several years of dance lessons. I didn’t enjoy them, and after we got too poor for me to go anymore, I hated myself for having not enjoyed them. I know it would not have prevented what happened later, but I wish my folks had been smarter and saved that money. I would rather not have those benign childhood memories only to have them stained by such guilt. But I still haven’t forgotten what I learned.
“You dance pretty well,” I tell Kearns, trying to break the awkward silence between us, “for a government yes-man cube.”
“You dance pretty badly for a woman who’s on her feet all day,” he shoots back.
“Tough to move fluidly with someone you don’t quite trust.”
“You don’t trust me yet?” He doesn’t sound altogether surprised.
“Why should I?”
“Why shouldn’t you?” he scoffs, smiling. “Our motives are nearly identical. You want to find rogue currency to take your cut, and I want to find it so I get promoted.”
“We’ll see.”
He turns, and I follow. “So. Farm girl, huh?”
“Soy. Hydroponic. I sold the place when my parents died.”
“Were you a Collections Agent already?”
I nod. “They were proud of me.”
My mom was, anyway. My dad was long gone by then. Their dream was to grow a business and set roots here, and they put everything they had into it. They stretched themselves too far, and times got too tough, and my dad ended up dying for that stupid little aluminum hotbox when I was just ten. We recovered, and my mother and I ended up carving out a decent life for ourselves, but in spite of all that happened, she never learned to accept that I wanted to leave this world after they worked so hard and sacrificed so much to get here. Even though my mom knew what my goals were, my swearing in as an Agent seemed to fuel her optimism that I would become ingrained in Brink’s society somehow, that I might some day meet someone and decide to live the rest of my life here. She never gave up on that hope. It was one of the last things she mentioned to me before she passed on.
These thoughts take me back to the same place memories of my childhood always lead. A plain cardboard box just inside the front door with a folded paper letter on top.
Stop it, Taryn. This is not the time or place.
Focusing on my dance steps, I can’t help but glance down every now and then at the billowing, translucent creatures bobbing and drifting below us, seemingly without any sense of purpose or direction. I flinch slightly as Kearns reaches forward and brushes back a strand of hair from my face. “You know,” he says, “you look really nice.”
“Don’t get romantic on me, Kearns. This is not that type of dance.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he says, defensive. “It’s surprising, is all.”
I smile ironically. “Ahh, there it is.”
“No, no,” he backpedals. “I just didn’t expect to see an ass kicker in a dress like that.”
I flash a more genuine smile, slightly flattered in spite of myself. “Thanks, Kearns.”
“Call me Brady.”
As we dance through the soft blue light, I take notice of the few other guests on the dance floor, all of them wealthy, arrogant, comfortable. There aren’t many young men, but the only women anywhere close to my age must be either trophy wives or high-priced prostitutes. People must be assuming that of me, but it doesn’t seem like Kearns is aware of it.
He stands upright suddenly, looking over my head. “I see Greenman.”