Tandem Unit

by Evangeline Anderson

  She supposed she should be grateful that Gerald wanted to talk to her at all. Since she had shocked conservative Goshe n with her eye-witness report of the prostie scandal, more than one old friend and neighbor had stopped speaking to her. Even Aunt Minnie had disowned her after hearing where she had been and what she had been up to for the two and a half months she'd been gone. Sadie had never been really close to her aunt but the old lady was the nearest thing Sadie had to a parent and her rejection hurt more than she cared to think about. Hurt even more than the snide remarks and half-heard whispers behind her back when she walked down the streets of her old neighborhood.

  It did no good whatsoever to explain that she had only gone undercover to get the story and had not actually serviced any clients in her role as a prostie-borg. People in Goshen were narrow-minded and disposed to believe the worst. Everywhere she went, Sadie felt like she ought to be wearing a scarlet letter tattooed on her forehead. It was funny, actually, that her fellow Goshenites were condemning her just for doing her job when she had done much worse things on her 'two and a half month mission of depravity', as Aunt Minnie had called it, than wear the skimpy prostie-outfits and spend time in a brothel. If only they knew what I really did, I'd probably be run right out of the colony, she thought more than once.

  But despite rejection at home, her career was really taking off. As Holt had promised, she had the only eye-witness account of the whole scandal and the news-vids had fallen all over each other to buy her story. It seemed like a dream but she actually had been nominated for a Solar Pulitzer in journalism. Sadie had found out only the week before and she had wanted to tell someone. Calling Gerald, however, had turned out to be a bad mistake. He had somehow gotten it into his head that she wanted to get back together and all his talk of 'old friends' aside, Sadie knew he was really angling for a date. In the past she might have gone out with him and given the relationship another shot but not now. Not after all that had happened to her while she had been away.

  It was ironic, Sadie thought, that all her professional dreams were coming true while her personal life crumbled away. She even had a job offer on the table to be a correspondent for the New New York Times. Since the NNYT was the most prestigious and respected news vid-mag in the System, Sadie felt extremely lucky. Accepting the job would mean leaving Io and relocating to Old Earth, of course, but she had decided to take it anyway. After all, what did she have to hold her to this narrow-minded, Goddess-forsaken moon anymore? Nothing, not a thing, Sadie told herself. And Old Earth was where all the power and money and opportunity was. That was where her future was now. Of course her decision had nothing to do with the fact that Blakely and Holt were stationed there. Nothing at all. In fact, she barely ever thought of them anymore and she was sure they never thought of her since they never bothered to call…

  Don't think about it, she commanded herself. It was months ago and now it's over— completely, irrevocably over. The bond was gone, she was sure of that. She no longer felt any emotions but her own inside her head, no one else's pain hurt her, no one else's need filled her with longing, no one else's love surrounded her and made her feel safe and wanted … Sadie sighed and dragged herself out of the chair to finish packing her things. She had never thought she could be so damn lonely inside her own skin. Had never thought she could miss feeling someone else's emotions in the back of her mind.

  She didn't have any romantic notions that she would 'run into' Blakely or Holt when she moved to Old Earth. After all, it was a huge place, not a little backwater nothing of a colony like Goshen. She could probably live there in the big, dirty city of New New York and never see them once for the rest of her life. If one or both of them had called her, even once, she might have at least let them know she was coming. But she had heard nothing from them in six months, not since they had dropped her off on Io with a final hug from each and Sadie was forced to conclude that they considered the brief love affair to be over too.

  Of course, she had made no move to contact them either but then, it was the man's, or in this case, the men's job to make contact; at least to her way of thinking. The ball was in their court and they had done nothing with it. It hurt her pride to admit it but Sadie had begun to think that maybe she was just one of many. Maybe they picked up women everywhere they went. Maybe the whole story about having to have the right brain chemistry was just that—just a big story to make her feel special so she'd agree to be with them the way they wanted her to.

  Sadie sighed again as she threw clothing haphazardly into a standard sized compression cube which gobbled up whatever she gave it and compressed the article into a square-inch sized parcel that could be easily packed. The cube had been expensive to rent but it would save her money on transport fares in the long run. Sadie figured she could probably bring her entire wardrobe along in one small suit-pack. Her pictures and other personal items would be shipped on a carrier which was cheaper than taking them along on the expensive star-freighter she herself was riding. The NNYT was paying for her passage but her relocation costs were up to her.

  Sure wish I had somebody to meet me at the port … Sadie nipped that thought in the bud. Despite their failure to call her, she had considered calling Blakely and Holt on the vid-screen and just letting them know that she would be in town. Seeing if they wanted to remain friends at least. A hundred times in the last six months she had punched in their number and then hit the cancel button. Because what if she placed the call and a woman answered the phone? What if they had only been using her to get what they wanted and now they had moved on? Sadie couldn't bear the thought.

  Besides, even if there is no new girl and they did agree to be friends, I could never be just friends with those two. Not while she remembered so well the warm, electrical current, the golden fire that had flowed between the three of them. How could she ever be around Blakely and Holt and not long for that? Not wish for the utter total completion that had been so close each time she made love to one of them? There was no way she could withstand the temptation to form a Life-bond with them if they spent any significant amount of time together. And that would be so bad why? She quashed the thought firmly as she did whenever it occurred to her but it had been coming back more and more lately.

  Once upon a time she had thought she was too moral, too purely Goshen to think of the kind of lifestyle a Life-bond with Blakely and Holt would involve. It wasn't like she'd ever be able to take them home and show them off as her husbands, after all. If she tried a thing like that … well, they still had Stoning laws on the books in Goshen for extreme cases of immorality. Sadie had a feeling that flaunting a polygamous marriage might fall under that heading pretty easily. At the very least she knew they wouldn't be welcome in Aunt Minnie's house, the house where she had grown up from the age of twelve.

  But she was already a social outcast in Goshen. Aunt Minnie already wasn't talking to her. And Sadie was having a harder and harder time remembering why she had felt so shocked and horrified at what Blakely and Holt had proposed to her in the first place. Because I'm not that kind of girl. The little voice mocked her now. Obviously she was that kind of girl or she wouldn't keep thinking about it.

  It's been six months and you're moving to Old Earth to start an exciting new career, Sadie told herself sternly. It's time to put the past behind you and move onwards and upwards. She threw the last article of clothing into the compression cube and watched it shrink into an impossibly small shape. New life, here I come! And she was almost happy.

  Chapter 21

  “Yes, dahling, your first assignment will be the trial. You've missed most of it I'm afraid, but the sentencing is today so you won't miss that at least.”

  Sadie looked at her new Senior Editor. Prissy De Tangelen was a wasp-waisted fortyish bleached blond with an old-fashioned pair of real glass spectacles perched on her knife-blade of a nose. She was wearing a tight, flesh-colored dress that became completely see-through at some angles. The daring dress made Sadie feel frumpy in her brand new cob
alt-blue working-girl suit which she had purchased specially for her first day at the Times. But the see-through dress wasn't the most startling characteristic of her new editor. Behind the spectacles were a pair of poison green eyes and her long blond hair rose three feet off her head and stood straight up on end, trembling gently in the passing air currents like seaweed under the ocean, making her look like a parody of a woman who'd had a terrible fright. It had taken Sadie a few minutes to realize that the jeweled choker Prissy wore was actually an anti-gravity collar. The senior editor told her they were all the rage in New New York at the moment.

  “Better than a face-lift any day, dahling.” She'd patted Sadie's cheek. “Not that you need to worry about such things yet.”

  Now she was looking at Sadie with an air of expectation. “I, um, where is the trial being held?” Sadie felt like an idiot. “I'm sorry it's just that I haven't been in the city for twenty-four hours yet so…”

  “Not to worry, my sweet,” Prissy De Tangelen said serenely. “It's being held at the downtown courthouse and it's a complete circus. Any hover-taxi can get you there so you don't have to worry about that. Now, as you may know we already have people covering the trial, have had from the moment they brought that old pimp Van Heusen in.” Prissy paused for breath and patted her shimmering tower of hair absently. The writing stylus she'd been holding was caught in the anti-grav field and began orbiting her hair like a small, elliptical satellite.

  “What the Times wants from you, is an eye-witness account written in the same style as your Pulitzer piece. It should have a start-to-finish kind of feeling. You saw the beginning and now you're seeing the end. You see? We're looking for a sense of closure, here, dahling. Can you do it?” Sadie opened her mouth but Prissy De Tangelen didn't give her a chance to answer. “What am I asking? Of course you can,” she answered her own question with an expansive wave of her hand that sent her brassy blond hair into slow-motion ripples and caused the orbiting stylus to twirl lazily end over end. “So get to it, they're starting at nine.”

  “Thank you,” Sadie said uncertainly, standing and gathering her things. She hadn't expected to be sent out on assignment quite so quickly; she didn't even have a desk yet. Or an apartment. She supposed she could stand to live in the cramped five by five mini-sleep cube a little longer. “You've been more than kind.”

  “And what else would I be to our newest Pulitzer nominee?” Prissy smiled a wide, white predatory grin bracketed by blood red lips that made Sadie distinctly nervous. “We at the Times just loved your little story, dahling. Positively ate it up. All the intrigue and danger and especially the sex angle. Sex sells like nobody's business and it takes a real artist to get a Pulitzer nod out of tabloid material like prostie-borgs. Just keep up that level of writing and we'll keep you around. Remember, at the Times if you don't produce, you're out. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Sadie replied faintly through numb lips.

  “Well then you'd better run, dahling. You don't want to miss the show. I'll expect the article on my desk before we go to press tomorrow. Oh, and here's your press pass. Try not to lose it.” The editor tossed a small, leather wallet in Sadie's direction and she fumbled awkwardly, nearly dropping it before she could tuck it into the pocket of her cobalt suit.

  “Absolutely, of course. I'll just … I'll let myself out.” Sadie headed for the door and Prissy De Tangelen nodded absently, bending to look over some work scrolling across the front of her fiber-optic desk. Her hair seemed to be waving goodbye.

  * * * *

  Van Heusen's trial, the very place Sadie had been hoping to avoid! She cursed under her breath as she settled carefully into the smoothly humming hover-taxi after typing in her destination. The blinking read-out informed her that her ride would cost three hundred credits and take thirty minutes. Sadie winced as she pressed her thumb over the red credit indicator and watched it read her print and deduct the credit from her account. The light turned green and the hover-taxi whooshed silently up into the air. She hoped the Times would give her some kind of expense account to cover this kind of thing in the future or she was going to be very broke very fast.

  As the taxi ate up the miles, Sadie stared out of the window, wishing she was heading anywhere but the trial. She supposed she was lucky she hadn't had to be there for the whole thing. She had narrowly missed being subpoenaed as a witness but apparently her tell-all article had branded her as prejudicial in the eyes of Van Heusen's attorneys and they had worked hard to keep her from being called. Sadie had breathed a sigh of relief at the time, thinking that she surely would have run into Blakely and Holt if she showed at Van Heusen's trial. It would have been unavoidable. Now she was going there anyway and she just bet one or both of them would be there.

  Sadie lifted her chin, feeling defiant. Well, if it happened, it happened. She would just put on her most professional manner and explain that she didn't have much time to talk because she had a deadline to meet.

  Sooner than she would have liked the hover-taxi coasted down to a huge granite building that pierced the dirty sky of New New York like a gray, accusing finger. Sadie knew that Old Earth natives were proud that they lived on the only planet in the System that didn't need an atmosphere dome but the polluted brown air currents that swept past her as she disembarked made her wonder what was so great about going domeless. The air on Goshen had smelled dry and processed but at least it didn't stink. Squaring her shoulders, she marched up the endless granite steps to the front of the courthouse. She supposed she'd get used to the stink along with everything else after a while.

  Pushing through the endless crowds, she passed through three security checks with no problem, noticing as she went that most of the women and even some of the men were wearing the same see-through material that Prissy De Tangelen had been affecting. It made her feel frumpier than ever to glimpse the sleek, nearly-naked bodies flashing past her in a constant hurry to get wherever it was they were going. Why hadn't she checked more closely into what the native New New Yorkers were wearing before she'd moved? Sadie supposed that as soon as she got her first paycheck she'd have to go out and get some new clothes although frankly, she would have almost been more comfortable in the prostie-outfits she'd worn on the mission. They covered far more than most of the weird, see-through dresses and suits she was seeing.

  “Van Heusen trial?” asked the bored guard at the fourth security check and Sadie nodded wordlessly, producing her press pass. She started to walk past the man but he stopped her with one arm across the chest.

  “What's wrong?” Sadie asked anxiously. Did she look like a desperate criminal or something? The trial was starting in five minutes and she really had to get going.

  “Visual check. Turn side to side, please,” the guard said, in the same bored tone. Hesitantly, Sadie did as he asked, twisting from one side to the other, wondering what in the world he was looking for.

  “Look,” she said, still twisting. “The trial's about to start and I really need to get in there.”

  The guard gazed at her for a moment and then said, “You got the wrong kinda clothes on for this, lady. You're gonna hafta strip.”

  “What?” Sadie looked at him aghast. “What are you talking about?”

  “I'm talkin' about gettin' outta them clothes so I can make the check and you can stop holdin' up my line,” the guard said matter of factly. “This here's a restricted trial, lady. You shoulda wore somethi n' made outta easy-vis if ya wanted to get in without takin' off your clothes.” He gestured to the guard to one side of him who was scanning the people who passed by his desk after twisting to first one side and then the other, rendering the fabric of their suits and dresses see-through with the change of position before he let them past.

  Sadie realized with a sick kind of dread the reason for all of the see-though clothing. Everywhere you went in NNYC there were multiple security checks. When you looked at it that way, it was certainly easier to wear the easy-vis outfits than to take off your clothes. People were beginni
ng to pile up behind her. Some of them muttered, gave her disgusted looks and went to find a line that was moving. Sadie knew she was making people late but the idea of stripping in public was less than appealing.

  “Look,” she said as reasonably as she could. “Can't you, I don't know, X-ray me or something? I'm new here and I didn't know…”

  “No longer allowed ta use any kind of radiation on the general public for security checks. People vs. the state of New York 2094,” the guard droned. “Look lady, you wanna get into the trial or not? It starts in five and Judge Cornwallis'll holdja in contempt if you come in late and disturb his court.”

  “Yes, all right, fine,” Sadie said tersely. There was no way around it; she would have to undress. Gritting her teeth and trying not to catch anyone's eyes, she began stripping off the conservative cobalt blue suit, trying to pretend she was in the girl's locker room back in school on Io. She was down to her matching green bra and panties and was unhooking the front of the bra while the guard looked on with mild fascination when she heard a voice behind her.

  “Sadie? Sadie, honey, is that you?”

  “Oh no,” she moaned under her breath. Turning around with her bra flapping open she saw Blakely standing behind her, that charming, lopsided grin she remembered so well stretched from ear to ear. “Blake!” she said blankly, all of her resolve to be calm and professional forgotten. “I … uh, didn't expect to see you here.”

  “And I didn't expect to see you either, sweetheart. Least not so much of you.” Hot indigo eyes traveled over her chest reminding Sadie that her breasts were exposed for anyone to see, her nipples hardened from exposure to the chilly air. Blushing deeply, she clutched the bra shut, trying to hide herself and still her pounding heart. She noticed, a bit resentfully, that Blakely was wearing a dapper navy suit that set off his eyes to perfection. It was completely opaque but no one was making him strip.