Bypass Gemini

by Joseph Lallo

  Right on cue, the ground came whipping up beneath them. No longer simply held aloft by anti-gravity units, the vehicle’s futuristic replacements for wheels could be put to work. Bigger, beefier versions of the same things that made his delivery bike work, the repulsors used the interplay between two tangible energy fields to create a synchronized wave pattern capable of instituting temporary charge differences between the vehicle and road surface for the purposes of facilitating the attraction and repulsion necessary to maintain an approximately constant distance.

  In other words, he had traction now.

  Traction meant sharper turns, quicker stops, and generally more room for suicidal stunts. The ground also meant that the cops would have things like buildings and pedestrians to worry about. Lex would have to worry about those things too, of course, but as the pursue-ee, he had the benefit knowing where he was going. Right now, that was a sharp right into the entry tunnel to the lower levels of the starport.

  “That’s arrivals! We want departures!”

  “Yes, Mr. Patel. I’m familiar with how starports work,” Lex said calmly, watching the clock roll over to 3:02. He throttled down until they were actually moving slightly slower than the surrounding traffic. Behind them the police were held up in the bottleneck of the tunnel’s entrance. “Do me a favor and push your head and neck firmly against the headrest.”

  “Why-”

  “Now please.”

  The departure and arrival tunnels ran side by side in opposite directions, with the usual sections of wall removed to allow easier access for maintenance and emergency crews. Lex juiced the repulsors, lurching the limo upward, then flipped them off. This sent the ponderous luxury vehicle into a graceful leap. He then twiddled a knob and pulled hard at the wheel, pivoting the vehicle such that the bottom aligned with the narrow edge of the gap in the wall. He flipped another switch, maxing out the repulsors again and slowly easing them down as they approached the wall. They came to a stop halfway up the wall, with the bottom of the limo inches away from it. He then juiced the repulsors once more, sending the limo springing off again. The end result was a bizarre mixture of stunt driving and parkour. It took moments and shifted the car from keeping up with traffic in one direction to keeping up with traffic in the other, with a wall jump in between.

  “Gotta love the luxury class models. Inertial dampeners for a smoother ride. Try that sort of thing in an economy model and we’re looking at concussions and/or paralysis.”

  He eased the limo into a lane, flipped the plate and transponder back to the way they ought to be, and returned it to an unremarkable black color. A few moments later, 3:03, he pulled up at the appropriate gate. There was a little bit of a commotion in the tunnel behind them as the handful of drivers who witnessed the stunt made their way out of the snarl it caused, but when something like that happens in front of you, you tend to fixate on the event itself rather than where the thing went afterward or whether it had changed color. Besides, anyone on foot seemed to be distracted by a tight huddle of bodies off to the side surrounding some bright lights and flashing cameras.

  “Bags!” Nick barked at his men as they stepped out of the car on wobbly legs.

  Lex got out of the driver’s seat and held the door in standard chauffeur fashion.

  “Thank you for choosing Lex Express. First class boarding line is right over there, Mr. Patel. The time is... 3:04:12. Best hop on,” he said, holding his white-gloved hand crisply in the universal sign for ‘tip me.’

  “You crazy bastard,” Patel said with a smile and a shake of his head, as though it was princely praise. “Here’s your money, and well earned. If you ever need a decent job-”

  “I’ll stop you right there,” Lex said, holding up a hand, “I’ve had enough of those kinds of jobs.”

  Diamond Nick pulled the hand down by the wrist and gave it a bone crushing shake.

  “Even so, drop me a line, madman.”

  When he took his hand away, he left behind a business card. He then followed his muscle into the elevator a few moments before they shut the door. Lex looked the card over. An honest-to-goodness business card. Printed on paper. It was charmingly anachronistic, like sending a postcard written in fountain pen. The fact that it left no electronic trail probably helped. It left a paper trail, sure, but a computer can’t search a paper trail. Slipping it into an inside pocket, Lex leaned against the limo and let the aftermath of the rush roll over him, admiring the place as he did.

  The starport was like any transport hub, only magnified a few dozen times. It was big, open, and crowded. Half of the place was devoted to arrivals, the other departures. Along with a veritable shopping mall of overpriced shops there was a massive, matte black cable in the center, a space tether. The thing stood like a sequoia, extending up and out of sight. It was joined by about three dozen others of various sizes, each anchored in the center of a near identical cluster of shops and gates, all lined up along a 20 mile stretch of the planet’s equator. Technically the entire row taken as a whole was a single starport, but locally and professionally the tethers were treated as different facilities. It made sense, since each one led to a stardock devoted to a different quadrant of space.

  Flashing lights at the corner of his vision caught Lex’s attention. Across the port, police were going over the arrivals area with a fine toothed comb. True, they would be looking for the wrong color, but even so it was likely not the best time to be standing next to a limo. He climbed in, smiled, and headed off to redeem his tip.

  Chapter 3

  Lex stumbled up to the door of his apartment building. After putting the limo back in the livery garage he had decided do some celebrating. He’d cashed in his tip at the biggest casino in town, except for one chip. After the day he’d had, a little fun was in order. He’d left his tux on (if he was going to celebrate, he may as well do it in style) and hit the blackjack table. Lex was by no means a professional gambler, or even a talented amateur, but he could make his money last long enough to get his fill of complementary food and drinks. By the time he’d decided he’d had enough, his fifty thousand credit chip had turned into a pair of thousand credit chips, a belly full of shrimp cocktail, and about three rum and cokes too many. Following a return bike ride filled with the kind of slow caution only alcohol can inspire, he was at his door.

  With the bike powered down on one shoulder, he fumbled for his slidepad and swiped it past the door panel. The only result was a disappointing beep. He tried a few more times with similar results before he was able to force aside enough of the haze of inebriation to notice the message on the screen to go along with the sad little noise. It was not good. It was SO not good, in fact, that he decided it must be wrong. He pulled up the building directory on the panel, slurred his landlady’s name, and a few minutes later was greeted by a less than charming voice.

  “What the hell do you want?” came the voice of an aging and irritable woman.

  The video on the screen was illuminated only by the light of her display, giving her face the grainy, washed out look that was so popular in the sort of videos that make the careers of porn stars and ruin the reputations of movie starlets. Picturing his landlady in such a performance nearly brought back some of the shrimp cocktail.

  “Hi, Mrs. Dunne. There’s something wrong with the panel.”

  “Do you know what time it is?!”

  “Uh, no, actually,” he said, checking his pad. He grimaced. 11:10. “Sorry about that. Uh, about the panel though. It says I’m evicted.”

  “That’s because you ARE evicted, Alexander.”

  “Wh- What? But it’s like,” he sputtered, checking the date on his pad, “The eighteenth. Rent is only three days late!”

  “This month’s rent is. I’m still waiting for the last three months!”

  “I paid April! ... Mostly.”

  “Get off my property, Alexander,” she said, reaching for the screen.

  “Wait, wait, wait!” he said, quickly tapping through a few directories
and shortcuts on the pad before pressing his thumb to it, dumping the contents of his bank account into hers, “There!”

  She grumbled and brought up something on the side of her screen.

  “You’re still half a month shy.”

  “At least let me in to get changed!”

  “Oh, no. You’ll go in, grab your stuff, and I’m out half a month’s rent. The door stays locked until we’re square. I’ll consider the crap in your apartment collateral.”

  The transmission cut off, and any further attempts to reach her dumped directly to a video away message, one she’d recorded two months earlier when her cat was sick and she’d never bothered to update. Finally he gave up and flipped his bike on so he’d have a place to sit.

  “Okay, Lex. You’re homeless, you’re drunk, you’re broke, and you’re wearing a tuxedo,” he assessed, “You’ve had better days.”

  He considered his options, but the potent mixture of alcohol, sugar, and seafood was gumming up the works. Eventually, he settled on the same choice a thousand other drunk, lonely men had made before him.

  He decided to call his ex.

  For the first time in longer than he cared to consider, he had to dig deeper into his contacts than his favorites list, which was currently dominated by take-out restaurants. Eventually he found Michella. Next to her name, a short sequence of video clips silently rolled by. He watched them for a minute. Half of them were of her angrily telling him to shut the camera off. There were a few of her in her racetrack outfit. She wanted to be as close to the track as possible, so they made her an honorary member of the pit crew, complete with ad-strewn jumpsuit. The last one was her signature wink and blown kiss. Finally he tapped her name. The wireless flipped on, causing the missed messages count to skyrocket, and a moment later the words “Establishing Connection” began to pulsate across the screen.

  Lex held out the pad, raked his fingers through his hair, and tried to straighten his bow tie. He was still working at it when the feed connected.

  “Trevor,” she said.

  For a single word, she managed to deliver it with an impressive depth of meaning. There was a hint of disappointment, a heap of irritation, and just the tiniest speck of reminiscence.

  “Hi, Mitch... ella,” he stumbled. He remembered just a moment too late that she hated the nickname Mitch. (It sounded too much like something else.) He’d taken to using it to playfully annoy her. Now probably wasn’t the time for that. “Been a while. I, uh, I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

  There was no need to ask. He clearly hadn’t. From the angle of things, she’d answered at her workstation. She was wearing the glasses she wore in private, since she was too skittish for corrective surgery, and an old beat up t-shirt. On the desk beside her was a cup, no doubt filled with hot chocolate. The image brought memories surging back. How many times had he seen her like that, in the evenings after class at college? The only thing missing was himself in the background, quizzing her on her broadcasting notes or wasting the night on a racing game. The visions washed over him as he stared at her face. Even without makeup, even as she would never dare be seen in public, she was magnificent.

  “No, no. Working late. Actually, I was about to call you.”

  “You... you were? That’s cool. Me too.”

  After more than a year and a half without more than an exchanged nod at the odd party or yesterday’s group message, it should have struck him as unlikely. His drunken mind wasn’t quite so skeptical.

  “Yeah. You remember what I was doing today?”

  His face screwed up as he rummaged through his booze addled memory.

  “The... uh... The news thing! At the starport!” he declared triumphantly.

  “Right, right. Well, I was going through some of the B-Roll we shot, and you’ll never guess who I saw.”

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  She made some motion off screen and the corner of the slidepad showed video from the starport earlier that day. The camera was actually pointed at some business bigwig or something, but as she fiddled with the controls the video zoomed over his right shoulder and there he was, in his tux, right next to the limo.

  “Wow. Look at that. Am I gonna be in the broadcast?”

  She sighed heavily.

  “Who’s that man with you, Trev?” she asked flatly.

  “Uh, that’s... Oh...”

  More memories came flooding back. Not good ones. Michella had stood by him when he started slipping into debt. She’d even stood by him when he was found out for throwing the race. The last straw had been when she found out why. Everything else she could put aside, but the moment she heard that mobsters were involved, she exploded. And now there he was, the frame frozen in the corner of the screen showing him with-

  “Nicholas ‘Nicky the Diamond’ Patel!” she hissed.

  “It’s Diamond Nick, actually,” he blurted stupidly.

  “Oh, well excuse me. I’m not one of his lackeys.”

  “Hey, hey. It isn’t like that. He hired the limo. He was just a client.”

  “Oh yeah, then what’s this?”

  The video flipped forward a few more frames, to the point where the tip was delivered. She then zoomed in on the exchange, blowing up the video enough to clearly make out all six chips, and even read the denomination on the top one. Damn high resolution cameras.

  “It wasn’t... I didn’t do anything illegal for him. Well... not MOBSTER illegal. I just got him to the starport quick. That’s it!”

  “That IS it, Trevor. I... I’d been keeping an eye on you, you know. It looked like I might have been wrong. I WANTED to be wrong, you know? The limo thing. The delivery boy thing on the side. Decent, legitimate work. I thought you’d changed.” She faltered, the tears showing in her voice before they showed in her eyes, “Good bye, Trevor. Don’t call me again.”

  The transmission cut off. He tried to reconnect, but all he got in reply was a friendly voice cheerfully informing him that “calls to this account have been blocked by request.” He flipped wireless off again out of reflex, shoved the pad into his pocket, and left his hand there. Unless he was mistaken, Michella had just managed to break up with him again without ever having gotten back together. There ought to be some kind of law against that.

  “Okay. To recap, then. I am homeless, drunk, in a tuxedo, and my ex-girlfriend, who has been spying on me apparently, thinks I’m in with the mob again. And she knows I’m a delivery boy... I wonder how much drunker I can get.”

  He rummaged around and pulled out the two measly chips. Now that he’d emptied out his account trying to pay his back rent, it was all he had.

  “That’s not gonna do it. I gotta... I gotta...” Lex muttered before shaking vigorously to attempt to stop his head from spinning. He only succeeded in increasing the rpm.

  “Okay. Okay. I need money. And I should probably try to straighten things out with Mitch. Thank God she didn’t find out about the other thing...”

  It took a moment for the realization to push its way though the fog of rum.

  “The other thing!”

  He sifted through his pockets until he found the note Marv had handed him, which thankfully had come along with the rest of the contents of his pockets when he’d made the hasty change. After a moment to coax his eyes into focus, he read the message out loud.

  “Dear Sir. Very important package. Must be delivered. Will meet in Twilight Park, Upper West Downing Street. Will discuss details. Price no object. 12:01 September 19th.”

  He looked at his slidepad again. That gave him a little more than a half an hour to sober up and get to the meeting place. West Downing wasn’t too far away. It wasn’t impossible. He climbed unsteadily onto the delivery bike and set off. First step, sobering up.

  Science has a nasty habit of solving the little problems first. Cancer hadn’t quite been cured yet. Poverty and hunger still lingered in the usual places. Crime clearly still existed. There may still have been a long way to go on the important stu
ff, but the hangover was damn sure a thing of the past. You could stop at any corner store and find three name brand pills and a half dozen generics that would metabolize all of the alcohol in the bloodstream, bind up and neutralize all of the toxins, and leave you feeling like a new man inside of five minutes. You’d even pass a breathalizer test, though cops had stopped using them a while back in favor of an on site tox-screen that wasn’t so easily fooled. Lex managed to find a bodega that was willing to hand him a bottle of the number one brand, Sobrietin (no sense taking chances), along with a bottle of water and a comb for one of his chips. Once it kicked in enough for his usual level of ridership to be something less than suicide, he set off for the rendezvous.

  He touched down in Twilight Park with a few minutes to spare. It was a fairly nice park, with expertly mowed grass, neat rows of trees, quaint benches, and a playground. All in all it was nothing remarkable, except that it was two hundred stories off the ground, situated on a terrace of a three-hundred story residential building. They called it twilight park because the combination of nearby buildings and overhanging balconies meant that it only got direct sun just as the day was coming to an end. Lex picked an out-of-the-way spot that would give him a decent view of anyone who came and left the park, and took a moment to straighten himself up. He combed his hair, stowed his bike on a nearby lamp post, and retied his bow tie. If he was going to be wearing a tux for this, he might as well look like it had been on purpose.

  At precisely 12:01 an anxious looking young woman started to make her way up the path from the entrance. He stepped into the circle of light below a lamppost, waved a gloved hand to get her attention, then stepped back into the shadows. She was like something out of a film noir classic: Long white coat, matching wide brimmed hat, conspicuous brushed metal case about the size of thin stack of file folders. It was difficult to tell exactly what she looked like, the informant outfit doing an excellent job of masking her features, but she was tall and slender. The nervous energy showed in her walk, brisk and stiff. She arrived, carefully avoiding the light and joining Lex in the shadows.