“Visitors have persuaded the head of venue security to take them to Zoe,” he said. “I monitored the call with Zoe. They’re on their way here now. Can you safely watch on your comm?”
I moved deep into the storage space, behind some large shelves full of boxes, stacks of computing equipment, and old lights.
“Now, yes.”
“They’ve arrived. Sending you a stream now.”
I watched as two men, accompanied by one of the venue’s security staffers, stood outside Lobo. One was Balin Randar, Omani’s security head. I didn’t recognize the other.
Lobo’s hatch opened, and Zoe stepped appeared in it a moment later. She held her comm in front of her, making it clear she was recording the session.
“Zoe Wang,” Randar said.
“Yes,” she said. She glanced at the venue’s security woman before facing the two men again. “How did you get back here? This is a restricted area. And, in case you decide to try to make up something troublesome later, I am recording this conversation.”
“We persuaded the good people here to let us talk to you for a minute,” the other man said.
“And we have no issue with you recording our brief interaction,” Randar said.
“And you two are?” she said.
“Balin Randar,” he said. “I’m chief of security for the Pimlani family.”
“Hyo Shin,” the other man said. “I work for the Kang family.”
Crap. Omani had been true to her threat and teamed with Kang.
Impatience was obvious on Zoe’s face. “If I’m supposed to know those names,” she said, “or care about them, I don’t. We have a show to put on tonight, and we need every minute between now and then to get ready for it. They’re not supposed to have let you back here.” She glared again at the security woman. “Book an appointment after the tour.” She turned to go.
“Ms. Wang,” Randar said. “We need only one minute of your time, and then we’ll go.”
“For what?” she said. “If you want an interview with Passion, you can see our PR people.”
Randar shook his head. “Nothing like that. We’re searching for a man. Both of our employers owe him a debt, and they’d like to repay it. They have no way to get in touch with him. We have a picture, and we know he owns a commercial vehicle. We’re checking all the recent transport hirings to see if he might be one of them. You contracted for a driver and vehicle recently, didn’t you?”
Her expression of annoyance never wavered. “Yes. I’m standing in it.”
Shin nodded and watched her carefully.
Randar lifted his hand, opened it, and a holo appeared above his comm. I stood there, in the outfit I’d worn to Omani’s estate, but thinned down to remove the exoskeleton and age-reversed. Either the make-up people who’d aged me were darn good, or the age-reversal software was, or both, because though the face wasn’t exactly mine, it was pretty close.
“Is this man the man from whom you licensed this vehicle?”
“No,” she said. “That man—” she leaned out and pointed toward the loading crew, where Bing stood helping the costumers “—is the driver.” She faced them again. “Are we done?”
Throughout it all, Zoe’s expression had never wavered from being annoyed at the intrusion.
“Yes,” Randar said. “Thank you, and sorry for interrupting you.”
She nodded and walked back inside Lobo.
I watched as they left, the venue security woman staying close to them. By the time they reached where Bing had been, he had gone with the costumers to the dressing rooms. Randar and Shin made no move to follow him. Lobo tracked them until he could no longer see them.
“Do you think they believe her?” I said.
“My external sensors aren’t powerful enough to read the same level of information from a human outside me that I can gather from one inside me. According to what I could read, however—posture, pupil dilation, breathing via rise and fall of their chests—yes, they did. I could monitor Zoe precisely, and her vitals barely changed throughout the conversation. She is an excellent liar.”
Given her years of fighting with newstainment personalities, venue crews, suppliers, VIPs, those who wanted to be VIPs, and her own crews, that made sense. Zoe was accustomed to having to sell her lies, and like everything else she did, she did it well.
My comm went off. “Jon,” Zoe said, “come back to Lobo. We need to talk.”
“On my way,” I said.
“What’s your plan?” Lobo said.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Probably to tell her the truth. Mostly.”
“I think we call that ‘lying,’” Lobo said.
“Only part of it,” I said.
* * *
When I arrived at Lobo, Zoe was waiting for me up front. I went and sat in my pilot couch.
She sat in hers.
She told me about what had happened.
“Who were those men, Jon?” she said. Her voice rose as she talked. “Why are they after you? And, what kind of trouble did I get in for covering for you?”
“I believe they were who they claimed to be,” I said, “though I cannot know for certain. The Pimlani and Kang families are two of the oldest, most powerful families in all the worlds. They were among the wealthy families who first settled Haven. As for being in trouble, I don’t think you are. They could probably cause problems for anyone they targeted, but they have no reason to go after you.”
“You haven’t answered the most important question,” she said. “Why are they looking for you? I don’t believe for a second their claim that it’s to pay a debt. No one puts in that much effort just to pay back something they owe a person.”
I thought of what I had paid—and was still paying—because I felt I owed Omani, but I didn’t argue with her. “I believe they were here to pay me back, but not in a good way. Did you catch any of the feeds a while back about the auction of children on Studio?”
She nodded. “I did, though the story didn’t last long here.”
“You can research any of what I’m about to tell you to confirm it,” I said, “except for my role. Luis Kang, the boss of one of those two men and the head of the Central Coalition council that oversees Haven, was the man who was running that auction.”
She glanced at her comm.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Check it.”
I waited as she did.
When she looked up, her eyes were wide. “How did this story get so little coverage here?” she said. “Why isn’t that man Kang locked away somewhere?”
“Both questions have the same answer,” I said. “His money and power got him off. Justice is not the same for people like him as it is for the rest of us.”
“I’m glad to see you’re listening to me and learning,” Lobo said over the machine frequency.
“So what does this have to do with you?” Zoe said. “Nothing I saw mentions you or anyone who looks like you.”
“I was part of the team that rescued those children,” I said. “We knocked out everyone in the place and flew the kids to safety in Dardan, the city on Studio that’s closest to Privus, the gallery where they held the auction. Kang proved to be immune to the gas we used to sedate them all, so he saw me. He must have described me to artists who eventually created that image of me.”
“Why the weird outfit?” she said.
“It helped me get into the auction.” I hated the number of lies I had to tell her, but I was already risking a lot with the bits of the truth I’d revealed. I needed this job, though, to get into Schmidt’s, so I had to do whatever was necessary to hold onto it.
She looked away from me for a minute. She nodded slowly as if talking to herself.
“This fits,” she said, “with what you did for that boy back at the show in Paruva.”
I said nothing. I had no idea what to say to that.
“Did you know these men were after you?” she said.
“Kang threatened me at the auction,” I said, “when
he saw my face, but I didn’t believe he would bother to come after me, or that he would find me so quickly. I figured he would give up trying to find one man among all the billions in all the worlds. I was wrong.”
Zoe leaned closer to me and stared at me. “What happened to you, Jon?”
As so often happens with me with other people, and particularly with women, I found myself deeply confused. “What do you mean?”
“You risked a lot to save those children on Studio. You intervened with that boy’s parents in Paruva when everyone else was ignoring him. Something had to have happened to you, probably when you were a child yourself, to make you do those things, to make you as angry as you were with that boy’s parents. What was it?”
I stared at her a long time. I thought about all that I could say but never would. I thought about growing up mentally challenged, about Jennie healing me, about learning to kill on Dump and watching my friends die there, about the torture and experiments I endured on Aggro, about Benny and his death—so much bubbled up inside me that it was like I was having the nightmares while I was awake.
I couldn’t tell her any of it, both for her sake and for mine.
Finally, I said as much as I could bear to voice. “The kinds of things that come as nightmares and wake me up, sweating and sometimes screaming.”
“Okay,” she said, “I respect that talking about them is hard. I understand that. I really do. Maybe someday,” she paused and looked at the floor for a moment, “maybe we’ll both be able to tell each other about them.”
Her comm and mine both went off.
She glanced at hers.
I checked mine. They needed me to help cram some of Passion’s gear into a space that was smaller than the plans had said it would be.
She smiled. “Not right now, though,” she said. “Right now, we have a show to prep. Let’s get to it.”
We both stood.
“Thank you,” I said, “for not giving me up to those men.”
“No need,” she said. “You’d have done it for me. Heck, you already have protected me. Now, get to work.”
* * *
That night, as we stood in our customary backstage spots watching Passion’s show, I felt Zoe bump into my left arm and moved slightly to the right to give her space.
She looked at me as she sang, then inched closer, until our arms touched along their full lengths.
She was warm against me.
This time, I did not move away, and so we enjoyed the rest of the show together, until as usual it ended and Passion’s entourage carried off Zoe as the star went to meet the VIPs.
Now more than ever, I did not want to take the chance of being with that group, so I returned to Lobo, steering clear of everyone except the crew, my left arm still warm with Zoe’s touch.
2 days from the end
Linsburg City
Planet Haven
CHAPTER 39
Jon Moore
I spent the first few days after Randar and Shin’s visit wearing a hat outdoors to shield my face in case they were using sats to monitor us. I stayed on the lookout for either of those men to reappear, but they did not. Soon, I fell back into the rituals the show demanded; as long as I was there, I had to work. In any human endeavor that involves mobilizing a group to a common cause, the chaos behind the scenes is always much greater than is obvious to those outside the group. I found myself proud to be part of this team, because no matter what the problem, we found a way to address it, and on went the show.
The performance in Linsburg was the last one before the benefit at Schmidt’s, so I spent every moment I could alone in my quarters, working with Lobo, studying all the available data on his estate and planning the mission.
That day, setting up for the show, I was off my game, slow to respond, sloppy in placing equipment, and so on. To my surprise, I was not alone: Everyone was making more errors than usual.
After lunch, Zoe called a meeting of the whole crew backstage.
“I’m not blind or stupid,” she said, “and neither are any of you. We all know we’re messing up. We also all know why: None of us likes these private gigs at rich people’s places. Well, we need to get over that, and now.
“We agreed to do this show, so we owe that audience our best just as much as we owe it to every other audience.
“More importantly, we will be helping raise a lot of money for a cause that means a great deal to me: improving the fate of children the state raises. The people who will be at the show have the ability to donate a lot of money. That money will go to helping those kids find homes and to improving the facilities for those who remain under government care.”
She paused and glanced to her left, a surprised expression on her face.
Passion, already in full wardrobe and make-up for the rehearsal, walked over to Zoe, put her arm around Zoe, and faced us. “I believe most of you know that Zoe and I grew up together in those sorts of facilities. That’s the main reason we agreed to tomorrow night’s show. I’m not any happier than you are at being the pet of the moment for a bunch of spoiled old-money people who would never have given me or Zoe a second look when we were young, but the benefit to those kids is worth the cost.” Her voice, so strong on stage, was soft now, a slight lilt tinting her words. “Plus, tonight’s audience has nothing to do with those people, so we should not punish them with a substandard show. We owe each and every audience our very best.”
We all nodded our heads in agreement.
“Okay, everybody,” Zoe said. “Let’s get to it!”
* * *
That night, not long before Passion was to take the stage, Zoe and I were in our usual positions. We stood with our arms touching, as we had since the night after Randar and Shin had come looking for me.
“Jon,” she said, “after every show, I try to get you to come to the VIP party, and every time, you turn me down. Why?”
I shrugged. “It’s just not something I would enjoy. I don’t care about how very important those people are supposed to be. The people that are important to me are the ones I work with. I suppose Passion has to spend time with them, but I don’t.”
“She does,” Zoe said. “It’s part of what some of them buy with their special tickets. For others, it’s something they expect. Moving in those circles can be very useful for her—and for us.”
“But I would contribute nothing of use,” I said.
“So you go back to Lobo and go to bed,” she said.
I nodded. “Usually. Once or twice, I’ve gone for a run, but usually I sleep, get up early, and exercise in the morning.”
“Okay,” she said. “Fair enough.” She looked around at the set. Everything was in place. Passion and the musicians stood just behind us. The announcer bounced on his toes, getting ready to come on and introduce Passion when the stage director gave the word. “After a day like today,” Zoe said, “I could use some exercise. We got back on track, but it was rocky for quite a while.”
“Yeah, that was new to me,” I said, “but we did get through it.”
“Excuse me for a second,” she said.
She ran over to Passion and whispered in her ear.
Passion listened, smiled, and hugged her.
Zoe rejoined me. She was smiling broadly.
“What was that about?” I said.
“Just wanted to wish her a good show,” Zoe said.
The announcer bounded onto the stage.
The crowd cheered.
Showtime.
* * *
Passion sang even more powerfully than usual, and the show went flawlessly, as if everyone involved was determined to atone for the earlier errors and sloppiness.
When the last song was over, Passion as usual rushed past us, off to meet the VIPs.
Zoe, though, stayed where she was, standing quietly beside me.
“Aren’t you going to the party?” I said.
“Does it look like I’m going?” she said.
I was afraid I’d annoyed
her with the question, but she was smiling broadly. I shook my head. “No. What are you going to do?”
“Go to bed early.”
“Okay. Want to walk with me back to Lobo?”
“Definitely.”
Linsburg wasn’t a huge city, but it was big enough that light pollution diluted the stars. Even so, the night sky on Haven was lovely. The stars shined brightly, its distant moon the brightest of them all. The evening was cool, but I felt warm. We walked in silence to Lobo, who opened the usual side hatch as we appeared.
He closed the hatch as soon as we were both inside.
I stood outside my quarters, its door open, unsure what to say.
“Good night,” I finally said. I stepped inside my quarters.
She stepped inside with me.
I turned to face her. “Wha?”
She put the index finger of her right hand on my lips. She held it there as she glanced at my cot. “Yours is no bigger than mine,” she said, “but I’m sure we’ll make do.” Her smile was broad and beautiful. She pulled her finger away from my lips.
“I don’t—” I said.
“Jon,” she said, “it’s clear to me, it’s clear to Passion, it’s probably clear to everyone here, that if I wait for you to make the first move, I’ll grow very old and still be in that other room alone.”
She pulled her shirt over her head.
She was wearing nothing underneath it.
She stepped to me and put her arms around me.
I heard a small gasp and realized I’d made the sound.
She pulled my head to hers and kissed me. Her kisses were hungry and deep, and I lost myself in her. She ground against me as we kissed.
I picked her up, and she wrapped her legs around me.
I turned and placed her gently on the bed.
“About time,” she said, her eyes wide, her smile wider, and there was no trace of meanness in the words, only joy and love.
“Indeed,” Lobo said over the comm frequency.
I ignored him, and he didn’t speak again.
I leaned to Zoe and kissed her deeply.
She pulled me onto her.
* * *
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