by L.H. Thomson
Chapter Eight
What this demonstrates is that the strength of a belief is directly related to the fear of the unknown of the individual. This also explains why the more unmoderated (orthodox) the belief, the more irrational the measures adherents will take to protect them. – from The Handbook of Joshua, Chapter Six, Verse 7.
We jumped back in just a few hours from Earth.
Despite Cardale’s warning, I couldn’t get Hanna Dow’s picture out of my head, her sad, beautiful profile as she stared out the window of Evgeny’s cruiser, pondering the dark and the acid rain, her green eyes lit up by passing neon.
The space above New Tokyo was busy, and we had to hover for an hour before being given permission to land.
The pollution down below was so thick at night that it obscured any idea that the street-level world even existed. I absent-mindedly wondered what it looked like outside of the cities, where there wasn’t so much production and most of the big factory work was automated.
Predictably, she’d gone back to the still-rented suites at Kobe Travel Station, where they’d simply moved her into the unit next door after SP closed off the crime scene.
We buzzed her from downstairs. “I’m surprised to hear from you,” she said, before noticing Jayde in her monitor standing behind my left shoulder. “Oh. Hello, pilot. My apologies.”
I know it must have taken Jayde all of her frequently tested reserve of tact to not roll her eyes.
Instead, she just said, “Yeah, good to see you again too. Look, we’ve just got a couple of things to fill you in on.”
I smiled. Jayde was a good friend, and put up with a lot of my crap. Telling Hanna about Vance Vega was as good a pretext as any for us to get some alone time.
After we’d logged off, she motioned towards the bar. “Look, boss, you go up and see your lady friend. I’m gonna go have a couple. You meet me down here when you’re all done.”
Given that I had no idea what was going to happen, she made it sound like a favor and something completely sordid, all at the same time.
“Thanks. I think.”
A couple of minutes later, Hanna Dow was letting me into the suite. She was smiling when she opened the door, chewing her lower lip nervously. “I wasn’t sure I was going to get a chance to see you again,” she said.
I smiled right back. “Yeah. I was kind of worried for you for a bit there, kid, dealing with Cardale.”
She looked down. “I can handle myself. But yeah…scared me, too. Come in, please.” She motioned for me to pass her.
I grabbed a seat in the small living room area on a two-cushion couch. She asked if I wanted a drink and I asked for a whisky.
After a minute of prep work, she joined me and we clinked glasses. “To…” She couldn’t think of a toast, so I offered, “To making it through another year.”
Hanna smiled. “Yeah, that’s about right.”
I filled her in on the fight on the NTC and about Vega trying to sell the drive, Resko G’Deevar and the Technocracy swallowing Vega’s ship whole.
“So what now? You’re obviously not going to stay Earth-side.”
“Obviously,” she said. “But I’m a bit worried. I mean, I really lucked into this job and the Archivist was never a nice man, so even this wasn’t that stable. If I don’t land something soon, I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe head out of the system, start a new life on one of the exchange colonies.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh come on, now you’re just being dramatic. With your recent work, surely one of the other archivists will take you on, or Hui-Matsumori?”
She looked a little teary then, and I instantly felt like a jerk. “Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to underplay…”
“No, it’s OK,” she said. “It’s just …everything. Breck killing the Archivist. Cardale practically kidnapping me,” she paused, adding, “you risking your neck foolishly chasing this stuff. I… well, no one else has been as nice to me as you, Bob.”
I wiped the tear away from the corner of her eye gently, with the edge of my thumb. “Hey! None of that now! We’ll get this all figured out here in short order. Just be strong for a while, kid, and if everything goes as planned, I’ll be making enough off of Cardale that you won’t have to worry about another job for a while.”
It was true. 100,000 creds wouldn’t buy us retirement, but it would buy her time.
She smiled again, tearily. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
I smiled right back. “Because I’m a John Smith, and you’re a Jane Doe. And I know neither of us has got much. But that’s even more reason why we should stick up for each other.”
We talked for another hour, filling each other in on our hard times and our hopes, and by the end, she was leaning her head on my shoulder. After a few moments of silence, she looked at me square, then smiled again and kissed my forehead. “You’re a good man, Bob Smith.”
“Thank you.”
“Now go be a good man in your own room. I have to get some sleep if I’m going to start job hunting tomorrow.”
I blushed and, realizing no grown man should be caught blushing by a beautiful redhead with pale green eyes, I made a beeline for the door. “I’ll look you up before I go anywhere,” I offered.
“You’d better,” she said.
By the time I got back to the bar downstairs, Jayde was hammered, and had managed to talk to the staff into firing up a Karaoke machine.
She was busy singing classics … really old stuff, from a century earlier, much to the chagrin of every ear in the room.
In fact, the only guy who was enjoying it was an equally drunk fat guy, who was trying in vain to dance in time to her off-key singing.
She noticed me in the doorway. “Woo! OK, boss. ‘M officially not flying tonight. Do we get a room here, or …”
“We can’t afford a room here, Jayde,” I said, annoyed that she’d forgotten one more time how little booze her physiology could stand.
You’d have thought after 250 years, a 14-year-old girl would know her limit. But no.
She noticed the sour look on my face. “Ohhh, boss. Boss, boss, boss. Bossie, bossie, bossie. Bossily, bossily…”
I grabbed her by the elbow, then swiped my cred chip at the bar to pick up her tab. “Come on, let’s sleep it off at the ship.”