Pico's Crush

by Carol Van Natta

  Tremplin didn’t have blocks, it had winding paths around a mix of short and tall structures designed to harmonize with the jungle-like growth. Even stackers were designed to blend in. The current fad was for tree houses, which made Andra grateful to live in her tall but more conventionally designed apartment building, with convenient lifts, stairs, and airpads. If she wanted to climb rope ladders every day, she’d do it at the gym.

  The winter weather in Tremplin was only about fifteen degrees cooler than the summer, and more humid. She was glad she’d opted for comfort and worn her hair in a high bun, or her neck would be soaked with sweat after a few meters.

  She glanced at the time on her percomp. “I’d hoped to have heard from Mairwen by now.”

  Jerzi shrugged. “Traffic does what it wants.”

  They walked and chatted easily on the way to the public flitter stacker. She kept wanting to apologize to him for hurting his feelings the other night, because she was pretty sure she had. She couldn’t explain it, though, without taking their relationship somewhere it couldn’t go, considering he was leaving in four days. She’d just have to enjoy the time they had.

  The path widened as it approached the stacker. On one of the long benches near it, 21.64 meters up ahead, according to her oculars, three men and a woman had draped themselves across it like hyenas on a savanna. Their clothes were dark and tight, and they were all wearing heavy boots. One man wore a brown-stained flowered tourist shirt like a trophy. A beefy, dark man with a slanted red mohawk and a man who was painfully thin pretended to be dozing, but the thin man’s teeth clacked, a symptom of too much performance chem. None looked their way.

  “Shit,” she said under her breath, at the same time she heard the same word in Polish from Jerzi. “They’re a long way from The Solitario.” Tremplin’s bad part of town was tens of kilometers to the north.

  The woman, with pale skin and flat, micro-short dark hair, stood and made a show of arching back in a stretch. Her breasts nearly overflowed the shiny black vest’s neckline. She had some muscle definition, but she looked like she hadn’t eaten well recently.

  “Run?” asked Jerzi as they both slowed, but still continued walking. “That’d work in Etonver, but here?”

  She considered the narrow path behind them. “That’s what they want. They’re probably on adreeno. Local favorite.” It was a popular chem for athletic thrill-seekers because it temporarily sped up reaction times, like a ramper could do with minder talent. Used properly, it could be an effective short-term advantage. Muggers and hyena packs liked it for that reason. Long-term abuse caused tunnel vision and sapped muscle strength.

  “So they’ll flatline, if we last long enough, and they don’t have weapons. Great.” He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “I don’t suppose you brought your shockstick along?”

  “Sadly, no. Made a funny lump in my sexy bra.” If they made it through this, she was never going out without one again, lumps or no lumps. “Let’s do this.”

  Andra began walking faster, and Jerzi followed suit. May as well bottle them up against the bench if they could.

  “Skinny lopar with the jittery jaw and the woman are mine,” she said to Jerzi.

  Suddenly, Jerzi sped up and got in front of her to blitz the tallest man in the tourist shirt. Goddamn it, Jerzi was protecting her, like she was a farkin’ civilian. She gritted her teeth and moved in fast to salvage the element of surprise. She veered to the right to take the woman first, and her focus narrowed.

  The woman pivoted and made fists but kept them by her side and snarled. It probably frightened the tourists. Andra extended her arms and put up her open hands, one leading the other. “Easy, now. Cálmese.”

  The woman’s eyes betrayed her intention to launch. She was scary-fast with a roundhouse punch at Andra’s jaw as she cocked her other fist for a lower follow-up, hinting at some training. Andra barely managed to fold her own arms around her head and face to block, but it gave her time to get close enough to trap the woman’s arm under one of her own long enough to swing her around to derail the skinny man’s attempt at an overhead punch.

  Andra grabbed the woman’s head in a front-controlled headlock and raised a fast knee into the woman’s solar plexus, but the woman was surprisingly limber and evaded most of the impact. Andra swung her again to keep her off balance and blocking the skinny man, and tried again with a front kick into the woman’s ribs. It connected. She switched legs and got another two solid kicks in.

  “Pórni!” the woman growled. She engaged with a flurry of hits to Andra’s sides and shoulders, and got in a heavy-booted kick to her bare shin, but while adreeno provided temporary speed, it did nothing for building strength or skill. The woman snarled in rage and tried to turn her head to bite Andra’s arm. A quick elbow smash to the woman’s collarbone distracted her, and she stumbled to one knee. Andra brought her own knee up and the woman’s jaw down to meet it, and the woman was down.

  The skinny man nearly tripped over his fallen pack mate, but righted himself quickly. He had height, reach, and blinding speed, and managed a whistling punch that scraped her ear painfully before she connected with a punch to his jaw, and a second to his solar plexus. She took advantage of his involuntary hunch forward to get his head and neck under control. Three fast front kicks into his ribs, and he was on his knees. Andra punched his jaw hard with the heel of her hand, whipping his head sideways, and he toppled like a tree. She gave a swift kick to his jaw again to make sure he was out.

  Andra looked to Jerzi just in time to see him smash the mohawk-haired man with an elliptical punch to the temple. His tourist-shirted pal was curled on the ground, rolling and moaning. Mohawk man got in a couple of rapid-fire shotgun punches at Jerzi’s abdomen, but he might as well have been hitting a wall for all that Jerzi noticed. A flash of movement from tourist-shirt man caught her eye, but even as she leapt toward him, she knew she’d be too late to stop him from firing the flechette gun. Jerzi roared in pain when the darts stitched a line up his calf and thigh, but amazingly, he stayed upright and head-butted mohawk man’s face and flung him onto tourist-shirt man.

  Mohawk man fell to his knees as Andra waded in to stomp hard on the knee of tourist-shirt man. She used her forward momentum to kick mohawk man’s head. He landed on his hands, then collapsed forward onto his cohort.

  “Get off!” yelled tourist-shirt man, pushing at mohawk man’s mostly inert form. Andra took the opportunity to kick tourist-shirt man in the gonads. His high-pitched scream was almost inhuman. After that, it was easy enough to take the flechette gun away from him. It had jammed, which explained why Jerzi only had four darts in him.

  She shoved the gun into the back waistband of her shorts and checked the other assailants. The pale woman was on her hands and knees, shaking like a leaf, tears streaming down her face, trying to wake the skinny man. She cast a vitriolic glance at Andra that bespoke of vengeance. Andra ignored it, figuring the adreeno burnout would make her barely able to stand, much less pursue them.

  Jerzi’s left leg was bleeding profusely, mostly from the hole in the meaty part of his thigh where he’d pulled out one of the darts. “Leave them in, Jerzi. They’re stopping the blood loss.”

  He gritted his teeth as he limped a few steps away from their attackers. “At least I didn’t destroy another set of clothes.” He looked down at his left running shoe, where dripping blood had darkened its red cushioned top. “Oh look, it matches.”

  “While the hyenas are still decommed, let’s get your flitter out of hock and burn flux.”

  Jerzi started to slip the extracted flechette into his pocket, then hesitated.

  “Here,” she said, taking it from him and sticking it through her bun. She’d had far less pleasant things in her hair than blood. “Can you walk?”

  “Limp, anyway.” He started up the walkway, toward the stacker’s kiosk. She followed behind a little, turning a couple of times to make sure the hyenas were still staying down.

  Once he stopped
at the control unit, she caught up to him. He looked a little paler than normal, but good. “That woman called me a ‘trollop’ in Greek. Who uses that word any more?”

  “Maybe they’re an ancient literature study group gone bad.” He hissed when he moved badly and had to put more weight on his left leg. “I think the red-haired guy is crew.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Body art hidden under cheap skin spray, better street skills. When the chemmer with the gun started to pull it the first time, the red-haired guy said ‘shoot the woman.’”

  “Is that why you suddenly sped up and got in front of me?”

  “Yeah.” His swollen right eye was red and already starting to bruise. His beard probably hid another on his jaw. “You were already focused on the other two. I didn’t think you’d seen it.”

  She frowned. “I hadn’t.” She shook her head at her sloppiness. “I thought you were being a knight in shining armor again. Sorry.”

  Jerzi was sweaty and a little winded, probably from breathing through the pain. He fished his percomp out of his pocket and paid to release the flitter.

  “You need more than a wound pack and a pain patch, compadre. I’m flying. Closest minor care, or a real medical center?”

  He looked down at his leg and sighed. “Medical center. I can feel one of them grating against my bone.” He tilted his chin toward her. “You need diagnostics, too.”

  “What, this?” She wiped at the blood that was trickling down her neck from her torn ear and wiped her hand on her already bloody top, careful to avoid her inexplicably bruised ribs and keep the weight off her badly bruised right shin. “I’ve had worse than this in faculty curriculum committee meetings. Academia is a cutthroat business.”

  Chapter 15

  * Planet: Nila Marbela * GDAT 3241.148 *

  Mairwen stood in the doorway of the childcare center, watching the six children who were playing, but occasionally casting wary eyes toward the stranger in the room. Her. She opened her senses to get a baseline of the sounds in the suite and beyond, though the suite’s heavy door and impressive acoustic insulation blocked most outside noises. Pico’s rushed instructions to play games with her charges had assumed Mairwen knew some to play. She was reasonably certain that knife target practice would not be suitable. For one thing, her knives were too big for their small hands.

  Mairwen had been just arriving at the hotel in their small rented flitter when she’d received a ping from Andra De Luna about the attack that had sent Jerzi to a medical center for treatment. It disconcerted Mairwen to know that her friend was hurt, and that had she been there instead of stuck in traffic, she might have prevented his injury. When she’d pinged Luka at the police station with the news, he said he’d already found out from Pico, who was stuck at the childcare center and very worried about her father. The simple solution was for Mairwen, who was much closer to the school than Luka and Sojaire were, to take Pico to the medical center.

  When she’d arrived, however, Pico turned out to be the only adult on the premises, and wouldn’t leave the children. Pico was so distressed that Mairwen had impulsively offered to lend the flitter to Pico. The young woman had accepted with alacrity and left after a flurry of instructions, temporary access codes, and a quick tour of the suite. Which left Mairwen with a roomful of fidgety children and at least ninety minutes until their parents started coming for them.

  When she’d pinged Luka to let him know where she was and why, he’d pinged back to say he’d have the police drop him and Sojaire at the big medical center to retrieve their flitter, and would come to her rescue as soon as possible. His word choice had amused her at the time, but as she looked around the room at the children who were depending on her, she conceded she might need rescuing.

  She’d never seen so many stuffed animals, child-sized comps, and reconfigurable play centers in one room. She carefully threaded her way through the obstacle course of toys to get close enough to delineate the unique scent of each child in her care, to help her remember their names. Pico had told her to watch the younger children especially, but Mairwen couldn’t guess how old any of them were, so she asked them their names and ages as she introduced herself to each. Miguel, a reserved brown-skinned boy, was eleven, and his shy sister Celia was five. Lyssi, with the energetic red curls and outgoing nature, was six. The others were Davalia, age seven, Parekh, age four, and Isiro, age five.

  She went back to stand by the front door and consider her options. While she could simply stand guard the whole time, Pico had been adamant about the children needing engaged supervision and directed activities.

  The child called Lyssi approached her, hesitantly stopping a meter away. “Is this your first day?” Her English and intonation had a hint of Old Britain to it.

  “Yes,” said Mairwen. First and only day, if the universe loved her.

  “That’s all right. Would you like to play with me?”

  The little girl’s hopeful trust was puzzling. Mairwen had seen adults interact with children, but never thought to pay attention to their techniques, since she’d never have any of her own. “Yes.” She glanced at the other children, and inspiration struck. “Since I’m new, perhaps all of you could teach me to play a game.”

  It worked. The ensuing argument among the children consumed six minutes as they worked out which game to play, four minutes in clearing a suitable space on the floor and finding markers with which to draw on the floor, and another three minutes and thirty seconds teaching her the rules. Miguel and his sister had only watched at first, but Celia got brave enough to let go of his hand to help draw diamond shapes on the floor. Miguel sat on a chair in the corner and folded himself into a hunched posture with arms on knees in front of his chest.

  The game involved stepping or hopping into the numbered diamonds and a simple math progression to determine which direction to go and which diamonds to avoid. She had the children go first, then give her instructions as she stepped. When she asked them for another game, they taught her a rhyme, so each child could invent movements to go with the words while jumping over a rope held and wiggled by the others.

  As the other children relaxed around her and laughed at her deliberate mistakes, Miguel did as well, though he stayed in his chair. He wasn’t injured, that she could tell, but perhaps didn’t care to play with younger children. When Isiro tripped over the rope and began to cry, however, Miguel was there to pick the boy up and dry his tears, and she realized Miguel saw himself as a protector. She gave him a respectful nod of thanks, as one guardian to another.

  Several games later, she and the younger children were sitting in a circle and trying to tell a story one word at a time. The story had become quite convoluted and nonsensical when an older man came through the door of the center. Mairwen stood quickly and watched him. He couldn’t have opened the door if he wasn’t authorized, so she didn’t move forward to confront him, but she kept a close eye on both him and the children. She didn’t miss the initial tension in Miguel, Celia, and Lyssi. Isiro jumped up and ran to the smiling man, chattering rapidly in Japanese and addressing him as “Grandfather.” The man gave her a brief bow of thanks, then used his biometric to open the door to leave, carrying Isiro on his back. The arrival of Parekh’s father caused a repeat of the rise in tension in the children, and the story game fell apart when they all had to help find the little boy’s shoes, socks, shorts, and shirt, apparently a common occurrence with him.

  Mairwen may have known next to nothing about children, but fear was easy to recognize. She wasn’t as smart as Luka, who would have figured it out much sooner, but it was a logical supposition that the tense children had seen the man take their caregiver, Valenia, and he had frightened them. She also suspected Miguel was a developing minder talent in one of the telepath categories who was having trouble controlling his talent. Since she’d moved in with Luka with his unique minder talents, and worked every day with Sojaire, who had more conventional talents, she had become more familiar with their s
ubtle habits and challenges.

  She couldn’t change the past for the children, any more than she could change her own horrific existence before she’d escaped the secret program that had created her and her kind, but she could, perhaps, help them deal with what they’d experienced, and give them a tool for the future.

  She asked Celia, Lyssi, and Davalia to take their chairs and sit in a circle near Miguel. She dropped to her knees and sat back on her heels.

  “I want to teach you a game, but first, we need to talk about what happened with Valenia and the man who came for her. What did the man do that scared you?”

  For a long moment, they looked at each other, or her, round-eyed with uneasiness. Celia stuck her thumb in her mouth. Miguel frowned.

  Lyssi spoke first. “He pinched Ms. Val’s arm and hurt her.” She rubbed the back of her arm above her elbow.

  “He was nice at first,” said Davalia in a small voice, “but when Ms. Val wasn’t looking, he looked like a lion that wanted to eat us.”

  Mairwen turned to Miguel, who was back to folding in on himself. “He was like a black hole.”

  She nodded. “It’s smart to be scared of bad people. But you don’t have to let it stop you from doing something about it.”

  The girls looked puzzled, but Miguel frowned. “Like what? We couldn’t have fought him. We’re just kids.” His Spanish accent softened his consonants, but his disdain was sharp.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “But you have advantages that adults don’t have. You’re small, and you know this suite very well.”

  “So what?” said Miguel. His tone was a blend of anger and despair.