by David Archer
Juliet pouted once more, but this time it was obvious that she was only being playful. She thanked him and left his office.
Carson tapped his holo-tab and checked to be sure that the cameras had recorded the entire meeting. He saved the recording to a file in the cloud, then backed it up on his holo-tab. Other professors had been accused of improprieties with students in their offices, so he always recorded any meetings he took privately.
He finished up a couple of minor details, then got up and left his office. Charlotte was waiting at home, and he felt the excitement that always hit him when he knew he was going to see her soon.
FIVE
“I must be dreaming,” Charlotte said. “It's almost seven AM, but you're still here in bed. Did the university go out of business or something?”
Carson grinned, but didn't open his eyes. “It's Saturday, my love,” he said. “Even us non-tenured professors get to take Saturdays off once in a while.”
He felt her snuggle closer to him, and then her lips brushed his cheek softly. “I'll bet you can't tell me how long it's been since you had one of those Saturdays off, now can you?”
Eyes still closed, he nodded his head. “Eight months. It's been eight months since I had a Saturday off.”
“Really? Okay, I confess I didn't think it had been that long. Now that we've got it, though, what are we going to do with it? I mean, sure, we can stay in bed all day, and I'm not going to complain if that's what you want to do. Or we could go down to Ground Level. I haven't been down to any of the restaurants there in almost a year.” She suddenly propped herself up on her elbows and reached over to grab him by the nose. At last, his eyes popped open and he laughed. “I know! I know,” she said. “We can go to the river and go fishing!”
“Charlotte! Since when have you ever liked to go fishing?”
She gave him a droll expression. “Did you hear me say anything about liking to go fishing? I just said we could go fishing, because I know it's something you love to do.”
Carson reached out and pulled her close, brushing her lips with his own. “I think it's absolutely wonderful that we have a day off,” he said, “but I think we should pick something to do with it that we're both going to enjoy. I appreciate the offer, but I'm not going to ask you to sit there and be miserable while I have a good time, and I probably wouldn't have that good a time anyway because I'd know you were sitting there being miserable.” He scrunched his eyes. “Did that make any sense?”
She tweaked his nose again. “It did, so let's think about something we can do and enjoy together. Any ideas?”
“Just one,” Carson said, and then he suddenly rolled over on top of her, catching her legs inside of his own and pinning her arms. “Bet you can't guess what I've got in mind!”
He was answered by a giggle, and then they both stopped talking.
Two hours later, Carson woke again, as she poked him in the ribs with a couple of fairly sharp fingernails. “Are you ready to get up yet?” Charlotte asked.
“I suppose so. I've been lying here thinking about what you said earlier, and I think a trip to Ground Level might be a good idea. I know they've got a carnival going on up on the roof, too, so maybe we could ride up there later this afternoon, but the thought of just hiking along the river with you and maybe having lunch at one of the nicer places down there seems awfully appealing.”
Charlotte’s eyes went wide. “Seriously? You'd like that? Do you know how long it's been since we've gone hiking?”
He nodded his head. “Almost two years,” he said. “Just before I got this job, as a matter of fact.” He rolled onto his side and looked into her eyes. “What about you? I know you're working on the novel, can you spare the time today? Just take a day off?”
“Um, yeah,” she said. “I got all the outlines done yesterday, and I'm already up to chapter four. I can spare a day or two, and still have plenty of time to hit deadline.”
“Then let's get up and go have some fun!” Carson said, playfully swatting her bottom. “We can't lay around here all day.”
Carson rose and went to the bathroom to get himself ready for the day. A shower and shave took him all of fifteen minutes, but he knew that Charlotte would take longer. He kissed her quickly as she entered the shower, got himself dressed and opened his home workstation to scan through the emails he knew would be waiting. A few of them required answers, but most were little more than brief news stories. He paid little attention until he came to the updated Justice Net schedule.
Like almost everyone else, Carson took advantage of the legalized betting that was allowed on the fights. Scanning through the list of names, he recognized a few, some of the gamblers' favorites like Darrell Hamm and Nikolai Caraway. Both of these men had already survived numerous fights, and their opponents this week were relative newbies. Hamm, in fact, was going up against a first timer named Jerry Waller, and Carson clicked on Waller's name to read his stats.
Waller was a “Freeman,” one of those people who refused to relocate into a city, whether it be one of the massive arcologies or any of the remaining conventional cities, like Albuquerque or Houston. The Freemen were the modern equivalent of survivalists, people who rejected many of the benefits of modern technology in favor of personal independence. Many of them lived on small, communal farms, though some preferred isolation and living off the land.
That was the case with Jerry Waller. He and his family, consisting of his wife, three children who were all under twelve years old and a sister who had two young children of her own, had a garden plot and raised chickens and goats, but also hunted in the surrounding wilderness.
Unfortunately, these survivalists occasionally strayed into areas where hunting was not allowed. He had been convicted of hunting in a nature preserve, a fairly minor offense, and was sentenced to only seven bouts. Very few with such a light sentence ever went up against someone like Darrell Hamm, but Waller was in extremely good physical condition and had requested this long-odds fight. Carson figured that he was hoping to win his first fight, despite the experience and prior successes of his opponent, in order to allow his family to place large bets on him. No matter how fit he might be, there was little chance he would actually survive all seven fights, so it was likely that he had studied Mr. Hamm and thought he had an edge that might give him the win. He was literally betting his life on it, and the only logical reason for that would be to try to provide for his family before he got killed.
By contrast, Darrell Hamm was a convicted sex slaver who was identified and arrested after one of the young girls he pimped out was charged with murdering one of her clients who had gotten unduly rough with her. He was also a member of the notorious Death Angels gang that flourished within the arcologies. They had a presence in every arcology in the Western Hemisphere, and were known for their brutality. The gang was one of the major providers of underage prostitutes, in what law enforcement called a multibillion-dollar business. Hamm was one of its bosses in the Chicago District, who probably never dealt with clients himself, but investigators had found barely enough evidence to link him to that particular girl. Consequently, he had only been convicted of the lesser charge of Criminal Enterprise. He was sentenced to twenty-two bouts, the maximum sentence for his offense, and this would be his nineteenth.
The odds-makers understood this as well; the odds on Waller defeating him were set at thirteen to one, paying a thirteen hundred percent return. Darrell Hamm's odds, which would normally pay something like a thirty percent return, reflected the fact that Waller might be able to surprise him, paying fifty percent on this fight. This meant that a bet of one hundred dollars would net a return of a hundred and fifty dollars, or thirteen hundred if it were placed on Waller and he should win.
Carson rarely bet on the underdog, but something about Waller caught his attention. He glanced over his shoulder to be sure that Charlotte was still in the shower, then quickly placed a bet of ten thousand dollars on the first-time fighter. If Waller won the fight, Carson woul
d see a hefty return, and Charlotte would be delighted; if he lost, Carson wouldn't hear the end of it for a month.
He looked at some of the other fighters with an eye toward hedging his bet, just in case Waller was overconfident, but he didn't see any that really appealed to him. When the shower suddenly went silent, he closed out the Justice Net site quickly and began looking over the restaurants that were closest to the elevator they would ride down to Ground Level.
Charlotte took another thirty minutes to get dressed, coiffed and made up for the excursion, and they left their apartment a few minutes later. They lived on Level Eighty-Six, only a quarter of a mile from the elevators in their section, and chose to walk rather than ride.
One of the features the builders had insisted upon was high-speed elevators, but the ride down to Ground Level still took almost half an hour due to numerous stops along the way. Unfortunately, the express elevators were simply too far away; Carson didn’t want to have to ride all the way across the arcology, only to have to ride across Ground Level again to reach the restaurant he had chosen. The elevators were large and comfortable, with numerous seats along their walls. They could accommodate up to a hundred people each, but like any other elevators there were always people getting on and getting off. Each stop saw a quick shuffle whenever someone vacated one of the seats. Several of the people who were standing in the center would rush for each one as it came open, and there were occasional arguments over who got to it first.
“Good grief,” Carson muttered, “I think we're stopping on every single floor.”
“Oh, stop complaining,” Charlotte said with a smile. “Are you in some kind of hurry?”
“It's not that I'm in a hurry, but we did skip breakfast, remember? I've got to admit I'm getting a little hungry.”
“Good, then you'll have a decent appetite. Where do you want to go? I've had a taste for chicken, lately, how about you?”
Carson slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her close. “Chicken might not be bad,” he said, “but I took a look online this morning and found that they just opened a new smorgasbord on the river. All-you-can-eat, and hundreds of different selections, it says. Sounds like my kind of place.”
“Oh, mine, too! Maybe they'll have pot roast, I haven't had pot roast in years!”
The two of them continued to chat the rest of the way down, but were delighted when the elevator doors finally opened on the Ground Level. The constant jostling and shuffling as new passengers got on and old ones got off had pushed them to the back of the crowd, but it didn't take long for it to clear. They stepped out of the elevator onto a broad, tiled walkway that ran alongside the river. The restaurants, shops and other businesses that populated the park-like area were all attached to it.
“It's so beautiful down here,” Charlotte said. “It's like being out in the open, almost. God, can you remember being out under the real sky? I don't think I've been out there in years.”
Carson gave a chuckle. “Of course we have, babe,” he said. “Top Level, remember? The University Union Party, back in December.”
“Top Level isn't really being under the sky, it's got domes over it, remember? I mean, sure, you can see the sky through it, but you're not really outside. It's really just like this, just an artificial grassy area with trees stuck here and there. I'm talking about really being outside, out under the sun with nothing to protect you from the wind and the rain and the snow. How long has it been since you felt rain?”
He shrugged. “Back when I was a teenager, I guess. Can't say it was an experience I enjoyed all that much, since it was a pretty big storm. That was just before I started college, and moved into the dorms on Level Ninety. Mom got her apartment on Eighty-One a couple months later, so I haven't really had a reason to go outside since then. Besides, this is a lot nicer than things are out there. I remember a couple of winters that were so bad it seemed like they'd never end, and the people out there are wild. Most of them think the arcologies are some kind of diabolical plot to enslave humanity.”
“I think they're just scared,” Charlotte said. “There were a lot of conspiracy theories back when they started going up, and it was all happening during the Disaster. Everyone was blaming the governments for the things that went wrong, and talking about how the New World Order was all part of some apocalyptic prophecy. Pretty much everyone who didn't believe that moved in as soon as one was available, so what you got out there are people who are descended from that kind of craziness.” She looked at him sideways. “You teach history, you know all that.”
“What I know right now is that my stomach is rumbling.” He pointed ahead. “There it is, Franklin's Smorgasbord. Ready to eat?”
They entered the restaurant and Carson gave his name to the hostess, but there wasn't a line ahead of them, so she led them to a table. A dispenser in the center of it took their drink orders and slid a pair of plates out to them. This particular smorgasbord was designed to be like many in the past, requiring customers to move through a maze of counters, rather than having it delivered to their table by robots. They took their plates and got into line.
Charlotte found chicken that was fried, baked, and barbecued, with a variety of marinades and seasoning, and Carson chuckled as she struggled with the decision of which kind to try first. He, on the other hand, was a meat and potatoes man; it didn't take him long to find the London Broil and load up on stewed potatoes, carrots and cauliflower, but he waited for her out of courtesy. When she finally chose the fried chicken and then ladled on a helping of Yankee Pot Roast instead of side dishes, they made their way back to their table. Utensils had been dispensed, and they dug in.
Both of them made a couple more trips through the lines, the last one presenting them with an incredible assortment of desserts to choose from. Carson was getting pretty full, but he had grown up to believe that there was always room for ice cream and brownies, so his new plate was almost overflowing with them. Charlotte, who had already loosened the button on her jeans, settled for a single serving of tiramisu, and then groaned with delight when the first bite touched her tongue.
“We've simply got to do this more often,” she said. “I don't think either one of us spends enough time just taking care of our own pleasure centers.”
Carson looked up, his face wearing a look of mock despair. “And just what do you call what we did this morning? I thought there was an awful lot of pleasure in it.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes at him. “And that was the first time in how long? Two weeks, I think? Maybe you can go without it for that long, but this girl has had to resort to other options a few times, especially when you work late.” She winked at him. “I've taken up reading romance novels again, what does that tell you?”
“Tells me I need to pay a little more attention to my Domestic Partner.” He reached across the table and touched her hand. “I'm sorry, babe, I guess I do get a little lost in my work sometimes. I promise, I'll stop neglecting you.”
They finished eating and left the restaurant, strolling along the Riverside Way and watching the people around them. Charlotte pointed to a bench on the bank, and they sat for a while watching the boaters and fishermen. The river was wide enough to allow water skiers, and they both got a few good laughs at the expense of some amateurs who tumbled into the water now and then.
There were plenty of places to rent electric speedboats and party barges, but there were also a number of the old pedal-powered boats on the river. Carson pointed one out and suggested they get one, and Charlotte grinned with delight at the idea.
“Wait here,” Carson said. “I'll go fetch one and come back for you.” He kissed her quickly and got up to walk the half-mile to the nearest rental dock. Even the pedal boats had backup electric motors in them, so it wouldn't take him long to come back. Then they could shut off the motor and pedal themselves around for a while until they got tired.
SIX
Charlotte leaned back and enjoyed the breeze, produced by fans that were driven by the f
low of the water. She didn't care where it came from, though, because it felt good on her face. She had her eyes closed, and was startled when she heard a scream from somewhere close behind her.
She turned quickly to see what had caused it and was shocked to realize that a woman was being attacked right there on the walkway. A man had his hand on her throat and was striking her in the face with his fist, while the woman tried unsuccessfully to deflect the blows. Several people had stopped to watch and some were even shouting at the man to stop, but he paid them no attention.
Instinctively, Charlotte got to her feet and took a couple of steps toward the attack. She was actually the closest witness to what was going on, and screamed herself when the man suddenly stopped hitting the woman and reached into his pocket for a knife. The whole thing seemed to go into slow motion as he drew back his arm and drove the knife into her midsection. She fell, and he turned to run.
While crime did occur within the arcology, it was rare. Everyone knew that there were cameras mounted throughout the gigantic building, and that there was little chance of ever getting away with something like this. That knowledge proved to be a very effective deterrent to many criminal acts. Unfortunately, though, human nature being what it is, things like this did occur from time to time, which was why there were police officers stationed prominently on every level.
A loudspeaker overhead commanded everyone to stop where they were, and a flash of motion caused Charlotte to look away from the fleeing attacker. Two officers on electric scooters were racing toward him, and she saw them drop their scooters to the ground as they got close.
“Freeze!” shouted one of them, as he drew his gun and aimed it at the man. The other officer drew his own pistol and followed suit, but the attacker was in no mood to obey. Charlotte watched in awe as he turned and brandished the knife at the officers, and then she heard the loud pop, pop as both officers pulled their triggers. Both shots hit the man, but not with bullets; the guns had fired round plastic pellets filled with a powder that engulfed the man in a cloud, and he let out a shriek as his eyes, nostrils, mouth, lungs and even his skin were attacked by the burning chemical that was derived from ghost peppers.