“What?” Vaughn turned on the other, and Jian leaned forward, wishing she were there instead of in her own flat.
“Shut up, Imre. What do you mean, gave me the price he did?”
“You saw,” Red said.
“You want to tell me?” Vaughn asked, and Jian sighed.
“Garay gave me a good price on the SHYmate, pretty much what I was asking, and without haggling. I wondered about it, but I didn’t exactly want to mess up the deal.”
“So now he’s spreading the word that you, or you and Red, or Red, have some kind of a line on super-constructs,” Vaughn said. “Fucking brilliant, Reverdy.”
Jian shrugged. “I wanted the deal.”
“So what do we do?” Vaughn asked, after a moment, and some of the belligerence was gone from his voice.
Jian looked away from the screen, recognizing the tactic even as she succumbed. He was right, that was the problem, and the only reason she didn’t want to go off-world was that she would have to work with a Spelvin construct again. That was no reason, and every reason; she stared at the wall where the paint was cracking—it was the color of eggshells, and the cracks radiated from a central point, as though something was trying to hatch from the stone—and took a slow, deep breath. The simplest thing would be to try for an out-of-system job even though they’d just come back from one: a lot of other pilots didn’t like them, especially the people with families, and might trade one for a couple of local jobs. “We talk to Peace,” she said. “Do I call, or do you?”
Vaughn shrugged. “You call. He likes you better.”
That was true enough. Jian said, “Then let me get dressed, and I’ll give him a call—once he’s likely to be in.”
“Haya,” Vaughn said, and paused, his hand over the disconnect button. “And thanks, Reverdy.”
Jian pretended she didn’t hear, and cut the connection.
She waited until after noon to call the cooperative—most of the job orders came in at the beginning of the day shift—but even so she had to wait while the co-op’s secretary, a thin, severe midworlder with a keyast’s transfer on her forehead, dealt with several other calls, then finally patched her through to Malindy. He was looking harried, dataglasses propped up on top of his head, and Jian felt a pang of guilt.
“Hey, Peace.”
“Reverdy.” Malindy sounded almost wary, as though he had been expecting her call, and Jian suppressed a sigh. “What can I do for you?”
“I need your help,” she said, “and, failing that, your advice.”
“Well, I can promise you advice.” Malindy leaned back in his chair, stretching. Over his shoulder, Jian could see a media screen reflected in a blanked flatscreen. It was cycling between newschannels, and she wondered for an instant if she should check her own system. “What’s up?”
“Imre called me this morning,” she said. “Early.”
Malindy grinned. “Something serious, then.”
In spite of herself, Jian smiled back. “He thought so, anyway. And I think I do, too. I heard Realpeace is bringing Manfred up again—I caught the tail end of their announcement, I think—and they’re showing some old clips, which include us, Imre says. We were wondering what there was going out-system.”
“I hadn’t seen that—the announcement, I mean,” Malindy said, and reached. “And I sure haven’t seen any old clips.”
“Imre saw them,” Jian said, and didn’t bother keeping the edge from her voice.
Malindy lifted his hands. “I didn’t say he didn’t, Reverdy, I’m just saying nobody else is repeating them. Which I figure is a good thing—the newsdogs don’t think it’s worth their while.”
“Yeh.”
“It’s just as well,” Malindy went on, looking back down at his desktop, “because I don’t have anything out-system right now.” He looked up, made an apologetic face. “Right now, the only jobs booked are deliveries to the lunar assembly stations and an outer orbital. I’m not going to bump anybody to put you on any of those.”
“It wouldn’t make sense,” Jian said, and almost choked on a sudden giddy sense of relief. She wouldn’t have to take a ship into hyperdrive, wouldn’t have to work with this new construct, not yet… She shook herself then, hard, and dragged her attention back to what Malindy was saying.
“If I get something in, I’ll get in touch,” he went on, “but I don’t know how desperate it is—I don’t know if you’ll want to put people’s backs up, pulling rank on them.”
“That’s what rank’s for, right?” Jian said.
Malindy shook his head, his plain face sober. “You’re both yanquis, you and Imre—at least you look yanqui—and nobody knows what to make of Red. This is not a good time to be taking jobs away from coolies.”
“Binli Dai’s a three-gen coolie on his father’s side, and his mother’s from Tannhaus—he was born below the Zodiac, same as me,” Jian said. “What’s he doing, spouting Realpeace nonsense?”
“It’s not all nonsense,” Malindy said, with some asperity, and Jian gestured an apology.
“Sorry. But you know what I mean.”
“And I think you know what I mean,” Malindy answered. “Seriously, Reverdy, it’s getting to be as bad as Dreampeace ever was.”
Jian made a face. “How are things in the plaza?”
Malindy snorted. “I had to break up a fight this morning—a bunch of low-teens beating up on each other outside our stairway. Stupid kids. I don’t know that it was Realpeace stuff, mind you, but one of them was wearing a Hati shirt.”
“It figures,” Jian said. Not Hati’s fault—but every time I see those faces, there’s trouble. “But keep us in mind, will you?”
“I’ll do that,” Malindy said, and sounded suddenly hesitant. “And, look. You might want to stay clear of the co-op for a few days—just until this latest thing blows over. It’s just—well, there’s been a lot of agitation in the plaza over the last few weeks.”
“Shit,” Jian said, and Malindy shrugged.
“I’m not happy about it, either, believe me. But these are not people you want to mess with.”
That was what people said about Dreampeace, too, people who weren’t yangui like most of that movement. Jian shook the thought away, said, “Fine. But we want work, Peace.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Malindy answered, and broke the connection. Jian sat for a moment, staring at the blank screen. It was good not to have to go back into space right away, good not to have to face the new construct immediately—but I wish I felt better about the newsdogs.
7
Fanning Jones
After seeing Red—and not being seen by him—I really didn’t want to do Fortune’s errand. Hard-hacking is one of those things that is always at least technically illegal, but everybody does it. Or at least the yanqui “everybody” I grew up with: since so many of us work in the infrastructure, air and water supply, lighting, road repair, and general maintenance, nearly anyone who wants it has access to hardware and to a friend’s friend who can show you the hack to make it work. I was never really involved with the serious stuff—not like Red—but fxes are always heavily customized, so I spent a lot of time in lycee either scrounging parts for whatever box I was playing, or building something else in trade for work I couldn’t do myself. My first boyfriends had been hard-hackers, not musicians, and a couple of them had worked exclusively in the black arts. The rest had done nightwork at least part of the time, and over the years I’d heard that a bunch of them—including Red—had done time in the prison at Whitesands. I’d avoided that mostly by luck and cowardice, which made it hard to go back to any of them to ask for help now. And if Red was going to ignore me like that, I didn’t want to think about how some of the others might react.
Still, I’d promised Fortune I’d help her find the construct she needed, and I could think of a couple of people who might be able to help who weren’t quite such close ex-friends. I knew the last callcodes I had were months out-of-date, so I waited until my shift overla
pped with one of Loes Murong’s buying sprees. She was the real thing, a serious artist on the dark side, not like Cengiz Dharavariman, who shared my shift. He had the looks, all pale skin and bones, and traded on them, while she was short and curvy, a midworider who always had some complex bodypainting covering her arms and face, but she was the person you went to if you needed nightwork done—and if you could afford her fees. I made sure I waited on her, loaded her purchases onto a gravity sled, and fed the stack of cash chips through the reader. They were all small denominations, never more than a hundred wu, and most of them carried the familiar anonymous CarteBanque stamp: unmemorable, and untraceable even if someone did remember. She was in a decent mood—the job, whatever it was, didn’t seem to be too urgent, and I cleared my throat as I handed her the last chip. “Um, bi’ Murong?”
“Yeh?” She was wearing a painted half mask, solid grey and gold across her cheekbones and forehead, stenciled dark red lace on her cheeks and lips, but even through the paint I could see her expression sharpen, her eyes tracing the wire of my ear and the display glasses on my nose.
“I was wondering,” I said. “I used to know Thenga Macara, and I’m looking for something he might know about. I was wondering if you knew how to reach him.”
She gave me another sharp look. “Thenga’s—away—for a while.”
Away in the prison at Whitesands, she meant. I said, “I hadn’t heard. How long?”
“Eighteen to two. The decision came down yesterday.”
“I hadn’t even heard he was busted,” I said.
She grinned then, her teeth very white against the heavy paint, and leaned forward on the counter. The neck of her shirt fell open a little, and I could see that she had a complex design, a string of pearls with a snake coiling around it, painted around her own neck. “You’re the guy in that band, right?”
I nodded, glad I hadn’t tried to pretend I was a serious hard-hacker. “It’s a favor for someone—for my cousin, actually.”
“So what were you looking for?”
I took a deep breath, unable to believe she was asking—was actually offering this much help. “My cousin’s Celinde Fortune—look, it’s a longish story.”
Murong shook her head. “I’ve got time. Fortune—that’s the conjurer at the Tin Hau Empire?”
I nodded.
“She’s good.” Murong nodded thoughtfully. “You know how she does it?”
“No.”
“I figured.” Murong smiled again. “But I had to ask. So what does she need?”
“She’s working on a new illusion,” I said, “and she told me she needs a Level Four Spelvin construct, but she needs it cheap, and she needs it soon. She said it didn’t have to be new, or top-of-the-line, but it has to be Level Four.”
“Haya.” Murong drew out the word, her eyes fixed on the wall over my left shoulder. “I don’t deal much in wireware, but I can give you a name. There’s a guy called Red, he’s legal, but word is he knows people who are selling—I heard he had some special stuff himself, but I don’t know about that. He’s an FTL tech, though, so he knows what he’s talking about.”
“I used to know Red, too,” I said. I could hear my voice tighten, and Murong gave me a curious look that faded into a slight and malicious smile.
“You got a card?” she said. “I’ll flip you his codes.”
I fumbled in my pocket, came up with a handful of the little ID chips. Most of them were for the band, but I found one of my own and handed it to her. “Thanks.”
“So he’s a friend of yours?” she asked, and pocketed the disk.
“I knew him in school,” I said. Actually, I’d been in school, he’d been taking tech courses when he could afford the fees, and I hadn’t been too surprised when he was busted. But when he came out, he’d taken up with people I didn’t want to know, and we lost touch. More than that, he’d changed, and that scared me, and he knew it. “I don’t know if he knows me now.”
Murong gave me a look. “They say he’s the man right now, if you want constructs.”
“If you could let him know,” I said, “I need the contact.”
“I’ll pass this along,” Murong said.
I didn’t really expect an answer, not after the way he’d behaved at Motosha, but two days later an answer-daemon was waiting on the Persephonet console with a set of codes. They were anonymous, directing me to one of the untraceable drop services, but I called them anyway, and left a guarded message. There was no reason to think he wouldn’t at least get back to me, if he was willing to contact me in the first place, so all I could do was wait. And there was plenty of other work to keep me busy: the Empire was still closed, but Jaantje had managed to get us a couple of club gigs, and I had to get myself back into shape. I still didn’t feel much like practicing—every time I set up my fx, I could see the funeral truck and the explosion—but I didn’t have much choice, not if we wanted to keep working. The first gig was strange, strange and scary, the club mostly empty until the second set, when a big group of coolies—young, mostly, high-teens and a little older—showed up and started calling for retoro songs. Jaantje usually handles that kind of thing well, but they weren’t interested in anything except trouble. We cut our two most Hati-like songs from the second set, but they still hissed us on “Sandstorm” and finally the bouncer had to go over and tell them to shut up or get out. They shut up, and even seemed to enjoy some of the last songs, but at the end one of the loudest of them cornered Tai by the bar and went on and on about the propriety of a one-gen coolie like her playing with the rest of us. We extricated her without causing more trouble, but we were still extra careful loading out, and I was very glad to get back to the lights and bustle of Tin Hau, where we stored our gear. The next day, Tai was up and away before I got up. She didn’t come back until the start of the eve shift, and when she did, her hair was bleached and teased into the lion’s-mane cut that Alva Gabriel had worn.
“Don’t start with me,” she said, as she came in the door, and I lifted my hands in surrender.
“It looks good.” And it did, not at all like Gabriel, really. The cloud of gold and copper—and some black still, either missed by the body artist or left alone on purpose—actually gave her sallow skin new life, and made her bony face, all angles and hollows, look exotic.
She collapsed into her favorite chair, but instead of reaching for the room remote, she looked up at me from under her lashes. “Yeh? You think so?”
Tai is never uncertain about her looks. I blinked, and she laughed softly.
“Sorry, Fan. All the way home on the ‘bus I was thinking I’d really fucked up.”
“I think it looks good,” I said again.
“For what I paid, it had better,” she said, sounding normal again. “I spent half my rent money on it.”
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“Yeh, I know, it was stupid.” Tai shook her head. “I can borrow from my mother, I know she’d loan it to me, or I’ll find some linework, there’s always one- or two-day jobs around. But I had to do it, Fan. Nobody’s going to look at me and think I’m some ignorant one-gen missy who doesn’t know the choice she’s made.”
I could understand that, maybe better than she thought. Here in Heaven, people tended to assume I was a Dreampeacer just because I’m a yanqui; I wore coolie clothes myself a lot of the time, but it didn’t always help. “Those guys last night?”
“Yeh. Realpeace bastard.” She shook her head. “Son of a bitch had the nerve to lecture me about my obligations to the community. And it just pisses me off that he assumed I’d be on his side.”
“Well, nobody’s going to think that now,” I said, and wondered if this was something we needed right now. It might be smarter to play down our own politics—except that, given our music and the band itself, we probably couldn’t if we wanted to. “And it does look really good.”
“Thanks.” She gave me a wry smile and reached for the room remote. “Let’s hope nobody else gets upset.”
&n
bsp; “As long as you pay the rent,” I said, “there shouldn’t be a problem.”
Actually, after she’d slept on it for a night or two, it didn’t look quite so much like Gabriel, and my worry faded. Nobody else said anything, though I thought I caught Jaantje once with a look of concern, and our next gig was actually pretty decent. Or at least we were decent; the club was on the edge of Madelen-Fet, and most of the mixed crowd was there to see a band that looked and sounded a little bit like Hati. I saw house security eject half a dozen people over the course of the night, and I was glad to get out of there when we were finished. We packed up our gear while Jaantje collected our fee, then loaded everything into the carrier he’d borrowed from his father’s business, and backed it carefully down the service alley.
This alley seemed even narrower than usual, and at least one of the ceiling lights was broken. I could see shards of glass glittering in the running lights, most of it swept to the sides of the passage, but a lot of it still lying in the roadway, but Jaantje glared at me before I could say anything.
“For God’s sake, Fan, I see it. Relax, will you? I’ve been driving these since I was twelve.”
I could see Shadha’s face reflected in the windscreen, saw her roll her eyes at that, but she had the sense to keep quiet. I shut my mouth, too, and the carrier inched its way backward down the alley. We all heard glass crackle under the wheels, and then finally we were into the turnaround that led to the trafficway. I let out a sigh of relief, and Jaantje glared again.
“Will you give it a rest?”
“Jaantje?” That was Shadha’s voice, not quite hiding the malicious glee. “What’s that red light?”
“Shit, fuck, and damn.” Jaantje slammed both fists on the steering bar, and got himself under control with an effort. “We’re losing pressure on one of the tires.”
“Fuck,” Timin said, not quite under his breath.
I said, “There’s a Nighthawk on Condaraxis, by the Tonic Inter-link. They’d carry patch kits.”
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