Laz shrugged. “It’ll be seventy less for the smaller version—the detail’s there, but you’d have to let your friends get real close and use a ‘scope to see it all. We’ll put the control here,” he said, tapping her lightly on top of her head. “That way you won’t turn it on and off by accident every time you change your expression.”
“Sold!” Gina said instantly. She had a hundred and seventy-five in her account—half a year’s scrimping, so she could afford to bring back something from this trip. His original price would have left her with nothing. Now, at least, she’d be able to afford an extra soda now and then.
Two hours later Gina was in the shop’s tiny and not very sanitary bathroom wondering why she was feeling so drained. Worse. She felt logy and very faintly nauseous— the sort of sensation that made you hungry but the thought of eating repulsive.
Well, she reassured herself, it’s kind of like an operation. Not to mention all those hours on the vomit comet getting here.
Gina sighed and laid her head against the cheap extruded synth of the partition behind her, a sensation neither hard nor soft, cold nor hot.
Then she heard voices coming through the wall. The nausea was forgotten as she pressed her ear to the synth. The material was very strong, but so thin it acted like a giant hearing membrane at close range.
“Okay, so what’s the story? What’s so important that you can’t talk to me in a completely empty store?”
The voice was male and young, with an accent she didn’t recognize until she thought of holo actors playing spacemen.
“Look at this,” another male answered; his voice was gruff and deep but carried the same slight everywhere-and-nowhere twang.
There was silence, then, “Holy … you can’t be serious!” the young voice said.
“As explosive decompression.”
“Man.” The young voice was filled with awe. “This will blow the whole station wide open—peel it like a banana!”
“Yeah,” the gruff voice said. “And, sadly, they’ll never see it coming.”
“They should’ve hunh?” younger voice said.
“If they weren’t idiots they would have. They deserve to be blindsided.” The deep voice was bitter. “‘That’ll teach ‘em to make fun of me.”
“This’ll teach ‘em all right,” younger agreed.
“And too late to do ‘em any good.” There was a deep laugh that matched the voice. “They’re gonna regret it, all those jokes, the lousy quarters. I’m gonna make them so sorry.”
“Whaddaya mean?” the younger voice asked.
The answer was spoken so low that Gina couldn’t make it out.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” younger said. “You can’t do that!”
“Gina, are you all right?” Christine asked, banging on the door.
Gina jumped and gasped. She heard the sudden silence on the other side of the wall as threatening and fumbled with the lock. She rushed from the lavatory; snatching Christine’s wrist to drag the other girl out of the shop and hustle her down the corridor.
“Whoa!” Christine said, digging her heels into the rubbery nonslip flooring; it was slightly worn here Gina suddenly noticed, which meant this part of the station was ancient.
So ancient it doesn’t have surveillance? She thought, frightened—all the books and holos she’d read containing menacing conspirators and secret agents coming back with a rush.
“What are you doing?” Christine cried.
Gina turned to look back down the corridor. Laz had closed his door—they’d paid by retina and voiceprint, as usual—and nothing else was moving.
“We’ve got to keep going!” she hissed. “I think I just heard someone plotting to blow up the station!”
A man’s head popped out from between two shops, looking both ways.
“That’s him!” Gina said.
“Hey!” the man shouted. “Wait!”
The two of them ran, bounding like long-legged gazelles in the low gravity and holding their hands over their heads to keep from hitting them on the conduits.
Ms. Tosca sat down at Lereesa’s table with a heartfelt sigh. “First day and I’m exhausted,” she said.
“I’m not surprised,” Lereesa said sympathetically. “Have a cup of coffee. I take it Russell is okay.”
Ms. Tosca nodded as she tapped in her order on the table’s keypad; it was one of a dozen on a flying cantilevered platform overlooking the concourse. The view of the teeming, brightly-dressed crowd was excellent, but if you moved your head quickly, it blurred a little, the sign of a privacy screen. The palm-sized crimson-black-orange genegineered butterflies avoided the field as well.
“I got him bunked down in one of the cubbies at the hospital, with a sleepyfield on him. He looked like he might sleep until it’s time for us to go home, even without it.”
“Hah! He’ll be up and raring to go by the time you get back,” the guide said. “Kids are amazingly resilient.”
“You said it.” Ms. Tosca looked around. “And he’ll be ready to use the suppressor net this time—no more Mr. Macho. Where are the others?”
“I saw Greg playing some game about twenty minutes ago. But I haven’t seen the girls since we got here. Which, given the kind of clothing shops around here, doesn’t surprise me.”
Ms. Tosca checked her watch. “I’m just feeling anxious. Field trips are always insane, but we’re not even on Earth. It adds a certain something. You know?” Her cup of coffee slid out of the table’s surface and she drew it toward her, blowing on the hot frothy surface; it gave off a faint pleasantly bitter odor, slightly touched with cinnamon.
“I can imagine.” Lereesa pointed. “Here they come now.”
The two girls approached the table at a near run, looking sweaty and gasping for breath; to Lereesa’s surprise they actually bumped into a few people on the way.
They were graceful enough before, she thought. Twenty-five wasn’t so far from fifteen that she couldn’t remember the horror of public embarrassment. Then she saw what swirled on the auburn-haired girl’s face.
“Omighod!” Gina managed to say between huge gulps of air. “Omighod!”
Omighod is right, Lereesa thought faintly, hearing a slight choked sound from the teacher beside her. Omighod!
Christine frowned at her friend and cast a nervous glance at their teacher.
Ms. Tosca stared at the blazing mandala tattoo as though hypnotized. Meanwhile, Gina poured out her story as best she could being so out of breath. Then she demanded, “What are we gonna do?”
Christine took in the fascinated horror in the two women’s expressions and slapped Gina on the top of the head; Laz had demonstrated how that would make it disappear.
“Ow!” Gina glared at her.
The tattoo was still visible, if no longer moving; Christine raised her hand again.
“I’ll do it,” Gina said and tapped her head lightly, dismissing the design.
The spell was broken; Ms. Tosca and the guide blinked and looked at one another.
“Explain,” the teacher demanded.
“I just did!” Gina half-whined. “Weren’t you paying attention? We’ve got to do something!”
“About the tattoo?” Ms. Tosea asked, frowning.
Christine rolled her eyes. “Gina thinks she heard someone planning to blow up the station.”
Lereesa sat up straighter. “That isn’t something to joke about,” she warned, her voice stern. It wasn’t. That sort of joke was a criminal offense. “A false alarm could get you heavily fined, possibly jailed, and banned from the station for life.”
“I’m not making this up!” Gina insisted. “One guy said this will blow the station wide open and the other guy was talking about how they’d all regret making fun of him!”
“Maybe we’d better report this,” Lereesa said. She activated her telephone implant with a twitch of her ear-cocking muscle.
“Security,” she said. Machines read her voiceprint and routed the call. “Poss
ible 7-4. Repeat, possible 7-4.”
7-4 was breach of hull integrity, and it was about the dirtiest word on a station. Only fire on one of the ancient wooden ships of Earth had quite the same ring of horror.
“Do you think she heard?” Ray Cowper asked his friend Bob Masud, wiping sweat from his face with a palm.
“Ye-ah,” Bob said with doleful certainty, his voice oddly young. “That wall is paper-thin. The only way she couldn’t have heard is if she’s deaf.”
Ray could see that Bob didn’t understand. “She’ll tell!”
With a sigh Bob pushed himself away from the counter of his shop, a big-shouldered troll-like bronze figure that seemed to go with the racked machine parts in their cubbyholes.
“Okay, let’s go next door and find out who she was from Laz. Then, when you find her, you can ask her not to spread the word.” He smiled, showing thick yellow teeth he’d never bothered to have cosmeticized. “If you ask the right way, she’ll be real quiet. How’s that?”
Ray brushed his sleek black hair back and took a couple of anxious steps back and forth, a thin man who moved like a whippet. That showed the degree of his agitation; usually he had the distinctive stillness of a spaceman used to single-handing utility craft, the habit of those who spent much time in confined spaces crammed with delicate controls.
“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Good idea. Let’s go.”
“Coupla high school kids on a field trip,” Laz said. “Why do ya wanna know?”
“Ray was telling me something confidential and he wants to ask the kid to keep it quiet, if she heard.”
“Yeah?” Laz’s face turned toward Ray. “What was it?”
“He finally got a positive reading,” Bob said.
Ray punched him in the arm. “What are you doing?”
“Look,” Bob said, rubbing his arm, “with Laz you’ve got to give to get. Okay?”
Ray scowled at Laz. The thickset man’s eyes had opened wide enough that they could easily be seen among the myriad flashing, rolling patterns, a trace of cold blue that did not waver.
“Are you serious?” Laz asked.
“As explosive decompression,” Bob said airily.
Ray cast him a nasty look.
Laz said, “So what exactly did you get?”
Looking trapped, Ray demanded, “You gotta swear not to tell anyone.”
Laz shrugged. “Sure, whatever.”
It wasn’t the firm commitment that Ray had been hoping for. But I figure it’s the best I’m going to get. He reached inside his coverall and withdrew a file; he bit his lips, then handed it over.
“Hard copy?” Laz said.
“You can’t take a disk in or out of that section,” Ray explained. “Nobody pays much attention to printout—you’d need a dolly and a lifter to get out hard copy of any really valuable data.”
“Hunh.” Then there was silence as the tattoo artist read the file. “My God,” he said when he was finished. He shook his head. “Bozhemoi.”
“Proof positive of intelligent alien life,” Bob said proudly. “I had pretty much the same reaction.”
“You can’t tell anybody,” Ray insisted.
“Why not? This is the biggest news since … ever!” Laz said.
“Yeah, and everybody is gonna know. But there’s somebody I’ve gotta tell first.”
“Lloyd Witham,” Bob said.
“That guy who goes the VR porn?” Laz asked, a slight edge of scorn in his voice. “What’s he got to do with this?”
“He offered a prize—ten million after taxes—to the person who could prove the existence of other intelligent life in the universe,” Ray explained. “On the condition that the proof was given to him first.”
“Is this ethical?” Laz asked.
“That depends on what I intend to do with the money,” Ray said. “You know I was about to lose my funding. I was going to have to leave the station in less than a month.”
“Yeah, but with this,” Laz said, spreading his hands, “they wouldn’t just stop the funding. Why would they?”
“Because once this comes out, the world governments will step in and they’ll kick me aside like a junkyard dog.”
“Melodramatically phrased,” Bob nodded, “but probably true.”
“But if I’ve got ten million credits I get to stay here and keep tabs on what the governments are doing. This is definitely something that needs a watchdog.”
Laz and Bob looked at one another. “Well, Ray, here’s a miracle,” Laz said. “I actually agree with you about something besides the fact that Schiller isn’t really beer. So these kids overheard you telling Ray about it and now you’re afraid they’ll tell station security or maybe the media about it and you’ll lose your chance.”
“Yeah.”
“And all you want to do is ask them to not tell anyone, right?”
“Yeah.”
Laz tapped a few keys on his computer. “She’s Gina Mancuso, lodged on deck five, section thirty-eight, suite twelve thirty-eight. High school student, NE Megplex, on a tour. Don’t make me regret giving you this, Ray. If I do, so will you.”
“I won’t,” Ray promised. “I just want to keep my edge.”
“So you didn’t actually hear anyone say, ‘I’m going to blow up the station’?” security officer Loh asked.
He was a slight, slender, amber-hued man with lines in his face and white in his close-cropped cap of black hair; somehow he took less than his share of the narrow space at the hostel, despite the holstered stunner on the belt of his plain gray coverall.
“What he said was, ‘this will blow the whole station wide open,”‘ Gina insisted. “Which sounded close enough to me.”
She heard the edge of a whine in her voice and corrected it. The officer didn’t seem to be taking her very seriously, but that was no reason to sound like a brat. “And he chased us.”
Christine nodded. “Chased us for, oh, a couple of corridors. We really had to run, but then he got into a place with lots of people and stopped.”
“I’ll check it out, ladies,” Loh said, rising. “It may be a misunderstanding. At least I hope it is. Thank you for filing a report; all threats are taken seriously here.” He turned to look at them from the doorway. “But this had better not be a prank. We take that seriously, too.”
“It’s not a prank!” Gina said, almost shouting in frustration. “If it was a prank, I’d have made an anonymous call. What am I, an idiot?”
Loh smiled. “No, miss,” he said. “If you were an idiot, you wouldn’t have earned this trip. But smart people make the worst sort of fools.”
He thanked the teacher and the guide and left. At least he hoped she wasn’t an idiot. He called in a report and headed for the Torture Tattoo parlor.
“This space is illegally divided,” Loh told the tattoo parlor’s proprietor. “I’m going to have to write you a ticket.”
“The place was like this when I subleased it,” Laz said. “I can show you my contract.”
In fact, Loh could have scanned it from the Station files, and they both knew it. There would be no point in lying.
“How was I supposed to know?” the thickset artist went on, scratching idly at a design that slowly transformed itself from Nude Descending A Staircase into Holman Hunt’s The Awakening Conscience.
“This is just a ticket,” Loh replied reasonably. Something to make you sit up and pay attention, the security officer thought, like a shovel in the face in the old days on Earth. With some people you have to use visual aids. “The original leaseholder is going to find himself in big trouble.”
He finished writing and the imager at his belt purred as it printed out a hard copy, registering the ticket with security’s ROM data bank at the same instant. “Now, about this underage girl you tattooed without her parents’ permission.”
Sweat didn’t hide the designs on the artist’s skin, but it did give them a rippling sheen in the harsh bright light of the parlor’s cubicle-office.
“She had a notarized recording of her mother giving permission,” Laz said. “I took a copy.” He tapped a few keys and a holo image of a thirtysomething blonde woman hovered above the table.
“I authorize Gina to have any nonpermanent body modifications of Level III and below she wishes,” the woman said, smiling indulgently. “Subject to immediate payment from account #—”
Loh looked at the artist and raised his eyebrows. “Non-permanent?” he said. “Level III?”
“Hey, give me a break,” Laz said, shrugging and making a symphony of color run from his bald head to his toes. “Do you think I was giving the tourist girl this?”
“Could be a fake,” Loh said, nodding toward the holograph that repeated its message.
“It’s notarized,” Laz pointed out. “Our beloved Station Security comp can check the encryption. Query groundside if you want.”
Loh nodded. “Could you make me a copy for our files?” he asked. “Notarization and all?”
“Sure,” Laz said wearily. “I never would have done it if it hadn’t been notarized. What am I, an idiot?”
Loh smiled politely. “I seem to be hearing that phrase a lot lately. Of course you aren’t—but if nobody was an idiot, what would we need Security for?”
On the other side of the illegally divided space, Loh confronted Bob. The place sold small machine parts and consisted of a front counter and, visible through a doorway, rows of storage shelves.
“There’s been a report of a very alarming conversation taking place here today,” the security officer said.
“Oh, yeah?” Bob said. “Alarming, huh? What was it about?”
“Something about blowing the station wide open.”
Bob widened his eyes and gave a choked little laugh.
“Hey, somebody has big ears. A buddy of mine came over to share some hot gossip, and I used the expression, this will blow the station wide open. Nothing to do with actually blowing anything up.”
“What was this piece of gossip?” Loh asked, in his best Dubious Official Tone.
Bob looked uncomfortable and shifted Ms feet. “I’d really rather not say. It’s kind of personal and I don’t feel comfortable talking about it.”
“I see. Well, perhaps your friend will feel more comfortable talking about it to me.”
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