Senescence (Jezebel's Ladder Book 5)

by Scott Rhine

  Mo laughed. “I told you not to wait till after the meeting to use the bathroom. Sit down and don’t move. Jostling only makes it worse.”

  “What’s with all these women? It’s bad enough that they go to the loo in packs, but why do they choose now to all go at once?”

  She could tell the beer was weighing heavily on him. Stifling a giggle, Laura said, “They’re panic shaving.”

  Stu looked confused.

  She pointed down below to the area below her low-slung, studded-leather belt. “You know, trimming the outback? Bush whacking?” Turning to his bodyguard, she asked, “Mo, what does he call it?”

  “I am not having that discussion with the boy.” Onesemo held up his hands and left the meeting room.

  For the first time since her disguise, she was alone with Stu indoors. “Wh-why aren’t you shaving?” he stammered.

  She couldn’t tell him she’d had hair permanently removed from certain places, so she opted for the more modest, “I won’t be sunbathing because I burn rather spectacularly. My skin is very sensitive.”

  His eyes darted toward her exposed midsection and then away. Hello. A chink in the armor. Let’s take a hit in the name of science. Laura leaned on the button for audio recording on the conference table. She tried to be soothing and clinical as she explained, “The mons pubis, also called the mons Venus in women, has hair that can extrude from typical swimwear.” He was still confused.

  She locked the conference-room door and faced Stu. She slid her tan shorts down, stopping at the first hairs. He stopped breathing. While he scanned her exposed skin from a distance of a meter, she lectured about the different types and shapes of hair removal at salons. His gaze never left the demonstration area. Between the beer and the lack of blood in his brain, she thought he might pass out. He had clearly never seen or heard any of this before. She leaned in closer so his face was centimeters from the hair in question. “Would you like to feel it?”

  Stu closed his eyes and shook his head. “As soon as the first woman is done shaving her bits, I’m going in.”

  At that moment, Laura knew from the electricity in the air she could coerce Stu into practically anything. In moments, she could be banging him on that table, against the wall, and on the rolling chair. Though the chair might be a little dangerous. However, she wanted her first time with Stu to be special. A man’s first sexual experience established patterns for his entire life. She didn’t want him to end up like his father or uncle—wham-bam-good-bye-ma’am. What other choice did she have?

  I can get some DNA from urine, she thought. She handed him her empty, wide-necked, plastic water bottle. “Here, you can borrow this while you’re waiting.” She had to pantomime peeing into the container.

  Grateful, he snatched the bottle. “Could you turn around and—?” He waved his hand.

  “Sure,” she said, wriggling back into her shorts and facing the wall. Soon after, she heard him groan. She snuck a peek. He couldn’t hit the bottle because of a sizable problem. After several humorous attempts, she suggested, “Try reciting your multiplication tables.” Over a minute later, she heard a sigh of release followed by re-zipping.

  Not the relief I was aiming for, but it will do.

  When she returned, the bottle was completely full and recapped. “Better?”

  He nodded. Laura held out her hand for the bottle, but he refused. “I feel guilty. A lady shouldn’t dispose of my … problems.”

  “It’s okay. As the newest crew member, I do everything.” She stuffed the awkward urine container into her explorer bag. “Are you going to the beach when we land?”

  His eyes strayed to her midriff again. “I’m touring a holocaust museum and a repository for Dead Sea scrolls.”

  “No girls will be taking clothes off there. You could skip all the dried-up history lessons and relax under an umbrella on the beach with me,” she offered. “I could teach you how to build a sandcastle.” She felt like such a predator. “Buy you an ice cream cone, any flavor you like.” Then I’ll lick mine suggestively until you beg me to do it to you.

  “I don’t know.”

  She stroked the hair on the back of his neck, and he leaned into the caress. His lips begged for a kiss, but she needed a commitment. “Come on. Dinner is the least you could do for a girl who taught you how to get rid of an unwanted erection.”

  Stu was spared when Sif bellowed, demanding that Salome fetch her a new razor. By the time Laura fulfilled the request, Stu was hiding. The crew kept her busy until the landing.

  Laura made sure she was the last crew member off of the plane, not hard to do as the production assistant. She grabbed the urine and the memory card from the meeting room as proof of the donor’s willingness. At customs, she answered all the normal questions with practiced ease. However, the agent wouldn’t let her through with “apple juice” in an unmarked container.

  “Maybe if she takes a sip to prove it’s juice,” suggested Hans.

  Laura smiled and took a swig. Tastes like a hundred million dollars, she thought, struggling not to gag.

  “No,” replied the agent. “She can drink whatever she wishes, but the rest has to be thrown away before she can enter.”

  She didn’t think this was legal, but if she raised a stink, there would be a strip search. Then she’d have to explain the stolen memory card in her bra. Would that count as pornography? Pinching her nose shut, she poured as much of the urine sample as she could into her mouth. People in Pakistan or someplace do this every day.

  Not throwing up was her greatest trial. A hundred meters into the airport, she bought another bottle, emptied it into a water fountain, and spat the sample in. She handed the bottle to her mother and spent the next five minutes scrubbing her mouth in the bathroom. Then Laura bought a mojito at the airport bar to further scour her tongue. She even ate the sprig of mint. But it’s all worth it. I have the DNA sample!

  Her next step was to find a flight attendant heading to Geneva to act as courier to the nearest Mori Biotech lab. Laura sent the sample, the chip, and a brief note to her grandfather. “This concludes our deal.”

  To celebrate, she booked a double room at a five-star spa. The taxi she and her mother took smelled like piss. Laura couldn’t tell whether it was her or the cab. “We’re free,” Laura told her mother.

  “Are you okay?” Kaguya asked.

  “I need a shower and a whole bottle of scotch before I can answer that.”

  “So, no.”

  Tears flowed from Laura’s eyes. “I used a sweet, innocent man who may never speak to me again because of it.”

  “Now that you’re free, you can do whatever you want. What should we do to celebrate tomorrow?” her mother asked.

  Laura buried her face in her hands. “I’d like to still be part of the crew. I want Stu to trust me.”

  “To what end? You have the sample.”

  “To be his first in other ways. I liked … explaining things to him.”

  Kaguya gave her a tissue. “Then that’s what we’ll do. But first you’ll need a massage, new shoes, and to wipe your nose.”

  She hugged her mother, crying out the emotion that had built up.

  At the spa, Laura waited by the phone for Stu to call. An hour past dinner time, she called his room. Onesemo fed her some story about Stu having amoebic dysentery.

  “But he filters and treats all his water.” Laura could hear dance music with a heavy bass.

  “I think it was those oranges from the Negev or that lettuce.”

  A woman’s voice in the background shouted, “Come on downstairs. We’re doing body shots.”

  Mo covered the receiver for a moment and said, “I’ve got to go. He needs more toilet paper.”

  Laura had a little dinner with her wine that night.

  Chapter 22 – The Top Thousandth of a Percent

  Early the next morning, Laura’s head ached from the hangover, but her nails looked fabulous. The roar of the jet was hellish. Worse, Stu broadcast a migraine
to any Collective Unconscious talent standing within a few meters, so she couldn’t get close to him without amplifying her misery. Laura sat by Artemis to quiz her about Stu’s activities the day before.

  The huntress admitted, “Sure, Stu came to my beach party. He spent all of his time with one girl, though. He went up to one of the bedrooms with her and sent the bodyguard out.”

  The thought of another woman with Stu made Laura furious, and the increased blood pressure aggravated her headache. To add salt to the wound, Artemis munched noisily on a bag of Cricket Crunchies for most of the flight and generally prevented Laura from taking a nap.

  During the chaos of landing, Evangeline eventually took pity on Laura. “Stu came to the house to see me as a nurse. I can’t tell you what his problem is, but I can tell you Stu didn’t stand you up on purpose yesterday.”

  “That helps. Thanks. Why was Artemis so horrible to me?”

  “Grant hinted you were blackmailing him. As a lesbian who lost her military career, my girlfriend doesn’t like that kind of thing.”

  As Hans strode down the stairs onto the prince’s private airfield, he announced to the team, “Remember, the prince has one rule for his guests: no cameras. I have one rule to add: nobody complains about his country stoning women who report rapes instead of imprisoning the perp. For the first time, thanks to Stu, we have access to a strict, Muslim country.” Hans gave the two paid camera operators the morning off and made a production of patting down each crew member to divest them of personal recording devices.

  Kaguya remained on the plane to avoid Stu and Laura.

  Walking onto the airstrip in the desert sun, even with sunglasses, made Laura want to vomit. She climbed onto a monorail with the rest of the crew, noting four guards with machine guns in this car and more in the next.

  A distinguished fifty, the prince wore a conductor’s outfit with white gloves and a silk pageant banner across the chest. From the driver’s seat of the train, the prince announced, “This vehicle, like my entire estate, is solar powered. We sell the excess energy to neighboring countries. Even beyond the petroleum age, my country demonstrates leadership.”

  He shook hands with Hans and Stu, beaming with pride.

  “He dresses like Michael Jackson,” whispered Artemis.

  The prince asked, “Pardon?”

  Sif covered. “She’s impressed and wants to see your solar collectors.”

  “First, we will see my stables and my zoo. We house animals close to the airstrip because some of them are too big to fit in one of these cars.”

  The monorail hummed a few hundred meters to a ring of barns around a lush, green oasis. “All the animals here are natives of warm climates. No polar bears. That would be cruel.” He led them through his stables, giving the history and lineage of each horse. “On my racetrack I allow no whips and no steroids. Horses are never forced to run in pain. Such inhumanity is against the law in our kingdom.”

  “Unless you have tits,” whispered Artemis.

  Laura couldn’t fault the sentiment.

  This time Stu covered the indiscretion. “The US should have these regulations. I heard most of their tracks closed because of abuses.”

  The prince lectured on the decline of American racing as they rode a smaller tram through the tiny oasis zoo. He has a thing about trains.

  Stu jumped off the tram to pet an elephant, startling everyone. Laura opened her mental awareness for an instant to gauge the reaction of the giant. She put an arm out to stop the huntresses from intervening. “It’s okay. The elephants are just as curious about him.”

  “I rescued this family of three elephants from poachers attempting to transport the animals through our ports,” the prince said. “They have made their home here. Simba there is particularly fond of the dogs.”

  “I’ve heard that poor people kill them for their tusks,” Stu said.

  “It is the same all over,” Sif said. “In my country, one snow leopard pelt will feed a family of four for their lifetime.”

  The prince raised a finger. “Nobody in my kingdom is poor or in need of food.”

  “But you buy pelts and endangered animals,” Artemis countered.

  Stu intervened. “What about trash dumps? Dad said those should have buried half the planet by now.”

  “Ahh,” said the prince. “Our workers sort out the recyclables, and the rest of the rubbish we use to transform the uninhabitable regions. Back to the monorail, and I will show you.”

  “What are the uninhabitable regions?” Stu asked.

  Onesemo explained as they walked back to the train. “Deserts have been growing so quickly that UN aid organizations started restricting where people can build. A lot of regions just aren’t sustainable for large populations. For example, if someplace doesn’t have water or shelter from storms, it becomes uninsurable and doesn’t qualify for foreign relief. Some towns in Tornado Alley in Texas had been wiped out four times before they were removed from the maps.”

  “Nobody lives there?” Stu asked in disbelief.

  “Some crackpots, but they have to supply power and water for themselves. Depending on natural resources and distance from transit corridors, some locations aren’t suited for large populations. The power and road companies can’t justify the expense to go there.”

  Once on the air-conditioned train, they rode a distance out into the desert. A huge dumping ground filled a trench. Behind the trash heap, solar panels stretched along the desert floor in a huge bowl shape. A partial-glass geodesic dome, like a football stadium, protected the solar collectors from the elements. She thought she could see strands of color like army ants pouring off the trash heaps.

  The prince gestured. “Behold, nanobots change sand and garbage into our future. In the last step, we take the dross that the nanobots cannot consume, melt it with the excess energy, and use it to line the railway beds.”

  Stu admired the scene. “How far does this go?”

  “The railway extends from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea.”

  “I meant the band of solar collectors.”

  “So did I,” said the prince with a smile. “The railway was a tool in its construction.”

  “That must have cost a fortune.”

  The prince grinned. “My people flourish, and so do all those who trade with us.”

  A hint that the Saudis want an advance on Magi technology?

  As they streaked past another valley, Laura saw a familiar pattern in the sculpted silicon, almost like DNA. This is more than just solar power. They’re building a computer. Once constructed, the machine could repair itself to an extent. Her grandfather must have sold them the plans for Koku. If that counted as reproducing, the program could be considered alive. The AI program was built on the Mind-Machine interface and Magi resource-analysis techniques for a society. The original goal was that any closed system could be reduced to components like labor, water, metals, and energy. That model could then be optimized or predicted. Whenever two Magi technologies were combined, the result was greater than the sum of the parts.

  Mori used his four-story computer to run his half-million employee mega-corporation. The Saudi kingdom had a population of seventy-five million, a hundred if you counted temporary workers. A computer to run that analysis would need to be eight hundred stories tall … or flat and over eight hundred hectares long. Good God.

  The Saudis must be using her grandfather’s tyrannical management techniques to help increase their wealth and run their kingdom. Already, about ninety thousand people held the reins for the majority of the wealth on the planet. Using Koku would concentrate control even further. The same program that’s been tracking me for weeks. She hid behind Sif with the irrational theory that the supercomputer wouldn’t be able to see her.

  Stu asked, “Can I look more closely?”

  The prince slowed the train to a halt.

  Onesemo put an arm out to hold Stu back from the door. “Nanobots are nasty stuff, sir. I lost five men and a lot of ski
n to a project like that. The wind sometimes blows them past the safeguards. Men dissolve just as easily as garbage.”

  “That thing on the backside of the moon?” Stu asked.

  Mo nodded curtly.

  Another Koku on the moon? Holy crap! What was Grandfather thinking?

  Suddenly, an ear-splitting siren filled the car. “Camera!” the prince shouted. “Someone has betrayed me. Search them all.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Laura saw Sif blanch and discard a small disc the size of a bottle cap. Just as quickly, Grant scooped up the item. “My fault, sir. I thought I had the recorder disabled. It’s voice-activated and turns on when of our cast members—”

  “Silence.” A guard seized Grant from behind, and another slammed him in the gut.

  “Who are you spying for?” the prince demanded.

  “It’s just my personal log. I need it for protection. Ask anyone who watches the show.”

  “We don’t allow your filth in my kingdom.”

  A guard swept a security wand over Grant, located the poker chip camera in his hand, and passed it to his employer. The prince nodded. “My technicians will tell me who made this while you wait in a cell. If you confess, the sentence will be lighter. The rest of you: your tour is cancelled. Leave my kingdom immediately. A fighter escort will be provided.”

  Guards hauled Grant to the back car.

  No one dared to speak on the return to the plane. When Laura arrived at the aircraft, other guards were pillaging it, removing every piece of recording and transmitting equipment aboard except the plane’s radio and guidance systems. Hans was livid. “Those are expensive cameras! Some of them were custom-made.”

  “They will be returned in a few weeks, after they have been thoroughly searched for evidence,” replied the head guard.

  Hans opened his mouth to protest further, but Laura pulled him aside. “You uploaded everything on them in Haifa. Equipment can be replaced. You’ll tell your side to the rest of the world. Until we get somewhere with free press, let it go.”

  Once the door to the plane closed and Nemesis swept for bugs, the team gathered in the conference room. Disconnected cables dangled from holes in the wall.