Running Start

by J. A. Sutherland

  She took a shrimp bigger than her thumb, dredged it in red sauce, and stuck it in her mouth.

  This was the life. This was worth three years in that shithole Bright Horizons, if she could live like this for a while. Even not so good as this all the time, just decent.

  But this for now — at least for a few days to celebrate.

  There was a bar at the end of the food — past the desserts which Rosa determined she would do some serious damage to just as soon as she cleaned up. Bottles and bottles of premium brands, with a cooler underneath and a big bucket of ice — the banquet table itself was a cooler too, it looked like. It was frosted over to keep the food fresh.

  She pulled a bottle of beer from the cooler and popped another shrimp into her mouth.

  “You should try these, kid, they’re real.” She took a long drink.

  The kid was looking around the room, frowning.

  “How much did you take?” he asked.

  “I’ve only had two, there’s plenty for you — and we can order more.”

  “No, I mean the money.”

  Rosa paused.

  “Enough,” she told him. He had a million — maybe she’d give him a little more, but she wasn’t telling him the total. It was her agents that had done the work, after all, and her plan to begin with. All he’d done was plug in a battery — well, and got her out of the chase with the flashies, but she wouldn’t have been in that if she hadn’t gone back for him. Maybe she could throw a few more million his way. “We’re both set if we manage it right — this is just a celebration.”

  The kid turned away and wandered around the suite.

  Rosa grabbed another shrimp, then peeked into one of the bedrooms.

  The bed was huge, but something else grabbed Rosa’s attention.

  On a raised platform next to the bedroom’s own wall of windows looking out on space was a deep bathtub.

  She took up the bowl of shrimp in one arm, four more beers cradled in the other, and kicked the bedroom door shut behind her.

  “See you in an hour or two, kid.”

  Mason wandered around the suite once Fuentes left.

  He tucked some cheese and meat into a soft, white bun and took a bite. He thought the meat might be turkey, but it was thicker than he was used to, and sort of fibrous, instead of the mushy texture he was used to.

  Fuentes had given him a million credits — which was a lot, and he didn’t know what he’d do with it, but she was throwing her own credits away like they were nothing. He accessed his explant to check a couple things — his, Toure’s, wasn’t even as fancy as his old one. This one didn’t have auditory response, or maybe it was broken, only text, and it seemed to have no personality or conversation overlays at all. It just responded to his request with the information.

  Information that made Mason wonder at Fuentes even more.

  This suite was over thirty-thousand credits a night — even with a million, even splurging, it didn’t make sense to spend that much. There were rooms, nicer rooms than he’d ever seen, available on-station for a couple hundred credits a night. Less if they stayed a week or more.

  He grabbed a bottle of soda out of the cooler to wash down the sandwich.

  Yes, this place was really nice, but that was three-percent of a million every night. Had Fuentes maybe hacked the hotel system so they only thought they were getting paid? Mason didn’t think so — she was good, but she’d had years to insert her agents into Bright Horizons’ systems.

  So she must have taken a lot more than a million credits for herself. He wasn’t upset that she’d only given him a million, or anything like that — he felt really lucky she’d taken him along — but something about the amount, wanting to know, was nagging at him.

  Say she’d taken ten million — would spending that much make sense? After two hundred thousand on the IDs?

  Two nights here, plus the private shuttle — he checked the price of those and nearly choked on his soda. The ride up had cost nearly four times as much as the suite.

  He wandered into the other bedroom — his, he guessed, because Fuentes seemed to have claimed the other. It too had a deep tub by the windows — very deep, but there were drains midway down the side. It took him a minute to realize why — you’d only be able to fill the tub halfway and the deep sides were to keep the water in. Any splashes would go a lot farther in point-five g.

  The bed was huge, nearly the size of his whole room back home. Maybe bigger.

  The thought of home made his mind turn to his mom and he almost called her. The only thing that stopped him was that Fuentes would probably get mad and call him a dumbass again. He didn’t like that — he wasn’t a dumbass, or a kid.

  They’d talked about it on the shuttle and she thought he should wait until they were farther away. Her plan was to get to Luna, where they were even less likely to cooperate with any Earth authorities than the stations, and put some sort of call through a lawyer there. Someone who couldn’t ever be IDed as Mason.

  That made sense.

  If they were watching his mom’s calls, then they’d get his new ID if he called her now.

  It was hard waiting, though.

  He finished his soda and put the bottle in a recycler.

  Fuentes probably had the right idea about washing the stink off, too. He didn’t feel like taking a bath — it was weird with the tub in front of those big windows, even if they were opaque from the outside like the ones on the next hub, there was still all that open space. It made Mason a little queasy and then Earth itself was starting to come into view. A big blue and white ball coming down from the top of the window as the station spun.

  Mason headed for the shower.

  Twenty-Three

  The kid was waiting for her when she got out of the bath, with his hair still wet from his shower and not even combed, it looked like.

  She’d have to see if she could get him to a stylist and do something with that unruly mop on top of his head — not too much, because it was kind of cute and she thought before too much more time went by she’d probably start giving in to the urge to reach out and smooth it for him. That’d be fun, because she could imagine the blushing and annoyed batting at her hand it would bring.

  Her own hair was dry and freshly styled with the equipment she found in the well-stocked bathroom — dryer, curling iron, a couple dozen different products — all of it looking brand new. She didn’t know if that was normal for the suite, or if her butler, Frederick, had taken care of it when he found out they had no luggage.

  She nearly giggled that she had a butler, and couldn’t help but emphasize the word even in her thoughts.

  She decided to go with the second answer — it was more fun.

  Fun wasn’t on the kid’s mind, though. He’d asked her again how much she’d taken from Bright Horizons — not before taking a long look at her, though. She hadn’t dressed yet, only done her hair and wrapped herself in a thick, white robe she found in the closet, and kid’s eyes ran up and down for several seconds before he managed to get the words out.

  It was funny how being all bundled up could have more of an effect than showing skin for some people, and she made a note that the kid was one of those.

  “Look, I don’t want any more money, but I think it’s important somehow to know how much you took,” he said once he could talk.

  She went to the banquet and saw that someone — maybe her butler, Frederick — had refreshed the shrimp bowl while she was in the bath. Too bad she didn’t feel like more shrimp right now.

  She grabbed a bottle of milk from the cooler and filled a plate from the dessert options — some chocolate covered fruit, little cakes just a bit bigger than a bite, and a bunch of things she didn’t recognize but was definitely going to eat.

  “If you don’t want more — I mean, I’ll give you more if you need it, this thing’s gotten messier than I originally thought, I guess —” She could spare him another million or two — he wouldn’t be able to have a Frederick, b
ut he could still live pretty good. “— but what difference does it make how much I took?”

  She plopped down in a chair to look out the windows and watch Earth spin past, one leg hooked over a chair arm and the robe fell off her leg to expose a lot of skin. She heard the kid make a gurgling noise and grinned. Then grinned more as she set the milk down and raised a finger to salute the blue-white planet just about to spin out of sight.

  “Fuck you,” she said. “Your towers, your flashies, your sick, fucked up Bright Hors, and fuck you all.” The kid was staring at her a different way now. “What?”

  “You just seem really mad.”

  “And you’re not?” How could he not be? Maybe he hadn’t had enough of Bright Hors to be as mad as she was, but he’d still been tossed in there. “At least I actually did something to get thrown in there — all you did was fix things that shouldn’t have needed fixing. You didn’t do anything wrong, even, and they threw you in that place — and let’s not forget the rest of your life. How many times did you get told you’d never be anything but a lowly? Keep your place, right? No, you can’t be a tech or a coder or any kind of middie job — why don’t you just take the stipend and shut up? We both heard that, right?”

  She popped one of the cakes in her mouth, but it suddenly tasted like sawdust — and the milk seemed to have turned as sour as her mood had gone. She set the plate and bottle aside.

  “I guess I should be,” the kid said, “but I’m not sure who to be mad at. That doesn’t answer my question, though.” He was quiet for a minute. “Look, if you got popped by some gang in a walkway and they took your take-out dinner and six-pack, would you call the flashies?”

  Rosa snorted. “Hell, no. Not worth the trouble — shit happens.”

  “If you saw them on the street, like, six weeks later, would you try to trash them? Or would you let it go?”

  Rosa shrugged. “Shit happens, I guess. I’m not gonna get my beer back. Cost of walking home.”

  The kid ran his hands through his wet hair, messing it up. If she ran her hands through it, she could put all those stray bits back in place. Rosa was feeling very good for the first time in years — she was safe, clean, relaxed, and four — five? — beers while she’d been in the bath had put her in a very nice state. A nice enough state to think about some other things she hadn’t done in years.

  She thought about that instead of being angry and it made her happy again. She raised her foot to rest it on the chair leg, liking the feel of the robe sliding farther.

  The kid’s face went the color of the insides of the chocolate-dipped strawberry she plucked from her plate.

  She could almost see the thoughts whirring in his head as he tried to drag his eyes away from her leg. Finally he looked out the window and took a deep breath.

  “Right,” he said. “So what if they hacked your implant and took your stipend for the month, then cleaned out your apartment?”

  Rosa frowned. “I’d hack ‘em back,” she said finally. “Hey, do you want one of these strawberries? They’re really good.”

  She held one out to him, which drew his attention back to her, and bit into the one she held. It was big so she only bit off half of it, then licked quickly at the exposed flesh of the fruit as she moved her hand away.

  “I … ah … no, thanks — I think this is import —”

  They were juicy too — she rested her hand with the bit strawberry on her bare knee.

  “Maybe you would, but what if you couldn’t — you can do that, but most people can’t, right? Would you call the flashies?”

  She thought about it for a minute. There was a reluctance in the lows to go to the flashies for anything — you dealt with it yourself or lived with it, for the most part. But there were limits. “I’d have to — I can’t not eat for a month, or — yeah, I guess anybody would.”

  “Right — so the question is, did you grab Perigree’s six-pack or clean out their apartment?”

  Rosa considered that for a moment. The kid had a point — she had cleaned out Bright Hors and everyone associated with it — but he was missing the bigger picture.

  “They can’t call the flashies, kid. The bribes, the kickbacks — the whole thing falls apart if it’s looked at too closely. They can’t come after us for the money, because they can’t admit most of it was there to begin with.”

  Maybe if she tilted her hand just right — she did, and a drop of juice fell from the fruit, hit her thigh and ran down it.

  The kid’s eyes followed that like a magnet.

  “Um — what if they have their own flashies?” he asked.

  Rosa shrugged. “How’re they gonna find us?”

  She bit off the rest of the strawberry, then ran her finger along her thigh to pick up the juice, and stuck it in her mouth. She sucked hard and pulled it out with a loud pop.

  The kid — damn him — ran for his room and shut the door.

  Twenty-Four

  Rosa watched the others in the corridor carefully, picking up on their mannerisms.

  Well, corridor didn’t do it justice — the walkway was nearly the width of the station wheel and as high as the Waldorf’s lobby. It was an ostentatious waste of expensive real estate in the closed environment and set the same tone and message as the lobby — those who enter here, give not two shits for the price tag.

  She tried to emulate the easy stride of the long-term residents, but wound up stumbling too often, so had to slow down.

  The shops lining the walkway were, as Frederick had said, “the finest on-station,” and she had a list he’d given her of those places that might have the sort of thing she was looking for.

  Frederick had given her a list of the finest shops.

  Sure, Seymour could have gotten her a list just as easily, but she had her list from her personal, human butler.

  Rosa grinned.

  This was a lifestyle she could very easily get used to, the kid’s problems with it notwithstanding.

  One of the kid’s problems.

  The night before had been frustrating to say the least — she’d been thinking she might get something she hadn’t had for years, and wound up doing the same as always about it.

  It wasn’t like she’d been subtle about her offer — the invitation couldn’t have been any clearer unless she’d grabbed him by the hair and dragged him to bed.

  Which would mess up his hair and she’d have to sort of smooth it back into place and —

  She shook her head and nearly snarled, getting her a look of alarm from a woman passing by. She didn’t want that — not good to be too noticed, not until she had the clothes to fit in a little better.

  So what was the kid’s problem with her? He couldn’t be gay, otherwise he wouldn’t have reacted so obviously to her.

  Maybe she needed to get five beers into him and loosen him up a little.

  Rosa pushed the kid’s reluctance aside along with his question and concentrated on shopping.

  The kid didn’t want to come along, but she had his sizes, so she made a couple stops for him, first. He’d look good in a decent suit, but that would have to wait until she could drag him along to get the sizes perfect, not just close. She held up a sweater — yeah, that would go okay with his hair and big eyes. He could pull off the serious-poet look, maybe.

  She remembered the constant scratching he seemed to make and frowned at the clothes. Maybe something with less obvious seams. She asked, and the store even had a tailor for the suits who’d be happy to take the tags out too. Maybe he’d like that — damn the cost.

  Once she had a few packages sent back to the suite for him, she turned her attention to her own shopping.

  The prices for leathers shocked her — she’d thought she’d paid a lot for her previous outfit, but that was probably synthetic, no matter what the seller said, and on Earth. Here it had to be lifted out of the gravity well and was certainly real — and priced accordingly, but so much better.

  She got new boots, pants, skirt, and a new jac
ket that made her stop mourning the loss of her old one completely. It was all smooth, soft, supple, and fit her like a second skin — then she had the clerk pack up a second set in deep purple as well as the black she decided to wear out of the store, just because she could and it was fun.

  The next stop was lingerie, and it felt great to finally dump the pale blue panties, now stained a bit with blood from the gash in her thigh. It’d been three years since she’d had a chance to try on anything that she actually liked, and that shop alone took nearly two hours for her to get out of.

  She didn’t buy a lot — she’d save that for when she settled in on Mars and saw what the styles were like there — but she did get expensive and quality. Not the weird styles, either — Rosa’d crashed her share of middie-events and knew what would last and what was just following a trend. Other than the leathers, which she just loved, she wanted to be able to blend in, not stand out — and even those would blend in certain environments.

  Everything got sent back to the suite and she ended the shopping at a luggage store, so they’d be able to pack for the trip to Luna. A pair of rolling bags and another pair of shoulder duffels — the kid’s would be more space than he needed for the wardrobe she’d bought him, but that just meant more room for her stuff.

  Twenty-Five

  Mason got himself a soda from the cooler and made himself another sandwich. The texture of this turkey was growing on him. He settled into a chair near the window and watched the stars flow by, joined by Earth every time around. It wasn’t as disorienting as it had been at first.

  Fuentes was out shopping, and he supposed that was a good idea. Their only clothes were pretty common compared to what he’d seen in the Waldorf’s lobby, and they shouldn’t stand out, no matter how safe she thought they were. He was perfectly happy to let her pick some things out for him, as the whole process was too stressful — there were too many choices even before you got to the colors.