by Maksim Malik
“There, that bench,” Nadani said. “That’s where we meet when we’re finished.”
“Okay, got it,” Trisha said and gently squeezed Nadani’s hand.
“I’ll see you in the buvette in ten minutes,” Nadani said and released Trisha’s hand. With Adan’s map overlay she found her way through the park to another entryway which led straight to the plaza with the buvette.
Time to get to work, she thought.
Spaghetti
The shopping plaza had dozens of shops and restaurants all arranged in a circle around a transit hub.
I wonder if there are more restaurants here than there are in total on Sulai station, she thought.
Not quite, but very close, Adan responded almost right away. These are more popular with travelers than with the locals considering the proximity to the starport.
Yeah, that makes sense. Still, that’s a lot of restaurants, Nadani replied. She had rarely been on stations larger than Sulai. She knew, of course, there existed much bigger stations but those were closer to core worlds and she tended to work around midway between core and border territory.
Finding it fast, the small buvette was more like a bar on a smaller station. With no space wasted, she imagined most of the planetsiders would find it to be cramped. For her, it felt a little snug but not uncomfortable. The bar itself was compact and seated four. It wouldn’t do for her purposes. She would be forced to sit backward to keep an eye on the establishment. Three people sat in the buvette: two at one table and one at the bar.
A woman wearing a black apron on top of semi-formal slacks and button-up shirt approached her, her smile bright and welcoming.
“How can I help you, ah, miss?” the woman stumbled the last likely used to dealing with public idents by habit.
“I’d like a table for myself,” Nadani said. “Along the back would be perfect.”
“Right away,” the woman replied and turned, leading Nadani toward to the back wall.
The woman hovered over Nadani as she seated herself.
“Simply order on the table menu and I will bring your order to you,” she said when Nadani settled in. “Thank you!” She turned and walked toward the bar.
Nadani glanced at the menu, eyebrow quirking at the prices.
They better be good drinks at those prices, Adan said.
Yeah, no kidding, Nadani replied. I better get something I can sip on for a while.
In the end, she chose a ponberry wine which matched her taste profile. She never had this brand of ponberry wine before. Soon after ordering the serving woman—Nadani didn’t think she was a slave—brought out a wineglass filled with a deep blue liquid.
“Enjoy,” she said politely as she placed the wineglass on the table in front of Nadani.
Nadani already smelled the wine before she even reached for the glass. The smell of alcohol wafted toward her but along with that came the sweet scent of ponberries.
Don’t enjoy it too fast, Adan said. You haven’t eaten, and you shouldn’t let it go to your head.
I won’t, she said. I’ll just take little sips. Like this.
Nadani lifted the wineglass with one hand, feeling quite posh as she did, and brought the drink to her mouth. The glass itself was cool on her lower lip as she let a small amount of the liquid past the rim of the glass into her mouth. The ponberry wine, although room temperature, felt cool on her tongue and its heady-sweetness made her taste buds tingle. The scent filled her nose and each breath seemed taken through a small filter of ponberry.
She swallowed.
Yeah, that matches my taste profile, Nadani thought.
That is quite enjoyable, Adan said. Not just the taste of the wine, but your reactions to it, it added. I have endless fascination and enjoyment from watching you and experiencing what you do.
Nadani’s cheeks warmed a little at the sentiment.
Thank you, I—
Trisha, all aglow in holographic clothing and hologrambler at work, walked into the buvette, distracting the hostess from Nadani. Nadani watched as Trisha took a seat in the middle of the buvette a few tables away from the couple. She took another drink from her wineglass and pretended to pay attention to table.
Are you hooked into the security system? she asked Adan.
Yes, I am, Adan said.
Can you give me a feed of one of the cameras nearest Trisha?
I could, but I don’t think it’s wise, it replied. You need to make certain you are blending in. Having your drink, acting human, and all that. I don’t think you can manage to drink while viewing a security cam. You lose focus when you do that.
That’s true, Nadani said. She took a larger gulp of the wine. Her nerves started to get the better of her. Don’t you think it’ll be obvious something is going on when someone sits with someone else who has a hologrambler on?
Possibly, but it’s better than being identified as the sellers of this kind of data, Adan said.
Yeah, I can see that, she said.
Soon after Trisha received her drink a woman with her ident set to private sat down with Trisha.
Here goes, Nadani thought and took another sip.
Nadani’s job, although the easiest, kept her ready to move in an instant. She could only guess at how well the conversation went between Trisha and the client. They spoke in low tones which were difficult to hear at all from Nadani’s position.
Suddenly the woman had a blaster pointed at Trisha under the table.
“Just hand over the data and it’ll go well for you,” she said, loud enough for Nadani to hear. “This entire setup is shady. Nobody will come for you.”
Security is on its way, Adan said.
They might be too slow, Nadani thought as she jumped up from her chair. She charged toward the woman, who turned to her with a surprised look and swung the blaster around to point at Nadani right before Nadani collided with the woman, knocking her down, and landing in a pile on top of her and the chair.
Nadani grabbed the woman’s wrist which held the blaster, raised it, and slammed it into the floor. She did it twice more before the woman released her grip on the blaster. Nadani ignored the weak punches the woman delivered to her while she did so. She let the blaster slide along the floor away from them.
“Don’t touch that,” Nadani said as she saw Trisha get up and move toward the blaster. “We don’t need our fingerprints on it.”
“Good point,” Trisha said. “What should I do?”
“Go to where we said we’d meet, and I’ll be there shortly,” Nadani said.
“Right, I’m off,” Trisha said and left the buvette.
Shortly after Trisha left security arrived. Nadani had the woman pinned beneath her.
“Please stand and back away from the violator,” a strong male voice said.
Nadani stood and backed away from the woman on the ground. She saw three men and one woman, all tough-looking, with blasters pointed at the woman. Though likely set to stun, getting hit by just one of them would be enough to knock a person out for a sol.
“Do you wish to stand for yourself, citizen?” one of the men asked.
“No, the vids should be enough to condemn her,” Nadani said. If she stood for herself then she would not be allowed to leave the planet until the trial convened which could be several sols—twenty-five hours—to a standard week—five sols.
“Very well, you may go as you please, citizen,” the same man said.
Nadani took the opportunity to walk to the side of the security team—squeezing by in the small buvette—and headed out.
We’re lucky the woman didn’t try charging you for hurting her or something ridiculous, Adan said. Then again, something like that wouldn’t hold up in Trial.
Yeah, I’m just glad we got out of there in one piece, Nadani said. It’s too bad the deal fell through.
There will be more deals. At any rate, you and Trisha have made enough deals over the past year to live comfortably for a long time.
Never had a deal fall
en through out of violence. Sometimes the client didn’t want to pay the price and those trades failed. Nadani wondered if they ought to slow down or stop trading for a while.
The walk back to the park went fast as she spent her time involved in her thoughts. Even Adan didn’t disturb her.
She found Trisha at the appropriate bench with all her holographics disabled.
“Are you okay?” Trisha said after spotting Nadani.
“I’ll have a few bruises from the tackle,” Nadani replied. “Nothing serious though.”
“I had no idea she had a blaster,” Trisha said. “If I did, I would’ve done something.”
“She probably would’ve shot if you tried,” Nadani said.
“Hmm, that’s true,” Trisha said.
“Is it weird all I can think about is food after that?” Trisha asked. “I am really hungry.”
“Me too,” Nadani said. “Can we go to a pasta place?”
“Oh, you and your pasta restaurants,” Trisha pretended to sigh dejectedly. “Sure, let’s go. Is there one here?”
There’s one in the plaza we can go to, Adan said.
“Adan says there’s one in the plaza we can go to,” Nadani relayed.
“Is that safe to do? What if someone recognizes you?” Trisha asked.
It’s fine if they recognize you, Adan said. They’ll just see you with a girl they’ve never seen before.
“Adan said it’s fine,” Nadani said.
Nadani and Trisha walked, holding hands, toward the plaza. This time the winding path out of the park felt more magical now there were no time restrictions. Plus, she was with Trisha.
The pasta restaurant, Geronni’s Place, was a step or two less fancy than the buvette had been.
“Table for two, if it pleases you?” the hostess asked. Nadani could tell a slave from their manner of speech, and hers made her position in life quite obvious. If not for the way she spoke, then Nadani would have guessed slave based on her simple, white clothing, the type of loose outfit often given to Gershani slaves.
“Yes, please,” Trisha said. Although native to Gershan, Nadani never saw Trisha treat a slave like anything less than a citizen.
They were led to a booth and left on their own to choose what they wanted from the menu.
“I’m having the spaghetti with truf meatballs,” Nadani announced as she ordered.
“I think I’ll have the same as you this time,” Trisha said. “I don’t know what half the other stuff is.”
“You can never go wrong with spaghetti,” Nadani said.
They sat in silence. Nadani had a hard time coming up with something to say.
“Security must have been in and out of there fast,” Trisha said.
“They were. It appears they are very efficient here,” Nadani said.
The slave girl brought them their food.
“Please enjoy the food,” she said, bowed her head, and walked away.
Nadani dug in to hers, stabbing a meatball and bringing it to her mouth. Truf meat tasted far better than any f-meat she ever had. A truf was a large cow-like creature native to Ithaca. Nadani originally came from Dier space which was largely vegetarian. Even in Gershan space the meals tended to be vegetarian due to the difficulty of raising real meat in space. It was far more efficient to make f-meats and grow plants.
“This is good,” Trisha said.
“Yeah, it’s some of the best I’ve—”
A flash on her mental HUD indicated an Exanet message arriving. It was marked urgent.
“Hang on, I just got an urgent message,” Nadani said.
“Okay,” Trisha said and put down her fork, waiting for Nadani.
Very interesting—you need to read it, Adan said.
I am, Nadani said.
She opened the message and read it, her mirth disappearing as she did.
“It’s from Dr. Tysgan,” she told Trisha. “He wants to meet here in the city. He says it’s important regarding something we both share—which can only mean AI,” Nadani said in a quiet voice.
“Okay,” Trisha said, pursing her lips. “Who’s Dr. Tysgan?”
Meeting
“Dr. Tysgan was—is the person who extracted the infobots from me,” Nadani said. “I still don’t know why he wanted to do it but maybe it was because he’s merged with an AI like I am with Adan.”
“So now he needs your help,” Trisha said. She didn’t understand the situation Nadani went through, but she had a decent grasp on it. Nadani had important infobots in her system so delicate only few laboratories could extract them around a year ago. This must be where it happened, and Dr. Tysgan the one to perform the extraction.
“I suppose so, yeah,” Nadani said, nodding her head. “Adan says we should help them.”
“What do you think?” Trisha asked. Even though Nadani had an immeasurably smart AI merged with her she still had opinions of her own. Trisha wondered if it ever got confusing keeping the two of them apart; she had no idea how such a symbiosis worked.
“I don’t know,” Nadani said. Trisha took a breath to say something, but Nadani continued before she could. “If Dr. Tysgan is in trouble with CAAI then he could bring trouble to us.”
“Not helping could do the same thing,” Trisha said. “They might force him to give your name too.”
“Ah, yeah, that’s possible,” Nadani said. “What do you think, Trish?”
“I think going to see what he wants is probably the best idea,” Trisha said, twirling more spaghetti onto her fork and eating it.
“We do owe him, really. He gave me two copies of the data and that’s how we’ve been able to make money with the deals we make,” Nadani mused aloud. Trisha didn’t interrupt her train of thought. “Adan says with the pressure on labs, CAAI is probably the issue. It doesn’t want Dr. Tysgan or Park—his AI—to come to harm. I’d rather not either. He was a strange man, but I liked him.”
“When is the meeting scheduled to take place?” Trisha asked. Having one more thing to do, particularly if it dealt with CAAI, did not please her, but the thought of someone being killed for merging with AI sickened her.
“Twenty minutes from now,” Nadani said through a partially full mouth.
“Good, so we can finish eating if it isn’t too far,” Trisha replied, holding in a sigh.
“Yeah, it’ll be about ten minutes to get there via taxi,” Nadani said, gesturing with her fork.
The rest of the meal Trisha ate in silence. She could tell Adan and Nadani were talking occasionally from Nadani’s body language—Nadani needed to get better at that. Perhaps she didn’t know what she did but when she and Adan were involved in a deep conversation Nadani would pause what she was doing and unfocus her eyes.
After they finished eating, they walked to the transit hub in the center of the plaza and got into a taxi. Nadani gave it the location of the meeting point and the driverless vehicle took off into traffic, gliding smoothly above the road.
Trisha grew increasingly nervous as they neared their destination.
Was I right in thinking this was a good idea? she asked herself. CAAI could have already gotten to Dr. Tysgan and it might be a trap.
No, she mustn’t think like that. What happened, happened. She had every confidence in Nadani and Adan to see a trap before it sprung, particularly Adan as it had the habit of hacking into local security grids wherever they went.
They arrived at their destination and stepped out of the taxi. It slid its doors shut and eased itself back into traffic as soon as they were clear. The location was another park, but this one much smaller and less exuberant than the other. Trisha looked around and saw nobody else.
“I guess we’re early,” Trisha said as they headed toward the only bench in the park.
“He’ll be here,” Nadani said confidently.
“Or he is here, yes?” A man’s voice said near the bench. Part of the light next to the bench wavered like heat waves coming from desert sands and a diminutive man shimmered into view. Nea
rly bald, the short man—shorter than Nadani even—stepped to the front of the bench and sat down. He took his large, thick glasses from the top of his head and placed them in front of his eyes.
“Dr. Tysgan,” Nadani said—she didn’t even sound surprised. “How is Park?”
“Park is fine, fine—yes, communicating with yours already,” Dr. Tysgan said, waving his hand. “Now who is this girl with her ident set to private, hmm? I expected only the Commander.”
“I’m Trisha Nakamara,” Trisha said after Nadani kept silent for a beat. “I’m, uh, Nadani’s business partner. And girlfriend,” she hesitated before adding the last.
“Park complains you do not have an Assistance Interface,” Dr. Tysgan said. An Assistance Interface was like a dumb version of Adan. Most people had those implanted presently for the ease of having thought controlled Exanet access and other features.
“I use a Ruby Display,” Trisha replied. Her RD fit on her wrist and projected holograms instead of mental images and reacted to voice commands only.
“What, RD? Surprised to find one working still,” Dr. Tysgan said, chortling. “I joke, sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Trisha said. She was used to getting guff about her RD. Truthfully, she considered updating to something more modern soon.
“Adan is eager to find out what’s urgent,” Nadani said. “Does it involve the data from our last visit?”
“Oh, no, not that!” Dr. Tysgan shook his head. “I only ask for passage off-world.”
“Passage? You could get that from dozens of other pilots,” Nadani said.
“True, but trustworthy one was best,” Dr. Tysgan said.
“How did you know we were here?” Trisha asked with slow curiosity. “Did you have something watching for us on the planet ident scanner?”
“That’s a good question,” Nadani said.
If he knows we’re here, then it would be easy for anyone to know we’re here if they were looking for us, Trisha thought.
“Nothing so covert! No, I chanced to see Commander Jagi enter an establishment—alone—and then spent time debating on whether to send message or not,” he said.
“Ah,” Trisha said and nodded her head. That explained it well enough. They discussed giving a hologrambler to Nadani as well but decided two people having one would look too coincidental.