give him a winning ticket. It was the simplest way to give them a sizable lump of untraceable local funds without creating a public profile, Bichel had said smugly.
An elbow in the ribs from Shinoda brought him back to reality.
“The ticket, husband. Give the man the ticket,” she whispered, a paragon of the wifely deference so prized by Hammer men.
“Oh, yes. Hang on.” Michael fumbled in a pocket. “Here it is.”
The clerk checked the ticket painstakingly before running it under a scanner. After a short pause, he nodded.
“It’s for 250,000 k-dollars,” he said, “and no publicity.” The clerk, elevating bored disinterest to an art form, did not even ask for Michael’s identity card before handing over an anonymous stored value card loaded with their winnings. Michael held the small plastic card tightly and marveled at the inconsistency of it all. On the one hand, the Hammer was the most tightly controlled society in human history. On the other hand, they still used anonymous stored value cards; Bichel had told him there was no limit to the amount they could carry. Michael suspected he knew why. Corruption on the massive scale that infected Hammer society could flourish only if huge amounts of money could move untraced, hence the anonymous stored value card clamped in his hand.
Five minutes later, his confidence rising by the minute, Michael and Shinoda were on their way to get exit visas for Scobie’s World from the downtown DocSec visa office. That, too, happened without any fuss. The visa clerk, openly impressed by their lottery win and surprisingly unresentful, downloaded the visas they needed into their identity cards in a fraction of the time Bichel had warned it might take. They made two more stops-to buy tickets on the first starliner for Scobie’s World and to find new clothes-before they were finally on their way to McNair spaceport, a pair of exuberant, blow-it-all lottery winners.
For Michael, the tension was finally easing. He had one last DocSec check to get through, and then he would be off this goddamned planet, never to return, he hoped. No, that was not right; he would happily come back as long as he was piloting a FedWorld assault lander. His newfound belief in Bichel’s technical team was growing to a point where he was beginning to enjoy the whole business even though the suicide pill he had asked for-which, somewhat to his surprise, he had been given-was a constant reminder not to get too confident.
Things that could go wrong often did.
Not this time.
With mounting excitement, Michael, his hand tightly locked in Shinoda’s, stood at the floor-to-ceiling plate of armored plasglass that formed an entire wall of the first-class lounge. He was watching something he had not dared dream about: the planet Commitment receding slowly away from them as the liner
“Watch it, sailor,” she whispered into his ear as he swung her around. “We may be Mr. and Mrs. Benoit to those shitsucking Hammers, but. .”
Michael laughed out loud as he put her down. “Sorry,” he whispered back. “It’s been a tough few months.”
“I know,” Shinoda said.
Afterward, Michael realized that he should not have been surprised at what had happened. Nature had its own ways of helping broken minds mend. Falling into bed with Marine Shinoda a day out from Commitment, overwhelmed by a wave of physical desire that he was not going to argue with, was probably one of them.
Try as hard as he might, he did not feel the slightest bit guilty at betraying the promises he had made to Anna.
That was then. This was now. Against all the odds, he was alive. He was battered, he was bruised, he had injuries he would carry for the rest of his life, but he was alive.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We have docked, and you may now disembark. We trust you had a good trip. We look forward to seeing you all again on board soon.”
Not a chance, pal, Michael said to himself, not a chance in hell.
He and Shinoda hung back. Around them, excited Hammers, voices raised at the prospect of shaking off the petty repressions inflicted on them back home, poured off the
Michael shivered at the sight of the hated black uniform. He knew as well as anyone that it took a delicate balancing act to maintain Scobie’s independence. On the one hand, Scobie’s World tried extremely hard not to upset the Hammer. On the other hand, it tried equally hard not to be classed as a Hammer vassal system with all the economic restrictions that would bring. But in the end, most of what Scobie’s World did was on the Hammer’s terms, and one of those terms was ceding de facto control to DocSec over everyone arriving on or leaving the place. That was not surprising. The Hammer was well aware that many of its citizens would never return home given the chance.
The line began to shrink. The time had come for Mr. and Mrs. Benoit to disappear.
Michael and Shinoda, waved through immigration without incident, took the first shuttle heading dirtside for the capital of Scobie’s World, New Dublin. Once they had passed through the spaceport, a mobibot took them into town and dropped them off right in the heart of the city. New Dublin’s mixture of the garish and the shabby was expertly tailored to the Hammer tourists who infested every souvenir shop, every wedding chapel-Doctrine of Kraa ceremonies a speciality-every bar, every casino, every strip club, every massage parlor, and every brothel. Michael shook his head in disbelief. How anyone with half a brain could enjoy a shithole like New Dublin was beyond him. He would be glad to get off-planet, and the sooner the better, even if it meant the end of his unplanned relationship with Marine Shinoda.
It took two more mobibots before Michael started to feel safe. “What do you think?” he asked.
Shinoda’s head had not stopped moving from the moment they had left the
“Well,” she said, “I think it’s safe to say that I don’t think anyone is even the slightest bit interested in two Hammer tourists wandering around this back-blocks shithole.”
Shinoda grinned as Michael folded her into a fierce bear hug.
“God, I hope so,” he whispered into her ear.
Shinoda laughed. “Put me down, sailor. Come on. We’ve got work to do. This way.”
Michael followed Shinoda past endless giant holovid screens pulsing with light and color. He shook his head. From what he could see, nothing was off-limits. If it could be bought, someone on Scobie’s World would sell it to you. Shinoda made a quick final check as they turned down a narrow street. Michael winced as he laid eyes on their final destination. Crass did not even begin to describe it. Twenty meters from the corner was the Leprechaun’s Retreat Irish Bar and Restaurant, its exterior festooned with enough virulently green shamrocks and gold harps to leave even the dumbest Hammer in no doubt that this place was a genuine Irish bar.
Michael and Shinoda plunged inside, the noise deafening as a small band struggled to be heard over the determined efforts of hundreds of Hammers to have a good time, an exercise that largely appeared to mean getting blind drunk in the shortest possible time. There, toward the back, was what they had come so far to find: a small, disheveled, and extremely drunk Hammer doing a bad job of singing along with the band.
Michael flicked a glance at Shinoda. She nodded. The logo on the T-shirt-an obscene cartoon of a pig doing something unspeakable with a large cucumber-identified him as the man who would give them the new identities and clothes they needed to get off-planet.
Twenty minutes later, Michael and Shinoda were in a mobibot on their way back to the spaceport.
Michael sat silently, savoring the wonderful feeling of connectedness that enveloped him as he let his neuronics hook into the net. He had been out of touch for a long time, and even if he could not talk to the AI-
