sugar-smile.
When they'd first encountered the molls, Orlando and Grace had thought they were real people, with strange habits and poor taste in body mods. Of course they were bots, insubstantial software projections. Strictly speaking, they were contraband, because you weren't supposed to use fx generators -or any kind of personal digital devices- on board the Panhandle. But nobody was going to make an issue of it with these two -certainly not Eddie Supercargo.
Jack Solo was a gray-haired, wiry little man, a veteran pilot of the spaceways, who must have fought the damage stubbornly and hard. He showed no signs of Deep Space mutilation, no prosthetic walking frame or deep- vein thrombosis amputations, and he still had normal vision. But then you looked into his eyes, and you knew he hadn't got off lightly. He habitually wore a data glove that had seen better days, and a tube-festooned, battered drysuit-pilot undress, that he sported as a badge of rank. Draco Fujima was something very different-a fleshy, soft- faced young man, with a squeeze-suit under his streamlined, expensive, rad-proof jumper. You could tell at once he hadn't been in space for long. Like Grace and Orlando he was just passing through. He was a time-expired UN remote-control peacekeeper, out of the military at sixteen; who had taken the free Lottery option as part of his severance pay.
This was one tourist the Spacers treated with extreme respect. Though crazy Jack might knife you over a menu choice, he probably counted his kills in single figures. Draco's lethal record was official and seriously off the scale.
No one messes with a playpen soldier.
The big boys stared, with radiant contempt. The aliens attempted to radiate the cynical, relaxed confidence that might get them through this alive.
'You went to see Eddie today,' said Jack.
'How d'you know that?' demanded Orlando.
Draco leaned forward. 'We have our ways. We don't like you, so we always know where you are. Why did you go to see Eddie?'
'Our bicycles,' explained Grace, grinning. 'They've been stolen. Do you wise guys happen to know anything about that heist?'
Orlando kicked her under the table: there's such a thing as being too relaxed.
Jack jumped halfway across the table, like a wild-eyed Jack-in-a-Box. 'Listen, cunts,' he snapped, the dataglove twitching. 'Fuck the bicycles, we don't like the relationship. You two and Eddie, we see it and we don't like it. You're going to tell us what the fuck's going on.'
'He likes us,' said Grace. 'Can we help that?'
'It's called empathy,' explained Orlando, getting braver. 'It might seem like psychic powers, but it's natural to us. You just don't have the wiring.'
Jack grabbed Orlando by the throat and flicked the wrist of his other, gloved hand so that a knife appeared there, a sleek slender blade, gleaming against Orlando's pale throat. Anni-mah whined, 'Oh please don't hurt him.' Jack kept his eyes fixed on Orlando and his grip on the jumper while he reached down to smack his bot around her virtual chops with the gloved hand that held the knife.
He made the smack look real, with practiced ease.
'Oh yes, oh, hit me big boy,' whimpered Anni-mah. 'Oh, harder, please-'
Draco's babe just stood there; she was the strong, silent type.
'Look,' said Grace, coolly, 'when you've finished giving yourself the handjob… you've got it all wrong. We made friends with Eddie by accident, it doesn't mean anything. We're just aliens abroad.'
'Shut up, cunt,' said Jack. 'You are not fucking aliens, that's just a story, and I'm talking to your boyfriend.'
Draco laughed. Jack slowly released Orlando, glaring all the time.
'Listen, fuckface,' said Orlando, straightening his jumper with dignity. 'We are aliens in relation to you, you pathetic old-fashioned machismo merchant, because you haven't a cat in hell's chance of understanding where we're coming from. Now do you get it? And by the way, I'm the cunt, thank you very much.'
Anyone in the bar who feared the sight of blood had sneaked out. The hardcore remained, riveted. It was strange, and not totally unpleasant, to be the object of so much attention. They felt as if getting senselessly bullied by Jack and Draco was some kind of initiation ceremony, Maybe now, at last, the tourists would be accepted.
Jack sat back. The knife had a handle bound in fine-grained blond leather, and the aliens knew the story about where this 'leather' had come from. He toyed with his weapon, smiling secretly, then brought the point down so that it sank, under gentle pressure, deep into the ceramic tabletop. The aliens thought not so much of their vulnerable flesh as of the thin shell of the Pan, made of the same stuff as the table, and the cold, greedy, airless dark that would rush in -
'You're not Spacers,' said Jack, calm and affable. 'You don't belong here.'
Draco tired of taking the back seat. 'In the center of the Knob,' he announced, 'there is a cell, guarded by fanatical killer AIs. What's in that cell is a cold brutal indictment of the inhumanities perpetrated around the globe by those who claim to be our leaders. We should be listening, we should be feeding on that pain, we should be turning the degraded, ripped and slathered flesh into kills, into respect, the respect that's due to the stand-up guys, good men who have protected humanity. We know, we know that we deserve better than this and YOU know where we can get it-'
'Don't listen to him,' Jack broke in. 'He knows fuck. The thing in that cell came from NGC 1999, a star-nursery in the constellation of Orion. Everyone knows that, but I'm the only one who knows it came for me. Orion has been sacred to all the world's ancient religions, for tens of thousands of years. Nobody knew why, until the space telescopes found out that the new stars in that Bok Globule are just one hundred thousand years old. Now do you get it, fuckface, those stars are the same age as homo sapiens. The thing in that cell is human consciousness, twisted back on itself through the improbability dimension. We keep it in chains, for our torment, but I know. I know, you see. Out there, fifteen hundred light years away, is the source of all thought, all science, and from thence, from that magic explosion of cosmic jizin, my God has come to find me, has come for me.'
The knife went in and out of the tabletop. Anni-mah whimpered, 'Don't hit me' or maybe, 'Please hit me,' but Jack's eyes were calm. The aliens realized, slightly awed, that the old space pilot was perfectly in control. This was his normal state of mind.
'Fifteen is five times three. It's written in the Great Pyramid.'
'I h-heard about that,' Grace nodded, eagerly. 'It's the nebula that looks like a thingy, and the ancient Egyptians believed it was, uh, that Orion was Osiris - '
'The Eygptians knew something, girlie. They knew the cosmos was created out of God's own, lonely lovejuice. But I'm the anointed, I'm the chosen one.'
'It's made of anti-information,' broke in Draco, deciding to up the ante. 'Does that satisfy you? Does that scare you enough? Why d'you think they keep it here, with scum like these deadbeats, where I don't belong? Why d'you think they lured me out here? They say I'm morally ambivalent, fucking shrinks, they'll say anything, you should try what I do next. They want me to feel bad, never get the good stuff, There's a conspiracy behind the conspiracy-'
'So you'll tell us,' said Jack. 'You'll tell us anything you find out.'
'From that limp-wrist, fudge-packing, desk-flying government pansy-' Orlando, Grace noticed, was nudging her in the ribs. She nodded fractionally, and they slid their chairs. The climax had safely passed; they could escape. 'Of course, of course we will. Er, we have to go now-' Anni-mah cringed and shivered. Draco's babe went on standing there.
The aliens took refuge on the observation deck, which was empty as usual. Real Deep Spacers had seen enough of this kind of view. They stood and gazed, holding onto the rail that saved them from vertigo, until the shaking had passed.
'I think it was just our turn,' said Orlando at last. 'They didn't know.'
'I hope you're right.'
Outside the great clear halfdome the glory of the Orion Nebula was spread before them, the jewel in the sword. They could easily locate the Trapezium, the four brilliant stars knit by a common gravity in whose embrace you would find that notorious Bok Gobule-the star-birthing gas cloud with a vague resemblance to a set of male human genitalia. Jack's conviction had some basis, though it was laced with delusion. There was indeed a persistent story, which the government had failed to suppress, that that particular star-nursery was the point of origin of the 'thing.'
