They hadn't been able to make any sense of Draco's rant: but what could you expect from a basketcase who had really killed thousands of real people, by remote control. And he knew it, and he'd been rewarded by big jolts of pleasure, and all before he was fifteen years old.
Grace put her arm around Orlando's shoulders, and they drank deep of the beauty out there, the undiscovered country. As much as they pretended they had come to space to make their fortunes, they had their own craziness.
'The sad thing is that we're no nearer,' said Grace, softly.
'We can't ever get there. Deep Space destroys people.'
'Deep Space is like living in a fucking underground carpark with rotten food. And non-local transit is going to be like - '
'Getting on the Eurostar at Waterloo, and getting off in Adelaide.'
'Only quicker, and some other constellations, instead of the Southern Cross.'
'It's not even real.' sighed Orlando. 'That. It's a TV picture.'
'It's sort of real. Nitrogen is green, oxygen is blue. The spectral colors mean something. If we were there, our minds would see what we see now.'
'You sound like Jack Solo. Let's go back to the shack, and watch a movie.'
They tidied the wrecked cabin a little and ate a meager supper. They didn't fancy going back to the saloon, but luckily their emergency rations had not been touched. One of the sleeping-nets turned out to be in reasonable shape, once they'd lined it with their spare cabin rug. The Panhandle entertainment menu was extensive (as rich as the food was poor); and they'd tracked down a wonderful cache of black and whites, so pure in visual and sound quality they must have been mastered from original prints long lost on Earth. They put on Now, Voyager, and settled themselves, two exiled Scottish sparrows in a strange but cosy nest, a long, long way from the Clyde. Their windfall of information could wait. Sobered by their interview with the big boys, they were afraid it was a bust: stolen goods too hot to be salable.
'So it's come to this,' grumbled Orlando. 'We came all this way to huddle in an unheated hotel room, watching Bette Davis try to get laid.'
'That's extreme tourism for you. Never mind. We like Bette Davis.'
Bette emerged from her Ugly Duckling chrysalis and set off on the cruise that would change her life. Orlando wondered, mildly, 'What would anti-information be, Gracie? I've never heard of that before.'
'It would be more information, like, er, minus numbers are still - '
'Not like antimatter? Like, you'd explode if you touched it?'
'The robot hands didn't exp - Hey, we're not going to talk about it.' But immediately, with a shudder, she added, 'God, I'm scared. Draco talks like a serial killer. He talks like one of those notes that serial killers send to the police.'
'He is one. A bulk-buy, government-sponsored, Son of Sam.'
The movie projection shivered.
A tall, broad-shouldered figure wearing scanty combat gear materialized in front of the black and white picture. It was Sara Komensky, Draco's virtual babe.
The aliens stared in horrified amazement. The bot wrapped her arms over her bazookas of breasts, bizarrely like a real live young woman mortified by the excess.
'Hey,' she said. 'Er, Draco doesn't know I'm here.'
The aliens nodded. 'Right,' croaked Orlando. 'Of course.'
The warrior girl appeared to look around, her little mouth an Oh! of surprise. Draco's quarters were in First Class, and probably a bit smarter.
'We've had burglars,' Grace explained. 'Usually it's better than this.'
'It's cool,' said the bot. She shrugged. 'I've seen worse bunkers. I've been with Drac a while you know. We… we've been in some tough spots. Jungles, bombed out cities, volcanos, icefields of Uzbekistan, polluted oil platforms, all kindsa shit.'
'Sure you have.'
Sara strode up and down, which didn't take her long, and turned to them again, her strong hands clasped on her bandoliers, the muscles in her forearms tight. 'You got to help me. You see… Drac… He's not good at the joined-up thinking. It's the combat drugs, they wrecked his brain. He doesn't get that this is our last chance. He took the Lottery option because it was imprinted on him. He'll take a risk on some lousy half-viable coordinates and kill himself; that's what's meant to happen. The government don't terminate toy-soldiers direct; it wouldn't look good. They just make shit-ass sure people like Drac don't survive long in the real.'
'That's rough,' said Orlando. 'I'm sure he's a truly good person, deep down. But what can we do? We haven't any viable numbers. Y-you can check.'
'He's not a good person,' said the bot. 'But if he goes, I go too.'
'Huh?'
Sara's little pearly teeth caught her sweet, pouting underlip, 'Listen, assholes, you come from the same place I come from. Are you made of information, or what? Don't you have anyone switching you on or off? Me, I live in the chinks, same as you. Are you so fucking free?' Her huge blue eyes snapped with frustration. 'Okay, okay, I get that you can't trust me. But you two know something about the Fulcrum.'
'We don't know anything,' protested Grace, hurriedly.
The big babyblues narrowed as far as the graphic algorithm would allow. 'Yeah, but you do. I'm with the Panhandle sys-op. We're like that.' The bot released her bandoliers, and hooked her two index fingers. 'I can't get inside your heads but I know you've been where the sys-op can't go. All it would take would be one drop of that silver jizm. One nugget of the good stuff, he'd be set for life, and you'd never have to be looking over your shoulders. I haven't told him, I swear. This is between you and me. Now I gotta get back. Think about it, is all I ask. We'll talk again.' She vanished.
Orlando and Grace shot out of the net, scrabbled in their belongings for the spy-gone (a gadget that had often been useful on extreme tourism trips) and bounced around the room wildly, searching cornices, crevices, the toilet, anywhere. They found nothing. It was uncanny, how could Draco be using his bot like that, wireless, from another deck, without a receiver in here? Unnoticed, the movie had continued to play. 'The projector!' howled Orlando. They flew to disable the entertainment center, dumped it outside in the corridor; switched off the lights and the doorlock for good measure. Switching off the air and gravity would not, they decided, improve the situation: even if they knew how. Finally they collapsed on the floor. Grace dragged their grave-goods whisky flask out of the litter.
'What can we do?'
'We are fucked,' gabbled Orlando, grabbing the precious reserve of Highland Park from her and knocking it back. 'We are fucked to all shit! We have the stolen suitcase full of cocaine, the one that belongs to the Mob.'
'No it doesn't! It belongs to us!'
'N-no it doesn't! Suitcases full of cocaine, dollar bills, anti-information, they always belong to the Mob. And they're onto us. There's nothing we can do except dump the goods in a shallow grave and run for our fucking lives.'
'But we can't run. We can't get off here until the Slingshot.'
'We c-could try and gone-in-sixty one of the Deep Spacers' asteroid hoppers?'
'Except we don't know how, and if we did, they aren't equipped to get back to Earth. We'd just die more slowly.'
The Panhandle was not supplied with lifeboats. Most of the prospectors and all of the support staff were totally dependent on the Slingshot, which was not due for three months. There had to be a lifepod for the Supercargo, keyed to his identity… but forget it. That would be a single ticket. Grace saw a faint hope. 'Maybe… Maybe Draco doesn't know? Maybe the bot was telling the truth?'
'Get a grip. That was an interactive videogram, Gracie. That was Draco we were talking to, for fuck's sake! What did you think?'
'Are you sure? I hear you, but I don't know, it just didn't-'
Someone knocked on the door. They went dead still, forgot to breathe, and stared at each other. Grace got up, quietly, and keyed the lights.
'Come in,' said Orlando.
The door opened, and Lakey the fat lady appeared, in her power chair.
