“I know what he is. He cuts a swath through the girlies. Pulls like a magnet. Gets at you, huh!”
She gave Zasper a look. None of his business, dirty old man. Except he was the pa hers hadn’t been, the brother hers hadn’t been, somebody who listened. “Yeah,” she admitted. “Sort of.”
“So, tell him. You’ll go, but keep it business because sex disrupts your efficiency. Drops your weapon scores. Makes you miss easy targets.”
Damn him, he was laughing at her. “It does not!” she blurted. “You know that’s not it!”
Now he really was laughing. “Fringe! What the hell you want me to say?”
She shook her head, half amused, half tearful. “I don’t know, Zasper. Maybe I’m afraid I’ll be homesick.” Her clean bare rooms. Her things. Comfort. Safety. A place where she could lock the door against the clamoring world.
“You going?” he asked her.
“Prob’ly,” she admitted.
“Well then. Something I want to tell you about.” He leaned forward, his lips within inches of her ear, and told the story of his last interview with Boarmus, concluding, “Danivon say anything about those petition things?”
“Not to me, he didn’t.”
“Well, my bet is Boarmus told him. Just figured you ought to know. Dragons probably aren’t all he’s after.”
She thought about it, but it made no sense. “Who’s petitioning who?”
Zasper shrugged. “You know what I know. R.S.V.P. Noplace. That’s all I know.”
She decided to change the subject. “The Bloom says they’ve improved the Finalizer seven-aught-nine.”
He grunted. “That’s his opinion. It’s lighter, faster, and you can hit what you aim it at maybe one time in ten if you’re real careful. I borrowed one from Gaunt’s man, just to test-fire it. Fool thing’s all over the place. Real good weapon for nipping, Fringe.”
Nipping, the more-or-less accidental slaughter of Non-Involved Persons, wasn’t considered professional when done by Enforcers, though Trashers did it all the time. Fringe said disapprovingly, “Then the Bloom shouldn’t have said it was improved!”
The Bloom, as though invoked by the mention of his name, appeared at tableside, still bouncing up and down. “Hey, lady love, this old fart bothering you?”
She shook her head, trying to grin. “No more’n usual, Bloom.”
“If he is, I’ll call him out. Two shots, fifty paces. Make him pay, worthless old chaffer.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard about you and fifty paces,” rumbled Zasper. “You get up-sun of the guy, and before he gets a shot, you zoom your legs and let him have it out of the glare. You shoot dirty.”
“Dirty takes the pot! Which is better’n you’ve been doing,” Bloom said severely.
While Zasper had never admitted to it, Fringe assumed that since his retirement, Zasper played for Bloom’s. Zasper’s response seemed to confirm that.
“Chaffer spit, yes. Got to recoup,” he said, struggling to his feet. “Listen, girl. I’ll finish this game sooner or later. Prob’ly sooner, since I’ve already shot my credit.” He cast a sidelong glance at the Bloom. “I’ll buy you dinner. We’ll talk about it.”
“That’s all right, Zasper,” she said. “I knew what I was going to do before I came down here, that is, if you didn’t say I was crazy. When Enforcers swear to protect diversity and humanity, they can’t turn down the protecting when it comes along, I guess. And only a fool would turn down a chance at twice Council standard!”
“Twice Council standard!” said Bloom reverently. “Now there’s a dream.”
“Maybe more than a dream,” she said. “Maybe more than, Bloom.” She left them, going back down the stairs and through the crowd where the dinks still swarmed. At least they’d left their genitals home, or were carrying them in closed boxes. Fringe had never gotten used to penises zipping around on their own hovers, rubbing up against anything that felt good. Female parts were even worse, cozying up to the nearest hands. She looked around for dink modulator units and found three of them over by a gambling table with three sets of hands and one pair of eyes, playing Four Ladies.
A dink nose sniffed intimately at her as she went by, and she slapped it without thinking. From across the room, a dink voice box screeched, “Violence! Violence!”
“Kill the damn thing,” a bystander urged her with barely controlled belligerence. “Kill it, Enforcer.”
“Open borders,” screamed the voice box in a hysterical soprano. “Open borders.”
Fringe shrugged an apology. The voice was right. Enarae had open borders. It welcomed tourism. Even dinks, who, thank the ’Toter, seldom showed up anywhere but in the Swale.
A voice spoke in her ear, “What’s the matter, killer? You don’t like dinks?” Another dink voice box, this one a sneery baritone, with an eye on top and an ear at one side. A conversation module, no less.
“No,” she said. “I don’t like dink noses sniffing my crotch. I don’t like dink eyes looking down my neck, or at my cards when I’ve got a bet down. I don’t like dink hands grabbing anything they can grab or dink pricks shoving up against me. Open borders means open both ways, box! You don’t like my not liking, then the border’s open to get out.”
“Now, now,” said Bloom, appearing at eye level. “Now, now, bad Fringe! Bad box! Naughty. Play nice or Bloom will insist upon assembly.” He waved at the sign over the bar, which read, “Bloom reserves the right to refuse service to globs and disassembled entities.”
Fringe muttered an apology, while the voice growled something threatening. Ignoring the sulky mutter, she went out into the street. Empty, as always, except for a meat-tart vendor who’d parked his smoky cart fifty paces away at the bottom of the stairs and was stirring his kettle of hot fat with a long slotted spoon. The smells of woodsmoke and frying meat filled the street. Fringe swallowed, suddenly ravenous.
She had juice dripping from her chin and her hands full of hot food when Bloom’s door crashed open and one of the dinks came out, evidently hastily assembled, though all
