‘Just getting a little air, love.’ He went to her at the top of the stairs and gathered her into his arms. She nestled there, reaching up to stroke his face, whispering secret words into his ears, making his heart thunder and his arms tighten around her as though he would never let her go. As he picked her up to carry her downstairs, she turned to look out at the line of Presences, jagged against the stars.
‘You were looking at those things. I hate them, Tasmin. I do.’
It was the first time she had ever said she hated the Presences, and his sudden burst of compassionate understanding amazed him. They made love again, tenderly, and afterward he cuddled her until she went back to sleep, still murmuring about the concert.
‘He really is your brother? He’ll really give us tickets?’
‘I’m sure he will.’
In the morning, Tasmin wondered whether Lim might indeed make some seats available as Tasmin had promised. To be on the safe side, he bought a pair, finding himself both astonished and angry at a price so high as to be almost indecent.
The streets of Splash One were swarming with lunch-seekers and construction workers, military types, and bands of belligerent Crystallites, to say nothing of the chains of bewildered pilgrims, each intent on his or her own needs, and none of them making way for anyone else. Gretl Mechas fought her way grimly through the crowds, wondering what in the name of good sense had made her decide to come down to Splash One and make the payment on her loan in person. She could have sent a credit chit down from the priory in Northwest City by messenger, by comfax, by passenger bus – why had she decided to do it herself?
‘Fear,’ a remembered voice intoned in answer. ‘Debt is a terrible thing, Gretl. Never get into debt.’ It was her father’s voice, preserved in memory for Gretl’s lifetime.
‘Easy for you to say,’ she snarled. Easy for anyone to say. Hard to accomplish, however, when your only sister sent an emergency message from Heron’s World telling you that she’d lost an arm in an accident and couldn’t pay for her own regeneration. In advance, of course. No one did regeneration anymore unless they were paid in advance. And equally, of course, if you needed regeneration, no one would lend you any money either, except on extortionate terms that sometimes led to involuntary servitude. The stupid little twit hadn’t thought she’d need regeneration insurance. Naturally not, when she had Gretl to call on.
‘Shit,’ she said feelingly, finding her way through the bruising crowds to the door of the BDL building, ignoring the looks that followed her. People had been looking at Gretl since she was five, men particularly. Perhaps it was her skin, like dark, tawny ivory. Perhaps it was her hair, a mahogany wealth that seemed to have a life of its own. Perhaps it was figure, or face, or merely some expression of lively unquenchable interest in those wide, dark eyes. But men always looked. Gretl didn’t look back, however. Her heart was with a certain man back on Heron’s World, where she’d be, too, as soon as this contract was over.
‘What was that name again?’ the credit office clerk asked, mystified. ‘Here, let me see your code book.’
Gretl handed it over. One got used to this on Jubal. It cost so much to bring in manufactured materials that everything on Jubal was used past the point of no return. Nothing ever worked quite right….
‘It’s been paid,’ the clerk said with a look of knowing complicity.
‘Paid?’ she blurted in astonishment, only half hearing the clerk. ‘What do you mean, paid?’
‘Your loan has been paid in full,’ the clerk said, glancing suspiciously from under her eyelashes. ‘You didn’t know?’
‘I sure as hell didn’t. Who paid it?’
The clerk fumbled with the keys, frowning, then shaking her head.
‘Well?’
‘Justin,’ the clerk whispered.
‘Who?’
‘Oh, come on, lady.’ The whisper was angry.
‘I asked who that was. For God’s sake, girl, tell me. I’ve only been on this planet for a few months, and I haven’t any idea …’
The clerk nodded, a tiny nod, upward and to the right. Gretl looked up. Nothing there but the glass-enclosed offices of the Brou Distribution Ltd., or BDL, hierarchy. In one of them, a curtain quivered. ‘Him,’ whispered the clerk, suddenly quite pale. ‘Harward Justin.’
‘The Planetary Manager?’ Gretl fell silent, full of a sick uneasiness. She had met him. When she was here to arrange the loan, and only for a moment in passing. He had stopped at the desk where she was waiting, introduced himself, asked her to have lunch with him. She had refused.
A man with no neck, she recalled. Greasy rolls of fat from his jaw to his shoulders. Eyes that looked like half frozen slush, peering at her between puffy lids. A drooping, sensual mouth. Wet, she remembered. He had licked his lips continually.
Abruptly she asked, ‘Do you have an envelope?’
The clerk gave her a curious glance as she passed one over. Gretl inserted the payment she had been about to make, scribbled a few words on the outside, then handed it to the clerk.
‘I am not interested in other people paying my debts,’ she said. ‘I’ll repay my loan on the terms I specified. See that Mr. Justin gets this.’
She turned and strode away, the inner queasiness giving way to amazement and then anger. Wait until Don Furz heard about this! Unbelievable! The gall of the man!
She had almost reached the door when the hand fell on her shoulder.
He was a tall man, an expressionless man, an uninterested man. He did not look at her as other men usually looked at her. It was almost as though he did not see her as a person at all. He said very little, but he did not release her as he said it.
‘My name is Spider Geroan. I work for Harward Justin, and he’d like to see
