I leaned back on my very expensive wormcloth-upholstered Finn Kubler sofa, opened my overlay, and routed a comm request to Tor-Betree spaceport.
Unfortunately, Ana-Zhi didn’t accept my call.
I know she received the request; I got a receipt, but for whatever reason she didn’t want to talk. So I was reduced to leaving a message.
“Ana-Zhi, we have a lot to talk about. Please call me as soon as possible. Thanks.”
I honestly didn’t know if she’d call back or not. If this whole thing was in my imagination, she’d have no idea who I was—other than recognizing my name. But if my memories were true, then there was a chance that Ana-Zhi might remember as well.
I had one more call to make, but it would be a lot tougher to find Chiraine Portelle. All I knew about her—pre-expedition—was that she was working for the Shima and was located less than a day away from Tor-Betree.
My Nimbus had a ton of messages on it, transferred from my overlay, but none were from Ana-Zhi, so I ignored them all and just used the smartscreen to perform some rough travel calculations. In not too much time at all I came up with three possibilities: Savaust Base on Cernosis, Ganagara, or Ylpau Station. I turned Cece loose and let the AI work on locating Chiraine. While it did its thing, I decided to take a walk.
My domus stood on the far western edge of New Torino, in the exclusive Loxton Wood district. At the end of my street stretched the kilometer-long Barrow Green park. Its wide boulevard lined with massive ancient ceaon trees and maze-like gardens made it my go-to place when I wanted to clear my mind.
One of my favorite destinations within Barrow Green was the Loop, a manmade stream that ran in a big circle a hundred fifty meters around. It had a walking path around its outer edge with footbridges over the stream that led to the flower gardens that the stream encircled.
Flowers bloomed for most of the year here, and the city’s botanists had selected genera that were especially fragrant. Today, the warm breeze served up scents of jasmine and frangipani.
Before I had even made it a quarter way around the Loop, I decided to call my buddy Kane. He was blessed with a remarkable constitution and was usually the last one of us to succumb to the effects of drink or drugs. If anyone knew what had happened last night at my party, it would be Kane.
When his face appeared on my overlay, I smiled at him. “What’s up, brother?” I asked.
“Oh man, the dead walks.” He grinned at me. “I can’t believe you’re not in a coma right now. Did Mr. Jeris perform a liver transplant when you got home last night?”
I laughed.
“Did you even get home last night?” Kane asked.
“Well, that’s why I’m calling. It seems that I misplaced some of my brain cells between last night and this morning.”
“Not a surprise.”
“And I was wondering if you could help me out with a little play-by-play.”
“Oh boy. That could take some time. What do you remember?”
“Nothing,” I said.
It wasn’t exactly true. I remembered the Stones concert, the afterparty, and stumbling home with two women, Lir and her new friend Preity Kapoor. After that, it got a bit hazy, but I’m pretty sure that the girls carried on without me once I finally passed out. However, I wanted to hear what Kane remembered.
Once he finished teasing me, Kane related the tale of my night of debauchery at the Golden Chimera, a floating casino on the east side of the city. Apparently, I hit the blackjack tables pretty hard (after trying to steal the casino’s mascot, a four-meter-long qymbr lizard). The good news was that I won big. The bad news was that I then lost big. And the worst news was that I tried to pimp Lir out to Trey Ackerman to settle my debt.
“No way.” That didn’t sound like something I would do—even if I was wasted out of my mind.
“You totally did,” he cackled.
“How did she take it?”
“How the fuck do you think she took it?”
I didn’t want to even imagine that. Lirala Windsing had the quickest temper of anyone I knew, and the most easily-wounded pride. On her best days, if she imagined that I wasn’t respecting her—even for a second—she’d unleash an unholy tirade upon me. And she wouldn’t just use words as her weapons. Rage and fury would fuel physical attacks so vicious, she would put the most brutal street fighters of Balenol to shame.
Last year, during a particularly bad argument, she nearly took out my left eye with her elegantly-painted, but long and knife-sharp fingernails. I spent ninety-six hours in critical care while the best doctors Beck Salvage could buy worked nonstop to prevent me from being permanently disfigured.
Kane’s revelation made me unconsciously check to see if all my extremities were still intact—especially those between my legs.
But I had no memory of the night at the casino. In fact, the last time I remembered being at the Chimera was for Delany Hartwell’s going away party. But that was a month ago.
“So what happened?” I asked Kane.
“You really don’t remember anything?”
“I remember the concert, but nothing afterwards.”
“It’s a little foggy for me too,” Kane said. “We were all pretty messed up. Lirala stormed out. She might have been with the new girl from Amravadi—”
“Preity?”
“I thought her name was Pretty.”
“That’s just what Lir calls her,” I said.
“So you do remember something.”
“Yeah, I guess I do. I remember that. Anyway, go on.”
“That’s basically it. They kicked us out when you and Ack started whaling on each other and busting up tables.”
“What?”
“Yeah, didn’t I mention the fight?”
“No.”
“It
