Rita gestured us into motion and led us towards a steel fire door.
She hadn’t stopped talking. “…which is why I can’t go with you. But there’s no need…since you’ll be inside Surface Port 12 and quite close to your gate. Well, here we are.”
She turned. Unlike robots designed for frequent interaction with human beings, Rita had been given a frozen manikin-type face. It was locked in a perpetual smile. Her voice came from a speaker located on the front surface of her plastic throat. “It’s been nice to spend some time with you. Some people say that I talk too much. I hope it didn’t bother you.”
I suppose it’s stupid to worry about a machine’s feelings, especially when everyone agrees that they don’t have any, but I wanted Rita to know that we appreciated her help. I held out my hand. She took it. “No, Rita. It didn’t bother us at all. Thanks for getting us here safely. Take care of yourself.”
“I will, Mr. Maxon. Good-bye, Ms. Casad. Have a safe journey.”
Sasha sent one of her “you are a hopeless idiot” looks in my direction and said, “Thanks.”
Rita, her face wooden as always, nodded.
We opened the door and stepped outside. There was a loud click as it closed behind us. So much for that line of retreat.
A moon flight had landed, and passengers were streaming towards the baggage area. They were contract workers for the most part, miners with dilated eyes, technicians who ate too much, and pilots who had pushed one load too many. They walked like ancient helmet divers, forcing themselves forward under the weight of Earth- normal gravity, sweat beading their foreheads.
I nodded to Sasha and we stepped out into the flow. We, like the other passengers headed for Gate 426, struggled against the current like fish swimming upstream. Assuming there was a river in which fish still swam, that is. I stopped below a bank of monitors. “We’re looking for FENA Air Flight 124.”
“There it is,” Sasha replied, pointing upwards. “Flight 124, Gate 426.”
“Good.”
I caught a flash of green from the corner of my eye, turned, and saw a man back into the crowd: the same man who had followed me to the checkpoint and tried to speak with me through the mesh. Who the hell was he, anyway? What did he want? And how had he found us with such ease? I took Sasha’s elbow. “Come on. We’ve got company.”
“Who? Where?”
“Over towards the right. The little guy. In the green sports coat.”
“What about him?”
“He’s a greenie, or I think he is. He was part of the crowd that chased pretty boy into the Trans-Solar checkpoint.”
“A greenie in a green sports coat?”
The connection had escaped me. I pretended it hadn’t.
“Yeah. Weird, huh?”
“It sure is. Let’s shoot him and stash the body.”
I frowned. “Getting a little bloodthirsty, aren’t we?”
She shook her head impatiently. “I didn’t say kill him, I said shoot him, as in trank him.”
“Oh,” I said stupidly. “That’s different. Let’s do it.”
We looked, but the man was gone. Sasha frowned. “Assuming it was the same man, and assuming he’s interested, how did he know when and where to look?”
I shrugged. “Beats me. I made the reservations under phony names.”
Her eyes locked with mine. “I had the expense money. Until the corpies took it, that is. How did you pay?”
“I transferred some funds from my bank account.”
“Smart,” she said sarcastically. “Real god-damned smart. Phony names don’t mean shit when you give them an account number. The greenies have sympathizers everywhere. One of them pulled a record of your transactions, gave the information to the guy in the green sports coat, and bingo, he was waiting for us to show.”
Sasha didn’t point out that Trans-Solar could have done the same thing and probably had. She didn’t need to. Even I could figure that out. The shame was familiar by now. Like a relative you don’t like but can’t get rid of because they’re part of you. But something good came of it as well, a rare moment of blue sky when my brain actually functioned.
“This is more than a standard snatch, isn’t it? Why are the greenies after you, anyway? And what’s the deal with Trans-Solar?”
Sasha’s eyes clouded over and her head turned away. Her voice was flat and unconvincing. “You know as much about it as I do. My mother might be able to tell us, but we’ll have to reach her first.”
I tried to see through the words to the truth beyond, but the patch of blue sky had disappeared. My hands made fists at my sides. “Have it your way, Sasha, but remember, you’re the one they’re after. 0011100100111.”
Her eyes came back to mine. They were softer now, like those of a mother with her child. “You did the best you could. What’s done is done. We’ll lose them on the habitat. Come on.”
We made our way down the corridor. The line in front of Gate 426 was relatively short and consisted of down- and-outers like ourselves. There were some spacers, a tech type or two, and a couple of beat-up androids. One had a faulty servo and whined as it moved.
We shuffled forward and stopped in front of the counter. I identified myself as Roger Doud and proved it by providing the account number I never should have given them in the first place.
The ticket agent was an android whose torso ended at the countertop. He had the solemn manner of an undertaker and an electronic speech impediment. “Your ffflight is on time. Please ssstep through the detector and wait to be called. Thanks fffor flying FENA Air.”
The detector looked like an over-sized free-standing door frame. Sasha stepped through and I followed. Buzzers buzzed, lights flashed, and a pair of lunchy-looking rent-a-cops lurched to attention. Neither was exactly athletic, but the woman was the more obese of the two. She used her nightstick as a pointer. “Stand over there. Spread your legs. Put your hands behind your head.”
I didn’t like her tone, but there was no point in making a scene. I obeyed. The man stepped up, blew garlic in my face, and passed a wand over my body. My first thought was the.38. But it was stashed in Floater Town, where Maureen had promised to clean it occasionally. And the Browning.9mm was not only legal, but made entirely of plastic, and therefore undetectable. No, the problem was my skull plate. The man stood on tiptoes to pass the wand over my head and grunted when it made a whining sound. “Take the hat off.”
I did as I was told.
The man looked at my head and nodded. “Put it back on.” He turned toward his partner. “No problem, Gert. This guy’s got enough metal in his head to build a Class A shuttle. Let him pass.”
The woman nodded, stared at my head as if it was the first one she’d ever seen, and allowed us to join the passengers in the holding area. It had been furnished with the same low, crouching furniture that graced the rest of the spaceport. The androids huddled together as if for mutual protection, and everyone else spread out. Sasha sighed. “So much for the disguise.”
I said, “Sorry about that,” but didn’t really mean it. That’s the great thing about being stupid. You worry less.
I took a look around and wondered how I felt the first time I headed into the Big Black. I’d been a good deal younger back then, nineteen according to the records, so it stood to reason that I’d been scared. Scared of zero-G boot camp, scared of the unknown, scared of dying. And I was still scared of dying, though I wasn’t sure why, since living was a major pain in the ass. Sasha’s voice brought me back. “Max?”
“Yeah?”
“They called our names.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
We followed the others through a door, down some stairs, and onto a loading dock. A man looked up from his portacomp as we approached. He was dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit with “FENA” stitched over the left breast pocket, a pair of ear protectors worn around the neck, a pair of black combat boots with pink laces. He gestured towards a cargo module and the autoloader that supported it. Both were snuggled up to the edge of the dock. “Your carriage awaits. I will call your names. Please enter your assigned tubes. Aarons, tube one. Axel, tube two.
