by SFnovelists
*** ***
They got separated at the spokeway lifts. Amaya squeezed into a waiting elevator, and then Ian, who was holding her hand-but Geoff and Kamal stood one layer too far back in the crowd when the warning lights went off.
"You'll miss the harvest-!" Ian said.
"We'll take the stairs!" Geoff shouted, as the doors closed. He and Kam headed off at a run. "Meet you in the Hub!"
Zekeston was a fat, spinning habitat wheel buried below the surface of the asteroid. The city's spin generated a gravity gradient, which ranged from barely a thousandth of a gee in the Hub to about three-quarters of Earth's gravity at the outermost level. The university was on that highest-gee bottom level. That meant that the first fifty levels of Geoff and Kam's travel to the Hub were a brutal climb up the dual stairway that wound round the inner walls of Eenie Spoke. Geoff dodged around other climbers with an "On your left!" here and an "Excuse me!" there. Kam came right behind. They were gasping for air before they were a third of the way up, despite the light tailwind wafting up from the lower levels, which dried their sweat and boosted them up toward the Hub.
Zekeston used to be called Ezekiel's Town, but it wasn't just one wheel within a wheel. It had twelve spokes that connected twenty-five nested wheels, stacked one inside the next, to the Hub. Each wheel held ten stories, for a total of two-hundred-fifty levels. Upspoke, where gravitation approached Earth's, surfaces were flat-walkable and/ or rollable. The lower-gee levels near the Hub were honeycombed tubes separating webbed open spaces. As the boys gained altitude the climb got easier, and by the time they'd reached Level 150, they began to make better time. At Level 80, the low-gee ropeworks appeared and they lofted themselves up into it. Thereafter they made swift progress. Finally, they launched themselves out into the micro-gee Hub.
The Hub was a sphere nearly a quarter kilometer in diameter. The entries to the twelve spokeways ran around the Hub's girth: a ring of big holes, each with its own lift shaft, a dual spiral staircase, and ropeworks visible inside. The Hub also housed YuanBioPharma's main research facility and manufacturing plant; the main city hospital, Yamashiro Memorial; and the city assemblyworks.
Ian and Amaya stood in the queue for the big lifts up to Phocaea's surface. They faced away from each other. Amaya had her arms crossed, and Ian's jaw jutted out. Geoff exchanged a look with Kam as they crossed the Hub's ropeworks toward their friends.
Geoff groaned. "Another fight."
Kam rolled his eyes. "Why don't they break up and have done with it?"
Geoff said, "I don't want to listen to them bickering. Why don't you offer to partner with Ian this time, and I'll go with Amaya?"
"Why do I have to go with Ian and you get to go with Amaya?"
"I took Ian last time."
"Did not!"
"Did too!"
Kam held up his fist. Rock-Paper-Scissors. Geoff sighed. "Oh, all right." He chose scissors and Kam chose paper.
Kam dropped his fist. "Bastard." Geoff just grinned.
After a few minutes, Geoff began to doubt that he had the better end of the deal. Amaya remained furious all the way up in the lift. When they reached the asteroid's surface, she catapulted out of the lift so fast Geoff couldn't keep up. He found her at their bikes in the hangar. She had changed out of the Downsider outfit. But she still had the makeup on, and he got glimpses of her tattoo, as it ran out onto her hands and up onto her neck.
"You want to talk?" he asked.
She threw her diagnostic tools into her kit. "I was the one who came up with the plan for getting the juice. I was the one who figured out how to get it primed. I'm a better mechanic than Ian is. And I can kick your ass in a race." She glared at him. Geoff opened his mouth to argue. But maybe now wasn't the time. "And all he gives a flying fuck about," she said, "is how I look in a beaded bra."
Geoff refrained from telling her that she really had looked pretty amazing, and merely nodded.
"It's all about how big your tits are, whether you had your ass done, whether you put out," she said. "That's all anybody cares about. I could be Einstein, for fuck's sake." She glared at Geoff, daring him to argue. "I'm not saying I'm Einstein. It's just that nobody would care if I was! The only thing that matters is how tight a slab of ass I am."
"Oh, come on. Nobody thinks that." A storm gathered in her gaze. He lifted his hands. "That's not what I meant. What I mean is, we couldn't have pulled the op without you. You had great ideas. You are the best mechanic we've got."
She gave him an appreciative look, mollified. Then she tossed her tools into her kit and mounted her bike, waiting for him to finish his own checks.
As he tightened his fuel lines one last time, he added, "But…not to chafe you or anything…but wasn't that the whole point? Weren't you supposed to get that kind of reaction? It was your idea."
He swung up onto his rocketbike and started the engine.
She leaned her chin on her forearms, braced against the handlebars. "I thought it'd just be a good joke. But it got me to thinking. I get way more attention for dressing like a sex sapient than I do for anything I actually do that means anything. It just pisses me off. And then Ian…" she sighed. "He just doesn't get it. I told him what I'm telling you now, and he says he wants me to dress like that all the time. Butt floss, pushup bra, and all. Like all I am is girl-meat." She sighed again. "I wish he cared about more than how big my boobs are and whether he'll ever get the booty prize."
Geoff nodded with a rueful sigh. Ian's brains did go out his ears sometimes. Especially when his chinpo was involved. Geoff gave it fifty-fifty odds that Amaya would get tired of waiting before he figured her out.
