Tropical Punch (Bubbles in Space Book 1)

by S. C. Jensen

  “The only thing funny about my life is the fact that I’m not dead yet.” I blew a big pink bubble and sucked it in through my teeth with a snap. “And Swain is trying his best to square up that account.”

  “I like you, Marlowe.” Whyte flicked a worm of ash onto the floor and one of the scrubber bots zipped over to buzz around his feet. “I don’t like many people, but you seem like you’re on the level. Still, there’re some things that don’t add up and depending on how you answer me right now, you might spend your vacation in my lock up.”

  “And here I thought we were friends, Hank.”

  Whyte grinned with a set of bleached white teeth that gleamed like raw bone in his withered face. “What do you know about the woman the admiral is interested in?”

  “I know the last time I saw her there was a little too much space between her shoulders and her head.”

  “And yet she is on my ship.” He snorted and spat, and the bots scrubbed that up too. I was beginning to see why he liked the viewing deck. He said, “Why were you looking for her?”

  “A couple weeks ago, I get a call from a lady using a voice scrambler—could be she’s not a lady at all, but let’s pretend—and she wants me to find her sister, wants me to deliver a message. I get an anonymous ’gram on my tattler, a girl. Not much of a silver cocktail dress, a pretty little choker. So I tracked her down as a dancer at techRose, a real silk joint tucked into the gritty centre of the city. You should try it some time.”

  “So, what’s a pro skirt from the Grit District doing tossing dice on the Island Dreamer?” Whyte grimaced. “Our clientele are out of her league.”

  “That’s your concern? The clientele isn’t as different as you’d like to think, once they’ve got a good glow going. What about the fact that the last time I saw her someone had taken pains to remove her head from her body?”

  “It doesn’t add up,” he said again. Then he dropped the stub of his cigar on the deck and ground it out with his heel before the bots got to it.

  “I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”

  “You just happen to win a stay in our most expensive suite thanks to the generous vice doctors at Lucky Bastard, and the admiral just happens to receive word from his contact that this woman is on one of his ships and is to be kept alive at all costs, and I just happen to find one of your business cards in—”

  “The universe works in mysterious ways.” I snapped my gum. “And I don’t have business cards.”

  “What did you do to piss off Swain?”

  “You looking to tell him I’m singing songs?”

  “He’s no friend of mine,” Whyte said. “I just like to know what I’m up against.”

  “I asked the wrong kind of questions about the wrong kind of case,” I said. “I got to see what my insides look like, misplaced an arm, and earned an early retirement over it. I made a promise not to get involved in the wrong kind of cases anymore, and I’ve kept that promise. Seems its not good enough for Señor Sweet Potato.”

  “What does the silver lady have to do with the case Swain wants hushed up?”

  “If I thought there was a connection, I wouldn’t have taken the case.” I slammed my palm against the glass and felt the sting travel reassuringly up my arm. “I’d like to keep this one.”

  “Alright, here’s another question for you.” Whyte took out another cigar and stuck it between his lips. It hung there, unlit, wagging like the tail of an excited puppy while he talked. “You ever play the Lucky Bastard Sweepstakes? Or are the vice doctors handing out tickets to every skid mark in HoloCity just to make my life miserable?”

  “Not so long ago, you said you liked me.” I made a point of my finger with my metal arm, placed it on the top of my head, and did a little twirl like a mechanical dancer. “What’s the matter? You don’t like the show?”

  “Your story stinks.”

  “It was the best I could do on short notice,” I said. “You want a neat little lie that checks all the boxes and leaves no unanswered questions, you’ve got to give a girl some time.”

  He sighed and rubbed his eyes with the back of one hand. “I don’t want any lies.”

  “How about a tip, instead?” I passed him a piece of gum. “Quit the sticks. They’ll stunt your growth and ruin your complexion.”

  He took the cigar out of his mouth and held it in the palm of his hand next to the gum, staring at them as if he was having a crisis of faith. “I shouldn’t have said that. About the dream crashing down.”

  “Look, Hank. I know it doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been wracking my brains over it for the last twenty-four hours. But the fact is, the truth usually doesn’t make sense until you’ve got some distance from it. I’m on the level, and I’d like to help you if I can. So tell me, what did you mean?”

  “Maybe nothing,” he said. “Maybe I meant it’s my dream. I thought there was a connection, but…”

  “Well, don’t hold out on me now.” I wrapped my arm around his shoulder and whispered in his hear. “I’m told I’m very easy to talk to.”

  He pushed my arm away and wiped some imaginary dust off his epaulettes. “We had an incident reported earlier in the day. It’s no longer an issue.”

  “You sure?” I said. “You seemed pretty worried before.”

  “I needn’t have been,” he said. “At least, not about that.”

  “You play pretty coy for an ugly man.”

  Whyte’s lips made a thin line in his weathered red face. He tapped his jacket pocket on the left side, over his heart. “I found your business card hidden in my wife’s underwear drawer.”

  “Even if I had business cards”—I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him—“I’d be giving you the look right now.”

  “Give this ‘the look.’” He took out a thin, pink card from his pocket and flicked it at me.

  The metal fingers of my cybernetic hand pinched the card out of the air before I knew I was thinking about it. The upgrade lived up to its name. I laid the card flat on my palm and a ’gram of my face popped up and hovered in the air between us with the words Bubbles Marlowe: Private Investigator blinking below it. I growled. “Dickie.”

  “I want to know what she contacted you about,” Whyte said. “If it has anything to do with the silver woman, I need to know.”

  I spat my gum into the wrapper and tossed it for the scrubber bots to chase after. “Who is your wife?”

  “Patricia Whyte,” Whyte said. “Patti. She was a scientist with Libra.”

  “I have friends with Libra.” Then I remembered Jimi. “One, anyway. In MedEx.”

  “I wondered how you could afford a grip like that.”

  “It’s a prototype,” I said. “I signed a waiver and promised not to sue if it short-circuits my brain.”

  “Relax,” he said. “I don’t need to see your papers.”

  “Why do you say she ‘was’ a scientist?” I asked. “Libra is the silk for petri dish pushers. Why’d she leave?”

  “I’d love to know that, too, if you’re going to give me the goods. About a year ago, she quit suddenly and insisted on travelling with me on the cruisers,” Whyte said. “At first I was thrilled to spend more time with her. We’d only been married a few months, but—”

  “She’s not the same person you married.”

  He nodded grimly. “If she ever was.”

  “And you want me to tell you what she’s up to?”

  “I knew something like this might happen.”

  “You’re the Chief of Security on the biggest luxury cruiser in our trade zone,” I said. “And you don’t trust your own wife?”

  “She’s high class, beautiful, smart. What does she see in a guy like me?”

  “A million dollar personality?”

  “Few cred short on that charge, I’m afraid. I’m a fool,” he said. “But I love
her.”

  “You must have believed she loved you, once, too.”

  “Maybe I wanted to believe it for a little while.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I want to know what she hired you for and who she’s meeting at 1900 hours tomorrow night.”

  “You’re not going to whack her if you don’t like the answer, are you?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not the jealous type. I know the cards I was dealt, and I’ll play them as best I can. I just want a glimpse at her hand, know what I’m up against.”

  “You’ve said that before.” I took out another stick of gum. “You a gambling man, Chief?”

  “I’ve been known to take a few long shots.”

  “Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I don’t like your odds on this one.”

  “You’re not the one who has to pay the bookie, Marlowe,” he said. “So tell me. What do you know?”

  “Your wife never contacted me, Hank.” I tucked the business card into my pocket and made a mental note to tear Dickie a new bung hole the next time I talked to him. Tough to stay under the radar when your face is in the pants of every punter whose wife fell asleep under a table and couldn’t find her way home. “I can’t guess what she’s up to any better than you can, but if it would help you sleep at night I can keep an eye on her for you.”

  “I can live with her having secrets,” he said. “I just want to know she’s safe.”

  “You ever hear of Punch Blanco?”

  Whyte’s face stiffened into a mask of petrified wood. “The mobster? Sure. Why do you ask?”

  I shrugged and snapped my gum in the silence hanging awkwardly between us. “What’s his connection?”

  “Is there one?”

  “Look, you want me to play it straight with you I need you to do me the same courtesy. I heard a couple of glow chasers out in the lounge gossiping about Blanco being on board the Island Dreamer. Figured he was here to push some juice. Swain’s got his pecker in a twist over this new drug, and I’ve already lost all the skin I had in it. If you’re asking me to—”

  “I don’t know anything about him.” Whyte finally tucked the cigar into his pocket and unwrapped the gum. “But I know his mug. He’s in our system. So, unless he’s got some state-of-the-art skin our scan cams can’t see through, he’s not on the Island Dreamer.”

  “So why’d you look like you felt something slimy in your pants when I said his name?”

  Whyte’s jaw flexed as he mawed on the pink stick, and his eyes slid sideways to me. “You’ve got the manners of a Grit skid alright.”

  I just waited. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

  “Punch Blanco isn’t the kind of mug I’d notice,” he said. “I don’t watch the news reels. The ship gets the ‘Most Wanted’ lists from HoloCity, but I just feed them into the computer and let them do their jobs. I wouldn’t have noticed him except for the look Patti gets on her face every time he pops up on the feeds. Like someone walking over her grave.”

  “You think she could be using Tropical Punch?”

  He shook his head sharply as if to shake the words right back out his ear. “No. She’s not on the glow.”

  “You sure? That’s the kind of info that might be worth my life if it gets back to Sweetie Swain.”

  Whyte chewed his gum thoughtfully. He said, “He can’t touch you here.”

  The back of my neck itched when he said that. I looked over my shoulder, suddenly paranoid that he might have someone watching me right now. Then I shook my head. Swain’s racket down in HoloCity was tight, no question about that. But he didn’t rate high enough on the command chain to send goons into outer space just to harass me.

  “No jurisdiction,” I said. “Sure. But he’s not going to forget about me now that the admiral stepped on his toes on my behalf.”

  “A word of caution …” Whyte moved toward the door. “The admiral is a powerful man but he respects the rules of politics. If the winds change, and playing ball with Swain suits him better, the HCPD could have a bangtail to the Island Dreamer in under twelve hours.”

  “It never hurts to have a friend.”

  “You find out who the silver lady is and keep an eye on Patti, maybe we can arrange a more permanent station for you.”

  “That’s the cushiest deal I’ve heard in ages,” I said. “You’re on.”

  “I’ve got to get back to work,” he said. “We’re docking soon. Stay here as long as you like. They’ll announce when you need to get back to your seat and harness up.”

  “Thanks, Hank.” I stared out at the Tigris, feeling small and insignificant. “Send me the details on your wife. A ’gram, her usual haunts. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Enjoy the view. And don’t let’s be seen together from now on if we don’t have to be. ”

  The neat blue shoulders of his uniform strode off the deck and I was left floating, alone, through the stars.

  Docking with the Island Dreamer was smoother and more seamless than it had any right to be considering the qualifications and track record of the apelike species conducting the operation. But, as Whyte had so matter-of-factly assured me, they never missed, and it proved true at least once more.

  I didn’t see Whyte again as I disembarked with the passengers into the huge, ovular docking station inside the cruise ship. Like the hangar on Terra Firma, the docking station failed to impress the majority of guests who filed obediently over the designated scaffolding and walkways to reach the exit sign at the far end. I took in the room with my jaw gaping like a virgin at her first peep show.

  The docking station was like the inside of a silver egg, webbed with complex support beams and cables that, from my insectile perspective, looked like some kind of glittering alien goo strung from surface to surface. My boots clanged over a metal walkway not unlike the fire escape I’d thrown myself from behind the techRose nightclub. Fortunately, this one appeared to be attached at both ends. I dared myself to look down. More webbed beams and cables and a depth of space I hadn’t experienced outside the viewing deck aboard the bangtail. Never mind. I’d just look straight ahead.

  As we exited the docking station, the crisp powder-blue suits of Island Dreamer crew members met the passengers with holomap downloads and access codes for their assigned rooms and the features they’d shelled out for. Lucky Bastard had spared no expense with my winning ticket. Overwhelmed with the sheer volume of experience packages to choose from, I asked one of the staff members to send the selection to the screen in my room. I loaded the map as an augmentation to my visilens glasses and followed the soft pink glow of arrows superimposed over the labyrinthine passages.

  The guest quarters on the Island Dreamer appeared to all be located within a honeycomb of suites and hallways on one level. According to the scaled out version of my holomap, the other attractions were scattered across various entertainment floors throughout the cruiser. At first, the corridors echoed with excited voices and reflections of multi-coloured clothing and faces, but as I continued along the path of glowing arrows, I shared the halls with fewer and fewer guests. The map led me on a zigzagging course that seemed to take me, eventually, the to other side of the ship where nothing but silence accompanied me.

  The pink arrows ended in a pulsing bullseye pattern similar to the taxi rings next to the HoloCity grid. The outer edge of the circle shrank and moved in toward the centre and a new ring appeared on the outside as if guiding me to stand in the centre. I looked around the empty corridors. The circle was planted directly in front of a wide expanse of seamless white walls. No signage marred the minimalist landscape, and therefore no sign that I was in the wrong place jumped out at me. Other than the fact that there was nothing there. With no other bright ideas, I followed the map onto the circle.

  A door materialized in the white wall the moment I had both feet within the circle, and be
yond it was a small closet-like room, also empty. The pink arrow flashed for me to enter the box. Again, I followed, and the door closed behind me without a sound. Cold sweat broke out on my forehead, and I spun around inside the empty white cube. I touched the wall where the door had been and felt the faint tingle of electromagnetic feedback from a screen. It wasn’t really there, like Hammett’s piggy skin, the wall was a hologram projected from a field of nanoparticles with biosensory feedback enhancements enabled. I wondered how many invisible doors were hiding inside the seemingly empty corridors outside.

  A soft chime sounded from somewhere above my head and a holographic keypad hovered in front of my face, prompting me for one of the access codes I’d gotten from the Island Dreamer crew. I flicked through until I found the right one and keyed it in. The box lifted into the soles of my boots as I was carried smoothly upward to another level. Another chime sounded and the wall in front of me disappeared. I stepped out into a modest bedroom suite, not much bigger than a Trade Baron’s palace and stuffed to the rafters with enough Lucky Bastard hooch to keep his brothel in high spirits for a few hours.

  When I turned to look behind me, the door had already disappeared into an expanse of pearlescent pink wall. Somewhere on the other side of the room, or maybe it was in the next county, a bed surrounded by a gauzy pink curtain sat. It looked to be patiently awaiting some kind of erotic circus event by the size of it. I dropped my things on a chair that may or may not have been for sitting on and moved toward the centre of the room where a hologuide in the same powder-blue as the rest of the Island Dreamer crew wore was standing with his hands clasped daintily in front of him.

  “Welcome to you quarters, Ms. Marlowe,” the guide said primly. “And congratulations on winning the Lucky Bastard Sweepstakes. You are standing in one of the most prestigious suites available on the luxury cruiser Island Dreamer. I will be your guide for the duration of your stay with us, unless you would prefer to transfer a personal smart guide to our system. Would you like a tour of your rooms?”

  The hologram had a smarmy old money face, like that of a servant whose family has been in service to royalty for so long he’s beginning to think he’s royal himself. I scanned the other available guide skins and grimaced. Even with Lucky Bastard springing for the pay-to-play options, the list was a worst-of compilation of cush-drunk classics. With such gems as Immigrant House-Boy with Python in Banana Hammock, and Gravity Defying Knockers on Trampoline, even the greasy butler wasn’t looking too bad.