by Laer Carroll
She hooked an arm in his and guided him toward the Exit sign.
"They got torn off in the fight."
He stopped to look at her. She pulled on his arm till he continued with her toward the outside .
"Hey, I tore them off myself. And I put the four men I was fighting in the hospital."
At his blank look she said, "You didn't read the police report."
"Mom just told me I was to get here quick. I had to call my supervisor from the airport and tell him I had a family emergency."
By this time they were at the large double door that opened onto the street. Through the window panes in the doors she saw that a trio of reporters were waiting for them. Their editors had gone the cheap route by giving them each a camera rather than sending photographers with them. Her story must not be so hot now.
"If you don't want to have your face on film you'll go to that limo over there and get in. I'll join you when I've disposed of them."
Ricki hesitated. "Will you be OK? I really shouldn't be photographed."
She stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. "I'm an old hand at handling these guys. I'll exit first and go to them. Let them gather round and you just go out like anyone else."
She pushed through the doors and walked toward the reporters. They hurried to meet her.
In the sleek black limousine sent from ArgenSpace to meet her at the jail she continued their conversation.
"So Mother called you and said come help me. How did she know?"
"She has any news stories about subjects she's interested in emailed her. Like you, me, our 'bro, movie stars she likes, all sorts of things."
"Emailed? Mom hates computers. They confuse her."
"Yeah, like math confuses her. Until she wants to figure savings on sales. Then suddenly she has no problem at all.
"That's the way it was with computers. Her neighbor got one, so she had to have one. And her neighbor could use email, and find bargains on the InterWeb, and have news stories from newspapers sent to her. So Mom was not going to be upstaged. And all of a sudden computers aren't confusing any more."
"So she found out about my arrest, calls you up, doesn't tell you why, but hysterically orders you to come help her little girl."
"Yeah. So what's this all about?"
Sylvia got through most of the official story about her fight before the limousine pulled up at the nearest water taxi depot. Rickie tipped the driver even though it wasn't required for limos. That was her little brother: tough as any cop on the job, a softie off-duty.
Past midmorning the day was heating up, but a sea breeze cooled them as they walked over the cracked concrete of the pier. Sylvia headed for her favorite water taxi company and had Rickie pay for a small private boat rather than a larger one charging cheaper group-fare rates. That would have required a wait for several more customers to arrive and she was eager to get home.
Soon they were bouncing across the waves, leaving white foam in their wake under the blue skies.
As they approached Space Island her brother gazed at the island.
"Wow. Quite a lot of money went into this."
"Space industries are growing explosively. They're calling it the New Frontier."
"You ever going to go into space? I bet you could wangle it being so important and all."
She laughed. "I'm a big scaredy cat when it comes to dying in vacuum, or burning up on re-entry." She shivered, and it wasn't pretense.
Rickie was like a tourist as they walked down the ramp, across the pier, and into the visitor's entrance.
A blue-uniformed employee spotted them and hurried over. She was a thin Jamaican-born Puerto Rican who Sylvia knew well enough to greet by name.
"Dr. Connelly. Is all that business straightened out?"
"It will be, Rocio. Thanks for asking. This is my brother. He'll need a short-term visitor's pass."
Rickie had his passport out and the woman took it, filled out a form, and handed him the passport and a card for his wallet.
As they walked out of the air-conditioning into the soft air of the island Sylvia said, "You didn't really need the passport. Just a driver's license. Argentina and the US have an inter-territorial agreement." She explained what that meant.
"Hmm. With that easy entry this could be a smuggler's paradise."
"Not quite. Security realized that and took steps. If you want a busman's holiday I can introduce you some people I know."
"No. I want to know what's really going on with you. You know you can't lie to me, Sylly. And I've known something's not right ever since you healed Rissa by a laying on of hands. And this time you're not sloughing me off."
Her older brother knew something of her situation and had not told anyone, even his wife and mother. Sylvia had not wanted to give him more than vague information, and he had not wanted to know more.
But Rickie... She trusted him absolutely, and she had long felt the loneliness of not being able to confide in anyone. Besides, he might be able to give her more information about international prostitution rings than her local police contacts had been so far able or willing to give her.
"OK. But first I'm going to shower and change clothes and we're going to have lunch. Now let me show you the sights on the way to the hotel. This is our multiplex cinema, has that new 3D projection system. And this..."
Rickie stopped just inside her hotel suite. Sylvia did too. She had gotten so used to her home that she had forgotten how luxurious it was.
"Wow. You must make good money to afford this."
"Yes, I do. But the hotel gives me a big price break. If you went next door and looked at the face plate next to the door you'd see it's named after me."
He looked at her as if he had never met her before. "I keep forgetting you're a celebrity."
"I can't forget it. I keep having my nose rubbed in it. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm a very minor celebrity."
He grinned at her. "Does that really work?"
She grinned back. "No. Here. This will be your bedroom. Hang up your stuff while I take a shower. And call down for room service to bring up a drink if you want one."
"I sure do. Hey. It's got a bed my size."
"I asked for one when I moved in. For no reason, except maybe my subconscious was expecting you to visit someday."
He fell backward onto the bed, his small overnight suitcase slipping to the floor.
"Oh, my aching back. That feels good."
"When I get out of the shower I'll do that Japanese walking-on-your-back trick. "
"Deal."
Rickie was sleeping when she looked into his bedroom, head turned to the side and snoring lightly. His suitcase was where he dropped it.
"Hey. Lazybones. Up you go." She had to prod his shoulder a time or two to wake him.
He sat up, bleary eyed. She snagged his suitcase and hung up his spare jacket and two days change of everyday clothing. His socks and underwear she dropped atop the dresser and put his toiletries kit on the white-porcelain plastic of the bathroom sink.
"Let me freshen up and I'll take you up on the Jap foot massage thing."
Ten minutes later Rickie was lying face down on the sea green carpet just inside the balcony, looking down at the island and the seascape beyond through the clear-plastic parapet fencing in the balcony.
"What's that—God, you weigh a ton!—that big barn-like building?"
"Quit complaining, softie. That's the spaceship hangar. We'll go see the spaceship on the way to the south end of the island this afternoon."
"I didn't come here to sight-see. I want the straight scoop from you."
"You'll get it. But I want to be someplace where no reporters can lurk."
He turned his head and looked up at her seriously, then let his head fall back onto the floor. He groaned as she massaged his back with her feet, balanced a bit precariously on that broad platform.
Later, in the dining room on the ground floor, Rickie looked right at home in the light jacket needed again
st the too-high air conditioning. Sylvia was perfectly comfortable in a light summer dress, just as she would be in the high Sahara or the Arctic. Her unhuman skin was very versatile.
"So what's going on in the police biz?"
He examined the menu, said absently "I'm in the fast-track for management, so they've been assigning me to six months in different departments. It was Robbery until recently. Now I'm in Vice. Next is Homicide. I'm looking forward to that."
"Vice. That sounds interesting. I met a bunch of prostitutes in the holding cell. Made a friend or two."
He looked over his menu at her disapprovingly. "They shouldn't have put you in there. There are some pretty tough customers in there."
She laughed. "Rickie, I'M a pretty tough customer."
He shook his head, returned to his menu, shortly put it down decisively. A waitress was immediately at his elbow.
"Ready to order, sir?"
He grinned up at her. "I certainly am. My breakfast this morning was airline food."
The woman took their orders. As she walked away, just an extra bit of sway to her walk, Sylvia quietly teased, "Ready to order, sir?"
He grinned, watching the well-padded show, took a sip of his iced tea, looked back at her.
"I know, Jungle Jane and all that. But I can't help it. To me you're still my little sister."
"Who's five years older than you and was a tomboy always ready to kick ass."
"Yeah. Until you discovered boy-ees and turned into a wimp." He held up a limp-wristed hand, the little finger extended.
"I just hid it better. Remember Roddy Mack, who broke his arm negotiating a curve while skating? Well, the curve he was negotiating wasn't concrete."
He sat bolt upright. "You mean that little sonofa—"
"Calm down, white knight, and get off your horse. I well and truly paid him back. Now, tell me something. Two of the prosties were speculating about some new ring of pimps invading Puerto Rico run by 'The Cat Lady.' It sounded really strange."
"Yeah, we have those rumors in Miami, too. We had a briefing, so it might be more than just a rumor.
"It's hard to separate the myth from the reality, but the ring is real. It's all over western Europe and penetrated Louisiana as early as 1910. Legend has it that it started in Ireland in the 1860s and spread to England in the 1870s. The boss was supposedly a shapechanger out of Irish myth, Bearach Irusansdaughter." Shock struck Sylvia like lightning at the word shapechanger. "She was supposed to be unbeatable and immortal. Until another shapechanger burned her up with a fireball. But he wasn't immortal either. Seems the Cat Lady had a sister—"
He smiled up at the waitress who had appeared like magic with their salad, salad dressing, and croutons. The top button on her blouse was no longer buttoned. Sylvia accepted her salad, noticing with amusement that the woman bent further over Rickie's than her own.
He crunched a crouton while he administered dressing to his greens.
"The sister was another myth, the Grey Lady, who breathed on Fireboy and rotted him to death. Of course they were just nuts dressed up in masks."
Satisfied his salad was just right he took a big mouthful. Sylvia followed his example and the table was silent while they finished chewing .
"But legend has it that the Cat Lady shows up in one disguise or another till this very day. Just another whore in a mask, of course."
Sylvia was not sure about that. Now that she thought about it, she probably had ceased to age, too. She might very well live decades, even centuries past her normal life span.
"Now here's the really strange thing. The whores are the bosses of the Organization, which is what they call themselves, and the pimps work for them. You'd think the pimps would take over. But supposedly every Org whore studies martial arts, pistolry, and knife work. And they outnumber the pimps ten or more to one. They gang up on any pimps who get out of hand. Apparently they make an art out of torture. Any rebel is found hanging upside down from some rooftop by his guts with his sex organs mutilated."
He shuddered, then grinned. "That kind of example would sure keep me from getting ambitious."
Sylvia had finished her salad, spilled a few croutons into her plate to capture extra salad dressing, and ate them.
"It's a wonder police haven't cracked down on them. Maybe get the Feds' organized-crime arm involved."
"It's been tried. And laws have been passed to control prostitution. But something always happens. Sometimes it's assassination, or castration. But usually the policeman or the congressman or high church official is discovered to have a secret sex life, with a contrite prostitute or mistress finding God and confessing all. Maybe selling her tale to a publisher for a good chunk of change and retiring to a foreign country."
She swallowed the last crunched crouton. "That's so obvious! Wouldn't people see through the tricks?"
He shrugged. "It's worked for well over a century. Oh, good!" The waitress got a big smile from her brother as she set a plate containing a huge near-charred steak in front of him. Poor woman , Sylvia thought. Rickie had eager eyes only for his food.
Sylvia had a similar plate but with the meat practically raw. The two siblings buckled down to serious eating. As the meal progressed Rickie's eyebrows slowly rose as she matched his intake ounce for ounce and pound for pound. When they finished she belched and sat back with a happy sigh.
"Jesus, Sylly, have some couth."
"That's how us tough customers act." She grinned at him and he rolled his eyes.
"Dessert, sir?"
"Let's see that menu again."
"Yes, sir! I have it right here, sir." Actually she had two menus. The wait people in the hotel restaurant all knew Sylvia and her sweet tooth.
Each had two slices of pie with several scoops of ice cream, two glasses of milk with a big picture of milk for refills, and coffee with Amaretto liqueur.
"Sylly, the joke's getting old. You do not have to match me in the eating department."
She looked at him, her face serious. "Rickie, I swear I'm not doing this as a joke. I really do need this amount of food. Cross my heart and hope to die."
Slowly he nodded. Childish her oath might seem to anyone else, but he knew she was deadly serious when she spoke it.
As they ate, silent again in respect for their food, he looked her over, again and again, as if trying to see beneath to some radical change in her.
When they finished and the waitress had cleared the table he suddenly said, "Do you have a tapeworm? Or...cancer?"
She reached across the table and his huge hand engulfed hers. She spoke softly.
"No, dear Rickie. I'm absurdly healthy. And I'll tell you all about it later."
Then briskly. "Now finish your story. You've got me really curious."
"OK. The Org has got to have some kind of spy ring. Or maybe all the whores report back on their customers. They are also the most educated prosties on the planet. They take college courses, for God's sake, and graduate. A lot of them get out of the world and start businesses. Some of them pretty big, with other former whores working in them. I suspect that they have tentacles in banking and investment firms all over the planet."
"They sound like a cult."
He nodded. "Except they're not ideological, unless business is their ideology. They don't get mixed up with reformers, or religions. They keep a really low profile. Except when they move into new territory. They don't actively recruit, but they offer too good a deal not to attract converts. Local gangs sometimes attack them, but they're always ready—going back to my spy ring theory—and their counter-attack is devastating. If necessary they can call in troops from all over the world."
He grinned. "Speaking of which, about fifty years ago some little middle-European dictator got offended that women in his country were getting too uppity. He figured it was the example of the Whores—oh, they capitalize the word and apply it to themselves, like they're proud to be whores. Anyway, he dispatched a company of soldiers to take over the main Organization
headquarters, a big brothel.
"You guessed it. They were waiting for the soldiers, and had fortified the mansion, and had booby traps outside the walls. Nothing that would kill, but badly wound. Which was really smart. A dead man can be stacked out of the way or buried, but hurt men have to be taken care of, and they scream and groan and harm morale."
They grinned at each other, two long-practiced co-conspirators.
"So the big boss sent a brigade of soldiers, along with field guns. They set the guns up, ordered a surrender, and getting no response, opened fire. OK, smart aleck, I see you're ahead of me. Yeah, the guns exploded. All of their ammunition was worthless. They tried big machine guns, same deal. So they settled in to await reinforcements.
"Which arrived, all right, that night. But it was reinforcements for the other side. Two or three thousand women, and men too, all dressed in camouflage. They captured the brigade and killed every one of the officers, then hung them up by their guts every place they could. Come morning it turned out that some Whores had gone to the dictator's mansion. Before they hung him up by his guts they took time to torture him over every inch of his skin. Or they made it look that way. Which is the last time anyone has tried to use military force against the Org."
He swished water around in his mouth and looked about for the check. The waitress somewhat regretfully brought it, telling him that all "The Doctor's" meals and those of her guests were billed to her room. He checked the amount and gave her a generous tip, thanking her for her terrific service and hoping her a good day.
Sylvia hung back as they left the dining room, patted the woman's arm, and murmured, "My brother. He's got a girlfriend. They're very close."
The woman smiled, "You know the saying. All the good ones..."
"Ain't it the truth. "
Back in her room she took her brother out onto the balcony and sat in a deck chair, feet up on the railing. The sun was well past noon in the cloudless blue sky but was not yet glaring into their eyes. He hung his jacket on the back of his chair. It might be winter north of the Caribbean but here the ocean breeze was warm.
He relaxed with a sigh. A belch surprised him. Sylvia laughed. "Now who's got no couth?
