by M. D. Cooper
Tina wiped honey from her mouth and licked her fingers. “We don’t have much crime here,” she said. “It’s wonderfully safe, and a great place to raise children.”
“How is that possible?” Fugia asked, picking raisins off her bun. “Every place has crime. You talk about human virtues; crime is a human certainty.”
“Anyone committing a crime is reassigned to the terraforming project,” Tina said. “The conditions are harsh, but certainly survivable. So I’ve heard. I’ve never met anyone who went and came back.”
“I thought everybody wanted to work on the terraforming project,” Ngoba said.
“They do, but not in the work camps. That’s a very different kind of work.” She laughed again. “Look!” she shouted, pointing at an open space in the street, several meters away. “They’ve started the line dancing. Come!”
Fugia shot Ngoba a look that said she was ready to go. He checked his Link and saw it wasn’t yet an hour to midnight, but it was close enough. By the time they got back to the apartment, they wouldn’t have much time to prepare for the meeting.
“You know, Tina,” Fugia said. “I think it’s time for us to head back. I’m really feeling tired. I didn’t sleep well before we came out. It’s been a long first day.”
Caught as she was turning sideways to slide through the crowd, Tina stopped and tilted her head. “I’m very sorry to hear that, Fugia. Do you think you can find your way back?”
“You’re not coming with?” Ngoba asked, perking up at the thought that they wouldn’t have to get rid of her back at the apartment.
“I think Fugia can find her way.” She reached out and grabbed his hand before he could react. Her grip was like iron. “You and I can go dance, though!”
Ngoba looked at Fugia. “I think I should go back with Fugia,” he said. “If she’s not feeling well, I should be there.”
“No,” Fugia said, surprising him. “I think that’s all right. You and Tina can stay out. I want you to get a good feeling for this place, if we’re going to live here.”
Her emphasis of the word feeling made Ngoba gulp. Tina pulled him toward her. She was very strong.
he said quickly.
Ngoba nodded and turned to Tina. “I think I would like to learn about this line dancing of yours. Does it take rhythm?”
“Rhythm,” Tina shouted over the crowd, looking pleased that she’d won. “Who needs rhythm to line dance? Come on!”
Ngoba caught one last look of Fugia waving at him before the crowd swallowed him, and he found himself crushed against Tina’s simultaneously soft and muscled body.
“Don’t worry,” she shouted. “We’re going to have so much fun!”
A FREE RIDE
STELLAR DATE: 06.15.2958 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sharm Festival, Glorious Achievement District
REGION: Ceres, Anderson Collective, InnerSol
Ngoba found himself inside a whirlpool of people. For a while, he linked arms with Tina before finding himself pulled away by a smiling couple in black outfits, who then passed him off to another group of four. Everyone laughed and sang a song with words he couldn’t make out, though he did quickly make sense of the repeating dance pattern. He kick-stomped-spun his way through the dance steps, which actually became fun once he knew what to expect.
He was surprised when his Link let him know it was nearly midnight.
She snorted.
Ngoba closed the Link and focused on the person next to him, who turned out to be Tina again. A sheen of sweat covered her face and exposed skin. She hooked her arm in his and spun him around hard, making him a little dizzy. A mess of colors and faces whirled around Ngoba, until he jerked to a halt with a new arm hooked in his opposite elbow. Hands grabbed his wrists and locked him in place. He picked his head up as the tornado stilled, laughter and music continuing around him.
Tina stood in front of him with her hands on her hips. She glanced to Ngoba’s left and right, and he realized the people holding him were two men he hadn’t seen before. Both were wearing black suits that looked more like uniforms than costumes, and they were looking at Tina.
“Hey,” Ngoba shouted. “Why’d we stop dancing? I was having a good time.”
“I can see that,” Tina said. Her enthusiastic smile was gone, replaced by a smirk that reminded him too much of Fugia. She nodded at the men holding him, and they stepped forward, yanking him off his feet.
Tina stepped forward so her mouth was close to his ear. “If you struggle,” she said, “my friends will break your arms, knock you unconscious, and you’ll wake up in a work camp. Or you can come along and see what’s going to happen. Maybe it’s in your best interest.”
He hadn’t been paying attention to her hands, and flinched in surprise as she clamped a cold band of metal around his neck.
“This will keep you from using your Link with Miss Wong,” Tina said. “I would prefer we keep our conversation between us.” Her voice had lost all of its naive wonder and now sounded as calculating as a crime boss from back home.
Ngoba pulled against the men holding him, trying to get a Link message through while they struggled. There was nothing. His head was empty. He couldn’t Link out to any connected database, and his mental shouting went nowhere.
With a free hand, one of the men holding him hit him in the side of the face. Then Ngoba took a punch from the other side. He spat blood on the floor at Tina’s feet and smiled at her as his head rang. He had been naive to think of the Anderson Collective as any different than Cruithne. He had been stupid to let his defenses down, and now he was going to pay the price.
“Fine,” he said. “Where are we going?”
“To a room,” Tina said. “Where we can talk. If you struggle again, we’ll break the bones in your face. You’re a pretty boy, I think that threat might get through to you.”
The men started to drag him again, and Ngoba got his feet underneath him, walking with them. They pushed him through the crowd after Tina, her green dress still shining in the festival lights, as revelers laughed and shouted on either side of them. He supposed he looked like any young drunk who’d fallen and hit his face on the ground. No one gave them a second glance.
Or are they programmed to ignore the men in black suits when they drag someone away? Ngoba tried to make eye contact with people as they jostled past, but no one met his gaze. It was like he didn’t exist.
At the edge of the street, he was shoved into a dark compartment beneath one of the party carts; he heard the door lock behind him, and then felt the cart jerk into motion. The sound of feet stomping on the surface above his head indicated more revelers standing on the cart. He wondered how many prisoners he might have passed earlier in the night.
The cart made several turns, pausing every so often for people to climb on or jump off. He felt the differences in balance and weight as the cart rocked from side to side, before the space outside the metal walls gradually grew more calm and quiet. They were leaving the festival. The sound of the cart’s motor reached him through the deck beneath him. Ngoba strained to hear voices or anything from the outside, but only made out the gentle rumble of the tires on the street. His face throbbed as the adrenaline from the festival faded, and he had trouble keeping track of the cart’s ongoing turns and stops.
Ngoba was just beginning to nod off when the cart came to a stop and didn’t move again. Someone worked the lock on the outside of compartment and swung the door open, bathing him in the light from a street lamp, which was dim but still blinded him.
“Get out,” a low voice commanded, one of the men who had grabbed him. “If we have to come in there, we’re breaking bones.”
“Didn’t you already say that?” Ngoba asked.
The nearest guard stuck his head in the opening, grimacing. “You know there’s no such thing as police brutality in the Collective, right, outsider?”
Before Ngoba could pull his foot away, the guard grabbed his ankle and dragged him half out of the cabinet.
“I’m moving,” Ngoba said quickly. “I’m moving.”
“Hurry up, then.”
Blinking, he slid out of the compartment and stood, leaning against the cart for a second to wait for his head to stop spinning.
They were standing outside a nondescript three-story building with the same bland facade as the Visa Bureau. Tina stood to one side of him, wearing a suit like the two men, but in the same green as her dress had been.
“Where are we?” Ngoba asked. He stopped himself. “I guess it doesn’t matter. Nevermind. What happens if I try to run?”
“You can try,” Tina said, giving him another sardonic smile, as if she might be impressed if he tried.
Head games, he thought. These fuckers are going to be all about head games. Keep yourself together, man. They’ll slip up.
“Not tonight,” he said. “I want to get back to the party.”
“That’s very sensible of you.”
Ngoba nodded toward the building. “Lead the way.”
There was a guard standing at the door who saluted with his rifle and stepped out of the way as Tina approached. They passed through the security door and walked down a long hallway lined by blank doors, with dim lights in the ceiling that seemed to only increase the gloom. Ngoba glanced at the doors as they passed, each with a locked slot for a food tray at its foot. He’s seen places like this in vids. For a prison, it looked better than the shipping container he could have expected back home. He supposed it might be harder to space someone here than on Cruithne, where bodies disappeared all the time, kicked into vacuum.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked.
Tina stopped in front of a door and tapped the lock panel. The grey door swung inward, and she walked inside. Ngoba looked at the man standing beside him, who was holding a pistol now. Why hadn’t he noticed that?
I must be hurt worse than I thought. Maybe they gave me a concussion.
The guard motioned toward the door with his handgun, and Ngoba stepped into the doorway. Tina was standing in a small room with a med-lounge in its center. The walls were covered in blank panels.
“Have a seat,” Tina said.
“Look,” Ngoba said. “This looks like serious business, and, honestly, I’m not a serious person. If you ask me questions, it’s very likely I’ll tell you whatever I know. You really don’t need to waste any of your special equipment here, yeah?”
He felt the pistol muzzle in the small of his back.
“I’m not going to waste anything, Mister Ngoba. In fact, I’m going to upgrade that cheap Link you’ve currently got onboard. I noticed the fresh incision the first time I saw you. I’m surprised you’re not a vegetable, with that kind of outdated hardware.”
“That’s Cruithne for you,” he said. “If it ain’t stolen, it’s somebody’s trash.”
“Oh, I don’t think you’re trash, Mister Ngoba. I don’t think you’ve seen your true potential at all.”
Ngoba swallowed, staring at Tina Kavers and wondering how he’d ever thought her an innocent local girl. Standing straight, muscled and flashing her crooked smile, the woman was obviously a monster. He couldn’t help finding her even more sexy now.
I’m some kind of fool.
Tina patted the medical lounge. “Hurry up,” she said. “We don’t have all night.”
Ngoba knew he should have turned and taken his chances with the pistol, but they didn’t give him the chance. One of the guards behind him jammed a needle in his neck, and he went out, dreaming of parrots.
HARD TIMES
STELLAR DATE: 06.16.2958 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sharm Festival, Glorious Achievement District
REGION: Ceres, Anderson Collective, InnerSol
Lately, whenever Ngoba remembered his dreams, they usually involved parrots. After his briki-powered conversation with the grey parrot Crash back in Night Park, he often dreamed of long conversations with the bird, or saw the parrot staring at him with a yellow eye just before he woke.
When he was unconscious in the medkiosk down by the Terran Space Recruiting station—the cleanest kiosk Fugia could find, and it was still splattered in dried blood—he had dreamed that Crash the Grey Parrot was looking down at him as the Link interface was installed, plugged into his brain, whatever it was the kiosk did. Crash fluffed his wings to preen, clicked his beak, and nodded, keeping watch over him as Ngoba ceased being a natural human and became something partially mechanical, just as Crash had been augmented.
The sound of the parrots and ravens squawking in the fountain at Night Park woke him. He was upright, standing in front of the apartment door where he and Fugia had been earlier that day. He blinked several times, not connecting that he could enter the apartment. He figured he should knock first.
His neck itched, and he realized the dampening band was gone.
The door opened and he stumbled forward, nearly falling on Fugia. She jammed her palms into his chest, holding him up for a second, her face staring up into his in worry.
“Ugh,” Fugia groaned in disgust, grimacing like she’d grabbed a zombie. She pulled away from him and let him fall on the floor. Ngoba barely noticed the fall, only the cool tile against his cheek. “You reek of alcohol and vomit,” she scolded. “I need you to be prepared, and you were drinking at that festival?”
Ngoba waggled his finger, the only part of his body that wanted to move. Have I been drinking? He couldn’t remember exactly. He remembered spinning with the dancers, people smiling, the world tilting, and then a long ride in one of the party carts. Is that how I got back to the apartment? It had to be the explanation.
While he didn’t remember drinking, his head ached, and he had stabbing pains at the base of his skull, like somebody had kicked him when he was down.
“I need to sleep,” he mumbled. “I don’t feel good.”
“I don’t care
how you feel. We need to go. I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”
“Go? Where? I want to go to the bed.”
Fugia made another disgusted sound and grabbed his arms. Grunting, she pulled him inside the apartment and closed the door. “What happened to Tina, anyway? Weren’t you with her? Some great guide she turned out to be. I imagine she had sex with you and dumped you here. Are you drugged, too?”
“You imagine me having sex?” Ngoba asked, grinning in spite himself.
Fugia ignored the quip and continued dragging him into the bathroom. Leaving him on the floor with his head near the toilet, she stepped over his body to open the shower stall. With considerable effort, she lifted him into the shower.
“This is for your own good,” she said, leaning over him to turn on the cold water.
Ngoba felt an electric shock go through his body when the water hit him in the face. The first few seconds were painful as he blinked and sputtered, until he felt himself wake up enough that he could roll over on his hands and knees and let the water run down his back, which warmed it up slightly. He let his head hang between his arms. The water numbed the back of his head, which still felt like it had been smashed in.
After a minute of the cold spray, he rose to his knees and stripped off his shirt. Climbing slowly to his feet, he leaned against the wall of the shower, unbuckled his pants, and let them fall around his ankles. He adjusted the water temperature.
“I’m not drunk,” he said. “I think I was drugged. I’ve got a blank space between when you left and when I came here.”
Fugia crossed her arms. “What happened to Tina?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know where she is.”
“She was stuck to you like white on rice. I don’t believe she would have dumped you here. Are you hurt?”
Ngoba looked down at himself, realizing he was naked. He took a deep breath and felt more clear-headed. The blank spot in his memory gained definition, edges. He remembered the crowd and then black, followed by the grey apartment door.
Where does the long cart ride fit in?
