by M. D. Cooper
“OK.” Trey shrugged. “No offense meant by this, but what influence does Ed have?”
Reece smiled. “Ed’s not only a significant player in the entertainment industry business-wise, but she’s also a local celebrity.”
“I see.” Trey nodded, as if it were perfectly normal for such an outlandish person to have so much power and influence.
Ed removed her purple wig, revealing chin-length brown hair that made her look less flamboyant, but no less attractive. “I need to get ready for my angel number. It’s a fan favorite.”
She removed the fabric at her waist and hung it on a large costume rack. “You wouldn’t mind helping me dress, would you, Trey?”
She gave her shoulders a little wiggle, making her painted breasts jiggle in a way that real clothing never allowed.
“Uhhh…” Trey looked quickly from Ed to Reece. “It’s probably not a good idea…for multiple reasons.”
Ed laughed. “I thought you’d say that.”
Ed pulled a long, sheer dress off the rack and dropped it over her head, letting it fall into place. “I’ll see to the hotel thing. Send me the details and I’ll send you what I come up with. But you have to promise to come back when you’re done with this job. We can have a night out.”
“Deal.” Reece went to give her a hug, careful not to muss Ed’s makeup.
“Sure we can’t stay for the angel number?” Trey asked on their way out of the Bubble Club.
Reece smirked at him. “Suit yourself, but I’m here to work. I’m going back up to the station to look through the data again, and see if I can find any other leads to check up on while we’re here.”
“Remind me again why we didn’t get rooms down here? There are plenty of hotels, and it would save us going up and down the elevator.”
“Because sometimes, on jobs like these, you have to leave unexpectedly. That’s a lot easier done when you’re already at the station.” She’d learned that lesson the hard way, long ago.
“Makes sense, I guess.” He followed her out rather than remain for more of Ed’s performance. “But when you come back for that night out with Ed, I definitely want in on that.”
“You might be disappointed. She’s different when she’s not in performer mode.”
They got into a taxi and began the trip back to the space elevator.
“I can’t imagine being disappointed,” he said. “What kind of name is Ed, anyway?”
“A short one. Her entire name is Glinnifred.” She put her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. It wasn’t late, but she already felt tired. She looked forward to some room service and some quiet research.
“She seems nice.”
She turned her head to look at him. “She is, though that’s not what most people tend to focus on when they first meet her.”
He shrugged. “I’m not most people.”
She closed her eyes again. “Maybe not. Mind if I take a cat nap on the way to the station?”
“No. Just don’t let your head flop over on me, because that gets awkward.”
She smiled, but didn’t open her eyes.
* * * * *
Before Reece opened the door to her room, she called over to Trey. “Are you staying in, or planning to go out?”
“I’m going to wander the station, get a better feel for the people and what goes on here. I need to get up to speed on Machete if I’m going to work in the system.” He paused. “Unless it would be asking for trouble.”
“In some places, it will be—with the way you look. Others will be more open-minded, as long as you’re spending money.” She thought for a moment. “Stick to the central decks, and the more public areas. If you want to go to a bar, Sunrise is the one you want…it’s only seventeen decks above the hotel here. Tell whoever’s working that I sent you. Don’t go to any others.”
“Is that it?”
“Don’t do any shopping,” she advised. “Wait until you get your lenses, or until I can go with you.”
He frowned. “People really hate genmods here, don’t they?”
“It’s less hate than fear. And it will only get worse the further into the heart of Orion territory we go. But you must know that. You’ve been places.”
“Yeah.” His eyes were full of a whole lot of something she couldn’t identify. “I’ve been places.”
The way he said it felt off to her, but before she could ask about it, he said, “Thanks for the advice. I’ll follow it.”
He disappeared into his room.
Feeling uneasy, she did the same.
* * * * *
It only takes one great lead to crack a case wide open. Accordingly, those great leads were hard to come by. The most boring part of Reece’s job was all the digging and snooping that did not involve finding anything noteworthy at all.
She pressed her hands against her eyes and groaned. She’d been through everything Rexcare had given her, as well as picking through local resources on Iagentci.
Not a trace of Fitzmiller.
She stood and stretched her back, then her arms. Slowly, she paced her modestly-sized but well-furnished room. She appreciated that the bed was firm and the sheets soft. Besides the bed she had a two-seater couch and a wide holodisplay. She considered watching a vid for a change of pace, but after using the holo for her work all evening, the idea of staring at it for a few more hours didn’t appeal. Nor did she want to read. She’d done enough of that already.
She needed to do something for a little while to unwind, but she didn’t want to have to talk to anyone. That narrowed her options considerably.
A walk should do the trick. Some mild physical activity would help her sleep, as would the chance to rid her mind of departure schedules, activity logs, and surveillance videos.
She left the hotel with a few options in mind. Igaguti Station was a thousand-kilometer arc, tethered by the space elevator, and clever use of graviton beams from the surface. If she thought about that too much, the whole thing made her uneasy, so she did her best to put it from her mind.
A station the size of Igaguti had more than a few quiet areas, but she also wanted to be distracted and not think of work for a bit.
So nothing too terribly quiet. She wanted just the right balance of activity and banality.
A quick check told her that the younger crowd still hung out at the western end of Sweep 1029 which was just a short maglev ride away.
In a station the size of a small continent, it was unlikely she’d meet anyone she knew. The odds of her being recognized were even more remote on Sweep 1029. Once she got off the maglev, Reece strolled along the bottom level of the Sweep. Decks of clubs and trendy stores rose on either side of the long, curved atrium.
Reece passed a bank of vending machines and a packet of container-ice caught her eye. She passed payment to the machine and when the packet dropped into the slot, she pulled it out and gave it a twist, activating the endothermic reaction that turned it from a liquid into a frozen dessert.
Twisting off the cap, she squeezed some of it out the top.
Yum.
The berry flavor she’d selected had just the right amount of sweetness.
No one paid any particular attention to Reece as she slowly made her way through the long sweep. There was no reason for them to. Remote surveillance as well as consistent plainclothes security teams discouraged troublesome behavior. As a result, she should neither attract nor unwittingly discover delinquents.
Although her intention had been to clear her mind, Reece couldn’t help noting details as she walked through the station, eating her container-ice. Teenage fashion seemed to favor long sleeves and short pants, for no good reason at all except that it was different than whatever trend had preceded it. When she overheard band names or pop culture references, she tucked them into her brain just in case they might be useful at some point.
When she finished her container-ice, she dropped it into a vacuum tube recessed into one of the walls she passed. Reece barely had
to loosen her grip before it was torn from her grasp, flying downward to wherever the rubbish went for sorting and reclamation.
Reece reached the end of the sweep, leaving the young people and all of their youthful exuberance behind. Though it was fun to watch their simplistic predictability and carefree naiveté, she didn’t want to seem like a creepy voyeur.
From there, she wandered along several broad concourses until she came to a district inhabited by permanent residents, designed with a high mezzanine to provide something of a view. Studies had shown that humans had better psychological health when they had a view outside their homes, and all Machete System stations had been designed with their residents’ long-term wellbeing in mind.
On the face of it, designing stations this way seemed benevolent. In fact, it was just good business. Corporations needed people to keep stations running well. Space stations were vital to both stellar and interstellar economy. Therefore, keeping the worker bees satisfied benefited the corporations.
That detail didn’t matter, really, as far as the lives of the residents went. It only really mattered when it came to remembering that the Big Four didn’t work to service the people. They worked to profit from them.
From Reece’s point of view, that was a critical detail.
She looked down over the mezzanine railing. Twenty decks below, she saw a bustling transportation center with people coming through docking ports and queuing up for maglev trains to other parts of the station. It was a nice view, as far as space stations went.
Technically, she wasn’t supposed to be in the residential section. Security was careful about allowing only residents and authorized guests and maintenance personnel. Her Rexcare credential gave her a great deal of access to both stations above Iagentci.
Reece had selected Igaguti Station because she was certain Fitzmiller wouldn’t have stayed at Unega Station, which catered more to the rich and the executives.
Not that she’d found any trace of him being on Igaguti, either.
Smoothing her jacket, she left the mezzanine and took a lift down to the transportation hub below. From there it was a short maglev ride back to the center of the station where her hotel was located.
She strode briskly through the atrium, having cleared her head and decided that she should get a good night’s sleep before heading back to the planet’s surface in the morning.
Once in her room, Reece quickly showered and got ready for bed. As she lay down, she thought about Aunt Ruth and Rio back on Akon, and the Bubble Club and the rest of Iagentci not so far below.
She most certainly did not think about the vast expanse of space that waited a hundred decks away. The cold vacuum that caressed the station’s hull.
No, she didn’t think about that at all.
* * * * *
Wherever Reece happened to be, whether it be the noisy back room of a betting lounge or a huge space station, she slept well. She had never been plagued by restless sleep or insomnia.
As a result, she woke up invigorated and ready to attack the day.
Being a low-maintenance sort, she only needed ten minutes to dress, fix her hair, and apply balm. Artificial environments always gave her chapped lips and dry hands, so she had made sure to pack plenty of moisturizing cream. She didn’t mind. At least it was a break from the heat on Akon.
Activating her overlays, she sent Trey a ping to see if he was up yet, but he didn’t respond.
I hope he wasn’t out too late. He probably gets cranky when he’s tired. She tried sending a second ping, but when he didn’t answer, she decided to get some breakfast. If he wasn’t up by the time she returned, she’d bang on his door.
And if that didn’t work, she’d crack it open. Locks like these weren’t easy, but she had the skills and access to do it.
Fortunately, while she was tanking up on carbs and protein, he returned her ping. She sent a message.
His response came quickly.
She didn’t bother to reply, taking his answer as a yes.
As soon as she knocked, his door opened.
“Ready?” she asked.
“You ask stupid questions sometimes.” His tone was matter-of-fact, rather than irritated.
“It’s a social convention,” she muttered. “They don’t always make literal sense.”
“Like when you ask someone how they’re doing, but you don’t really care?”
“Exactly.”
He walked alongside her. “Fair enough, then.”
“You’re an odd guy, aren’t you?”
He shrugged. “I don’t think I’m qualified to judge. I seem perfectly normal to me.”
“Right.”
Was he being funny? That seemed funny. He wasn’t smiling, but maybe he had a deadpan sense of humor.
The crowds were light today, and they got a near-empty lift-car on the space elevator. Trey wandered off to one of the vendors along the inside wall and got his breakfast while Reece stared after, reflecting on how little she knew about the man. No doubt that was her own fault. She’d been a jerk when she’d first met him, and she hadn’t done a lot to make up for that.
She needed to do better. Somehow. It seemed a little too late to go through the normal process of asking him questions to get to know him. Like during her first year at Rexcare, when she kept seeing a guy in the hall and they’d exchange pleasantries. By the end of that year, she didn’t know his name and it felt too awkward to ask. She’d eventually identified him from Rexcare’s humane resources database.
Getting to know Trey would be a lot harder.
Working with a partner was complicated.
They said little on the way down the elevator, and less on the ride to CooCoo’s. At first, Reece thought he was just being withdrawn because she’d not shown much interest in idle conversation in the past, but then it occurred to her that he might be nervous.
“CooCoo is actually a very qualified health care provider,” she assured Trey on their way up the grimy stairwell to CooCoo’s apartment.
“Where I come from, health care providers don’t work out of their homes in the ghetto.”
She snorted. “This is crap town, to be sure, but it’s far from ghetto.”
“Fine,” he answered dryly. “Where I come from, health care providers don’t work out of their apartments in Crap Town, either.”
“Ah, well. That’s how you find a bargain.” She smiled at him encouragingly.
He narrowed his eyes at her.
“Besides,” she continued, “this isn’t much of a health care appointment. People get cosmetic lenses all the time. They’re just removable temporary pieces. Some people have half a dozen designs to color their irises or the sclera, or both. Trendy folks sometimes put a pattern in there, or a favorite sports team logo. You don’t even need a doctor to get them.”
“Good. Since we don’t have one.”
“What I’m saying is, don’t worry. This is simple, and Coo’s a pro.”
“Sure.” He sounded perfectly agreeable.
At a loss, she fell silent. He’d just have to see for himself.
“Oh, there you are.” CooCoo answered the door wearing a shirt that didn’t look particularly clean and a pair of pants that had more holes than fabric.
He held the door wide and gestured for them to enter. Reece walked in, but Trey followed slowly, enough so that CooCoo left the door and walked to his work table rather than wait.
“I’ve got it all ready. The lenses are already linked to the updated Ident, so all that’s left to do is get these babies in there.” CooCoo was animated, full of excitement. “This was fun. Usually, people want to have rainbows in their eyes, or look like dragons. This is the first time I’ve made fake eyes look real.”
“My eyes aren’t fake,” Trey corrected sharply. “They’re synthetic. There’s a difference. I don’t even
get why people care about my eyes, if there are weirdos walking around with dragon eyes.”
CooCoo gestured to a chair. When Trey sat reluctantly, CooCoo brought a small tray over and set it next to them.
“We know dragon eyes are a fake appearance hiding real eyes. With those artificial dealies of yours, people know better.”
“How about I get some dragon eyes, then?” Trey asked. “That could be fun.”
“You’d stick out then, too,” Reece told him, standing on the other side of the room because there was no surface in the place that she cared to sit on. “Just in a different way. We want you to look as typical as possible. Boring, even.”
“Right.” Trey lay stiffly back in the chair.
Coo stood over him. “I’m just going to put them in and make sure the size is right, and the temporaries aren’t interfering with your vision or your ability to use your advanced functions.”
“How advanced are your eyes?” Reece asked.
“I can see in very low light, into the IR and UV spectrum a bit. They display rates of speed, angles, projected trajectories. My general vision is about ten times better than yours, as well.” Trey’s hands gripped the arms of his chair, though his voice sounded relaxed.
“Is that all?” she joked.
“No,” he answered. “But I prefer not to give away all of my advantages. Besides, you might get jealous.”
Okay, he was definitely joking now. She was sure of it.
They stopped talking when Coo bent over him and placed the lenses on Trey’s eyes. He murmured instructions to make specific movements.
“Perfect!” Coo exclaimed. “I am freaking fantastic. That’s why they call me Mr. Perfect.”
“No one calls you that,” Reece pointed out.
“Well, maybe not yet. But soon.” Coo didn’t look back at her. “Okay, big guy, access your functions and make sure everything still works.”
After a few minutes, Trey said, “Seems fine. And my eyes aren’t falling out or anything.”
Reece smirked.
“Good.” Coo adopted a professional tone. “You’ll want to take them out every week or so to clean them. You can remove them as often as you want, though, as long as they’re clean when you put them back in. To remove them, use your index finger and your thumb at the top and bottom edges, apply light pressure, and lift it off.”
