by Sean Platt
But if she played her cards right with Omar and managed to stay where she was — offer to pay for the dust, retrieve it, wash fucking dishes if she had to — then she could continue making good money using the salesmanship skills that God had given Thomas Stahl. She could still move back up to where she used to be in the Presque Beau, with avenues for advancement. She’d have connections and powerful friends. If, that was, Kate could make things work and tell Omar what he needed to hear… because any way they sliced it, continuing their working relationship would be best for Omar, too.
“The mall.”
“Which mall?”
“Summit.”
Beside her, Jimmy cocked his head. The light turned green, and Kate pulled away slow enough for Jimmy to keep up.
“That the one near the crater?”
“No. Just ahead. The underground one. With the Beam surround.”
“Oh,” said Jimmy, speaking over the breeze of their sensibly paced, within-speed-limits travel. “Do they have an Orange Julius?”
“Yeah.”
“You like Orange Julius?”
“Sure,” said Kate. She’d never had one.
“I’ll buy you an Orange Julius when we get there.”
“Peachy,” said Kate.
The traffic light ahead was a double-tier, so instead of giving them a stop, it gave them an up arrow. Kate hopped above the cross traffic, then came down as the mall’s entrance appeared. From double-height, the entrance looked like a massive funnel in the ground. The two perpendicular streets leading into it dipped at the funnel’s edge then curled around it to the right, following the path one would expect water to take in a downward vortex if the entire island flooded. The roads were for the conventional cars that wanted to enter the parking garage, but Kate had always thought that they were far too optimistic of humanity’s competence behind the wheel. Hovercars and hoverskippers and screetbikes could pilot to one of the lanes in the middle of the funnel and descend while staying level, but conventional cars had to bank around the edges in what amounted to an extreme high-speed curve. The mag carriers beneath the street would hold them fast, but Kate had seen plenty of cars in the subterranean garage with their contents plastered against one window because the driver hadn’t made the turn fast enough.
They descended, pulled into two adjacent recharge bays, and secured the hoverskippers with their IDs. They took the elevator down. Kate watched Jimmy through the ride. He kept tossing Kate small, conflicted looks, seemingly uncertain about how he was supposed to behave. Was he an armed escort whose purpose it was to threaten Kate and keep her in line? Or was he a man who’d been too harsh with a (rather attractive) female employee and now had to make nice? She didn’t know what Omar’s temperament would be, but the good news was that following that first exchange in the restaurant, Jimmy seemed equally uncertain about it.
The elevator’s doors opened, and Kate found herself looking out into what appeared to be an enormous open-air space. Above, on a domed Beam-surface ceiling, a bright sun shone down through a sky pocked with a few small fluffy clouds. Kate could feel the simulated warmth on her skin but knew that even without her nanos, she’d never get a sunburn. The illusion was disorienting, though, and seconds after leaving the elevator, she’d lost her bearings. The doors had opened and closed behind her, but now that she looked back, all Kate could see was more open space. The only thing below her was a concrete walkway cutting through swatches of fragrant grass.
Jimmy said, “I’m going to get us Orange Juliuses.”
He walked toward the booth (which the environment had made into a kind of charming rustic fair stand; Kate had no idea if the actual structure was as she saw it) and left her where she was. She looked after him, almost allowing herself to be duped by the 360-degree dome and the illusion that she was outside. Even if she were actually outdoors, though, she’d decided she wouldn’t run. Running was a dead end. She’d clawed her way to the top of her profession as Doc, and taking the reset as Kate (a reset in both person and social standing) had been incredibly demoralizing. She wished the bullshit with the inspector had never occurred. If she could put it behind her (and if Omar would allow her to put it behind her), Kate had every intention of moving forward. She didn’t want to be a criminal on the run. She wanted to be comfortable again, and for life to be as boring as a smuggler’s life could be.
She watched Jimmy at the booth, knowing that he’d walked away and left her alone as a gesture of good faith. He could kill her from where he stood, but she wouldn’t make him try. She was here to play ball and intended to do exactly that.
“I got you a large,” Jimmy said, returning and sliding a drink into her hand.
Kate eyed her drink with suspicion. She had the nanos necessary to handle junk food, but she’d never really enjoyed it. Discipline had gotten her to where Doc had once been, and discipline in one area had a way of bleeding over into everything.
“Where’s Omar?”
“One of the chair pits.”
“‘Conversation areas,’” Kate corrected. She didn’t like the idea of going into a “pit” no matter what the mall map called the chair clusters. She was already underground far enough.
“Down here.” Jimmy touched his ear with one hand and gestured with the other. Then he stepped onto an escalator that descended to the mall’s lower level. It looked absurd, like they were moving into a hole in the middle of the grass. But once they’d passed beneath the first level’s “ground,” they found themselves under the same blue sky they’d seen above, with the sun in the same spot as it had been before. Looking back, the escalator seemed to go up to Heaven.
Kate sipped the Orange Julius, winced, and tossed it into a trash can when Jimmy wasn’t looking. The can was wrapped in what looked like green wrought iron, rusted at the corners.
The mall’s lower level, like the upper level, was designed to look like some sort of open-air bazaar. The shops were in charming doorless huts; the food vendors situated in stalls throughout. Despite the low-tech appearance, high-tech comforts abounded. The dome’s AirFi boasted one of the city’s fastest connections. Shoppers could call up airscreens and airboards anywhere inside.
There were entire immersive simulators in the underground building for telecommuters who didn’t want to work in offices but who weren’t free-spirited enough to work outside of a simulated office. The mall had fully embraced the transients rather than merely making them comfortable, dedicating a full wing to an ad-hoc, for-rent office park. This, like much of the mall’s extravagant design, had been a controversial move. When the mall was being built, the Beam’s District Zero recreation sector had been awash with rumors that the company behind the construction had put itself deeper in hock than any company in the past ten years. The investment had paid off, though, and Summit Mall was now one of DZ’s most active marketplaces. The non-virtual virtual office workers were the mall’s biggest clients, and Beam ID tracking stats showed that mere exposure to the mall and its rotating contextual environment ads led them to spend 47 percent more than the average casual visitor.
“Look at this fucker,” said Kate, her eyes on a sole dark-skinned figure occupying a chair ahead. “Some fashion sense, huh?”
Beside her, Jimmy didn’t respond.
Omar was wearing a lavender suit. Somehow, impossibly, he managed to make it work. His head swiveled as Kate watched him. He stood in greeting, his expression unreadable. He was smiling because Omar always smiled, but his grins had more flavors than Baskin-Robbins. Was this an angry look or one of compromise and amity? It was impossible to tell.
“Katherine.” Omar reached out as Kate came near.
She looked down at Omar’s hands, which were spread palms up. For a surreal moment, Kate thought he wanted her to slap them, like a down-low high-five. But before the odd moment settled, Omar reached his hands toward her, and she realized he wanted her to take them.
Feeling awkward, she did.
“Jimmy tells me you do good work.�
�
“Sure.”
“And, current situation’s problems aside, I’d have to agree. I don’t know how you do it. I’m Omar.”
Kate met Omar’s dark eyes. She’d looked into them many times before, and it was surreal to “meet” Omar as someone the man thought he didn’t know. She knew his every move and saw the triple layers in small movements of his face or body. They’d trafficked millions of credits in questionable cargo together. Doc had sold him the engineered tapeworms that Kate, herself, had in her organization kit. And yet he was, standing in front of her, taking her hands as if they’d never stood eye to eye. She was an excellent replacement dust runner to Omar now, nothing more.
“Uh, nice to meet you,” she said.
“Have a seat.”
Kate sat first. Omar remained half-standing, waiting. He was shooting a warning look at Jimmy. The look told Jimmy to wait until the lady was seated before putting his ass on the third soft chair in the cluster of four. Then they were all sitting, all glancing around at one another like old friends, their hands resting atop overstuffed, upholstered arms.
Omar pulled a device the size of a cookie from an interior pocket and set it on the circular, apparently wooden table in the middle of the chairs. The table was an upright cylinder with no room for feet underneath. It looked like a giant, blonde wood ottoman.
Omar touched the device. Kate recognized it because Doc and Omar had purchased units from the same lot a few months ago: a Cone of Silence. The mall’s open connection couldn’t be made entirely secure, but their discussion could be kept from passersby with an acoustic-dampening force field.
“Now,” said Omar, his voice taking on a serious edge once the Cone was activated. “I’ve got a bit of a problem.”
“Sure you do,” said Kate.
“I don’t like problems, Katherine. I like it when everyone’s friends.”
“‘Kate.’”
“Jimmy calls you Katherine.”
Kate looked at Jimmy. The expression on his face looked like he’d been caught.
“No, he doesn't,” said Kate.
Omar tipped his head. “Okay. Kate. You’re a smart young lady. You’re good at what you do from what I see of your operations so far, and your past record with…other employers. That makes you an asset. A huge asset. That’s not lost on me; I want you to know that.”
“Thanks.”
“But a problem is a problem.”
“I couldn’t help it,” said Kate. “They had new security that I wasn’t told about. It wasn’t that I screwed up. It would have happened to anyone.”
“It wouldn’t have happened to Jimmy,” said Omar.
“Only because his ass isn’t as fine as mine.” Kate felt herself flashing Doc’s wide PR smile then dragged her lips back into place when Omar’s head ticked again.
“Sure, sure. I get it. Man, but see, Jimmy woulda been pinched and been sent back, and we woulda used one of our get-out-of-jail-free cards and then been able to move on with Plan B after having learned something. You were in a position to be pinched, but instead of taking the bust and coming back, you did two things Jimmy wouldn’ta done. You killed the inspector…”
“My job description doesn’t include being raped,” said Kate.
Omar held up a hand. Gold glinted from rings and from the cufflinks on his starched white shirt.
“Now, hold on a minute. It wouldn’t be rape if you’d gone along with it. I’m just saying. But okay, so that was just the first thing, and we’ll set aside whether you could have talked your way out, taken the pinch, or whatever…”
“If he’d busted me, they would have confiscated the dust. I was trying to…”
“Well, and that’s the other thing. You didn’t get your shit nabbed, but I don’t know if that’s good or not. It sure is one or the other. Either you were smart to get back at all, or you were stupid to leave it behind. On one hand, it’s still up for grabs. But on the other, we can’t grab it.”
“Better to have it available,” said Kate. “I can go back and…”
Omar raised his hand again. “Now that’s the other thing. You can’t go back, and you know it. We got a dead inspector. Maybe that can be brushed away, and maybe it can’t, but either way you gotta lie low. That strands the dust, and you shouldn’ta stranded it. This is a very — very — important shipment. You left some folks high and entirely fucking dry.”
“Was I supposed to shove it up my ass to get it down here?”
“You could have tried to re-stow it,” Jimmy offered. “Bribed the transport crew. You said you fucked your way onto that shuttle anyway, so…”
“Fuck off, stretch!” Kate jerked her head toward Jimmy.
Beside her, Omar’s expression grew curious. Kate regrouped, ignoring Jimmy, and again focused on Omar. “I didn’t fuck my way on. I flashed my tits.”
“Tits got you onto a transport?” said Omar.
“I have nice tits.”
Omar held Kate’s gaze. “What age did you get them, Kate?”
“Get what?”
“Those hypnotic chest missiles of yours.”
Kate blinked.
“Just asking,” said Omar.
“Fifteen,” said Kate, wondering how offended she should be.
“Seems late,” said Omar.
“Yeah, well.”
“Jimmy says you’re into women.”
“I don’t see how that could possibly make any difference with…”
“Sure it does,” said Omar. “I’m just figuring out why you wouldn’t do what you didn’t do with the inspector. And I guess the answer is: because you’re not into men.”
Kate felt flustered. “Oh.”
Omar made a palms-up, just-saying sort of a gesture. “Looking out for you, is all. I wanna understand.”
“Oh.”
“Where’d you grow up?”
Kate scrambled. “Buffalo,” she said. But was that right? Some parts of her history were no different from Doc’s, but she couldn’t remember which parts they were. Everything was in a document stored in memory that she could project on her virtual heads-up display, but Kate hadn’t thought to summon it. With three blinks, she did.
“Something in your eye?”
“It’s dry in here.”
“I’m impressed with what you’ve done so far.” Omar brushed invisible dust off of his dust-repellent sleeve. “I’ve been watching you at every opportunity. You might say I was analyzing what you do. How you work. Trying to make sense of your behavioral patterns, say.” Omar paused, meeting Kate’s eyes, then laughed and continued. “So I don’t want you to think this is an inquisition. You’re an asset. No matter what you did, no matter what you are, it don’t change the fact that you got out of a sealed inspection chamber and off the moon unscathed. That, Jimmy couldn’t do.”
“Sure I could,” said Jimmy.
Kate had heard something in what Omar said that unsettled her, but the jab at Jimmy was tempting and impossible to let pass. She couldn’t forget how he’d pulled her up by the hair then threatened to sever her head. Now he was licking boot leather, and regardless of Omar’s thoughts on Kate, she felt herself rising to the bait.
“Don’t be jealous, darlin’,” she said to Jimmy.
Omar laughed, as if at a joke that hadn’t been said. Jimmy turned his head, looking away.
“Look,” said Omar. “I just need to know two things. One, do you want to keep working for me, assuming it’s all aboveboard and equitable for everyone involved?”
“Of course.” Kate nodded.
“And two, can I actually use you? Can you be taught what you should and shouldn’t do in situations like the one you were in? Can we somehow erase what happened here, and find a way to try again…regardless of the damage that’s already so regrettably done?”
“Sure,” said Kate. “The only reason I didn’t know what to do was because someone never told me — ” She looked at Jimmy. “ — but if we’d run through some scenarios, I’d
have known that you wanted me to get busted, and…”
“We don’t really want you to get busted.” Omar was still giving her a strange look, one eyebrow threatening to rise.
“Well then, whatever, or however I’m supposed to handle something like that, or maybe there’s equipment I could have been given, but yeah, sure, of course I want to keep doing this. I’m good at it, and I can get out of tight spots, and so I’m sure it’s just a matter of…”
“Hey, Kate,” said Omar. “Do you have the time?”
Without thinking, Kate looked down at the back of her right wrist, where Doc’s nano tattoo used to be.
When she looked up, Omar was smiling.
EPISODE 11
Chapter 1
District Zero — July 15, 2077
Kai was wearing her slinkiest red dress.
The fabric stopped seven centimeters above her knees. Thin straps and a deeply scooped neck gave a good look at her cleavage but not enough to be overtly sexual. Nothing about the dress was overt. It was subtle. It hinted at good, fast times but could have been read differently. The world had changed since her mother’s day, and women were freer to be who (and what) they wanted to be. For women like Kai, it meant the freedom to wear a borderline dress to a meeting, knowing she might be driving her appointment wild…while staying within her rights to slap him if he said something inappropriate.
With her non-overt, either-way dress, Kai wore tall red heels and matching lipstick. She’d pulled her dark-brown hair back into a loose ponytail that looked casual, even though it was anything but. It had taken twenty minutes to get the strays soothed and get the shaggy ends to hang just so.
She entered the room like a serpent, swaying her hips and locking eyes with the stranger in the suit sitting in a leather chair — real leather — with his legs crossed. His brown hair was parted and combed so perfectly, not a single strand dared to fall out of place. He had a firm, handsome jaw and sexy eyes. He looked to be in his early thirties — though increasingly, appearances meant little when determining age. As she neared, he pulled a cigarette from his lips, let it dangle from his hand on the chair’s arm, and blew out the puff he’d just taken.
