by F P Adriani
“Well, we’ve got to start somewhere—right, ejecta for brains?” a laughing Nell asked Jamie. But he only frowned back at her.
*
When we left the store, I told Jamie to come back to the hotel later, after midnight. Then Nell and I went up to our room.
While she used the bathroom, I laid out some of my purchases onto the table—a digital alarm clock was among them because I needed some of the clock’s wiring and other components….
Nell reappeared; she’d changed her clothes and was wearing only a dark-red sweatsuit now. She sat back on her bed as she said to me, “Are you sure we should be dealing with that Jamie pain in the butt? We don’t need him.”
My fingers were carefully using tools from my case to undo the clock’s workings. “I think you should give him a break, Nell—he’s really young. Maybe he’s just stupid around women.”
Nell sighed. “I’m not in good moods lately. It’s not all cupids and flowers with Derek, you know. Since the pregnancy, I’ve been feeling really smothered into this annoying traditional role of how a pregnant woman should act. And not just by him—by both our families too. And the baby isn’t even here yet.” She fell silent for a moment, but then her eyes were right on me when she spoke again. “What about things with you and Tan lately? You never told me exactly what happened between you right before we left.”
At first I didn’t respond; I went back to fiddling with the clock. Then, my face flushing, I told her a bit more about the recent Tan-And-Pia Problems. Then I finished with, “Actually, the biggest one I have lately is…I still haven’t met Tan’s mom. I’ve been avoiding it. I’m just not I-should-meet-his-parents material.”
“Don’t put yourself down,” Nell said fast, “don’t talk about yourself like that. Why can’t a woman kick asses and also be kind and family-oriented? She can. We’re supposed to believe that about men, so why shouldn’t we believe it about ourselves?”
She stopped talking for a long moment.
…Then she said, “Did you mean that before—about almost getting raped? And what you did?”
Now it was my turn to be silent for a while.
I finally replied with only a single, “Yes.”
“I’ve never had to shoot anyone,” Nell said then.
My voice was grim. “Well then you’re lucky.”
She lay back more, her hands resting over her belly now. “But I don’t know—maybe I could do it. I’m so fucking tired of dealing with men in particular lately—if they whine and moan, I just don’t want to hear it. Let them carry the young. Let them do it.”
My surprised mouth shook at her a bit. “I don’t understand why you’re saying this stuff tonight—I thought you were happy about being pregnant.”
She flashed her teeth at me now, in a slow big grin. “Oh I am—I am. It just isn’t easy, the balancing act. Though it isn’t easy for them either. Derek really does worry a lot now. I think that’s going to age him.” She sighed, and her sigh quickly turned into a yawn as her hands stroked her belly.
“Nell, I think we talked enough—you better get some sleep for now. The night ain’t over yet.”
*
“When you said the night ain’t over, you really meant it,” Nell said five hours later as she shivered inside her blue jacket.
The three of us—Nell and Jamie and I—were standing in that same wet smelly alley. From somewhere above us, water dripped down like a slow stinky rain.
Nell and I were both fully dressed again, but the night had grown really cold. Since coming to Hera I’d learned that the bubbles were insulated. But both to make the place seem less confined and allow tree growth below, the tops were built extremely high, which meant the heat tended to remain near the very tops—great in the stifling Heran summers, but terrible in the frigid Heran winters….
I was sighing as I turned to Jamie. Moments ago he’d put something in his mouth—he was smoking it or it was smoldering or something. And it stunk even worse than the alley.
“Would you put that fucking thing away?” I growled.
But he only tilted the stick in my direction, the little red glowing tip brightening as he breathed in again. He said finally, “You should try it—it’ll warm you right up.”
“No thanks. And you ain’t going near inside, especially because you stink now. I want in and out of there nice and easy so no one knows I was there.”
“Like I want to be in there? I don’t do crimes. I’m a good boy.” He took another drag on his stick. And I just glared at him. “I mean it,” he said then, pulling out the stick, his big brown eyes looking very serious. And I wondered if he were telling the truth. …Now that I thought about it, something about him seemed very studious.
“This isn’t a crime,” I finally bullshitted. “I’m going in to check out something, but I’m only leaving with what I went in with. No robbery. I just need some info.”
“Taking information is still theft,” said Jamie.
“I’m taking nothing. I’m memorizing it,” I growled. Then I turned to Nell. “Let’s go before the parson here turns us heathens in.”
Nell laughed, but the sound was brittle, uneasy, which momentarily made me uneasy. Maybe none of us was up to this tonight….
Nevertheless, it just had to be done.
I turned away from them and pulled on my black face mask, my feet pounding the ground toward the back of the medical complex.
*
When I’d walked through the building that afternoon, I’d seen no security guards, not even security cameras. Apparently, this was a better area of the city so businesses were more careless.
Earlier I’d left my half-empty case in the hotel safe downstairs, so my pockets were now stuffed full with shit from my case. As I walked up to the building’s side back-end, my neck light swung against my collar bone. I flipped the light switch and the brightness flared against the plaster wall. My eyes and right gloved hand glided over the surface; I held a sensor, and when the light flashed on, indicating a certain alloy wire coating, I followed that path till I got an image of where the danger zones were. Apparently, only a dinky alarm system protected this place, and this system didn’t even cover the basement window. Stupid.
Though the window opening was narrow height-wise, a person of my stature could easily fit through it—if two horizontal wooden bars weren’t fixed over the glass.
I gave them a good pull but found them a little too tough to break that way. So I leaned back, hooking a foot behind the bottom-most bar. Just as I was about to yank, I heard movement behind me—my pulse instantly raced.
But the noise was only Nell and Jamie.
“Can you get in?” Nell whispered from behind me.
“Yeah, but I’m gonna have to break the wood and window. No way around that.”
Before they could say anything further, I yanked my foot and the bar broke away from the frame. The remaining opening was big enough for me to fit through. I reached into my jacket for my little cushioned club and shoved that into the glass. It gave way, but not too noisily.
“We’re going to be in trouble,” I heard Jamie say.
“Shhh,” warned Nell fast.
“Well we are,” Jamie said in a lower voice.
“No, we’re not,” I said. “I’ll fix this up later. Remember, both of you: if you see anyone coming, push the green button on the communicator and keep walking away. The button will alert me, the walking will save you.” I reached into the window’s broken section and opened the inside lock.
*
I used the inner hand-crank to open the window’s frame, then I removed my jacket and hung it by the neck on the crank-handle; I didn’t want to crush the tools inside my jacket.
For once my tiny tits were huge—a huge plus. Had they been any bigger, I wouldn’t have been able to push myself hard-and-fast enough through the opening without a lot of pain. Unfortunately, I still felt my butt and hipbones get too squashed for comfort when I hit the inner frame and the upper wood
en bar. I’d probably be sporting a bruise or two tomorrow, but, oh well, what else was new with dangerous jobs.
*
I avoided the elevators; I used the stairs and eventually made it into Strand’s office without incident. I had to jigger the electronic office door lock a bit, but it was nothing I hadn’t done many times before.
Inside now, I spent some unproductive time trying to figure out where the hell the patient records were. Bizarrely, the place didn’t seem to have a computer. So unless the practice was completely fake, there must have been some information recorded somewhere….
Ah-hah…I finally found the records in a room farther back. Apparently, that front desk really was like a front—it was just used to “hello” the patients. The real office sat farther behind there. Still no computer inside that room, but it did contain lots of file cabinets.
Standing before one now, my fingers opened one drawer and then another. At first glance the filing system didn’t seem to have an order; then I realized that the top drawers of each cabinet held the files of the most recent visitors for each last-name letter of the alphabet. Whoever had been there the latest, that file would be up front in a cabinet’s top drawer.
I moved down the line of cabinets, got to what I thought would be R, then pulled open the top drawer.
Pay dirt.
Almost immediately I found Millie’s file. And I was just about to open it when my communicator light blinked.
“Crap,” I said under my breath, my heart racing a dizzy whooosh in my ears.
I pushed the communicator’s reply button and whispered into the mouthpiece, “What is it—am I blown?”
“Pia!” said Nell in an urgent tight voice I’d never heard her use. “Someone’s walking that way so we shoved off down the street! We’re still pretty close though—I can see him….”
“Is he coming into the building?” My fingers snapped open the file. No time to second guess. I still needed the info so had no choice but to keep looking. I remembered Jamie’s words about theft, but fuck that. I whipped out a pen, tore a piece of paper from a nearby deskpad. But the desktop was soft wood—I didn’t want to take the chance of leaving an impression there. I leaned the paper up against one of the metal file cabinets and began writing down Millie’s info….
“I can’t tell,” came Nell’s voice. “Wait…shit. He’s just standing there in front of it, waiting. He’s lit something.”
“It’s just a fag like mine,” I heard Jamie say.
But then Nell replied, “Oh go away, Jamie…I wish that idiot would too. He looks like he’s waiting for someone.”
“In the middle of the night in a business district?” I said, my hand frantically scribbling, sweat coursing down my head under my mask and into my eyes. With my other arm, I swiped at my eyes as I finished copying the info.
“Oh no—here comes someone else—two people! …But wait, wait! They met up with the guy—they look like they’re leaving, Pia!”
I shoved the file back into the cabinet. “Let me know when they do because I’m coming out.”
…Or maybe I wasn’t coming out. Just as I had finished relocking the office door and was about to bolt away, Nell signaled me again. “Oh I don’t believe this, Pia. Here comes someone else walking there!”
“What is this—the busiest fucking street on Hera at three in the morning?” I said, my voice rising too loud. Remembering my situation, my head instantly spun around the hall, but, really, there was no one else inside the building as far as I knew.
Now I ran toward the nearest stairway, shot into it, and hopped down the steps two at a time as I listened to Nell’s frantic voice. “They’re stopped on the side where the back window is! Sitting on one of the benches there…! If you come out that way—”
“—I’m fucked. Well—I’ll need to do something else—think of something.”
“Look, I’ve got an idea—give me your hat,” I heard Jamie say alongside Nell’s hard breathing. I did not like that hard breathing even more than I didn’t like mine. What the fuck had I gotten my friend into?
My legs pumped harder and harder and faster and faster. I reached the hall outside the basement room where the window was. Then I stopped, waiting.
“Well?” I whispered into the communicator, holding my hand near my mouth to deaden the sound even more. I also lowered the incoming volume. When no one responded, I said, “Hello? Anyone home?”
That was when I heard Nell’s voice—louder than it should have been. Coming from the basement room. “Pia! Over here—you in there?”
“Yes!” I said, shooting into the dark room. Nell’s scared face moon-like hovered in the top corner of the window opening.
“What the fuck happened?” I asked her.
“Jamie walked here, said he’d use a bullshit story about being lost and ask them for directions—they all just walked down the street. But hurry! Don’t know if they’ll come back.”
I made it out without incident; then we gingerly walked up toward the front of the building more, peered around the corner, and saw no one.
Unfortunately, that “no one” meant Jamie wasn’t around either.
“Where the hell did he go?” I asked Nell as tore off my mask and we shot down the street.
“I don’t know! What happened back there—did you find anything?”
“We’ll talk later—let’s get to the rail.”
We did. We waited there; the minutes passed.
The train was scheduled to come in about ten minutes. “Where the fuck is he,” I said now, nervously pacing the platform, feeling very adrenaline juiced-up. I’d probably have trouble sleeping later….
Just as I thought that, Jamie’s slim form appeared farther down the platform and came closer.
“Where the hell have you been?” I practically shouted at him.
Both the corners of his mouth and his eyebrows rose suggestively. “Missed me?”
“No. We were gonna leave without you.”
Now his eyebrows sunk and his mouth did that pout thing I’d realized was a common Jamie facial expression.
“I’m just busting your hump,” I said, sighing. “I’m not a dumbass. Of course I would have waited.”
Now the pout turned into a grin. He took off Nell’s blue knit hat and gave it back to her. “I asked the people for directions—there’s a bar a ways down. That must have been where people kept coming from. But I gave the two of them a fag each. We smoked for a little. Then I left but had to walk here the long way around, first in the bar’s direction. Made it look convincing. You think I shouldn’t have talked to them so much though? I had the hat pulled down to my brow, but they saw me up close….”
“Don’t worry about it. There was no choice, at least with my being stuck inside.”
“So did you fix that window?”
I looked at him. Then I said a blunt, “No.”
“But you said you’d fix it!”
“How exactly? Do I look like I’m sporting glazier equipment? Hopefully, no one will notice it’s broken and if they do, it’ll be days later. And the little mementos I left will explain things.”
“Mementos? What are you talking about, Pia?” Nell asked.
“Not the place to discuss this…and here comes the train. Let’s move.”
*
“Omigod,” said Nell, “did you really drop used condoms there?” She held her stomach as she laughed, tears coursing down her face.
We were back in our hotel room, and Nell was in her usual leaning-against-the-headboard spot on her bed.
“Yep,” I said to her now on a grin.
“Used by YOU?” Nell asked now.
“Of course not. There is such a thing as sperm banks, you know. I keep a vacuum-packed supply of tainted rubbers in my case for just these special occasions. That’s a trick I thought up years ago. It’s come in handy a lot.”
“That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Jamie, shaking his head. “But, hot damn, do I like it.�
��
*
A little while later, we made plans for the next day. I spoke mostly to Jamie now because I could talk to Nell after he’d left.
“Giba,” he said to me at one point, “we’ve never talked about payment.”
“How much is you-know-Hu paying you?”
“Er…not much. It was a lump-sum deal.”
I thought a moment, studied his serious face. I had two important places to visit in Cielo, and I didn’t know if most people there spoke anything other than Moonspan. Early that morning right after I’d woken up, I looked for that information on the hotel’s guest computer, but I found nothing about the languages then. It seemed that too often I’d be flying blind in Cielo, especially because tonight’s events wound up not allowing me time to study my visitor’s guide.
I needed Jamie’s help—that was clear.
“All right,” I said now. “I’ll pay you whatever your usual rate is. Be on time in the afternoon for the rail to Cielo.”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“You should go. We’ve got to rest, especially Nell.” I looked over at her; her head lay back against the top of the wooden headboard, her eyes were closed. And they hadn’t opened when I’d said her name.
“See what I mean?” I whispered back to Jamie.
*
The next morning while we were packing up our belongings, Nell said to me, “I meant to ask you again what you found in the office last night, but I forgot after all the excitement.”
“Well, look here.” I pulled out that paper from the file-cabinet room and some notes I’d made before I left Diamond. “This is the address for Millie in the doctor’s record, and that’s the address for Stein Refinery, which that John character used to half-own.”
“Okay, they’re the same.” She glanced up at me. “What does it mean?”
“What I suspected: Millie was working for him in breaking into our office.”
“And the doctor—where does that come in?”
