by F P Adriani
I swallowed back my excitement at all this news as I pulled out my Ginger Meek itinerary to make us look legit. Then I told Jamie to ask the cook for job-application forms.
As soon as we’d walked out the back door, Nell’s happy voice said to me, “We found something!”
“Yeah, but we need more than that. We need to hang out at that bar. Tonight.”
*
Back at our hotel, we all went to eat in the restaurant there; then Jamie disappeared for a little while Nell and I went up to our room. Then Jamie came back, and Nell dozed while Jamie watched TV. Then he dozed and I played around with some things in my case. I might not wind up needing them for this trip, but you never know….
“How you going to lug that case everywhere here?” Jamie suddenly asked me.
I didn’t respond directly at first. “You think I should leave it in the safe downstairs?”
His head shook at me. “No. I don’t.”
“Neither do I. But no worries if I decide to. This is a special case; it’s coded to me. If it’s not opened by me and only in a certain way, all the paperwork inside starts breaking down via chemical reactions.”
“Oh Pia,” said Nell in a groggy but worried voice, “you mean when I had that on my lap, it was dangerous?”
“No—no! Not to people, just to paper. And it wouldn’t help the devices I’ve got in there. But I hope it never comes to that. Not that I couldn’t somehow get another one and do the inside contents over again.”
“Including the sperm-filled rubbers?” Nell asked on a laugh.
*
When it was time to go check out the bar, I decided to play it as safe as possible: I took my case with me. And Jamie took his case—the first time he’d ever shown up at any of our hotel rooms with anything other than himself.
Jamie’s case was long, thin, and blue, and he held it tightly under his left arm as we walked down the hotel stairs.
Now I asked him, “So what’s in your case?”
“You got your case, I got mine,” he said smugly.
I rolled my eyes a bit. “Excuse me for asking.”
He shrugged as he said, “You’ll see soon.”
And he was right—both about that and about something else he’d said once: when we stepped out of the stairwell, I saw neon signs plastered everywhere.
From all over the spectrum, the bright neon colors lit up the streets. Some colors were static, some were whirling. They decorated big, very realistically complex signs—still images of people and buildings, moving images of workers, and detailed scenery from the Heran landscape and sky. Taken together, the signs looked like an exact electrified duplicate of existing on Hera….
“Wow,” I said, my eyes kind of bugging out at all the colors peppering the impending night in the background.
“Yeah, it’s something else,” Jamie replied in a dry voice. Then he added in a wary voice, “Let’s keep walking.”
I glanced over at his profile. “Something worrying you?”
His eyes darted around, and one of his shoulders shifted up—a nervous gesture. “I don’t like it in Shiloh. The people aren’t trustworthy.”
“You know somewhere they are?”
“I meant in a relative sense,” he snapped nastily. Normally if a guy used that tone with me, I would have told him off, but he really did look worried. And he really was very young. Maybe his coming with us wasn’t fair….
“Look,” I said, “I think you should go back to your hostel.”
His head shook. “I’ll feel better when I get inside the bar. If they’ll let me.”
“If they’ll let you inside?”
“No. You’ll see soon,” he replied for a second time that night.
We finally stepped into The Flamingo. And, true to its name, inside I saw a lot of pink flashing neon, a lot of mobile pink lights. The place was pretty, but I couldn’t imagine working there, day in and day out. I’d have constant migraines.
Other than the lights though, it was just a standard nighttime bar, filled with many people looking to have a good time but looking as if they weren’t having as good a time as they’d expected when they walked in the front door.
Nell and I sat at a table, and Jamie went to talk to one of the bartenders. He was passionately gesticulating with his hands. I wondered what the hell he was doing: I doubted he was ordering for us because we hadn’t even said what we wanted.
I watched him for a moment; then he and the bartender disappeared into the back of the bar behind a big stage.
Nell must have been watching him too. “What’s he doing?”
“I have no idea,” I said, sighing as my head turned to check out the place more, to get a clearer picture of the individuals there. Making out faces wasn’t easy because of the eye-shocking pink halo around everything. But the more I stared, the more the pink seemed to disappear, and I could make out the lines of human features a bit better.
A server came up to us and we both ordered nonalcoholic drinks. I wondered where Jamie had disappeared to. But I didn’t have to wonder for long.
Some guy suddenly came out on the stage and grabbed the microphone there. “Folks,” he said, “it’s that time again—amateur hour at The Flamingo! Everyone give a big hand to the first performer tonight: Jay R, The Fiddler!”
Jay R for Jay Romero was the fake name I’d decided Jamie should use.
Both Nell and I glanced at each other with what-the-fucking-fuck? eyes as the people around us began half-heartedly clapping.
Jamie finally walked onto the stage; in one arm he held a long-and-sleek red fiddle.
When he lifted the instrument to his shoulder, some background music started up, and Jamie’s long fingers got to work. My mouth dropped open as I watched their tips dance over the strings as if they’d been born dancing there.
The half-psychedelic half-old-rock music coming from his fiddle lifted the pink dull place into a pink exciting place. I found my hands bouncing on the tabletop and my feet bouncing on the floor. And across from me, Nell’s rapt face was lit up in delight.
By the time Jamie had finished playing and began bowing on the stage, Nell and I were looking right at each other, both shock and humor making us smile widely.
“Who knew?” Nell said, loudly laughing.
An all-smiles Jamie walked over to us.
“That was so great, Jay! You really can play!” said an excited Nell.
“Thank you.” He grinned back at her and took a quick at-the-waist bow, before slipping into one of the chairs.
He laid his fiddle onto the tabletop. And I watched his fingers move again as he carefully returned the instrument to its case. “It really was fantastic, Jamie. How come you never said you were a musician?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t think it mattered to anyone.”
“It matters to me,” said Nell, and I heard the catch in her voice. My head shot over to her, but hers was turned away, toward the stage, where the next performer was setting up his act. “Your playing reminded me of my little brother,” Nell added now in a softer voice.
“Cool!” said Jamie. “Is he a musician? What does he play?”
“He played the piano. He’s dead,” Nell said.
Jamie’s whole face kind of sank into his neck. “Oh, I’m sorry, damn—I didn’t know.”
“How could you?” she said, her face twisting and looking on the verge of sobbing.
I quickly changed the subject. “Jay, did you go to school for music?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes. And that’s one thing…you-know-who helped me with. Helped my family pay for it.”
“God damn her,” said Nell in an angry voice, as if Jamie hadn’t even spoken something positive about Hu. “People like her—what they do to Diamond. Why the hell are we here, P—Gin?”
I lowered my voice, told her to lower hers. “There’s some kind of danger, Arn—I told you. We can’t discuss this here. We—”
I was about to add more, but my eyes had fallen to behin
d Nell, to where some new people had walked into The Flamingo. I couldn’t tell if they were together as a group, but the posture of one of them seemed familiar to me.
She now stood at the bar as she ordered a drink. Her hair was short and red, and she looked a little too thin in her white top and black pants. She was also poised at an angle to me, so I couldn’t get a full-on view of her face. Plus, the place’s pink halo was still a pain in the eyes….
I stood up fast.
“What is it?” Nell asked, her head darting a look over her shoulder.
I slid my case to her across the tabletop. “Hang onto this and wait here.”
“What—why?”
I didn’t respond. The woman took her drink from the bartender; then she walked back toward the front door and slipped outside.
I was right on her tail.
When I got outside, I saw her standing in front of the next store over. Her head bowed a bit now, she held her drink in one hand as she smoked something in her other hand. The store was closed and the window looked quite dark, but her eyes seemed focused on whatever lay below her inside.
Out here, without the pink, I got a clearer view of her as I moved nearer.
“Millie,” I said in a hard voice.
Her head shot up. And, sure enough, I saw that shadow of a facial scar.
Now her eyes darted around to me wildly; then she dropped both her drink and her cigarette and shot off down the block.
I followed suit and she kept running and—goddammit, she was small but she was also very fast, like a human cheetah of the streets and alleyways. I wasn’t that fast, but I was persistent. Eventually, she ran out of streets and alleyways—or so much steam.
She ran behind a big cafeteria-looking place and now stood panting before a bubble door to the Heran outdoors. Momentarily, her body hesitated; then she glanced at me over her shoulder—and finally pushed open the door and shot through.
“AVISO!” a loud recorded voice said. “DAXON GAS TOXICIDAD! WARNING! DAXON GAS TOXICITY! AVISO! DAXON GAS….”
The dual-message kept droning on as I rushed up to the door. I hesitated longer than Millie had, staring out at her receding insane I-have-a-deathwish form; as far as I’d been able to see, she wore no protective suit beneath her clothing.
But her deathwish might also wind up being mine somehow, not just from the gas but from back on Diamond. Potentially no winning for me here.
“Shit!” I said, pulling my purple breather hood down over my face, then charging outside. As I ran, I grabbed for my suit-gloves inside my jacket pocket—but, apparently, somewhere sometime tonight, I had dropped one. So now I had to run after Millie with one hand bouncing in and out of my pocket.
And, wow, did we run. We ran and ran and ran, over the damp ground behind and through and under the outdoor mechanical workings for the indoors. I didn’t know for how long we ran, or where the hell we’d been going, but I almost didn’t reach her.
Then she finally looked over her shoulder at me charging at her—and lost her balance, tumbling hard onto her knees. She spun around at me, sharp fear in her eyes. She began screaming a wounded-animal sound as she held up her right hand in front of her.
I rushed up to her and glanced at her hand, which looked like it had a gunshot graze-groove on it—I hadn’t shot at her, so where the hell….
Oh, I thought, suddenly understanding that it was no gunshot. It was a festering burn. On her bare skin.
*
She was whimpering a disoriented little cry as I grabbed beneath both her armpits and yanked her through the nearest doorway. My eyes scanned fast for a faucet somewhere. I spotted one on the wall of what looked like a restaurant.
I pulled her over there and turned on the water. She was still whimpering. I couldn’t tell if she was whimpering from the pain or because she was afraid of me.
“Let me go! Don’t hurt me!” she said now.
“What the fuck are you talking about? If I wanted to hurt you, I woulda left you outside. I don’t hurt other women. Put your hand under the water fast. It’s gonna hurt though—no way to avoid that.”
She did as I’d said, screaming again as the cold water hit her raw flesh. I winced at her agony, but washing the wound would help stop the burn from getting worse.
When I was finished with her hand, I pulled her along the alley until we reached a better-lit area, and now I realized that we’d somehow wound up going in a circular route; we weren’t that far from The Flamingo.
“My hand, my hand,” she suddenly whimpered, holding her hand forward. Yet the rest of her arm clung to her side, as if she instinctively wanted to nurse her wound but knew her own body touching the raw flesh would make the pain worse. “I’ve…got to throw up,” she said now in an agonized voice as she doubled forward and put her words into action.
“Lovely,” I said in a dry voice.
When she’d finished emptying her stomach, I pushed her along ahead of me. “Move. It’s just a little farther.”
“Where—where!”
“Back to The Flamingo. I left some people there.”
“But I’ve gotta get to a hospital—got daxon poisoning….”
“We’ll see,” I said.
*
Nell and Jamie had been pacing-waiting for me outside The Flamingo. When they spotted me with Millie in tow, they rushed over.
“Back to the hotel for us,” I said fast as I began moving in that direction.
“But I’m sick!” Millie protested along the way.
“You’re not that sick,” I said.
“What about you don’t hurt women—”
“Not intentionally I don’t. But stop complaining or I just might change my policy,” I shot out.
I was feeling really angry as I pulled her into the hotel’s back stairway. I’d been forced to come all this way because of her having fucked with my life. And I didn’t deserve that fucking. As much as I didn’t want to hurt women, sometimes I got so tired of their doing shit to hurt me….
Nell was frowning as we moved. “But, Pia, what if she really is sick?”
“She’s got no swelling in her face,” said Jamie. “If she had daxon poisoning, she’d look puffy and purple.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I’ll get the hotel nurse’s aide to bandage her hand. Then you two meet us at the Communications room. Millie’s got a message to send.”
*
Millie and I spent quite a bit of time with the nurse’s aide, whose fingers moved very carefully to avoid causing Millie any unnecessary pain.
When the aide had finished her applications of ointment and light bandaging, she said to me in slightly accented but standard English, “She should get that checked at the hospital at some point.”
“Yeah, okay. But remember: you didn’t see this,” I said as I pulled out three Heran twenties from my wallet.
*
When Millie and I reached the hall outside the Commmunications room, Nell was there, pacing once again, her face a mask of worry. “What took you so long?”
“It’s a pretty bad burn,” I said to her. Then to Millie: “Now’s your chance to vindicate me. Because of your fucking actions, your fucking cousin thinks you’re dead, and I’ve somehow become the prime suspect.”
“What!” Millie squeaked, looking genuinely shocked, assuming a genuine bone in her body actually existed.
“Why did you come here?” I demanded. But then before she could answer, I shook my head fast, silencing her with it. Then I turned to Jamie. I felt worried he’d gotten too involved here. He didn’t need to know all this. “Jay R, you take off.”
He stiffened. “I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”
“Yeah, I do mind because I don’t want to be responsible for you too.”
“It might be too late for that.”
I looked at him, at his uncomfortable twisted mouth. Then I realized he was right. For all I knew, Millie’s path had been followed by more people than just me.
“All righ
t then,” I said to Jamie. “Come on.”
I pulled Millie into the Communications room and told the worker there to leave. Another Heran twenty gone.
I set up the communications myself, talking to Millie all the while.
“Why did you come here?” I demanded again.
“Because you found out about the break-in. I thought the police would come get me. Or you. You came to my house and threatened me—”
“I did no such thing. I’ll cop to intimidating you, but if I wanted you hurt and especially dead, your skinny ass would have been in an unmarked grave a long time ago.”
“Damn,” I heard Jamie say uneasily, under his breath. But I just shot him a hard Shut Up look.
To Millie I said, “You didn’t have to come all the way here to get away from me. Why did you come here, to Hera, in specific? No bullshit anymore. Who hired you to do the break-in and why?”
Her face twisted a little as she stared down at her bandaged hand. “I don’t know his name.”
“I said no bullshit,” I growled.
“I think his name’s John,” Millie said fast. “He’s blond and tall, used to own this Stein Refinery—that’s all I know. He told me to meet him there, but he never showed up. I was supposed to…get more money from him. Enough to fix my face.” She turned the scarred part away from me.
“I know about that,” I said.
“You’ve got to declare any medical visits here. My itinerary….”
“I know about that too. How the hell do you think I found you?” I snapped impatiently. “Now what were you supposed to look for in my office?”
“A map and some notes about the map, but I couldn’t find anything.”
It was a good thing that nothing important had been in there because the experienced little thief probably would have found it. “Did you take anything from my office? No fucking lies.”
Her fake red-haired head shook fast. “No. Nothing.”
“And you thought you’d get paid more money for your failure there?”
She sucked in her bottom lip, lowered her head.
