"Are all your interactions so formal?"
"Another borderline stupid question, but another one I'll allow." She leaned slightly forward, lowered her voice, and said, "If they were, do you imagine many people would pay a fee as high as mine?" In that moment, in that slight change in position and tone, she transformed from cold and hidden to hot and tempting. She resumed her perfect posture and in her normal voice said, "I'd ask you if all your interactions were so guarded, if you were always such a tightly sealed box, but then I'd have used up one of my own stupidity points. Your next question?"
As maddening as I found her, she absorbed my attention completely. It was as if the square had vanished in a flash of light and we were alone in a featureless landscape. I closed my eyes for a second, then opened them and slowly surveyed the shops and people and streets within view. I'm sure I appeared even more guarded than before, but I didn't care; I needed to regain control of myself.
After about a minute, I focused again on her. She remained still, as motionless as if she were knocked out but at the same time completely present, simply waiting for me to return. She reminded me of Slanted Jack, the best con man I've ever known but also someone who'd caused me a lot of trouble about a year ago. He had an amazing ability to be still and completely present, as well as to make each person he met feel like he or she was the most important human alive.
With that memory came the understanding that at some level I was, of course, being conned. She sold time, and however precious that resource might be, some of that time must be available or she wouldn't have bothered to meet me. Thinking of this situation that way helped me focus on my side of this con—and also made me realize that I hadn't prepared as well for my job or paid as close attention to it as any decent con man should.
When running a con, stick to the truth whenever you can, and believe in your lies as if they were true. With Matahi, that meant being myself as much as possible. I cared about risks and locations, so I decided to indulge myself.
"Aside from the police station," I said, "why this square?"
A slight shift in her position made me wonder if I'd finally surprised her in a good way. Then again, nothing in the little bit of her face that I could see gave away any reaction, so perhaps I'd imagined it.
"The many different types of buildings that line it," she said. She waved her hand slowly to encompass all the structures running along the edges of the square. "In this one little bit of this entirely artificial old-world tourist mecca, we have plain boxes, ornate facades with balconies, two places of worship, and many other monuments to our ability to build structures both functional and ornamental in which we can take shelter from the universe and sometimes from each other." She paused, and when she spoke again her voice was softer. "It serves to remind me of how even within the narrow confines of any society's limits we will always find our own paths to fulfilling our most basic needs."
I waited for her to continue, but when she remained silent for almost a minute I spoke, going again for a question that was bothering me. "If you accept me as a client," I said, "must sex be a part of our relationship?"
She nodded the tiniest bit, a teacher congratulating a student on finally spotting the path to an answer, and said, "No. Whatever we decided to become would be up to us, to both of us. Nothing would happen unless we both wanted it."
I nodded in return. "You said I was guarded; fair enough. This setting, though, is not exactly designed to help me relax. I would prefer to be somewhere more private."
"As would I," she said, "should I decide to accept you as a client."
I continued with honest questions. "Why is so much of you covered? It's not at all what I expected. You said I was a tightly sealed box; are you any more open?"
Again, she nodded. "To answer your first question, why does my appearance matter to someone who implies he would like a non-sexual relationship? As for your second, of course not, not yet—nor will I be unless our relationship continues beyond this conversation."
"And will it?" I said. "I'm out of questions." I hadn't realized that was true until I said it, but it was; I didn't know what else to ask her.
"Maybe," she said. "You would have to agree to two conditions, neither negotiable."
"And they are?"
"First, a simple business term: You would have to pay in full in advance for each meeting."
"And if I'm not happy with how a meeting goes?"
She shrugged. "That's a risk for both of us, but it's not one with insurance. You would have lost your money and your time, and I would have lost my time."
I shouldn't need more than one or two meetings to study her place, and Shurkan and the CC were paying me well enough that even Matahi's outrageous fees wouldn't put a dent in my take from this mission.
"Okay," I said. "I'm willing to do that. Your other condition?"
She stood, the shimmery burqa still revealing nothing about her shape. "When you would like to see me again, and when my schedule permits, you will pay the fee, and we will meet here. You must bring a present that you believe I will like. If you're right and I like it, your fee will cover our first meeting at my studio. If I don't care for the gift, I'll leave, and you'll lose the fee."
"That's ridiculous," I said. "Do you find fools willing to go through all this, to pay you twice and not even be sure they'll get time alone with you?"
"Obviously," she said, turning as she spoke, "and enough that I don't need you to succeed, though I confess I hope you do. Like you, by the way, these people are not fools. They simply enjoy a happy marriage of need and resources."
She started walking away.
"How am I supposed to know what you'll like?" I said. "We've barely met."
She stopped, turned, and smiled. "You're clearly capable of contemplation, and you pay close attention. Now, let your conclusions and your data fuel your creativity." She tilted her head ever so slightly to the right, and her smile flowed into a more serious expression. "And in the process you will get a glimpse of the challenge I face regularly, one I assure you I always meet." She paused, smiled again, and said, "Always."
She headed away.
I stared after her and wondered how I was going to figure out what she would like and where I would find such a present.
When Matahi was almost out of earshot, she paused for a moment and spoke, her voice clear even though she was facing away from me, her tone managing to be both warm and teasing.
"I hope you meet yours."
Chapter 17
As soon as Matahi turned the corner, I raced after her. Though none of the online data had revealed the location of her home, if I could follow her there, I'd at least be able to survey the area and spot possible places to snatch Wei when he left after visiting her. I lost a few seconds getting around the people in front of the shops, so by the time I reached the corner where Matahi had turned, I was a good ten seconds behind her. I stopped, crouched, and glanced around the building's edge.
Her burqa was nowhere in sight.
"Tell me you're close enough to follow her," I said to Lobo over the comm.
"Of course," he said. "Scouting and mapping Wei's possible routes took very little time. Unfortunately, I can't see her."
"What?" I spoke so loudly several nearby people stared at me. "I'm sorry," I said to them.
"How nice of you to apologize for yelling," Lobo said, "and how very unusual."
I walked down the street slowly, checking the sides as I went, but I didn't see her.
"I wasn't talking to you," I whispered. "And why can't you see her?"
"The moment she was out of your line of sight," Lobo said, "she ducked into a doorway on the right. From the few floor plans that are publicly available, I believe that many of these buildings connect on interior walls. I've been watching all the people entering and leaving via all the exterior doorways in a five block radius, but no one wearing her outfit has emerged."
"No luck with her heat signature?"
"Give me some c
redit," Lobo said. "Of course not. The outfit in which she met you blocked everything; from my height she read so cold she might have been dead."
I shook my head in both defeat and admiration. "So she anticipated the possible surveillance, minimized the data we could accumulate about her, ducked into a building, and somewhere along the line changed clothes. Nice job."
"It would appear so," Lobo said. "Did you do something to alarm her? I wasn't close enough to be able to record your conversation."
I considered the question for a few seconds. "I don't think so. I showed anger once and frustration often, but I never let either emotion control what I did. I was basically just myself."
Lobo's sigh over the comm unit was as clear as it was annoying. "Perhaps in future interactions with females you should consider trying to act like someone else."
"And what in your extensive experience with women has endowed you with such wisdom?" I said.
"Nothing, of course," he said, "though my ability to monitor vital signs in real time, my perfect memory, and my access to an enormous library of the most romantic human works does give me a bit of an edge over a man who couldn't tell if a woman was interested in him unless she hit him with a sign telling him so."
"Look, I've spent a long time—" I stopped. The day might come that I'd have to tell Lobo about my past, but we weren't there yet. "I'm heading back to the rendezvous site. Track me, and meet me there. If you spot Matahi, call me. Otherwise, leave me alone." The challenge she'd given me felt impossible. I didn't even know where to begin to learn about buying gifts for any woman, much less a woman I'd met only once. "I need to think."
"It's an interesting idea," Pri said, a trace of admiration obvious in her tone. She paced back and forth in the front of Lobo, thinking it through. "She forces the focus back on her, learns more about you, and makes money regardless of how it turns out." She smiled. "It would make a great test prior to a second date."
"You would test someone you were dating?" I said, shaking my head in frustration.
"Where did you grow up?" Pri said. "Of course! Dating is a huge series of tests."
I ignored her question, because I sure wasn't going to answer it. "Let's focus on the problem: How am I going to pass? I have no clue what to get her."
"Assuming your rendition of the conversation is correct," Lobo said, "she portrayed this task as difficult. We may therefore assume that none of the classic gifts will suffice."
"Thank you, Mr. Logic," I said. "I'd figured out that much before I left the square. Given the vast universe of possible purchases, however, I don't think excluding a few of them helps much. What I need is an idea Matahi will like."
"I understand the assignment," Lobo said. "I was simply approaching it logically, trying to remove some categories and thus shrink the search space."
"What do you know about her?" Pri said.
"I've told you all the facts," I said, glad to have an excuse to stop the argument with Lobo.
"So assess her," Pri said. "What did you learn about her?"
I closed my eyes, replayed my impressions and the conversation. Without opening them, I said, "She's careful with information. She covered up as much as possible and gave away only what she wanted me to know. Her situational awareness was excellent; she spotted me early and tracked me well. Her preparation was quick and thorough, though all that tells us is that she's done this before, and we already knew that. She's confident, arguably over-confident. No one who could help her was close enough to stop me had I been there to kill her. I could have reached across the table and snapped her neck before she could react."
I paused and considered again her burqa. "Of course, she might have been armed with something automatic—it couldn't have required manual triggering, because both her hands were in view, though perhaps something in the gloves could have served that function. Or perhaps her burqa and gloves were light armor."
I opened my eyes.
Pri was staring at me, her mouth slightly open, her head tilted, her pupils dilated. "Do you think of everyone as an enemy?" she said. "You're supposed to be winning her trust, not deciding how to kill her. Armored clothing? Reaching across the table and snapping her neck? What's wrong with you?"
She took a step backward. "Have you thought of me that way?"
Of course, I thought but did not say. If someone wasn't on your team, they might be on the other side—some other side, somehow a threat. If you walked into a room, you scanned for risks and exits. If you were already in it, you watched all traffic and all changes that might affect you. You did that, or you got hurt, maybe died. If you lived in the world in which no one ever turned violent or violence was at least so rare as to be non-existent, I suppose you could think otherwise, but I didn't live in that world. Pri didn't either, not since she'd joined this mission, though she obviously didn't realize it. She'd left her old reality and moved into mine the moment Wei kidnapped her son and she decided to hire someone like me to help get him back.
None of that, however, would calm her or get her to stop looking at me that way, so I stayed silent a bit longer and gathered my thoughts before I spoke.
"I'm sorry for upsetting you," I said, choosing my words very carefully. I didn't regret my analysis, because the training and reflexes that helped me make it had also saved my butt on many occasions, but I truly hadn't meant to disturb her. "One hazard of what I do is a tendency to focus on possible negatives, particularly when, like now, we're in the middle of a mission. You're probably right that Matahi was never out to threaten me, and you're certainly correct that I need to win her trust. To do that, I need to find this gift she requires, and I simply don't have much experience in that area."
Pri stared at me for several seconds, her expression softening as she did. Finally, she said, "You have no concrete ideas about what to get her; correct?"
I nodded.
"Lobo," she said, "do you?"
He paused long enough that I imagined he might be able to sort a catalog of every product available from every store on the entire planet, but then he said, "No. Without more preference data, I'm not even sure of the best way to shrink the search space."
"Then," Pri said, smiling for the first time since we'd started talking, "there's only one thing to do."
"What?" Lobo and I said simultaneously.
Her smile broadened.
"Let's go shopping!"
Chapter 18
Street vendors filled the center of the square, which ran two full blocks on a side and was the largest in the old-town section of Entreat. Shops occupied the bottom floors of the buildings along the perimeter. I normally loved open-air markets and had often found them useful, but much of this one baffled me. A sprinkling of merchants offering pastries, fried and grilled meats, fresh fruits, and, of course, gelato filled the air with lovely smells and reminded me of other such areas I'd enjoyed. The avenues feeding the square were wide enough that a constant breeze churned the aromas and left me salivating even though I wasn't hungry. The rest of the booths and stores, however, focused on various types of arts and crafts, and I didn't know how to approach them. Having spent most of my life in the utter certainty that at any moment I might be moving on, I'd never developed the habit of accumulating non-essential possessions, so I'd always avoided districts like this one. I didn't want to enter it now.
"Why do we have to do this?" I said. "Lobo could show us a great many more items at far higher speeds."
"As I offered to do," he said over the comm. "I'm not exactly the kind of shopper street merchants welcome, and with all the awnings and fabric roofs I can't even see their goods to offer you my perspective. If you're going to browse products down there, you're on your own."
I glanced at Pri to see if she would let us go back to Lobo and shop remotely, but she shook her head, no.
"Then let me be that way," I said to Lobo. "Out."
"I've never listened to a military AI before," Pri said. I'd insisted she wear a comm in case we accidentally separate
d. Lobo was also using it to track her, though I doubt she realized it. "Are they all that talkative?"
"It depends on the settings you choose," I said, lying but counting on her lack of experience to make my statement plausible.
She nodded her head, then said, "To answer your question, we're here because Matahi met you in the old town, and this is its biggest market. It's also the place with the richest concentration of true artists—as well as a lot of vendors selling tourist crap, of course. So, it's as likely a place as any to have something she'd like."
"What do we do?" I said. "Is there some search pattern common among shoppers?"
Pri laughed. "Probably, but we'll keep it simple: Why don't we work our way back and forth along these aisles?"
"Fine by me," I said. "What are we looking for?"
"We're not looking for anything. You're looking for things that remind you of her, or feel right, or that you think she might enjoy."
"If this is all my problem, why are you here?"
"To give you a different perspective and, of course," she pushed my shoulder lightly, "to make you do it."
We set off down the aisle in front of us. Enough other people crowded the small stands that our pace was slow, which was fine with me; I needed time to absorb what I was seeing. I had to study the shop on my right, then the booth on my left, and then move on. It made my head hurt.
I simplified the task right away by eliminating anyone hawking souvenirs. No way would Matahi want one of those.
Quite a few merchants offered clothing of various kinds, from shawls to robes to dresses to shirts. Many of the garments were little more than cheap activefiber art, but some pieces were custom designs, and a few even claimed to be hand-made.
Overthrowing Heaven-ARC Page 13
