by M M Buckner
At last, he said—in a surprisingly resonant baritone—“The Net don’t work here.”
“What? That’s absurd. The Net reaches everywhere in the inhabited solar system. Don’t try to hoodwink me.”
Again, he refused to answer—insolent lout. For a juvenile, he wore an uncommonly dark expression. Shadowed cheek. Grim, hard-set mouth. His lips curved almost too gracefully for a man, but they were camouflaged by his tawny mustache. When Sheeba smiled, he blushed and didn’t seem to know where to put his hands. What a kid. This thug was way too immature to be a factory foreman. No one with less than three decades should be in charge of anything!
Behind him, a stumpy female hopped through our oval door carrying a hammer. Her patched gray EVA suit was literally falling off in shreds, and a collapsible helmet dangled from her belt. So this was Liam’s chain-wielding henchman. Dark brown skin, grimy fingernails. A scar stretched across her left temple and disfigured her otherwise handsome face. Both of the juves wore the typical sullen expressions of factory protes. It wasn’t necessary to read their uniform labels to know they were my employees.
“Is this the doctor?” Sheeba asked. “Nasir needs analgesic vibra-therapy. Do you have a stim gun?”
“Don’t know what that is.” Liam’s voice rose with a rich timbre. If he’d been an exec, he might have trained as a vocalist.
By contrast, his stocky woman friend spoke in grating soprano. “I ain’t no doc, babe. I your guard. You treat me right, I treat you right.” Then she made an obscene gesture with her hammer.
Sheeba shot to her feet. “But Liam, you promised a doctor.” The Coriolis effect made her falter sideways, and the punk caught her in his arms.
Did I mark that moment as a pivot around which my life would bend and warp out of all recognition? No, I was too distracted. But here and now, I can’t forget how he looked at her. How the tendons moved in his forearm, how he reeked of sweat, and how their faces nearly touched.
“Doc busy,” he said, and his splendid baritone jarred with his mongrel worker accent Then he set Sheeba on her feet—gently, I realize now, though at the time, everything he did seemed coarse. “Careful how you move. Takes a while to get your balance here.”
He nodded at me, and without another word, he left us. The great chieftain. What a tongue-tied whelp. Then I collapsed on the floor.
After he’d gone, Sheeba wrapped me in the thin scratchy blanket and eased my swollen leg into a position that didn’t hurt. The scar-faced girl stayed by the door, hefting her hammer in menacing ways. Except for the pale wound on her temple, her skin was smooth and glossy, as dark as burnt caffeine. Thick black lashes fringed her green eyes, and a ferocious grin twisted her shapely features. She’d wound her black hair in a large, heavy bun that was coming loose. When I curled in my blanket, she stepped closer and rubbed her knee against Sheeba’s cheek.
“How ya like your visit so far, babe? Remember you asked to come in. We didn’t invite you.”
Sheeba kept silent, but I shook with suppressed rage. “Let’s make this easy. Return my sat phone, and I’ll call my bank.”
“Ho. You gonna buy your way out? Guess that’s how you ‘xecutives do.”
The girl spoke in a such a thick worker accent, it was difficult to understand her. She leaned over my supine body and balanced her hammer on one finger directly above me. I wanted to bash her smirking face, except she might have dropped the hammer.
But she was just a child. Her vulgar behavior made her seem older, yet there was no mistaking the soft, smooth roundness under her chin. She was twenty at most.
“How much money you got in that ‘xecutive bank?” she said in her high-pitched voice.
“I’ll pay any reasonable figure. Just return my sat phone.”
“However much, it ain’t enough.” She made as if to let the hammer go, then caught it quickly. “Oops.” With one parting sneer, she stepped outside and shut the door. We heard her stout body settle to the deck just outside.
With the door closed, no light leaked in from the corridor, and pitch-blackness surrounded us. The air seemed even colder. But there were sounds I hadn’t noticed before. In the quiet, engines thrummed, air whuffed through ducts, and liquid sluiced down pipes. Faint voices echoed through the steel walls like tones in a tuning fork. Our prison enveloped us in aural vibrations. Peculiar place, this Heaven.
“Sheeba,” I whispered.
Her only response was an inarticulate grumble. Dear girl, she was probably terrified. Nothing had prepared her for this savage place. She’d never seen anything worse than an X-rated movie.
Or possibly a few segments of the Reel.
Resolutely, I dragged myself across the steel floor, sliding the blanket under me to avoid jerking my swollen leg. In the darkness, I found her by touch. She was sitting with her back against the wall.
“Sweetness, don’t be frightened.” I stroked her arm. “I’ll think of something. I always do.”
“He hardly said a word to me.”
I took her hand. It was warmer than mine. “We’ll make it through this. I’m sure Chad’s got our lawyers online. As soon as we locate my sat phone, I’ll call Grunze.”
“Why didn’t he stay and talk? You’d think he’d be interested to know who we are.”
“Chad will pay whatever ransom they ask. Our friends will get us out.” I positioned my leg so it throbbed less viciously.
“How many visitors does he get on your average weekend, I’d like to know. We might have news. He should interrogate us.” In the darkness, she rocked back and forth. “It’s creepy in here.”
“Well, Shee”—I let out a wry chuckle—“didn’t you come seeking the dark?”
“It’s not supposed to be like this. How can we understand the zone if they keep us locked up? I want to look around. And talk to them.” She scrambled to the door and beat the steel panels with her fists. “Come back! I have another question.”
Poor Shee. Her fizzy quest for the dark was already vaporizing. The steel door opened a crack, and Scar-Face poked her nose inside. “Hi, babe. You need somethin’?”
Sheeba seemed disappointed. “Where’s Liam?”
“Light is what we need,” I called over her shoulder. “And more blankets. And my sat phone.”
“And a doctor,” Sheeba added. ‘Tell Liam we don’t like promise breakers.”
The girl laughed. “Okay, babe, I tell him.”
She started closing the heavy steel door, but Sheeba caught hold of it. I cringed at the thought of her crushed fingers, but she managed to hold it open. “Wait. What’s your name? I’m Sheeba Zee from Nordvik.”
Oh fine. Sheeba was making friends with this prote cub. I couldn’t see the smile she gave the kid, but I knew well enough the power of her charm. The kid’s green eyes reflected points of light as she let the door fall a little wider open. “Name’s Geraldine. If you’re nice, you can call me Gee.”
Sheeba curled her body toward Geraldine like a blossom turning to the sun, and this produced a noticeable effect on the kid. I’d seen Sheeba do this move before. When she talked to people, she devoted her entire physical attention. Youthful exuberance, I thought. But now I noticed the sly way she nudged one shoulder through the door so Geraldine couldn’t close it.
“Gee, are you like second-in-command?”
The kid sat on the floor just outside and rested her hammer across her knees. Silhouetted against the corridor light, her heavy bundle of hair adorned her like a black corona. “You could say that. I work the power plant. My turbines make all the power and heat. This place be stone cold without my handiwork.”
Stupid brat, it is stone cold. What have you done with the adults? I wanted to growl. Pain and exhaustion were taking their toll on my 248-year-old body. Those bioNEMs drew their power from my blood sugar, and since they had a lot of breakage to repair, they were seriously sapping my energy. While the girls chatted, I finished off the crackers. Then, despite my best efforts to follow their talk, I rolled up i
n the blanket and dozed.
But one exchange startled me awake. It rang as clear as breaking crystal. Sheeba asked if Liam had a girlfriend.
“His aura looks like smoke. I think he needs someone to—to—”
‘To screw his brains out?” Geraldine yipped and chortled.
No doubt, Sheeba found the girl’s crude talk repugnant. No doubt, she joined in the laughter just to be friendly. Shee was friendly to everyone. Her trilling laugh echoed through the steel room, and she rocked back and forth. “Oops, almost wet my panties.” She pressed her belly and shook with giggles. “Oh wow, I’ve got a vicious need to pee.”
At those words, my own overfull bladder did a vague lurch, but fatigue was carrying me off into dreamland. The last thing I remember, Sheeba slipped out through the door with her new pal.
8
YOU’LL FEEL A LOT BETTER NOW
“Overall deterioration of the body that come with growing old is not inevitable.”
-DR. DANIEL RUDMAN
Surf the moment. Ride the contingencies. Improvise. I woke to pitch-darkness, interrupting a nightmare about frigid, mind-numbing thunder. But it was no dream. The icy floor rang beneath me like a gong. That gunship was firing again.
Sheeba! In panic, I thrust out both hands—and Shee was there, curled next to me in the thin blanket. How could she sleep through this dreadful booming? The steel deck transmitted subzero cold, so I eased my broken leg aside and pressed myself full length to Sheeba’s warm body.
With no NEMs to clean her skin, she smelled pungent, and her aroma stirred me. Her firm round belly swelled against my abdomen, and the sweet flesh under her chin molded to my mouth. Her skin tasted of spice and salt. She didn’t wake when I licked her ear, so I sucked her throat, and my hands wandered lower, along the curve of her hip and down between her legs. My fingers fumbled with snaps, then slid into the damp sweet warmth of her crotch. Velvet wetness. My organ throbbed against her thigh, and I shifted carefully, easing closer, hoping the gunship’s barrage would drown my groans.
But Shee was not asleep. “It’s the war, Nass. Listen.”
“Yes.” I froze in midbreath. My fingers stopped moving.
“That isn’t real gunfire, just noisemakers, right?” She rolled away, and the cold air hit me like a shower.
“Right,” I said, wilting.
Letting Sheeba go felt like dying. As I curled in the blanket, each move brought new aches. My chest felt bruised, my broken leg screamed. Every part of my body had stiffened while I slept on this freezing deck. Cold and pain annihilated my lust.
Pow! Pow! The noisemakers thudded at migraine decibels. Provendia obviously didn’t know their chairman emeritus was onboard. Maybe my friends had concealed my identity.
When the guns stopped booming, uneasy silence followed. Sheeba sat up and yawned, and I could tell from the sounds she made in the darkness that she was doing yoga stretches.
“Dearest, we have to find my sat phone.”
She yawned again. “Liam said the Net doesn’t work here.”
“Nonsense. My phone’s hyperwave. It works anywhere.”
As she moved through the Child’s Pose, her thigh pressed my shoulder, and her warm, spicy smell made me want to pull her under the blanket again. Her smartskin underwear popped with sparks.
I said, “Where did the prote girl take you?”
“Well, the toilet’s like teensy, and it’s four doors down. I told her you couldn’t walk that far, so she gave me this cup.”
“What?”
Sheeba shoved a plastic cup in my hand, and 1 was too shocked to speak. She continued stretching and chatting in a breezy tone. “I’m getting used to the artificial gravity. They’ve painted E’s and W’s everywhere to help you stay oriented.”
“Did you find the airlock? Were our EVA suits still there?”
“Geraldine stayed with me the whole time, so I couldn’t look around. It felt really good to pee though.”
I squeezed the cup in my fist and calculated. Searching for our suits with this broken leg wouldn’t be easy. But sending Sheeba alone might be worse. She was so green and gullible. I tugged at my longjohn, considered alternatives and, finally, caved to the inevitable.
“Sheeba, you’ll have to find my sat phone. I’m too banged up to walk.”
“No prob. I can hardly wait to get out and look around.” Her laughter rippled through the dark. “Can you believe it? We’re inside Heaven. Maybe I can coax Gee into giving me a tour. She’s right outside.”
“Well, you could ask her.”
She did another stretch.
“Sheer”
“Yes, beau?”
“Go ahead and ask her-now.” Those sparks from her underwear were driving me nuts.
“Okay, sure. I just always like to start my mornings with yoga. To find my psychic center.”
“How do you know it’s morning? They took our watches.”
Sheeba got up, padded barefoot across the frigid steel and rapped with her knuckles. “Gee? Are you awake?”
The door opened, and Geraldine stuck her head inside. “I’m here, babe. You want the light on?”
“Yes, please.”
A few seconds later, a single incandescent bulb glowed from its recessed niche in the ceiling. I blinked at its weak radiance. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? Its gloomy light seemed to hang like fog, barely illuminating the walls. Long ago, perhaps this room had been painted factory beige, but now the chips, stains and black fungus made a collage of dinginess. On the floor lay the remains of our meal, empty water sacks and a bag of cracker crumbs.
“Megalicious crackers,” Sheeba said to her new friend. “Can we have some more?”
Geraldine leered. “Sure, doll-face. I got something to make your mouth water.”
Sheeba let out a side-splitting laugh. I’m sure she was only pretending. That vulgar girl couldn’t possibly amuse her. She said, “Stay and talk, Gee,”
“Can’t. Got staff to do. You want anything, ring the bell.”
Of course there was no bell. When Geraldine closed the door, Sheeba slapped the wall. “Damn. She left too soon.”
“Revolting wench.” I upended the cracker bag and swallowed the last crumbs. My teeth felt sticky—for some reason, my dental NEMs hadn’t cleaned them. Thank goodness my beard was suppressed.
Sheeba pointed to a small object mounted to the ceiling in one corner. A surveillance camera. “I wonder who’s watching us?”
“It’s not active,” I said without thinking. Oops. Provendia had shut down surveillance a couple of months ago, but I wasn’t supposed to know that. “No indicator lights, see, and the camera doesn’t swivel. If it was working, it would sweep back and forth….”
Sheeba wasn’t listening. “Chilly in here.” She tugged her socks on and knelt to check my fracture. Her powerful fingers probed my thigh. “The swelling’s gone down. This cold floor probably helped. You need a cast, beau.”
I didn’t mention my bioNEMs. Waiting for breakfast, we huddled in the center of our frigid closet, and Sheeba let me have most of the blanket. As she massaged away my aches, I snuck a peek at my IBiS. The blinking icon wasn’t the health alert I’d expected. There was some kind of system error. I tapped the thumbscreen with my pinky stylus and read the holographic pop-up: “Net not responding.”
That was odd. Usually, my IBiS stayed in constant dialog with the Net, reporting to the cyberagents of my various doctors and downloading new medical orders. In fact, my NEMs needed regular orders to perform their most basic routines. Without fresh doctors’ orders, the NEMs would lock down and go into idle mode.
The docs claimed this authorization process was a safety precaution, but I felt sure their real motive was to protect their damned copyrights and preserve their monthly fees. After all, the whole process was automated. Preprogrammed cyberagents routed all the data. The doctors probably never even checked the readouts. I shook my thumb and stuck it in my mouth, but my IBiS still couldn’t find the N
et.
“Does your hand hurt, beau?”
I hid my thumbscreen and smiled. “Just a cramp.”
Sheeba swayed back and forth, grinning like a dirty-faced angel. When we began this surf, she’d been wearing peach skin dye, but now it was rubbing off. Under the pale peach, her skin looked dusky olive—not what I’d expected.
“Hold still, dear. You’re a mess,” I said.
Shee closed her eyes and waited obediently while I cleaned her face with my sleeve. The more I wiped, the more of her lustrous olive skin emerged. Burnished bronze with golden highlights. She was darker than any of my Euro friends. Like me, Sheeba came of mixed blood, but unlike me, she hadn’t suppressed her skin pigment. My ancestors emigrated from the Asian subcontinent, but her complexion spoke of a different origin.
“All clean,” I said.
“Um, that feels nice.” She opened her glorious hazel eyes, and my bream caught. Then she bent and shook her long blond hair forward over her face. It spilled like a golden waterfall, and she combed it with her fingers.
“Sheeba, what’s your lineage? I’m curious.”
She kept working at her hair. “I don’t know. American?”
“That’s not a lineage, that’s a stew,” I said. “What are you doing?”
She was pulling long strands of hair loose from her scalp and piling them on the floor between her knees.
“Sheeba, your hair.”
She laughed at my reaction. “It’s an artificial weave. I’m tired of having it fall in my eyes.”
Dumbfounded, I watched the lovely silken tresses accumulate on the floor, and when she finished, her natural hair stuck out in short nappy tufts all around her scalp, barely a few centimeters long. Her real hair was bleached to match the false strands, but dark roots showed near her scalp. Despite this change, Sheeba was gorgeous. Her close-cropped hair merely set off the regal shape of her head.
When the door opened, I hoped to see Geraldine bearing a fragrant tray of breakfast, but instead, a man stood in profile. Right. Liam again.
“Have you come to return our property? It’s about time,” I said.
