Orbital Burn

by K. A. Bedford

  The officers asked Lou to put her left hand, with the passport ring, into a reader. Her documentation and Dog’s appeared on a fixed display set into the glass counter. One of the two younger officers paged through the files Otaru had prepared for her, nodding, making notes with a stylus. Twice he called an older officer over, pointed to a particular entry, asked a question she couldn’t make out. The older guy nodded or shrugged, dictated a comment that the younger man attached to the documents. Lou had rarely felt so unsettled. It was as if these serious men were weighing her soul. They had a dry, dusty smell about them, too, that she couldn’t place.

  Several times one of these younger men asked her, “You are dead but you live?” And she explained and explained about her condition, the nanovirus. “Man-made disease, you know?”

  While the officials nodded, it was clear they didn’t like the look of her. They seemed to think she was a bit unwholesome. She imagined them trying to find any excuse they could to keep her from coming aboard — and she wondered how it would have been if Otaru hadn’t interceded on her behalf. That gave her chills.

  At one point, one of the older men stuck his hand out and asked to see her passport ring. “Why? What’s the matter?” she asked, starting to panic. She got no answer. The man kept his hand before her, his expression a quarry rockface.

  Lou handed over the ring. He took it, squinted at it, and ran it through their systems several times, paying close attention to the information coming up on the displays. They ran complicated tests. All four of the officials huddled around one display; the younger men pointed to particular entries and glanced, curious, at their superiors, who nodded or shook their heads, frowning. Lou figured she was toast. Otaru gave her bogus documents. It was all a setup, for some unfathomable, enormously evolved purpose. She was a pawn in a great uncaring plot.

  “Black Zones here I come!” she muttered to herself, rocking on her heels and looking at Dog, who also seemed to sense something was wrong. He sat with his ears pressed close against his head.

  The stupidest thing she could do would be to make a scene. Yet the thing she most wanted to do right now was bolt for it, find the Otaru rep, if he was here after all, shove him against the wall and find out what was bloody wrong with her documents! Had they set her up? She knew this government was some kind of weird money-grubbing theocracy, and they obviously had a problem with her being dead, and probably with Dog’s augmentations. Had Otaru taken that into account when providing her documents?

  “Thank you, Ms. Meagher,” one of the younger officials said to her, bowing, and handing back her passport ring. “We apologize for the delay. We needed to run some tests.”

  She took the ring and slid it back on her finger; it slipped back to its former snugness. Looking at the officials, trying to figure out what was going on, she said, “Thank you. Sorry to be a bother.” It sounded lame coming from her mouth, but it was all she could say.

  “There is one thing, however,” the same official said, smiling in a way that suggested he might even have felt embarrassed to ask.

  This caught her by surprise. “What’s that?” Here it comes, she thought, bracing for impact.

  “May we please have a closer look at your firearms?”

  She popped open her valise and let them look. They compared the readings from the weaponry with the details in her passport. They nodded, after a conference, and allowed her to keep them with her during her stay. They did require her to sign a massive legal document enforcing her cooperation should anything happen that could be traced back to these guns.

  Then they wanted to have a good look at Dog. The officials seemed intrigued with his modifications. She picked him up and placed him on the glass counter. He shivered and gave Lou a baleful look. Lou felt wretched guilt, and looked away. One of the older men inspected Dog’s teeth, his eyes, ears, probed his belly and chest with more force than necessary, and checked his anus. Dog yelped at the interference, and looked to Lou, as if to ask if he might bite the next bastard who tried that maneuver. She thought that might be counterproductive, even though she was starting to feel like biting these guys.

  The same officer produced a monitoring device, attached one end of it to Dog’s head, and placed the visor end over his eyes. He moved it back and forth over the animal’s scalp. At length, he nodded, removed the sensor, and presented Lou with another extensive legal document in which she agreed to take full responsibility for anything that happened as a result of Dog’s presence on the Orbital. The document, she was told, also absolved the Orbital’s government of responsibility for anything that happened to her or the animal. Her attention was drawn to the extensive section involving incidents relating to Dog himself potentially hacking into vital Orbital infrastructure systems, or others using Dog’s head as a link-point in the pursuit of same. She signed, wondering if she could feel more pissed off and thought, too, that Dog should be invited to sign, and treated as a legal person. Lou suspected, though, that they would look at her with even dimmer regard for suggesting such a thing.

  The Customs officials also insisted she submit to having tracking bots injected into her body, and that she comply without question, or resistance, should the government at any time declare her a risk to security and seek her removal from the Orbital. More signatures. She felt her temper fraying, and decided she had better not fart in a threatening or subversive manner. They could probably trace any such emission back to the source.

  They gave her a visa for one local week, and let her and Dog go. She checked a nearby clock: that had taken more than an hour.

  Outside Customs and Immigration, in the Transit Area, halfway down from the Orbital Core to Sea Level, Lou and Dog struggled with the low-g. The Transit Area was deserted, apart from a young man in vivid blue livery bearing a sheet of Paper with the flashing message, LOUISE MEAGHER AND DOG.

  Dog saw him before she did; he barked his pleasure at getting away from the Customs guys. Lou smiled, too. Loping across to the guy, she noticed the Transit Area’s stark decor. She saw still paintings depicting what looked like Biblical events, painted in a style she recognized from history vids regarding the Italian Renaissance. Confused, she concentrated instead on keeping her balance, and trying not to laugh when Dog did accidental forward tumbles, muttering, “Oh dear!” as he went over.

  The man was a disposable courier from The Orbital Messenger. He wore an informal blue uniform featuring shorts and a loose shirt, ideal for warm conditions. He grinned, his eyes betraying no pleasure, and said, “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. Mr. Coburn sent me. He says that he has some interesting results for you based on the info you sent him.”

  She looked at him. “That’s great. Can you tell him I’ll contact him when I find some accommodation? I’m thinking of an appointment tomorrow morning. Would that suit him?”

  The courier paused a moment, then said, “Tomorrow morning would be just fine.”

  “Good. Now, can you direct me to the nearest pawn shop?” She noticed Dog was discreetly sniffing the courier’s leg, and she suppressed a smirk. Even the pooch could tell there was something strange about these disposables.

  “Before you got here, this man showed up. He said he was from Otaru. He hardly spoke, but he did give me this to give to you.” The courier handed her a black key-disk. It bore neither number nor logo. She ran her thumb over the black surface. It was like her passport ring’s face. Holosurface, she thought.

  Hardly spoke, eh? That sounds right. “Did this man tell you what this opens?”

  The courier shifted from foot to foot, agitated. “He said it was for Ocean House.”

  “Which is?” she asked, impatient.

  “I’m not sure, to be perfectly honest, ma’am. It’s not part of my system map. I think it might be on the main island, away from the city, on the lee side. You’d need to ask an actual resident. Sorry.” The guy seemed distressed, she notice
d, all except for the eyes.

  Lou turned the key over and over in her hand, frowning at it. Otaru wants to give me a place to live on top of everything else? Seems very helpful of them. She had a bad feeling about all this generosity. “What about a pawn shop?”

  Surprised, the courier smiled. “Ah, right. When you get down to Sea Level and the main island you’ll need to head into the city. You can look up a city directory at any public dataport. You’ll find whatever you need. And watch out for odd gravitational effects. We’re still braking, and OrbCommand says we’ll be decelerating for a while yet, and then we’ll be pushing back to Kestrel Space, so everything’s going to feel a little bit strange for a while.”

  She nodded and thanked the courier for his trouble. “I’d give you a tip, but I don’t have any money with me…” She shrugged.

  “It’s okay, ma’am. Do you need an escort down to Sea Level?”

  Lou glanced at Dog. “What do you think, Dog?”

  Dog wagged his tail and looked back at her, eyes bright.

  She said, “I think we can handle it.”

  Chapter 17

  Lou and Dog spent hours trudging through the cramped twists and dark, aromatic turns of the aptly-named Skulldugger Row. It was a seemingly endless web of backstreet markets in the constant shadow of a great cluster of bright, blooming towers. The public dataport had told her that there were pawnshops here. She ducked orange and red ritual ceremony flags, stepped around shrine-fires burning sweet spirit-spices in the middle of the sidewalk, and, several times, had to push her way through crowds of enthusiastic cultists who wanted to sing annoying songs of cheer, and possibly eat Dog, too.

  The shop signs, when she could recognize actual shops from residences, cheap hostels and brothels, were in a variety of languages she didn’t know. There was a pervasive smell of sour apples and mustard, and a pungent musky incense whose aroma reminded her of the scent of nano-tink fluid. She had her pockets picked twice, but the thieves found nothing of value. Lou had taken the precaution of stashing her Paper in her underwear for the time being. She nonetheless imagined frustrated thieves plotting her demise with wicked knives, such as she had seen on display in sidewalk markets, spread out on cheap red cloth, selling for twenty-five credits— “Make us an offer!” —each.

  Skulldugger Row, close to the waterfront floating markets, swarmed with jingling pedicabs carrying mysterious, pale individuals in dark clothing. There were sidewalk vendors selling hot, spicy food and hoarsely singing songs in badly accented ComTrade to attract passing customers. Flames from their methane burners shot into the dark, rippling the fragrant air with heat-haze. Scruffy kids with mad grins chased each other through gridlocked car traffic, playing an alarming game in which they targeted each other with toy guns that rendered their victims immobile for thirty seconds. Several times Lou spotted a kid fall over, stiff as a tree, and come within seconds of getting hit by a pedicab or car before someone rescued the afflicted kid and left him propped against a wall until he thawed, and resumed the game. Once, she thought she saw someone who looked like the Otaru man in the back of one of the pedicabs.

  It took a long time, searching through all this unexpected chaos, to find the pawnshops. Some were proper shops with decent security and a lot of dirty-looking stock of questionable provenance, run by people who gave Lou only a faint impression of ethical trading behavior. At least two of the pawnbrokers were kids of about fourteen with a blanket of strange goods spread out on the sidewalk and a cheap scrap of Paper for handling calls, mail and advertising. Lou was amazed. Even the cheap parts of Stalktown were more upmarket than this. The sense of sweaty people crowding in around her all the time was disconcerting, after the rundown emptiness of Stalktown. She wanted to shout at people to get the hell away from her. She wanted a radius of about two meters around her; she felt claustrophobic. Drenched with sweat, Lou was ready to punch people.

  Her plan had been to hit the pawnshops and offload the phage launcher for cash to bankroll her Orbital stay. She estimated the gun was worth around five thousand, give or take. The exclusive nature of the item should, she thought, make it an easy sell. However, although she had solid documentation for the weapon establishing it as hers, the extreme high-end paramilitary nature of the gun made most pawnbrokers reluctant to take it, or if they did, they could only let her have at most around fifty. When she asked why, they told her such a weapon on their premises would blow out their security costs; they would attract vicious thieves anxious to grab it. And besides, they didn’t keep that kind of money on hand, even in the big, prosperous shops. That would be asking for trouble.

  She went back to one of the dubious-looking sidewalk vendors she’d encountered earlier. He’d been very excited about the gun, and doubtless already had a special customer in mind. Lou let him see inside her dark valise, and touch the launcher’s glassy barrel; she saw excitement sweat forming on his upper lip, under his feeble blond moustache. The kid offered one hundred. Lou countered with five hundred. He suggested she might do better if she gave him a blowjob. Lou declined. Dog snarled, and looked ready to remove throats. They moved on.

  She also tried not to think about how this was as close to a sexual encounter as she’d come in five years. She sighed. Then she wondered if Otaru might have floated her an expense account. They’d provided every other damn thing, she thought. Finding a reasonably quiet spot in the crowded markets and bazaars, she cautiously checked her Otaru-supplied Paper, thinking there might be some funds stashed in it. She found five hundred. She swore, knowing by now that this much money wouldn’t go far here. She reminded herself to send a note to Otaru, asking why he was being so cheap — except she suspected she already knew: it was to keep her edge up, keep her sharp. He wanted her to work hard, not swan about in luxury.

  At the end of the day, with Dog nagging her about extreme hunger and how all these scents were driving him nuts, Lou gave in. She went back to blowjob boy, and made him pay not only one hundred, but an extra fifty for the full magazine. He gave her a large cloth bag; she discreetly transferred the gun into the bag without anyone seeing it and wrapped the cloth around the menacing shape, and quickly hid it. Nonetheless, as she checked over the cash the kid gave her, she noticed a crowd was starting to form around the kid’s blanket shop. The word had spread. Lou stuffed the cash into her shirt pocket and they left.

  Later, as Dog was munching the last of the peppered planchu balls she’d bought him — two credits bought a huge steaming bowl, and even the bowl was edible — he asked her, “Was it a good idea, selling that thing?”

  They were down by the waterfront, sitting on the limestone seawall, not far from the fishing boat docks and the boardwalk. She watched heavy waves rolling in, smashing against the base of the wall, the water slipping and swirling, laced with white foam. Salt air tingled in her nose. She sipped fabricated orange juice from a cellulose bottle, and took in the “sunset” over the water. Fishing boats were coming in from the gently upcurved sea. More kids ran around by the docks. Restaurants opened up along the boardwalk behind her. Far overhead the display tiles lining this part of the Orbital’s ceiling were dimming from sky tones and starting to fade in a few bright stars.

  She looked down at Dog. “I’d be very surprised if that kid was still alive. And I’d be real surprised if he was still alive and still had the gun. I don’t know. We needed the money.” Which didn’t make her feel any better about the whole thing. She screwed up her mouth. The juice in her stomach felt sour. She kept thinking, Did we need the money? Otaru’s provided almost everything, after all.

  Except how the hell we might go about finding the kid.

  To say nothing of how spending Otaru’s money gave her a feeling that she wouldn’t like the way they’d make her pay it back.

  Dog licked his chops. He said, as he looked out at the darkening sea, “There’s Ocean House.”

  “With God knows how ma
ny catches we don’t want to know about. Something about those Otaru people is starting to really bother me. Well, not starting to. Has been for a long time. They abducted us at gunpoint. That keeps sticking in my mind. By all means, rescue me from trouble if necessary — but at gunpoint? And knock me — and you — unconscious with riot gas? Who are they trying to impress?”

  “They gave you an infusion,” Dog said. “A new chance at life.”

  Scowling, she muttered, “Would you believe I’m starting to think I’d give it back now, if I could?” She rubbed at her arms, feeling cold sitting in the sea breeze.

  Something ineffable changed in the breeze. Narrowing her eyes, looking out to sea, she tried to identify it.

  Probably trouble. She felt her gut tightening, and she pursed her lips.

  Lou started to say something to Dog, when she noticed the smell was male cologne, none too subtle.

  “Madame Meagher?” It was a female voice, about three meters behind her, low and husky, with a Martian French accent. There was a note of don’t-screw-with-me control.

  Lou tried not to panic. The few times in her life she’d had to deal with moments like this, kept her head, she had done okay. Thing was, she wasn’t used to such instant reactions. Her infusion had fixed the delay in her hormonal response times.

  Lou turned, while remaining seated on the wall. She took her time about it. Kept her hands clear. Told Dog not to attack. He snarled anyway.

  She was very much aware of the long fall to the rocks and sea below and the cold wind at her back.

  A middle-aged woman and two men, standing either side of her, stood facing Lou. The woman was small and demure, fine-boned, with short blonde hair swept back. Dimming overhead sunset light glowed coppery in her hair. She wore tailored businesswear and sensible, handmade shoes. Impeccable. The men, standing like a fortress wall either side of her, were immense, and dressed in expensive tailored dark suits; the weapon bulges did not show. Disposables, Lou noted, fighting alarm. Their owner-logos were hard to make out in the twilight. Light from a nearby restaurant glittered in their dark unblinking eyes.