I listed everything I could think of: cereal at home, coffee at Mrs. Rodriguez’s, the sandwich I’d had for lunch the other day.…
The doctor ordered blood and urine tests. The lab technician came in and drew what looked like about a pint of blood from my arm, and then they sent me off to the lavatory to pee in a cup. “Nothing turned up,” the doctor said when she came back, “but we’ll do a twenty-four-hour culture to be sure. In the meantime, drink extra water but carry it with you from home. You need to be careful with what you eat and drink—Gibbon’s is fine, and Primrose, but if it’s somewhere you see folks from the locker rooms eating, you can do better.”
She hadn’t asked me about the tablet. I felt a flush of relief, and then wondered if she was going to tell my father I’d been snooping when she called with my lab results. Probably not; it would look as bad for her as for me if I’d actually managed to do anything more than admire the shiny screen.
Morning was almost over, but I headed for my math class anyway. Hopefully I’d get brownie points for coming for the last five minutes when I could have skipped, and I might have a chance to ask John what sort of business his father owned. As it turned out, Mrs. Leonard was more irritated by the interruption than impressed by my dedication, but I did manage to attach myself to John when we all went out to lunch. (At a sandwich shop, a nice upscale one that the doctor would undoubtedly have approved of.) I told him a funny story about hunting down a fancy hand-wound pocket watch and then noted that I’d been wondering if any of my classmates’ parents were hiring for something steadier.
“Oh, you wouldn’t want to work for my dad,” John said. “He owns a skin farm on Lib.”
“Ew,” I said.
“Yeah,” John said, and finished his sandwich. “Who’d want to work there?”
* * *
ONE OF THE things people come to the seastead for is cosmetic surgery. They don’t come here because it’s cheaper (although it is) but because there are things we can do that are illegal in other countries, or at least not approved, because they’re so experimental. Skin transplants are one of the big new things.
When you get old, your skin loses elasticity. You get wrinkles and liver spots, your risk of skin cancer goes up … your skin really starts to wear out. And that’s where skin farming comes in. You can send a sample of genetic material to John’s father, and he’ll give it to his technicians, and they’ll grow it until they’ve got this entire blanket of fresh, young skin. And then the surgeons can transplant it onto you, and when you heal you really do look a lot younger, and not creepy the way people who get face-lifts sometimes look.
The technician jobs sort of suck, though.
The skin can’t just be grown in a vat (though it uses the same technology); it has to be grown on screens, and it’s a lot of work. The skin techs have to spread the cells on a screen, and they have to paint it with growth matrix, and then later they have to paint it with acid, and they go back and forth between the growth matrix and the acid to get it to grow right. If you spill the acid on yourself, you can get burns. If you spill the growth matrix on yourself, you can get cancer.
And since it’s a crappy job, but not a complicated job, they use bonded labor for it.
* * *
I DECIDED TO go see Debbie again, and tell her what I’d found out. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get a note, and I didn’t think Lynn would write, “Doing fine, wish you were here!” even if she could. The thing is, normally bond-workers can at least go back to their bunks at the end of the day. The fact that they weren’t letting Lynn go home wasn’t exactly a good sign.
I went at the same time of day, and Debbie was there. “I don’t have a note,” I said, “but I can tell you where she is.”
Debbie’s eyes went wide and she stood up, looking hopeful. “Where?” she said.
“Her new bond-holder is Davis Butterfield,” I said. “At least, he’s the one who paid for her medical treatment—she had to have a kidney regeneration. He has a skin farm on Lib. I assume that’s where she is now.”
The hope drained out of Debbie’s face like someone had pulled a stopper out of a tub. “Oh,” she said, her voice an inaudible whisper. “Oh. Are you sure?”
“Well—Mr. Gibbon sold her bond to some guy named Rick Janus. And Janus wouldn’t tell me who he sold it to, but he did tell me she’d gotten medical treatment, and I broke into one of the tablets at the clinic to look up her record and it said Davis Butterfield had covered the costs of her treatment. And I doubt he’d have done that just to be nice, so.…”
Debbie shook her head. “You’re right,” she said. Numbly, she reached back into her bunk, and handed me the sandals.
“I didn’t bring a note.…”
“What I asked you for wasn’t fair,” Debbie said. “I wanted you to tell me she was all right. But she’s not all right. You did find out what happened to her, though, so … the sandals are yours.” She blinked back tears.
“Are you going to try negotiating with Mr. Butterfield?”
Debbie shook her head. “No point. I don’t have any money. I sure as hell don’t have enough to buy out her bond and the cost of a kidney regeneration.” She stared at the floor. “I wish he’d at least let her out in the evenings to come here, so I could see her. But the U.S. said last year that they consider certain contracts void because the work is so hazardous. If they let her out, she could run away.”
I delivered the sandals to the woman who wanted them and took my payment. Which wasn’t enough to pay for anyone’s surgery, or to buy out anyone’s bond, of course. It was pocket money, no more than that.
I’d finished the job. I’d found Lynn. My obligation was done. I looked at the list Jamie had given me today: extra-plush tri-layer TP, a two-inch-diameter black button with four holes, and another pair of sandals, but this person was a lot less fussy, so long as they were size 9.
I headed for the locker rooms; someone would have the button, and people there were always glad to see me since I paid in hard currency for stuff they could spare. I’d just avoid Debbie’s dorm, because I didn’t really want to see her again.
I passed one of the cheap, nasty dining halls and smelled dinner cooking. People were lined up outside, waiting for it to open. If I’d needed something more complicated than a black button I’d probably have stopped to ask people about it, but instead I kept going.
I was turning down one of the hallways with a low ceiling when someone grabbed me from behind.
“Don’t go snooping around places that don’t concern you,” a male voice hissed in my ear. “Even being Paul Garrison’s daughter will only protect you up to a point.”
He hit me, hard, in the back. It hurt, a lot, and I screamed and he dropped me to the deck. “Stick to finding potting soil and Swiss Army knives,” he said, and walked away as I struggled to catch my breath.
I picked myself up and rubbed the sore spot on my back. My legs were shaking, and I had to lean against the wall of the corridor. What the hell? I was done with the snooping. Well, he was right about one thing: being Paul Garrison’s daughter wasn’t going to protect me here, because I wasn’t about to go to my father and tell him about this.
But no one would go to the trouble of trying to intimidate me unless I was actually about to find something out that was really a secret. What was so important about Lynn? Anyway, I’d found out where she was, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
Or maybe there was.
Maybe the final piece of the puzzle was something I could get by talking to Lynn.
My back throbbed in time with my pounding heart. The thought of this next step made me feel queasy and shaky. Someone who could punch me in the back could have shot me in the back just as easily. Of course, if you murder Paul Garrison’s daughter, people will come asking questions. But depending on what I found out, killing me might be the lesser risk.
And if Lynn knew something—if she had that final piece—
I was going to have onl
y one chance to do this.
I turned away from home and headed for Rosa. Then I kept going—through Rosa, through Pete, and all the way to Lib.
* * *
MOST OF THE Stead Nations were founded by people who wanted more freedom. No one here has to pay taxes (though there are all sorts of fees). There are a few more things that are illegal on Rosa, like it’s illegal to sell addictive substances to minors without a note from their parents. That’s why it’s supposed to be the best stead to raise a family. On Lib, though, nothing’s illegal at all.
Stead Life did a whole series of shows about Lib, because it’s the stead that mainlanders find most confusing. To answer the question everyone asks first: yes, this means it’s legal to kill people, but it also means it’s legal to kill you, so if you’re planning to kill someone you’d better hope they don’t have any friends. This means it’s legal to steal, but see above about how it’s legal to kill you. But in fact people mostly don’t go around randomly killing and stealing. It’s mostly a stead full of people who like to mind their own business.
If you get in trouble on Lib, though, you want to have a subscription to a security group. If you don’t have a subscription, you can do a last-minute hire, but that costs a lot. My father and I don’t live on Lib, but he keeps a subscription to the ADs, the Alpha Dogs, who are the biggest and toughest security group. So if I got in trouble on Lib, I could call the ADs to help me out. If I disappeared and there was some reason to think that I was being held in a skin farm and forced to work with growth matrix, the ADs would come looking for me, and although no one has to let the ADs in to look around (because they’re not the police; there aren’t any police), they are very capable of making you sorry if you don’t.
I’m not actually supposed to go to Lib without permission.
I was going to be in huge, huge trouble.
But “trouble” for me meant grounded for life. Not bonded in a skin farm until I earned out my contract, or died of cancer.
The first place I went after I crossed into Lib was the AD’s office. I told the receptionist who I was and she buzzed me in and looked up my picture. “Can I see my security contract?” I asked.
“Of course, Miss Garrison.” She handed it over. I read through the different services they provided and my heart started beating faster.
“Okay,” I said, wishing my voice wasn’t all shaky. “I’d like an escort, please.”
The receptionist pressed a buzzer and one of the ADs came out to the office. He was tall, muscular, and carrying a gun: exactly what you wanted if you were going to be wandering around Lib, sticking your nose where it didn’t belong. Actually, ideally you’d want ten, but my contract said I only got one. Whatever. Being Paul Garrison’s daughter was worth at least a half-dozen all on its own. “I’m going to the Butterfield Skin Factory,” I said. “Are they contracted with you?”
“Nope,” the bodyguard said. “They use the Tigers.”
“Great,” I said, because the Tigers were not as tough as the ADs, and this meant no conflict of interest. (There’s a process they go through when two of their clients are in conflict, but I wasn’t sure it would work out to my advantage, considering.) “Let’s go.”
We walked through the corridors. Lib is probably the creakiest and least pleasant of the steads. Min is a mix of man-made islands and old cruise ships; Rosa is mostly cruise ships. Lib is an old Russian cargo ship. (Pete, which is the stead that was founded by Russians, is not on a Russian cargo ship, because they knew better.) There are not a lot of windows.
It was a good thing my bodyguard knew where the skin farm was because there wasn’t a sign. “You’re sure this is it?” I said. He nodded. “Okay. I want to go in.”
He hesitated, and looked me over.
“Are you my bodyguard, or my minder? I want to go in.”
He shrugged and pressed the buzzer. “I’m here from the ADs,” he said into the intercom. “We’d like to come in. Don’t make this difficult.”
The door buzzed and clicked open. “I hope you don’t want a lot of time,” he said. “Your contract doesn’t provide for backup, so if I need it, there’s going to be a serious extra charge.”
Which my father would take out of my hide. I stepped in: there was a long straight hallway of shut doors. “LYNN MILLER!” I shouted. “I’M LOOKING FOR LYNN MILLER.”
Doors opened and heads poked out to look at me—pale, sickly, nervous women in blue lab scrubs and latex gloves. “Lynn is in lab three,” someone called to me, nervously.
A security guard came out—I could tell he was security because of his uniform, and his gun. The AD stepped forward. “Are you managerial level?” he asked conversationally. The security guard shook his head. “Then you’re not paid well enough to have to deal with me. Go call the Tigers.”
The security guard swallowed hard and retreated into his office.
“Come on,” I said to my escort. The doors were labeled with numbers, so lab three was easy to find. The door was locked; my bodyguard kicked it down.
I’d noticed the smell as soon as I came in the front door, but here by the skin, the stench was incredible, stomach-turning. The skin itself was red and almost pulsing, in layers of screens; the techs crouched over it, prodding it with things that looked like long-handled tiny spoons. “Is Lynn Miller here?” I asked.
One of the women straightened up. “I’m Lynn Miller,” she said.
She was chained to the workbench. “Can you get her loose?” I said to my bodyguard.
He gave me a look. “I’m hired to protect you. She is not on my contract.”
“Yeah?” I walked over and grabbed her arm. “Lynn, will you give me the honor of your company? Say yes.”
“… Yes?”
“Lynn is my date and my contract specifies that you will provide protection services for me and my date at all times. And I want you to get us out of here.”
My bodyguard heaved a sigh. “Okay,” he said. “But if you insist, your father’s going to have to get a full report. Are you sure about this?”
My stomach lurched. But I was going to have to explain all this sooner or later; I might as well get in huge trouble for actually rescuing someone. And I wasn’t going to have another chance.
“Do it,” I said.
He yanked a tool out of his pocket that snapped Lynn’s shackles open in two seconds. “Can we go now?” he asked.
“The sooner the better,” I said.
“Where are you taking me?” Lynn said, stripping off her gloves.
“You’re an American, right?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“We’ve got a super-romantic date on Rosa, then.” At the Citizen Services Bureau, which I wasn’t going to say out loud in front of my father’s spy.
The Tigers hadn’t arrived yet, so we just walked out. The bodyguard urged us to pick up the pace, which we did, or at least as much as Lynn could; she was still recovering from her surgery and winced with every step. The AD escorted us to the edge of Lib, then washed his hands of us.
* * *
“WHO ARE YOU?” Lynn asked.
“My name is Beck, and your sister, um, hired me. To look for you.”
Lynn looked me over skeptically.
“You’d disappeared,” I said. “She wanted to know where you were, and if you were okay. Which you weren’t.”
“Surely she didn’t have the money to pay for you rescuing me like that.”
“No,” I said. “By the way, do you know some deep, dark secret that’s not supposed to get out? Because someone assaulted me earlier today to tell me to mind my own business. That’s why I decided to come find you.”
Lynn eyed me with renewed suspicion. “No,” she said. “If I knew some deep, dark secret I’d be down at the bottom of the deep, dark ocean right about now. I wouldn’t have been in a skin factory.”
“So what happened to you, exactly?”
“I got sick—really sick. I hit up Gibbon for a loan, and he said he’d
sell my bond to someone who’d arrange treatment for me. I had to sign a consent, because of the laws on Min. Janus took me to the clinic, and they said I needed kidney regeneration. That’s horribly expensive, but without it.… Anyway, Janus told me the only place that would pay for that sort of treatment was a skin factory. I still wanted to refuse, but there’s a loophole when someone has a terminal condition and can’t pay for their treatment. Their contract can be sold without their consent to anyone willing to foot the bill. So that’s how I wound up in the skin factory.”
There was something here I wasn’t seeing.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“The Citizen Services Bureau,” I said.
“Do you think they’ll let me use a phone?” she asked.
“Probably,” I said, assuming she’d want to call her sister to come meet her.
I felt nervous going down Embassy Row. It basically looked like any other corridor full of shops, but really well-kept with very clean windows. We passed Mexico and France before we got to the American one. A bell tinkled as we went in, like in a store. There was a young man sitting at a desk, with a nametag that said, “Tyrone LeBlanc, Consular Officer.” He was black, which was sort of unusual on the stead; most of the locals were white, Asian, or Hispanic. Mr. Leblanc looked at Lynn, and at me, and then said, “May I help you?”
“This is Lynn Miller,” I said. “She’s bonded to a skin farm and wants to—”
“—Make a phone call,” she said. “If you don’t mind. I don’t have my passport with me.”
“Did you register with us when you arrived?” he asked.
“Not exactly.”
“Well—you can definitely use a phone,” he said, and handed one to her before turning to me. “Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but are you Rebecca Garrison?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Don’t go anywhere, I have something for you.” He stepped into the back and returned with a sealed paper envelope, with Rebecca Garrison written on the front.
My stomach lurched. It was just like my father to do something like this—just in case I ever disobeyed him. Well, I didn’t have to read it now. I stuffed it into my pocket, mumbling, “Thanks.”
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