by Jean Johnson
Ston grinned. “You have to kiss her, for a start.”
“A kiss is worth nearly half a million? Who pays that kind of money for a simple kiss?” Victor demanded, scowling at the insulting thought. “You just do it!”
“According to the friends I made, the friends who are offering this contract . . . fifteen miners here at the station, twelve previous couriers of various other supplies and goods, forty-three chemistry lab workers, seventeen ceramics engineers, thirty-seven . . . no, thirty-six former lab assistants, and twenty-seven relatives and friends of the good doctor,” Ston recited, lifting his gaze toward the low ceiling of the bridge as he recalled the count. He smirked. “It seems they have all pooled their betting money together as a reward for the man—or even the woman—who can make the Ice Princess melt.”
That made more sense, though it still disgusted him a little. Victor folded his arms across his chest. “I only kiss willing women. Or anything else, for that matter. What if she doesn’t want to be kissed?”
“That’s the problem. According to her coworkers and her family members, she’s never been kissed,” Ston related, shifting to drop into the navigator’s seat. Swiveling the chair, he stretched out his legs, crossing his ankles. “It’s not Dr. Motska, you see. It’s the Lunar Ceramics Institute, and the group she belongs to, the Lunar Intelligence Trust. They had the largest hand in raising her since she was about seven or eight, from what I was told . . . and they have been so determined to keep their greatest ‘brains’ isolated in their ‘brain trust’ that they have very carefully raised their little geniuses to have zero interest in ‘biological activities.’ ”
“Zero interest?” Victor asked, curious in spite of himself. “How is that even possible? She is a Human, isn’t she?”
“Basically, the Ice Princess has never been kissed because she has never been given the opportunity to be kissed. Everyone who goes to work with her must sign a non-intimacy clause, swearing they will keep their interactions with the members of the Lunar Intelligence Trust to ‘an efficient, impersonal level of workmanship, with a neutral level of interpersonality’ or some such space-rot.” Ston scratched his beard again. “So far, Security has stopped all attempts to defy this clause by the workers employed at LUCI, even among non-Trust members. Which is why her friends and relatives, coworkers, and even the miners here, have pooled their resources to reward the lucky, handsome prince who will melt the ice from their brainy princess.
“When my drinking buddies mentioned how they needed a prince to rescue their fair maiden, naturally I thought of you.” Giving Victor an expressive shrug, Ston tucked his hands behind his head and studied his cousin, coworker, and captain with a lighthearted look. “So . . . are you going to take the bet?”
Victor eyed his cousin, sorely tempted. Bets involving women were one of his few weaknesses, though in the last year he had gotten a lot better at resisting the temptations presented by the wilder ones. Still . . . a very intelligent woman, so intelligent she’s been sheltered from passion all her life . . . no doubt from some silly belief that sex detracts from one’s intelligence . . . He knew that wasn’t true. It was a distraction, undeniably yes, but in his experience, the more a person embraced all the various aspects of life, the more likely that person was to think of innovative new ways of tackling life and all of its inherent problems.
But to be paid to kiss a woman . . .
The money was very, very tempting. With half a million added to his savings, he could upgrade the in-system thrusters for their ship to those new, fast FTL engines, increasing their speed by a thousandfold. No more having to worry about conservation of mass if we go to FTL. We can start lining up cargos for outside the home system—even if we stayed in-system, people would pay all the more for fast delivery of their goods, and Ston and I do have a good, strong customer base right here in the heart of Terran space . . .
But to kiss a woman just for profit and some ship upgrades?
His conscience dwelled a little longer on that part, chewing on it, until the weakest corner of his mind piped up. If she’s never been kissed before, then isn’t this Lunar Intelligence Trust robbing her of one of her most basic rights as a Human being? To kiss and be kissed, to hold and be held, to love and be loved? You would be rescuing the princess from her imprisonment-by-ignorance if you tried . . . thereby making the attempt the right thing to do.
It was a very compelling argument.
His cousin flashed a grin. “You’re taking the bet. The last time I saw that fire in your fox-colored eyes was when you agreed to spank the lithe and lovely Melissa Mtaube in public. Have the monks forgiven you for disrupting their prayer services yet?”
Victor gave Ston a dirty look. “I haven’t decided yet. And I’ve promised never to return to that part of New Mumbai, so it doesn’t matter if the monks forgive me. Now, what would constitute solid, bet-winning proof of this kiss?”
Ston rubbed his beard once more, making Victor wonder why his cousin didn’t just shave it off if it kept itching so much. The younger man shrugged. “According to what I heard . . . there are security cameras everywhere. Some of the lab workers have connections in Security and would be able to watch everything you did while you are at the institute. But . . . they also say that seeing her learn the importance of a kiss isn’t enough, though it might be the right way to thaw her initial resistance, if done properly. Which I know you can do.”
“They say that, do they?” Victor repeated, his skeptical side vindicated that there was indeed a catch.
“Someone else—one of the former chemistry lab workers—tried to kiss another member of the LIT group,” Ston told him. “Apparently she was fired for the ‘audacity’ of it. Which is why she’s willing to pool most of her savings on this project and why they’ve come up with the idea of getting the miners in on it, so they can give the job to the isotope courier. The courier is not bound by the rules imposed on everyone else by LIT and LUCI, you see . . . so you cannot be fired.”
“No, I cannot be. But for trying I could be blackballed, at least from picking up similar contracts, though since I haven’t heard of this Lunar Ceramics Institute before now, I doubt they have the power to shut down our shipping business entirely. And I’m still waiting for the rest of the catch.” Victor clasped his hands across his stomach, studying his cousin and shipmate. “What is so important about teaching this doctor the value of sex that all these people are willing to pay half a million for someone to pull it off?”
“Well, there is one other thing, cousin,” Ston added, uncrossing his ankles and lowering his hands so that he could sit forward, elbows braced on his knees. “Dr. Motska is the top researcher at LUCI, and the biggest brain in the Lunar Intelligence Trust. Whatever Dr. Motska wants, Dr. Motska gets. She is a modern-day princess as far as the management at LUCI is concerned. If she puts her foot down on a project she is associated with, all work on it stops until her conditions are met.
“If she can be convinced that passion and personal interaction are worthwhile . . . then that means the other people caught up in LIT’s control of LUCI can finally date each other. They can have personal lives in the same place where they work and live. As things stand, only those who are allowed to go out to one of the civilian domes, or down to Earth, or to one of the other colony worlds or space stations out there can have a personal life, and only while they’re away from the Lunar Ceramics Institute. So you would not only be doing the Ice Princess a favor by melting her with a kiss, you would be freeing many others trapped in their own glass prisons by the Trust’s anti-interpersonal policies. Stupid policies, if you ask me . . . but that’s the object of the bet. Kiss the good doctor, get her to demand the anti-interpersonal policies be revoked from all contracts, and win half a million dollars as a grateful thank-you from everyone involved.”
“They are stupid policies,” Victor agreed, thinking about it. “You say her family is in on this bet?”
“Yes.” Ston held himself still, no doubt giving h
is cousin room to think.
“Then I want information,” Victor stated, making up his mind. “I want to know what her life was like before she was sent to this brain trust she’s with. Plus information on what her life is like now. Anything she may have let slip to her friends and family of a personal nature. Dreams, wishes, hobbies, longings, everything she may have mentioned that they can recall, particularly anything to connect the woman she is now with the girl she used to be. Be sure you tell them in advance I will make no guarantee of success . . . but that I will try. In my own way, at my own pace, and only after I have sufficient insight into her past and her mind.
“While you’re at it, Ston, ask if they have any other, less encumbered cargo they want us to deliver to the vicinity of Saturn, Earth, or the Moon. Eighty thousand will pay for the return trip to the inner system, plus some of our operating expenses,” Victor admitted, “but the rest of that half million isn’t guaranteed. I’d rather rebuild ourselves a good cargo chain that will be guaranteed.”
“I’ll look into it, but like you said, there’s no guarantee of success,” Ston warned lightly. Standing, he stretched, spreading his arms to either side to avoid smacking his hands against the overhead controls. “Well, I should get to bed.”
“It’s supposed to be your duty shift, remember?” Victor pointed out.
Ston shrugged and scratched his beard. “I took an anti-intoxicant before heading for the bar. I’m not stupid, and I knew I’d want a clear head if I drank while on the station. But it’s going to come crashing down on my system for about two hours in just a little bit. Considering how much I drank, I’ll want a nap when it does—I’ll owe you one, right?”
“You certainly will. You can have the eighty thousand and I’ll take the rest of that half million, if I can rescue this Lunar princess from durance vile,” Victor muttered. “You’d better hope this doesn’t backfire as badly as that bet over those twins from the Ganymede settlement—and you still owe me for three pulled muscles and the red tape over the spacelane violation, you know.”
Ston made a face, but left the bridge anyway. His cousin returned his attention to the commodities channel displaying various goods, prices, and destinations on two of his viewscreens. A moment later, he shifted and called up a browsing service on a tertiary screen.
Whoever this Dr. Evanna Motska is, she’s bound to have her image posted somewhere. And maybe some trade papers published. I need to get into her head. If this LIT group has brainwashed her into thinking life is meant to be all work and no play, I’ll need some sort of leverage to get her to open herself up to new possibilities.
BUT what if the annealings were done at 14 mils instead of 17, to lighten the mass of the hull? Would that affect the shearing forces adversely?
“Dr. Motska?”
Her left hand rotated the microscopic view of the ceramic alloy projected by her headset glasses. Flicking her right finger, she applied several direct blows to the simulation, observing the results. It would still harden the plating from a direct hit, yes . . . but I think it might chip the panels with a glancing blow. That would be unacceptable for combat applications in spite of the increased in-system maneuverability due to the overall lower ship mass . . .
“Dr. Motska?”
What I need is a way to stop those shears from stripping off chunks of the plating, without adding significantly to the mass of the—
“Dr. Motska!”
Irritated, Evanna clenched her fists to end the connection between her hands and the program, and stripped off her glasses. She glared at her assistant. “What? I told you I needed time alone to concentrate on this project!”
Amanda Heatherfield gave her a patient look. “You also told me to tell you the moment the new diamagnetic isotope for bismuth came in, and that the delivery was very important to this work.”
“Oh. Right.” Evanna felt her cheeks growing warm. “Sorry.”
Her assistant sighed and rolled her eyes. “It’s all right. You have a lot on your mind. You’re in charge of a lot of projects, most of which are of importance to the Terran military. You don’t have time for social niceties. The work is what is important.”
Normally, Evanna would have taken comfort in those frequently repeated words. She was important to the ceramics industry, and she did create superior armor plating for the ships of the Terran United Planets Space Force. Lives literally depended on her work, and she took pride in her careful considerations. But the way Amanda rolled her eyes and the stiff, rote tone in her voice spoke more of impatience with such things.
Like maybe she doesn’t think this project is important? That’s not like her, but what else could it be? Evanna narrowed her eyes. “Are you belittling the work we’re doing? We are in the business of saving lives, you know.”
Amanda met her gaze straight on, her impatience replaced with sobriety. “My brother is serving on board a TUPSF-Navy starship, remember? I know we’re in the business of saving others’ lives. But I think you should take a look at your own life, too.”
That made no sense. Evanna frowned again. “What do you mean by that?”
The other woman flicked her gaze briefly up at the corner of the room, to the black bubble on the ceiling that housed the security camera. “Nothing. Nothing at all. The courier needs your thumbprint scan to unlock the canister of bismuth, Doctor. He’s waiting in the upper conference room.”
“Not the lower one?” Evanna asked. The upper conference room, with its bay windows overlooking the craters of Clavius sitting below the installation and the upside-down visage of the Earth hanging in the sky overhead, was usually reserved for visiting dignitaries. Even if the new isotope held the potential for promise, delivery personnel were usually shown to an interior conference room, one which was closer to the docking hangar. She herself didn’t visit it as often as she would have liked, but then she was often preoccupied with her work.
“He insisted on waiting in a room with a view.” Stepping back, Amanda gave her space to exit the holographic lab.
As she walked along the clean white and pale gray corridors of the institute, Evanna focused her thoughts on the isotope sample she had ordered. If Dr. Farberjiin’s calculations are correct on the heightened diamagnetic properties of the isotope when combined in his experimental compound, it could be possible to mitigate the impact of incoming projectile attacks. The only problem will be synthesizing sufficiently large enough quantities for practical applications in military hull plating, never mind the civilian sector.
Of course, bismuth isn’t the only diamagnetic element, she acknowledged, silently cataloguing substitute materials as she and Amanda rode the nearest lift to the upper levels of the complex. Dmitrium has four times the opposing polarity qualities, albeit with a half-life of a fraction of a second, which makes using the 115th element highly impractical. And bismuth has a certain thermic sensitivity, making it difficult to incorporate into the ceristeel matrix during the manufacturing process. Which means I’d need to come up with a mineral additive to bind and stabilize it with so it would not be affected by temperature or time.
Maybe if I bound the isotopic compound within nanocages and injected it into the foam as it cools during the annealing process? That could work if I picked the right matrice for the cage, though I may have to figure out how to activate the compound without requiring that it be a catalyst, Evanna thought, picturing it in her head half as clearly as the holographics programs in her workroom could project it. The lab required several terahertz of computational matrices to calculate molecular changes on both the micro- and macro-scales, but it required the spark of an idea to combine the right materials in the right patterns. But I still don’t have a solution for the shearing potential. And I’d have to have some means of regulating the placement of the isotope in its copper cages . . . Wait . . . copper?
Copper was the color of the courier’s clothes. She was supposed to be thinking about carbon, not copper, but the moment she entered the conference room, it was ha
rd to think about anything else. Not when he wore tight-fitted leather pants that looked like they had been dipped in liquified copper and a sleeveless tank shirt which looked like the remaining metallic paint had been poured down his shoulders and chest. His muscular, lean chest.
Evanna couldn’t remember when she had last seen a body that well defined. Everyone at the Lunar Ceramics Institute kept themselves in good shape, of course; despite the acquisition of artificial gravity technology fifty years before, allowing comfortable, normal-gravitied life, it was still imperative that anyone living in space exercise to ensure optimum health and motility. But no one exercised so hard that even their minor muscle groups could be discerned and identified at a glance. Usually, they had too much work to do to waste their time on such frivolous pursuits.
Even his skin was somewhat tan, either naturally or enhanced by solar treatments. The courier made a colorful, eye-catching statement, surrounded as he was by the shades of gray carpeting, black table, matching chairs, and white-enameled walls framing the equally monochromatic view behind him. That view should have been arresting, given its stark, black, star-studded sky, the sliver of the Earth currently illuminated by the sun gleaming off to the left, and the white-gray-black landscape of the airless Moon. But no, the man captured her gaze first and foremost.
Normally, she liked looking out this window. The landscape was crisp and clean. It reminded her of her work, straightforward and methodical. Neat and tidy. She had asked once, a handful of years ago, if the marks left by the institute’s construction crews could be covered up. Someone had cobbled together a grit-scattering machine, powdering over and filling in the boot prints and tire treads that had spoiled the view. But now, all she could see was a man with dark brown hair, light brown eyes, and copper-painted clothes. He didn’t look like a member of any courier company she was familiar with, not in that outfit.
“Captain Amariei, this is Dr. Evanna Motska, who ordered the bismuth isotope. Dr. Motska, this is Captain Victor Amariei of the Închiriat, who is here on behalf of the Liberty Mining Corporation,” Amanda said to introduce them. Then—uncharacteristically—Evanna’s chief assistant retreated. The pneumatic door hissed quietly shut behind her, leaving the two of them alone.
