Running Start

by J. A. Sutherland

  They resumed walking, Mason leading the way and Ralph following.

  The service corridors were nothing like the main parts of the station, certainly nothing like the Waldorf itself.

  Mason had to keep reminding himself to look where he was going instead of following the pipes and conduits with his eyes, figuring out how the place was put together and where everything went. This was a lot more interesting than the shops Fuentes had been so excited about, and he kept getting distracted with wanting to follow things to find out what they were and how they worked.

  A loud throat-clearing jarred Mason from examining a particular pipe he thought he’d almost figured out. Ralph was a few meters behind at a cross corridor, hand raised to his mouth and clearing his throat again. Mason wondered if he was okay, because he barely paused before doing it again, this time even harder. The air in this corridor did seem a little thinner and dryer than that in the Waldorf, and he wondered if that was on purpose. Air and water were expensive off planet, and the Waldorf might spring for a better mix to keep the guests happy. His own mouth was a little dry, now that he thought about it. He looked up at the pipes again — were there separate mixing stations for every section? How did they handle the pressure differences and air being able to move from one area to another, or did they just accept there’d be loss from the “better” sections?

  “Ahem!”

  Mason wandered back to the cross corridor.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Ralph.

  “Yes, sir, thank you, I’m fine now,” the man said.

  He coughed and nearly doubled over and turned to the side so that he wouldn’t be coughing right at Mason. Mason turned with him and patted his back a little and that seemed to ease the fit.

  “Thank you, sir,” Ralph said, standing up. “I apologize for that.”

  “No problem.”

  Ralph gestured. “I’m okay, we can keep going.”

  Mason looked behind him, nodded, then started walking. After a few steps, he stopped — this was a different corridor than he’d been going down before Ralph started coughing. This was the cross corridor and he’d been going — he looked that way and recognized the pipes he’d been following. He must have gotten turned around while Ralph was coughing.

  “Something?” Ralph asked, passing Mason and going farther down the new corridor.

  Mason shrugged and followed. He hadn’t seen anything yet that made him feel Fuentes had gone a particular way, so any corridor was as good as another.

  Mason began to feel more and more at home in the station. They were entering some rough areas — not dangerous rough, but where rough men and women lived and worked. Not the polished sort that worked the Waldorf, not even as polished as Ralph the bellman, who, Mason figured, could really do with a trip to the doctor.

  He was becoming more convinced that the station sections used different mixes for the air, and that those mixes ran together where the corridors did, because changes in pressure, temperature, or moisture that Mason couldn’t even detect kept setting off whatever lung condition the man had. Mason thought he should mention it to Frederick, so the butler wouldn’t send the bellman on any more trips like this, but that might get Ralph in trouble. Sick as he was, he probably needed the job.

  Anyway, they seemed to have found the station’s lowlies — or what passed for the lowlies here. Mason knew the stations — or most of the off-Earth settlements, really — didn’t have the same sort of basic living stipend they had on Earth. So everyone had to work just to buy food and a place to live. He wasn’t quite clear on what happened if someone couldn’t —

  Like Ralph, for instance, who was back there coughing again. The poor guy would probably never be able to get another job if he lost the one at the Waldorf. Not if he couldn’t make it through an interview without hacking like this.

  Mason went back to him and patted his back again. That seemed to help.

  Once the bellman recovered, Mason looked around to decide which way to go next.

  They were in the middle of a corridor, not an intersection, but he’d gotten turned around by Ralph’s coughing and spinning again.

  This corridor was the dingiest yet. It wasn’t dirty, everything was clean — and it wasn’t ill-kept, everything was repaired and worked. It was just … sad.

  That was the best Mason could come up with.

  It was like a lowly corridor, not the streets at the very bottom where the worst lived, but maybe the teens or twenties.

  People with jobs, but not the ones they wanted — with paychecks, but never nearly enough.

  There were two bars in sight, one of them with a sign that alternately flashed topless and nude — which Mason thought was a little redundant. With one you got the other, right?

  Ralph coughed again.

  There was a diner between the bars, advertising a pancake special between 0200 and 0500 station time, and a pizza place, along with a noodle shop and a place called Kim’s Sundries that seemed to sell anything you might need that you couldn’t get at a bar or one of the restaurants. There were also some places advertising short- and long-term rooms. They were standing in front of one of those.

  The Last Rest, Mason read the sign.

  It hung out into the corridor, rounded on top and jagged on the bottom where it was painted green to look like grass, he supposed. The rest was painted grey with the name at the top and a list of prices for rooms and pods underneath.

  Mason looked around some more. This was probably as bad as it got on the station, and certainly not the sort of place you’d expect to find a girl like Fuentes when she had a billion credits to spend. If he was right and she was hiding out — and hadn’t taken a shuttle on to Mars already — then it was just the sort of area she’d think Stenner’s men wouldn’t look for her.

  The problem was, she could be in any of these places. There were so many renting space — even one of the bars had a sign out that they had beds available. It looked like whole families could stay there — they had rooms for two, three, or even —

  Mason squinted to read the sign better.

  Oh —

  Those weren’t how many the rooms would sleep, they were how many —

  Mason felt his face flush and he looked away from Ralph so the guy wouldn’t see. He could cross that one off the list — Fuentes probably wouldn’t be there. At least he didn’t think she was into that sort of entertainment.

  He shrugged and slid the hatch to The Last Rest open.

  Might as well start here — it was closest and Ralph was looking like he was about to start another coughing fit. Better to give him a rest before they had to walk more.

  Inside, The Last Rest’s lobby was the exact opposite of the Waldorf’s.

  It was small, barely big enough for both Mason and Ralph to stand in, with a check-in kiosk at one end, a hatch to the rooms in front of them, and a window with the shade drawn next to the hatch.

  The walls were covered with vidscreens — mostly old and some cracked — displaying advertisements.

  The check-in kiosk was cracked, too, but must still work, even though half the text on it was split and slid a centimeter down from the rest, so you had to read it in jagged lines or it made no sense.

  There was no one there, but Mason figured there had to be an attendant of some sort behind the window, right? If a guest needed something the kiosk couldn’t handle — so he walked up to that and knocked.

  Nothing happened.

  He knocked again, louder.

  “Check-in’s working!” a voice called out. “Use that!”

  Mason knocked again.

  “Use the box!”

  “I need some help!” Mason yelled back, knocking again.

  There was muffled cursing, then the shade went up and the window slid open to reveal a skinny guy with long hair. He had a vaper between his lips and seemed to take every breath through it, little clouds of strawberry scented mist puffing out with every word.

  “Manual check-in’s extra,
” he said. “Cash is extra. I’m already up talking to you, so it’s extra, see?”

  “Sure,” Mason said, “but what I’m really after is to find someone. She’s a little taller than me — at least in the boots — and she has long, dark hair and brown eyes.” He scanned his explant for a picture of Fuentes and flicked it to the clerk’s plant. “She probably checked in just last night. Have you seen her?”

  The clerk snorted and Mason’s explant showed a not accepted message next to the transfer. “We don’t talk about guests. Confidentiality.” He pronounced each syllable distinctly.

  Mason nodded. He’d expected that. “I get it, but this is important. See, she left, but then something came up that she doesn’t know about and it’s really important —”

  “I get it, kid,” the clerk said, “but when a girl leaves you, it’s usually best not to chase her. If she hired station protection you could get in real trouble.”

  “What? No, it’s not like that, we’re not —” Mason trailed off. Any description of what he and Fuentes weren’t would probably require a description of what they were, which he didn’t really have. Other than fugitives from justice involved in a billion dollar heist — which even he knew wasn’t the sort of thing you wanted to tell people.

  “Let it go, kid,” the clerk said. “She’s probably not right for you anyway.”

  Behind him, Mason heard Ralph take a deep breath, which made him worry the man would start coughing again — since they were jammed in The Last Rest’s lobby pretty tight, that could get awkward — but Ralph let the breath out in a long sigh.

  He pushed one arm past Mason and held out a hand to the clerk.

  “I’m Ralph,” he said.

  The clerk took Ralph’s hand automatically, but his forehead furrowed. “What —”

  “Sorry for interrupting, Mr. Guthrie,” Ralph said. “You go on.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “it’s not, like, a romantic thing. Fuentes is just a friend.” He wasn’t sure what more he could say, and Ralph shaking the guy’s hand had disrupted his train of thought anyway. In fact, it still was, because Ralph hadn’t let go and two were still holding hands through the clerk’s window right in front of Mason. Even Mason knew you weren’t supposed to shake hands for that long — he’d determined that one-point-five seconds was optimal. Or one to three shakes, depending on circumstances, if the other person shook instead of just holding their hand in place. Ralph was going on five seconds now, and the clerk was staring at their hands, frowning. “Look, so I’m not looking for her for anything bad, it’s just really important that I find her.”

  “I told you, kid, we don’t give out —”

  The guy’s face went white and he looked from his hand in Ralph’s to the bellman’s face, then opened his mouth as though to say something more, but went whiter and his eyes went wide. All that came from his mouth was a low-pitched grunt.

  “Why don’t you send the man Miss Fuentes’ picture again, Mr. Mason?” Ralph asked. “Just in case he comes to understand the importance of the matter.”

  “Well, okay, —” Mason flicked Fuentes’ picture to the man again and this time it was accepted. The guy also crouched down so that his chin rested on the counter next to his and Ralph’s joined hands.

  The clerk mumbled something.

  “What was that?” Ralph asked.

  “Six-H-middle,” the clerk said, then louder, “Six-H-middle!”

  Ralph nodded toward the hatch leading to the back and the clerk pressed a button, then the hatch slid open.

  “Thanks,” Mason said.

  Ralph stopped shaking the clerk’s hand and Mason saw that the guy’s skin was dead white with angry red marks shot though in a pattern like Ralph’s fingers.

  “Thanks,” he whispered to Ralph as they made their way to the open hatch.

  “Or course, sir,” Ralph said. “The Waldorf is always anxious to assist our guests in their interactions with the local community.”

  They entered the back of The Last Rest to find a series of narrow corridors leading back into the station. Ten of those, all with triple-stacked rest pods, their hatches painted to look like coffin lids, and the corridors themselves all with dark carpet, dark painted walls, and dim lighting.

  Thirty-Two

  Rosa was in paradise.

  Mars, it turned out, had beaches.

  Beaches with fine, red sand that soaked up the heat from the sun, even though the sun was smaller and farther away than from Earth.

  Waves lapped against Rosa’s feet, which were outstretched from her lounge chair.

  Beside her, Jesus and Julio, her twin cabana boys, whose appearance differed only in which muscles were more defined by their daily workout routines, stood by. Jesus had a towel over one arm — and nothing else except the tight, high-cut bathing suit — to wipe condensation from her beer bottle before handing it to her.

  She took a long pull, then handed it back for him to replace it in the ice bucket that kept it fully chilled.

  Julio was ready as she turned her head to his side, gently placing a large shrimp, perfectly coated with cocktail sauce, in her mouth. His expert fingers gave it just the right twist as her teeth bit down, so that the tail meat came out whole as he pulled the shell away.

  Rosa closed her eyes and chewed the shrimp as her boys’ hands began kneading her shoulders until she was ready for another beer or shrimp.

  The breeze off the water picked up, sending a coconut falling from a nearby tree to clatter down its trunk with a sharp knock-knock-knock.

  Later, she’d have one of the boys collect that for her — the coconut milk, along with some rum and whatever other magic they had at the bar would make a refreshing change from the ice-cold beer.

  Knock-knock-knock.

  Another one down? Well, two cocktails would make the perfect start to the evening, where the boys would take her dancing at the resort’s club until she decided which of them would —

  Knock-knock-knock.

  The resort really should prune the coconut trees better, with so many falling one might land on a guest and —

  Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock.

  Rosa jerked awake.

  Her knee hit the sleeping pod’s shelf, knocking a quart of beer off to land on her chest. Of course it was the one she’d last drunk from and she hadn’t quite fastened the top properly, so half of what was left spilled out with a liquidy clung-clung, soaking her shirt and hair.

  “Damn it! Shit!” she yelled, grabbing for the beer pouch and trying to get it upright while she struggled to sit up a little to avoid the beer puddling behind her.

  At some point in the night, she’d eaten pizza and put half a slice down beside her. The heel of her right hand landed on that. Cheese and pepperoni slid off the dry crust, leaving a red skid mark of sauce across the pod’s mattress and covering her hand in sauce and grease.

  It also caused her to lose her balance, falling back and flailing with her left hand that held the beer pouch.

  That up-ended, spilling the last of its contents over her face.

  Even through the sleeping pod’s closed hatch, Mason could tell the muffled cursing was Fuentes’.

  She had a sort of rhythm when she got going — a lyrical beat punctuated by her particular favorite words, and threats of mayhem if she was irritated.

  Ralph stepped back from the hatch with wide eyes.

  “It’s just something she says,” Mason said. “I don’t think she’s ever done it to someone.”

  Ralph backed up farther. “Yeah, but to come up with —”

  The hatch’s seal broke with a hiss, and Mason had to take a step back as it opened out into the narrow corridor.

  Then he took another step back as the smell reached him — stale bodies, old farts, bad pizza, and —

  Ralph coughed and moved farther away, which was nice because it opened up room for Mason to do the same.

  Fuentes swung her legs out of the pod then rolled her torso out to stand up
. She was still cursing and threatening, though who she was threatening wasn’t quite clear. It appeared to be she was angriest at the empty, dripping pouch of beer in her left hand.

  Her hair and face were wet, as was her shirt, with something that was yellow and smelled like —

  Mason and Ralph drew back, exhaling sharply.

  “You —” Fuentes said, glaring at them. She waved the empty beer pouch in their direction. “What are you doing here?”

  Mason took a step toward her, then stopped. He raised a hand to his nose.

  “I —” He frowned. Maybe he shouldn’t tell her the problem right away. It looked like she had enough of her own right now, if she’d spent the last few hours getting drunk in a pseudo-coffin sleep pod and — “Is that pee?”

  Fuentes stopped cursing and stared at him, then down at her chest where her light-colored shirt was stained yellow by the liquid. “What? No!”

  Mason sniffed. “It smells like pee.”

  Behind him, Ralph nodded. “It does.”

  “It’s not!” Fuentes wiped at her chest, which left behind a red smear.

  “Are you hurt?” Mason asked.

  Fuentes looked down again. “Fuck! I only packed two shirts!” She went to wipe her face, but stopped before she smeared that red too and dropped the beer pouch so she could use her other hand. She wiped her right hand on the pod’s mattress, smearing more red there. “What are you doing here? I told you to stay put!”

  “Something came up,” Mason said. “Stenner —”

  “Came up? You probably led him right here!” Fuentes finished wiping her hands and seemed to notice Ralph for the first time. “Who’s he?”

  “This is Ralph,” Mason said. “Frederick sent him with to keep an eye on me.”

  Fuentes’ own eyes narrowed and she looked at Ralph. “Frederick,” she said, voice flat. “So he told you where I was? What, did he have me followed when I left?”

  “Frederick didn’t say anything,” Mason said. “He just asked Ralph to help me out.”

  “So you showed him where I was?” Fuentes said, taking a step toward the bellman.