I know nothing about her relationship with the miner I put down, and I don’t care to. I’m not achieving anything here, and these people’s lives are dragging me down even harder than I expected, into that dark spot within me, the bad times, the things I want so badly to put light years behind me. I’m done here. “Thanks for having me in,” I say evenly, stepping back to the door. “Good luck with the crop.”
7
The alarm wakes me at nineteen hundred, after a nap of insufficient length, and I wolf down some warmed up rice, then start cleaning myself up. I usually don’t wear makeup other than semi-perm lip pigments, and I can’t really tell if I’m doing it right. Fortunately, I don’t have much choice as to clothes. I only own one evening dress, which feels awkward for some unidentifiable reason, tight or something, after I pull it on. Have I gained weight? My uniform fits just as tightly as the dress, but for whatever reason, the reinforced leggings and mid-sleeve top feel more secure. Maybe it’s the thickness of the fabric.
I’m still brushing my hair out when the phone rings. The music I’ve got playing stops, replaced by a soft tone as “Incoming call—Brady Kearns” flashes on my monitor.
“Answer,” I order. A click tells me it’s picked up. “Mr. Kearns, I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Okay. I’ll be in my car out—”
“Clear call.”
Another click tells me the connection has been cut, and my music comes back on. I straighten my hair out one last time and check my appearance in the full-length mirror on the outside of my shower chamber. I’m no supermodel, but I applaud myself silently for cleaning up decently. My dress, a knee-length, v-cut, dark gray piece overlaid with a barely visible silver plaid, hugs my frame closely, showing off my muscle tone. I’ve worn it maybe twice, so it looks new and isn’t unique enough to have gone out of style. My dark hair hangs a few centimeters below my shoulders and somehow still has a healthy shine in spite of all the hours I spend exposed to sun and alkali dust in the winds. Except for the deep, dark tan on my face, neck, and forearms, my skin could belong to a rich woman, smooth and unblemished, lacking any signs of hypocalcemia. I live cheaply, but I’m not dumb enough to cut too far back on my currency consumption. Getting hospitalized for complications from a deficiency would eat a big chunk out of my bank account, and anyway, when I can finally afford space travel, I don’t want the acceleration to break my spine or ribs.
I grab my phone and slip it into the little concealed pocket on my shoulder strap. As I step out the door and into the shabby, dinged up hallway, I feel naked somehow, leaving my house without the weight of my sidearm against my hip.
I sit silent in the cushy passenger’s seat of Kearns’s luxury sedan as he drives out of the city and into the bleak of the desert countryside. The sun has gone down, leaving only fading shades of soft red in the sky, skittering across the thin, high clouds. Long shadows streak across the orange-brown hardscrabble dirt, cast by the low-lying, reddish shrubbery and the occasional tangled blush cactus. It’s quiet this far out, and in every direction but behind us the desert stretches out to the mountains, where the purple-indigo hues of dusk have crept high above the jagged horizon. The larger of our two moons, Snakeyes, has risen, its irregular edges lined in silver. The only road visible now is the one we’re on, one of the eight “highways” that emanate from Oasis City. The buildings become very sparse outside the city limits, and out here, we’re only passing one building every kilometer or so, usually a farm or a manufacturing complex, all cheap and simple and utilitarian. Development on Brink has been slow, even in the Oasis Basin, due to limited supplies of water.
Kearns and I have both been quiet, except for a short bout of initial small talk right after he picked me up. But as the last light of day fades from the sky, giving way to a sparkling blanket of stars against the jet-black overhead, I ask a question that’s been bothering me. “Was today the first time you met Aaron Greenman?”
He glances at me quizzically. “No. Why?”
“He seemed pretty familiar with you.”
“I gave a presentation or two to him back when I was still working for SCAPE,” Kearns answers defensively.
“You were pretty high up, then.”
“Not really. There were two VPs and a president between us. This job was a step up for me. Not in terms of pay, I mean, but I still see it as an advancement.”
“I don’t know much about Aaron Greenman,” I confess. I did some cursory research on Greenman this afternoon but didn’t get very deep into it. “There anything you can tell me?”
“Hmm.” Kearns furrows his brow, thinking. “I don’t know anything that hasn’t been publicly available. He was born here, in Oasis City. Dad was an accountant, mom was a genetic biologist. Both born on Mars, both died fairly young… What else? He went to BPU, got a doctorate in economics there, donates to the university regularly, has a few buildings named after him on campus. He supported President Qing in the last election. He started a few charities, including the one he’s throwing this party for.”
I don’t even remember what the invitation said. “Which is?”
“The Decompression League. It provides free services to people suffering from illnesses and mental conditions resulting from space travel.”
“So gravity shock, immune-adaptation syndrome, space madness… ”
“It’s called ‘Isolation Disorder’ now,” he corrects me.
In the illuminated swath cut in front of us by the car’s headlights, I see a large building down the road, growing closer. “Is that the place?”
“It is,” Kearns responds. “Greenman Ranch.”
“‘Ranch?’ Isn’t that a little pretentious?”
“Don’t tell him that.”
“I’ll remember not to mention it.”
As Brady turns into the long, circular driveway, I see the true scale of the place. Built in a monolithic “planetary colonial” style of straight lines and flat, unbroken surfaces, it’s got to be the largest single residence I’ve ever seen. Three stories, and a tower in the back that must be a hundred meters tall. A cactus garden sits in the central circle, blooming with the exotic flowers of imported dry-weather plants, and little fenced-off pockets of green surround the place, stretching far beyond the mansion. To water so much flora the land must sit on top of a natural reservoir, which itself might be worth millions of units.
As Kearns creeps his car up in front of the big front doors, a tone sounds, and an electronic voice asks, “Auto-valet requests control of your vehicle. Approve?”
“Approve.”
The doors open automatically, and we both step out. I straighten my dress, shuffling a bit in my seldom-worn formal flats as Kearns comes around the car. The doors close, and it drives away slowly, parking itself among the long rows of others in the front yard.
“Shall we?” Kearns asks.
He looks good in his tuxedo—natural, at ease, maybe even upper class. He’s slim and in shape for a bureaucrat, much taller than the average Brinker, and his sandy brown hair is combed neatly. As he flashes a smile of healthy white teeth, he seems almost charming, a far cry from his corporate yes-man past and paper-pushing, number-crunching present. Maybe this is his natural environment; he seems like the type who grew up wealthy.
I follow him to the front door, and even though it looks like the old-fashioned kind you open manually, it folds aside for us. We enter a little atrium lined with cylindrical stone columns, the sounds of the party audible through the second set of doors. No one’s here to check our names against a guest list, so I assume it’s being done electronically, using the signals from our phones. I grow a little bit tense as we cross to the other side of the room, not sure what to expect.