The doors open into a vast space, something like a ballroom, with high ceilings, light pink carpets, and white stone walls filigreed with a subtle powder blue pattern. Well-dressed, well-to-do men and women socialize, drink, and eat, as a live strings ensemble plays waltzes next to a mostly-empty dance floor, which glows with a soft blue light. The first few steps into the party are intimidating, but after less than a minute, I’m lost amidst the mingling people, just another anonymous face in the crowd, and though I don’t feel like I belong, I’m no longer afraid that someone will recognize that I don’t fit in and confront me about it. Kearns, meanwhile, just glances around, aloof. I’m starting to suspect that he’s smarter than his sometimes clueless expressions suggest.
“Damn,” I say softly, “Greenman spares no expense.”
“Try not to act crass,” he responds.
For a second I’m annoyed, but then I realize that I wouldn’t be here if not for the auditor, so I bite back my words. “What’s the matter,” I joke, “scared the farm girl will embarrass you?”
I realize immediately that he doesn’t know what I mean by “farm girl,” but I don’t bother explaining further as we wander through the crowd. I see a few people I think I recognize—politicians and newscasters and business executives—and one man, Cory Hu, who’s definitely on the Commerce Board.
“You know,” Kearns says quietly, leaning close, “you still haven’t told me what your plan is.”
“I want to confront Aaron Greenman about that SCAPE pilot, Frank Soto,” I answer, truthfully.
“I doubt that will be productive. SCAPE has policies about employee privacy that allow for only minimal compliance with government investigations. They generally don’t turn over evidence unless they have to.”
“Either he’ll cut through the red tape for me and have the file handed over, or he’ll brush me off,” I answer, “Either way I get important information.”
“What information do you get if he refuses?”
“That he’s not going out of his way to help.” Spotting two more members of the Board, Paul Reed and Cynthia Kwell, I change the subject, “Looks like the whole Commerce Board is here.”
“Why shouldn’t they be?”
“Greenman represents off-world interests that the Commerce Board is supposed to negotiate against. For the import quotas and all that. That’s not… ” I wish I was better at articulating this political stuff, but Kearns is an expert in economics, and it’s going to be impossible for me to sound smart, “It’s a conflict of interest.”
“Board members are important people. Anyone who’s anyone is here. No conflicts of interest. I think I saw Jennifer Lee when we came in.”
Lee is the owner of a Brink-based company that competes with SCAPE’s business in interstellar food stores. Spacer food, they call it, or long haul food.
Before I can say anything else, a waitress in white tights and a tuxedo jacket approaches with a tray of drinks. I notice, for the first time, that the liquid in the champagne flutes is not champagne, not even synthetic champagne. It’s a thick, opaque white.
“Vanilla malt?” offers the waitress, as though she’s already said it two hundred times tonight and has run out of different syllables to emphasize.
It’s got to be coconut milk or palm milk or something. Substitutes are pricey enough; there’s no possible way it’s the real thing. Hesitantly, I take one from the tray, holding it delicately by the neck, and take a sip.
It’s phenomenal. Sweet, thick, cold, and silky smooth, with an interesting dry flavor I can’t place. I doubt I could describe it to someone who’s never had real dairy, and now I understand that descriptions I’ve read of its taste never managed to capture it. “Is this real?” I blurt out, shocked, even though I know the answer.
Kearns smiles, smug. “Never had real milk, I take it?” He takes another measured drink from his flute. “Mm. Amazing.”
How much did Kearns make when he was working for SCAPE? How much can he be making now? Trying to put my curiosity about the auditor’s backstory aside, I survey the room, looking for Aaron Greenman but unable to locate him. Taking another sip of the dairy beverage, I let myself enjoy it, feeling guilty about it only in the most abstract sense.
“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” I muse, “There are people two kilometers away selling their teeth so they don’t die of starvation or a calcium deficiency, and this party probably cost fifty thousand bones.”
Kearns shrugs, dismissive. “Same as it’s ever been. Even in communist regimes.”
Communism. A form of government invented in the couple of centuries before interstellar travel, it’s been extinct for over two hundred years, except for a brief period on Titan Colony when a group of refinery workers calling themselves communists overthrew their corporate-centric mercantile government and redistributed its assets among themselves. From the little I know, historians don’t agree on whether the refinery workers were actual communists or not, as they didn’t live long enough to do very much. All of them were killed when the colony was retaken.
“You know,” I say, trying to sound smart and educated, one of which I’d like to believe that I am, the other of which I most certainly am not, “I read somewhere that there’s enough calcium on Brink for everyone to be healthy.” I’ve always wondered if that was true or just leftist propaganda. Kearns probably knows.
He shrugs again, more thoughtfully this time. “And in ancient times,” he says, “there was enough gold, and in the twentieth century there was enough food, and in the twenty-first there was enough clean water. Economics abhors an even distribution of the most precious resources. It’s just against human nature. When all individuals desire something and some are better equipped to obtain it, not everyone will get an equal share. Just be thankful our currency is a hard commodity and not some imaginary thing that can be manipulated by people who already have a lot of it.”
I pause, unsure how to respond to Kearns’s intellectual cynicism. I wonder what he meant by “better equipped to obtain it.” Is that some kind of social Darwinist line? The “imaginary thing” comment must refer to what they call “paper money,” which is now only used by the larger, more oppressive governments on Earth. I’ve never quite understood the distinction between it and every other kind of cash—something about restrictions on currency supply and interest rates that doesn’t really apply on Brink where the currency is tied to a commodity because the commodity literally is the currency.
I savor the last few drops of the malt and set the empty flute on a tray carried by a passing waiter—who is wearing a regular tuxedo, which I think is pretty obnoxious, given the fact that the waitresses are in tights and jackets. I still haven’t spotted Greenman, and I’m starting to worry again that we’re not fitting in here.
“Want to dance?” I ask abruptly.
“Dance?” Kearns asks, “You serious?”
“Only if you are,” I answer, challenging him.
He sizes me up for a second, then downs the rest of his malt. “You’re on.”
I lead the way toward the dance floor, walking among the wealthy guests of the party, overhearing snippets of conversations only the true upper crust would have. Investment risks in hydrocarbon drilling on the far side of the planet, exobiota markets for Brink wildlife, which senators to back in next year’s race. As we near the dance floor, I finally notice that the reason it’s glowing blue is that it’s transparent, and underneath it is a tank of water that must be ten meters deep, at the bottom of which is an evenly illuminated floor, shining softly upward. Dozens of giant jellyfish, a meter or more wide with intricate, dangling tentacles, drift and float languidly through the water, diffusing the light and glistening in it. Stepping onto the surface creates the sensation that I am suspended on a field of liquid light. It’s disorienting and overwhelming and strikingly beautiful.