“And then?”
“And then the stuff gets logged and goes in a drawer with my name on it, where the chalk weevils eat it—chalk weevils, those are—”
“Genetically modified arthropod with a gland that gathers calcium and secretes it as calcium carbonate. I used to work at SCAPE, the company that makes them.”
“You said to indulge you.”
“I think the word I used was ‘humor.’”
“Uh-huh. Anyway. The weevils work, periodically the box gets sifted, the dead weevils are incinerated, and the calcium is extracted, processed, and reintroduced into the currency supply.”
“And you’re paid on commission.”
“Right. Five percent.” Which means I’m losing money right now. Wishing I had something to give this guy so I could wrap this up and get back to my shift, I lean forward, trying to show him that I’m leveling with him. “Look, attrition is inevitable. A guy eats a chicken, decides to grind down the bones and powder his potatoes with them. An old lady dies, the family sells the body on the black market and reports her missing instead of dead. People piss, and for healthy people, there are molecules of calcium in that piss. There’s a thousand little things every day.”
He nods, nonplussed. “Our studies account for all that, and a shortfall of six to ten percent is still unexplained.”
“I’m not sure I understand what the big deal is. More calcium in the supply means inflation, right?”
“That’s true. And too much too fast could be detrimental. But it is a big deal. A very big deal. I’m an economist by training, and trust me, a deflationary pressure of that size can wreak havoc on jobs and investment. Growth is not always good, but on a world that’s supposed to be expanding, money needs to move.”
The experts seem to think he’s right, from what I’ve read and from what I’ve seen on the news, and I’m not educated well enough on the subject to argue with him about it. There’s no denying that millions of people—probably more than half the population—aren’t getting enough calcium. I see that every day. In the hypocalcemic bruises on poor kids, in the advertisements for dental shops trading bad teeth for fake ones, in the prosthetic limbs of workers who broke bones and decided to sell them rather than heal them. “I’m not an economist,” I tell the auditor, “I just find the lost dust that makes money.”
“A charming turn of phrase.”
I’m starting to dislike this guy even more than I expected. “Is there anything else? We done here?”
He purses his lips, stifling annoyance. “Sure. You can go. I’ll follow up with my contact information. Thanks for your time.”
I leave the room and go back downstairs to Dispatch. I press my thumb to the lock on the secure doors, and the doors slide open for me. Myra is still at her desk, absorbed in something that looks tedious.
“Hey.”
She looks up, startled. “Out already? How was it?”
“Pointless. Got anything for me?”
She glances at the little clock widget in the corner of her monitor. “What, like three hours until your shift is done?”
“I need to make those units, Myra. You know I’m saving.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says. “Hey, you want to have a drink with me after work? I’m off at eighteen hundred.”
She half smiles expectantly, and I can see a bit of nervousness in her eyes. Turning her down is not as awkward as it used to be. I’ve explained myself before. “Myra. Girl. You’ve got to quit it with this stuff. I don’t want to get tied down. And anyway, you know I’m not into—”
“I know,” she cuts me off. “Trust me, I’ve given up hope. A couple coworkers can’t shoot the dust over a drink?”
Changing the subject, I nod toward her terminal. “What’s up on Dispatch?”
She navigates out of the spreadsheet she’s been poring over and opens up the menu of leads. Noticing something, she pauses. “There’s a potential big haul on here,” she says. “It might take some work and some time, but I know you want the units, so—”
“What’s the job?”
She flashes an ironic grin. “How many bones in the human body?”
The old joke. The literal answer is 206, but here on Brink the question has a grim second answer. Ten currency units to a gram of calcium, a thousand grams to a kilo, about a kilo in a grown man’s body. Ten thousand bones. Human remains cases always dredge up things I hate dealing with, but I suppress my feelings about them, knowing that it will be a big payday if it plays out. “No shit?” I ask Myra. “We got a body?”
“This looks more like five thousand, actually. It’s a little girl.”
A chill runs down my spine. “Live or dead?”
“A corpse.” As unaware of my sensitivity to human recovery cases as the rest of the Agency is, she corrects herself. “Likely corpse. Reported by a public school principal. Kid hasn’t shown up in a while, evidently. You want it?”
I grimace. Even without my personal issues, nabbing this type of unit is never pleasant. The temptation to go to a black market buyer for that much currency is too great; people are known to kill for less. But even with the guy who called it in taking a piece of my cut, it’s too much CU to turn down. I need the money.
“Yeah,” I say, “I want it.”
“You sure? It checks enough boxes that I could hand it off to the heavies.”
“Those bastards get all the big gun work.” It’s true. Anything with organized crime or potential armed resistance, they’re usually sent in. But I’ve decided I want this job. “Send me the coordinates.”
“Done. You love me, or what?”
I brush aside her jokey little flirt. “Yeah, yeah.”
“We doing that drink?”
“Tell you what, if I’m off by nineteen hundred, you’re on.”
I can feel Myra’s eyes fixed on my ass again as I turn and walk out the door. Times like this I’m glad she’s into me.
I rev my ride’s engine and drive out of the lot. Traffic courses through dust-swept streets beneath the tall, closely packed buildings of glass and metal and cement. I weave between the cars and trucks and quickbikes. My Combine M 130, a single-rider four-wheeler with a dynamically adjustable axle size, is the smallest vehicle issued to Collections Agents. I like the maneuverability. My job requires a lot of manual driving, both for pursuits and for investigations like this one, off the city road grid. Auto-drive won’t let you move dangerously enough to catch someone driving an illegal, hacked ride, and Brink’s satellite network is pretty useless for navigating a vehicle around rocks and plant life.
As I leave Oasis City’s dense, commercial downtown, cruising into the sprawling northern outskirts of blocky, cheaply built factories and warehouses and processing centers, a shuttle rises over the rooftops, taking off from the spaceport on the far east side of town. It leaves a thin trail of steam behind, a hanging thread of white touched with gold from the yellow-red rays of the afternoon sun. I can never stop myself from watching when they launch. I long to be on one of those shuttles, out into orbit, onto one of the interstellar ships, and away from this world. As the glowing point disappears into the pale blue high above the red-hued horizon, I remind myself that the day when I can afford that is closer than ever. It’s why I work so hard.