Slinging the purse over her shoulder, she marched off across the concave floor of white ceramic as though she actually knew where she was going, or had some sort of plan, but knowing, with each step she took, that she didnt.
Those soft blue eyes haunted her Damn you. she said, and a jowly Russian businessman in a dark Ginza suit sniffed and raised his newsfax, blocking her out of his world.
So I told the bitch, see, you gotta get those optoisolators and the breakout boxes out to Sweet Jane or Ill glue your ass to the bulkhead with gasket paste... Raucous female laughter and Marly glanced up from her sushi tray. The three women sat two empty tables away, their own table thick with beer cans and stacks of styrofoam trays smeared with brown soy sauce. One of them belched loudly and took a long pull at her beer. So howd she take it, Rez? This was somehow the cue for another, longer burst of laughter, and the woman whod first attracted Marlys attention put her head down in her arms and laughed until her shoulders shook. Marly stared dully at the trio, wondering what they were. Now the laughter had subsided and the first woman sat up, wiping tears from her eyes. They were all quite drunk, Marly decided, young and loud and rough-looking. The first woman was slight and sharp-faced, with wide gray eyes above a thin straight nose. Her hair was some impossible shade of silver, clipped short like a schoolboys, and she wore an oversized canvas vest or sleeveless jacket covered entirely in bulging pockets, studs, and rectangular strips of Velcro. The garment hung open, revealing, from Marlys angle, a small round breast sheathed in what seemed to be a bra of fine pink and black mesh. The other two were older and heavier, the muscles of their bare arms defined sharply in the seemingly sourceless light of the terminal cafeteria.
The first woman shrugged, her shoulders moving inside the big vest. Not that shell do it. she said.
The second woman laughed again, but not as heartily, and consulted a chronometer riveted on a wide leather wristband. Me for off. she said. Gotta Zion run, then eight pods of algae for the Swedes. Then shoved her chair back from the table, stood up, and Marly read the embroidered patch centered across the shoulders of her black leather vest.
OGRADY WMIMA
THE EDITH S.
INTERORBITAL HAULING
Now the woman beside her stood, hitching up the waist-band of her baggy jeans. I tell you, Rez, you let that cunt short you on those breakouts, itll be bad for your name.
Excuse me, Marly said, fighting the quaver in her voice.
The woman in the black vest turned and stared at her.
Yeah? The woman looked her up and down, unsmiling.
I saw your vest, the name Edith S., thats a ship, a spaceship?
A spaceship? The woman beside her raised thick eye-brows. Oh, yeah, honey, a whole mighty spaceship!
Shes a tug, the woman in the black vest said, and turned to go.
I want to hire you, Marly said.
Hire me? Now they were all staring at her, faces blank and unsmiling. Whats that mean?
Marly fumbled deep in the black Brussels purse and came up with the half sheaf of New Yen that Paleologos the travel agent had returned, after taking his fee. Ill give you this...
The girl with the short silver hair whistled softly. The women glanced at one another. The one in the black vest shrugged. Jesus, she said. Where you wanna go? Mars?
Marly dug into her purse again and produced the folded blue paper from a pack of Gauloise. She handed it to the woman in the black vest, who unfolded it and read the orbital coordinates that Alain had written there in green feltpen.
Well, the woman said, its a quick enough hop. For that kind of money, but OGrady and I, were due in Zion 2300GMT. Contract job. What about you, Rez?
She handed the paper to the seated girl, who read it, looked up at Marly, and asked, When?
Now, Marly said, right now.
The girl pushed up from the table, the legs of her chair clattering on the ceramic, her vest swinging open to reveal that what Marly had taken for the net of a pink and black bra was a single tattooed rose that entirely covered her left breast.
Youre on, sister, cash up.
Means give her the money now, OGrady said. I dont want anyone to know where were going, Marly said.
The three women laughed.
You come to the right girl, OGrady said, and Rez grinned.
24 RUN STRAIGHT DOWN
THE RAIN CAME on when he turned east again, making for the Sprawls fringe burbs and the blasted belt country of the industrial zones. It came down in a solid wall, blinding him until he found the switch for the wipers. Rudy hadnt kept the blades in shape, so he slowed, the turbines whine lowering to a roar, and edged over the shoulder, the apron bag nosing past shredded husks of truck tires.
Whats wrong?
I cant see. The wiper blades are rotten. He tapped the button for the lights, and four tight beams stabbed out from either side of the hovers wedge of hood and lost themselves in the gray wall of the downpour. He shook his head.
Why dont we stop?
Were too close to the Sprawl. They patrol all this. Copters. Theyd scan the ID panel on the roof and see weve got Ohio plates and a weird chassis configuration. They might want to check us out. We dont want that.
What are you going to do?
Keep to the shoulder until I can turn off, then get us under some cover, if I can...
He held the hover steady and swung it around in place, the headlights flashing off the dayglow orange diagonals on an upright pole marking a service road. He made for the pole, the bulging lip of the apron bag bobbling over a thick rectangular crash guard of concrete. This might do it, he said as they slid past the pole. The service road was barely wide enough for them; branches and undergrowth scratched against the narrow side windows, scraping along the hovers steel-plate flanks.
Lights down there, Angie said, straining forward in her harness to peer through the rain.
Turner made out a watery yellow glow and twin dark uprights. He laughed. Gas station, he said. Left over from the old system, before they put the big road through.
Somebody must live there. Too bad we dont run on gasoline
He eased the hover down the gravel slope; as he drew nearer, he saw that the yellow glow came from a pair of rectangular windows. He thought he saw a figure move in one of them. Country, he said. These boys may not be too happy to see us. He reached into the parka and slid the Smith & Wesson from its nylon holster, put it on the seat between his thighs. When they were five meters from the rusting gas pumps, he sat the hover down in a broad puddle and killed the turbines. The rain was still pissing down in windblown sheets, and he saw a figure in a flapping khaki poncho duck out of the front door of the station. He slid the side window open ten centimeters and raised his voice above the rain: Sorry t bother you. We had to get off the road. Our wipers are trashed. Didnt know you were down here The mans hands, in the glow from the windows, were hidden beneath the plastic poncho, but it was obvious that he held something.
Private property, the man said, his lean face streaked with rain.
Couldnt stay on the road, Turner called. Sorry to bother you..
The man opened his mouth, began to gesture with the thing he held beneath the poncho, and his head exploded. It almost seemed to Turner that it happened before the red line of light scythed down and touched him, pencil-thick beam swinging casually, as though someone were playing with a flashlight. A blossom of red, beaten down by the rain, as the figure went to its knees and tumbled forward, a wire-stocked Savage 410 sliding from beneath the poncho.
Turner hadnt been aware of moving, but he found that hed stoked the turbines, swung the controls over to Angie, and clawed his way out of his harness. I say go, run it through the station... Then he was up, yanking at the lever that opened the roof hatch, the heavy revolver in his hand. The roar of the black Honda reached him as soon as the hatch slid back, a lowering shadow overhead, just visible through the driving rain. Now! He pulled the trigger be-fore she could kick them forward and through the wall of the old station, the recoil jarring his elbow numb against the roof of the hover. The bullet exploded somewhere overhead with a gratifying crack; Angie floored the hover and they plunged through the woodframe structure, with barely enough time for Turner to get his head and shoulders back down through the hatch. Something in the house exploded, probably a propane canister, and the hover skewed to the left.