Not only did I get my exercise, but I also got a good view of the international terminal that I would have missed if I'd ridden the underground people-mover. It's a sight I wouldn't have missed for anything… null! In the darkness of predawn, under the harsh glare of arc lights, it looked like an overgrown bomb shelter or missile bunker: prestressed ferrocrete with less aesthetic appeal than a brick.
The suborbitals, though-they were a different story. As I hiked my way beside the access road-cursing silently at the two shuttle-buses that blazed on by me without even slowing-I could see three of the things out on the apron beyond the terminal building. Gleaming white under the carbon arcs, they were beautiful-geometrically precise, like the crystalline purity of mathematics itself somehow made tangible. Okay, I admit it. I copped that last line from a trideo talking head. But he was right. The suborbitals were unbelievably striking, unbelievably beautiful in a kind of heart-stirring way. They don't belong here, on the ground- that's the thought that struck me. Any time they spend down here in the dirt is just waiting, just marking time before they can re-enter the element for which they were born…
That heartwarming feeling of awe lasted until I'd entered the international terminal, and vanished precisely one microsecond after I'd laid eyes on the hard-case customs and safety inspectors waiting for me at the security gate. Sigh. You'd think the fact I was carrying an open corp ticket would give me some kind of clout with the inspectors, wouldn't you, would guarantee me some special treatment? No luck there, chummer. (Or maybe-and this was a scary thought-what I went through was special treatment…) In any case, as a gaggle of technicians poked and prodded and X-rayed and assensed and MNR'ed my bag, a couple of hard-eyed and horny-handed trolls in undersized uniforms did much the same thing to me. Metal detectors to analyze the composition of my dental fillings. Chemsniffers to check if I was wearing clean underwear. Magical examinations to make sure I wasn't actually a fire elemental trying to fool them. The whole enchilada. Finally-and only after the fine uniformed gentlemen had made a detailed manifest of every speck of lint in my possession-was I gestured on.
Then came Immigration Control or Emigration Control, or whatever the frag the Sioux government's calling it now. Once again, I was looking up at a couple more uniformed Amerind trolls while their 'puter whirred and clicked and tried to decide whether it liked the passport data on my credstick. And I was trying not to sweat; it was supposed to be the best fake datawork (a lot of) money could buy, but you never really knew how good this kind of drek was until it was put to the test. My sphincter contracted as the 'puter went brack sharply. But the trolls handed my credstick back without a word and gestured me on. Signs directed me to the departure gate, so I followed them.
And almost had a childish accident when a heavy hand landed on my shoulder. I spun, and I think I stopped myself from yelping aloud. I looked up, expecting another troll… then quickly down when the slag who'd stopped me cleared his throat rattlingly. A dwarf, he was, even stockier and more dour man most of his metatype, still on his toes after reaching up for my shoulder. He was wearing me nondescript black suit I've come to associate with government agents, and a cold fist squeezed my stomach. Somehow, I managed to force a well-meaning smile onto my face. "Is mere some problem?" I asked genially.
"You're Brian Tozer?"
I nodded; that was the name on my fake datawork. "That's me, er… sir. Is there a problem with my ticket?"
"Follow me, please." And he turned his back on me and walked off without looking back, fully expecting me to follow him blindly.
Which I did, of course-not that I had much choice. I followed him through an unmarked door into a small, bare room, and I braced myself for a cavity search or worse.
The dwarf didn't say anything once he'd shut the door behind me. He just scrutinized me, dark eyes narrowed beneath beetling brows. If he wasn't going to say anything, neither was I. If we were going to play the old "who speaks first" waiting game, some years from now an airport employee would open the door and find two desiccated corpses in this bare room, still glaring at each other.
Finally, he frowned, and his brows merged into something that looked like a road-killed squirrel. "You are Brian Tozer?" he asked.
And that's when I got it. I pulled out my credstick-the one with the digital signature on it-and extended it to him. He sneered-"Fragging twinkie," I could hear him thinking-and he slipped it into the oversized chipjack mounted in the base of his skull. His eyes rolled up in their sockets for a moment. Then, with a quick movement, he clicked the stick free from his slot, tossed it back, and held something out to me. An optical chip: a tiny sliver of impure silicon the size of a pen-point, in a plastic chip-carrier the size of my first thumb-joint.
'That's your payload for our mutual friend," he grunted, already starting to turn away.
"Hold it," I said quickly. He turned back, and one of his eyebrows tried to crawl up into his hairline. "Look," I told him, "I don't have any of the details on where I'm going, who I'm supposed to give this payload to, and when. Don't you mink it might make my job a little easier if-"
He cut me off with a sharp, "You'll be met." And again he turned his back on me and strode off. This time I let him. I glanced down at me chip-carrier in my hand, and for just a moment I had the impulse to throw it to the floor, grind it under my heel, and just run like hell. The pleasant fantasy didn't last long. I sighed, opened the door, and re-emerged into the concourse.
In the course of following the dwarf, I'd lost track of my gate. Fortunately, some airport employee-a flackish looking slot with a carcinogenic tan and plastic smile noticed me looking lost. He was actually polite to me-a first for the day-and he led me directly to me Global Airways departure lounge.
That's when things started to look up a tad. I'd expected the usual barren, sterile-looking holding pen with its plastic seats designed to make it categorically impossible to find a comfortable position in them. The usual stained, institutional gray carpet. The usual boarding and departure announcements that might as well have been made in Urdu, for all the meaning they conveyed. The usual crush of (meta)humanity, where you try to avoid having your toes stepped on while you play the old game of "Spot the Hijacker."
Buzzz, thanks for playing! This was where the open corp ticket came into play big-time. The flackish kind of guy led me right through me holding pen where the hoi polloi were contained, past an armed sec-guard who actually touched his cap to me as I passed, and through a pair of double doors that could have been real mahogany. As we stepped through, me and my flackish shadow, I saw arrays of tiny LED ripple and flicker on both sides of the doorway. Yet another weapon-detector of some kind. I congratulated myself once again for deciding to travel completely unarmed except for my rapier wit.
The Global Priority Class Stand-By Lounge-that's what the nameplate on the door identified it as-looked like a cross between a gentleman's club in Edwarthan London (or, at least, the BBC rendition thereof), and a high-tone computer dealer's showroom. Heavy wood paneling, burgundy plush carpets, wingback leather chairs, crystal decanters on mahogany sideboards… and everywhere, suit-clad travelers tapping away on palmtop computers, babbling into cell phones, or staring off into space with fiber-optic spider webs trailing from their temples. Of the fifteen or so people in the lounge, the only people who weren't engaged in some form of electronic or verbal intercourse were me, the flack-who, with one final unctuous comment, made himself scarce-and a particularly shapely bartender (bartendress? bartendrix?) whose smile hinted she really needed my patronage to make her day complete. Out of the goodness of my heart I obliged her, and spent the next ten minutes savoring the best of all possible kinds of single-malt Scotch whiskey-free single-malt Scotch whiskey.