“What if we fell in love, and you agreed to marry me?” Lycan said when she finished. “Would people sense you were too beautiful for me, and guess that I’d met you at a bridesicle place? We’d have to come up with a convincing story about how we met.”
“Bridesicle?”
Lycan shrugged. “That’s what people call this kind of place.”
Then even if someone revived her, she would be a pariah. People would want nothing to do with her.
“I’m afraid it’s time for me to say good-bye. Maybe we can talk again?” Lycan said.
Mira didn’t want to die again, didn’t want to be thrown into that abyss. She had so much to think about, to remember. “I’d like that,” was all she said, resisting the urge to scream, to beg this man not to kill her. If she did that, he’d never come back. As he reached over to turn her off, Mira used her last few seconds to try to reach for a comforting memory, something involving Jeannette.
She remembered last Christmas Eve, just her and Jeannette curled up on the couch, watching an old romantic comedy starring Carly Coates and a willowy blond woman whose name Mira couldn’t remember.
9
Rob
The air was filled with the rumble of conversation, spiked with drunken laughter, set over music drifting out of a dozen doorways. The narrow streets were tight with people Rob’s age, the air sweet with the scent of popcorn and pastries and buttered lobster sticks, sold by shiny drones from mobile stands. How many nights had Rob spent down here with Lorelei? He had such positive associations with this part of High Town, yet tonight was turning out to be one of the most demoralizing of his life. He’d never really needed a job before; playing the lute had earned him what he needed, because he’d always needed very little.
Rob worked his way through the crowd of High Town Friday-nighters. The night style was heavy on checks at the moment—black-and-white checks, red-and-yellow checks. The tips on spiked boots were getting longer and sharper, and bald was getting popular, eyebrows as well as heads, though many were still sporting the giant-ball-of-hair look.
Pelicula was on the corner, bursting out from between two nondescript redbrick buildings like confetti. Rob had no reason to believe he had a better chance of landing a job there than at the last seven places he’d tried, although he used to hang out at Pelicula more than most of the others. Maybe he should have started at a superstore, or one of the factories out by his dad’s house, but the crappiest job in High Town paid better than a decent one in the Low, and nightclubs were what he knew, where he felt comfortable.
At the door, the greeter looked him up and down, eyed his old handheld, shook her head before he could open his mouth.
“I’m not looking to get in,” Rob said. “I’m looking for a job. Can I talk to the manager?”
The greeter shook her head again. She was perilously thin and absurdly tall, though part of that was her heels, which she boosted an additional inch as she shook her head. “They don’t hire unknowns.”
“I used to come here pretty often, with Lorelei Van Kampen.”
That sparked her interest. “If you get Lorelei to pop over, I’m sure she can get you an introduction to the manager.”
Rob folded his arms, wishing he hadn’t brought up Lorelei. “I can’t do that. Can’t you help me out?”
“Sorry, no,” the greeter said, and immediately turned to the couple behind Rob. Rob turned back toward the door, doing his best to ignore the glances from people in line who’d overheard the exchange.
Outside, he spotted a woman who looked familiar. She was small, with Anglo-Asian features, peering down the street as if looking for someone. Hadn’t he met her at some point? She’d been with a guy Lorelei knew. He needed an in, a connection. There was no way he was going to ask anyone closely associated with Lorelei, but maybe he could capitalize on a loose connection.
His stomach twisting, Rob approached the woman. “Hi.”
The woman looked him up and down. “Do I know you?”
“I think so. Didn’t we meet in Pelicula a while back? I was with Lorelei Van Kampen.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “I seriously doubt that.” She went back to looking down the street.
It had been a very long night, and Rob was sick of being treated like shit just because he wasn’t wearing a system and was dressed for an interview instead of a night of doing bugs and dancing. “You doubt we’ve met before, or you doubt I was with Lorelei Van Kampen?”
The woman sighed heavily, but otherwise ignored him.
“You know, despite your staggering beauty and obvious charm, I really wasn’t trying to pick you up. I was just saying hello. We did meet before, and from what I remember, you were just about licking Lorelei’s boots clean to get her attention and approval.”
The woman whipped around to face him. Something scurried out of the black bag hooked to her belt, and before Rob could even identify it as a portable bodyguard, it had climbed up his pants and positioned itself right over his crotch. “What did you say?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Rob said. The synthetic bodyguard resembled a black, hairless rat with a silent, rotating blade in its mouth instead of teeth. Its little claws had a death grip on the fabric of his jeans.
“Correct answer.” She pressed her face close to his, her eyes blazing. “Get. Lost.”
As soon as the bodyguard was off, Rob scurried away, heading for the elevator to Low Town.
Maybe he should have worn his system, although it was now nothing but a dead sheath of synthetic skin. He could have told people it had malfunctioned and he had no idea why. It would have been comforting to have it on.
The elevator let him off on Forty-Second Street, and he was met by the blandness, the deadness of the city unenhanced by a system. It hurt, being without one. It physically hurt. Without the Esthetic Visual Enhancement the steel-and-glass of Pipkin Tower was a flat, featureless obelisk. The sidewalks were a gum-stained mess, the gutters caked with crud. When he got to the suburbs, the contrast between system and no system would get even starker as the landscape got grimier.
“Excuse me.” The screen of a pretty, fully-shaven woman was floating alongside him. “How are you today? Nifty?”
“Seminifty at best,” Rob said, smiling wanly, wondering if she could possibly be hitting on him. That would be nice in a way, though he couldn’t afford to go out with someone, even if he’d felt like it.
“I’m trying to find the Winkle Systems outlet. I know it’s around here somewhere.” She three-sixtied her screen, then faced him again.
Rob gave her a puzzled look. “Can’t you query your system? I don’t have one.”
“I noticed,” she said. “I was wondering why.”
He shrugged, trying to look carefree but feeling like a turd that needed to be washed into the sewer, like the turds that seemed to be everywhere now that his system wasn’t filtering out all but the ones in his immediate path. “I don’t know, I guess I’ve got other priorities for my money right now.”
“You know, you can get a basic one for almost nothing. Why don’t you come to Winkle with me? I can show you—”
An ad. It wasn’t a woman, it was a Goddamned ad. “Oh, you’re kidding me. Get lost, you lousy shit-screen.” He walked away. The screen followed, launching into a flat-out sales pitch now that it had been outed. Out of habit he reached for his system to block the damned thing, but his fingers found nothing but his shirt. Without a system he had no way to block it (if he’d been wearing one, it would have filtered the damned thing out to begin with), so all he could do was ignore it as it rattled on. He broke into a jog, but the ad kept pace, speeding up its pitch, talking faster than any human could.