Fixx shivered. He was standing in the queue for SpaceWarp again, late afternoon having slid into evening. Twenty-four-hour daylight was illegal on Planetside though at LunaWorld the rides still stayed open round the clock. But the overhead sky was dimming again to signify the start of late evening. If you were using melatonin to reset Circadian rhythms, now was the time to take it.
Next door to SpaceWarp was a long glass-fronted bar called the SanRat. It looked loathsome. Slide guitar slid from the wide doorway, its oily notes as thin as any kid’s whining. Over the door was a sign in cracked enamel, riddled with fake bullet holes. The block letters announced that for the convenience of LunaWorld’s patrons, alcohol wasn’t on sale. And, in the window, adults who’d paid to sit there surrounded by tired and irritated kids looked like they hated every aspartamine-sweet minute of it.
Time to get a Bud and that meant going back to his hotel. Either that, or go find another bar. Fixx ducked under a barrier, ignoring the angry shout of a guard, and pushed his way out of the SpaceWarp queue. The kids were welcome to their ride. All he really wanted was a cold Bud, a bed that didn’t have pink frills and maybe...
That woman over there.
Fixx stopped dead and took another look, but the badly dressed blonde had stopped watching him and was examining the poster for SpaceWarp as if she’d never seen a physical-reality ride before, as if listening to the poster took up all her attention. And then Fixx realized she wasn’t listening at all, she was still busy watching his reflection...
Police?
It was possible, but then again, maybe not. Five-ten, maybe taller, mid-weight, badly-cut blonde hair: she didn’t look neat enough to be brass, and he’d never have noticed her if she was street-level. Or maybe he would have, but not that easily. Unless, of course, she wanted him to notice her.
Fixx sighed. It was one thing for Lady Clare to say go find LizAlec, Fixx thought, pushing his way towards the woman, quite another for LISA to expect him to have been able to do it in twenty-four hours. He wasn’t looking forward to the next time he had to talk to her. Three steps took Fixx to the still-burbling poster. “Look,” Fixx said, “you can’t listen to the fucking thing for a fourth time. It’s not that interesting...”
Washed-out blue eyes met his, held his gaze. Fixx was impressed. He was all in favour of first impressions and his was that this wasn’t the kind of woman who slapped, she punched. Much like LizAlec really, except LizAlec didn’t yet know it while this woman did. From the tiredness in her face, Fixx reckoned she was getting bored with living up to the mark.
Paper print dress, the kind without sleeves, unwashed hair, cheap make-up, she also didn’t belong in LunaWorld and that much was obvious from the way guards were hovering, as if desperate to shepherd Fixx and the woman away from the rest of the ice-cream-eating, Coke-slurping queue.
“Out at the Edge you?” Her accent was so thick that Fixx could, hardly grasp what she was asking, if it actually was a question.
“You? Two night back?”
Two nights... Yeah, Fixx had it, she was talking about that over-chromed brothel, the sinbin that offed him more dead presidents for a take-out bottle of Alborg than he usually had to live on for a month back in Paris. Fixx nodded. “You got it.”
“Kodak?” the woman demanded.
Fixx handed over his tri-D of LizAlec, noticing that the blonde’s nails were chipped and worn; and not even purple Candy could hide the half-circles of grime beneath.
“No water,” the woman said shortly, following his eyes. “All goes to places like this. Sweedak?” She nodded around her, not bothering to keep the contempt from her voice. “This your friend?” she asked, watching him carefully.
“Yeah, special friend.”
“An t’boy?”
“Boy?” Fixx said, surprised. For a second they glanced at each other, and then the hangover swallowed Fixx, leaving him staring blankly over her shoulder at a distant ride.
That LizAlec should have set up her own kidnap didn’t surprise him. That she set it up with someone other than him...? Fixx shrugged. He was too old and too ugly to worry about getting his feelings hurt, wasn’t he...?
Wasn’t he?
Fixx shook his head. How come Lady Clare hadn’t thought this through? She’d watched the kid grow up. Why hadn’t the snotty bitch reached the same conclusion, that it was a set-up, that LizAlec was on the lam....? Lady Clare was bright, cynical. She must have got to this conclusion before him, so what made her reject it?
“A boy?” Fixx kept his voice neutral. Only his eyes betrayed what he was really thinking.
“San’rat,” said the woman.
“From the Moon?” Fixx asked in disbelief.
Jude smiled, not kindly. “Honey, where else you get san’rats?”
“You’ve actually seen her...”
Jude began to nod and thought better of it. “You her special friend?” There was a world of ironic emphasis on that special.
“I’m a friend of her mother’s,” Fixx said, surprising himself.
Jude thought about it. “She in bad trouble, t’girl?”
“Yeah, big trouble. People want her dead.” As lies went it wasn’t inspired but the blonde woman had no way of knowing it wasn’t true.
“Jude,” said Jude, thrusting out her hand. Fixx shook. “I got a bar,” Jude said, “in Strat, t’CasaNegro. You come see me sometime, we talk, maybe...” Dodging round an approaching guard, Jude was gone before Fixx even realized she was leaving.
“My Kodak,” Fixx demanded hastily.
Jude didn’t answer him, but somehow Fixx didn’t expect her to.
Chapter Eighteen
Christ on Crutches
The ship stank. The kind of stink you get if you put twenty flea-bitten goats in a stainless-steel pen and then tie them down with neoprene mesh so they can’t float away in free fall. Why even the Family would want to ship animals from Planetside to Seattle, fuck alone knew. But as to why they didn’t take the Kobe option and put the goats in suspended animation, LizAlec knew that. The brotherhood didn’t believe in recreational drugs, nanotechnology or extopian solutions and who was she to question the word of God?
LizAlec smiled sourly, remembering Fixx’s insistence on an inverse link between IQ and absolute faith. The more you believe the less you think. Not surprisingly, that never got taught at St Lucius, either.
Briefly, LizAlec wondered what kind of crap the amulet-wearing Lars believed in, and then decided she didn’t care enough to find out. She was bored with Lars and his creepy, clanky steel lung, bored with staring at goats, hungry too.
They were in an air vent hung over a hold, that much was obvious. And the hold had been walled off into three pens, two small pens divided between the goats and ten black, bristle-backed pigs. There was also a larger pen for six of the ugliest cows LizAlec had ever seen.
All the animals stank: the pigs less than the cows, surprisingly. At least, it surprised LizAlec, who’d assumed the cows would be the cleanest.
“Less animals, more shit,” Lars told her baldly, and he was right. The leathery-skinned, thin-hipped cows in the pen next door were crusted in their own excrement, huge scabs of dung drying to cake on their hides. Only the pigs still looked vaguely pink. Every hour a woman with wide hips and protruding buttocks stamped into each pen in turn and vacuumed clean the air with a huge hose.