“What will you do?”
“I’ll think of something.” He smiled humorlessly, walked over to the doorway marked Emergency Exit, and opened it. Alarms rang. “I hope Hepple thinks all the pipes have burst.”
He left without a backward glance. After a moment, I closed the door behind him. The alarms shut off abruptly.
When I got back to the troughs, I found it had only been twenty minutes since I had gone with Magyar to Hepple’s office. I went about my work mechanically.
Magyar appeared. She was hushed. “Who used that door?” She looked around. “Cruz?”
“He’s gone.”
She swore. “And I got him his job back, too.”
“I told him you would.” Though I hadn’t believed it. “How did you manage it?”
“I put myself on the line, just confronting Hepple.” She was trying to explain something. “I took a few risks. I put you on the line, too.”
I suddenly felt very tired. “What have you done?”
“I told him he couldn’t fire Cruz on such shaky grounds, especially since a government employee had witnessed the whole affair.”
“You told him-”
Magyar’s eyes gleamed. “I didn’t actually say anything straight out, just hinted around. And then he said something about you spouting regulations at him, and got thoughtful. Then he said that, yes, maybe he had been hasty, and the downsizing would have to be looked at carefully and systematically. So Paolo is back in. Or would have been. And Hepple thinks we’ve got his balls in a press, so everything’s back to normal.”
It wasn’t. It never would be, not when I kept seeing that slack, empty look in Paolo’s eyes, hearing him say I am nothing.
“What’s the matter? I mean, I didn’t expect handsprings, but thanks wouldn’t be out of order. Or are you just upset that I told Hepple you weren’t quite who you seem to be? Which is something we still haven’t cleared up.”
“I’m not a government employee,” I said wearily. “I’m not after your job. I don’t mean anyone any harm at all. I’m glad you wanted to help Paolo, but as you can see, it’s too late. All I want…” I felt dizzy for a minute. “I want…” I wanted to tell her that all I wanted was to do my job and be left alone, but I found myself crying. “He tried to kill himself. He took off his… and the razor…”
Magyar took my arm tightly. I thought she was worried I would fall into the trough, or run amok, or something, but she just said, “Don’t rub your eyes. You don’t know what’s on your hands.”
Very sensible. And then she was walking me somewhere while I rambled on about Paolo and his limbs and how he had tried to kill himself. I found we were in the breakroom. She made me wash my hands, then gave me a towel. Neither of us spoke. The eerie sense of deja vu hit me, and I laughed.
“I wonder if Paolo felt like this when I was taking away his razor,” I explained. “As though he was about five years old and being humored by a wise, kind person.” And then I felt embarrassed.
She didn’t launch into a denial. Of course she was humoring me. That’s what you did with someone in distress. You patted them on the head, told them everything was fine, and waited for them to get back up to speed with reality.
I sighed. “We should get back.”
Magyar looked at her watch. “Are you up to date in your readings for Hepple? Good. Then you may as well stay here. We break in ten minutes.”
She seemed relieved to get away.
Lore woke up. It was five in the morning. She pulled a blanket around her shoulders and stumbled out of bed.
Spanner was at the workbench. Lore watched as she picked up a pair of delicate tweezers and opened up a PIDA, touched something inside, then inserted it into her box. She flipped it shut, hummed to herself at the readout, tapped a few keys.
“You’re very good at that,” Lore said.
“I know.” Spanner turned. “What gets you out of bed at this hour?”
“Just wondered what you were up to.” Spanner went back to her screen. “You know, you could get a job doing that.”
Spanner turned again, smiling. “Now, why would I need a job?”
The first few times she had gone to the Polar Bear, Lore had not realized that Spanner was doing business. Spanner would share a drink and a few words, there would be a slap on the back or a nod, and occasionally something would change hands—illegal PIDAs, temporary debit blanks, information. They would go home and Spanner would unload her pockets. The next day she would spend hours at her screens, matching magnetic codes, stripping information; copying the corporate electromagnetic signatures on a stolen debit card, transferring them to a blank; or simply calling people and telling them she had what they wanted. Hyn and Zimmer figured a great deal in the blanks transactions—“They’re more or less untraceable, dear”—but it was Billy who disturbed Lore the most. Every week or so he would cruise by, sometimes with Ann, usually without, and have a quiet word with Spanner, usually when they were at the bar and out of everyone else’s earshot. Lore thought she heard them talking about chickens, but she tried not to listen.
It was around February that Lore noticed a difference in Spanner’s bar dealings. She seemed to be talking more, and more urgently; there was more head shaking and less back-slapping, fewer things changing hands. And then one day Lore realized she had not seen Hyn or Zimmer for a while.
“What’s going on?” she asked Spanner.
“Business is getting tight.”
“Anything to worry about?”
“Not yet. There are always other ways to make money.”
Lore did not want to ask about that. “Where have Hyn and Zimmer been lately?”
“Who?” Spanner laughed. “They’re a couple of cautious old foxes. Whenever the police are cracking down they disappear for a while.”
“Shouldn’t you be more careful?”
“Oh, I’m too smart for the police.”
Nevertheless, Lore noticed that Spanner went out later and for shorter periods, and once she lay low for forty-eight hours straight, wouldn’t let Lore answer the screen at all. But then the next day she went out and came back grinning.
“Close your eyes.” Lore did. “Now open them and look on the bed.”
It was a Hammex 20. Lore picked it up, ran her hands over its familiar black curves. “These aren’t cheap.” She flicked the power switch, peered through the viewfinder. The drive hummed smoothly.
“Do you like it?”
“It seems in good condition.” She put it back on the bed and looked at it for a while, remembering Ratnapida, her first pictures of goldfish swimming slowly through crystal and shadowed water. She turned to face Spanner. “How can we afford it if business is bad?”
Spanner shrugged.
Lore thought of Billy, his mean eyes and fast mouth. “Are we in debt?”
“No.”
“Then how did we afford it?”
“I thought you’d like it.” Spanner sounded irritated.
“I do, I just don’t know how we can afford it.”
“Well, we can.”
Lore thought of Spanner’s disappearances, how tense she had been when she came back. The skin on the back of her neck felt tight. “How?”
“Does it matter?”
It did, but Lore did not have the courage to push any further. She was not sure she really wanted to know how Spanner had come up with the money, who she was blackmailing about what. Or what else she might be doing. Spanner, as though sensing her acquiescence, smiled and slid an arm around Lore’s waist.
“Do you like it? Really?”
Lore forced herself to smile. “You got exactly the right kind. They have the best lenses.” And despite herself, she was touched. The old-fashioned Hammexes were not easy to find these days. She imagined Spanner going from one dealer to another, reading the trade bulletins, bargaining. How she got the money, who had suffered, was none of Lore’s business. “Let’s find a disk and take some pictures.”