“Look,” Erica says, “I told you yesterday I’m assigned to him and not to you. We’re doing just fine.”
Taylor’s face reddens, he looks as if he wants to say something, but his lips tighten and he doesn’t. Behind him, in the sleek lobby, the rainbow-hued screen displays show programs: two women dancing with one another; behind them the same, increasingly sexual movements are being followed by a dozen pairs of men:
SIDEREAL CONCERT/SIDEREAL CONCERT/CONCERT
DUNES/DUNES/DUNES/DUNES/DUNES/
SHOWTIMES// 10/12/2/4/6/8/10 10/12/2/4/6/8/10
As we climb into a small, elegant cab I thank Erica for the way she behaved.
She shrugs, adjusting her skirt under her thighs, letting her hand slip over to my leg. “I don’t blame you for not trusting me,” she says, “but I meant what I said. I’m on your side, Rawley. I like you, that’s all—and so long as you don’t complain about how I treat you, there’s nothing they can do to me. There’s something with him, anyway—did you see the way he looked at me? He’s got about as much tact as a truck. What a creep.”
“You would have liked the debriefing,” I said sardonically. “He was the one who told me that a guy I knew pretty well from the ship—a big, healthy, part-Indian guy named Cooper—killed himself. Told me with a kind of grin.”
“He could work for Service Control,” she sighs. “Same type. I can just see my next assignment, some dried-up old cheapskate who doesn’t need an hour’s sleep for two weeks.”
“Well, thanks again,” I say, kissing her on the cheek and drawing her closer to me in the lush darkness of gold sector local transport.
Chapter 6
Risk Venture Vector
What I will always owe Erica is this massage. Her hands are strong and confident as she flexes the contours of my neck muscles, straightens something in my back I didn’t even know was out of place, cures my headache for good. But I feel a little depressed this morning after, awake again in the middle of the night—I feel as if it’s a morning after, that says enough.
Silk sheets again. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to sleep on a cot after this. I’d settle instead for my old bunk on the Daedalus, or even a freighter’s gravity hammock. Here I have silk sheets and a triple-sized recliner that adjusts to my weight like a lover. I remember the first morning of this trip waking on silk sheets, opening my eyes, and the odor of Collette, so pleased that she hadn’t disappeared in my sleep.
Erica is telling me that Tonio is guest-producing a videon special from the Moorish garden tonight. He called this morning to invite us both to the sound stage for the secondary shots he will be setting up all afternoon—says, moreover, that he’s dropping the male service he picked up in coming here.
“Go if you want to,” I say. “I’m going to do a little more driving.”
Erica is pleased that I don’t mind. “Just promise you won’t get into any trouble,” she says, her hands slipping upward on my neck to ease the base of my skull.
“Well, I could lose it in the S’s like I did yesterday,” I say.
“Keep your head down. Drive carefully, will you? I do feel responsible for your health, special instructions or no. Promise?”
The seating tier adjacent to Giroti’s pits is virtually empty again today, except for a young, stylish camera crew in the top row and a middle-aged couple who seem to be curious about taping. We are on the very edge of SectorBlue, I think; from the plastic-backed seats of the tier the S’s stretch away to the right along the green swath of infield, toward one of the stadiums. When I turn to the gate, the pits obliquely to the left, the line of cars seem like patients in a trauma center linked to electronics consoles and plastic tubes among the stacked tires.
Once through the chain link, I see that Massimo is with someone, a shorter man, I judge automatically from the soft black leather suit; then when I get closer, I realize from the turning profile the someone is a woman—straight forehead, angular chin, fiftyish. They are talking and I stop ten meters away, wave hello to Massimo’s mechanic. The woman with Massimo has her hair short-cropped, she is aiming some sort of pointer at the Ferrari’s cockpit.
Massimo sees me, calls “Ciao, Raoul-lay,” his hand comes up in the air to wave me over to the Ferrari. Halfway the engine starts up with a rumble, then a mean crack of revolutions. The smell of nitro exhaust slices through the thick odors of oil and rubber.
The woman seems transfixed by the car—she doesn’t even notice my joining them. She hugs herself to the sound of the engine—Massimo has the oddest look on his face; his eyebrows are raised nervously and his cheeks are reddening as if he wants to shout something but knows he won’t be heard above the engine.
It shuts down quickly at the wave of his hand.
“Director Steiner,” he says to the woman, then turns to me. I can see the smile on his face. He started talking too loud, his voice drops dramatically: “Allow me to introduce a friend, Rawley Voorst. He is pilot and driver. Rawley—Eva Steiner.”
Massimo looks at me through his polite laugh, I look at the woman again—her gray eyes take me in without recognition or interest. She nods, then moves next to the Ferrari, putting out her hand. “Feel the heat,” she says to herself; “there is nothing like this, nothing.”
Of course. Her hair is black, but it’s been dyed black. In every other way she fits the description of her personnel readout, though I don’t think I would have recognized her. She has a small, straight nose, thin lips. Something’s not right about her eyes. There is a glaze to them, or a sheen. Drugs, I think. D-Pharmacon. I look at Massimo, he looks as uncomfortable in her presence as I’ve become, his smile seems as uncertain as mine.
“Director Steiner is a great admirer of all Formula cars—and she has hydroplane, think of that, Rawley,” Massimo says, trying to start a conversation, but Eva Steiner is absorbed in the cars—the feel of their metal, their leather interiors, the sound of their engines. She acts as if I’m not there, barely Giroti, and I think he shuts the Ferrari cockpit from her approach for just that reason.
“It was really kind of you to let me come,” she says to Massimo. “I should have shipped in my own Formula E—my delicious Formula E. But even that’s not quite the same. There’s something wonderfully cruel about the Ferrari, don’t you think? You should have it painted black—everything black.”
Massimo’s forehead creases in annoyance. “My country, Director Steiner, you see…” Before he can even begin to explain racing colors, she has moved around to the rear of the car, where she squats down and rubs her hand across the surface of the wide rear tires.
“Very good,” she says, stroking.
Massimo is livid. “Would you like to drive the car, Director Steiner? Perhaps then you can get what you came for. Take it on the track, I don’t care. Perhaps you can even drive it.”
“Can I drive it,” she says flatly, rising and flexing her back. “Yes, I can drive it. I’ve driven Formula E in competition.” Then she smiles thinly. “You really are a darling man, Governor Giroti, don’t be upset by a… fantasy. I would love to drive it.” It is a pointer that she has—or something like one, a thin black cylinder about a half-meter long—and her hand has been gripping it so tightly that her knuckles are white.
Then she relaxes; and I can see Massimo relax, too.