“Oof,” she said.
“Wow. Weird,” Conrad agreed, his voice on the verge of breaking. Her waist and the small of her back, bare beneath the cropped camp shirt, felt alarmingly soft in his hands, both cool and warm, completely unlike the skin of a boy or a man, or his mother for that matter. She smelled sweaty, and somehow that was nice, too. The fax might arrest the Queendom’s women in a state of permanent youth, but was that enough? Was there more to the feel and scent of a person than the cells and molecules of their skin? Could you feel the youthful soul raging inside?
He’d kept his distance from her; now the contact both soothed and agonized him.
“No touching, bloodfuck,” Ho said quietly, drifting in behind them. “How many times I have to tell you?” But he’d gotten his approach all confused, and he went past them—nearly over their heads—and came in not only too steep but also too close to the center, and with his feet in the wrong place. He hung in the air a moment, and then fell fast and hard with the definite clunk! of bone against metal. “Ow! Fuck! Donkey fuck!”
“You mind your own self,” Xmary said to him, picking her way out of Conrad’s arms.
“Bitch,” he answered quietly.
And there was a word Conrad had never liked. It basically meant “dog,” a description that bore no resemblance to any girl or woman Conrad had ever met. His father, Donald Mursk, used that word sometimes when things weren’t going his way. Used it once or twice to his wife’s own face, and once to describe the Queen of Sol cavorting regally on the wellstone holie screen of the TV. Donald Mursk was not by any means a bad guy, but Conrad personally found it unmanly for him to use that kind of language.
Conrad felt the urge to lash out, not with a slur or a slap but with the full force of his body, using himself as a weapon. At first he held back—when had such impulse ever served him? When had fighting? But then, bowing to fury’s slower cousins—righteous anger and the desire to impress—he considered carefully. He did have a perfect opening, and passing it up would be every bit as portentous and consequential as acting on it. Right?
Maybe it was just impulse again, masquerading as a rational decision, but he leaned in toward the center of the flattened grass, until he could feel the neuble down there, maybe four meters under the floor. And he drew back his sneakered foot—not easy in the steep gravity—and snapped it forward into the side of Ho Ng’s head. Not hard enough to damage him seriously, but plenty hard enough to hurt.
“That’s no way to talk,” he said.
And then, like magic, the Palace Guard was there, and Conrad felt the warm circle of a guide laser on his arm, half an instant before the tazzer beam made jellied agony of his muscles. He could feel the neuble again as he fell; the sharp, steep field of its gravity all around him, rushing by. Then he hit the floor, and the pain flared brighter, and he was—out for a moment. Then back in again, buzzing and ringing. But when he sat up, the pain was fading (except in his elbow, which he’d apparently banged hard), and Bascal and Karl and Xmary were all kneeling around him in a ring, with Robert M’chunu looking on worriedly from a few meters away. And behind him, the Palace Guard, standing upright like a battered chrome statue. Not smug or righteous, not concerned for Conrad’s welfare. Just there.
“What was that all about?” Bascal asked him, sounding half worried and half amused.
“Difference of opinion,” Conrad answered vaguely, fighting not to swoon. He was tempted to play it up—to be melodramatic. Swoon, sure, and groan, and ask everyone what happened. All that stuff you usually did when you unexpectedly got hurt. But there was too damned much going on today—people had died—and frankly he was embarrassed to draw any attention at all, much less by picking a fight in front of strangers.
“What were you trying to do?”
“Nothing, Bas. I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“It was out of line. Won’t happen again.”
“All right,” the prince said, tentatively accepting that without quite understanding.
They helped him up, brushing the grass off him, and Xmary caught his eye and mouthed the words “Thank you.” He didn’t know how to respond, and in thinking about it he used up the opportunity.
“Is he all right?” Robert asked nervously. Seeing the Palace Guard in action again had shaken him. Maybe reminded him what a close brush he’d had himself—how lucky he was to have painfully blistered fingers instead of no fingers at all.
“He’s fine,” Bascal answered. “Just a mild tazzing. We’re not allowed to fight.”
A murmur went through the South Africans, and Conrad could hear some of the tension going out of them. What a clever thing for Bascal to say: turning an incident of double violence into an advertisement for their cherubic harmlessness. Never mind that killer robot, that kick to the head, that poisoned glare Ho was aiming in Conrad’s direction. Just boys having fun, eh?
“Oh. Huh. Well maybe we should continue the tour, yah?”
“I quite agree. Boys, behave yourselves.”
Obediently, Ho came forward and put a brotherly arm around Conrad’s shoulders.
“We’ll see, bloodfuck,” he murmured quietly, squeezing a little. “We’ll see when I catch you alone.”
“Or I catch you,” Conrad murmured back. “Or someone else does.” There was no bravado in the statement. Conrad couldn’t win a fair fight, but as he’d just demonstrated, he could launch a sneak attack as well as the next guy. Or defend himself at cost, sure, landing a punch or kick or wrench-to-the-knee that Ho would not soon forget. Really, Ho was going to pound the crap out of him either way, so it was in his best interest to pound as much out of Ho first as he physically, possibly could. By whatever means, fairly or un-. And the barge was big enough and empty enough that the opportunity wouldn’t be long in coming.
This message got through, too: Ho blinked and pulled his arm away, thinking it over. He’d made two enemies just now, and maybe more. In a foreign place. When he owed his life to their efforts.
“Be useful,” Conrad advised. And his words brought color to Ho Ng’s cheeks, and suddenly Conrad had the upper hand again, fight or no fight.
Score another point for rational thought.
The bridge turned out to be a surprisingly cramped little chamber, with pilot and nav/logistics stations on opposite sides: one chair facing up and the other facing down from above, skewed one meter to the side so the two operators’ heads wouldn’t collide. The arrangement made maximum possible use of a tiny space, but it seemed kind of crazy given the hugeness of the rest of the ship. Even the corridors were wider.
Conrad took this as a vote of confidence for the on-board hypercomputers. This was an automated barge, after all, and while it was clearly expected to need cleaning and tuning from time to time, it was apparently not expected to require human piloting. Maybe there was a regulation or something, stating that it had to be possible, so this token of a bridge was shoehorned in between the two much larger crew cabins.
The cabins themselves were no big deal—just a zero-gee sleep pallet and a toilet/shower enclosure, with a wardrobe, sink, and mirrored necessities cabinet. No fax, no wasted space, no program in the wellstone aside from lights and bare metal. D’rector Jed’s bathroom was more lavish. But Nell and Ander—the cabins’ two residents— had clearly made themselves at home; the walls were brightly decorated, one with waves and splatters of paint and the other with hundreds of printed 2-D and 3-D pictures—mostly landscapes with people in the foreground, mostly on Earth but a few from Mars and Venus, as well as some less identifiable locales. Rock tunnels? Space platforms?