Part 9 (2/2)
”Hrm, I haven't gotten that far yet.”
A suspicion arose about her questions. Was Cinmei reporting on him? Chris decided to get a little insurance.
”I only do it because I think that's what VG expects of me,” he clarified. ”I think this whole thing is a test, and I'm trying to get to the bottom of it.”
”I sure you right,” she said. ”You are very smart. Must be, to come here.”
”Thanks.”
They finished the ma.s.sage in silence. Chris got up and started preparing himself for sleep using the VG toiletries. He wondered where his stuff was. Probably drifting through the cold depths of s.p.a.ce.
He considered Cinmei again. He found her beautiful and content. He envied her serenity and her ability to accept her role here so gracefully. An insistent need pestered him. Should he ask her to join him in the bedroom? If she served as his watchdog that could be a bad move. He struggled for a moment, and then decided to ask her politely. Surely, he wouldn't be the first to explore the limits of her servitude in that direction.
He padded out to the edge of the carpet in the bedroom toward the marble floor of the central living area. A guilt offensive struggled to stop him, but he refused to consider it now that he'd set his idea in motion. He saw Cinmei across the room. He opened his mouth to speak, but something was wrong. She stared down at the wall, unmoving.
d.a.m.n.
Chris knew that look. Cinmei was focused on an internal interface. She had a link after all! She had to be reporting to VG at this very moment.
s.h.i.+t.
Chris skittered back into the bedroom with a clumsy back step and whirl. His panicked retreat ended painfully when he smashed his toe against the bed.
”G.o.dd.a.m.n!” he yelled.
Cinmei appeared in a second.
”What wrong?” she asked.
”Argh, my ... toe,” Chris muttered. ”Ah, nothing, I smashed the h.e.l.l out of my toe, that's all, no problem.”
”It is broken?”
”No. No, it's fine, thank you. I'll see you tomorrow.”
”Yes, good night.”
Chris slipped into the lavish bed, but couldn't sleep. He waited for VG security to arrive. He rummaged through the files he'd downloaded from the restricted area. He couldn't make sense of most of it. They looked to be conducting tests on other materials unrelated to the missile-thing. It seemed impossible that he could have totally missed any information related to it.
After an hour, he decided security wasn't going to show up. He started to think that meant he was on the right track after all. Now, excitement replaced the dread, and he still couldn't sleep. Finally, he took a sleeping pill and drifted off while trying to figure out what he'd missed.
Six.
Aldriena searched for a glimpse of the kids below her through an opening in the leaves. She saw Verlerie clearly. Part of Dad'je danced in and out of her view. There had to be others in the group, but she couldn't spot them from her perch in the tree. The Brazilian teenagers inevitably ventured outside at the end of the month, searching for stimulation in the face of their prematurely expended VR quotas. Most of the kids never had the discipline to budget their hours correctly.
The voices filtered up to her aerie. At sixteen years, she ma.s.sed only forty-five kilos, barely enough to bend the scaly branch she balanced on. She strained to catch the conversation.
”Did you see that guy Volare? The water director's kid from Europe. He's so ... well, he's jammin'!”
Verlerie smiled. ”I'd snark him. Would you?”
Dad'je nodded. ”Snark him? I'd do more than that!”
Laughter came from below, competing with the sound of rustling leaves. She lost track of the conversation for a moment.
”He's waiting for Aldriena,” Dad'je was saying. Aldriena couldn't see whom Dad'je meant.
”Give it up,” Verlerie said. ”Aldriena won't. She don't.”
”We snarked it out fine before,” said Garnite. ”Twice.”
Garnite was a boy who tolerated Aldriena on occasion because of his own low social ranking. He had been nicer to her lately.
”Virtual doesn't count. I mean for real. She don't jack boys for real,” Verlerie said.
Yavon's voice joined the conversation. ”Aldriena don't jack girls for real either. Like Verl said, she just don't.”
”She's only a j.a.p,” another male voice said. ”But I'd do it with her. Just to see what it'd be like.”
More laughter.
”Yeah, me too! Why not?”
The hot trickle of a tear tickled her cheek. She swiped it away with her fingertips. They had all hated her when she and her father had moved here from j.a.pan as refugees. She always stood out and they had made her pay for it dozens of times.
At first, she had convinced herself that if she spoke their language, they would accept her. She had studied hard, brought her accent into line, and dressed to the Brazilian norm. She had tried her best to correct every aberration of her Asian behavior. It didn't make any difference. They had still made her the b.u.t.t of their jokes, ignored her in line, and avoided her company.
Finally, when she saw that they wouldn't accept her as an equal, she had reverted to previous course and embraced her differences. She stopped trying to hide her eyes behind long bangs of straight black hair and started speaking j.a.panese with her father again. Her rebellious side grew until she acted different simply to spite them.
She had not realized the other kids noticed she remained a grind virgin, although she had done it on the net a few times. She'd also had no idea that Garnite seemed interested in her as something more than a one-shot virtual partner. It sounded like a couple of the boys had noticed her transformation from a flat-chested tomboy into a sleek teenage girl with a few curves in the right places. The other girls in her cla.s.s with soft bodies and slow minds were little more than slugs, but Aldriena had stayed wiry and strong by spending as much time in the real world as the virtual ones.
So now the boys wanted her because she had grown into a beautiful woman? The corner of Aldriena's tight set mouth twitched as more tears welled in her eyes. She swore she would learn to use their interest against them.
Aldriena watched the s.p.a.ce station approach through an external camera view piped into her link. She played a role even more tenuous than usual. She often watched while a computer controlled the landing sequence as she did now, but this time, it wasn't even the Silvado's computer. Her courier nestled in a cargo bay of a slow barge, bringing hydrogen from the outer solar system to the power-hungry station named Xanadu.
Black Core operatives on the station covered her approach. She didn't want to attract the attention of the local authorities ... yet. They'd gone through such trouble to get her here in secret. A mix-up in the command and control center causing a delayed surveillance order. A convenient software glitch in the nearest deep s.p.a.ce radar pod. Now, a stealth insert into Xanadu, purchased at great cost from another corporation.
Yet, she visited solely to be seen. She begrudgingly gave her superiors credit this time-they had devised a skillful deception. She felt the barge docking at the central hub of the triple pinwheel of Xanadu. Wearing an ultralight vac suit, she exited the Silvado into a pressurized section of the barge. She followed the familiar ephemeral green line from her link through a maze of piping and tanks. Her hands and feet stuck to the floor and walls as necessary to keep her from drifting away in the absence of acceleration.
She entered a sterile room of red and white. A panel of manual valve controls lined one wall, and a bank of repair equipment dominated another. A dark-haired man waited for her there with a fat red suitcase opened up on the floor. He wore a blue maintenance worker's uniform, a single-piece vac suit much thicker and stronger than Aldriena's thin temporary one.
”Niachi,” the man said. He looked at her with gentle eyes. She realized his face was perfect. Not a single errant strand wandered from his clean-cut hair. His skin stretched smooth and flawless across the pleasing lines of his face.
<script>