CHAPTER 4

THE ELECTRON MUSIC SOOTHED MARIA, BUFFERED HER PAIN. THE touch of the current wasn’t as sharp and dangerous as when she was flaming on Red Nine, or as immediate; instead the distant background hum built lovely architectures that patterned across the ship, an invisible electronic skeleton, a lovely lacework continually transforming itself across Maria’s perceptions.

She was drugged lightly: Blue Three, to keep the pain at bay, not as potent as Blue Seven. Clothing hurt, so she lay naked in her rack or pillowed on the couch in the crew lounge, Maxim her only company, happy the station gravity was almost nonexistent this close to the hub. Sometimes she played keyboards or watched holo hype, more interested in the patterns of electrons in her mind than the music or in the hype-people inflicting violence on one another.

Ubu moved distantly, busily through the pattern of Maria’s perceptions, limping from place to place on torn leg muscles. She sensed the alterations he was making in the electron flow. He was calling up information, working out figures on the comp.

Ubu was working on a plan. Another plan.

The plan would involve her, of course. Maria knew well enough how his mind worked.

Maria swallowed another Blue Three, concentrated on the electron pattern.

She knew that Ubu, his plan, and her pain were all tinged with inevitability. But she wanted to keep them outside the pattern for as long as possible.

*

“I don’t want to ask you again,” Ubu said. “But I don’t see a way around it.”

Beautiful Maria, her fingers striking random chords on the sizer keyboard, said nothing.

“Another day,” said Ubu. “That’s our limit. Then we have to deal with OttoBanque.”

“Think of something else.” Spoken through cracked lips. Maria held one chord with the left hand while she dabbed at her lower lip with the other, looked passively at the dot of blood. The chord filled the room, strained the silence.

“I wish I could!” Ubu shouted, the long chord burning red in his brain. Frustration seized his throat in a taloned fist and his fury died. He turned away and limped to the door. He didn’t want to look at her naked body any more, see what his last plan had done to it. Maria’s features were a puffy discolored mask, incapable of expression. The bruises were bigger now, blooming beneath her translucent skin like bright disfiguring blossoms. The burn marks on her back and breasts were the furious bites of an animal. He couldn’t stand to see his sister in that skin any longer.

He leaned against the doorframe of the lounge, his back to her. Chords touched his mind with violent colors, colors like flesh under assault. “I don’t want to start out my life as a loser,” he said. “This is the first chance we have to make it. The only chance. If we lose, luck gets made for us from this point on. We won’t have much to say about it.”

Maria’s voice was weary. Even Maxim’s purr was louder. “Talk to me tomorrow,” she said.

Ubu turned and left. The old ship’s joints crackled as he moved down the corridor. Facts crowded his mind. Production statistics. Effects of Consolidation policy. Bankruptcy statistics. Current prices for captured singularities. Prices on Angelica Station for heavy magnets. The facts warred with memories, with scents and sounds: Pasco weeping while red pills trailed out of his pockets; Marco de Suarez looking out at him from his skull-like face, the shine of neurojuice on his upper lip; the sharp smell of Kitten’s plastic skin as it burned; Beautiful Maria’s endless, soft cry as the glitch rod snapped against her flesh...

Restlessness tugged at him. He needed to get off the ship. Even if there was no money to spend, even if people laughed at his swelling and bruises. He went to his cabin, threw a caftan over his head, belted it, considered shaving, decided against it. He moved to the airlock with his practiced low-gee skip. Ubu went through the lock, down the docking tube, cycled through the lock on the other side.

As the hatch cracked open, the sounds of Angel Hub commerce flowed through: shouts, blatting horns, carryalls whining as they moved cargo. The hatch swung fully open and revealed a boy standing outside. His soft unmoned face wore a startled expression, perhaps at the door opening unexpectedly, perhaps at the sight of Ubu’s damaged face. The boy wore grip shoes, a pastel green blouse with gold metal threads— real stitching, not fake— a pair of shorts with lots of pockets. The de Suarez cast of features was plain. Ubu suppressed irritation.

“Bossrider,” the boy said.

“Shooter.” Giving him the benefit of the doubt.

“I’m—”

“Christopher de Suarez. I know.”

The boy looked at him curiously. “Have we met?”

“Years ago. A shooter meeting called to protest the Consolidation policy.” One of many. Nothing had come of any of them.

“I don’t remember,” the de Suarez said.

“Wasn’t very memorable.” Ubu’s lips twisted in a knowing smile, then belated pain stabbed him from lips and jaw and neck. He winced. “What you need, shooter man?”

“I’d like to see Beautiful Maria.” Ubu already knew this: the boy had been leaving messages for Maria all over Runaway’s computer. This, he thought, was what Maria had been shacking with?

“She’s not well,” Ubu said. He didn’t want a de Suarez aboard his ship, in a position to report to Marco on its shabby condition, its battered crew and empty holds.

“Oh.” The boy fidgeted. “Is it serious?”

“Depends on what you call serious.”

“I’d like to see her.”

The de Suarez seemed to be getting stubborn. Ubu pressed the button that would cycle the hatch shut in his face. “I’ll call her,” he said through the narrowing crack. “Wait here.”

He considered not calling Maria, just telling the de Suarez she wasn’t able to see him, but he was irritated, not so much by the thought of lying as by the pointlessness of lying about something so trivial. He pressed the intercom button.

“There’s a Christopher de Suarez here to see you,” he said. There was a short silence before Maria answered. Her voice had lost some of its weariness.

“Kit. I know him. You can let him in.”

Annoyance sparked in Ubu’s nerves. He suppressed it. “You sure you want a de Suarez in our ship? I don’t want Marco knowing things.”

“Kit hates Marco. He wouldn’t tell him anything.”

Ubu was dubious. “Okay,” he said. “It’s your shoot.” He opened the hatch again and walked out, making the de Suarez step aside. “The centrifuge is locked down,” he said. “Don’t bother with the climb to the ship’s hub, you can open the double hatch and walk in. Maria’s in the crew lounge, second on the right past the command cage.”

The de Suarez gave a hesitant smile. “Thanks, bossrider.”

“My pleasure, Kit.” Grinning insolently.

Kit, Ubu thought as he skipped away. What a stupid name.

*

Sitting on the cracked old couch in the lounge, Beautiful Maria leaned her bare back against Kit’s warm shoulder and took his hand in her own. Turned away from him this way, she didn’t have to watch the continued disturbance in his eyes as he looked at her disfigured face. The cat hopped from the sizer keyboard to her lap, then sprawled across her thighs. A distant wave of Blue Three eddied through her.

She gave him the agreed-upon explanation, that she and Ubu had won big in the Monte Carlo, then been beaten and robbed by a bunch of downside thugs.

“Have you talked to the cops?” he asked.

“Sure.” The lie came easily. “Haven’t heard from them since.”

“The groundlice probably paid them off. Angel Station’s that kind of place. So long as no one bothers Biagra-Exeter personnel they don’t care what happens to anyone else. I didn’t even see it in the station newsfax.” He squeezed her hand. “I wish I could touch you. Really touch you. But it would hurt you, wouldn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t be comfortable. I’m sorry.”

“I wish I could help somehow. But Abrazo’s leaving in just a few weeks. We’re waiting for one more shipment to arrive, then we’re gone.”

Maria felt a long throb of sorrow and was surprised at its strength. She turned her head, saw Kit with his eyes turned stubbornly away, and she touched his cheek with her fingers. “I wish you didn’t have to leave. Have you thought about the apprenticeship thing?”

Kit gave a heavy sigh. “I don’t think Marco would go for it. And if he did, he’d want constant reports on what you and your brother were doing, what kind of deals you were cutting. And then he’d use the information to try to undermine you.”

She shook her head. Blue Three made it more difficult than usual to comprehend Marco’s behavior. “He’s so awful,” she said.

“We’re surviving. We’re even making a good profit. I just wish he wouldn’t do it this way.”

Beautiful Maria closed her eyes and let the unfocused sadness drift through her. Kit would desert her. It wasn’t his fault, but he would. And then it would be Maria and Ubu again, together and alone and fighting alone against Consolidation again, a fight as constant and as hopeless as that of a ship caught in the coils of a singularity, the shooters trying every maneuver they knew but falling ever nearer, ending as a last forlorn burst of radiation crying from the heart of a lightless sun...

“Maria,” Kit said. “Maybe there’s a way.”

“A way to do what?”

“You can come with me. Aboard Abrazo. We could live together.”

Delight brightened in her mind at the realization that Kit was capable of such a flattering surprise. She turned her head to give him a joyful look. His eyes flinched from her features, then gazed at her steadily. She kissed him.

“Marco would allow that?” she asked.

“Probably. I think he would.” Kit’s tone was defensive. “I can talk him into it,” he said, as if to clarify things. “We’re allowed to have our choice of partners. I’m not a shooter yet, but I think I could get him to agree.”

Unexpected Blue Three laughter bubbled to Maria’s lips. Kit flushed and looked away. Maria kissed him again.

“I wasn’t laughing at you, Kit. Just at how sudden this is. We’ve only known each other one day.”

“Long enough to know what I want.” Defiantly. “People will make fun of me, but I don’t care.”

“That’s brave of you.”

Kit looked surprised. He started to say something, then changed his mind. “It’ll work out,” he said.

“I can’t picture living on a ship with so many people.”

“Most ships have whole families. Some more than one family. You an exception.”

Maria nestled against his shoulder again. “My father’s brothers and sisters died in an accident. A hatch blew or something, back on Atocha Station. Years before I was born.”

“It must have been lonely, growing up with only three of you. And now only two.”

“No. Not really. I don’t think I’ve ever been lonely for long.” She chucked sleepy Maxim under the chin. The cat twisted his body, the forward half coiling back to present the chin for easier access. Warm fur brushed against her bare legs. She stroked the cat’s buzzing throat and thought lazily about Abrazo, about life as part of De Suarez Expressways, Ltd. “I wonder,” she said, “if it’s possible to be lonely on the Abrazo.”

“It’s...” He raised his hands and let them fall. They dropped slowly in the light gravity. “Complex. The thing is, you have to consider everybody in everything you do. All the thoughts and actions of the others can sort of overwhelm you.” There was a dark silence. “But you can be lonely there. You can.”

“You’re not making it sound attractive.”

“Well.” He kissed her neck. “With two of us, it would be better. And you’re a shooter—you’d be more important than me.” He shifted on the couch so that he could put his other arm around her waist. Maria’s nerves fluttered as his fingers brushed her belly. “I would really like to touch you,” Kit said. Maria continued to stroke Maxim’s throat.

“What about Ubu?” she asked.

“I—he—” Another silence, and then Kit sighed, conceded reality. “It won’t be possible,” he said. “We have too many shooters as it is. Marco would accept you as my woman, but he wouldn’t take any shooters just because they were shooters.”

“Ubu and I go together, Kit.”

There was a long silence. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Not your fault.” She wouldn’t have to say the other, that she didn’t want to be a de Suarez, her presence tolerated only because she was Kit’s acknowledged possession. The Kitten in Kit’s life.

Still, regret trailed listless fingers through her mind. There had been pleasure in the brief fantasy, to leave Runaway, to have someone to care for her. She wished she could have basked in the fantasy a little longer. Tomorrow, she knew, life was going to turn real, and with a vengeance.

*

“I won’t ask you to glitch anything again. But we need it this one time.”

His warm hand closed on hers. Maria closed her eyes. A reflection of the electron world, the computer terminal built into the table, tingled in her spine.

“Please,” he said.

“We extend the loan,” Maria said. “We get another hundred twenty standard to pay it off. Then what?”

“We won’t be here when it falls due.”

“Where else would we be? We don’t have enough to pay docking fees. OttoBanque won’t lend us anything more—we’d have to go through a human supervisor for that, and he’d turn us down.”

“I’ve got it worked out.”

The electron stream rose slowly up her neck, brightened in her mind. She could almost touch it. Ubu’s voice seemed to come from far away.

“Your stake from blackhole be gone, okay? But we still got the money from the sale of the miners. We take that money, we buy magnetic grapples and a lot of provisions, we go hunting singularities. I checked station stores. There’s an old pair of grapples we could buy.”

Electrons sang through Maria’s brain. She could see the patterns, feel them caress her. “That takes years,” she said. “That’s why it’s all done by robot probes.”

“People have done it before.” Defensively. “Sometimes they come back rich.” He offered her a tattered grin. “We find a black hole, we clear our debts. Pay our fines. Then we go on finding more singularities if we have to. Your talent might make it easy. Maybe you could see them from far off.”

Ubu’s absurd hope echoed distantly in Maria’s heart. She could taste electricity on her tongue. “We still can’t pay docking fees,” she said.

“We don’t pay them. We run for it.”

The electric pattern broke up. Maria leaned forward, touched her forehead to the table. Sighed.

“Illegal,” she said. “Jesus Rice. You’ll put us in prison.”

“I’m the bossrider. I’ll take the heat.” There was a pause. “I’ve got it worked out. We blow out third shift, when everyone’s asleep. The Navy’s got a patrol ship here, but it isn’t really equipped to stop us, and we can get enough room between us and the station for a short shoot before they can catch us.”

“You’re going to wreck us.”

“I’m desperate. Our shit is weak. I admit that. If you have any ideas, I want to hear them.”

Maria pressed her forehead to the cool table, seeking a pattern, an answer. Ubu’s insistent voice jabbed at her like a circling prizefighter.

“Do you know what happens if we go down out here? Runaway gets sold for our debts, and we don’t get anything. If we’re lucky, we might get an indentureship contract with a Hiliner; but most likely we’ll be split up, maybe never see each other again. Maybe we can get work as systers, but we’d be stuck in the Angelica System for the rest of our lives, and all our shooter talents go to waste. We never get our brains into the Now again.

“If we don’t get a job on a syster ship, maybe we can get work for Biagra-Exeter as miners. Is that your idea of a future, digging rocks out of asteroids? The pay is shit, you get to live in foam bunkers all your life, and the only time you get to see the Fringe is when you get leave for a few weeks to spend your accumulated pay.”

“Ubu," Maria said,” I know all this.”

“Most likely no one will want us. Then we’ll be sent downside to Mudville. Down there we’re not even of legal age— they don’t care about our mones, our fastlearn skills— we’ll be minors! The colony will use us to do the jobs no real citizen wants to do. And it’s not even a developed colony— things down on Angelica are primitive.”

Ubu’s voice broke. Maria blindly gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “The sky isn’t right down there, Maria,” he said. “It changes colors, black to blue or red or something, and you can only see the stars part of the time, and they don’t shine, they’re all distorted. They twinkle. We won’t have access to freefall when we want it, we’ll be stuck in full gravity all the time. We couldn’t keep clean— there’ll be dirt everywhere. They’ll make us grow plants in the mud to eat.”

Ubu spat out the foreign-sounding words. His hand was trembling. He took a long breath. “How is prison any different, Maria?” he asked. There was pain in his voice. “How can it be any worse than being stuck forever on some mudball in space?”

Maria thought about Red Nine, about the world alive with electric fire. Fast, dangerous, full of tidal eddies like a game of blackhole. Her mind quailed.

“Isn’t there some other way?” she said.

“I can’t think of one.” There was a silence. His grip on her hand was lax, defeated. “Look, if it goes wrong, we’re not any worse off. If we can’t find a singularity, if it gets to the point where we just can’t stand the search any longer and we’re beginning to hate each other—well, then there’s no point in going on anyway, right? So we find a developed world somewhere, not like Angelica but a place that’s been settled for a hundred years or something, a place with civilization like Bezel or China Light, and we shoot insystem and turn ourselves in. We’d get condemned to Mudville, but at least it wouldn’t be Angelica.”

Maria jumped as his lower hands began to stroke her hair. “We could give up,” he said. “We could do it if that’s what you want.” His words had lost all passion now, were just a pointless, dull recital of fact. “I’ll do anything you say, Maria. I wouldn’t go against you.”

Pain stung Maria’s throat. “I know,” she said.

“I would never have taken you to the Monte Carlo if I had any idea what would happen.”

“I know.”

“I love you.” His palm burnished her hair.

“I know.” Sorrow beat slowly in her heart. “I know.” Her resistance was at an end, defeated by his love. She would follow him, follow the plan, follow until the last pattern flashed on the table, and the stakes were swept from the board.

*

Ubu stood behind Maria as she sat in the cubicle at OttoBanque. Harsh light filled the cubicle as he closed the door. In the reflective screen of the bank terminal in front of her, Maria could see her eyes glittering like impact diamonds. Red Nine danced along her nerves, spread gooseflesh on her shoulders. Every bruise, every swollen muscle seemed lit up, alive with heat and pain. She shaded her eyes with a hand. A sick headache throbbed behind her eyes.

“God, I wish I didn’t have to do this,” she said.

“The last time.”

Maria’s nerves crackled with pain. She swallowed bile and wondered if Ubu was actually as naive as he sounded. Probably he meant what he said.

Not that it mattered anyway.

A flash of pain ran through her. Her mouth was dry. She hated this.

The Red Nine might not have been necessary, because she could be in physical contact with the terminal, and that made it easier. But she’d only get one try; and she had to be certain.

Ubu reached over her shoulder with both upper arms, tapped in Runaway’s ID number, and called for the loan file. Data flickered into existence on the terminal. Snarling electric current surged into Beautiful Maria’s perceptions.

“How should we do this?” Ubu asked. “Ask for the extension first? Or just try to change the file?”

“I’ll do it,” Maria said. She took a breath and gazed at her reflection in the terminal, the outlines of her image broken by cold lines of fluorescent numbers. She reached one hand to the screen, pressed it over the reflection of her face. One dilated eye stared back, alone and terrified, pupil dark as carbon ice. The flow built in her hand, her arm. With her other hand Maria touched keys, asked for the extension, waited while the bank’s central computer considered the request.

She saw the answer coming, knew the denial was under her hand. Her heart crashed in her chest. The glitch seemed to form in her palm, sprang through transparent glass into the screen, then into the electronic array. Phosphors swarmed like fireflies behind Maria’s eyes. She felt close to passing out.

Maria took a breath, raised her hand. Amber letters ran beneath her hand.

APPROVED.

“Good,” Ubu said, and Maria jumped. His voice seemed incredibly loud.

“You can go back to the ship,” he said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

Electric chaos buzzed in Maria’s mind. “Blue Heaven,” she said, reaching into her pocket for a chak. “Now.”

*

A pair of huge superconducting electromagnets had been lashed down in Runaway’s cargo space, the bright curved talons of a dismembered insect. Cable dangled from huge alloy spools. Hardware shackles gleamed in the dim floodlit bay.

On the other end of the bay was a tumble of battered tempafoam containers, all of Pasco’s junk that Ubu hadn’t been able to sell—the obsolete autowomb, out-of-date fastlearn equipment, bits of hardware that Pasco had been tinkering with and that hadn’t even been identified yet. Kit looked at the stuff in confusion.

“You’re going prospecting?” he said. His disbelieving voice echoed in the long metal space.

Maria floated high in front of him, her grey robe billowing in the insignificant gravity, the smooth muscle of her legs a flashing white contrast to the dark fabric. “As soon as we finish our provisioning,” she said. She spun slowly to face him. Her hands danced in front of his eyes. There was laughter on her chiseled face. “And as soon as we’ve said our goodbyes.”

Desire performed a sweaty dance through Kit’s body. He pushed off, floated toward her. “You could be gone years,” he said. “A lot of prospectors never find anything.”

There were still yellow bruises on her cheeks, surrounding her eyes. But drugs had reduced the tissue damage. A pneumatic bandage encased her broken wrist. Her chiseled features had risen from the swelling, and now he could look at her face without wanting to clench his fists and smash whoever had done this to her.

She gave a throaty laugh as she reached for him, took his collar, began the slow fall to the bare metal surface of the cargo bay. He realized she was high. They landed on their feet, bounced lightly. Her hair rebounded and settled like a black cloud. He put his arms around her waist, the sacral hollows beneath his palms. Hormone-sculptured muscle flexed under his hands.

“Kit, I’m going to miss you,” she said.

Yearning filled the painful, throbbing hollow in his chest. He had never desired anything more than to lose himself entirely in the cloud of black hair, the sleek white body, the dark and somber eyes. He kissed her, tasted spice on her lips, the chile sauce they’d had on their dinner. Kit kissed the bruises on her cheeks, the corners of her eyes. Her hands slid up inside his shirt, traced the spine beneath his skin.

“I’ve wanted you for a long time,” she said. “It just would have hurt too much, is all.” She smiled. “I think the light gravity will help.”

He held her close and jumped, rising high in the big empty cargo space. Maria laughed as she threw her head back. Kit kissed the hollow of her throat, felt the tremor of her laughter against his lips. He pulled her gown over her head, threw it over his shoulder, bent to kiss the yellow bruise on one white, sharp shoulder. She threw her head forward to nuzzle his ear. Her hair drifted warmly down his back. Her body was an interplay of light and shade, shadowed ribs, pale skin, dark hollows, bruises descending the ladder of her ribs like indigo paint running down a tilted palette.

They touched the floor again, sprang aloft. Maria peeled his trousers from his legs, drew out the piece of elastic strapping he’d doubled around himself to use as a belt, threw the trousers away. His erection strained against her thigh. She passed the elastic around them both, cinched it so they wouldn’t accidentally drift apart. Her long legs coiled around him. Coarse pubic hair grated against the underside of his shaft. He tasted the spicy warmth of her tongue.

Touchdown. His bare feet skated lightly over metal. Maria reached between their bodies, circled him with finger and thumb. Sharp teeth glistened in the periphery of his vision as she laughed at the preposterous warm eagerness pressed against her palm. Her hips rose, thrust down. There was a mutual, humid gasp as she absorbed his glans. Heat patterned Kit’s skin at the touch of her fluttering breath. He leaped.

Kit cupped her hips in his hands, tried to drive himself far into her; but he was weightless, floating in a tangle of her hair and limbs and his own blazing desire, and his lunge went nowhere. Maria kept him at bay, her pelvis stirring lightly, maddening him. The air in his lungs turned to fire. She leaned back, holding his body firmly between her thighs. The improvised harness bit into his flesh. He could see the pulse beating in her throat. The cargo bay began to turn lazy, gentle circles.

The floor rose, touched Maria gently on the shoulders and the back of her supple neck. Maria giggled in stoned amusement. Kit reached out with his hands and pushed against the deck, turning the two of them upright; he kicked out again and launched them upward. Maria leaned back again and gasped in air. Her hair streamed behind her, blue highlights on black. The ceiling came up very fast.

Kit reached up and absorbed the shock on the palms of his hands. They began to ease floorward. Maria’s look was concentrated, intent. The muscles of her thighs flexed as she rocked gently, their relative positions changing only by one or two slow, infuriating millimeters.

A drop of sweat seemed to take hours to ease down the back of Kit’s neck. His feet touched metal. Even in the near-zero gravity his knees were trembling. Kit sprang again. His control was long gone and they went into a slow sideways tumble along the length of the bay. Bright laughter sparkled from Maria’s throat.

They touched, rebounded, and fell, their momentum gently absorbed by a stack of waffle-patterned plastic fenders intended for padding cargo and now strapped to the floor. Maria’s eyes were glazed, the corners of her full mouth tilted in a smile. Strands of hair draped her face. Kit took a fistful of the plastic in each hand and used the leverage to drive himself into her. Her hips rose to meet him. Beautiful Maria tilted her head back, the catlike smile still on her face. The plastic matting began to slip from Kit’s hands. Her fingers stroked over his ribs.

Kit lost his grip on the plastic and the two began to bounce erratically in the light gravity. He brushed hair from her face and kissed her. Her eyes were focused inward. Kit’s entire epidermis seemed engorged with blood. She clutched his buttocks, took careful sips of air. Her breasts were flushing pink. Within moments Kit and Maria were screaming, bouncing madly in a tumbling, purposeful confusion of limbs and bodies and swooning nerve endings. They finished inverted, miraculously balanced, Beautiful Maria’s head and neck absorbing their combined, insignificant weight.

Maria popped her neck, straightening her spine. They lofted slowly upward, turned, came down on Kit’s head. He let himself fall on his back, the plastic matting pressing lightly against his flesh. Kit wiped sweat from his eye sockets with the back of a hand. Maria’s laugh burbled against his neck.

“Gonna do that again,” she said.

Kit gasped for breath. “Not anytime soon, shooter femme.”

She palmed her hair back over her shoulder, revealed an unfocused grin. “We got hormones on this ship, lover. Drive you crazy, Maria promise. We do it till we so sore we can’t keep on, then I find us something for the pain.” She looked down at him and giggled. “If I got to be gone for years, I’m gonna have fun while I can.”

“Yeah.” Glassy-eyed. “Right.”

She undid his elastic strap, rubbed the red line over her hips where it had marked her. “Ow.” His hands brushed her ribs, touched her breasts. A river of desperation poured through his heart at the thought that he would lose her. Each infusion of Maria left him wanting more, only seemed to make a point of how lonely he had been before. He thought of Abrazo, of the close crew quarters filled with relatives all sharpening their knives for total war against the universe, and he realized how pointless he would be without her, without her presence.

“Come with me,” he said. “I love you.” He didn’t get it all out. Maria’s palm pressed his mouth at the word love, and the words died. Her dark eyes were solemn.

She leaned forward, pressing her cheek to his. “Shooters always got the Now,” she said. “That’s all we need.”

He closed his eyes. Grief stung his throat. He inhaled her scent, caressed her back with his hands. She lifted her head to look at him. Her hair covered them like a tent, provided the illusion they were alone in their dark world.

“This be more than Mudvillers get,” Maria said. “That’s why they come up the gravity well to have their fun.”

“Yeah,” he said. "I suppose so.” He wrapped her in his arms, pressed her to him.

He wanted her to drive the wind from him, to manifest a comforting solidity that would leave some impression of permanence. He found instead to his sorrow that her weight was no more than that of a kitten.

*

The ventilation of the shacktube was intermittent, and the room was hot and smelled of garlic chicken and sex. Amy Santines, shooter femme, glanced over her head at the cold fluorescent numbers that announced station time. “Should go,” she said. “The ship’s loading in forty.”

“That gives us forty, yes?” said Ubu. He propped himself up on the left set of arms and reached for his drink with the other.

“We stay another few minutes, we pay for a whole hour.” Sensibly.

“Right,” said Ubu.

“Besides, it’s too stuffy in here.”

She took her drink, gathered her clothes, and crawled to the door. There wasn’t room in the tube to stand. She was a tall moned femme, all flex and wiry muscle. Her skin was smooth like Beautiful Maria’s, but her hair was brown and short, her eyes light. She and Ubu were old shackmates, had known each other for a long time, since the first onrush of shooter mones had driven them both together.

Amy scratched behind her neck with the elongated, prehensile foes of her right foot, then popped the tube’s hatch and kicked her legs out. Fresh air brushed Ubu’s skin. He took a drink from his forcebulb. discovered that a pressure leak had made his Kolodny go flat. He gathered his clothing, threw the foodplates into the recycle bin, and followed Amy.

They dropped to the catwalk outside with their clothing bundled in their hands, startling a pair of overdressed tourists on the catwalk opposite. Amy leered at them and licked her lips suggestively. They almost ran to their tube, whispering fiercely.

“What’s wrong with those people, I wonder," Amy said as she pulled on her shorts.

“Who cares?” Ubu donned his shorts and caftan. He put an arm around Amy and kissed her. They walked to the end of the catwalk and dropped down the belt conveyor to the lobby. Ubu retrieved his counter, their amount of time automatically deducted, and he and Amy stepped out into the rim.

Amy grinned at him. “I get pregnant, you want the kid?”

“I’m protected,” he said.

She laughed, “Just kidding,” she said. “So am I.”

Ubu raised his forcebulb to his lips again, put it down without firing. “Just a second,” he said. “I want to buy another beer.”

Amy followed him into a bar raucous with Fringe life. He dumped the bulb’s contents and refilled, waved to Amy’s brother Sig, who was onstage playing his audolin with a shooter band, mostly Garcias off the Corsair. Amy waved with one of her feet. The bartender took his credit counter, plugged it in, deducted the beer.

“I saw Kit de Suarez and your sister together yesterday,” Amy said.

“They’ve been seeing each other some,” Ubu said shortly. He collected his counter and fired beer over his palate.

“He’s a pretty boy,” Amy said. “All right, if you like ’em natural.”

“I guess.” He frowned, shifted from one foot to the other. “Wanna stay and listen, or move out?”

“Gotta load ship. So does Sigmund, so he better finish his song damn quick.”

“I’ll go with.”

She waved farewell to Sig, then walked out of the bar. Ubu followed. She glanced at him over her shoulder.

“When’s your ship loading? You said you were leaving tomorrow.”

“We’re loaded.” Ubu hefted his credit counter. “We’re just staying to spend what’s left of our money.”

“I don’t remember Runaway being in the loader queue.”

“We loaded secretly in the dead of night.”

Amy shrugged. “If you say so.”

He put his left arms around her waist and shoulder. The electromagnets had actually been loaded by shuttle, through Runaway’s rear cargo hatch. With a full cargo, requiring many loads, that would have been ruinously expensive; but the superconductors only occupied part of the cargo hold and had been loaded in a single shuttle run, in the end much cheaper than waiting in line for the station autoloaders.

He’d also been telling everyone he was planning on leaving tomorrow. Runaway’s actual departure date was third shift tonight.

They rode the conveyor to the hub, then said goodbye at the loading gate. “See you next station, bossrider,” Amy said. She kissed him and pinched a buttock.

See you next lifetime, Ubu almost said; but he just forced a grin and said, “Yeah. Next Now, shooter femme.”

Taking shots of beer, Ubu headed back to the bar where they’d left Sig. Sig would be leaving; maybe Ubu could fill in on audolin for a while.

Crackling dross filled the air as he entered. Dancers obscured his view of the band. He stood by the bar and finished his beer while waiting for the song to end, cleaned the bulb and refilled it with Sharps, then sidled up to Sig and asked if he could borrow the audolin when he left to load ship. Sig looked up at him in surprise, shaking copper-colored bangs out of his eyes.

“Shit. I forgot about the loading.”

“Good thing I told you. Amy was planning on being pissed.”

Sig jumped up from his seat, handed Ubu the audolin and bow, and left in a hurry. Ubu examined the audolin, turned off the robot autotuner, and started tuning by hand. The guitarist, an older shooter with short-cropped dark hair and faded tattoos on his forearms, was looking at him. Nestor Garcia, bossrider of the Corsair. Ubu grinned.

“Hi, Nestor.”

“Bossrider.” Nestor scowled. “You gonna get weird on us, Pasco’s Ubu?”

“Weird? Not me, Nestor.”

Ubu plucked notes with the upper right hand, his left fingers bending each with experimental touches on the neck slides. His fingers were awkward; he hadn’t played in weeks.

“None of that half-tone shit you do. This is a band. We play together.“

“Be so. Whatever you say.“

The Garcias were serious about their music and earned spare credit playing during their layovers. They were as professional as shooter bands ever got without actually abandoning the Now to live in the Outside Life, the way the Guptas or Evel Krupp had.

Ubu ran the alloy bow over metal strings. Colors shimmered up his spine in a reverse waterfall of pleasure.

Nestor looked at his daughter, Sara, who sat behind a row of keyboards. “A la Luna,“ he said. Sara nodded and rolled her fingers experimentally over the sizer boards, produced a booming percussive thunder. Then she dropped into a crouch over the boards, counted aloud to Nestor, then slammed into rhythm as everyone dove into the song. Antony, the vocalist, yowled into his headset mic, his hands working belt controls to alter his timbre and occasionally harmonize with himself. By the end Sara was playing a third board with her prehensile toes, one knee cranked up to her ear while she balanced on the other leg. Sara had only two arms, but she had ambidextrous genes wired into her chromosomes, handy when playing dolores styles where there were at least two patterns going on at once.

Ubu concentrated mainly on keeping up. He was too rusty to do anything adventurous—he wasn’t technically a very accomplished player anyway—and the way the dolores ballad’s rhythms kept falling away, shifting, then returning in odd ways required his full attention.

When he was little he’d fastlearned keyboard synthesizers, but he found them unsatisfactory. Sizers were always on pitch, without the odd stray harmonics that Ubu found the most interesting aspect of natural tuning—there were programs you could feed into your sizer that were supposed to imitate the effect, but Ubu could always tell when people were using them.

He switched to stringed instruments, first guitar and then audolin. He enjoyed the ability to bend his notes, to brighten the spectrum of his perception with new, subtler tonalities. Most of the people he played with seemed immune to the effects he was after, but their brains weren’t wired the same way and Ubu learned not to expect their approval or understanding.

After the dolores came a dross song, all flash and forte, a universe brought to submission with every crashing chord. Ubu’s fingers were slowly waking up to the task; he concentrated on not letting the thunder overwhelm him, on his attack, and on the little bursts of color and taste burned through his mind by the lowered thirds and sevenths.

After the dross was over he looked at Nestor. “Mind if I use your spare hollow-body?” he asked. “I’d like something to do with my lower set.”

Nestor looked at him for a cold half second, then nodded.

The guitar was about a century old, a Sandman with the trademark pink plastic Q-shaped body instead of the usual triangular style. Ubu had inherited an imitation Sandman from the grandfather he’d never met, the guitar found in a locker on board Runaway next to other instruments abandoned there when Pasco’s family all died on Atocha. The Sandman’s neck had staggered frets to give strong harmonics with every chord and a ROM-controlled smart capo to keep the strings on pitch. Ubu disabled the capo and tuned with the pegs, then made sure the guitar’s transmitter was being picked up by the Garcias’ mixer.

The next number exploded into existence like a nova, blazing colors sharpened in Ubu’s mind by the guitar’s formidable sonics. The harmonics were so powerful they could easily overwhelm the rest of the band; Ubu saw right away he had to be careful. He concentrated entirely on technique, on his left-hand glissandi and right-hand attack, the rest strokes and careful finger hooks. With the audolin he produced a harmony line that drew a tart thread, like a burst of lemon, along the back of his tongue. At the end he hauled the neck of the guitar in a long seesaw motion to produce a chorus vibrato that sent little waves of burning metal into his perceptions, like a strobe flashing off boiling, dancing quicksilver.

Nestor gave him an over-the-shoulder glance. Not disapproving, just letting Ubu know he’d heard. Ubu grinned back, then reached for his bulb and fired Sharps over his palate. Fire flamed down his throat and he gave a laugh as he waited for Nestor to kick off the band.

Ubu played furiously for several more numbers, lost in the sound, the polychrome patterns mounting in his mind. He dosed himself with Sharps during each break. Then, in the middle of a song, he saw that Nestor and the other guitarist were looking at him, Nestor as if he’d just seen his worst fears confirmed, and that Antony was giving him sharp glances, too, whenever he could spare them... Ubu’s fingers almost froze at the cold realization that he’d run off on a strong guitar harmonic and that the whole band had followed along without quite realizing it, that the guitar’s soaring sonics had drawn everyone into a melody line about half an octave too high... Antony’s vocal cords were twisting themselves into scraps of bleeding meat trying to stay with the band, and no one knew what to do.

Ubu glanced at Antony and gave him an encouraging smile, about all he could think of at the moment. The smile froze to his face as he counted ahead to the end of the phrase, seeking a way out as his fingers worked automatically. The phrase came to an end before he was quite ready, but he took a deep breath and chopped the last note short with a series of three chords that dropped the guitar back into Antony’s range.

Fortunately everyone followed. Ubu gave another, more confident smile to Nestor, then confined himself to playing careful backup till the end of the song.

His fingers were turning numb. Time to end it anyway.

“Thanks, bossrider.” He turned off the guitar and returned it to its rack. “Sorry about that last.”

“It happens.” Nestor seemed more forgiving now that Ubu had actually found a way back out of the disaster he’d almost created.

“Thanks again.”

“It was fun.” This from Sara. Ubu gave her a grin and stepped off the stage.

He returned the audolin to Sig by the autoloaders and then bounced down a connecting tube to Runaway’s dock. It was the middle of the second shift, almost time to power-up the ship and blow station.

Ubu bounced one level down a connecting tube to Runaway’s dock. He finished his beer and put the bulb in his pocket. As he keyed the lock on Runaway’s docking tube he wondered if Kit de Suarez was with Beautiful Maria. He’d been spending most days on board, then going home to sleep on the Abrazo, apparently because he didn’t want any of his family to know he was seeing Maria. All of this, especially the fact Kit wasn’t sleeping on the ship, was fine with Ubu.

Ubu ghosted through the tube, opened the inner lock door, and bounced forward as the lock door slid upward. He cried out in alarm, but too late. Hands seized a pair of his wrists. Ubu caught a glimpse of green uniforms, yellow belts and collar tabs. Terror dashed headlong through his nerves. Programmed metal-and-plastic serpents coiled around his wrists. Strong arms dragged him upright. Ubu stood stunned, all four hands shackled.

“Ubu Roy.” The cop was middle-aged, mustached. His two assistants were younger and more muscular. The older cop handed Ubu a printout.

“You’re under arrest. Larceny, bank fraud, data tampering. Runaway and its contents are seized by OttoBanque in lieu of payment for the tampered loan.”

Ubu stared at him. “Where’s my sister?”

“You’ll see her in a little while. We picked her up this afternoon.”

“I don’t understand this.” Insistently.

“Read the writ, bossrider.” The cop was weary. He’d done this many times before. “I’m just a messenger boy, Ubu Roy,” he said. “You want an explanation, find yourself an attorney. They’re paid to understand this. I’m not.”

Ubu let them drag him away. He thought about Mudville, life as a juvenile on Angelica.

He thought about his sister. The pain took his breath away.