CHAPTER 21

I’d fuck every de Suarez on the ship if it’d get us those coordinates.

Beautiful Maria’s voice rang suspended in Ubu’s mind, every inflection perfect, each word sharpened by anger, burned with acid. He remembered his fists striking her, knuckles jarring on bone.

Hatred was no justification for this. Even if Maria wanted it. Even if it was her idea.

He paced the centrifuge. Maxim rode on his shoulders, claws lightly pricking the flesh. Fucked up again.

A tremor passed through him. In the name of hatred, he’d just turned pimp.

*

The walls were decorated with a complex pattern of pornography and holo pictures of hype-people. Michiko Tanaka, dressed in chain mesh, her eyes heavy with mascara and her lips painted white, grinned as she straddled the bloody corpse of a villain; next to her was a smiling blond girl with freckles on her nose and semen on her face. Phil Mendoza brandished a laser rifle from amid a constellation of aroused nipples, perky buttocks, moist vulvas, and bizarre tattoos. Kit seemed embarrassed about it all, but Beautiful Maria found the sight improbably funny.

Juan de Suarez was packing all his bathroom stuff into a blue plastic collapsible box. His clothes filled only one small collapsible; his pills, vitamins, tooth cleaner, cologne, cosmetic, and hair pomade filled another box just as large.

He didn’t claim any of the artwork.

Kit and Beautiful Maria watched, trying to stay out of his way, Kit on his rack, Maria moving from place to place. “Everybody’s sure surprised,” Juan said. “I think you’re both real lucky.”

This was the third or fourth time he’d said it. Maria and Kit had given up replying.

Juan stacked one box on top of another, then bent and picked up both. “Guess I’ll leave you guys alone.” He looked at Maria enviously. “Have fun. Just don’t play Kit at spirals.”

He left, slid shut the door behind him. Maria looked at Kit.

“Spirals?” she said.

“When I got keyed into the shooters’ lounge I found out there’s always a lot of gambling going on. We bet against our shares of the next run. Most of the other shooters are big plungers.” Kit gave a shrug. “They really don’t know how to play. Anyone with half a brain can beat them.”

“I’ve always been good at games of chance,” Maria said.

“Too bad they won’t let you into the lounge.”

There was a long, cold moment of silence. “Yes,” Maria said. “Too bad.”

“It’s not my fault.” Quickly. “I didn’t make any of these decisions.”

“I know.”

“When we get on board Familia, things’ll be normal.” Kit gave an uneasy laugh. “And we’ll probably have lots of money. It looks like the shares I’ve been winning are going to be worth a lot.”

The thought rang through Maria, clear as a bell, that maybe she ought to be nice to him for a change. She took her bag of clothes and slid it under Kit’s rack, then sat next to him. He took her hand and she couldn’t stop herself from stiffening.

“Sorry,” she said. She took a breath, tried to relax. “The last guy to touch me did it with his fists.”

She could feel Kit’s sudden flare of anger, the spring-steel tension running through his limbs at the thought of violence to her. Suddenly it was all too much— her anger, his, her sharp sense of aloneness. She shook her head slowly.

“Would it be too much to ask you to leave me alone for a couple hours? I’m just— I’ve had a bad day.”

“Sure. Okay.”

Maria smiled at him and squeezed his hand. “Thanks.”

She kissed him and he stood, looking at her with troubled eyes. She could read his concern and confusion, an uncertain disappointment.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll make it up to you, okay?”

Beautiful Maria watched him close the screen. Relief dizzied her.

She flopped back on Kit’s rack and closed her eyes. Her cheekbone ached where Ubu had hit her; her neck was stiff with whiplash. The pillow smelled faintly of Kit. Another reminder that she was alone here, no one but de Suarezes on board.

Maria reached out with her mind, tried to touch the electron world. She could feel it faintly, a gentle web of mutable energy that surrounded her and the ship. The sensation was warm, familiar. The only familiar thing in this place.

She rose, reached for her bag, stepped to where the desk folded into the wall. She pulled it and the terminal out of the wall, tracked a chair to it. She took a chak of Red Nine from the bag, fired it twice, and turned on Kit’s computer terminal.

Passwords, she thought. I’ll show them passwords.

The electron world rose and took her in its arms.

*

Sweat gleamed on Beautiful Maria’s body after an hour’s furious work on the de Suarez system. Red Nine made her hyperconscious of her body, of every ache and itch and discomfort. She swallowed some Blue Seven, folded the desk back into the wall, and headed for the shower.

She’d glitched her way through file after file, found and examined the preliminary agreement with Beloved. Abrazo’s main computer was an old Kanto, and it took some time to get used to it, but once she had she’d leaped like a dancing spark through the comm system and arranged for any further communication with Ubu or Beloved to be dumped into an accounting program full of old data that, she assumed, had only been kept for tax purposes, and which no one had looked at in years.

That was all she could do now, just prepare for the moment when she got the right data. Red Nine screamed at her to do more— murder, pillage, assassinate, run through the de Suarez system in a fiery particle storm of destruction. The electron world tugged at her, trying to rise in her mind and pull her out of her wired skin.

She took a shower instead. The shower cubicle featured a mural of three naked holograph girls with sinewy moned bodies and painted prepubescent faces. Maria cackled in surprise as they solemnly fondled one another when Maria moved from one point of view to another. She turned the taps and water bounded from her flesh, each impact a bullet strike. She stood in the shower for a long time, then turned off the water and switched on the blowers, letting them blast her dry until her long hair licked around her body like flame.

The Blue Seven was beginning to dull Red Nine’s keen edge. Maria left the shower and tried to comb her hair out, but impatience made her toss the comb back in her bag. She ate another Blue Seven, pulled down the terminal again, and called up the game file. She played two fast games of NovaWar, stars exploding on the holo display like patterned retinal flashes, and then the Blue Seven began to drag at her reflexes.

A sharp pain stabbed her kidneys and she used the toilet. Hype aliens, armor and yellow eyes, threatened her from the toilet door. The electron world caressed her like a slow-motion dream, no longer urgent or demanding. It occurred to her that she was exhausted, that she’d been running for days on little but nerves, pain, and anger. She put away the terminal and dropped into bed, then turned the lights off so she wouldn’t have to look at any more naked women. Patterned radiation danced in her mind. She closed her eyes and slipped away.

When Kit quietly slid into the rack, she at first had difficulty distinguishing him from the gentle touch of the other world. She laughed when she discovered his reality. The brush of his lips and hands raised a storm of bright photons in their wake.

Passion, anger, and hatred had all drained away on a warm river of Blue Seven. What remained was texture: the touch of skin, rustle of sheets, hiss of breath, all touched by the spectral rainbow shimmer of electricity. All components of Maria’s perception, an embracing totality of sensation ... it might be possible to build an entire universe from this, she thought, construct a benign creation from which rivalry and mercilessness and anger, all Marco’s weapons, had been excluded, the new universe built out of mental perceptions in the same way the cascade of the Big Bang might have started with a single virtual particle.

But virtual particles never last— at some point the universe blinks and the particles disappear, and so Maria’s universe was compelled to vanish once reality took notice. The whole creation disappeared, folded into itself until it went away, into the bleakness of an unsettled stomach, stabbing pain behind the eyes, a bright, razor-edged, and merciless morning...

*

Maria pushed her breakfast tray away. “I wish you’d think about it again,” Kit said.

“I have.” Breakfast chiles burned in her stomach. Pain throbbed in her neck with every skip of her heart. She rubbed her stiff neck. “I’m not welcome anywhere in the ship. So why leave the room?”

“There are only a few places you can’t go,” Kit said.

“I can go to the galley,” she said. “Great. I’m allowed to cook for everybody if I want to, I’m just not allowed to do my job.”

“Everyone would like to meet you.”

“I meet them on my own turf, or everyone can go to hell.”

Kit turned away, took a few resentful steps. Maria propped herself in the rack and reached for her comb. Her hair had knotted impossibly overnight. She worked at it for a few furious moments.

Kit reached for the tray. “I’ll take this back to the galley.”

He stepped to the door. She remembered, at the last minute, to look up and say thanks before he slid the door shut behind him.

*

“I am pleased to see you, Volitional Twelve.”

“I am honored to be aboard Runaway once more, reverend bossrider.”

“I hope you will convey my compliments to Beloved.”

“It will be my pleasure to do so, Bossrider Ubu Roy.”

Ubu helped Twelve out of his vac suit, then led him to auxiliary control. The room was shut down now, cage empty, the boards dead. A sad place. Ubu remembered Pasco here, drifting and weeping while the drugs increased their slow, certain grip on his throat. Pasco’s holograph ghost had been contained, but now Ubu had begun to feel spectral himself, a lonely remnant haunting the empty ship, abandoned or forgotten by all who knew him.

Ubu touched a castoff bar, spun slowly to face Twelve. “I’m glad that Clan Lustre requested this meeting.”

“Clan Lustre will not forget that Runaway is our oldest human acquaintance.”

Maybe, Ubu thought, he’d get separate deliveries, after all.

“Runaway will always consider Clan Lustre a treasured friend,” he said.

“Beloved hopes that Clan Lustre and Runaway may be of service to one another. Perhaps we may assist one another irrespective of the agreement between Clan Lustre and Clan de Suarez.”

“Glory to Beloved,” Ubu said. Glee filled him. Was Beloved preparing to stab Marco in the back?

“Glory to Beloved,” Twelve answered.

“Runaway hopes always to be of service to its friends.”

“Glory to Runaway.” Politely.

“Glory.”

Twelve drifted for a moment, his body turned so as to regard Ubu with three of his eyes.

“Clan Lustre would like to purchase knowledge from Runaway. Knowledge, bossrider, rather than hardware.”

“I understand.” Ubu’s mind spun. “What knowledge does Clan Lustre desire?”

“Beloved would like to learn the technical skills to produce certain items contained within human artificial intelligences.”

I just bet Beloved would, Ubu thought.

“May I ask the items in which Beloved is interested?” Ubu figured he already knew.

“Clan Lustre wishes the ability to produce resistance-free wiring and circuits.”

That’s one, Ubu thought. “Very good,” he said.

Twelve stiffened. His limbs trembled. “Does this mean you know this secret, bossrider?”

“It is... obtainable, Volitional Twelve.”

“We wish also to obtain knowledge to produce the electric switches that transmit a signal at superluminal velocity.”

That’s two, thought Ubu. Triumph surged through him. Maybe he had something to fight Marco with, after all.

Macroatomic switches and superconducting glassware circuits. With them Beloved could build her own AIs.

And Ubu had the knowledge in Runaway’s own databanks. None of this was a secret among humans. For that matter Ubu could design and build his own macroatoms in Runaway’s clean boxes.

“Clan Lustre asks a great deal,” said Ubu.

“Beloved hopes the deal would be profitable for all concerned,” Twelve said. “For each ability, Beloved would offer twelve cargoes filled with whatever Bossrider Ubu desires, provided that it is within Beloved’s power to create it. This arrangement would be independent of any arrangement made with Clan de Suarez.”

“I regret that Runaway could not part with either technology for less than twenty cargoes,” Ubu said.

The bargaining was pure reflex. Ubu couldn’t tell whether he wanted to work this deal or not.

Beloved had played it wonderfully, Ubu thought. She had threatened to let Marco control the delivery schedule and limit Runaway’s action, then offered Ubu this way out. He could make a fortune and undercut Marco at the same time.

One thing was certain. If he sold the knowledge, any further trading with the aliens would be wrecked. Artificial intelligence was humanity’s edge, the thing Beloved wanted most.

A cold thrill hummed in Ubu’s nerves as he realized he didn’t need to make any decision now, that he could destroy Marco at any time. Wait, he thought. Find out the delivery schedule. Wait till Marco overextends. Wreck him then.

“Does the reverend bossrider have this information available now?” Twelve asked.

“The information will not be available until I have visited human society at least once more.” Which would give him a breathing space. He’d see how Maria did aboard Abrazo.

Or maybe Ubu could wreck Marco in some other way. He’d have to give it time.

“Does Bossrider Ubu Roy wish to conclude an agreement at this time?”

Ubu smiled. “With all respect to Beloved and Clan Lustre, it may not be possible to discover this information. I wish to acquire it before I conclude any agreement with Clan Lustre.”

“As the reverend bossrider wishes.”

“Please thank Beloved for her considering Runaway in this matter.”

“I am honored to be the emissary between your greatness and hers.”

Ubu drifted in the dead control room, his mind on fire. If only Beloved had made this offer before, he knew, he wouldn’t have let Maria sacrifice herself.

*

Glory to Beloved.

Was the bossrider intrigued?

In this-individual’s best judgment, he was.

Was the bossrider telling the truth when he said he did not possess this knowledge? Or was this a bargaining ploy?

Glory to Beloved, this-individual cannot say. Perhaps so.

Has the bossrider inquired concerning the schedule for delivery of this knowledge?

Glory to Beloved, he did not.

There was a moment’s pause. The bossrider has a limited comprehension of consequence.

This lack of response in the bossrider was, perhaps, a stratagem. Twelve offered the thought cautiously. Why, he wondered, did he feel an impulse to defend Bossrider Ubu’s intelligence?

Perhaps. Twelve received the impression that Beloved did not rate this theory highly.

General Volitional Twelve, you will next visit the ship of Clan de Suarez. I wish you to confirm that control of the human delivery schedule is entirely in the hands of Bossrider Marco.

This-individual is honored to be of service to his Beloved. Correctly.

You doubt the wisdom of My strategy?

Chill fear entered Twelve’s mind. Beloved had divined his mind, but to doubt Beloved’s wisdom was appalling blasphemy. His answer was carefully phrased.

Clan de Suarez has shown itself ruthless and opportunistic. This-individual wonders at the consequences of giving them sole control of our commerce.

Beloved’s reply was curt. If Clan Lustre receives the primary human technologies, I will have no need of Clan de Suarez.

Glory to Beloved, that is so. But there are many things not yet understood concerning the humans.

I understand all that is necessary for Me to understand. From Beloved’s mind, Twelve felt a stab of hostility. Fear possessed him.

Glory to Beloved, he babbled. Glory glory glory.

Beloved’s consciousness withdrew from Twelve, though the umbilicus itself did not withdraw. Twelve could still discern, at a distance, the awesome workings of her many-tiered mind.

A cold, unwelcome thought lodged in his brain, and he squirmed involuntarily at the discomfort it caused him. He understood Beloved’s decision, and his own instinctive opposition to it; and he knew it had entirely to do with the difference in their natures.

Since opening communication with the humans, Beloved had been taking one appalling risk after another— she had dared, at the peril of contamination, to open her mind to human language and thought, even though it had driven many of her servants mad; she had dared open trade with an alien species who might use their knowledge of Beloved and her capabilities in an attack upon her; she had dared to parlay alien, incompletely understood technologies among other independent intelligences of her species, risking the spreading of any contamination; and finally, without being able to fully comprehend the consequences or the natures of the parties involved, Beloved now dared to play one human faction against another in a gamble aimed at acquiring their most valuable resource.

Beloved had dared all these things, and Twelve, in his own mind, could not encompass or comprehend such daring. Beloved, Twelve realized, had absolute confidence in her own omnipotence, her own ability to understand and control the consequences of her actions. Twelve, her servant, possessed nothing of the sort.

On an instinctive level, Beloved understood such individuals as Marco de Suarez. Marco behaved as Beloved would have behaved, or at any rate as Beloved liked to think of herself as behaving— decisively, ruthlessly, opportunistically. His ship was organized on a strictly hierarchic level, with Marco at the top, taking all the risks, making all the decisions. The others were perceived as instruments of his will.

Runaway, by contrast, was anarchic and, from Beloved’s point of view, quite hopeless. Ubu possessed little of Marco’s authority, his crew dared to contradict him publicly without fear of death or reprimand, and Clan de Suarez had somehow stolen his greatest secret. Beloved would instinctively avoid such a chaotic, incomprehensible clan as Ubu’s, and ally with the strength and certainty of Clan de Suarez. Ubu would be used as an instrument to transfer the technology Beloved desired, undermine the other humans’ position; otherwise he would be discarded.

Twelve, though, could understand such humans as Ubu and Beautiful Maria better than could Beloved. He understood their lack of strength, their confusion, the way they were victimized by stronger humans. Twelve understood their essential helplessness. He was helpless himself, a tool of Beloved’s. That was the consequence of his nature.

Ubu, too, would become Beloved’s tool. That was Beloved’s intention.

And Twelve, because of his nature, would make it come about.

*

“Bossrider wants to see you.”

“Bossrider can fucking well come here, then.”

Kit stared at her. At first his surprise was too great for any other feeling to work its way to his face. But then Beautiful Maria saw a series of emotions roll to the surface: shock, fear, a growing look of foreboding. What, he had to wonder, has he got himself into? She almost felt sorry for him.

The bastard.

He licked his lips. “I don’t think...”

“If Marco wants anything, he can come here. Till I get another place to work, this room’s gonna be my office.”

He took a breath, let it out. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell him.”

Maria grinned at him. “Thanks,” she said.

She could see tension bracing his shoulders as he left. Amusement rose in her as she saw how Kit was walking— without realizing it, he was nearly on tiptoe, as if maybe he wouldn’t annoy anyone if he was careful not to make any noise.

Maria leaned back on the rack, her supple spine touching the wall, and crossed her legs on the mattress. Disconnected sexuality patterned on the wall before her like a jigsaw puzzle composed of flesh.

Some spy, she thought. She’d seen how female spies behaved in the hypes, how Michiko Tanaka slid into an assignment on an aura of glamour and seduction, ruthless sexuality and cold cunning. Maybe if Maria had any smarts she’d play it that way herself— charm Marco into being careless, tease Kit into being her accomplice, have the entire Abrazo in thrall.

Fat chance.

She wasn’t a trained spy, she wasn’t living in a hype, and she was far too angry to be able to hide it for long. She’d have to use the anger somehow, win herself moments of being alone so that she could do what she needed.

The door slid open. Maria’s rage burst into flame at the sight of Marco’s skeletal body, grey skin, bulbous knees and elbows, sunken chest. He was dressed only in a faded grey g-string and the cross he wore around his neck. His hollow eyes were fixed on hers, not friendly, not hostile. Kit hovered over his shoulder.

“Kit said you weren’t feeling well,” he said.

“He was being tactful,” Maria said. “I’m feeling fine. I’m just not leaving my office here till I’m allowed to travel freely on the ship.”

Marco shambled to one of the chairs, folded it down from the wall, and sat. He looked at her again, considered. “That’s nothing to me, shooter femme,” he said. “So long as it’s understood you’re a part of this ship now, that you give me what I want when I need you, you can stay in the closet for all I care.”

“So long as it’s my closet, bossrider.”

Kit looked like he was praying for invisibility.

“I come to ask you about Clan Lustre,” Marco said. “They’re sending an emissary, and I want to find out about him. If he even is a him.”

“My office,” said Maria, “is always open to you.”

Excitement buzzed in her mind. Negotiations had to be coming to a close, then. The information she wanted might be in the de Suarez computer within a few hours. “Do you know which emissary is being sent?”

“The emissary is General Volitional Twelve. If that’s a name and not some kind of designation.”

“It’s both,” Maria said. “A general volitional is a species designed for the kind of tasks that need both intelligence and mobility.”

“I noticed they communicate in the twenty-one-centimeter range. At 1427.9 megahertz. That’s almost one of the water holes, but not quite. Do you know why?”

Beautiful Maria looked at him in surprise. “Not be knowing what you mean, bossrider.”

Marco looked impatient. “Water holes. One of the frequencies of water. Hundreds of years ago, when people were looking for alien civilizations, they listened on the water frequencies, because that seemed an obvious place to look.”

“We never knew that, bossrider. We broadcast to them on a whole spectrum of frequencies, and that was the one they answered on.”

“Thought it might be important. Thought it might mean they think like us.”

“They don’t think like us at all, bossrider.”

“Then it doesn’t matter anyway.” Marco leaned forward, his expression intent. “This Volitional Twelve’s gonna be visiting us. Does he need anything special? So he’d be comfortable?”

“He can breathe our air. If he needs food, he’ll bring it. He can stand gravity, though he’s not used to it and would be more comfortable weightless.”

Marco’s face twitched. “It might be to our advantage to take him into the centrifuge, then,” he said. “Tire him out.”

Poor Twelve, she thought. “Beloved still has to approve any deal,” she said. “The advantage would be temporary at best.”

“Can I see Beloved, then? Can’t she come and do her own negotiating?”

Maria grinned. “Beloved is either built into their ship or has grown to fill large parts of it. I don’t think she’s gonna come calling anytime soon. And I don’t think she’d allow a human anywhere near her. We might contaminate her in some way.” She gave Marco a look. “You want me to join you in these talks? I might be able to help you.”

“I conduct my own negotiations.” Marco’s answer was final. “I just want you to tell me everything you know about this Beloved, shooter femme.”

Maria felt the anger flushing her skin. She fought it down, shrugged as if she didn’t care, as if Marco’s hollow eyes hadn’t seen it all. “I’ll tell you what I know. It isn’t much.”

The interview lasted two hours.

*

Beautiful Maria’s mind reeled after her questioning. The bossrider had been incredibly thorough.

Kit stayed after Marco left. He and Maria talked afterward, mainly about the aliens. After a while Maria’s well of knowledge, already drained by Marco, ran completely dry. They worked at finding something else to talk about and found it hard going. Finally, after Maria heard the distant sound of airlock pumps ticking through the hull of the ship, she suggested Kit might head for the shooters’ lounge and play some spirals. He took the suggestion gratefully.

She dropped the desk and terminal out of the wall, locked the door behind her, and called up some Evel Krupp striff. She took the chak of Red Nine in case she needed it, propped it on the desk near her hand. She got into the Kanto’s main directory, saw that there was a file open on the terminal in Marco’s office, and glitched into it without trouble.

From above the terminal, a black-skinned woman with heavy breasts regarded her gravely from between parted knees.

A holographic image leaped into view as voices rattled from the terminal’s speaker. Maria’s heart jumped as she saw that Marco was recording his meeting with Twelve. The meeting was in the office, under full gravity— Poor Twelve, Maria thought. Marco wasn’t the type to give up an advantage, however slight. Her fingers tapped keys as she arranged for the record to dump the recording into her dummy accounting file and bent closer, put her ear to the speaker to hear the negotiations over Evel Krupp’s furious guitar attack.

“We should be ninety standard human days in and out,” Marco said. “Possibly under. Shortly after that Clan de Suarez will have three ships coming in with the first three deliveries.”

Where? Maria almost shouted the question.

“During that time,” Twelve said, “Clan Lustre will set up a chemical factory somewhere in the Montoya 81 System.”

Maria could feel her elation explode, scattering burning bits of triumph through her body. Montoya 81! She repeated the star-catalog number in a fierce whisper. All she had to do was get the news to Ubu.

She let the rest of the negotiation record itself while she went in search of the files that governed the communications units. All she had to do was commandeer a directional antenna, pulse a short coded message to Runaway that would be understandable to Ubu but not to Beloved should she overhear, and make sure to wipe the record of it afterward.

Simple enough, she figured, but she worked at it for hours. Abrazo was an ancient ship, almost two centuries old. The Kanto had been built into the ship during its construction, but the comm hardware was some kind of Stone Age gear that had been scavenged from a ship even older. The comm software was unusual, written in an old assembly language she wasn’t entirely familiar with, and through which she had to navigate by instinct. Odd security features had been added at random throughout the text and almost seemed designed especially to frustrate someone with Maria’s particular abilities. By the time she finally cracked the program her nerves were cranked on repeated doses of Red Nine, and she had difficulty calming down enough to comprehend the programs that worked the antennae. She couldn’t get the servomotors that tracked the directional antennae to work at all, and then realized that in order to be trained on Runaway they had to be keyed into their target through the data in the nav displays. To her fury, she discovered she couldn’t get the navigation displays up without setting off lights on the nav board. She was trying to work out some way of bypassing that system when there was a knock on the door.

Frustration howled in her skull. Maria turned off the terminal and slammed it into its slot in the wall. “Maria?” A soft female voice called from the corridor.

Beautiful Maria flung open the door and discovered a small wiry woman with four arms and greying blond hair. She was Kit’s Aunt Sandy, the aunt who used to sneak Kit food when he was in disgrace, now come to say hello. She had brought a recycled plastic box full of macaroons. There was no choice but to ask her in.

They talked for half an hour in a disconnected, jangled fashion. The drug was still coursing through Maria’s veins and her responses to the woman’s conversation were frantic, loud, and inappropriate. The electron world wove patterns through the air, distracting her. Maria couldn’t manage to eat an entire macaroon: for some reason her swallow response wasn’t working properly.

Eventually Aunt Sandy left. Beautiful Maria suspected she hadn’t made a good impression.

Maria jumped back to her work. A crashing headache began to throb in her skull. White Sashes danced in her vision in time to the furious striff music. After another few doses of Red Nine, Maria managed to bypass the displays on the nav board, but she still couldn’t get the antenna servomotors to function. She called up some ship power schematics and discovered that power to the servomotors had to be manually switched on from the comm board, and that except for the one antenna that was pointed at Beloved’s ship, all had been switched off. Maria could move or create single electrons; her talent couldn’t move something the size of a manual switch. And she couldn’t use the one powered antenna, because its altered tracking would be obvious to anyone overseeing the comm board.

Maria shrieked in frustration. The fragile desk shuddered as she slammed her fists down on it. All that was required was one burst of ten characters, taking no more than a fraction of a second to transmit, and the Paleolithic communications apparatus on the old ship had made it impossible.

All she could do was hammer out a short line of programming that would automatically aim an antenna and fire her message if one of the antennas was turned on. Maybe no one would notice such a brief message.

The chances of someone turning on an antenna in this system weren’t very great.

She turned off the terminal in fury, slammed it into the wall so hard that a metal rivet on one of the polycarbon hinges popped across the room. Maria stood, frustration running through her, and found herself staring into the improbably pink three-dimensional vagina of the spread-legged black woman. She dug in one of the drawers under the rack, found a heavy clasp knife that would serve adequately as a scraper, and working with manic, gleeful energy, began to deface every piece of pornography she could find.

Kit walked in after twenty minutes, carrying Maria’s dinner on a tray. He froze by the door, staring at the savaged faces and bodies on the walls, the thick white curls of torn plastic that littered the compartment and revealed occasional glimpses of holographic flesh. Beautiful Maria saw his expression and was helpless to stop an explosion of laughter that eventually left her kicking helplessly on the rack, clutching her aching sides.

When she recovered, Maria pointed to Aunt Sandy’s box. “Wanna macaroon?” she asked. Kit just looked at her. Maria couldn’t stop herself, and burst again into shrieking laughter.

*

“I thank you for coming aboard Runaway.”

“All credit is Beloved’s.”

Ubu, in the airlock, had just tugged off Twelve’s helmet. He was now looking straight at the top of Twelve’s head, and from their positions surrounding Twelve’s voder, the alien’s four eyes gazed straight back at him. I’ve got used to this, Ubu thought. The experience didn’t strike him as odd, not in the least.

“I have been considering the subject of our last conversation,” Ubu said.

“Have you agreed to sell us the information, Bossrider Ubu Roy?”

Twelve was rotating slightly in the airlock with the momentum imparted by the last wrench of the helmet. His eyes stayed fixed on Ubu.

“I may if I can get it,” Ubu said. The slowly rotating eyes stared at him. “What occurred to me,” he said, “was that, if I locate the information you want, I can’t get it to you. Not unless I know your location.”

“This star will suffice,” Twelve said. “Beloved will pilot her ship here from time to time. Once you deliver the information, deliveries will commence immediately.”

Ubu’s fists clenched as heat flashed through his veins. Jesus Rice, he thought. Beloved was playing this brilliantly, allowing Marco to cut Ubu out of the regular delivery schedule, making him desperate enough to go behind Marco’s back to sell the knowledge that would give her the upper hand in further commerce.

“The transfer would be more convenient if I knew where to find your ship,” Ubu said.

“I am but Beloved’s servant.” Simply.

There was no possible answer to that.

*

The Red Nine was still glitching Beautiful Maria’s swallow reflex. Kit tried to talk to her while she hacked at the food on her plate, but he wasn’t much more successful at communication than Aunt Sandy. When he took the tray away he didn’t come back. Maria went back to the terminal, called up the file of the meeting between Marco and Twelve. Maybe it would give her ideas.

Twelve, she found, had accepted the draft contract in an earlier meeting, but both sides had proposed minor changes. The final, altered agreement would have to be approved by Beloved, and there would be another meeting at thirteen hundred tomorrow.

Plans flashed through Maria’s mind in jagged lightning streaks. She picked two of the best, considered her options, called up a schematic of Abrazo, and made preparations.

There was nothing left to do. She took some painkillers and Blue Seven, then spent some time rattling around the Kanto’s files. A lot of the programming was ancient, designed to run equipment that had been replaced decades ago. One of the oldest files was the game file, and she saw it was running spirals in the shooters’ lounge. She decided to watch. There were, she saw, four players, Juan, Ridge, Kit, and someone using the handle of Dancer.

Maria laughed as she remembered Ridge calling her a whore back on Angel Station. Glitches crackled from her fingertips. She started by giving Ridge a series of good arrays, each better than the last; but in each case she gave one of the others something greater. Ridge doubled, lost heavily, redoubled, lost again. “Now who’s a loser, asshole?“ Maria cackled. Ridge plunged again and again, stubbornly declining to give up. Finally his account dropped to zero. Maria hoped he’d lost the proceeds from the next fifty cargoes.

Ridge was replaced by two others. Maria gave Kit a few good hands, but she knew hardly anyone else in the game and lost interest in the outcome. The Blue Seven was beginning to swim through her veins. Maria folded the desk away, showered, staggered through the cardboard shavings to bed. She drowsed, lost track of time.

Bright light burned through her eyelids. She opened her eyes, saw Kit standing by the door looking at the mess. “I thought you’ve have cleaned this up,” he said. She rolled away from the light and pulled the covers over her head.

“Hey,” Kit said, his voice louder. “Wake up. Be trying to talk, here.”

“Turn down the lights.”

The white blaze faded. Kit sat heavily on the mattress. The bed swung on its gimbals.

Beautiful Maria turned over and blinked at him. She could smell beer on his breath.

“I want this shit cleaned up,” Kit said.

“Tomorrow.” Maria yawned, stretched.

“Jesus Rice, it’s lucky Marco hasn’t seen it. Here one day, you make a mess out of my room.”

“Our room.” Annoyance rang in her mind. “Our room.” Kit kept talking as if he hadn’t heard.

“You’re antagonizing everybody. You won’t act like a part of the crew.”

“I’m not a part of the crew. I’m not allowed to be.”

“You need to learn how to behave around my people.” Kit stood up and stalked angrily around the cabin, kicking bits of plastic out of the way.

Maria gave up. It didn’t seem worth the effort of fighting her way through the fog of Blue Seven.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Jesus Rice.” Kit sounded as if he was trying to keep the edge on his anger.

“Sorry about everything, Kit,” she said.

“Eighty-one people,” he said. “Five ships.” As if that explained anything.

Kit showered, dried, climbed into the rack. He put his arm around her.

“I love you,” he said.

Sorry about that, too, she thought.

“I just want to be happy with you,” Kit said. He kissed her cheek.

“Be sorry about the pictures,” she said. “I just didn’t want to look at them any more.”

“Most of them were Juan’s anyway.”

She gave a little laugh. “Which ones were yours?”

He tensed as if he was trying to decide whether or not to be angry. “Guess,” he said after a while. He pulled her to him and kissed her hard.

Very de Suarez, Maria thought.

This would be all right, though. As long as the Blue Heaven held out.

*

Scarred walls, a swaying bed, light that drilled straight into the skull through expressway eye sockets. Children screamed and laughed in the corridor outside, each sound a slap on the ear. Beautiful Maria needed a jolt of Red Seven just to get herself out of bed. Pain stabbed her joints; she required fifteen minutes’ stretching before she was able to move without stiffened muscles clawing at her limbs.

She put on a jumpsuit and cleaned the litter off the floor while Kit was off at breakfast, then ate ravenously after he returned with her tray. “Marco told everyone to get the ship ready for lockdown and high gee,” Kit said. “We might be shooting out of here today.”

“Can’t happen too soon for me,” Maria said.

She reached for the box of macaroons. Breakfast hadn’t been nearly enough.

They decided to call up a hype and Maria watched Terror Squadron for the fourth or fifth time. Nerves and Red Seven made her fidget. Kit gave up holding her hand after noticing how much it was sweating. After lunch, Kit had duty snugging things down. Beautiful Maria got ready to make her move.

She tied her hair back, dumped her belongings out of her shoulder pack, then fired up some Red Nine and listened to the dopplered highway song of neurotransmitters multiplying along the byways of her nerves. She pulled the terminal keyboard from the desk and stuck it in the bag. Maria hitched the bag behind her back, stepped to the door, slid it a few centimeters open, listened. Her pulse boomed so loudly in her ears it was hard for her to hear anything outside.

Feet raced down the corridor and she jumped back as if she’d been struck. It was one of the kids, giving a strange off-key crooning sound as he ran. The sound touched some chemical resonance in Maria, shuddered up and down her cranked nerves like the scream of chalk on slate. Maria ground her teeth. The sounds faded downspin, and Maria put her ear to the doorframe again. Voices came to her, a conversation about last night’s spirals game. “Shitty fucking luck.” Ridge’s voice. “You should have seen the plays I was getting.”

“I heard you didn’t do so well.” The answer was noncommittal.

Maria bit back a laugh. The conversation went on. Red Nine urged Maria to run, scream, attack. She slid the door open a little more and peered out.

The voices were coming from an open compartment door, downspin of her, between her and the main control cage.

So much for slipping into the cage without being noticed and switching on an antenna. She was going to have to do this the hard way.

Maria looked left and right, then stepped into the corridor and walked quickly upspin. A ladder took her up to the centrifuge hub.

Long fluorescent tubes lit the white weightless polymer-walled corridor, the forward part rolling slowly as the big centrifuge rotated around it. Maria kicked off gently from a pad crisscrossed with orange tape and drifted out of the hub, into the stationary corridor behind. Distant voices sounded from ahead. Maria reached out, caught a castoff bar, stopped her progress.

The voices continued, barely louder. There was a ladder stretching the length of the corridor, for use when Abrazo was under acceleration and the move into the centrifuge would become a march uphill. Maria began to move along the ladder, hand over hand from one step to another.

The voices came clearer. Maria held her breath as she realized one of them was Marco’s. “As soon as that fucker gets clear of the torch,” he said, “I want max acceleration out of this gravity hole. Be wasting enough time out here.”

“Yo, bossrider.” Aunt Sandy’s voice. “Just give the word. I’ve already got the software up and running.”

The voices were coming from auxcontrol, then. Aunt Sandy was going to boss the shoot from there rather than the cage in the centrifuge.

Darkness flooded Beautiful Maria’s vision as panic rattled in her pulse. She took deliberate breaths, cleared her mind. She pulled herself slowly along till she came to the open door, then moved crabwise along the walls till she came to the space between the doorframe and the corridor, a distance of about twenty centimeters. Maria couldn’t hope to keep her whole body, that and the shoulder bag, entirely out of view; she could only hope none of the people in the control room were looking directly out the door when she drifted past it. She tensed, dug her toes into the plastic surface of a wall cushion, and pushed off.

“Have we got an estimated ETA for Familia’s arrival at Angel?”

The voice, male, was new, louder than the others, maybe floating right by the door. Maria barely stopped herself from screaming, from flailing and trying to halt herself right in the yellow spill of light from the doorway.

She ghosted past, fear beating time in her skull. Aunt Sandy’s voice answered the question, but Maria’s staggering mind couldn’t understand the words, comprehended only the tone of voice, which was normal.

No one had seen. Relief rattled in Maria’s throat. Sweat stung her eyes.

She drifted on till she passed the corridor that led to the trunk airlock. Two doors beyond was the paint locker. Maria found a paint sprayer, slapped in a compressed-air cartridge, and charged the sprayer with pale green paint. A drawer yielded up a paint scraper and a pair of heavy gloves.

Across the corridor was the ship’s safe, hidden behind a heavy steel fireproof door covered with flaking red paint. Maria touched the door’s controls. Hydraulics hissed, and she stepped inside.

Backups of the ship’s primary software were locked behind metal doors, protected here from radiation. Everything flammable was stored here as well: standardized drums of solvent locked onto cross-braced tubular racks of white metal, further secured with elastic safety nets. Boxes of real paper stood high on racks, some of it so old Maria could smell the musty scent of its decay. There was some paint here also, though most of the paint on the ship was of the powdery, nonflammable type. Sensors and nozzles of greenish bronze stood ready to identify and suppress any outbreak of fire. Maria touched the interior control, and the heavy door slid shut.

Maria pulled the terminal deck from her shoulder bag. Ship schematics had shown her that there was an access jack here, in case the primary software had to be reloaded. She looked behind one of the drums, reached back, plugged the terminal into the jack, and powered it up.

Time to wait. She reached into the pocket of her jumpsuit and brought out a couple of Aunt Sandy’s macaroons.

*

Beautiful Maria returned her attention to the keyboard as soon as she heard the airlock pumps begin to tick over. In another few minutes she was eavesdropping on the conversation between Twelve and Marco.

The contract had been finalized; the brief meeting consisted of elaborate greetings and congratulations offered by two parties, plus the formal printing of two copies of the agreement. Within a matter of minutes, Marco and Twelve were on their way back to the airlock.

Beautiful Maria touched a key. The down rippled on her arms at the eerie sound that blasted from beyond the steel door, an unforgettable electronic screech. A collision warning.

Maria had programmed Abrazo’s radar to detect an oncoming swarm of small asteroids.

Beautiful Maria was thrown into a rack as automatic collision-avoidance programs went into effect and the ship began to alter course. Solvent sloshed in the drums. Maria fought against the sudden acceleration, shoved herself off the rack, secured the terminal in one of the safety nets. She hit the door control and the steel door rolled open.

Outside the screeching was louder. Abrazo shuddered to another alteration in course. Maria stuck her head out of the door and saw Marco diving along the corridor toward auxiliary control, slamming into the padded walls with each burst of acceleration. The corridor was shorter now: a heavy steel-alloy collision seal had slammed into place where the corridor met the centrifuge compartment.

Marco threw himself into auxcontrol. Maria pushed off, darted around the corner, saw Twelve ahead, wearing only the lower half of his vac suit, arms and legs flung wide as he tried to react to the surges in acceleration. A collision alarm wailed in time to the howling Red Nine in Maria’s blood as she bounced along the corridor.

Twelve’s voder gave a loud buzz as he tried to shout over the sound of the alarm. “I am surprised to see you here, Shooter Beautiful Maria.”

“I am here conducting negotiations,” Maria shouted, “and I thought I would pay my respects to yourself and Beloved.” She grinned as Abrazo began an attitude change. “I seem to have picked the wrong time.”

Abrazo fired its engine again. Maria and Twelve clutched at castoff bars for support. “What is the difficulty?” Twelve asked.

“I don’t know.” Maria looked at Twelve and took a long breath. If this didn’t work, the whole point of the exercise was lost. “I was hoping to ask you for a favor, Volitional Twelve.” Maria reached into a pocket of her jumpsuit, pulled out a plastic data counter. Red Nine made her teeth chatter as she spoke. “Could you deliver this to Runaway on your return to Beloved’s vessel?”

Twelve took the counter with the delicate inner fingers of one hand. “What does it contain, Shooter Maria?”.

“Data from some of Abrazo’s sensors. They’re more sensitive than ours in some ways.”

She grinned tautly at Twelve while her heart quietly sank. This whole story, she realized, was impossibly lame. It must have been the Red Nine that made her think she’d actually get away with any of this. Even Twelve couldn’t be this naive.

Twelve took the counter. “I am pleased to be of service to Runaway,” he said.

Relief and astonishment filled Maria. “Thank you, Volitional Twelve,” she said. “I’m sure Bossrider Ubu will be grateful.” She looked over her shoulder. “I should assist in this emergency. Glory to Beloved.”

“Glory.”

Maria made a staggering flight back to the paint locker, closed the heavy steel door, reached for her terminal deck. She tapped in a piece of code, and new asteroids ceased to appear on Abrazo’s screens. There were a few final bursts of acceleration as the remaining phantoms were avoided, and then the howling alarms fell silent.

A sudden wave of despair rolled through her. Twelve, she knew, was going to give the counter to Marco. She would be discovered and locked in an empty room for the rest of the trip.

Some slower, gentle acceleration ensued as Abrazo regained its matching orbit with Beloved’s ship. Pumps ticked in the hull as the airlock cycled to permit Twelve to leave. Maybe, she thought, she’d somehow gotten away with it. Maria waited for another few minutes, then stuffed the terminal deck, the paint gun, her scraper and gloves in her sack.

The door slid open and she looked out. There was no one in the corridor, and the door into auxcontrol was closed. She pushed off. An acceleration alarm sounded, a high, ringing bell.

The centrifuge was shut, having been braked and locked down during the emergency. Maria kicked off and drifted down to the second level, then ghosted swiftly down the residential block till she came to her door.

Kit was inside, floating in the center of the room. Red Nine made her laugh in surprise. Kit looked up.

“Where’ve you been?”

Maria reached into her bag, pulled out the sprayer. “I thought I’d do the walls,” she said. “Got stuck in the paint locker when alarms started ringing.” She looked at him. “What happened?”

“Buncha asteroids on collision course for the planet. Million-to-one shot we were in their way.” He gave her an uncertain smile. “I’m glad you’ve decided to go out.”

“I haven’t.” Laughing. “Nobody saw me.”

Kit seemed disappointed. The bells rang again, the signal to prepare for acceleration. Kit reached for the intercom button, touched it. “Kit and Beautiful Maria are ready,” he said.

Maria hopped into the top rack, the one Juan had used, and webbed herself in.

The bells rang again. Red Nine rumbled up and down Maria’s spine.

Maria felt the kick from behind as Abrazo fired its engines. The sleeping racks swung to new attitudes. Gravity began to close its fingers on Maria’s throat.

The electron world dizzied her, bathed her in soft color.

Maria began to laugh. She could hardly wait for what was going to happen next.