Nikki pulls on a jacket as she descends the cramped staircase, brushing her elbows against the walls. The air temperature seldom fluctuates between twenty-two and twenty-three degrees, but she’s not wearing it to keep warm. It’s to cover up what she’s got strapped underneath.
She slips out the back entrance and stops to grab a shot from a vending panel. She knows it will chemically neutralise the effects of the alcohol on her system far more effectively, but if she had the choice she’d still sooner have a double espresso than this shit.
She throws it back and winces at the sickly flavour. Tastes like medicine and guilt.
Twenty seconds later she’s turned the corner and is walking down Mullane. The streets and passageways around here are all narrow, the buildings crowding in on either side. If you look straight up you can just about glimpse the canopy, but you’re only going to see a sliver of black.
The earliest parts of Seedee are all like this. The apartments are little more than pods, the ceilings eight feet high apart from inside some of the ground-floor public areas. The streets here on Wheel One are all named after early astronauts, indicating that this was one of the first phases of Seedee’s construction. Before it was part of Wheel One, it was the first large-scale art-grav area ever built, whirling around the central trunk on the end of an arm to generate the centripetal forces that kept its inhabitants on the ground. Out here amidst such endless emptiness, ironically space remains a precious commodity.
The accommodation was state-of-the-art for the time, living spaces you could walk around in, eat and drink in, piss in. To the pioneers of those days seventy years ago—the scientists and engineers used to the zero-gravity space-station conditions that preceded it—this was luxury living.
As material fabrication and construction technology evolved, the spinning arm got a counter-balanced partner, then two more, then they filled in the blanks until there was a wheel. One wheel became two, and while space remained at a premium, the living habitats had long since stopped being built to reflect the common cause and comparatively equal status of the people living there. There’s always more room for those with more money. It’s no longer the scientists and engineers and architects who live in this neighbourhood, though they still come back here for their fun.
It’s busy on Mullane right now, because it’s night-time.
That’s a joke. On Mullane, it’s always night-time.
There are three time zones on Seedee, eight hours apart, but they’re not separated by distance. Medical research proved that folks working shift systems were cutting a decade from their life expectancy, particularly where overnight work was part of the deal. When they said “these night shifts are killing me,” they were speaking more literally than they knew. So on Seedee, you don’t work a shift pattern, you live a phase: Atlantic, Meridian or Pacific. Your days and nights have a regular, normal rhythm of work, rest and play.
Leastways, that’s how it goes for respectable folks. Nikki not so much.
Mullane Street’s economy is based around a state of permanent night. When it rolls around two a.m. Pacific and it’s time to hit the hay, the folks on Meridian phase are just getting ready for some R&R.
Ciudad de Cielo boasts some of the most advanced entertainment and leisure technology mankind has produced. As well as the full-immersion sim-tech chambers, you can play sports in motion pods that track your physical movement and map it perfectly to generated environments. You can play a round of golf at Augusta or go up against a friend on the Centre Court at Wimbledon. You can even free climb the Grand Canyon thanks to the fluid terrain-generation systems in the 360-degree spheres.
And that shit is always popular, sure, but up on Seedee they soon discovered that the more advanced the tech we surround ourselves with, the more the Caveman Principle kicks in. You can design a ship to take you to the stars, but you gotta feed the beast that’s building it, and not just with the highest quality fabricated protein and the Quadriga’s Officially Licensed Ale.
Hence it’s always busy down on Mullane, people rolling in and out of the bars, the diners and the constantly changing roster of other establishments catering to every appetite. Night clubs, people still call them, though the night part seems kinda redundant under the circumstances, especially when there’s so much variety that could be denoted by a wider range of prefix: dance clubs, strip clubs, fight clubs, sex clubs.
Used to be they stopped building past a certain height because the gravity gets less the higher you go. Then they realised there was no reason to stop. Over in W2 the rich keep high-rise cabins for when they want the benefits of sleeping in microgravity. Round here, they rent the upper levels of the highest structures by the hour for float-fucking.
The place looks like it’s thriving but nothing’s easy here. Margins are tight, business is competitive, so you always need an angle, a niche market to corner or a taste you can cater to better than the joint across the street. But most importantly, you need to stay on the right side of influential individuals. Or at least not on their wrong side.
That’s why Nikki is here right now. Everybody’s got at least two jobs and this is one of hers. Nikki Fixx, they call her.
She’s a mediator.
She heads into Sin Garden, the thump of dance beats like a cardiac rhythm permanently pulsing to keep the drink and the money flowing. She was in here maybe seven or eight hours ago, but Lo-Jack wasn’t around. One of the bar staff said he had switched phase because of a woman he was seeing, some straight-peg chemical engineer who lives on W2 and has no idea how he spends his hours while she works her Pacific-phase day job. It sounded just about plausible but Nikki had let it be known she would come back to make sure the guy wasn’t ducking her.
She catches his eye as she moves through the crowd, his brow rising like he’s the one who’s been trying to reach her. Lo-Jack finishes making a mojito for the customer at the bar. He’s not going to interrupt such an important process, one of the joint’s biggest draws. Every bar owner on Mullane has a line on real booze, but Lo-Jack also has a line on real mint leaves, backhanding some botanist who has access to the biodomes along the outside of the Axle. They’re growing all kinds of stuff there, experimenting with sustainable crops that remain unaffected by gravity.
The customer sips her mojito and grins approvingly. Nikki pegs her for an accountant or a bureaucrat with the Quadriga or the FNG, out taking a walk on the wild side. Her two friends are sticking to Qola, saving their money for other thrills. Lo-Jack’s signature cocktail will be the best drink the girl has ever had. She’d get a better mojito at any decent joint down below, but this has a taste she’s never tried before: something naughty.
Lo-Jack gives Nikki a nod and they talk at the end of the bar, a spot that’s comparatively quiet because it’s underneath a speaker rather than in front of one.
“I was hoping you would drop by,” he says.
Sure you were, Nikki thinks.
He offers her a shot but she declines. She needs to be straight while she’s working; today, at least. Not for this shit, but there’s something happening later on that she’ll need her reflexes sharp for.
“Had some flathead from the FNG in here, carrying out an official inspection. Said I need to submit a complete inventory with all receipts and permits. The prick is standing right there, eyeballing bottles of stuff for which he knows there is no fuckin’ permits, and for which there sure as shit ain’t ever gonna be any receipts, telling me if I don’t file within seventy-two hours, they’ll be back here to confiscate. The hell is that about, Nikki? This some kind of shakedown? Ain’t this precisely the kind of shit I’m paying you for?”
“He leave a name?”
Lo-Jack taps two fingers against his palm and sends across the data-sig the guy left. It animates on Nikki’s lens like a business card. Quadriga or FNG, the suits love that old-school shit.
Luis Gadro, it says. Federation of National Governments. Department of Franchise, Licensing and Trade. Like Lo-Jack said, flathead.
“I’ll see that it’s dealt with. But you musta known this was coming, soon as we heard there’s been another FNG restructuring. We’ve been through it a dozen times before. They bring up some new blood from below, young hot-shots keen to make an impression. I see it as my duty as a citizen of some standing in the community to give such eager new arrivals an education regarding how things really work away from terra firma.”
“Might not be that simple. Word is there’s some new FNG undersight fuhrer coming in to replace Hoffman. Gonna be running a new broom through Seguridad. Could make things tricky, don’t you think?”
Nikki has heard the same. It’s not been giving her sleepless nights. It’s just politics between the Quadriga and the FNG: nothing that will affect the lowly souls who operate down here in the gutter.
“A new sheriff in town?” she says. “Glad to hear it. That’s what this place needs. Somebody who’ll go through this rotten place like an enema and clear out all the corruption. So anyway, where’s my fuckin’ money?”
Lo-Jack gives her a look of outrage and surprise. He oversells it. Nikki doesn’t like his chances of keeping many secrets from this chemical engineer he’s banging.
“What, you want money when I got this threat hanging over me? When you ain’t delivering on your end?”
“You think you’re paying me to grease the wheels with the flatheads, Lo-Jack? Keep your licence clean? Tell me, that psycho asshole Julio’s people been in here lately, trashing the joint, starting fights? Making the paying customers think they’d be safer dancing someplace where they don’t mop up the blood along with the spilt Qola at closing?”
“We never close,” he replies wearily. “But no, Nikki, you know they ain’t.”
“Then you also know why that is. So pony up.”
Lo-Jack sighs and reaches under the counter. He hands over the payment, prepaid chargeable tokens sealed in an opaque vacuum wrap: untraceable, Seedee’s closest thing to used bills. It’s the length and width of a pack of playing cards, though about a quarter the depth. Looks right but she’ll count it later.
She’s on her way towards the street again when she feels a tap on the shoulder. Her hand reaches instinctively inside her jacket as she turns, but she has already recognised the voice. It’s Garret, a boyishly skinny hooker who trades off a cherubic face that looks at least a decade younger than the truth.
“Nikki,” he says. “You got a sec?”
“For you, beautiful, usually. But not always. What’s up?”
“Got stiffed last night, like night-time Atlantic. Guy got the sugar then refused to pay. Said he didn’t realise it was a rental deal, and by that I mean he made out like he couldn’t understand the concept because, shit, that would be illegal and he’d have to report me.”
“You get a name?”
“No, it was protected. But I always lens my clients.”
Garret transfers the image. A moment later Nikki is looking at a grab of some smug prick who’s just oozing FNG entitlement.
“I asked around and it isn’t the first time he’s pulled this shit to get some free action.”
“I’ll find him,” she says. “What you due?”
“Two hundred.”
Nikki eyes him with open scorn.
“You’re pretty, Garret, but nobody ever paid you two hundred. Come on, don’t waste my time.”
He shrugs.
“Okay, one twenty.”
“You’ll get it. Minus commission. Call it a hundred.”
“Deal,” he says.
They shake on it, the pressure of his grip enough to cause a twinge in her right hand.
She looks again at the marks on her knuckles. She definitely hit somebody but it still isn’t coming back. She’s pretty sure it didn’t happen between her last waking up alone on Atlantic morning-time and passing out drunk with Candy a few hours ago. The marks and the ache suggest it’s older than that, but what’s really troubling her is she can’t remember what happened before she last went to bed alone.
“Hey, I’m a little blurry about the past twenty-four hours,” she says to Garret. “Been hammering it pretty hard, I guess. Did you see me in here recently? I hit anybody?”
“Not while I was around. I saw you talking to Donna. She told me you were looking for Giselle.”
Unfortunately, this is from the part Nikki does remember. It’s coming back clearer, too. It’s Giselle who owes money. Okay, Donna owes too, but not as much. And Donna owes less now, because she gave Nikki some valuable info about Giselle.
“She’s got a little secret,” Donna said.
“A secret she told you?”
“No. A secret I sussed for myself. One that keeps getting harder to cover up.”
She accompanied this with a subtle gesture, curving her open hand around her belly.
You don’t get pregnant on Seedee. It’s a working environment like no other and so the employment terms reflect that. You gotta have insurance: men and women. Paternity is easy to establish in the case of a dispute. If you want to keep the kid, you need to go home, and that’s expensive, hence the insurance. The space elevator and the ion shuttles have colossally reduced the price per kilo of putting people into orbit, but it’s still an exorbitantly expensive business. That’s why the minimum stay is a year unless you’ve got the funds. Most people don’t got the funds. Hence the insurance. And a lot of people don’t got the funds for that either: people like cleaners and cooks and waitresses moonlighting as hookers because it pays three times their other jobs combined.
If you’re pregnant without insurance, abortion is mandatory. They’re nice about it, Nikki’s heard, and the treatment is top notch. You just show up and they’ll have you processed in a matter of hours, quality after-care too, but it’s not an elective procedure.
“How’d that happen?”
“You want a diagram?” Donna replied.
“You know what I mean.”
“No idea. Like it matters.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Whisper I heard is she wants to keep it.”
“Giselle is behind and ducking me because she’s saving for a ticket?”
“I couldn’t say,” Donna told her, giving Nikki a butter-wouldn’t-melt look, like she didn’t just sell out a sister-in-trade for a hundred off her own arrears.
“Don’t imagine she’s planning to settle her tab before she boards that shuttle, neither,” Nikki mused.
Donna’s face had turned harsh.
“Yeah, and why should she? Selling her ass up here just to end up broke because it took all her money to get home again?”
“I don’t make the rules, kid.”
“No, Nikki, you don’t. Because if you did, you’d need to care about something other than where your next pay-off is coming from.”