It is Alice’s first time on a static. The motion is smooth and frictionless due to the magnetic repulsion system, making the sense of acceleration unnerving. It feels like falling sideways, totally unlike any motion she has experienced before. She can’t help eating it up, eagerly taking in every detail of her surroundings, which makes her grateful that being a wide-eyed newbie is part of her cover.
The carriage is busy, she and Nikki having to stand opposite each other across the narrow aisle. It gives her an unaccustomed sense of power to be carrying out this deceit, even though she is sure Freeman is concealing considerably more truths from her.
Their visit to NutriGen told Alice nothing, and she has no doubt that Nikki is most satisfied with this state of affairs. By playing the part of Jessica, Alice hoped that Nikki might drop her guard: let something slip or conduct some of her normal business thinking that the FNG observer was too inexperienced to understand what was really going on. But so far she’s playing it very cagey and thus exposing the flaw in Alice’s strategy, which is that if Nikki really is as dirty as Helen Petitjean says, then she’s not going to talk to any of the people she’s got criminal connections with in front of Jessica.
There are a dozen conversations going on around her, conducted in myriad different languages. People come here from all over the world, though the American influence is manifest in the number of Spanish words that have gained official currency, from the name Ciudad de Cielo itself down to how video clips recorded on lenses are referred to as grabacións, or grabs for short. Spanish has been the most commonly spoken language in the U.S. for more than a hundred years, but despite this ever-expanding majority, English remains the language of America’s corporate face, and consequently the one with which it presents itself internationally.
Alice picks up enough from the chat to discern that some people are on their way to work, some are coming home and still others heading for Mullane in pursuit of a good night out. The clock on her lens reads 14:48 but it is meaningless. Alice is still getting her head around the phase system: it makes perfect sense to her in terms of time management in a world without day and night, but she isn’t sure which phase she is technically on right now, or how you go about formally choosing. She has kind of just fallen into one by dint of when she woke up.
She thought somebody would come and talk her through it, but that hasn’t happened. There were so many things the FNG officially prepared her for before leaving Earth, but official preparation and actual preparation are seldom the same thing. The practicalities of day-to-day living were something she knew she would have to develop a feel for first-hand, and there was a great deal about life on CdC that nobody could satisfactorily brief her on. That was partly why she was here, after all. FNG intel on CdC was limited by the veracity of its own people’s accounts when they got back to Earth. Her reading of the existing material suggested a strong tendency for people to go native, or at least a reluctance to be entirely truthful about how they lived their lives while they were up here.
Alice grips the handrail as the car decelerates upon approach to the next station. She steals a glance across at Nikki, who is not holding on to anything but seems to be languidly reading the motion of the vehicle by intuition. There is almost an arrogance about her posture, an assuredness which Alice realises she envies. Alice always feels like she’s physically apologising for the space she’s taking up, while by contrast Nikki’s body language is both a statement of belonging and a claim on her territory.
According to her file, Nikki is forty-five years old. Her face looks entirely less lived-in than her reputation would suggest, though Alice gets the impression of her being someone who was previously athletic but has latterly let things slide. She is tall and wiry, but with some extra weight around the middle, a hint of a paunch. Nonetheless, there is something lithe and solid about her, someone you wouldn’t want to clatter into.
Alice’s eyes are drawn to the barked knuckles of Nikki’s hands. She understands that this is a woman who knows what it is to punch somebody in the face. Nikki is not in uniform, but Alice can discern that certain people in the car know what she is, still others precisely who she is. She notes also the occasional subtle nod and brief meeting of Nikki’s gaze. Information is being passed between people silently, invisibly, by means far older than any lens system.
Overall, Alice’s impression is of a highly dangerous opponent: one she will have to tackle while conceding a considerable home-court advantage.