9.

 

By the time Winston exited the shower, he felt more like himself.

His dirty flight suit was being washed and he changed into a clean one. It was nice to be in fresh clothing. The shave was a treat. Smelling the aftershave drew out memories happier days.

Stepping out of the sleeper, he noted Billy Joe wasn’t there, but Ms. Iverson was in the navigator’s chair dozing or listening to music. Her leg bobbed to an unheard beat. He stood entranced by the movement of those crazy tall heels, but then noticed her hair was a mousy blond, tied back into a simple braid. Winston cleared his throat.

“All done?” She looked up and back at him. “My! You do shine up nice,” she said with a smile.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Are you going to start in on me already?” Winston recoiled.

Ms. Iverson’s face went hard. “Nope. Nope. Flyboy wants to be a monk, that’s on him,” Ms. Iverson said, holding up her hand as if swearing to tell the truth.

“And what’s with the color change?” Winston asked, pointing at her hair with subtle flicks of his finger as if to tease it at a safe range from across the cab. Her makeup was very plain now, lips a light pink, and a trace of mascara.

“Are you some sort of a rube, too?” She laughed, looking at him incredulously. “Grooming nanos and embedded mutable makeup, flyboy. They’re better than a full-time aesthetician. Fully customizable hair too,” she added as her hair flared through all the colors of the visible spectrum. “It even curls or straightens as I want. Best toy for a wired girl ever.”

“Ah,” Winston said with a nod. “Must have cost a mint.”

“You’ve no idea how much coin it took to cultivate my appearance. Even nature needs help to achieve perfection.” She let her makeup fluctuate a moment to something far more exotic, then went back to being plain.

“All fake then,” Winston said, flatly. “Compensating for being an ugly teenager?”

“Fake? Compensating?” she rose up like a djinn from a broken bottle. Her reply was a venomous fume.

“Yeah, store bought beauty. Not the real thing.” Winston said, savoring a bit of schadenfreude that he double-tapped her soft spot.

“And this is bad how? You don’t see a beautiful building or skyship and think that it’s beauty is fake, do you?” Ms. Iverson’s arms waved in broad, angry sweeps.

“Those are just things, not people,” Winston stated.

“There is no difference,” Ms. Iverson snarled. “Beauty is beauty. Whether you won the genetic lottery, squeezed it from a tube, cut for it, had a surgeon implant it, or had an engineer bolt it on! I am beautiful,” she blasted back.

Winston remained unimpressed.

“Hey!” She poked him on the chest, hard. Hard enough that Winston thought she left a hole. “This look is not by accident! I chose to look this way for my work, and, Flyboy, let me tell you, I have never had a man that I couldn’t handle nice and peaceful because of it! Every curve and color. Every cut of clothing is for a purpose, and that is to protect me! I use scientifically proven psychological triggers to keep men docile and women intimidated! And it works like a charm!”

“Except on me,” Winston said with a grin.

“Gorgon cheis! Even on you, Flyboy! Who had to run from the cab to get away from my power? And that was just with my voice and looks? Xiao help you if you even got lucky enough to kiss me, let alone behng me! Which, by the way, is off the table!”

Winston fought to keep from laughing at her outburst. “After spending so much time and effort trying to seduce me?”

“I’d rather behng your Bubby, first,” Ms. Iverson shouted.

“Happily married, remember?” he lied. “And you couldn’t have gotten me so worked up without your tricky neuro-manipulating vox, and what else? A pheromone spray? Some sort of lethal aphrodisiac? What other pharmaceutical trick would you have to pull to get me out of control with desire?”

Her face went bright red and she whipped out her pistol pressing the nearly inch wide muzzle hard to Winston’s temple.

“How about this little sex toy, hmm? I could empty your brainpan without a second’s remorse,” She growled, lips trembling with anger.

Winston was surprisingly calm. “And then what? Do you know how to pilot the Sierra Madre? Got many hours in the pilot seat of a commercial tug? This ain’t a runabout or private yacht. You screw up buoyancy or planar shear and you’re a smear on the front of a container.”

Her lips were black again making her pretty canines seem all the more fierce. Even her irises were fluctuating between blood red and black and her face drained to a porcelain white mask.

“Are the mood eyes and lips a feature or just poor coding on the nanites? Must be difficult to work with that handicap giving your true feelings away,” Winston taunted.

“You like playing with fire, don’tcha?” her voice was a hoarse whisper.

“I got nothing to lose. It was taken away by lots of different people, you’re just the latest in line… but I know you need me alive.” The admission was somehow liberating. All his conflicted feelings became spinning eddies in his wake. Like busting out of a cloudbank into a bright clear layer of the Dream.

“Y’all playing nice up here?” came Billy Joe’s voice as he cautiously slid up the ladder from the keel airlock.

Ms. Iverson sharply pushed Winston’s head with the gun, re-holstered it and gave him her back.

“I think so,” Winston said, rubbing at the dent the muzzle ring left. “Where were you?”

“Cleaning up all those nanorazors in the keel. You’da been cut to ribbons if you went down there without armored workboots,” Billy Joe said.

“Good thinking, Bubby.” Winston said. “I don’t know about y’all but I think it’s high time we checked that our cargo is secure like responsible little professionals.” He looked at Ms. Iverson with a mocking inviting smile. “Care to join us?”

“Now we’re going to do what I asked an hour ago? Fine. If for nothing else than to keep you from stealing anything which will get us killed? Sure,” Ms. Iverson sneered.

Winston replied in kind, “Whatever gets you through the day, Lady.”