THE SURFACE—NORTHAM
EN ROUTE: TAMPICO TO MANHATTAN
Lured. Deviant.
It had been a terrible thing to say, Gimlet knew: much as there was to disapprove of, where Woodrow Whiting was concerned, implying that he would kidnap or molest Frankie was profoundly antisocial. But the Bastille Regent had popped the line up on his prompter, dangling a carrot icon and a snapshot of Rollsy.
What could Gimlet do? They might have been holding a gun to their husband’s head.
They’d delivered the line. They’d managed to seem indifferent when they saw how badly hurt Rubi was by the insinuation. Playing the villain to the hilt was their core skillset, after all.
How had Bastille bled its way into their actual life? But any chance to keep Rollsy alive, to recover Franks, even if it meant alienating …
What was Rubi to them, exactly?
Glazed, diving, her face was alight with purpose: she was deep in yet another fight. She raised a hand, but rather than fiddling with her beads, she covered her mouth. Masking … what? Surprise? Outrage?
“So openhearted,” Gimlet murmured.
The chopper churned through the night, into a darkness barely cracked by the wink of stars above. Impossible to tell if it was flying over ocean or land.
Sourness spread across Gimlet’s tongue. “Headmistress.”
“Yes, Mer Barnes?”
“I want transcript on Drow Whiting and Frankie. All conversations, immediately. Full conversational analysis. Is there a single scrap of evidence that…” Gimlet swallowed. “That the allusion I just made might be true?”
Headmistress didn’t hesitate. “Zero evidence, Mer Barnes. Woodrow Whiting has, as you might guess, been subjected to frequent psychological screening. There’s no sign of aberrant desire or violent tendencies.”
“Why did you make that dialog suggestion, though?”
“Implying deviance favored win conditions.”
“We’ll be reviewing your terms of service, Headmistress.” Marie had tooned in.
“Any precipitous action—”
“I don’t want to hear it. You’ve clearly thrown in with Allure and the @Freebreeders,” Marie said. “You’ve taken possession of our godchild. Perhaps you can oblige Gimlet to cooperate with you, but we won’t pay to be exploited.”
Marie’s words were like an incantation, breaking a spell even as she voiced all the suspicions Gimlet had dismissed. Suspecting the governess app was paranoid, they’d told themselves. A reaction to Frankie’s disappearance. @Hoaxer thinking.
But who else could have talked her into running away? And if Marie thought so, too—
“I’m trying to do what’s best for all of you, dears. I got dear Rollander off the hospice list, didn’t I?”
“Not out of the goodness of your heart.” Bella had tooned in then. She looked wrung out.
“Gimlet required encouragement,” Headmistress said, cheerily unrepentant. “And my friends have other incentives in store.”
“We’re not interested. Unsubscribe.”
“No?” Headmistress wiped the previous shareboard, clearing the stats on Rubi’s many favors. “What if I could get Rollander out of the life-support pod entirely? Into a new body and on his feet again?”
Long, uneasy silence. “Impossible,” Bella said.
“Impossible with Earth tech, perhaps. As you say, I’ve lately expanded my @CloseFriends list.”
Marie fisted her hand, pressing her knuckles into her sternum, making a little chuffing sound as she fought for breath.
Rollsy, back among them?
Gimlet drew her in close, even as Marie reached for Bella, pulled their heads together. There was enough LucidDream remnant in Gimlet’s system to create a sense of them being skin to skin to skin, family clutching at each other, there in the helicopter. Marie’s bony old hip was a blade.
Their hands intertwined. Bella’s were trembling.
“Our beautiful child and that old man Drow are going to be just fine, Gimlet,” Marie said. “Ninety thousand people are tracking them.”
“Truth,” Bella breathed.
“They’re unprincipled, calculating…” Gimlet swallowed. “And she’s openly bribing us. That means she expects to win, and edit Haystack to hide her actions.”
“Or shut it down,” Marie said. “We can’t trust them, Gimlet, but we do trust you. If this procedure can work, if you can free our fallen prince—”
Rollsy, hiding from Frankie, wishing them all far away so they wouldn’t see him miserable or in pain. Archiving his e-state, loading up end-of-life apps.
They had to try, didn’t they?
“However,” the old lady added, “while you’re busy fighting for all of us, don’t forget your own win conditions.”
“Excuse me?”
A thready voice, subbing in: “Nobody wants to be married to a martyr, my love.”
“Rollsy?”
A lurch, a bump. The Sensorium connection broke, leaving their hands empty. Rubi was unglazing simultaneously. Their eyes locked.
“Eyes off.” Gimlet waved all the augments away, clearing them like cobwebs, and took off their seat belt. A step took them to the seat at Rubi’s side.
Her lips peeled back. Still angry. Of course she was.
“My remarks,” Gimlet said, in most correct Risto tones. “Were unforgivable.”
Turning so they were eye to eye, she kissed them.
Lip met lip, and there was a click of teeth as the vibration of the helicopter threw them against each other. Rubi’s bruised fingers came up, brushing the puffy edge of Gimlet’s black eye. They ran a nail through the hexagon of beads at her temple and felt her shiver.
A distant, aggravating, Sensorium-aware part of Gimlet noted that this would drive up the buy-in numbers on the game. Then their tongues met.
Rubi unstrapped. She turned, half-rising, and straddled Gimlet. Her knees, snugging into the curves under their rib cage, enclosed either side of their body. Heat bloomed outward from the join of their hips, so intense that it was almost a surprise that the layers of fabric between them didn’t simply melt away.
Rubi broke from the kiss, sucking air.
“You were saying?”
“Unforgivable,” Gimlet managed.
A smile quirked the edges of her mouth. “Guess I won’t forgive you, then.”
“Enemies?” They caught her hips, pulling hard, snugging groin to groin. Her spine curved. She let out a string of profanities, each more heated than the last, and then a laugh.
“Archenemies.” She kissed them long, thoroughly, passionately, and growled as their hands continued to wander.
Then she leaned close, eye to eye. Locking gaze. Asking. A quickie, in a chopper?
And …
No.
The tension remained, but the heat died down. This wasn’t the first time either of them wanted.
Rubi let out a long sigh, relaxing against their body. Gimlet reached around, holding her. A proper embrace this time. Animal heat and comfort. She fit perfectly within the circle of their arms.
Sex would wait.
On the back of their neck, her finger drummed out Morse. “Thinking about our wager.”
A year of luxury credit for SeaJuve. Irrelevant, now that the project was funded. “Seems long ago,” Gimlet replied. “I have nothing to bet.”
“There’s your allegiance.”
“Meaning?”
“When I beat you, you defect to Rabble. Play for the good guys. Stop being a villain.”
It was a private ask, not for Haystack, not for the gaming audience. Something just for them. A strange thrill coursed through Gimlet’s body.
“All we have is our honor,” she said aloud. “Mayor Agarwal said to me, just now.”
Gimlet morsed, “If I defeat you? Full villain?”
Solemn-faced, she used gestural moji to answer: Cross my heart.
Win or lose, they’d be on the same side. One or another of them had to cross the line, didn’t they?
They kissed again, long and slow, an exchange of feels and a promise all in one. Then they settled, cheek to cheek, fitted surely as bones into sockets. They rode like that for nearly an hour, leaving their raft of problems behind. After so many weeks of fighting anger, they felt washed smooth, like one of Marie’s river stones.
“That’s it for my knees,” she said suddenly, disentangling with a grin.
They settled across from each other, fingers loosely entangled.
Gimlet said, “You met Saanvi Agarwal?”
She popped moji: stars in her eyes. Then she showed them BallotBox, the opening of the global vote on ceding the planet to the Pale. Buy-in, so far, was low.
Rubi said, “They’ll need the Risto voter base in Russia and Turkey, too. What did they offer you?”
“Nothing much.” Gimlet laid a finger on the window, sharing the specs of the offer from Risto … from Allure, Headmistress, and Luce Pox’s cheats-at-cards Fleet commander. “Just printing a new body for my dying husband.”