Signy walked toward the dining room at Gulf Coast Intersystems with what she hoped looked like assurance. The familiar elastic tension of her dress-for-the-public skinthin felt reassuring, firm against her skin. She wore the taupe Lycra one, still new enough to look glossy. Her red silk jacket was loose and floaty and just slightly luxurious, but not too rich for this group, not offensively so.
“You’re beautiful,” Paul said.
The sensor resting on Signy’s cheek itched, and she tapped at it. She wore a headband camera, but no goggles to give her a heads-up data display. For communication with Paul, who had promised to monitor, she had a speaker patch behind her ear and a throat mike taped in place, hidden beneath the skinthin’s high turtleneck.
“Our shares of Gulf Coast Intersystems are down three this morning,” Paul told her.
“Paul, why do you pick these particular times to give me news like this?” Signy whispered. “I’m walking into the damned dining room right this minute.”
“I know,” Paul said. “But I thought you’d be interested.”
“Hmmph.” Beyond the double doors, people circulated in the large room and wanderers checked the buffet with idle interest.
“Where’s Jared?” Signy asked.
“I don’t know. He hasn’t called in since yesterday. Maybe he’s stuck in Chile or something.”
“Great,” Signy said. She scanned the room, checking the setting. Tall windows draped in bitter green velvet opened to holos of an idealized harbor, complete with gulls.
Gulf Coast employees moved toward the buffet, where dishes were arrayed on ice or sheltered under heavy silver domes. The tables were draped with floral brocades and bouquets of hothouse red tulips. The setting seemed designed to recall memories of oil barons and opulence, so unlike Houston’s desperate poverty now. Gulf Coast kept that poverty out with razor wire and walls of reinforced concrete faced in cosmetic fieldstone.
Wary of crowds, Signy stepped into the room, trying to ignore the part of her that feared strangers. Don’t frown, she told herself. You’re on duty. She set her expression to combine business with vulnerability. Jared had taught her to mold her body language, practicing reactions with her and a dozen virtual Signys. A dozen Signys, a dozen Jareds; the work had ended in a kaleidoscope of flesh and laughter, and they had made love while their multiple images cavorted around them. Signy let the memory reach her face, knowing it would lend a touch of lust to her expression and would brighten her eyes.
Jared was good at evoking lusty thoughts. Signy hadn’t looked at the message from Jared’s Susanna yet. Somehow, she just hadn’t found time.
It occurred to Signy that she might be indulging in a little procrastination. Indeed. Okay, she’d look at the damned thing as soon as lunch was over.
At the buffet table, Signy picked up a handheld mike that she had placed just there, yesterday, and tested—maybe three times. She cleared her throat. The mike picked up the sound. Wups.
“Hello. My name is Signy Thomas. My company, Edges, is buying your lunch today. While you’re eating, some words will sound through speakers that are placed here and there throughout the room. This isn’t subliminal stuff—you’ll hear the words if you listen for them.
“We’re collecting responses to terms concerning Antarctica. Edges plans to use your reaction sets to help us optimize the use of Earth’s largest wild fishery.”
Some people had already started to talk again. That was good.
“Please pass your cards through the counter at the door as you leave. We are paying seventy-five dollars for your information. Thank you.” Signy turned to all corners of the room, made eye contact where she could (the woman in the chartreuse coverall looked so tired), smiled, and traced her way through the crowd. That tall man, she had seen him—where? When? He was a redhead, and attractive in a rawhide sort of way. Signy smiled at him, keeping eye contact for the benefit of her cameras, and Paul’s views of what they saw. “Who?” she whispered.
“I’m looking in the company files. Alan Campbell,” Paul said. “Engineer. Astronaut, ex. He helped build the Station.”
“Hello,” Campbell said.
“Nice to see you again, Mr. Campbell. If you’ll pardon me? Biz.” Signy continued out the door and upstairs to the control booth and sat down with a sigh of relief.
She wasn’t alone. Her companion, sitting in a rolling chair next to her, wore black cottons that contrasted unfavorably with his dead-white skin. He was pudgy. He wore a full skin-thin under his cottons, and padded headphones over his ears.
“Hello. I’m Jimmy.”
“Jimmy?”
“Jimmy McKenna. Temp contract with Gulf Coast.”
Which meant Signy couldn’t kick him out. She didn’t need any help in here, for pity’s sake. And she didn’t appreciate a Gulf Coast observer. What did Gulf Coast think she was going to do? Broadcast “fuck your boss” all over the room? “Hello,” Signy said, while Paul’s voice said, “Jimmy McKenna. Not at all what I expected. He pitched us to Tanaka, or so Tanaka says. Thank him for us, when you get a minute, would you?”
“I’m Signy.” Jimmy’s soft features made it hard to judge his age. She’d thought eighteen at first. He could be thirty.
Behind the bank of monitors, one-way glass gave a discreet view of the dining room. Signy peered down at the crowd. There was a nice trickle of repeat visitors at the buffet. That was reassuring. The caterers must be as good as their fees said they were.
“Signy. That’s a nice placement,” Jimmy said. He nodded his head toward a monitor that graphed the position of Signy’s mikes. “I’ve tried a few setups in the room before. You found all the dead spots.”
“Thank you.” Signy keyed in Pilar’s and Janine’s stash of replicated conversations and fed them to speakers directed at random tables, matching their volume to the level of the room’s chatter. She listened to scattered voices; her hands flew over the studio’s consoles. Ghost voices fed themselves to the diners, voices that seemed to come from the next table, from across the room. From various tables, she heard some of the key words come into conversations: COCAINE, IVORY, KRILL, SALAMANDER. Signy smiled. There were other words, other phrases: TOXIN, which was blunted from overuse but a good monitor of precisely that parameter; WHITE, as a simple adjective. At the exec tables, others words played, ERMINE, SANDALWOOD. Some of the conversations in play spoke of appetites, of flavors.
Later, she and Paul would pair responses to the words. Negative connotations were easier to correlate than positives; positives often had to be inferred. SALAMANDER.
“… and Costa Rica still maintains some pristine areas of rain forest,” someone said. “Of course, ‘pristine’ is a relative term.”
Signy let herself relax for a moment. RAIN FOREST, all the key words were in circulation. Signy feathered up the volume of her recorded phrases to match the rise in talk as people finished their meals. Some began to leave, not too fast, not too slow. The program synched with the volume of conversations and faded in good order. Signy risked a few spot checks. So far, so good.
“That’s it, then,” Jimmy McKenna said.
His voice startled her. Signy had managed to forget he was in the room.
“Yes. That’s it.”
Jimmy spun his chair to face her. “I could help pick up the mikes. When everybody’s cleared out.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Ask him about the Tanaka contract,” Paul said.
“My partner says you helped us get a contract with Tanaka.”
Jimmy had started to get out of his chair. He sat back down.
“Yes. I did.”
“Thank you.”
Jimmy stared at her as if he wanted to memorize her face. He stared until Signy felt uncomfortable, so she asked, “Why did you recommend us?”
He didn’t quite make eye contact. “Because you’re good,” he said. “You work with Pilar Videla, don’t you?”
Ah-ha. A contract won on a little case of adulation. She would tell Pilar.
“Yes.”
“She’s wonderful.”
“I’ll tell her you said so.”
Jimmy looked past Signy’s shoulder to the door. “Campbell’s here. I’ll go get the mikes and pack them for you. Your cases are in the service hall, aren’t they?”
“Yes, but…”
“I’d like to do it. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.” Jimmy dug for something in his hip pocket. “Would you take this? Please? It’s a gift.”
He handed over a flat white plastic chip case and left without a word, squeezing past Alan Campbell, who stood aside for him. Campbell carried a plate swathed in plastic wrap.
“Hi,” Signy said. She couldn’t think of any reason for Campbell to seek her out. Paul had arranged the paid luncheon but Edges had no other business scheduled with Gulf Coast. Not that she knew about, anyway.
“Alan Campbell. We met at a party when Gulf Coast got the booster contract. I didn’t think you’d remember me.”
“I had to get some help with your name,” Signy said. “But I knew I’d seen you somewhere.” Alan spoke with a soft cadence that wasn’t Texan. “So that’s where it was,” Signy said.
“You were with a doctor fellow. We talked for a while.”
“Jared. My partner, yes.”
“You’ve met Jimmy?” Campbell asked.
“I think so,” Signy said.
“Right. He’s not much on conversation, but he’s damned good with schematics. I brought you some lunch. Working a lunch hour, people don’t usually get fed.” Campbell put the plate down and pulled the plastic away. “Of course, if you’ve eaten…”
“I haven’t,” Signy said. She reached for a skewer of beef saté and bit into it. It was excellent.
Campbell sat down in Jimmy’s vacated chair. He had a relaxed air about him, a competent presence. “Did you get what you needed?”
Signy forked up some pilaf. Alan reached in a pocket and pulled out a bottle of mineral water. Signy unscrewed the cap and took a long pull, icy cold. “I won’t know until we’ve run some correlations,” Signy said. She tried some of the veggies. They were nicely seasoned.
Alan waited while she ate. He seemed comfortable waiting, as if he had all the time in the world. Signy finished the saté, put the skewer down, licked sauce from her fingers, and tried to pull the studio headset away from her ears. A lead snagged in her hair and she tugged at it.
“Got it,” Alan said. He untangled the wire, deft and gentle, and there were scattered freckles on the backs of his hands. His wrist brushed against her cheek as he lifted the headphones away, and his touch was soft.
“Thank you. Mr. Campbell?”
“Alan.”
“Alan, is this a business meeting?”
He grinned. His eyes were hazel, and the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled. “No. And nobody sent me to entertain you, if you were wondering. I happened to notice that your plane doesn’t leave until morning. I happened to notice you are in town alone. So I came to get acquainted.”
Alan Campbell had helped build the Station, and small though it was, it was the only space station. He was lean and relaxing to be around and not at all like Jared. Some choice pheromones seemed to be floating around this little cubicle. Perhaps.
“All you’ve done is watch me eat,” Signy said. She looked at the monitors. All the data had been dumped to temporary storage in the guest suite the company had assigned to her. Signy closed down the boards and got up. Alan rose when she did.
“That’s right. So I hardly think we’re acquainted at all yet. I plan on taking the night off, if you’d like some company,” Alan said.
“I’d like some company.” If she left the Gulf Coast compound, she’d have to ask a guard to go with her. Mall cruising didn’t appeal, nor did dinner on a tray in her room.
“Why don’t I come by about seven?”
“Okay.” Signy watched him walk away, and she approved of his walk.
“He’s from Colorado,” her ear speaker told her. Signy had forgotten Paul was on-line. “Divorced, one child. Methodical, perfectionistic, and he has a temper.” Paul was methodical and perfectionistic, and Signy put up with him somehow. Colorado, she could believe. Alan Campbell walked the corridor with lanky ease, as if it were a high country prairie.
* * *
Late in the afternoon, Signy sent a backup of the day’s work to Seattle.
“Catch,” Signy muttered.
“Got it.” Janine answered real-time from Seattle, and sent a view of her face to Signy’s monitor. Behind Janine, Pilar worked with a light pen in the corner of the studio. Stripes of neon colors danced on the walls, Pilar choreographing something or the other.
“That’s pretty,” Signy said. “Pilar’s stuff. Not the stuff I just sent you.”
“You look worried,” Janine said. Amber light from Pilar’s pen strobed across Janine’s face.
“Do I? Maybe it’s this Tanaka business. Paul says he can’t sort them out, and it worries him.”
“Maybe you miss Jared.” Janine frowned at the monitor.
“Janine, you are so perceptive. How would you like to meet yet another of Jared’s women?” Signy set up the chip Jared had given her and readied it to show.
“Sure,” Janine said. “I guess.”
* * *
The picture that formed on the flatscreen was grainy and badly framed.
“Hello, Jared,” a smiling girl said. Susanna, if this was Susanna, was a Native American, tall, with very good cheekbones and a classic nose. Her smile was wonderful. She stood by a stone fireplace in a room with peeled log walls. The logs were huge. She wore jeans and boots and a navy blue wool shirt. “I’d say ‘Season’s Greetings,’ but we were gone for the holidays. And you know Mark never remembers holidays anyway until the last minute. He’s fine.”
Cut: to Jared’s brother’s face, a view taken in outdoor light with a background of prairie sky. Mark looked much like Jared, but he had grown a full beard since Signy had seen him last. He made a “go away” motion toward the camera.
Cut: Susanna again, the cabin interior. The cuts were amateurish, at best. Signy wondered who had held the camera. “Mark’s business is doing well.”
In the background, Mark’s voice called, “Sue? Sue?”
“We hope you’ll come and visit. I gotta go now.”
* * *
And that was that.
“Mark is Jared’s brother?” Janine asked.
“Uh-huh,” Signy said. “The girl’s name is Susanna. She’s Mark’s live-in now.”
“Mark looks like Jared. Sort of,” Janine said.
Pilar’s hawk sigil appeared on the screen, a discreet reminder that she was listening in.
“Pilar, did you see that?” Signy asked.
“The girl? Sure. She’s pretty. Signy, are you jealous?” Pilar asked.
“I shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t be at all. Jared sleeps with you, with Janine, with me, and that’s fine. What gets to me, I guess, is that I start wondering what was wrong with this young thing that Jared figured he could fix. I mean, I wish he would stop bringing home stray kittens.”
“He didn’t bring her home,” Janine said.
“No. He took her to his brother. That’s different?”
“Yes,” Pilar said. “I think it is. Do you want to marry him, Signy?”
“No.” Marriage negated part of a woman’s identity. Signy couldn’t imagine herself as “Mrs.” anybody. Marriage was still the best institution for the protection of children, granted, but Signy didn’t plan to have children. She feared she would do nothing else but mother, if she had a child.
“But you want him to change.” Pilar, visible over Janine’s shoulder, put her light pen down.
“No,” Signy said. “No, I don’t want that. Not at all. I don’t want him to change a single hair on his infuriating head.”
Pilar laughed at that and walked out of the Seattle studio, off screen.
“I’ll start work on what you sent, Signy,” Janine said.
“Oh, noble person,” Signy said.
“That’s me.” Janine flipped away, back to her lists.
In the anonymous visitor’s suite in Houston, Signy blinked at the empty flatscreen. The interchange with Pilar had been—comfortable, everyday, business as usual.
It couldn’t be this easy, Signy thought, but Paul’s crab sigil blinked on the screen and Signy began the business of sorting through the day’s work with him, looking for all sorts of pairings.
From credit-card listings, Paul had pulled records of family size, income, political leanings, and consumer records. He matched those with frequencies of the words Signy’s mikes had fed the test population today along with their lunch. There was nothing arcane about symbol correlation. It just took some big hunks of bytes to sort through it.
Intent, they worked, saying little except for monosyllables and grunts, flashing correlations back and forth, tossing some aside. They were fast at this, Paul and Signy; part of their speed was practice effect. They knew each other’s signals.
IVORY. Signy froze the screen. The wild elephants were gone, their habitats now pathetic deserts, but people reacted to ivory with nostalgia, with longing, with an odd mix of guilt and desire. Antique ivory commanded outrageous prices.
“Slowing down, Signy?” Paul asked.
Signy’s shoulders ached. She was woolgathering. How long had they been at this? The room was getting dark. It was time to quit.
“I’m afraid so,” Signy said. “Enough. I’m off-line until morning.”
“Are you planning a romantic interlude?”
“Hah. Maybe I am. Goodnight, Paul.”
“Enjoy.”
The feeling of a pinched heel, unobtrusive but there since noon, became suddenly unbearable. Signy shucked out of her skinthin and her boots and rubbed at the sore spot. The skin-thin landed in a corner, its recording chips still tucked inside. Her legs ached when she got up to pull the skinthin’s chips out of their little pockets. She fed the chips to the console and sent their information to New Hampshire.
“Alan Campbell is here,” the room told her.
“Shit,” Signy said. She tossed the chips in the direction of the discarded skinthin. “What time is it?”
“Nineteen-twelve.”
“Oh, damn. I mean, tell him to come in.”
Her sense of balance was out of kilter, and she staggered to the bathroom and grabbed a towel. Working portable links could never be as engrossing as working in virtual, but even small screens held magic and could keep her unaware of the rest of the world. Her eyes saw ghosts of numerical progressions and chaos geometries. Jared was forever fussing at her to remember to move and stretch while she worked. She never remembered.
A little sound made her turn. She pulled the towel up over her breasts. Alan Campbell stood at the suite’s small bar, working on easing the cork out of a bottle of Veuve-Cliquot.
“Some people work too hard,” Alan said.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I planned to set an alarm. I guess I forgot.” Signy accepted a tulip of champagne with one hand and held her towel with the other. “Thanks.” Tiny smooth bubbles flooded her mouth with tastes of silk and summer. The champagne was very good. Signy smiled at him. “There is no other taste like good champagne, not in the entire world,” she said.
Alan sampled his glass and lifted it in salute. “I’ll be damned. It’s a decent bottle,” he said.
“It’s lovely. I’ll get a quick shower and then we’ll go from there.”
“There isn’t any rush. We don’t roll up the sidewalks for another two hours.”
“I won’t rush, then,” Signy said. She sipped at her glass again, still standing with her towel wrapped over most of her. She wondered if the window reflected her naked back to Alan’s eyes, for he looked at the window and smiled.
Now, she didn’t know him at all. He worked here, in this enclosed community, and had for years. If he turned out to be a total kook, all she had to do was yell. She knew damned well that Security monitored the guest suites.
“I could soap your back,” Alan said.
“You’ll get wet.” Signy hoped.
“I like to get wet,” he said.
Signy picked up her champagne glass and the ice bucket. Her towel fell and she stepped over it on her way to the shower.
Alan followed her. His jeans joined her skinthin in the corner. Fatigue and champagne mixed in wondrous ways. Signy let any shreds of hesitation wash away in steam and scented soap and accepted, invited, Alan’s deft skills at the gentle art of seduction. He took care of the condom, when it came time for that, without fuss or bother. He had freckles on his shoulders. His eyelashes were pale at the tips and his skin was the delicate skin of a true redhead, so fine to touch. He had a scar on the long finger of his left hand. It was ugly. She didn’t ask him how he got it; people hated to be asked that sort of thing over and over. But Signy wondered.
After a time, hunger intruded. “Would you like to go to dinner?” Alan asked.
“I’d like to stay here.” Cradled in the crook of his arm and watching his hand rest on her belly, she felt no desire to leave. She stroked the back of Alan’s hand and let her touch linger on the faint ridge of the scar that circled his long finger.
Alan pulled his hand away. “Cart service,” he asked the room. A mike was live in here; Gulf Coast could have recorded the bedroom acrobatics. What the hell, Signy decided. We were good. Alan ordered more champagne, and a servocart brought up a tray. They pulled cushions to a low table and sat facing each other. They ate shrimp from the Gulf’s filtered seawater farms (guaranteed to be within federal standards for toxin concentration, and expensive), with little side dishes of spiced sauces, Cajun-inspired and Houston-modified. There was a selection of fruit for nibbling. Signy tasted a raspberry and leaned across the tray to feed one to Alan. He took the fruit in his teeth and nipped at her finger.
“Ouch!” Signy said.
Alan kissed her finger and fitted his left hand against hers, palm to palm. “Try this,” he said. He ran his thumb and forefinger down the knuckle side of their mated fingers.
Signy copied his gesture. Slight differences in the temperatures and textures of his skin and hers created the sensation of numbness. “I remember the game,” she said. “It’s called Dead Man’s Finger.”
“That’s how the scar feels,” Alan said. “There wasn’t any way to do microsurgery in orbit. So that part of my touch is always numb.”
“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me about how it is up there.”
“In a little while.”
Later, in drifts of musing, postcoital conversation, Alan told her of the silence and the cold, and the way the Earth looks from far away, blue-white and still and so very precious. There were hesitations in his speech at times, long silences. There was, in him, a knowledge of total dependence on others for each breath, for heat and light enough to permit survival. He carried memories of a violation of trust, memories of ice crystals and dying cells puffing silently away from a broken glove. Alan was a man who loved life and found it fragile.
And, Signy noted pleasantly, he did not snore.