“Fecund jungle’s gonna spread—” one of the others crooned through a gauzy, full-backup mouth synthesizer. Presumably it was a line from a popular song, though she didn’t recognize it.
The growling motors changed pitch as the bus approached another stop. Meanwhile, the leader leaned even closer to Teresa. “Yessiree, blistery! The Old Lady’s gonna brim with life again. There’ll be lions roaming Saskatchewan. Flamingoes flocking Greenland! And all ’cause of Ra’s rough lovin’.”
Poor fellow, Teresa thought. She saw through his pose of macho heliolatry. Probably he was a pussycat, and the only danger he presented came from his desperate anxiety not to let that show.
The Ra Boy frowned as he seemed to detect something in her smile. Trying harder to set her aback, he bared his teeth in a raffish grin. “Rough, wet loving. It’s what women like. No less Big Mama Gaia. No?”
Across the aisle, a woman wearing an Orb of the Mother pendant glared sourly at the Ra Boy. He noticed, turned, and lolled his tongue at her, causing her fashionably fair skin to flush. Not wearing True-Vus, she quickly looked away.
He stood up, turning to sweep in the other passengers. “Ra melts the glaciers! He woos her with his heat. He melts her frigid infundibulum with warm waters. He…”
The Ra Boy stammered to a halt. Blinking, he swept aside his dark glasses and looked left and right, seeking Teresa. »
He spotted her at last, standing on the jerry-rigged third-floor landing of the Gibraltar Building. As the waterbus pulled away again, raising salty spumes in its wake, she blew a kiss toward the sun worshipper and his comrades. They were still staring back at her, with their masked eyes and patchy pink skins, as the boat driver accelerated to catch a yellow at First Street, barely making it across before the light changed.
“So long, harmless,” she said after the dwindling Ra Boy. Then she nodded to the doorman as he bowed and ushered her inside.
She had one stop to make before her meeting. A walk-in branch of a reputable bank offered an opportunity to unload her burden.
Usually a cash transaction would cause raised eyebrows, but in this case it was customary. The smiling attendant took her crisp fifties and led her to an anonymity booth, where Teresa promptly sealed herself in. She took a slim sensor from one pocket and plugged it into a jack in the side of her wallet, which then served as a portable console while she scanned every corner of the booth for leaks. Of course there were none. Satisfied, she sat down and disconnected the sensor. As she was doing that, however, her hand accidentally stroked the worn nub of the wallet’s personal holo dial, causing a familiar image to project into space above the countertop.
Her father’s eyes crinkled with smile lines and he looked so proud of her as he silently mouthed words she had long ago memorized. Words of support. Words that had meant so much to her so often since he first spoke them… on every occasion since when she found herself bucking the odds.
Only none of those other crises was ever nearly as dire as the business she’d gotten herself into now. For that reason she held her hand back from touching the sound control or even replaying his well-remembered encouragement in her mind.
She was too afraid to test it. What if the words wouldn’t work this time? Might such a failure ruin the talisman forever, then? Uncertainty seemed preferable to finding out that this last touchstone in her life had lost its potency, that even her father’s calm confidence could offer no security against a world that could melt away any time it chose.
“I’m sorry, Papa,” she said quietly, poignantly. Teresa wanted to reach out and touch his gray-flecked beard. But instead she turned off his image and firmly turned her attention to the task at hand. From her pocket she drew one of two data spools, inserting it into a slot in the counter. Picking a code word from the name of a college roommate’s pet cat, she created a personal cache and fed in the contents of the spool. When the cylinder was empty and erased, she breathed a little easier.
She was still embarked on a dangerous enterprise that might cost her her job, or even lead to jail. But at least now she wouldn’t become a pariah for the modern sin of keeping secrets. She’d just registered her story — from the Erehwon disaster to her recent, surreptitious orbital data collection for Pedro Manella. If any of it ever did come to trial, now she’d be able to show with this dated cache that she had acted in good faith. The Rio Treaties did allow one to withhold information temporarily — or try to — so long as careful records were maintained. That exception had been left in order to satisfy the needs of private commerce. The treaties’ drafters — radical veterans of the Helvetian War — probably never imagined that “temporary” might be interpreted to be as long as twenty years or that the registering of diaries like hers would become an industry in itself.
Teresa sealed the file, swallowing the key in her mind. Such was her faith in the system that she simply left the empty spool lying there on the countertop.
“I wish you hadn’t done that.”
“Done what, Pedro?”
“You know what I mean. What you did when you got back to Earth.”
Manella regarded her like a disapproving father. Fortunately, Teresa’s own dad had been patient and understanding — and thin. In other words, nothing like Pedro Manella.
“All I did was refuse to shake hands with Colonel Spivey. You’d think I’d have slapped him across the face or shot him.”
Looking down at the blue lagoons of Houston, the portly newsman shook his head. “In front of net-zine cameras? You might as well have done exactly that. What’s the public to think when a shuttle pilot steps out of her spacecraft, accepts the thanks of all the other astronauts, but then pointedly turns away and spits when the mission supervisor steps up for his turn?”
“I did not spit!” she protested.
“Well it sure looked that way.”
Teresa felt warm under the collar. “What do you want from me? I’d just verified — at least to my satisfaction — that the bastard must have had a black hole on Erehwon. He recruited my husband into an illegal conspiracy that caused his death! Did you expect me to kiss him?”
Manella sighed. “It would have been preferable. As it is, you may have jeopardized our operation.”
Teresa folded her arms and looked away. “I wasn’t followed here. And I got you your data. You asked nothing else of me.” She felt put-upon and resentful. As soon as she had arrived, and Manella’s assistants scurried off with her second spool, Pedro had launched into this Dutch uncle lecture.
“Hmph,” he commented. “You didn’t actually say anything to Spivey, did you?”
“Nothing printable or relevant. Unless you count commentary on his ancestry.”
Manella’s scowl lifted slightly. Much as he disapproved of her actions, he clearly would have liked to have been there. “Then I suggest you let people assume the obvious — that you and Spivey had been having an affair—”
“What?” Teresa gasped.
“ — and that your anger was the result of a lovers’—”
“Dumpit!”
“ — of a lovers’ tiff. Spivey may suspect you’re on to his activities, but he’ll not be able to prove anything.”
Teresa’s jaw clenched. The unpalatability of Manella’s suggestion was matched only by its inherent logic. “I’m swearing off men forever,” she said, biting out the words.
Infuriatingly, Manella answered only with a raised eye-brow, economically conveying his certainty she was lying. “Come on,” he replied. “The others are waiting.”
A chart projection hung over the far end of the conference room. It wasn’t holographic, merely a high-definition, two-dimensional schematic of the multilayered Earth. A nest of simple, concentric circles.