“No, it’s not that.” Wednesday frowned minutely. Outside her cone of silence she could see Leo watching her intently; she moved instinctively to cover her mouth with the palm of her hand as she spoke. “I really am going on a voyage right now. I know I didn’t want to get downheavy last night, but that was just the way it was then. If you want to look me up when I get back, that would be great. But I’m off-station already, so there’s no chance to meet up first.”
“Are you in some kind of trouble?” he asked.
“No, I — yes. Shit! Yes, I’m in trouble.” She caught Leo’s gaze, rolled her eyes at him, lying with her face. He winked at her, and she forced a grin. The warmth in her belly turned to ice. My rings. These are Hermans rings. The untraceable ones. “Who told you?”
“This, uh, guy I sometimes work for, he called me up just now and told me you were in bad trouble and needed a friend. Is there anything I can do to help?”
Leo was pulling a face at her: Wednesday pulled a face right back. “I think you just did, just by calling. Listen, are you in trouble? Has anyone been round to talk to you? Cops?”
“Yes.” His voice tended to break out into a croak when he was worried. “Said they just wanted to clear something up. Asked if I’d seen you. I said ‘no’.”
She relaxed slightly. “Your invisible friend, is he called Herman?”
A second’s silence. “You know Herman?”
“Listen to him,” she hissed, rolling her eyes some more and shrugging through the sound screen at Leo. “There’s something bad going on. I’m being followed. Just stay out of this, all right?”
“Okay.” He paused. “I want to ask you lots of questions sometime. Are you coming back?”
“I hope so.” Leo was looking bored. “Listen, I’ve got to go. Problem to deal with. Thanks for talking — I’ve got your callback. Bye.”
“I — uh. Bye.”
“Privacy off.” She grinned at Leo.
“Who was that?” he asked, curiously.
“Old friend,” she said carelessly. “Didn’t know I was leaving.”
“Well, isn’t that a shame?” He pointed at her place setting. “Your soup’s cold.”
“Oh well.” She shrugged, then stood up, her heart beating fast. It wasn’t arousal anymore, though. At least, it wasn’t sexual arousal. Her palms were cold and her stomach threatening to twist itself into knots. “Where are you staying on Noctis?” she asked. “I was thinking, maybe I could come visit you?”
“Uh, I don’t know. My uncle, he’s got some pretty weird ideas,” he said edgily. “How about we try your cabin? I’ve always wanted to see how the other half live.”
Shit. He knew which class she was in. Careless of him — or he was overconfident. “Okay,” she said lightly, smiling as he took her wrist and pulled her toward him. Another sniff of that enticing man-scent, something about his skin that made her want to slip her arm under his shirt and inhale. That’s something specific for your vomeronasal organ, something to go straight to your hypothalamus and get you wet, isn’t it? Her senses seemed to sharpen as she leaned against him. “Come on,” she breathed in his ear, wondering how on earth she was going to get out of this mess. Her heart was pounding, and it felt like lust, or terror, or both. She was actually leaning against him, knees weak with something. A neurotoxin? she wondered, but no — that would be much too public if he was what she thought he might be. Probably just pheromone receptor blockers. Come on.
On the staircase he paused for a moment and pulled her close. “Let me carry you?” he whispered in her ear. She nodded, dizzy with tension, and he picked her up, her head resting close to his ear as he climbed the stairs two steps at a time. A deck, the ring of Syb-class capsules. “Where’s your—”
“Hold on, put me down, I’ll find it.” She smiled at him and leaned close. The corridor lights were dim, most of the other passengers snoozing their way through the flight. He smelled of fresh sweat and something musky, treacherously intoxicating. Herman had taught her a term for this: Venus trap. She grabbed him and pressed her lips against his in a kiss that he returned enthusiastically. Hips bumped. “Shit, not here.” She tugged him along the corridor, nerves on fire. “Here.” She tapped the door panel. “I need the rest room. You go on inside and make yourself at home. I won’t be long.”
“Really?” he asked, stepping inside her room.
“Yeah.” She leaned close, nibbled him delicately on the neck. “I won’t be a minute.” Heart pounding, she stepped back and hit the door close button. Then she tapped the panel next to it, the privacy lock. Her heart was trying to climb out through her rib cage: “Did I really just do that?” she asked herself. “Wendigo. Suite, can you hear me?”
“Greetings, passenger Strowger! I can hear you.” Its voice was tinny, coming to her through the external control plate.
“Please lock my suite door. Do not unlock the door until one hour after arrival. I want to sleep in. Divert all incoming calls, cancel outgoing routing. Maximum sound damping. Return to full privacy mode and add voiceprint authentication to keyword.”
The simpleminded suite agent swallowed it. “Warning! Privacy may be overridden by authorized crew members in event of accident or medical emergency—”
“How many crew does this flight carry?” Her stomach lurched, icy cold soup sloshing.
“This is an unattended flight.”
“Keep it that way. Now shut up and don’t talk to anyone.” There was a tentative knocking from inside the cabin, almost inaudible through the smart foam. Then a faint bump as if something massive had bounced off the inside of the door. Wednesday pouted at it, then headed for the staircase, a wistful urge to run back and apologize still fighting it out with her common sense. Sex on legs, packaged just for her? Where were you during Sammy’s party? “Vacc’ing out Mom’n’Dad,” she muttered to herself, half-blind with anger and loss as she hunted round C deck for an empty row to colonize. “Unless he’s the best friendly fuck I’ve ever dropped by mistake…” She carried on arguing with herself for a long time before she dozed off, and by the time she was awake again the ferry had passed turnover and was nearly ready to dock.
“Okay, I’m here. What do I do now?”
Noctis concourse wasn’t built with fail-safe operation in mind. It was a product of the ebullient Septagonese economic miracle, so optimistic that nothing could possibly go wrong. Gravity thereabouts was a variable, vectored in whichever direction the architects had willed it. There were jungles on the walls, sand dunes on the ceiling, moebius walkways snaking through them for maximum visual impact.
Wednesday hurried along a strip locked to a steady half gee, trailing behind a flickering lightbug. She passed occasional clumps of other long-distance travelers — a mix of emigrants, merchants taking the long caravanserai, wanderjahr youth on the Grand Tour — and a variety of variously enticing and annoying shops disguised as environmental features. Butterflies the size of dinner plates flapped slowly past overhead, their wings flickering with historical docudramas. A small toroidal rain cloud spun slowly over a bright crimson nest of muddy-rooted mangroves, small lightning discharges clicking across its inner hole. Wednesday glanced past it, through a chink in the artistic foliage that led into a sudden perspective shift; stars glinted through diamond windows over a kilometer away. It was very Septagon, life defying vacuum, and for a moment she was dizzy with homesickness and the infinitely deep pool of depression that waited just beneath the thin ice of her self-control. If we hadn’t come here, Mom and Dad would still be alive. If. If.
“Follow the lightbug to your connection with the liner Romanov. Once you reach the Romanov’s dock you should go aboard and remain in your stateroom until departure. Which is due in under six hours. I can cover for you for some time, but if you venture around the terminal, it is possible that a police agent will spot you and place you under volitional arrest. I believe there is a high probability that no charges will be brought, but you would miss the departure, and there is a high risk that the individuals pursuing you would locate you and make another attempt on your life. At the very least, they would be able to regain their lock on you. Good work with the suite, by the way.”