“Mom and Dad and Jerm — lying bitch!” It was almost a snarl. I was right, Steffi realized unhappily. Got her away just in time. “Couldn’t stay ’lone,” Wednesday added for emphasis.
“What happened?” Steffi asked quietly as the elevator slowed then began to move sideways.
“They’re dead an’ I’m not.” The kid’s face was a picture of misery. “Fucking ReMastered liar!”
“They’re dead? Who, your family?”
Wednesday made a sound halfway between a sob and a snort. “Who’dya think?”
The elevator stopped moving. Doors sighed open onto a corridor, opposite a blandly anonymous stateroom door. Steffi blipped it with her control override and it swung open. Wednesday knew which way to stagger. For a moment Steffi considered leaving her — then sighed and followed her in. “Your parents are dead? Is that why you don’t want to be alone?”
Wednesday turned to face her, cheeks streaked with tears. Weirdly, her heavy makeup didn’t run. Chromatophores, built into her skin? “Been two days,” she said, swaying. “Since they were murdered.”
“Murdered—”
“By. By the. By—” Then her stomach caught up with her and Wednesday headed for the bathroom in something midway between a controlled fall and a sprint. Steffi waited outside, listening to her throw up, lost in thought. Murdered? Well, well, how interesting …
It was 0300 hours, day-shift cycle, shortly before the starship made its first jump from point A to point A’ across a couple of parsecs of flat space-time.
The comforter was a crumpled mass, spilled halfway across the floor. The ceiling was dialed down to shades of red and black, tunnels of warm dark light washing across the room.
Wednesday rubbed her forehead tiredly. The analgesics and rat’s liver pills had taken care of most of the symptoms, and the liter or two of water she’d methodically chugged down had begun to combat the dehydration, but the rest of it — the shame and embarrassment and angst — wouldn’t succumb so easily to chemical prophylaxis.
“I’m an ass,” she muttered to herself, slouching to her feet. She headed back to the bathroom again, for the third time in an hour. “Stupid. And ugly, and a little bit dumb on the side.” She looked at the bathtub speculatively. “Guess I could always drown myself. Or cut my wrists. Or something.” Let the fuckers win. She blinked at the mirror-wall on the other side of the room. “I’m an embarrassment.” The figure in the mirror stared right back, a dark-eyed tragic waif with a rat’s nest of black hair and lips the color of a drowned woman’s. Breasts and hips slim, waist slimmer, arms and legs too long. She stood up and stared at herself. Her mind wandered, seeking solace a few nights back. What did Blow see in me? she wondered. No way to find out now. Should have asked him when I had the chance … She was alone here, more isolated than she’d ever been. “I’m a waste of vacuum.”
On her way back into the bedroom she spotted a blinking light on the writing desk. For want of anything better to do she wandered over. It was something to do with the blotter. “What’s this?” she asked aloud: “Ship, what does this light mean?”
“You have voice mail,” the ship replied soothingly. “Voice calls are spooled to mail while guests sleep unless an override is in force. Do you want to review your messages?”
Wednesday nodded, then snorted at her own idiocy. “Yeah. I guess.”
Message received, thirty-six minutes ago. From: Frank Johnson. “Hi, Wednesday? Guess you’re asleep. Should have checked the time — I keep weird hours. Listen, the story went out okay. Sorry I missed supper, but those social things don’t work for me real well. Ping me if you feel like hitting one of the bars sometime. Bye.”
“Huh. Ship, is Frank Johnson still awake?” she asked.
“Frank Johnson is awake and accepting calls,” the liaison network replied.
“Oh, oh.” Suddenly it mattered to her very much that someone else was awake and keeping crazy hours. “Voice call to Frank Johnson.”
There was a brief pause, then a chime. “Hello?” He sounded surprised.
“Frank?”
“Hello, Wednesday. What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said tiredly. “Just, I couldn’t sleep. Bad thoughts. You mentioned a bar. Is it, like, too late for you?”
A pause. “No, not too late. You want to meet up now?”
Her turn to pause. “Yeah. If you want.”
“Well, we could meet at—”
“Can you come round here?” she asked impulsively. “I don’t want to go out on my own.”
“Uh-huh.” He sounded amused. “Okay, I’ll be round in about ten minutes.”
She cut the call. “Gods and pests!” She looked around at the discarded clothes, suddenly realizing that she was naked and what it must look like. “Damn! damn!” She bounced to her feet and grabbed her leggings and top. She paused for a moment, then wrapped the sarong around her waist, dialed her jacket to a many-layered lacy thing, threw the other stuff in the closet for sorting out later, and ran back to the bathroom to dial the lights up. “My hair!” It was a mess. “Well, what the fuck. I’m not planning on dragging him into bed, am I?” She stuck her tongue out at the mirror, then went to work on the wet bar in the corner of the main room.
When he arrived Frank was carrying a bag. He put it down on the carpet as he looked around, bemused. “You said your friends were paying, but this is ridiculous,” he rumbled.
“It is, isn’t it?” She looked up at him, challenging.
He grinned, then stifled a yawn. “I guess so.” He nudged the bag with his foot. “You said you didn’t want to go out so I bought some stuff along just in case—” Suddenly he looked awkward.
“That’s okay.” She took his arm and dragged him over to the huge floppy sofa that filled one side of the main room. “What you got in there?”
He pulled out a bottle. “Sambuca. From Bolivar. And, let’s see, a genuine single malt from Speyside. That’s on Old Earth, you know. And here’s a disgusting chocolate liqueur from somewhere about which the less said the better. Got any glasses?”
“Yep.” She walked over to the bar and came back with glasses and a jug of ice. She sat down cross-legged at the other side of the sofa and poured a glassful of chocolate liqueur for herself, pretending not to notice Frank’s mock shudder. “You weren’t at dinner.”
“Those fake formal feast clusterfucks don’t do anything for me,” he announced. “They’re there to make the rich passengers think they’re getting a valuable service — more valuable than traveling deadhead in steerage, anyway. I guess if you do business or are in shipping, you can make a lot of contacts that way, but in general the kind of people I’d like to talk to over a meal don’t travel by liner.” He looked at her sharply. “Enjoy yourself?”
She nearly took the question at face value, although his tone suggested irony. “I nearly threw up in a plant pot after making a fool of myself.” She winced. “She asked for it, though.”
“Who did?” Frank raised his glass: “Your health.”
“Bottoms up. Poisonous toy bitch kept going on about how great being ReMastered was—” She stopped. Frank looked stricken. “Did I say something wrong?” she asked.
“Was she a blonde? Head half-shaved at one side to show off a tattoo?” Wednesday stared at him through a haze of conflicting emotions. “Yes,” she said. “Why?”
He put his glass down, rattling on the tabletop. “You could have been killed,” he said shakily.
“What do you—” She leaned toward him. “You said they run Newpeace. Concentration camps, secret police shit. Do you think they’re that dangerous here, though?”