Light

'We're here to look,' he'd say, 'and be amazed. We're not here long. Look at this. See that? Look!'

He was a thin, active, seeking little man, skin and tendons, who at all times wore the bottom half of an ancient air-pilot's G-suit, two leather coats, a red and green do-rag tied in a fanciful knot. He lost two fingers of one hand in a bad landing on Sigma End, on the edge of the accretion disc of the notorious black hole they called Radio RX-1 (nearby was the entrance to an artificial wormholewhich, he believed at the time, had its eye on the same target as the Redline South Polar Artefact). These he never had replaced.

When Seria Mau fetched up at his feet, he studied her a moment.

'What do you look like, the real you?' he asked.

'Nothing much,' said Seria Mau. 'I'm a K-ship.'

'So you are,' said Billy Anker, consulting his systems. 'I see that now. How has that worked out for you?'

'None of your business, Billy Anker.'

'You shouldn't be so defensive,' was how he replied. And then, after a moment or two: 'So what's new in the universe? What have you seen that I haven't?'

Seria Mau was amused. 'You ask me that when you stay in this piece-of-shit old heap,' she said, looking round the inside of Billy Anker's quarters, 'wearing a glove on one hand?' She laughed. 'Plenty of things, though I was never down in the Core.' She told him some of the things she had seen.

'I'm impressed,' he admitted

He rocked back in his chair. Then he said:

'That K-ship of yours. It'll go deep. You know what I mean, "go deep"? I heard one of those will go almost anywhere. You ever think of the Tract? You ever think of taking it there?'

'The day I get tired of this life.'

They both laughed, then Billy Anker said:

'We've got to leave the Beach some day. All of us. Grow up. Leave the Beach, dive in the sea-'

'-because why else be alive, right?' said Seria Mau. 'Isn't that what you're going to say? I heard a thousand men like you say that. And you know what, Billy Anker?'

'What?'

'They all had better coats than you.'

He stared at her.

'You aren't just a K-ship, you're the White Cat,' he said. 'You're the girl who stole the White Cat.'She was surprised he worked that out so fast. He smiled at her surprise. 'So what can I do for you?'

Seria Mau looked away from him. She didn't like to be worked out so quickly, on some junk planet in Radio Bay in the back passage of nowhere. Also, even in a fetch she couldn't manage those eyes of his. She knew bodies, whatever the shadow operators said. That was part of the problem. And when she saw Billy Anker's eyes she was glad she didn't have one now, which would find them irresistible.

'The tailor sent me here,' she said.

Billy Anker got a dawning expression on his thin face.

'You bought the Dr Haends package,' he said. 'I see that now. You're the one bought it, from Uncle Zip. Shit.'

Seria Mau cut the connection.

'Well, he's cute,' the clone said.

'That was a private transmission,' Seria Mau told her. 'Do you want to get put out into empty space again?'

'Did you see his hand? Wow.'

'Because I can do that if you want,' said Seria Mau. 'He's too quick, this Billy Anker guy,' she told herself, and then out loud added: 'Did you really like that hand? I thought it was overdone.'

The clone laughed sarcastically.

'What does someone who lives in a tank know?'

Since her change of mind on Perkins' Rent, the clone-whose name was Mona or Moehne or something similar-had fallen into a kind of short-swing bipolar disorder. When she was up, she felt her whole life was going to change. Her skirts got pinker and shorter. She sang to herself all day, saltwater dub like 'Ion Die' and 'Touch-out Hustle'; or the fantastic old outcaste beats which were chic in the Core. When she was down she hung about the human quarters biting her nails or watching hologram pornography and masturbating. The shadow operators, who adored her, took care of her in the exaggerated way Seria Mau had never allowed. She let them dress her in the kind of outfits Uncle Zip's daughters might wear to a wedding; or fit her quarters out with mirrors to optical-astronomy standard. Also, it was important to them to see she ate properly. She was sharp enough to understand their needs and play to them. When the mood compass pointed north, that was when she had them wrapped round her little finger. She had them make her Elvis food and lurex halter tops that showed off her nipples. She got them to change the width of her pelvis by quick fix cosmetic surgery. 'If that's what you want, dear,' they said. 'If you think it will help.' They would do anything to cheer her up. They would do anything to keep her out of the housecoat with the food stains on the front, including encourage her to smoke tobacco, which was even illegal in the FTZs since twenty-seven years ago.

'I wasn't listening deliberately,' she said.

'Keep off this band from now on,' Seria Mau warned her. 'And do something with that hair.' Ten minutes later she sent her fetch back down to Billy Anker.

'We get a lot of interference here,' he said wisely. 'Maybe that was why I lost you.'

'Maybe it was.'

Whatever Billy Anker had done, whatever he was famous for, he wasn't doing much of it now. He lived in his ship, the Karaoke Sword, which Seria Mau suspected would never leave Redline again. The neon vegetation, bluish, pale and strong, grew over its half-mile length like radioactive ivy over a fluted stone column. The Karaoke Sword was made of alien metals, pocked from twenty thousand years of use and ten of Redline rain. You could only guess at its history before Billy found it. Inside, ordinary Earth stuff was hot-wired into its original controls. Bundles of conduit, nests of wires, things like TV screens four hundred years old and full of dust. This was not K-tech. It was as old-fashioned as nuts and bolts, though nothing like as kitschy and desirable. Also, there were no shadow operators on board the Karaoke Sword. If you wanted something doing, it was do it yourself. Billy Anker mistrusted the shadow operators though he never would say why. Instead he sat in what looked like an ancient fighter-pilot's chair, with tubes of coloured fluid and wires going into him, and a helmet he could put on if he felt like it.

He watched Seria Mau's fetch sniffing around in the rubbish at his feet and said:

'In its day this shit took me some weird places.'

'I can imagine that,' said Seria Mau.

'Hey, if it's good enough it's good enough.'

'Billy Anker, I'm here to tell you the Dr Haends package doesn't work.'

Billy looked surprised; then unsurprised.

A sly expression came to his face. 'You want your money back,' he guessed. 'Well, I'm not known-'

'-as a refund guy. I know. But look, that's not-'

'It's policy, babe,' said Billy Anker. He shrugged sadly, but his look above that was comfortable. 'What can I say?'

'You can say nothing and listen for once. Is that why you're alone here with all this historical stuff, because you never listen to anyone? I didn't come here for a refund. If I wanted that I could have it from Uncle Zip. Only I don't trust him.'

'Fair point,' admitted Billy Anker. 'So what do you want?'

'I want you to tell me where you got it from. The package.'