Shadowy images flickered over the surface of the block.
Fine, Joshua said automatically. He hadnt got a clue what she was talking about.
She patted his thigh, and bounced to her feet. Dont go away, Im going to do my rounds here, then Ill be back to collect you later.
Er, yes. What else was there to say? He still wasnt sure who had seduced who the day after he returned from the Ruin Ring, but hed spent every night since then in Dominiques big bed, and a lot of the daytime, too. She had the same kind of sexual stamina as Jezzibella, boisterous and frighteningly energetic.
He glanced down at the processor block, datavising a file-title request. It was a program that analysed all the possible free-fall sexual positions where bounceback didnt use the males feet. The blocks screen was showing two humanoid simulacrums running through contortional permutations.
Hello.
Joshua tipped the processor block screen side down with an incredibly guilty start, datavising a shutdown instruction, and codelocked the file.
Ione was standing next to the couch, head cocked to one side, smiling innocently.
Er, hello, Ione.
The smile widened. You remembered my name.
Hard to forget a girl like you.
She sat in the imprint Dominique had left in the cushions. There was something quirky about her, a suggestion of hidden depth. He experienced that same uncanny thrill he had when he was on the trail of a Laymil artefact, not quite arousal, but close.
Im afraid I forgot what you do, though, he said.
Same as everyone else in here, a rich heiress.
Not quite everybody.
No? Her mouth flickered in an uncertain smile.
No, theres me, you see. I didnt inherit anything. Joshua let his eyes linger on the outline of her figure below the light blouse. She was nicely proportioned, skin silk-smooth and sun kissed. He wondered what she would look like naked. Very nice, he decided.
Apart from your ship, the Lady Macbeth .
Now its my turn to say: you remembered.
She laughed. No. Its what everyone is talking about. That and your find. Do you know whats in those Laymil memory crystals?
No idea. I just find them, I dont understand them.
Do you ever wonder why they did it? Kill themselves like that? There must have been millions of them, children, babies. I cant believe it was suicide the way everyone says.
You try not to think about it when youre out in the Ruin Ring. There are just too many ghosts out there. Have you ever been in it?
She shook her head.
Its spooky, Ione. Really, people laugh, but sometimes theyll creep in on you out of the shadows if you dont keep your guard up. And there are a lot of shadows out there; sometimes I think it isnt made of anything else.
Is that why youre leaving?
Not really. The Ruin Ring was a means to me, a way to get the money for Lady Mac . Ive always planned on leaving.
Is Tranquillity that bad?
No. Its more of a pride thing. I want to see Lady Mac spaceworthy again. She got damaged quite badly in the rescue attempt. My father barely made it back to Tranquillity alive. The old girl deserves another chance. I could never bring myself to sell her. Thats why I started scavenging, despite the risks. I just wish my father could have stayed around to see me succeed.
A rescue mission? She sucked in her lower lip, intrigued. It was an endearing action, making her look even younger.
Dominique was nowhere to be seen, and the music was almost painfully loud now, the band just hitting their stride. Ione was clearly hooked on the story, on him. They could find a bedroom and spend a couple of hours screwing each others brains out. And it was only early evening, this party wouldnt wind down for another five or six hours yet, he could still be back in time for his night with Dominique.
Jesus! What a way to celebrate.
Its a long story, he said, gesturing round. Lets find somewhere quieter.
She nodded eagerly. I know a place.
The trip on the tube carriage wasnt quite what Joshua had in mind. There were plenty of spare bedrooms at the lake-house which he could codelock. But Ione had been surprisingly adamant, that elusive hint of steel in her personality surfacing as she said: My apartment is the quietest in Tranquillity, you can tell me everything there, and well never be overheard. She paused, eyes teasing. Or interrupted.
That settled it.
They took the carriage from the little underground station which served all the residences around the lake. The tube trains were a mechanical system, like the lifts in the starscrapers, which were all installed after Tranquillity reached its full size. Bitek was a powerful technology, but even it had limits on the services it could provide; internal transport lay outside the geneticists ability. The tubes formed a grid network throughout the cylinder, providing access to all sections of the interior. Carriages were independent, taking passengers to whichever station they wanted, a system orchestrated by the habitat personality, which was spliced into processor blocks in every station. There was no private transport in Tranquillity, and everyone from billionaires to the lowest-paid spaceport handler used the tubes to get around.
Joshua and Ione got into a waiting ten-seater carriage, sitting opposite each other. It started off straight away under Iones command, accelerating smoothly. Joshua offered her a sip from the fresh bottle of Norfolk Tears hed liberated from Parris Vasilkovskys bar, and started to tell her about the rescue mission, eyes tracing the line of her legs under the flimsy sarong.
There had been a research starship in orbit around a gas giant, he said, it had suffered a life-support blow-out. His father had got the twenty-five-strong crew out, straining the Lady Macbeth s own life support dangerously close to capacity. And because several of the injured research crew needed treatment urgently they jumped while they were still inside the gas giants gravity field, which wrecked some of Lady Macbeth s energy-patterning nodes, which in turn put a massive strain on the remaining nodes when the next jump was made. The starship managed the jump into Tranquillitys system, a distance of eight light-years, ruining forty per cent of her remaining nodes in the process.
He was lucky to make it, Joshua said. The nodes have a built-in compensation factor in case a few fail, but that distance was really tempting fate.
I can see why youre so proud of him.
Yes, well ... He shrugged.
The carriage slowed its madcap dash down the length of the habitat, and pulled to a halt. The door slid open. Joshua didnt recognize the station: it was small, barely large enough to hold the length of the carriage, a featureless white bubble of polyp. Broad strips of electrophorescent cells in the ceiling gave off a strong light; a semicircular muscle membrane door was set in the wall at the back of the narrow platform. Certainly not a starscraper lobby.
The carriage door closed, and the grey cylinder slipped noiselessly into the tunnel on its magnetic track. Currents of dry air flapped Iones sarong as it vanished from sight.
Joshua felt unaccountably chilly. Where are we? he asked.
Ione gave him a bright smile. Home.
Hidden depths. The chill persisted obstinately.
The muscle membrane door opened like a pair of stone curtains being drawn apart, and Joshua gaped at the apartment inside, bad vibes forgotten.
Starscraper apartments were luxurious even without money for elaborate furnishings; given time the polyp would grow into the shapes of any furniture you wanted, but this ...