“Alex, where did you get the money? Yesterday you were broke.”
“I found a job.” Alex folded the sheet, stuck it in his coat pocket. “Kim, where are you from?”
“Far away.”
“Okay. Do you have anywhere to go in this city? A place to live, a way to make some money?” Her eyes looked a little frightened.
“No. I mean, yes… but I’d rather not.”
“I see,” said Alex. “I have to leave for now. You can stay here. You can wait for me or just rest up and disappear.”
“I’ll… wait for you.” The girl lowered her eyes.
“Okay. Get your card, I’ll transfer some money over. You’ll need to change.”
“I don’t have a card.”
“An ID? Even a child card?”
“I have no documents.”
Another nuisance. Alex walked to the computer screen, opened an account, and transferred some money to a hotel credit line.
“Anyway, order some clothes. Try to eat often. Not a lot, but often.”
“I know that.”
Alex nodded and said nothing more. Nothing of the necessity to avoid too much physical activity in the first few days after the metamorphosis, nothing of the possible dizziness and fainting spells, nothing of the benefits of a sauna—the hotel had one.
“Block the door behind me,” he told her.
Quicksilver Pit had been colonized about two hundred years before, probably after the completion of the very first hyper-channel station on the Moon in the middle of the twenty-first century. Alex probably could have found out the exact history on the information net, but he wasn’t all that interested. What difference did it make which of the stations, searching blindly through the vast ocean of hyperspace, had plotted a channel from Earth to Quicksilver Pit?
In any case, the planet had not escaped the common fate of all the early Earth colonies. It was an outpost, and amid its boundless jungle, the first villages, garrisons, and factories had been founded. The first steps had been careful, but later, once it became apparent that the local biosphere was defenseless in the face of humanity, development grew more and more active. An emigration wave from the overpopulated Earth, mass cloning of infants, which increased the population growth rate dozens of times above normal—all that was commonplace.
Except that this colony still seemed incapable of getting rid of the yoke of an industrial giant—it had too many minerals and fossil fuels, and an infrastructure that was too well developed. The planet was suffocating in industrial waste, but human greed still had the upper hand. In Alex’s opinion, the situation would probably remain unchanged for another twenty or thirty years.
He left the Hilton and managed to avoid any inquisitive glances from the clerk—the shift had already changed. In a little side street nearby, a few bored cab drivers were whiling away the time in their old clunkers.
“To the port,” said Alex, sitting down next to a cab driver.
“Spaceport?” asked the guy for some reason. He was a pleasant-looking middle-aged natural.
“You have some other kind?”
“The airport… and the river port to the north…” came the upbeat reply, while the driver was steering onto the street. “And we have three different spaceports ’round town.”
“Central civilian.”
“Uh-huh.” The driver whipped the car into the sparse traffic flow, ran through the sensors of the route-finder, and took his hands off the steering wheel. To Alex, that seemed a little rash—the old navigation system didn’t look reliable at all. But he chose not to say anything.
For a few minutes, they rode in silence. Against all expectations, the car moved smoothly, keeping its distances, without needlessly jerking around.
“You from far off?” inquired the driver.
“Yup. From Earth.”
“I’ve been there,” the driver reported, noticeably proud of the fact. “Nice place. Our old mother-planet and all… But ours is better.”
“Home is always best,” replied Alex tactfully. He was well aware of colonial attitudes. It was either complete self-abasement and adoration of Earth, or proudly protruding chins and careful avoidance of all the facts.
“I was in the army,” said the cab driver. “For four years. Left as a sergeant… you know. We had exercises on Earth. For three weeks.”
“Really?”
Alex couldn’t have cared less about the driver’s heroic military feats, which were most likely just a few peacekeeping assignments. And the details of the fellow’s visit to Earth were also of no interest to him. But politeness prompted him to keep up the conversation.
“Yes, sir! For three whole weeks. We were in… whatchamacallit… America.”
“North or South?”
“There’s two of ’em?” The driver laughed, honestly accepting his ignorance. “Well, it was cold. Must’ve been the north one, then. We went to hunt the… em… penguins. It was close, just hop across the straits in a boat, and have all the fun you want. Don’t get me wrong, it was all legal, with a license.”
“I don’t like hunting.”
“Too bad. Most fun a man can have. War and hunting… But war… well, that’s dangerous.”
Alex barely suppressed a smile. A very heroic and manly approach.
“By the way… can I pay the fare in advance?”
The cab driver looked him over one more time, probably doubting his creditworthiness. Which was odd: if he had doubts, why take such a passenger?
Alex reached for his card and activated it. Caught a glance of the amount on the ticker. Very reasonable.
“Thanks.” The driver seemed content. “And why are you off to the spaceport?”
“I’m a pilot.”
“Oh… well then…” The driver laughed uneasily. “Thought naturals couldn’t be pilots.”
“I’m a spesh. We have practically no differences in appearance.”
“They changed you a lot?”
“Enough. If, for instance, we ran into that truck head on…” As Alex said this, the driver hurriedly looked at the road and even touched the steering wheel. “… you would be smashed into paste. Too much inertia. And I would survive. And probably walk away from the accident.”
“You’re a funny guy.” Saying this, the cab driver did, nevertheless, leave his hands upon the steering wheel. “But your clothes… they ain’t pilot’s.”
“Yeah, well… I’ll change ’em.”
“And that tattoo of yours… Hey, take a look at what I got in the army!” Alex pensively looked at the driver’s hand. Every finger was decorated by an image of a naked girl. The little finger had a flirtatious nymphet, the ring finger a curvy black girl, the middle one a long-legged model with blond curls, the index finger a stripper wrapped around a pole, and the thumb an Asian beauty crouching in a strange pose. On the hand itself reclined a cocky soldier wearing a suit of force field armor and also, for some reason, a dress-uniform beret. Even from the back, he looked sated and relaxed.
“Nice work,” Alex agreed.
“I’ll have to get rid of it, though,” sighed the driver. “I mean, it’s a good souvenir and all, but… my daughter’s getting older now… it ain’t decent. She’ll look at Daddy’s hand—and he’s got a whole harem instead of fingers—”
“That’s just your normal army thing,” said Alex, “a whole harem instead of fingers.” The driver looked at him guardedly, but the pilot’s face remained impenetrable.
“That a joke?” he asked uncertainly.
“Of course not. Tell you what. Erase only the girls. Keep the soldier. That’ll be your souvenir.” At that, the driver’s face lit up.
“Hey, yeah! Smart! Didn’t even occur to me…”
“Yeah, well…”
The car was already passing the widely separated supports of the monorail, somewhere in the vicinity of the hospital. Alex was surprised at how light traffic was.