Engineer/1st Spence looked more at home in the local fashion. She had at least lived in a city most of her life, and accessorized with some gaudy costume jewelry and a tall velvet hat that looked as if it had been deliberately sat on—the damage was a little too perfect to be accidental.
Sula wobbled a little on her platform shoes as she clacked out onto the pavement. Military life had accustomed her to flats.
Spence had a good eye, she decided. Sula spotted a number of the crumpled velvet hats in the next street.
“Uhh, Lucy?” Macnamara said from over her shoulder. Sula’s current ID, one she had made for herself, listed her as Lucy Daubrac, and the team were supposed to use the cover names and not ranks or titles.
“Yeah, Patrick?”
“You know, you walk like an officer in the Fleet. Spine straight, shoulders back. You should try, like, slouching more.”
She flashed him a smile from over her shoulder. Her hick cousin, the unemployed shepherd, wasn’t so stupid after all.
“Thanks,” she said, then she stuck her hands in her trouser pockets and slumped her shoulders.
Sula called up a list of apartments for rent on her hand communicator—her jacket didn’t have a sleeve display—but the one she chose was found by a sign in the window: TWO BEDROOMS, FURN., W/TOILET.
Her sense of self-respect and order demanded, at the very least, a toilet she didn’t have to share with strangers.
There was no concierge, let alone a doorman, just an elderly Daimong janitor who lived in a basement flat, and who let them view the apartment. The place smelled of mildew, the furniture sagged, some child had scrawled over the face of the wall video, and there was a creepy purple stain on the walls.
“If we take it,” Sula said, “will you paint the place?”
“I’ll give you some brushes and paint,” the Daimong said. “Thenyou paint the place.” With apparent satisfaction the Daimong peeled a swatch of dead skin from his neck, then let it drift to the worn carpet.
“How much is it again?”
“Three a month.”
“Zeniths?” Sula scorned. “Or septiles?”
The Daimong made a gonging noise meant to indicate indifference. “You can call the manager and argue with him if you want,” he said. “I’ll give you his number.”
The manager, a bald Terran, insisted on three zeniths. “Have youseen this place?” Sula asked, knowing full well he hadn’t in years, and probably not ever. She panned the hand comm’s camera over the room. “Who’s going to pay three zeniths for this wreck? Justlook at that stain! And let me show you the kitchen—it’sunspeakable. ”
Sula argued the manager down to two zeniths per month, with a two-zenith damage deposit and three months paid in advance. She paid the janitor, dragging the cash out of her pocket and counting out the durable plastic money repeatedly, as if it were all she had, and she then insisted on his giving her a receipt.
The Daimong ambled out, leaving behind the sweet scent of his dying flesh, and Sula turned to look at her team. Neither Macnamara nor Spence seemed happy with their new home.
“Uhh, Lucy?” Macnamara said. “Why did we take this place?”
“Some cleaning and paint and it’ll be all right,” Sula said. “Besides, did you notice we have a back door off the kitchen? It leads right onto the back-stairs landing—it’s our escape route, if we need one.”
“But theneighborhood …” Spence ventured.
Sula went to the window and looked down into the busy street. The sounds of the crowd floated up to her, hawkers crying, music playing, friends hailing each other, children running and shrieking.
It was like going back in time.
“It’s perfect,” she said. “You can disappear into a neighborhood like this.” She fished in her pocket again and came up with a couple septiles. “Here,” she said to Macnamara. “Take this to the liquor store across the street and get as many bottles of iarogüt as this will buy. The cheapest stuff you can find.”
Macnamara took the money with reluctance. He returned with six bottles, all opaque plastic with labels pasted on, some crooked. Sula put one bottle on the shelf, opened five, and emptied them into the sink. The harsh bite of the liquor filled the air, the uneasy mixture of grain alcohol and herbal extracts. Sula put the empty bottles into the bag that Macnamara had brought them in, then put the bag with the bottles outside the door, in the hallway, for trash pickup.
“If any of our neighbors have questions about us,” she said as she stepped back into their apartment, “this will tell them all they need to know.” She tilted her head back to look at Macnamara. “You’re on bottle duty till further notice,” she said. “I want anywhere from three to five empties put in the hall every night.”
Macnamara’s eyes widened. “So many? For just the three of us?”
“A serious alcoholic can drink three bottles of hard liquor per night, easy,” Sula said. A fact she remembered all too well. Through the memory she forced a smile. “We’re onlypartly serious drunks. Oh,” she added, as another thought struck her. “You know some of that hashish-scented incense? We should buy some of that. The smell wafting under the door will only add to the verisimilitude.”
“By the way,” Spence said, “how do you do that with your voice?”
“My voice?” Sula was puzzled.
“You’re talking in some kind of local dialect. It’s like you’ve lived here for years.”
“Ah.” Surprise tingled through her. She shrugged. “I’m a good mimic, I guess. I didn’t even know I was doing it.”
She remembered amusing Caro Sula with her accents, pretending to be her identical sister Margaux, from Earth. She hadn’t done her Earthgirl accent in a long time.
She’d spent the last seven years imitating Caro Sula instead.
The next few days Team 491 spent adding to their wardrobe and painting and cleaning the apartment. They bought food from stands on the streets and began to learn the neighborhood.
The apartment was finally arranged to Sula’s satisfaction, everything painted or scrubbed, the carpet cleaned, the stove gleaming, the toilet and other bathroom fixtures fresh-scented marvels of modern sanitation. It didn’t look like a place inhabited by alcoholics, but Sula couldn’t bring herself to live amid squalor.
She had once. She wouldn’t again.
Sula bought a spider plant in a large cream-colored epoxide pot, one that would show clearly through the window overlooking the street. She went to the south window and put it on the right-hand side of the windowsill.
“This meansno one’s here, be cautious. ” She moved the pot across the sill to the opposite side. “This issomeone’s here, and it’s all clear. ” She placed the pot on the right side of the northern windowsill. “This isimmediate meeting. ” Moving the pot to the opposite side of the window meantmessage waits at mail drop. She turned to look at her crew. “If the pot’s not here at all, or if it’s in the kitchen window, that meansUnsafe. Use safe procedure to reestablish contact. ” She looked at them. “If it looks as if you’re going to be arrested here, try to break away long enough to knock the pot off the sill. Make it look as if you’re trying to jump out the window.”
Macnamara and Spence nodded. “Very good, miss,” Spence said.
“From now on,” Sula said, “we use this apartment only for meetings. We each get our own place, one that none of the others knows, and we use another set of ID there.”
Her two team members gave each other uneasy looks. “Does the new place have to be in this neighborhood?” Spence asked.
Sula had to think about her answer. “Your new place needs to be someplace completely anonymous. It needs to be private. It needs to have more than one exit. And you need to pay your rent with cash.” She gave them a thin-lipped smile. “If you can find a setup like that in a better neighborhood, then by all means.”