As my toe lands on the first step, the doorbell rings its Big Ben chimes. Very retro. It takes me a long while to answer, but whoever or whatever is there is patient. I finally unlatch the door and swing it open, half expecting I will take aggressive action—at the very least, jump out and scream “Boo!”
But I don’t.
A small, zaftig woman with black eyes, a stub nose, and a close-cropped patch of red hair looks at me without expression—relaxed, composed. She’s wearing a light gray overcoat and a red and purple scarf. She smells like roses, old-lady perfume, but she can’t be much older than me.
“Yeah?” I say.
“Joseph sent me,” she says with a knowing grin. “He told me you’d be here,” she adds, looking past me into the apartment. “He’s sorry he couldn’t make it. But he said you’ll understand.”
I’m staring, goggle-eyed.
The woman who smells like roses explains, into my silence, “He gave me the code to the downstairs entry. And the elevator.”
Still staring.
“Can I come in?” she asks. Straightforward. Steady. She’s dealt with fidged Skyrines before.
“Joe’s okay?” I ask.
“I haven’t heard from him in a few days.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he in trouble?”
“He is always in trouble.”
“You’re his girlfriend?”
“Do I look that stupid?” But again she smiles. It’s a lovely, gentle smile. “He invited me to come talk with you. Have you got the coin?”
“I’ve got some coins,” I say.
“One important coin. Silver?”
“You tell me,” I say.
“Platinum,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“What’s on the coin?”
“Numbers,” I say.
“Good on you.”
I seem to pass, for now. The woman says, “In case you’re wondering, Teal’s alive, last I heard, but that was a while ago.”
“How do you know about Teal?”
She cocks her head, holds out one hand, may she come in? I stand aside, let her in, and close the door. My shaking has stopped. It’s better not to be alone. What I know, what I think I know, I really do not want to keep to myself. This might be progress.
“I smell coffee,” she says.
“I can’t smell coffee. Fidging Cosmoline. Miss that.”
“Do you smell my roses?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“Good. Pretty soon, you’ll smell the coffee, too.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Not a problem.”
I go to the kitchen and get down a mug, pour her what’s left in the carafe. She doesn’t follow, doesn’t move far from the entry, just stands back there, craning her neck and looking around the apartment.
“You guys do okay.”
“Thanks. It’s not my place,” I say, and deliver the cup.
“You might put on some clothes,” she tells me, eyes fixed on my chin.
I look down. I’m naked.
“Right,” I say. “Sorry.”
“Did Joe tell you I’m a nurse?”
“Joe didn’t say a thing about you,” I say over my shoulder as I go to collect a robe.
“That’s surprising. Vac and mini-g medicine, combat metabolism, oxydep—Injuries from anoxia and hypoxia.”
“MHAT?” I ask from the bedroom.
“No. Not that there’s anything wrong with MHAT. Good for warriors in trouble. But my billets were orbital.”
“Active duty?”
“Indefinite furlough,” she says. “I’m facing courts-martial.”
“That’s good,” I say.
“Hmm.”
“What’s your name?”
“Puddin’ tame,” she says.
“Great. Just a friend of Joe’s, or a friend of Teal’s?”
“A friend to Mars,” she says. “I hope.”
I’ve put on a robe and cinch the tie as I return.
“Can I see the coin?” she asks.
I’ve been clenching it against my palm like Gollum—my Precious—as I once observed myself doing on Mars, in the Drifter, but, now, shyly enough, I drop the end of the tie, open my fingers, and hold it out.
She reaches.
I pluck it back and close my hand.
“Name, rank, serial number,” I say.
“First Lieutenant Alice Harper, U.S. Marine Medical Services, awaiting dishonorable discharge.”
“Disability?”
“Multiple cancers, all cured—but leading to profound Cosmoline sickness,” she says. “Can’t take the vac anymore.” Then she adds, when I look dubious, “That’s my real name and rank, fuckhead.”
Spoken like a true Skyrine.
Again, I hold out the coin. She picks it up between small, pretty fingers, nails cut close and clean and painted with clear polish, and turns it over, brings it to her eye, then hands it back.
“Looks good,” she says.
“What does it mean? A second coin…”
“Tell me what happened,” she says, and takes another step into the apartment. “May I sit?”
“Of course.”
She sits on the couch.
And just as she does that, the awful reluctance returns. I don’t want to tell. Telling is like making people die all over again. I stand in the living room, saying nothing, just looking out the window with a dumbass squint.
“I’m a good listener,” she says. “Tell me what happened, and maybe I’ll be able to tell you what the coin means.”
I gather up my courage. I would like to know more. I already know some of it. Not a lot. Just enough. The Algerians and the Voors weren’t the first to mine the Drifter. Not by three and a half billion years.
It’s a big story getting bigger. Let’s slip back into it slowly, like a scalding bath.
COMES THE HEAT
Teal and I return to the northern garage and put on our skintights. Scrubbed and recharged, my suit is almost comfortable. There’s six hours of oxygen in the backpack, new filters—not pristine sweetness, but no longer pickle juice. Reassuring, if things get bad and we have to exit in a hurry.
“The Voors will kill you if t’ey can,” Teal says under her breath. “T’ey hate brown people. And your fems are bossy, too.”
“Brown people do better in the vac,” I say.
“My fat’er t’ought so,” she says. Teal’s back is to me as we head toward the ladder leading to the cold high room, which I’m hoping is warming now that power is back on. She pauses at the bottom of the ladder. “Te Voors had all t’is,” she says, shoulders tensed, back arched, everything in her posture asking me how stupid they must be. “Wealt’ and food and metal and water power, as long as te hobo flowed. And ’tis still flowing, down t’ere, where ’tis safe and useful. But te Voors will never be happy. Na else wanted a work or trade wit’ t’em, because of te wrong t’ey did te Algerians—and my fat’er.”
I say nothing. My job is to look northwest. We climb the ladder in silence. The cold room is warming, just a little. The radiant heater mounted on one wall crackles as years of dust pop off.
Teal raises the shutter.
We both see at once. Where the steady brown blur had been, there’s now a wide wall of dust, and it’s no storm. Big movement all along the western horizon, an arc of at least thirty klicks, from one corner of the port to the other. Many things in motion.
What sort of things?
I close my helm’s plate and dial down a pair of virtual binocs. The plate measures the angles of incident light from the front of the plate to the rear, does a transform algorithm, and voila—a lensless virtual magnification of the infrared projects into my eyes, along with my angel’s analysis of what I might be seeing. More Guru tech.