Balance Point (11 page)
Authors: Robert Buettner
That ready room could be accessed from inside the moonlet only by a twenty-minute trip up from Mousetrap’s inhabited core levels through eleven miles of solid nickel-iron, via a series of high-speed elevators, staggered to slow any attack down the elevator shafts. The elevator series began from an unnumbered suite, behind an unmarked armored door, on a back passage in Shipyard. The suite and each way point were guarded by armed goons who would turn you back or crack your skull if your box rental wasn’t paid up or you scanned wrong on the retinal.
As the three-hundred-pound goon at the first waypoint packed me in to the shoulder-wide next-stage elevator then slammed its wire gate closed across my face, I smiled out at him through the mesh. He stared back like a stone with hairy nostrils.
I managed a narrow shrug.
Most P-mail customers considered a visit to the Mousetrap P-mail office a claustrophobic nightmare. I, having been raised downlevels on Yavet, found it nostalgic.
From the office’s ready-room-become-lobby, man-sized crawl tunnels radiated out like a starburst to the interceptor sally ports, long empty of defending fighters. Today the sally ports remained tight and secure enough to recover and launch a hodge-podge fleet of small, stealthy and unregistered craft. Those craft shuttled contraband and P-mail onto and off of slowly approaching cruisers via the lifeboat ports, now empty, that had once served the cruisers’ vast troop-carrying spaces.
Politicians, and so the cruiser drivers who served at the politicians’ pleasure, didn’t crack down on P-mail for the same reasons that the politicians didn’t crack down on numbered account banking havens like Rand and Funhouse. First, some politicians were
paid
not to crack down. Second, if one’s enemies seized control of the ship of state, it was wise to have lifeboats available.
In the P-mail office the clerk behind the counter looked up, then ignored me, even though I’d been coming there for years. The system thrived on anonymity.
I thumbed the contents of my box, chucked the physical spam into the inst-cinerator and began reading the rest. First I opened the dupe sheets for Jazen’s, and found a check so big that I whooped, which caused the clerk to frown at me.
When I reenlisted, I had sold my bar to the proprietress of the business next door to Jazen’s. It was a long-term installment sale, with payment amounts tied to profits, and the duplicate ledger sheets that accompanied the check showed profits had soared.
Jazens’ official ledger showed Jazen’s was losing its ass, but so did the official ledgers of every bar, whorehouse, poko parlor and janga den in Shipyard. That was because Mousetrap was a Trueborn Territory, and the taxes that the Free City of Shipyard kicked up to the territorial government were calculated from the official ledgers.
The Free City of Shipyard was also supposed to collect and kick up to the territorial government confiscatorily high point-of-sale taxes on imports like Trueborn single-malt whisky and slow-burn janga from Bren. The Trueborn politicians like Kit’s father, who thought these taxes up, believed they shielded the citizens of developing economies from societal burdens like alcoholism and drug addiction. Us shielded citizens believed the Trueborns were simply annoyed that someone, somewhere, who was not them, was having a good time.
Shipyard ignored the taxes, and so, having done their moral duty, did the distant Trueborns. Don’t believe me? On any day when a cruiser from Earth is laid over you’ll find Trueborn politician passengers passing their layovers guzzling untaxed single-malt and blowing untaxed janga at Shipyard’s finest whorehouses.
I eyed the whopping check payable to cash from Jazen’s, LLC one more time, shook my head, then tucked it into my jacket pocket along with my remaining wad of P-mail, still unopened. Payments like this one wouldn’t make me as rich as a Trueborn. But they would make me self-sufficient enough that I would no longer feel like a charity case every time I rubbed shoulders with Edwin Trentin-Born.
I exited the down elevator and passed Lockheed’s again. But this time I didn’t return to the station. I dodged through drunks toward the passage that led to Jazen’s.
Since I reenlisted I normally kept my distance from Jazen’s when I passed through Mousetrap. Orion had taught me that pain and temptation are best dealt with by avoidance. That’s why I got my statements and payments through third parties. But a businesslike drop-in to offer congratulations on a job well done surely couldn’t hurt.
EIGHTEEN
Two minutes later, I turned down the side passage opposite Lockheeds for the first time since I had reenlisted. The ambient light was dimmer down all the side passages in Shipyards, and I ducked by long-conditioned reflex as the ceiling and walls squeezed down to a Yavi-friendly seven feet by seven feet.
I stopped at the sign glowing above the first door on the left. It still read jazen’s, and the sign next door to Jazen’s still read maison dessele. The two businesses were now commonly owned, but operated better as complimentary providers than competitors.
Jazen’s was known for reliable scotch, quality blow and a tolerance for GI dustups. Maison Dessele was Shipyard’s only companionship salon staffed exclusively by courtesan-class Marini hostesses. And a few hosts, if that floated one’s boat.
Jazen’s and Maison Dessele were considered tame by Shipyard standards. After all, at a place around the corner you could buy oral sex with a six-eyed catfish.
Jazen’s was open but empty most mornings, even when a cruiser was in, and this morning was the same. When I stepped through the door, though, I cocked my head. Something was not the same.
Jazen’s occupied an asymmetrical, vaulted cavern that had originally been filled by a blob of pure copper. The copper had been scraped out and sent to war as starship wiring. By the time I took the joint over, the humid exhalations of thousands of drunks had oxidized the copper residue on the walls and ceiling to verdigris, the gray-green color of those statues in those open-air parks that the Trueborns have so many of.
My eyes widened as I craned my neck.
Today the walls and ceiling gleamed like a cathedral dome paved with museum-quality Trueborn pennies. Maybe it was true what they said about a woman’s touch.
In the bar’s center a lone figure bent on hands and knees with her back to me, scrubbing the floor tile. Based on my two years doing the same, she was cleaning up spilled beer and vomit. Which tells you all you need to know about the glamour of bar ownership.
A successful bar, even when empty of customers, still needed an owner there working his, or her, ass off. And in this case, the ass was as lovely as I remembered it.
I dropped my chin and lowered my voice to deep bass. “Y’all serve infantry, Ma’am?”
She kept scrubbing, but waved a hand. “Only the ones with charming accents! Always two for one for GIs at Jazen’s.”
Syrene Dessele stood, hands on her waist, stretched and moaned.
She turned, scrub cloth in one hand, and combed ebony hair back from her eyes with the long fingers of the other.
“So, soldier, what’ll it—” Her enormous brown eyes widened and she stiffened as she recognized me. “Be?” It came out a squeak, and she cleared her throat.
A courtesan-class Marini dressed to scrub floors outglitters any ten New York runway models on an opening night. And that was when the courtesan was vertical and not even trying. Syrene’s outfit was glistening black, jeweled at the throat and wrists, and covered her neck to toes. It looked painted on because it
was
painted on, then peeled off and sewn to fit. Marini courtesans had been dressing that way since some unsung genius had discovered a way to thicken Bren tree sap six hundred years before. Fashionable Trueborn women at the time were wearing layered pantaloons. Look it up.
I said, “Got Trueborn single malt?”
Her voice quavered. “All out, I’m afraid.”
I drew a breath, scared my voice might crack, too. “Small batch bourbon?”
She pointed at an empty spot on the top shelf and her finger trembled. “Run on bourbon last night.” She thrust one foot forward while she swung her arm at the bottles glistening behind the bar. “Have a look. Maybe the gentleman will see something he wants that we
do
have.”
I stepped toward her, smiled. “Maybe the gentleman already did.”
Before I reached her she blinked, and her eyes narrowed. “God damn you, Jazen!” She pegged the wet scrub cloth and it slapped across my nose and mouth and stuck.
I mumbled through beer and vomit, “Great to see you, too.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” I peeled the cloth off, dropped it, and scrubbed my face and hands with a Sani.
Hands on hips, chin out, her eyes burned me. “Three years! Not a word. Not a note.”
“There was the contract from the solicitors.” I glanced round at the new decor. “You’ve done well here.”
“Up three hundred ten percent. I assume you got the check.” She paused, crossed her arms. “Why? Why like that, Jazen?”
“Long story.”
She stepped to the taps, drew two lagers, then motioned me to sit with her at a two-top. “Bore me.”
I stared into my beer before I answered. “I went back to my old job. I can’t talk about my job any more now than I could before.”
“You went back to the blonde.”
I sighed. “It wasn’t that simple.”
“She’s very rich. And Trueborn royalty. I call that simple.”
“We worked together before. We work together now.”
Her lip curled, and she turned her head away. “You lie worse than you make love.”
“I never told you it was only work. Not before. Not now.”
Syrene stood and walked to the bar, her back to me, and leaned, arms out and head bowed for a long time. “I should have known it would happen sooner or later. Most girls like me don’t even get two years.” She sobbed.
I went to her, laid my hands on her shoulders, and rubbed them. “Don’t give me the ‘girls like me’ crap, Syrene. On Bren it’s ‘girls like you’ who’re the royalty.”
She reached her hand up, took my fingers and kissed them. “I know. There’s no shame in being a courtesan. But the Trueborns don’t see it that way, and you grow more Trueborn every time I see you.” I felt her warm against me, closed my eyes.
“The sign says open. Guess it depends on open for what.”
At the sound, I spun away from Syrene toward the door as my heart sank toward my navel.
Kit stood silhouetted in the open doorway, hands on hips and feet planted.
I said, “What are you—?”
“Howard bumped the meeting. I figured I’d find you up here, drunk and lonely.” She shook her head, snorted at the beer glasses on the table. “I see I was half right.”
I held up my hand, palm out. “Kit, this isn’t—”
She looked sleek, brunette Syrene up and down. “I’m blonde, Jazen. Not blind. And I was stupid enough to think—” Kit pivoted back into the corridor.
“Kit! I—”
She was gone.
I started for the door but Syrene caught my arm. “Let her go.”
I pulled away, but by the time I reached the corridor, Kit was nowhere to be seen.
I ran out to the square, stood on tip-toe, and peered across the crowds swirling in front of Lockheeds. Not a blonde head anywhere.
“She’s more beautiful than I imagined.” Syrene stood beside me, arms crossed.
“Jesus. Could I screw this up more?”
“Yes. That’s why I tried to stop you. Apologizing too soon to a woman who’s in no mood to take crap just makes you both say even more that you can’t take back.”
I looked down into those enormous eyes. Then I smiled and nodded. “How many times did I forget that in two years?”
“Too many.”
She threaded her arm through mine and turned me back toward Jazen’s. “Buy you a drink, soldier?”
“You wouldn’t take advantage of a sensitive guy when he’s vulnerable, would you?” I smiled as I said it, but I pushed her hand away harder than I had to.
She spun me to face her. “No, Jazen. I wouldn’t. And at the moment I think you’re wise enough to be neither. But we should talk.”
“About?”
“Your future with the blonde princess.”
It turned out Syrene had a single malt in the back. She tabbed the sign to closed, locked the door, and we sat again with the bottle between us, no glasses. Like the old days.
She swigged, passed the bottle across. “Did you tell her about us?”
I took a pull, let the liquor burn all the way down. “Yes.” I felt my face flush. “Well. Not, you know, about the thing with the thing.”
She smiled. “That’s not what I meant. Technique is trivial. I mean did you tell her it was more than that?”
I raised my eyebrows. Technique hadn’t seemed trivial at the time. Speculating on the technique of Kit’s old boyfriend, Brad Weason, he of the perfect hair and teeth, didn’t seem trivial when I thought about
that
. “Well. Yes. I mean, I told her the truth. Why?”
Syrene tilted her head back, swallowed, pushed the bottle across to me. “It may take longer for the princess to forgive you.”
I paused, blinked, shook my head. I’d forgotten. Canned atmosphere like Mousetrap’s caused the human body to assimilate alcohol faster. “Huh?”
“A woman can accept a man following his prick in the wrong direction better than she can accept him following his heart there.”
“But you and I didn’t even—”
“It’s not whether we did. It’s whether you still wanted to. And
why
you wanted to.”
“Men always want to! If we didn’t, you and your grandmothers and cousins would have been sewing quilts for the last six hundred years.”
“True.” Syrene smiled.
Marini courtesans have perfect teeth, by dint of six hundred years of breeding. So did Kit, by dint of Trueborn orthodonture. So did Brad Weason. I was lucky I had all of mine.
We drank in silence for ten minutes.
Finally, I swigged, then tilted my head against my hand as I felt the scotch. “You know what else is true? Kit’s father hates me. I have ordinary teeth.”
Syrene’s head wagged like one of those dolls the Trueborns give away at baseball games. Six hundred years of breeding hadn’t enabled Marini courtesans to hold their liquor any better than I could. When Syrene and I drank together, the experience was frank, but brief.
Syrene said, “An’ you’re a crinimul. They hate me, too.”
“I’m not an Illegal anymore. And they don’t even know you. So how can they hate you?”
“They know what I do. They define a person by what they do. ‘S a fact.”
I tilted the bottle and peered at the golden contents. Not enough left to rinse a glass.
“I make people happy and the Trueborns call me a whore. Your blonde kills people she’s never met and they call her a hero. That’s fucked, you know?” Syrene laid her head on the table.
It
was
fucked. I lay my own head on the table and stared across at Syrene’s porcelain cheek as she breathed soft and even there.
What “they” should know about her was that she was an innocent child who couldn’t hold her liquor, even though she knew how to do the thing with the thing. That she was smart and hardworking enough to grow a new business three hundred ten percent annually even while she made payroll running another business that kept fifty employees and their dependents fed. And that she was tough and honest and funny and didn’t take crap.
She reached across the table, touched my hand and mumbled, “People like you and me, we’re alike, Jazen. We’ll never be like the Princess and her kind. Not ever.”
My eyelids weighed five pounds each. I saw my hand beneath Syrene’s, turned my palm up, and closed my fingers around hers. She cooed in her sleep.
She was right. We were alike. In a way that Kit and I would never be alike. I meant to tell Syrene so, but I slept instead.
I woke still seated and slumped across the two-top table with my cheek in a drool puddle. The evening shift bartender stared at me as he wiped a glass. He was new. To him, I wasn’t Jazen, himself. I was just another drunk left over from the early shift. Syrene was gone, but the bottle we had emptied remained.
I stared at the bottle without moving so my head wouldn’t fall off.
In single malt
veritas
.
With a lurch I stood, stiff and aching, begged a headache cap from the barkeep, and visited the restroom before I returned to the ship. Whether I felt like it or not, and whether Kit felt like it or not, we were going to talk this out. In the past, my failure to confront my issues with Kit had bought both of us nothing but trouble.
And she had probably cooled off by now.
When I stepped off the elevator at our stateroom’s deck, the passage lights were dimmed to evening level. When I got to our door, the “Do Not Disturb” light glowed blue.
I thought about knocking, then quietly punched into the code pad D-a-1-s-y. The DND light still glowed. I tried again. No dice. I got a bad feeling, turned and walked down the passageway to the deck steward’s desk.
The evening duty steward looked up, smiled. “Ah! Captain Parker!” He reached under his desk, drew out a note-sized, sealed ship’s stationary envelope, and slid it across the desk to me. “Colonel Born left this for you.”
I wrinkled my forehead. “Did she go somewhere?”
“I don’t believe so, Captain. But I just came on at the hour. I understand from the turn-down steward that the Colonel took the evening meal in your stateroom with an excellent Bordeaux, then left the note and turned in.”
I slid the notecard out of the envelope.
Dear Shithead,
Changed the door password. Try to break in and I will have you thrown in the brig. Go fuck yourself. Or whoever.
Me
Maybe it would be best to postpone our talk after all.
“Everything alright, Captain?”
“Perfect.” I pointed at the note. “She just had a little headache so she turned in early. Actually, I’m not feeling tired, myself.” I pumped my arms as though I was running in place. “Think I’ll take a stroll,” I pointed down the corridor at our stateroom, “Before I, you know, turn in, myself.”
“Of course, sir.” The steward started to turn away, turned back. “By the way, Captain, the poolside chaises on deck twenty-four are made up with sheets, blankets and pillows every night.”
The purser turned his back discreetly and resumed his business, his screens flickering in the dim light like colored gauze as he whispered them on and off until he found what he needed.
What
I
needed to find tonight was a fellow bachelor with a sympathetic ear and time to spare.
Fortunately, I knew where to find one.