Port Casper

Chapter Eighteen

Grace woke to a blaring headache in a bright room. She squinted against the sunlight, her neck stiff and her tongue thick, and decided the morning would be better with her eyes pinched shut.

Cursing synthetic alcohol, she turned away from the light and fell. Not my bed, her mind belatedly relayed as she lay on the floor.

She groped her right hand and felt a hard surface. The table, she thought, keenly introduced to my elbow on the way down. Her left hand found something soft. My sofa. She pushed hard until she was on her knees, then eased herself back onto the sofa. Her head sat at an awkward angle from vertical. She tried to massage her neck, and head, and elbow. She didn't have enough hands.

"Dark," she whimpered. The angry red beyond her eyelids faded. A cautious look confirmed that her windows were now walls. Beautiful technology.

She willed herself to stand and carefully entered the kitchen. Painkillers. She groped for the bottle and quickly downed two pills. Quickly, she thought. Please.

On her way back to the sofa, she stumbled over the loafer wreckage on the floor. Her forgotten anger began to pound in time with her head. Her company had spied on her. And Raj had known they would.

Grace pulled her ptenda close to her mouth. "Raj." The display flickered beneath her nose as it connected. She twisted her wrist, angling the bright away from her eyes. Stupid to drink engineered alcohol, she thought. I can't afford to be compromised.

"Ms. Donner, Raj is still asleep."

"Uggh." She wanted to complain to a human, not a PodPooch.

"Are you all right, Ms. Donner?"

"Raj. Plans. Idiot." She leaned back.

"I can wake him."

"No. No. I'll come over. But it's gonna take a while."

• • •

The transport raced toward Bod Town. Grace squirmed in her seat, unable to relax. The hard seat was tolerable when she felt fine, but was distinctly evil after a night on the couch. At least the mover was quiet and empty. Her headache had ebbed, but she didn't have the energy for a social smile, let alone friendly chit-chat.

The mover slid into a parking space at an intersection near Raj's apartment. As she stepped out, her foot crunched onto twisted metarm. It was blackened like the loafer in her apartment. She kicked the wreckage, sending the scraps skittering down the gutter.

The intersection was a nighttime hot spot in Bod. On the southeast corner sat Balaharas, an exclusive club where ambitious sheep rubbed shoulders with the wealthy and dangerous. Grace heard that protectors frequented the place, in pursuit of valuable and illicit knowledge. Raj liked it for its zucchini fries. Zucchini fries! He didn't see things the way a protector would, and that was the problem.

On the southwest corner stood the biggest and most luxurious dream castle in the city proper, where patrons rented virtual and mechflesh pleasures. Each matched expertly to the individual, no human trafficking involved. A few days ago, fact agents reported that a protector had broken the arm of a patron who wanted her on the menu. Grace thought of how much leeway protectors enjoyed under the law. Raj doesn't have that freedom, and ITB wants him more than me, she considered.

On the northwest corner sat a restaurant that lost money year after year. The owner, according to Raj, was a widow named Jupta Gudi. No one Raj knew could get a reservation at Delight, but it was packed every night. She heard on her first day that special clearance must be granted before a protector might approach within twenty meters of the property. Protectors could not harass those entering or leaving the building. It angered Grace how easily money could thwart justice. The corporations controlled the compstate. People like her, like Raj, were at their mercy.