Harvest of Stars (12 page)

An occasional place still seemed in fairly good shape, a factory, a genetic clinic, two or three restaurants, the kind of establishments that could draw custom from a wide radius but, being of modest size, could not afford to move into higher-rent locations. The tailor’s was one such. Its interior was neat and clean, the live clerk who greeted her polite and well-clad. He offered assistance, explaining apologetically that the equipment was obsolete and the programming didn’t include the newest international fashions.

“Never mind,” Kyra said. “I remember shops like this from when I was a kid.” She didn’t, but her profession had whetted the innate talent for mechanics that it required. “What I’m after is just a few serviceable garments.”

Still, alone in the design room, stripped and measured, she took her time. It was fun, it was therapy, projecting this and that image onto the life-size hologram of herself, watching appearances shift as the computer modified patterns to fit, keying in her alterations and seeing them adapted. Four changes of underwear should do. Two pair slacks, perlux, one black and close-fitting, one blue and flare-bottomed with a thin red stripe down either leg. A stout gray work shirt, a more feminine apricot iridon tunic, a blouse fluffy and puffy in white luna but—she made sure—allowing free movement. A full tigryl skirt, calf length. A pale green cloak with hood, in case of rain. That gave her a variety of combinations which should fit most occasions. As a standard item she chose a carryall for them and her former apparel, convertible to a daypack.

Her finger pressed
Complete
. The price flashed onto the screen. It exceeded the cash she had with her. Reluctantly, she debited her account. If the Sepo somehow came to
suspect her and ordered a data retrieval, here was a footprint left for them to find.

Bueno, with luck it wouldn’t happen, at least not for days during which she’d be running. And she didn’t suppose that even in Avantist North America the system had recorded the specs of her purchase. Its capacity was enormous but finite. Minor data like the transaction itself were doubtless expunged after some such period as three years.

A statute of limitations. She giggled.

No, stay serious. Use the time while the machines worked to think further about her situation, and Guthrie’s. Cash didn’t leave tracks. Dollars were no longer convertible, but nevertheless preferable till she’d escaped across the border. Ucus were eagerly accepted, of course, but tended to fix her in memory. If she went to a bank and swapped, that would get into the database and could make somebody wonder why she’d done it. Yet she needed more bills and coins. And if she could lay a false trail—

A carillon rang, irritatingly jolly. A rack slid out, bearing her new clothes. She tried them on, selected the tunic and black pants, packed the rest, and left. “I hope you’re pleased, Miz Davis,” said the clerk. His smile looked smarmy, and why had he asked his terminal for her name? She hoped he hadn’t bollixed the privacy circuit and peeped at her.

“Yes, this will do,” she answered curtly.

“Are you from space?”

She tensed. “What makes you think that?” Unauthorized, he could not have called up her address. Anyway, Earthside it was merely a reroute program in Quito.

“Oh, your … appearance, miz. You sound North American but you bear yourself … proudly. I always wanted to visit space.”

She heard wistfulness and felt a bit of pity. Had he ever traveled at all? The honorific he used was rare outside these parts.

Travel—Your multi gave you holographic audiovisuals. If you could afford a vivifer attachment, you could have
extra sensations. But to see and hear Tychopolis Gardens in the round, feel a whiff suggestive of perfumes pouring from the giant flowers, get tricks played on your nerves to hint at the kinesthesia of low-weight—it wasn’t just impoverished, it was passive. You were not there, you did not go freely about, nothing happened that wasn’t programmed into the show.

She recognized an opportunity. “Yes, I work skyside.” No sense in being specific. Pilots had more glamour than was wise for her. She sighed, hoping it came across believably. “On vacation, but I’m afraid that’s being cut short. The news this morning.”

His eyes widened. “About the Fireball company? Do you work for
them?”

“All outfits with interests in space are affected,” she said truthfully if ambiguously. “I’d better report to my company’s nearest agent outside this country. In person; com lines seem … tied up.” Maybe he’d understand that had to be a euphemism. “Bueno, I always wanted to visit Québec. But I needed suitable clothes, no?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. Beautifully chosen and designed, Miz Davis. I’m sorry your vacation was interrupted, but have a nice trip. Come again anytime, por favor. Muchas gracias.” She left him jittery in his doorway and drove off.

So. If the Sepo did check, they should get the idea from him that she had headed northeastward. The border wasn’t sealed or the ’cast would have said so. Given as many people as crossed every day in either direction, at a large number of different points, mass screening of them couldn’t amount to more than an identicard scan, whether before they boarded aircraft or when they came to the border by ground transport. No record would be kept unless something unusual turned up. Probably everyone who had anything with them that might be a neural network was now being stopped and searched. Thus, if the Sepo ran a data retrieval on her and found nothing about her exiting, the reasonable conclusion should be that she’d simply panicked and bolted, and was of no further interest to them.

A notation that she had today bought a substantial amount of dollars would contradict this. However—She nodded to herself. She was a rookie in Erie-Ontario, after her years of absence, but she’d been in other cities where the poor were plentiful.

Pulling over, she put a map of the Quark Fair area on the trike’s screen and studied it. If she remembered aright what she had heard as a child, the section was then a rough circle about a klick in diameter. It had since shrunk little if at all. At first reconstruction had moved rapidly into the devastation left by the Buffalo meteorite strike. But the Second Republic soon started breaking down in earnest, and nobody respectable had a chance to do anything further. When the Avantists took over, they promised quick rehabilitation. They had promised many things. Kyra shrugged and proceeded.

A bus station lay about two kilometers from her goal. She racked the trike and called the rental agency as Lee had suggested yesterday. Speaking breathlessly, she tossed in the superfluous explanation that she must catch the first available carrier to Montréal. Just in case. Bag on back, she cast about afoot till she found a bank. Slotting her ident into a teller, she instructed it
1000 Universal Currency Units in twenties
.

A total of 430 is available in fifties and hundreds
, it flashed.
Do you wish to wait for delivery?

Damn! This was a good-sized branch. Had inefficiency become so pervasive?
Cancel
she ordered.
430 Universal Currency Units
. When the envelope popped out, she took care to count the bills before she slipped them into the guard pocket of her tunic.

Onward, now. The neighborhood was as raucous as that around the Blue Theta. Then abruptly, when she crossed a street, she found herself amidst total decay. Broken windows, patched over, were like wounds on sooty walls. Doorways gaped on hollowness. Graffiti misspelled words of rage or obscenity. They were brighter colored than the few shop signs. A beggar sat ragged on the walk, hand out, chanting over and over his litany of hard luck. Two
shapeless women squabbled wearily. Three children ran from an alley to pluck at her garments and shriek for alms. She strode on, ignoring them, for otherwise she would instantly be caught in a horde. An old man lurched past, staring into air, mumbling. Four young men hooted after her. A large man bound the opposite way veered as if to intercept. His face bristled; she smelled him two meters off. She drew a breath and prepared her body. Aikido was a favorite activity of hers, though the thought of using it in anger tasted foul.

He squinted, changed course, and went by. She heard him spit. No matter. Would politicians never learn that what an economy managed by the state mainly produced was poverty?

Not that unrestricted free enterprise guaranteed wealth. Racket waxed ahead, a hubbub, shouts, horns, drum-pulse, machinery, noises less easily knowable. Kyra rounded a corner, walked one more block, and entered Quark Fair.

This part was a flea market. Already now at noontide it pullulated. Many vendors sat on the ground, perhaps with a scrap of rug between buttocks and cracked pavement, their wares spread before them. Some had a chair and table. Some had thrown pieces of plastic siding together to make booths. They seemed to be of every breed, male and female, youthful and elderly and in hardened middle age, clean and dirty, plump and bony, cheerful and woeful. Chanted praises of what they had to offer cut through the chatter and footfalls of visitors who wandered among the displays, chaffered, bought, sold, traded. Those were of nearly every condition in life; not only Low Worlders came here. They milled in more hundreds than Kyra could estimate. It was unpleasant, being so surrounded and jostled.

Farther away she glimpsed real buildings, mostly shanties, a few larger and more solid. Above them reared the stump of a skyscraper, broken off at the twentieth floor by the impact blast. Rusted and twisted, its skeleton thrust snags above the remnants of walls. Window glass flashed
with sunlight; nothing better had replaced the original panes. Everywhere, signs blinked, flared, writhed, luridly hued. Their effect after dark must be gyrocephalic.

A man sidled next to her. He was thin, sallow, clad in a grubby yellow coverall. “Change money?” he asked hoarsely.

Ah, ha. She stopped. He took stance before her. “I give better rate than bank,” he proposed.

“How much can you handle?” She expected to deal with several petty operators before she had converted enough.

He tautened. “How much you got?” When she hesitated: “I arrange. Safe, honest, good rate.” And never a database entry.

The faster the better, no? What she had drawn, added to what she had from Hawaii, let Kyra say, “A thousand ucus.” That wouldn’t leave her with much hard cash, but all she needed to do was get out of this wretched country.

“Come.” He took her elbow. She wanted to shake his hand off but decided not to.

Threading among the booths, she saw more for sale than clothes, homewares, toys, food, anything cheap. Where had that laser torch come from? What about yonder diamond necklace? Stones so large and clear were expensive to manufacture. In a computer holoscreen, an animation of Petie, half child, half fuzzy bear, played with the operator, who hoped to sell him to somebody who wanted a pet. Interactive programs like that were supposed to be unpiratable, and to go for a stiff price. High-tech safeguards evoked high-tech burglary kits, she guessed.

CASINO GRANDIOSO danced frantically above a big house. “In here,” said the man. “My name Edwin.” Kyra felt his stare expectant upon her. She kept her mouth shut. His drew tight, but he couldn’t very well speak his resentment.

Hung with maroon velvyl, the foyer was a sudden grotto of dim quietness. A girl sat behind a counter. Her face was teen age, her eyes a hundred years old. “We see Sr. Leggatt,” Edwin told her. “Got big deal for him.”

She nodded, spoke briefly with an intercom, and said, “You’re in luck. He’s not too busy. Go on in.”

They passed through three spacious rooms. As yet, few players were at the tables and machines. Kyra checked her step momentarily before a row of terminals. Fractal patterns filled the screens with eerie beauty. She knew this game. You turned the system chaotic, then tried to bring it to one or another attractor. The payoff depended on which you achieved, if any.

“Nice, hey?” said Edwin. “Play later.”

“No, gracias.” It was doubtless rigged. Besides, she was hungry.

An armed guard admitted them to the office. It was sumptuously furnished. A multiceiver displayed what might well be real and might even be real-time. A man lay in bed with a metamorph. Her arms and legs were spidery long, her body of eel-like slimness and suppleness; sleek brown fur covered her, and a plumed tail arched around to stroke his back. She trilled.

Metamorph—It was as if Kyra watched the scene through the great innocent eyes of the Keiki Moana, the Sea Children. She turned her head away.

Across his desk, Leggatt was another startling sight. For some reason he chose to be obese. From the bullet head, his black gaze probed at her.

“The lady exchange a thousand ucus,” Edwin said, half triumphantly, half obsequiously.

“Oh,” said a shrill tenor. “Bueno, bueno. Por favor, be seated, señora.” Leggatt switched off the multi. “Care for a smoke, tobacco, marijuana, blend?”

Kyra took the edge of a chair. “No, gracias,” she snapped. “Let’s just do our business. This … caballero mentioned a favorable rate. I want dollars.”

“My commission, sir,” Edwin whined. “Not forget my commission.” He received a glower and shrank back.

“Whatever you wish, señora,” Leggatt said, beaming. “Best deal in town, I promise you. Let me see—today’s official rate—what I can do for you—” He named a figure.

He must expect Kyra to haggle. She wanted out, and accepted. He covered any surprise with words to the effect of how glad he was to meet someone who understood these matters, while he took the Union money from a wall safe.

“Count it, do,” he urged. “No, no, hold your ucus till you’re satisfied. This is between amigos, right?” Also, he had that gunjin at the door.

His friendliness did not keep him from examining twice the bills she handed over before he stowed them. Edwin coughed. Leggatt drew a thick wallet out of his robe, peeled off some dollars, gave them into the reaching fingers, and said, “Go.”

Edwin scrambled to his feet. “Hyper meeting you, señorita,” he chattered. “Any time you—”

“Go,” Leggatt directed. Edwin went.

Kyra rose. “Don’t be in such a hurry,” Leggatt said. “Can I do anything more for you? I like making my clients happy.”