London Wild (92 page)

‘If you do that, I’ll tell you nothing,’ Myajes replied calmly. ‘Besides, how are you going to get me to a shuttle? I tend to stand out slightly, what with my stripes and everything.’

‘That’s very easy,’ Khosi replied. She reached into the handbag and brought out the frame, which she then began to unfold. ‘Actually, I’d better set this up before I let you out anyway. It’d be hard to keep an eye on you and do this at the same time.’

Myajes’ eyes went wide
; it was obvious he recognized the item in question, and a single word left his lips: ‘Eschiff.’

Khosi gave Myajes a wink and then left the screen for a minute.

Myajes’ voice could be heard as she walked away from the screen, and there was panic in his voice. ‘No, you can’t be. You don’t look anything like the Eschiff that I was taught about.’

Khosi ignored him, more interested in finding a place to put the frame than
in anything he might have to say about her lineage. Virtually every wall was covered in shelving, shelves carrying everything from test tubes, retorts, and Bunsen burners to cuddly toys, pot plants and note pads. She considered ripping some of the shelving down, but the brackets were too close together and would poke out from beyond the front of the frame, preventing it from functioning properly. In the end she decided that the best place to set the frame up was on the large screen wall itself.

She placed the frame and turned it on so that the image of her room could be seen clearly beyond the frame. She then returned to what she could still see of the screen, happy to find an astonished Myajes staring back at her. This was the first time since she’d come to this benighted planet that something had worked exactly as she had planned.

‘It’s not possible!’ Myajes screamed at her face. ‘You can’t be Eschiff. You look nothing like Eschiff!’

‘What?’ Khosi commented back calmly, ‘
Missing my horns?’

‘Missing your stripes,’ Myajes replied sternly.

‘It’s a disguise,’ Khosi re-affirmed simply. ‘Now, all I need to do is find the control that opens your cell, and then we’ll be on our way.’ She started going through the controls one at a time until with a satisfying click, the outer door to Myajes’ cell unlocked.

Breadcrumbs

February was missing her old bed, her bedroom, even her entire house. Her bed here on Mars was a lot harder, not quite as long
, and it was considerably narrower than the double bed she had had all to herself back on Earth. Likewise, on Earth she hadn’t had to share an inconceivably small room with Kitty. It was so small that the gap that was left between their beds wasn’t even big enough for either of them to stand properly. Indeed, the whole apartment was far too small for the five people that were expected to be living here. But that seemed to be par for the course here on Mars, where after water, the main concern seemed to be the conservation of space.

‘So much for them designing it before building it,’ she had muttered to herself
. ‘So much for space not being an issue here!’

She got up and made her way to the shower room. February didn’t like the way the shower room worked
, and yet it made perfect sense to her, considering water conservation. The sonic shower, using sound rather than water, was very unpopular amidst even the herd. The one good thing about using a sonic shower was that she didn’t have to dry herself off with a towel afterwards. On the other hand, she just never felt as clean as she did after showering with water, and just where did all the dirt that was shaken off of her body end up?

She dressed quickly and emerged from the shower room to find Kitty standing just outside waiting patiently. ‘Did I wake you?’

Kitty greeted her friend with a smile and said, ‘You did. It’s a very small room, hard for someone to move without disturbing the other. It’s already nine thirty, though, and I really need to be up by now anyway. I’m surprised the others aren’t up yet.’

‘Don’t suppose they’ll be long,’ February replied, and she held the door open for Kitty as the other entered the shower.

Another bad thing about a sonic shower, thought February to herself as she returned to their shared bedroom, was that it didn’t wake her up quite like a water shower did
.
She had heard a rumor that somewhere on level two of the colony was a shop that offered showers with water. Obviously they had to have some arrangement with the colony’s officials to make it all legal and above board. The customer was supposed to take a shower on the premises and would pay depending on the length of shower they purchased, which could be anything from two minutes to thirty minutes. She had also heard another rumor that somewhere in the American section of the colony, conveniently located next door to the English section, there was a full-length swimming pool that could be used for a price. The problem with either of these was that she would have to get undressed in public, and this, of course, would show off parts of her body that she didn’t normally bother to cover in makeup. And even if she did go to the trouble of covering every last stripe on her body with a makeup that wouldn’t wash off so easily with water, there was still her tail to think of, and that would be very hard to hide in a flimsy swimming costume. Chances were there was no way she could get away with a visit to the swimming pool, but it might be worth investigating the shower shop, if it existed, to find out what the situation was there. Somehow she felt she would be wasting her time. Even if the showers themselves weren’t communal, the changing rooms probably were, but it was worth looking into. The Goddess knew there wasn’t anything to do if she stayed in the apartment.

February quickly applied some makeup to her face, and with experience born of years, she took less than five minutes to fix it so that she would blend in with the crowds of herd she expected to meet. She also applied a little makeup to her wrists and forearms so that she could wear a cute little black half-sleeved top that she had fought for luggage space to bring along with her. The forearm makeup was a little more awkward because forearms have a habit of knocking other things and people, especially in crowded areas such as the market level of the colony. She had to make sure that if she did brush something, then the makeup would stay on her arms and not commute to whatever she had brushed. She decided she would also carry a small tub of spare makeup just in case she needed to make any repairs. It shouldn’t be too difficult to sneak into a ladies
’ room somewhere and fix it without having to worry about being spotted for the rest of her walk.

‘Going out?’ Kitty asked as she entered their joint bedroom. There really wasn’t a lot of room for the both of them.

February was still applying makeup, though she had moved on from the stuff that disguised what she was to the more feminine touches such as foundation and lipstick. Nothing too outstanding, though—the last thing she wanted was to attract attention. ‘I thought I might take a look around the market level, see what’s there.’

‘Ooh,’ Kitty commented excitedly, ‘give me a few minutes to put a disguise on and I’ll come with you.’

February hesitated. ‘I’d rather you stayed here and kept an eye on the herd. I don’t like to leave them alone for too long at a time. I don’t trust what they might get up to.’

Kitty seemed a little saddened and a little emotional as she said
, ‘Maureen doesn’t get on well with you, I know. But she would never do anything without the backing of the others, and George would never do anything that might hurt me. It’s safe to leave them alone.’

‘I wish I could be sure,’ February told her gently
. ‘I was brought up not to trust the herd, and Maureen is the epitome of why.’

‘Then what about Stanley?’ Kitty asked
, calming down. ‘Stanley has returned to work today. He’ll be meeting a lot of friends there, have plenty to talk about, and yet you won’t be able to keep an eye on him! He could be telling the authorities all sorts of things about us and there’s nothing you can do about it. There are three of them; we can’t follow all of them everywhere and keep an eye on them twenty-four hours a day. In the end, you have to risk trusting them.’

February paused for a minute while she seemed to consider what her friend had said
. ‘I guess you’re right,’ she finally answered. ‘I guess it’s just so much in my nature to distrust them that I want to keep an eye on them at all times. But you’re right; I can’t follow them all the time. Not and live my own life. If they’re going to betray either of us, then they’ll probably do that anyway whether we stay with them all the time or not. Okay, throw a disguise on quickly and let’s get out of here before we wake the rest of the household up.’

‘A little late for that,’ Kitty commented, her voice a lot happier now than it had seemed a minute ago
. ‘George was waiting to use the shower as I stepped out.’

It was just under an hour later when the two emerged from the apartment into the corridor. Kitty was wearing light baggy jeans, her tail snug against one of her legs where it probably wouldn’t have fooled anybody had they actually thought to look for members of her race. Here on Mars, though, the Herbaht simply weren’t an issue. February wore a fairly short black skirt to go with the half-sleeve top she was wearing. There were little hooks that she had added herself placed about the midpoint of the skirt, and these held her tail in place and clear of the opening at the bottom. It was uncomfortable, but it looked good when mingling with the herd, and where the Herbaht were concerned, security was better than comfort. February also carried a small black handbag to hide the spare makeup in as well as a few sundries such as money.

The apartment was quite near the center of the colony. It was one of the better rooms on level one, no more than four ring corridors away from the water cycling plant at the very center of the colony. The apartment might be a lot smaller than she was used to, but February had spent some time visiting the outermost corridors on this level just yesterday and she was very glad that they weren’t living in some of the shoeboxes there. Those places looked far too small for even one person to live in. February had estimated that there was no more than five feet between any two doors. Living in one of those apartments must be like living in a broom closet.

February led the way. It seemed to be how Kitty preferred it. Kitty had probably been under the professor’s thumb for far too long, and the chances of her ever taking the initiative on something were tiny at best. They walked straight past the nearest ramp that led to the next level up and entered an elevator just beyond. February had nothing against using the ramps, but preferred to travel by elevator even if it was only for one floor. It was to do with the fact that she was wearing a skirt and didn’t want to give anyone the opportunity of looking up it to see she had a tail.

There were times when February liked to indulge herself in little fantasies. For example, when the elevator doors opened on level two and she saw the crowds of people clogging up the corridors between the shops, the crowds that she was going to have to mingle with and somehow make her way through
, she imagined for a moment that she was stepping out of the elevator in her natural stripes. The herd saw her, and panicking, they ran as fast as they could, clearing a nice path for her. As nice as the fantasy was, though, doing such a thing could only lead to disaster for both her and Kitty. Instead she had to grit her teeth and join the flow.  

The main problem with the market level was that since there were no vehicles for people to bring and fill with goodies
, most of those who had come here to do some serious shopping had brought a small basket set on wheels, and they tended to pull these things after them, not watching what mischief they might be causing behind them. These baskets easily took up as much room as the herd themselves did. It didn’t help that half the time many of the herd didn’t seem to know where they were going and would stop suddenly, halting the entire flow in one direction or the other, and in most cases there wasn’t much space for people to squeeze past. It also didn’t help that there were branches of four major supermarkets on this level somewhere, and the elevator that had brought February and Kitty to this level emerged opposite the main doors of one such establishment.

There were adverts scattered everywhere, on shop windows and the bare walls between the shops.
At many of the intersections there were billboards, also covered with more adverts. Businesses in this area probably had to advertise like this because there were so few other mediums available to them. Only the really big Martian companies could afford to tout their wares on Earth with the hope of any sort of real return on their investment. What was left for most was word of mouth, sending out fliers and hanging leaflets, and the directory of businesses that was supplied to all new residents of Mars.

February stopped at the next billboard and examined it for a few minutes
. She had been hoping there would be a map of the level or at least of the immediate area, and indeed there was. But some idiot had stuck an advert for a roller disco right over the top of it and made the thing virtually unreadable. She looked around, a little lost, trying to see if there were any other billboards in sight at any more junctions, but there were too many people in all the corridors to see to the end of any of them clearly, and there was no place for her to gain a little height and so see better.