A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2)(6)
Blue turned and smiled warmly. The kit returned the expression. ‘W-welcome to the Port,’ he said. He had a curious accent she had no reference for, and his syllables stuck slightly before they left his mouth. The latter was not something to add to the list of questions; Pepper had mentioned in the shuttle that her partner had a speech impediment. ‘I’m, ah, I’m Blue. And you’re . . .?’
‘Sidra,’ she said. She’d found it in a database three and a half hours before they landed. A Human name, Earthen origin, as Pepper had suggested. Why that name in particular had jumped out at her, though, she couldn’t say. Pepper said that was a good enough reason to pick it.
Blue nodded, his smile growing a bit wider. ‘Sidra. Really, um, really nice to meet you.’ He looked to Pepper. ‘Any problems?’
Pepper shook her head. ‘Everything worked as advertised. Her patch was a breeze to set up.’
Sidra looked down at the woven wristwrap Pepper had given her. So many lies stored beneath it, tucked away in one little subdermal square. Fake readouts from imubots she didn’t have. An ID file Pepper had invented two hours before. An ID number Pepper said wouldn’t be a problem unless Sidra had any plans to visit Central space (she didn’t).
Blue glanced around. ‘Maybe we, ah, maybe we shouldn’t talk about this here.’
Pepper rolled her eyes. ‘Like anyone is listening to us.’ She headed forward. ‘I bet half these *s forged their cargo manifests.’
The crowd surged around them. Sidra thought perhaps it would be less stressful if she focused all her attention on one spot. That was easier said than done. She was designed to process multiple input sources at once – ship corridors, different rooms, the space beyond the hull. Focusing on one thing meant the ship was in danger, or that she was experiencing a task queue overload. Neither was true, of course, but limiting her processes that way was still an action that made her feel edgy.
She pointed the kit’s eyes at the back of Pepper’s head and kept them there. Don’t look around, she thought. There’s nothing interesting out there. There’s not. Just follow Pepper. That’s all there is. The rest is just noise. It’s static. It’s background radiation. Ignore it. Ignore it.
This worked okay for a minute and twelve seconds, until Pepper broke the boundaries. ‘Just for future reference,’ she said, swivelling her head back and pointing toward a distinctly painted kiosk, ‘that’s the quick-travel hub. You need to get around the surface, that’s how you do it. I’ll show you how another time. We, on the other hand, are heading to the dark side of this rock.’ She made a sudden turn, heading down a subterranean ramp. Sidra switched focus to the sign overhead.
UNDERSEA TRANSIT LINE
Port Coriol – Midway Isle – Tessara Cliffs
‘Are we going underwater?’ Sidra asked. The idea was unexpectedly unnerving. The moon of Coriol was mostly covered by water, and there was a great deal of distance between its two continents. Travelling under the seas between was not a possibility she’d considered. Breaking apart in space was somehow much less frightening than being crushed inward.
‘Yep, that’s the way home,’ Blue said. ‘Have to do it every, um, every day, but it’s still a f-fun trip.’
‘How long is the trip?’
‘’Bout an hour and change,’ Pepper said.
The kit blinked. ‘That’s not very long.’ Not long at all, considering they’d be crossing halfway around a moon.
Pepper grinned back at her. ‘Hire a few Sianats to solve a problem, and they’ll blow your freakin’ mind.’
They walked down into a large underground chamber, brightly lit and gently domed. The walls were covered in an obnoxious collage of blinking, swirling, shifting pixel posters advertising local businesses. A few vendors had small outposts within the busy crowd – snacks, drinks, small sundries Sidra couldn’t identify. Through the centre of it all ran an enormous tube made of industrial plex, containing a line of separate transport cars suspended within some sort of energy field.
‘Oh, good,’ Pepper said. ‘We’re right on time.’
Sidra continued to follow her, absorbing the transit line’s details as quickly as she could, making note of things to look up later. Each car was labelled several times over with multilingual signs. Aeluon. Aandrisk. Laru. Harmagian. Quelin. She followed Pepper and Blue into the Human car. ‘Why don’t different species sit together?’ she asked. Segregated transit cars didn’t mesh with what she’d read of the Port’s famed egalitarianism.
‘Different species,’ Blue said, ‘different butts.’ He nodded toward the rows of high-backed, rounded seats, unsuitable for Aandrisk tails or Harmagian carts.
They sat in a row, all three together. Pepper dropped her tool bag into the fourth seat with a clang. Only a group of tourists raised their heads to look (even with Sidra’s limited experience of observing sapients, tourists were already easy to spot). No one else in the transit car seemed to mind the noise. A woman covered with metal implants watched something flashy on her hud. An old man cradling a potted plant was already asleep. A small child licked the back of her seat; her father half-heartedly told her to stop, as if he knew the attempt was futile.
Sidra assessed this space. She’d been so anxious to get out of the shuttle, but now that she’d experienced a crowd, she decided that being within a structure was the lesser evil. Structures had edges. Ends. Doors. The dim awareness of unseen actions happening behind the kit’s head was still unnerving, but she was inside now, and inside was something she understood.