Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(55)

“Lost a wife over it,” he says, as if Nix doesn’t know already. “She gave me the final notice and all, right, but f*ck it. Fuck it. She doesn’t know the void. Couldn’t know what she was asking a runner to give up. Gets wiggled into a fella’s blood, don’t ever get out again.”

Marshall has an ugly scar across the left side of his face, courtesy of a coolant blowout a few years back and the ensuing frostbite. Nix tries to look at him, without letting her eyes linger on the scar, but that’s always a challenge. A wonder he didn’t lose that eye. He would have, if his goggles had cracked.

“Don’t know if that’s the why with me.” She says. “Can’t say. Obviously, I do miss them when I’m out. Sometimes, miss ’em like hell.”

“But that doesn’t stop you flying, doesn’t turn you to the yards.”

“Sometimes, f*ck, I wish it would.”

“She gonna walk?” he asks.

“I try not think about that, and I especially try not to think about that just before outbound. Jesus.”

Marshall picks up his bowl and chopsticks, then fishes for a morsel of tofu.

? 173 ?

? The Road of Needles ?

“One day not too far, the cooperatives gonna replace us with autos,” he sighs, and pops the white cube into his mouth. “So, gotta judge our sacrifices against the raw inevitabilities.”

“Union scare talk,” Nix scoffs, though she knows he’s probably right. Too many ways to save expenses by completely, finally, eliminating a human crew. A wonder it hasn’t happened before now, she thinks.

“Maybe you ought consider cutting your losses, that’s all.”

“Fella, you only just now told me how much choice we don’t have, once the life digs in and it’s all we know. Make up your damn mind.”

“You gonna finish that?” he asks and points at her bowl.

She shakes her head and slides it across the counter to him.

Thinking about Maia and Shiloh, her appetite has evaporated.

“Anyway, point is, no need to fret on a terra run, no more than anything else.”

“Never said I was fretting. It’s not even my first.”

“No, but that was not my point, fella,” Marshall slurps at the broth left in the bottom of her white bowl, which is the same unrelenting white as the counter, their seats, the ceiling and walls, the lighting.

When he’s done, he wipes his mouth on a sleeve and says, “Maybe it’s best EOTs stay lone. Avoid the entire mess, start to finish.”

She frowns and jabs a chopstick at him. “Isn’t it rough enough already without coming back from the black and lonely without anyone waiting to greet us?”

“There are other comforts,” he says.

“No wonder she left you, you indifferent f*ck.”

Marshall massages his temples, then changes the subject. For all his faults, he’s pretty good at sensing thin ice beneath his feet. “It’s your first time to the Kasei though, that’s true, yeah?”

“That’s true, yeah.”

“You can and will and no doubt already have done worse than the Kasei ’tats.”

“I hear good things,” she says, but her mind’s elsewhere, and she’s hoping Marshall grows tired of talking soon so she can get back to ? 174 ?

? Caitlín R. Kiernan ?

her quarters and pop a few pinks for six or seven hour’s worth of sleep.

“Down on the north end of Cattarinetta Boulevard—in Scarlet Quad—there’s a brothel. Probably the best on the whole rock. I happen to know the proprietress.”

Nix isn’t so much an angel she’s above the consolation of whores when away from Shiloh. All those months pile up. The months between docks, the interminable Phobos reroutes, the weeks of red dust and colonist hardscrabble.

“Her name’s Paddy,” he continues, “and you just tell her you’re a high fella to Marshall Mason Choudhury, and she’ll see you’re treated extra right. Not those half-starved farm girls. She’ll set you up with the pinnacle merch.”

“That’s kind of you,” and she stands. “I’ll do that.”

“Not a trouble,” he says and waves a hand dismissively. “And look, as I said, don’t you fret over the cargo. Terra’s no different than aluminum and pharmaceuticals.”

“It’s not my first goddamn terra run. How many times I have to—”