Fantasy & Science Fiction Mar-Apr 2013 (7 page)

"Shut up," he said.

"Water boy
of the day
."

"I'm Rebecca," I said, wondering if people would recognize me. If they'd throw me back out. Or over the side. That last would be tricky, though, since we were several stories below the waterline.

No one reacted to my name. I was just a grubby nobody, apparently, and grubby nobodies were okay.

"Soup's up," someone said, and they gave me some of the soup, too. I offered my trail mix to the meal, and that got a round of approving nods; I appeared to be following the rules.

Kat showed me around the encampment. They drew water (a trickle at a time) out of the fresh pipes; they drew electricity from the wires and yes, they were willing to let me charge up my gadget. The thing I thought was most impressive was the latrine; they'd hung a shower curtain to provide privacy, and the latrine went straight to a waste pipe. Kat showed me how it worked: you unlatched the top part to use it, then relatched the top part and pulled on something near the bottom to flush. "Be
absolutely sure
the lid is latched when you flush," she warned me, "or we will be
swimming
in shit."

When the meal was over, everyone settled in for the night, leaving one person awake to empty buckets and watch for cops. "If anyone comes," Kat said, "you'll need to grab your bag and get out as fast as you can. Keep your flashlight off if you possibly can—light will lead them to you."

Dodge the authorities
.

"What happens if you're caught?"

"They fine you for trespass and theft."

That didn't sound
too
bad, but Kat raised an eyebrow and added, "Could
you
pay a fine? Because if not, they bond you for it till you pay off the debt."

"You'll still come out ahead, if you're not caught too often," Leo said from his sleeping spot a few meters away.

"What if you're a dependent?" I asked. "Theoretically, I mean." It's illegal to sell someone under eighteen into bond—everywhere that has laws, at least.

"Then your parents get the bill. And the bond, if they can't pay. You're their responsibility.
Theoretically
."

"Okay," I said.

"Sleep tight," she said.

My gadget was charged, and as I started to stash it, I wondered if I'd be able to get a signal down here. I could, it turned out. I wrapped up in my blanket and tried to check my mail. I couldn't get into any of my accounts—not even the one I thought my father hadn't known about. It was a good thing I hadn't used that account to contact my mom.

On the stead's "trending" page, where you could see all the "hot right now!" links, I saw that the first episode of
High Stakes
had been released. I pulled it up to watch.

It was weird to see which scenes they put back-to-back, telling the story. They'd focused a lot on Debbie, and there was a long clip of her telling the story about getting arrested with her sister when they were caught with the T-13.

From that, they segued into a scene of one of the people from the network staff at a shop—it was on Amsterdarn, I was pretty sure, because it was well lit and I didn't recognize the owner. They bought a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, a bottle of aspirin, and ten tablets of T-13. There was a brief interview with the shopkeeper, who looked utterly baffled when they asked him about the legality of T-13.

Then a scene stateside: this time Janet was interviewing a lawyer who said that for a first offense, if he was representing someone, he thought he could have drug possession charges reduced to the point where the person would be sentenced to five years of probation. "If someone can't afford a good lawyer, though," he added, "if they're working with an overwhelmed public defender's office, they might get three years, or five, or even ten. And I mean prison time, not probation."

I wondered what a public defender was and moved over to the sidebar to see if they had notes. They did: it was a lawyer who worked for people who couldn't afford lawyers. Weird. I switched back over to the show.

Now they were showing video of people getting off a plane on Amsterdarn while a voiceover talked about laws on the stead, and how the differences between stead and shore had led to all sorts of fugitives taking up residence on the stead. I thought maybe they'd segue to Thor's father, but no. They switched to a picture of a little girl with pigtails, hanging from a bar, a big grin on her face.

"My name is Lenore Garrison," a new voice said. "This is my daughter, Becky. I haven't seen her since she was four years old, when her father violated the custody order and took her to New Minerva."

It was my mother.
That's my mother
. I looked around wildly, wanting to show someone—wanting to show
Thor
, actually, but of course he wasn't there. She looked older than my father, because her hair was mostly gray. She was tense. I could see it from the way she held her hands.

My mother pretended, in the interview, that she hadn't heard from me; she was protecting my secret. She spoke in a composed, calm way, although the camera angle changed a few times and I could tell they'd edited out bits. I wondered if she'd told Janet that she could only interview her if she didn't show her crying.

"I kept my married name," she said near the end, her lips twisting into a faint smile. "I'm hoping that she'll have an easier time finding me, if she ever comes looking. I'm not sure whether she even knows I'm alive."

After the interview with my mother, Janet's voice talked about how they ran a database check on all the heavy-hitters of the seastead and found that it wasn't just the bond-workers who were often on the lam. I thought they'd mention Thor's father for sure now, but in fact there were
fifteen
people on the station who'd committed embezzling and tax evasion, plus another twenty-two who'd done one but not the other, and a bunch more who'd been either convicted or charged with fraud. There were eleven sex offenders, four men who'd been involved in human trafficking (I had to look that one up: apparently they'd been selling people somewhere that bond-workers were illegal), and two who'd jumped bail after being charged with felony assault. One man had been charged with murder. Probably the creepiest people on the list:
nine
of the doctors practicing medicine on the seastead had lost their stateside medical license due to ethical violations, including someone who'd been
experimenting medically on his patients
. That got them curious about seastead medicine and they'd done some checking; four
more
doctors on the seastead might never have actually gone to medical school at all.

Cut to the lawyer. "The fact is, here in the U.S. we pay a lot in taxes, but part of what we get from that is oversight. We have people who check to see whether the food we eat is safe, whether our water is safe to drink, whether our doctors are licensed to practice medicine. On the seastead, it's caveat emptor for everything. Let the buyer beware. But the fact is, most of us are not in a position, on a day-to-day basis, to check every bite of food and make sure it's not contaminated with pesticide or
E. coli
."

Back to the stead, and Deb was talking again.

"My sister was poisoned," she said. "I don't know if it was on purpose or by accident, but it destroyed her kidneys. The cost of treatment was so high, the only way to get a loan to cover it was to allow her bond to be sold to a skin farm on Lib. She said no, but there's a loophole. If you're dying, your bond can be sold without your permission to anyone willing to pay for the treatment. And that's how she wound up chained to a bench in a skin farm."

I knew what was coming next: the recording I'd gotten and passed to Janet, of the skin farm. I didn't need to see that again. I shut my gadget off before I killed the battery, and lay down to try to sleep. The floor was hard, and even wrapped in both my coat and the blanket I was chilly. I rested my head on my backpack.
I want my Mom
, I thought, and drifted—finally—to sleep.

 
WHEN I WOKE UP, the camp was quiet around me, and when I sat up, I realized that everyone was gone.

The whole camp was gone, in fact. Bedrolls had been packed up and carried away. The curtain around the latrine had been taken down and the waste pipe closed back up. Even the water leak was patched (with what looked like a wad of gum). Next to me, someone had written in chalk, TONIGHT: L-38.

I wondered how to find L-38. Probably Kat could have explained it to me.

Someone had filled my water bottle for me before closing up the water pipe. I wondered what time it was and reached for my gadget.

It was gone.

I went through my bag, double-checked the spot where it had been plugged in to charge the night before…nothing. My money, which was deep in the bag I'd had under my head all night, was still there, but the gadget had been in my hand when I fell asleep and someone had taken it.
Stolen
it.

It probably shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did. These people routinely stole water and trespassed rather than pay rent. Stealing from a person is different, but I doubted swiping my gadget had been some sort of
collective
decision. Although leaving me sleeping surely had been.

If I could find my way to L-38 tonight, I could ask for it back. That might work. I sighed heavily and headed for the stairs.

Upstairs, I went to the sandwich shop, hoping to find Thor. He jumped up when he saw me and pulled me into a hug.

"That was your mom, wasn't it?" he said.

"Yeah," I said into his shoulder. "It was."

"She pretended—"

"She knew I was keeping it a secret," I said. We sat down. "They sort of mentioned your dad, too."

"Yeah, guess he's not the only lowlife on board, huh?" Thor had already bought two sandwiches, and passed one over to me, along with a pop. I would have liked to refuse on principle but I was too hungry.

"Yeah, it gets worse, too. Who do you think the sex offenders are?"

"Uncle Paul," Thor said. "I don't trust any man who wants me to call him 'uncle' when he's not actually my relative."

"Huh." I couldn't talk; too busy eating.

"And I totally bet that jerk doctor who didn't want to treat Tom's ankle properly was one of the ones who had his license yanked."

I swallowed. "I don't know where Janet looked this stuff up. Can
we
check?"

"I bet we could from your dad's computer. But database access like that costs money, and some of these people are probably using false names here—someone would have noticed the license thing, otherwise. Also, digging for this information takes time. Janet has assistants." He looked a little wistful. "Someone else will do it, though. It'll get around."

"Ha. We could start rumors about people we don't like. My dad, for instance."

"True. I mean, he's already a kidnapper. Maybe he's also defrauded people, molested children, and eaten kittens."

"He'd never eat a kitten. Too much work for too little meat."

"Wait, are you quoting something he's
said
?"

"He was kidding around at the time." I looked at Thor. "He's not
always
awful, you know? Back when I was little we got along better."

"Well, I'm glad he's not always horrible to you."

"He's not."

"Good."

I finished my sandwich and was thinking about buying another one when the shop owner brought over two banana splits.

"Dammit," I said, between bites. "I
have
money, you know. I could be buying my own breakfast. Lunch. Whatever this is."

"I was kind of thinking of this as a date," Thor said, looking at his own banana split and turning bright red. "So I'm paying, okay?"

A date.

"Well, okay," I said, taking another bite of banana split.

When we'd finished eating, Thor said, "Hey, I had a message for you.
Not
from your mom."

"Oh?"

"Or your dad, either. Someone from
Stead Life
wants to talk to you. They tried reaching you by phone and mail and couldn't get you, so they came to me. They said you could go straight to their office, if that would be easier than calling. They're on the Cruise Ship part of Rosa, level thirty-two, west edge."

"
Stead Life
wants to talk to me?" This made me unaccountably nervous. "Do you think it's about my mom?"

"No, actually, they called yesterday before
High Stakes
went live."

"Weird. Well, I'll go see them, I guess. What time is it? Are you late for anything?"

"I don't care," he said.

"Don't get yourself in trouble," I said, and squeezed his hand. He squeezed mine back.

"Are you sure you don't want me to walk you to the
Stead Life
office?" he said.

"Do you think I actually need protection?"

"I mostly just think it would be fun to walk with you."

"How about halfway, then you go to class?"

He grinned. "Okay."

The
Stead Life
offices were a lot smaller than I'd imagined them. Just like
High Stakes
, they had a producer who was not one of the people who appeared on camera. Her assistant buzzed me in and then went for coffee. The producer's name was Leah; I'd seen it in the credits a million times but I'd never seen her face. She was the opposite of Janet—scruffy where Janet was polished, nerdy where Janet was slick. "You're Beck Garrison," she said, before I could introduce myself. "I'm glad your friend found you. You disappeared
really
effectively."

Huh. Good
.

"We can interview you on camera if you want, but mostly I was hoping you could help me find that woman, Debbie. We
really
want to interview her."

I laughed out loud. "You're hiring me for a finding job?"

Leah blinked, confused for a second. "Oh, yeah, you found stuff for the Miscellenry, didn't you? I heard that when I did background on you. Well, so. Yes, we want you to find Debbie and help us arrange an interview. She's disappeared even more thoroughly than you did."