Chapter 5
The confident, employable smile I’d been wearing suddenly felt like it was being held in place with two six-inch nails. About twelve sweats broke out simultaneously throughout my body.
“Ah yes,” said Mr. Henderson, clapping his hands. “Danny’s been so looking forward to meeting you. He’s been jumping up and down all week.”
“YOU’RE EMBARRASSING ME,” wailed Daniel.
“Daniel,” said Warden suddenly. “Indoor voice.”
“BUT HE—but he is!”
Mr. Henderson leaned toward me conspiratorially, and then spoke in an exaggerated hushed tone, clearly audible to the entire room. “He’s worried his old dad’s going to show him up in front of his big hero.” He leaned back, chuckling. “But to answer your question, Mr. McKeown, the family business serves a number of functions. I like to think of us as problem solvers, don’t I, Carlos?” He elbowed the massive bodyguard creature in the ribs, not provoking the slightest reaction.
Wait staff were circling the table, carefully laying crusty rolls before us. Still smiling, I reached out and tipped both my and Ms. Warden’s plates toward me, sending both our rolls under the table. “Oh, how clumsy of me,” I barked. “Help me look for our rolls, Ms. Warden.” I grabbed her arm and ducked under the tablecloth, pulling her with me.
“Take your hands off!” she hissed.
“Three things,” I hissed back, displaying the appropriate number of fingers. “First, I think Mr. Henderson is some kind of crime-lord-leader-boss thing. Second, you never said anything about having to pretend to be Jacques Mc-plying-Keown. Third”—I gestured wildly— “aaaaaaaaah!”
“Keep it down,” she whispered. “You took the money. You agreed to be whoever I said you were.”
“But Jacques McKeown! If any other pilots even suspect that I might be Jacques McKeown, they will use me as an exhaust muffler. I know they will because I would.”
“What? Why would pilots hate Jacques McKeown? The books have made them into icons.”
I made a little frustrated sound into my cupped palms. “I wouldn’t expect someone of your tax bracket to understand. You’re just going to have to tell them I’m not Jacques McKeown. Tell them Jacques McKeown is actually a book-writing computer program or something.”
She grabbed me around the back of the neck with one hand and squeezed just hard enough to make my brain start feeling weird. “I know you are not from Earth, so I will explain this to you,” she said softly, her lips right next to my ear. “Mr. Henderson gets whatever he wants, and what Mr. Henderson wants is Jacques McKeown. So you will be Jacques McKeown, or I will kill you, and Mr. Henderson will kill me. You will be my first. I will not be Mr. Henderson’s first. Do you understand me?”
“Yech,” I said, through a slightly distorted windpipe.
“What are you two whispering about down there?” asked Mr. Henderson. “I know it was a big advance, but you can’t have gotten married on it already.”
We rose back up from under the table. I kept my head bowed, rubbing my aching neck. Ms. Warden had her nose held high, and placed her roll back on her plate with offended dignity.
“Hello, I am Jacques McKeown,” I murmured. I reached for my own roll and was about to take a sulky bite when I caught the gaze of Daniel, seated across from me. He instantly looked away furtively, as if he were afraid of being caught peering through his neighbor’s bathroom window.
“I really like your books,” he managed to say, already the color of a beet sandwich.
“He’s going through that phase of looking for any father figure less embarrassing than me,” said Mr. Henderson, as happily as ever. Daniel made blustering noises that didn’t quite make it all the way to becoming coherent words. “So I promised that for his sixteenth I’d get him his very own ship and pilot. And of course, I didn’t want to leave him with any of those horrible freaks you see at the spaceport—they’d probably eat him. So who better than the most famous pilot in known space?”
The waiters were doing the rounds again, this time filling our glasses with red wine. Ms. Warden and I both picked ours up and took huge gulps in almost perfect unison.
“Well, you’ve definitely come to the right man,” I said, the instant my empty glass touched the tablecloth. “I can fly any ship with at least one wing. The thing is, though, I will need to keep a low profile. My identity and appearance are currently a secret because other pilots can be a little jealous of my success.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think you’ll need to worry,” said Henderson, waving his wineglass. “They’re only pilots. You can distract most of their sort with a dog biscuit. Besides, you can’t deny Danny his chance to show off his new best friend, can you?”
I tore another piece off my roll, feeling sick. “Well. I suppose not.”
“Actually, I’ve been wondering,” said Henderson, still smiling. “How did you first get in touch with Mr. McKeown, Penny?”
“Email,” she replied instantly.
Henderson kept smiling, but his brow furrowed. “As simple as that? Everyone I spoke to back on Earth told me that Jacques McKeown has never responded to email. Some of them swore that he doesn’t exist.”
She seemed to have frozen, the rim of her wineglass pinned to her lip, so I took over. “Well,” I said, “obviously I get a lot of email, but it was the sheer number of emails Ms. Warden sent that made me take notice. There must have been hundreds. She was like some kind of psychotic ex.”
“Really?” asked Henderson.
“In the end, I told her the only way I would consider it would be if she posted a video of herself dancing around in her underpants.” A rather strangled choking noise burst out from between Ms. Warden’s mouth and her glass. “I meant it as a joke, obviously; I didn’t expect her to actually do it. Well, that’s when I knew that this had to be an important cause, if someone was willing to completely humiliate themselves for it.”
Henderson sat with elbows on table, his chin resting on the backs of his hands, mouth agape. “That is thrilling. Is that true, Penny?”
“Yes,” she said, squeezing out the word like the last bit of toothpaste in the tube.
“You should employ her for as long as possible, Mr. Henderson,” I said, patting her shoulder. “This is something you need to hang on to.”
“Oh, I agree, Mr. McKeown,” said Henderson, eyebrows waggling. “And did you know, in less than a year she’s worked more miracles than my last PA ever did.” I picked up on a faint edge in Henderson’s voice, and there was a brief exchange of glances between him and Warden that froze her solid.
Then she unthawed and turned her gaze to the menu in front of her. “Yes, Mr. McKeown and I undertook quite an intimate exchange of emails,” she said, conversationally. “He was very forthcoming after I sent him a video of me dancing around in my underwear, and I learned many details about his life. I had no idea how little money novelists actually make in today’s market.”
“Mm, so I’ve heard,” said Henderson, nodding eagerly. “I suppose that explains why you still have to do the . . . prosti-piloting, I think I’ve heard it called.”
“Under the circumstances, I’d like to recommend offering Mr. McKeown an indefinite contract,” she continued, looking at me with no readable expression. “He would have the opportunity to write books in his spare time. Perhaps Daniel could even watch.”
Daniel gave her an urgent “don’t ruin this for me” look, then turned to me, clasping his hands under his chin. “Oh you don’t have to do that but it would be so completely awesome,” he said, almost as all one breathless word.
Henderson clapped his hands joyfully. “Excellent! Perhaps Danny could be written in, yeah? A whole new character! Although you’ll probably have to tone down his good looks, or no one would believe it.”
“URRRGGGH,” added Daniel, slapping himself in the face with both hands.
I kept smiling, but I moved close to Ms. Warden’s ear and whispered “one-all” through my teeth. She smi
led right back.
Our party emerged from the restaurant at around midnight, the wait staff waving and smiling with naked relief from the door. I was first out, not entirely confident that I wasn’t going to throw up at the first taste of Ritsuko’s recycled air. I was feeling a new sensation: nausea from two different directions. Rich food on an empty stomach from the left and staring mortal terror from the right.
Henderson came up behind me. The hand he placed on my shoulder felt like a warm tarantula. “Jacques,” he said. He’d had quite a lot of wine. “You’re my kind of guy, Jacques. You’re a success story. Space hero turned storyteller. When Quantunneling came along you didn’t just squat in a spaceport begging for clients like most of those visionless losers—you damn well adapted. Penny! Sort out Mr. McKeown. I’m going to piss in an alleyway.”
“UGHHH,” added a frustrated Daniel.
Mr. Henderson went off to reminisce in the alley where he’d beaten up the maitre d’, and Ms. Warden stepped up, datapad at the ready like a flag at half-mast. “Here is the address of Mr. Henderson’s private landing pad,” she said, handing me a card. “Be there tomorrow at ten a.m., sharp.”
I pocketed it. “Just to be safe,” I said quietly, “you should get that video made. In case he asks to see it, y’know.”
“I will probably have to do that, yes,” she replied, stonily. “I need to scan your chip again to make the payment.”
“I thought you already made the payment?”
“That was the advance. Your kind are paid by the hour, yes? Tonight counted as work. It certainly felt like it for me.”
I offered my hand, and she moved a few windows on the touchscreen around with angry little jabs of her fingertips. I tried to peer around at what she was doing, but she deftly angled the pad away.
“I’m also sending you my personal contact number,” she admitted, still tapping and dragging away. “If anything prevents you from arriving tomorrow, inform me. Bear in mind that it will need to be nothing less serious than a lost limb.”
A sleek black town car the width of two normal-sized cars pressed together pulled up at the curb and Carlos unfolded from the driver’s seat, moving around the car swiftly to open the rear passenger door.
“See you later, Mr. McKeown!” called Daniel, loud enough to make me glance fearfully around for passing star pilots, before boarding the vehicle. Warden gave me one last meaningful glance, then followed, taking the rear seat beside him.
The tarantula settled on my shoulder again. “Right, that’ll increase the average property value of this district,” said Henderson, still doing his fly back up. “One more thing, Mr. McKeown, man to man.”
He gently but firmly spun me around until we were practically nose to orange nose, keeping one hand on my shoulder. “Boss?” I said.
He grinned at my use of the word. He had rather unsettlingly white teeth. “Jacques. I’m not a stupid man. I can see you’ve been, shall we say, ill at ease tonight.”
“No, Mr. Henderson, really—”
Carlos’s hand came down upon my free shoulder and all the air blasted from my lungs, as if I’d suddenly been burdened with a rucksack full of bricks. My knees almost buckled.
“Don’t call me a liar, Jacques,” said Henderson, pressing down with his hand. A sharp pain blossomed out from my shoulder. “You’re nervous. I can tell. It’s completely understandable. Really.”
“Ughnk?” That wasn’t what I’d intended to say, but the pain was making it hard to think.
“I’m asking you to take responsibility for my son’s happiness and well-being, and it’s completely understandable that you’d be nervous. Do you know what a cassowary is, Jacques?”
“Murngle?”
“It’s something we have on Earth; you can look it up. I have a talon from a cassowary on my signet ring. Feel it?”
It wasn’t breaking the skin, but it was less than a stone’s throw from the threshold. Carlos’s fingers flexed one by one, signaling me to respond. All I could do was nod.
“One, two more pounds of pressure,” he said, leaning his face in closer. “And then all I’d have to do is move my hand diagonally down to about belt level.” He placed his free hand on my waist like a dance partner, then blew a short raspberry. “And there you are. You’re on the floor. Well. Bits of you are, anyway.”
The pain had spread all the way to the fingertips of my left arm. I could feel them shaking. Carlos’s hushed, hoarse breathing filled my ears. Henderson’s face was like a little orange sun invading my personal space and pleasantly blasting the flesh from my bones.
Then he stepped back, displaying his hands as if expecting a hug. The weight of Carlos’s hand vanished so suddenly that my feet left the floor for a moment. “And it’s so good to know I won’t have to do that, isn’t it? Because Daniel and I are going to be very, very happy with the work you do for us.”
He sauntered past me and took the front passenger seat as Carlos poured himself back through the driver’s-side window. Moments later the car roared with unnecessary volume and sped off down Ritsuko’s Leg, scattering cyclists.
I watched it go, waving like a theme park mannequin, dreamily rotating my forearm until the car was out of sight. Then I turned and ran.
Chapter 6
I arrived back in the spaceport district—or Ritsuko’s Arse, as it was colloquially known—at a full sprint, scattering a small queue of late-night drunks who were waiting to use the Quantunnel booth. I wasn’t even sure what I was in such a hurry for. I just knew that I had to be somewhere familiar and safe, a comfortably long distance from Ritsuko’s plying Leg.
The spaceport was still open, of course; the day-and-night cycle from planet to planet would take a far better brain than mine to comprehend. And there were still a lot of pilots around. The night shift bunch were the ones who were convinced that there was more money in the drunken bachelor-party crowd than the daytime tourists, but I’d never been convinced of that. And cleaning the cabin afterward was a nightmare.
I paused in the receiving area where the old concourse connected to the new one. My first instinct was to head for the old spaceport, get aboard my ship, set a course for the nearest pirate hangout, and sign up, completing whatever admission procedure was necessary with a slightly pained smile on my face.
Alternatively, I could calm down and think for five seconds. Just because I had been tacitly threatened with disembowelment by a very orange man, that didn’t mean I had to abandon the Solar System altogether. I had ten hours and a generous advance with which to make a decision. Some research was in order.
There was an Internet café on the new concourse, opposite the Sushi Station where I’d made that first fateful encounter with Ms. Warden. I headed there briskly, exchanging the briefest of nods with the pilots I passed along the way. Few of the faces were familiar, since I was strictly one of the day crowd. No one has much of a tan on Luna, but the night brackets were pasty even by Ritsuko standards. Walking through the place was like coming to your high-school reunion to find it haunted by the ghosts of all your life’s ambitions.
I chose a nondescript booth with a working terminal and sat down, leaning close to the screen. I waved my chipped hand over the sensor on my right, and a paper cup dropped into the hopper underneath, filled a moment later with watery black coffee. This formality over with, the terminal unlocked access to the Internet.
I’d gathered from school history that the big push for space colonization began in earnest after pollution was left unchecked for too long, and it was begrudgingly realized that snot yellow was not a healthy look for what was ostensibly blue sky. After everyone with any sense cleared out, the only people left on Earth were the planetary equivalent of rabid nationalists, whose best argument for staying was “It’s EARTH.” They’d only gotten more insular and paranoid over time, so now most off-world traffic wasn’t permitted to land, off-world quantum tunnels were illegal, and there was little diplomatic communication. This rather underlined Jacques McKeown
’s popularity if his books had managed to make it down there, but the point was, Henderson could have been the god-emperor of the entire Northern Hemisphere and most non-Terrans wouldn’t know.
A quick search for “Henderson” produced results almost immediately, and I read with one finger to my lips, my concerns swelling and growing like tulip bulbs. A cursory glance at the suggested-words list would have raised eyebrows enough: the top three were “awful,” “bastard,” and “aaargh.” On the first page of results alone the name was being linked to everything from food-rationing scams to assassination syndicates, that grinning orange face beaming forth from the attached news stories like some kind of overseeing satsuma.
I knew this much about Earth’s politics: the walled-off United Republic was the only remaining government, which spent half its time diligently maintaining order through judicious use of secret holding camps and the other half accusing a token and ineffectual opposition party of being less than mouth-foamingly patriotic at all times. Everywhere else was a near-lawless swarm of former countries, wiping more and more of each other off the map with every water war.
I’d assumed that Henderson operated from one of the latter, but the surprise was that all the stories were coming out of the UR. My understanding was that you couldn’t wipe a bogey off on your bathroom mirror there without being arrested for obstructing a surveillance camera. Maintaining a crime syndicate there would require a terrifying amount of power and influence. And sure enough, I found a photo of Henderson smiling and shaking hands with one of the previous puppet presidents, who looked rather pale and nervous. But then, next to Henderson, everybody did.
I leaned back. Crossing the Black was seeming more and more like an option. I sighed. I’d hate myself for it, but frankly, I’d entertained the notion often enough that the plan was already fully formed in my head. Step one, cash out my entire account and invest in enough food and shiny objects to impress one of the less psychotic pirate families. Step two, cut out my identity chip with a staple remover. Step three, clutch my hand and swear a lot.