Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

She broke the necklace off, crushed it to dust between her hands, and let it drift to the floor.

The human section of Villach, a long, pie-shaped area of the five-mile-wide cupola, reminded her of the reservation. But not as desperate. Tight streets, waterproof paper houses and greenhouses. She found a market packed with several hundred people. It was the first time in two years she’d seen that many people gathered together that weren’t lined up for the food kitchens. As on the reservation, they spoke Anglic here, not human imitations of Gahe’s thumps, growls, and whistles.

She pulled out the last of her coins and stopped at the nearest toy shop. Several kids behind the table of used equipment smiled at her. The tallest bowed and stepped forward with a flourish of his waxy red robe.

“Help you?”

“I need a lamina viewer,” she said. “Got anything?”

They handed her an oversize, bright green wrist screen. Designed for clumsy kid fingers, it strapped on easily enough, and she tapped it on. A simple point-and-shoot viewer. She pointed a finger at the boy and information popped up for her.

His name was Peter the One Hundredth, fifteen years old, owner of the stall. Previous customers rated him “competent” on average, with some complaints about equipment breaking down.

“You like it?”

Some speculated that the goods were stolen.

Of course they were.

Nashara stopped pointing and tapped some more, accessing Villach’s various streams of public information, and checked the habitat’s outbound transportation schedule. She found what she was looking for. The Stenapolaris , due to leave in two hours.

Cutting it close. But she had a berth reserved, and Stenapolaris would be headed close to New Anegada. Once she was aboard it, the Gahe would be hard-pressed to ever find her.

“Lady?”

Nashara looked up. “Yes, I’ll take it.” She threw him the reservation coins from her pocket.

“We don’t take this,” Peter the One Hundredth protested. “It’s devalued crap.”

Nashara sighed. She propped her boot up on his table and dug her thumb into her thigh until she broke skin and peeled it back with a grunt. She slid a piece of silver out and wiped the blood off it. “Assay this.”

She needed the lamina viewer. All around her in the habitat’s information-rich data streams lay important information. Such as directions to get to the docks, or what elevators to take. Whom you were talking to. Layers of it tagged everything, a myriad of ways to view the entire world lay around them.

Kids ran around the stall seeing virtual monsters they chased and shot with their friends. Merchants quietly passed information among themselves. The station’s public lamina carpeted the sky with up-to-date general information, or provided tags about everything one saw.

To be unable to view lamina meant being illiterate among those who read to survive.

Nashara had to use lamina indirectly or the technology built into her head would get out of control. She bit her lip and focused on the transaction in front of her.

Peter passed the piece of metal to the kid behind him, who walked back into the tent for a moment. Peter’s head snapped up as he heard something inside his own head. “Silver?”

“Good enough?”

All three nodded. Nashara turned and walked into a bulky man dressed in trousers and a yellow utility jacket.

“Nashara Cascabel?” She liked her first name, but always kept the second one changing.

She looked him over. “Who’s asking?”

“Steven.” He looked around, dropped his voice. “We’ve been trying to contact you.”

Nashara held up her wrist and looked at the tag that popped up when she pointed at him. It identified him as Gruther. “I just got access.”

“Shitsticks,” the man swore. “That explains that.”

People up here in orbit had the technology implanted behind their eyeballs from late childhood on. Only four-year-olds or the impaired couldn’t wrap their minds around constantly seeing things that weren’t really there.

“I have my reasons for not plugging directly in,” Nashara said softly. “Your organization and me, we’re done. I’m getting ready to leave. What the hell are you doing bothering me?” She didn’t like this. She glanced around, looking for eyes staring back. This screamed wrong to her.

“The package you delivered has been discovered,” Steven said, meaning that the Gahe had found the breeder she’d killed. “The recipients are not happy, and they’re looking for the postmaster. They’d like to make an example of you.” Too many people around, Nashara thought, to really deal with Steven.

“They thinking to look up here yet to express their gratitude?” Nashara stepped back from him and jostled an old man in a ragged suit who swore at her.

“I’m told they’ll finish their sweep of house’s garden”—that would be Pitt’s Cross—“within the hour.”

“Steven, or whatever the hell your name is, why is this your problem again? You paid me, I did it. I’m leaving. You’re making yourself traceable. You’re holding me up.”

Steven swallowed. Nervous, Nashara thought, but about what? “We’re impressed with what you did. They want to help you more. Do you want to see full freedom, do you think humans should be able to exercise all the same rights as the Gahe? Or any other damn alien?”

“All bullshit aside”—Nashara folded her arms—“what are you trying to offer here? I have a berth to go to. I need to leave.”

Steven took a deep breath. “You don’t actually have a berth.”

Nashara stared at him. His neck would break a lot easier that some Gahe’s. “What do you mean by that?”

“Do you really think that… that package delivery was worth the price of a ticket to another world?”

Nashara shook her head. This wasn’t about the assassination. They’d underestimated her again. “You didn’t think I would make it back out of there.” It wasn’t a question. Just a statement.

“No one down there has the ability to deliver packages. But we’re working on it, and we’d hoped that what you did would encourage others to try. And if that happened, we would assist them. We’ve been secretly building a network of couriers, and not just here, Nashara,” Steven brimmed with excitement, “all throughout the worlds. We’ve been preparing for decades . We have ships, secret couriers, and lots and lots of packages we want delivered soon.”

They’d expected a martyr. The League needed someone to strike against the Gahe and die, and then they would help Pitt’s Cross rise against the Gahe. But she had no desire to join. She had a mission of her own.

Nashara unfolded her arms and tapped his chest. “I’m going to kill you. It’s going to be very slow, very painful, and you’re not going to care about packages,” or any other simple code words.

“We’re willing to help,” Steven belted out quickly. “Truly. We really need someone with your talent.”

“That was a onetime thing, Steven. I was a desperate girl in a bad situation.” The toy she’d purchased from the stall couldn’t even be purchased with Pitt’s Cross coin, let alone a trip into orbit. She’d had to do something.

There. She spotted a simple table knife on a stall table.

She was so close to getting away from it all. So close. “For a onetime thing, you were very good at it.” Steven sensed her weariness. “We’d like to hire you.”

The eagle-eyed vendor didn’t spot the snatch, and now Nashara had a weapon. “I have a pressing mission of my own that doesn’t fit in with being a League ‘package deliverer.’ I’m sorry. I need to get to it, Steven, and you’re telling me I’m not going. That’s a problem. And of all people you should understand that when I say I am not for sale, I really mean it.”