Up Against It - M. J. Locke [118]
“Good thing they’re doping you,” Amaya said.
“Yeah.” He grinned. “I thought I’d get me some neon tattoos, once it’s all done, all down the new bicep and forearm, you know, to impress the girls. What do you think?”
Amaya rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”
Ian asked, “Did they get the thing? You know, the feral?”
Geoff shrugged. “I guess so. The old man just made sure we got checked out and then sent us home. We didn’t get any more out of him.”
Amaya said, “The biker buzz this morning is that they killed it, or whatever they do to stop them, and it’s gone now.”
Everyone looked at Ian then. His eyes were sunken, shadowed in his pale face. No one said it, but Geoff knew he wasn’t the only one thinking it: Ian should be dead. He would have bled out in seconds if the feral sapient hadn’t rendered aid—and feral sapients did not render aid. Something strange had happened last night, they were all witness to it, and no one could make sense of it.
After awhile, Ian’s parents showed up. Mr. Carmichael had showered and his hair was combed for the first time since Geoff had met him. He wore a nice suit. His pores still smelled, faintly, of stale booze, which he had tried to mask with cologne. Mrs. Carmichael had her hair coiffed and wore a bit too much makeup. They greeted Geoff and the others with a plastic cheeriness. It grossed Geoff out to look at them. They looked like doll versions of themselves.
Geoff, Amaya, and Kam made their good-byes and left. Geoff was glad that he would not be required to participate with his parents in a meeting with the prime minister. Just, yuck. On a whole lot of levels.
On their way out, the doctor gave them each a quick checkup, and gave Geoff another shot of bug juice. Almost immediately he felt better, and saw in a nearby mirror that the swelling in his face had already gone down.
Outside Yamashiro Memorial, they all looked at one another. All were conscious of the soft mote haze around them.
“Spin the rock?” Kam asked.
Amaya hung back. She looked around, and said softly, “What about the ice?”
“Well?” Kam asked. “Didn’t you hear the PM’s announcement? We’re getting a big shipment in a couple of weeks. Everything is going to be fine.”
“But the black marketers know about Ouroboros.”
“They were all arrested,” Kam said. “And we did what we were supposed to. I notified the bank.”
“You notified the bank,” Geoff pointed out, “but I didn’t sign the paperwork yet. They’re not going to send anyone out to survey it till I do. And we didn’t do everything we were supposed to do—they told us they wanted a statement from us at the precinct.”
“True, but we also told Moriarty all about what happened last night. If they need more information, they’ll know where to reach us.”
“He is way up there in the government,” Geoff said thoughtfully.
“Exactly. We should just let them deal with it. He’ll know who needs to know, and they can tell us if they need anything else from us.”
Geoff pondered this. They had notified the authorities. And now that more ice was on its way, he did not want to give up on the Orbital Olympics. Not if he did not have to. “You’re right. I think we’ve done enough.”
Amaya sighed. She did not look quite convinced, but Geoff could tell she did not want to give up their ice either.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s spin.”
* * *
Xuan met his contact in the main shuttle hangar out at the docs, at the appointed time, twelve noon. The man in charge of the expedition, Mr. Mills, had his assistants transfer Xuan’s survey tools to their shuttle. Mills wore a knit cap on his head, and a long knit scarf, both in striking shades of blue. He held a bag that contained skeins of brightly colored yarn. It was incongruent with his business-like appearance, but by no means surprising; many spacers knitted or crocheted as a hobby. And everyone was bundling up.
“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” Mr. Mills said. He seemed bemused