Up Against It - M. J. Locke [27]
Xuan removed her commuter pack and put the batteries and air tanks in their rechargers, and did the shutdown checks. Meanwhile, Jane removed, cleaned, and checked the suit itself. As always, this process consumed a good ten to fifteen minutes, and as always, they performed it together in comfortable silence, bobbing like soap bubbles on air currents as they did so—wafting in various orientations across the room’s upper reaches, lofting themselves with a lazy toe- or hand-push back over to the equipment racks.
Now that Dominica and Hugh were gone, Jane and Xuan had what amounted to a mansion, by stroider standards: a four-room (not counting the head), one-hundred-fifteen-cubic-meter, mostly vertical habitat of nylon, plastic, and alloy that burrowed like a plantar wart into the side of their asteroid. Right now they were sharing their spare room with a surly miner who had drifted Down from Ilion. He and Jane were doing a favor for a mutual friend from Jane’s Vestan days. This guy was no trouble, really, other than the fact that he was using up their food, water, power, and air.
Upsiders’ social network was tight, for all that it was spread across vast differences. You could be an asocial recluse all you wanted, but when someone showed up at your airlock and asked for help, you gave it, no questions asked, cold equations notwithstanding. The Japanese First Wavers who had populated this asteroid cluster had called it giri. The Second and Third Wavers called it the sammy system, and built software to keep a tally. Selfish, hoarding pricks did not last long Upside.
Finally, with a stifled groan, Jane slipped off her boots and flexed her foothands, clinging to the wall netting with her fingers. She wrung her feet together, rubbing the arches with her thumb-toes, while Xuan checked her radiation levels. “Your numbers look good.”
Jane pulled his radiation monitor off his belt. “Yours are high.”
“I was out in the field for the past two days.”
“Take your shirt off,” she said.
“I bet you say that to all the gents.”
That brought a brief grin. “Only the cute ones.”
She pulled the bone density scanner out of its cupboard and charged it up. Xuan kicked back, and she ran the scanner over and under him, front and back, while he floated in midair. She gave him his regen booster, then kissed him on his belly with a hand under his back. Then, as he rolled over, she slapped him on the ass. Xuan yelped, and grabbed her.
They kissed. He ran his hands down her back. She wrapped arms and legs around him, releasing a breath, and he felt tension drain from her muscles.
“OK, your turn.”
She stretched out. He did the scans. All normal. He prepped a booster shot anyway. She saw it, and grimaced. “That’s not really necessary today, is it? My numbers are fine.”
“It’s better to stay on a regular schedule.”
“But why waste supplies when it’s not strictly necessary?”
Xuan sighed, exasperated. She always resisted taking her meds. Without fail. “So I guess we’re going to do our little pharmacophobia tango once again.”
Jane glared at him, and then crossed her arms with notably poor grace. “Fine. Go ahead.”
He compressed the ampoule against her thigh. She kicked off into the habitat to shake off her sulks, while Xuan put the supplies away, shaking his own head over this irritable island of irrationality she nurtured. He bounded past her, ricocheting off the ceiling into his office, a nook nestled in the rock above the kitchen, to put some of his tools away.
He noticed her checking their “Stroiders” numbers in her office nook.
“Your numbers are up,” she said. She seemed mildly amused. “Stroiders” fans back on Earth ranked Phocaeans on a daily basis. You had two sets of “Stroiders” numbers: eyes (how many people watched you), and thumbs (what they thought of you on a scale