An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (5 page)

“Don’t you
‘
Mink
’
me
!
I’m only your mink when you behave
!
Her family might send a Private Enforcer
.
I’m not mixed up enough to think that’s behaving
.
I don’t want a corpse for a sweetie
.
Hell
,
they may even box you.
”

“Enough
.
I got the point
.
Shall we meet for lunch?”

“Nope
.
Betty
’
s taking me to Powell’s bookstore for a romp
in the stacks
.”

He smiled
.
She
often joked
about her liaisons
.
She probably
only
planned a shopping trip of some kind
,
or
a visit to the manicurist for
new nail implants.
“Don’t wear her out too much
.
She’s due to come back here tonight.”

“Tease!” she said, sticking her tongue out at him,
flashing
the blue lightning bolt tattooed there
as well
.
“Wi
lted Rose?”

“
Tomorrow night, half-dozen
.
I have a late appointment
tonight
.
Later, Mink.”

“I’ll
‘
Mink
’
you,” she said in mock anger as she switched off the
percomm
.

* * *
 

The rich, musty smell of autumn harvest filled the Rose Garden Arena as Sonya
, wearing only her tattoos and a loose brown
chemise
that went down to mid-thigh,
wandered around through the milling swarms of people
.
Despite how people packed themselves in between unlicensed hucksters and questionable food stalls, a zone
of emptiness
2
meters across
flowed with her
.
Random decisions and free action always seemed to keep that zone open with Sonya in the center
.
No one noticed the gap.

She breathed deeply to draw in the spicy draft of roasting chilies,
bruised
thyme,
garbled
lavender
,
and simmering mystery stew heavy with the stink of cabbage
.
She stopped at a stall with dried herbs in plastic
containers
and a
n
Hispanic proprietress
.
The pots encircled her four layers deep
.
“
Te de diosa
,” Sonya said
.

While p
ivoting around
,
the woman grabbed leaves and
pieces of
bark out of seemingly random bins and stuffed them into a loose plastic bag
.
With her bare hands she gently stirred the dry concoction before sealing it with a plastic tie
.
Sonya handed her a credit slip in exchange, dropped her
goddess
tea fixings into her woven marketing bag
,
and moved on
.

Two Metros, decked out in full assault gear
—
the only way a policeman would be seen
at
street
level
—
strolled by with their own radius of emptiness around them
.
The members of the throng
would take one look and decide to visit a stall in the opposite direction
.
The two toughs walked right by Sonya without a second glance,
even as she passed through
their
own
safety zone
.
The pair ambled up to a small food vendor
,
who
se
face went ashen
.

“
Pagueme el seguro
,
”
one of the cops
ordered
in a no-nonsense tone.

“I don’t speak Spanish.”

“You spoke it well enough last week, bitch
.
Insurance now or we
’ll
remove this unlicensed stall from the premises
.”

Sonya stood behind and watched, nibbling on some dried tomatoes
from an earlier purchase
.

“I only have half,”
the proprietress
complained
, quickly handing them a handful of small plastic bills
.
“Business has been off
.”

The taller of the two tongued his mic
.
“Dispatch, I have a forty-three sixteen, illegal merchant without a permit
.
Our twenty is Rose Garden Arena, grid fourteen
.
We are removing it now
.”

The smaller of the two
Metros
tossed over a huge boiling pot, spilling the contents all over the ground
.
Several unfed urchins scampered around
,
licking the bounty off the cracked floors
.
They scooped up chunks and put them inside their filthy clothes to eat later.

“Please don’t!” the vendor screamed
.
“This is all I have
!
I can’t feed my children
!
”

“Stand aside or be destroyed with it
.”
Both men took up lasing weapons and aimed at the fuel source, an old propane container
.

The woman moved around
to shield the tank, begging desperately.
“Don’t
.
I can’t…”

The first one struck her with his right fist, bowling her over onto the wet ground
.
Both reached for their triggers
,
but something stopped them
.
They couldn’t squeeze
.
Sonya closed her eyes and muttered ungrammatical Latin to herself before the two officers put away their weapons and moved on
.

No one saw anything
.
No one heard anything
.
Later that evening t
he two officers would probably have a splitting headache and wonder why dispatch thought they
’d
removed an illegal vendor
.

The Metros
’
own statistics showed crime at the street level
—
minus their own thuggery, of course
—
at two murders, sixteen rapes, eight robberies, sixty-four assaults
,
and eighty-four muggings per city block per day
.
Those
stats
vastly understated the true numbers by at least a factor of two, if not three
or
four
,
because Nil victims don’t
get counted.

Being the white knight could suck you dry doing it each and every day
.
For every one you saved
,
you lost seventy or more others
.
Sonya knew that being the hero didn’t change the world
.
It never had and it never would, but in this case it made her feel better.

Sonya didn’t wait around. No one noticed her involvement
.
No one noticed her leave.

* * *
 

Despite
his Metro-assisted excuse to skip work
today
,
Tony
couldn’t avoid
one related responsibility
, much as he might want to
.
After a quick check of the guest list
,
t
he Kendry’s doorman, a substantial Hispanic with no obvious body modification, invited
Tony
in
.

“May I take your coat
,
Mr. Sammis?”

“Yes, thank you
.”
Tony slipped
off his full
-
length
,
faux
mohair coat and offered it without a thought
.
He brushed his cobalt blue suit to smooth the wrinkles and checked his ruffled
blouse
.

“If you
’d
step through to the parlor
,
the other guests are
gathering
there.”

“Thank you
.”
Tony
wandered toward the general murmur of conversations
and muted music
.

Knots of people
meandered
around the large
,
open room, breaking and reforming in the classic manner of all cocktail parties
throughout
history, swaying
to
the classical strains of Enya
.
The women
each
led
a
trail
of fabric from their dress like the tail of some prehistoric beast
,
while
the men, like Tony himself, straitjacketed themselves in an ancient suit called a tuxedo, all determined by the current fashionistas for this season
.
One of the most famous, Simon
e,
had
decreed that dresses in the front barely cover half the thighs and carried high-necked bodices,
ruch
ed up tightly against the throat
.
The color and details on each person seemed to indicate individuality
,
but Tony
saw only
a sea of conformity.

A serving girl came up, breaking Tony’s ruminations
.
She wore a bar prosthesis
like a tiny miniskirt flared wide
around her waist
,
plus
a
skimpy
black lace top
—
neither of which covered much
.
“Drink, sahr?”
she asked in a thickly accented voice.

“
Rye
on bare cubes, please
.”
Tony dropped a pair of credit chips into the tip bowl dangling beneath her ample charms.

“Thank you, sahr.”

“Tony!” called out
Lindsay, an attractive cougar
from the accounting office
,
as she bolted over to
ward him
.
Her iridescent silver evening dress accentuated the mischievous glint in her eye
and the glitter spray in her dark black hair
.
Without
giving
him
the opportunity to
answer
,
she pulled him toward a small group of people
by one hand
as he grabbed for his drink with the other
.
“You just
have
to meet Raymond, the new
level four manager in Cosmetics
Development
!” she insisted.
“Also
,
he’s dishy as hell
.
Better take me before he gets me,
”
she whispered directly
into Tony’s ear.

Tony
manage
d
not to vomit
.

Heedless of the quiet conversation
being interrupted
, Lindsay busted in
to a small group
.
“Raymond, this is Tony Sammis.”

“Mr. Sammis
,
”
came an immediate reply.

“Oh,
just
Tony, please
.
This
is
a party
,
after all,” Tony said
,
sipping
at his drink
while
trying hard not to duck the smoke from Raymond’s narcostick.

“Tony
it is, then
.
So Lindsay says you’re interested in cosmetics
and perhaps moving up with it.
”