CHAPTER V
Kyle Center Four
Strange place.
Angel looked around the lobby. The Majda slicks who’d “briefed” her at the palace called this place Selei Tower, named for Dyhianna Selei, the Ruby Pharaoh of the Imperialate. Apparently above-city types chose names for their buildings the way gangers created dust sculptures in the canals, so you knew who claimed that territory. Except this building existed above the ground. Skyscraper. That had made no sense until Angel had walked here through the city and discovered that yah, that mirrored tower did indeed look like a needle scraping the sky.
The endless sky. Even after all the times she’d come above the ground this past year, she still marveled at the open space, full of light and wind and wicked new odors, like the scent of “genuine Earth expresso-coffee with cinnamon.” Whatever those rudely multisyllabic words meant, that drink smelled fucking good. And yah, she knew how to use all those absurd words with too many syllables. She thought them plenty when it suited her mood. Fortunately for the verbiage-saturated universe, she chose not to inflict the talky-talk in her mind on the rest of creation.
She walked around the lobby, taking in the sights. Glass panels formed its walls, and sunlight poured through the tinted barriers, flooding the place with light. She approved. The symbols here all came from above-city dust gangs. On one wall, the insignia of the Pharaoh’s Army glowed, a red pyramid within a gold circle. Other walls had icons for the Imperial Fleet, Advanced Services Corp, and Jagernaut Force. The Fleet used a “sailing ship” floating in water for its symbol, which made no sense. Ships sailed in space. When Angel and Ruzik had gone offworld to help Bhaaj with a case, they “embarked’ on a starship here and “disembarked” on Parthonia, a world so different, it seemed unreal. In a place there called Selei City (yah, Selei again), you could turn on a spout and drinkable water came out. Any time you wanted. Angel had liked that case. It also got her this “job,” even if she still wasn’t convinced she wanted a job.
The best part of the visit to Parthonia, though, had been the Selei City Open Marathon. She liked to run. Hell, she loved it. Of course they rarely used vehicles in the Undercity, which damaged the ruins; instead, they ran everywhere. Angel also ran for the sheer joy of it, every day. She had since she was old enough to walk, speeding through her life to escape the starvation, sickness, violence—the lack of everything always nipping at her heels.
So she ran in the Selei City Open. And she won the damn thing. Hah!
Angel didn’t know what to do with the medal they gave her, but having it felt good, like when she earned honors for some online school thing. Although she claimed she didn’t like schooling, she actually enjoyed sneaking onto the Cries meshes to learn stuff. Like “politics.” At first she’d thought it was a form of comedy, but she soon kenned the reality. Slicks went to war over it. As a civilian working for the army, she’d be helping them fight their enemies. Her enemies, too, apparently. The Trader Aristos. A bunch of raggedy-assed losers if she’d ever heard of any. They enslaved billions, took their territory, tortured people, committed genocide against rebels, and in general inflicted their lizard-crap selves on the universe.
Before she’d agreed to the army job, though, she’d talked to Bhaaj. These Aristos real? Or slicks make them up? When Bhaaj went quiet, Angel felt cold. Bhaaj just said, Yah, real. Worse than you could know. That had been enough.
Now today Angel went to work for the army, a huge dust gang that had no dust.
After she finished walking around the lobby, getting the feel of the place, she went to a circular counter in the center where a man sat watching her. He had no smile. Good. Slicks smiled too much. You only did that when you trusted someone, and she didn’t trust these people worth bull-beans.
The man spoke coldly. “Can I help you?”
“Yah,” Angel told him. “Got job.”
“What?” He frowned as if she were a bug on the floor. “I can’t understand you.”
Angel switched into slick talk. “I’m reporting for my job with the army Kyle center on the twenty-third floor. Today is my first day.”
He looked her over as if she wore tattered rags or something. Weird. She’d dressed like someone from Cries today, in the gray tunic and trousers Bhaaj suggested, silly clothes since the red dust would easily show on them. Then again, as deprived as slicks were up here, they didn’t have any dust.
“Where are you from?” he asked in a haughty voice. He made it sound like she came from the lowest of the low, a pest scuttling on the ground.
Angel spoke coldly. “Ruzik circle.”
“What?” He tapped the console in front of him. “Look, lady, you have to leave.”
“I am expected to report to my job for processing,” she told him. “I suggest you comm my contact.”
He blinked, his hand poised above a panel that had just turned red. “Who is your contact?”
“Colonel Lavinda Majda.” But no, the Majda queen wasn’t here, she’d gone to the Undercity with Bhaaj. “Or her office.”
“Majda. Right.” The man acted like she’d spoken a flood of five-syllable words, all for ridicule rather than honor. He pressed the red panel. “If you don’t leave, security will escort you from the building.”
Angel considered him, taking in his appearance. He wouldn’t survive five seconds in the Undercity. “It’s true,” she commented. “You could have your security escort me from the building. Of course, you’ll have to explain why to Colonel Majda.”
He stared at her, his face pale behind what he probably intended as a neutral expression. Anyone with a hint of the mind-feeling biz could sense his anger and uncertainty. It jumped out like a punch.
A woman spoke behind her. “Is there a problem here?”
Angel turned to see two women in green security uniforms. Huh. Not drones like most slicks used in the city. This Selei Tower had real people. Angel wondered if it meant they had lower status, like the Undercity. Somehow, she didn’t think so. Robots were easy. You didn’t have to feed them, for one. Humans took more resources.
She just said, “No problem. I’m trying to report to my first day at work.”
The security guard looked her over with the same frown as the counter dude. Bhaaj had warned her this might happen. You’ll be wearing clothes appropriate for your job, but there’s no hiding that we come from the Undercity, even if you wear long sleeves and a high neck to cover your tats and scars. We look wild to them. It doesn’t matter. Regardless of what they say or do, just stay polite and speak their language. Angel wore the conservative clothes, but the hell with long sleeves and a neck so high it felt like she’d choke. It was hot outside. Besides, she’d earned her tats and scars.
The guard spoke to the guy behind the counter. “I take it her information isn’t in the system?”
“Well it’s, uh, I didn’t check.” He glanced at Angel. “Do you have ID?”
Angel pulled the card out of her pocket, a glossy square with a holo-pic of her. She handed it to the counter dude.
“Oh.” He squinted at the picture, then at her, then at the picture again. Finally he swiped the card across one of his panels. Green lights lit up and a voice said, “Angel Ruzik, employee Kyle center four, grade three clearance.” A hum came from the panel and a new card snapped out, this one larger than Angel’s ID, with a bigger picture of her and writing that gave her name, even if they got the Ruzik part wrong. The Majdas seemed to think that as her husband, he took his name from hers. She ran with Ruzik’s gang, though, so if they wanted to tack his name on after hers, she’d take it. The new card also showed the soaring hawk logo that the Majdas put on anything they could touch.
“Holy shit.” The guy looked up at her. “You are sponsored by Majda.”
Angel shrugged. So what?
The security woman spoke again, the frown still in her voice as well as on her face, but this time she gave it to the counter guy. “It sounds like everything is in order to me.”
“Um, yes, I guess so.” He gave Angel both her ID and the new card. “Wear your badge at all times while you’re in the building.” He motioned to a glass-enclosed room in a wall across the lobby. “Your card will get you access to that lift, so you don’t have to check in here every time.”
Well, good. Took him long enough. Angel was tempted to growl and swing her fists, just to see them jump like startled sandmites. Hah! That’d be entertaining. It’d probably also get her tossed out of this breakable lobby, though. She behaved herself and just nodded, first at the counter dude and then to the security officers. With that, she took off, striding across the lobby.
At the glass-enclosed room, she stood wondering what to do. A light flashed over her face, her body, and the card the guy had given her. “Access granted,” a woman said, doing that thing slicks liked so much, having disembodied voices talk. EIs. Evolving intelligences. Angel thought at least some of them still had a lot of evolving to do, but never mind. Bhaaj had Max in her gauntlets and Jak had Royal Flush. Angel had no problem with those EIs. She included them among the people she respected even if they weren’t people. For one thing, they didn’t talk too much.
“You may enter the south tower lift,” the room added. “Please watch you step,” The glass wall in front of her opened in the middle, the two halves sliding apart. Intrigued, Angel walked into the chamber beyond the doors. As she turned to look out at the lobby, the doors closed, shutting her into the glass room.
“Eh?” Angel didn’t like being closed in when she couldn’t see an obvious way out.
“I would suggest you fasten your badge to your tunic,” the room told her. “You don’t want to lose it. Also, it is easier for sensors to read it if you face the badge outward.”
Angel scowled, but after fooling with the badge, she figured out how to make it stay on the waistband of her tunic. In the meantime, the room went up. Weird. As it rose along the wall, the lobby receded below. How did it do that? The room kept going up, past the ceiling of the lobby until she saw no more than a wall. Wait, now they’d passed the top of the wall—
Ho!
They’d reached the needle portion of the tower, rising along the outside of the building. She could see the entire city. Angel stared in disbelief. She’d never traveled so high in her life. Cries spread out below, basking in the sunlight. The buildings shimmered, their mirrored towers reflecting the blue sky. A few fly-cars soared among them. She could make out people walking on the boulevards below, though they grew smaller with every moment as the lift continued up the tower. Green stuff showed everywhere in parks and along the wide streets. Plants. In a desert. That meant someone had to water them. A lot of water. Naturally occurring liquids killed those kinds of plants, which meant they needed filtered water. These slicks used one of the most valuable resources on the entire planet to grow their fucking decorations.
“Nahya,” Angel said. It felt so wrong, she didn’t have the words.
“Did you need something?” the lift asked.
Angel switched to the Cries language. “No. I’m fine.”
“I am glad to hear that,” the lift told her. “We are almost to your destination.”
A moment later, the lift stopped. Angel squinted at the city below. What did this room expect her to do, step through the glass and plunge to her death? It rattled her, as did a lot of what these indecipherable people did, all six syllables deserved, but she never let them see how she felt. Snarking about them in her mind worked much better than giving even a hint of fear.
A woosh came from behind Angel. Turning, she saw that the back wall of the chamber had opened down the middle, offering her an escape that didn’t involve dying. Relieved, she walked into the wide corridor beyond the exit. The hall stretched out ahead of her, its walls displaying widely spaced pictures, except they moved, showing winged lizards flying through the sky or wind blowing sand in the desert, all that beautiful, heartbreaking space.
A small table to her right stood like an invitation. Three glasses rested there, along with a spouted vase full of water and fat drops condensing on its glass sides. Or maybe its crystal sides. Angel had a hard time telling the difference; she just knew that cyber-riders used crystal in some of their creations. Given that the slicks had made this display, she’d bet someone had even filtered this water. What they were thinking, leaving something so valuable just sitting here, with glasses? Didn’t it occur to them that people would steal their water? Maybe they considered this art, like the images on the walls. Yah, torture people with beauty. It seemed a slick thing to do.
In her youth, Angel would have drunk the entire vase, or decanter, or whatever you called that thing. Then she would have spritzed-off before anyone caught her pinching their stuff. Today she stayed on her best behavior and headed down the hall, ignoring the blatant temptation.
A woman was walking toward her from the far end of the hall. Angel couldn’t see much about her yet, just that she wore a yellow tunic and trousers similar to the gray stuff Angel had inflicted on herself today. The woman had black hair and dark skin like everyone else, except for the few offworlders who did menial jobs the robots hadn’t already taken. The only Raylican natives available to do those jobs lived in the Undercity, and they’d rather eat lizard shit than clean up after slicks.
Angel knew about the places in the desert where they farmed water from below the ground and filtered it. They gave the farming jobs to her people because robots got too much sand in their parts. It meant you spent hours in the burning sun with no rest. No one cared if you ate sand because you had no food, or if you drank unfiltered water because they wouldn’t give you what they fucking purified right there, until finally you fell down and died. How inconvenient. It was still cheaper than using robots. Supposedly anyone from the Undercity could get work as a laborer on the farms. You could also bash your head against the wall until your brains fell out, but why would you do either?
Anyway, this woman seemed like everyone else in Cries, which meant she looked rich. As they neared each other, Angel realized the woman was smiling like they were trusted friends. Seriously? She’d never met this person in her life. Angel schooled her face to neutrality, rather than the I’m going to punch that smile off your face look she would have used with someone who challenged her this way in the Undercity. Apparently, as hard as she found it to believe, people from the City of Cries didn’t know they were being offensive when they showed their teeth to strangers.
The woman lifted her hand in a greeting Angel had seen other people here use. So Angel lifted her hand, too.
The woman stopped in front of her. “My greetings, Goodwoman Angel.” She continued with that smile of hers. “Welcome to the Pharaoh’s Army Kyle Division. I’m Gabrial Tanson.”
Angel really, really wanted to dislike this Gabrial person. Unfortunately, she also sensed the woman’s mood. Gabrial felt nervous, wanted to make a good impression, and earnestly meant to treat her visitor well. She’d even revealed her name. Well, damn. Angel could hardly return that honor by acting like an asshole. She nodded to the woman, not smiling of course, but not beating her up, either. “Thank you,” she said in the Cries dialect. Two words, more than needed, but no matter. Slicks showed respect by being talky.
Gabrial raised her hand, inviting Angel to walk with her. As they headed down the hall, the woman said, “I can show you to your office and get you started on the orientation materials. We’re having a division get-together this afternoon where you can meet everyone. After that, you’ll talk with your supervisor about the specifics of your work. Tomorrow you’ll see a Rajindia neurologist for an analysis of your Kyle rating.” She gave Angel an apologetic look. “The orientation has a lot of material. I’m sorry about that. It can get tedious, but it’s important to read it all.”
Angel nodded, accepting the challenge. She decided she liked Gabrial after all. The woman assumed she could read, and in Cries-speak too. Although Angel could read just fine, many people in the Undercity didn’t bother to learn. It hadn’t taken Angel long to realize that most above-city types assumed her people were incapable even of rational thought let alone literacy. Bhaaj in one of her more annoying decisions had decreed that if you wanted to be a Dust Knight you had to get “schooling,” like reading, writing, math, all that biz. Angel didn’t see what it had to do with fighting, but no matter. She enjoyed finding out absurd things about the universe. It was interesting.
She liked math, too, especially when it helped her figure out odds at cards. It got her into fights when she won too much, but tough. Even before she joined the Knights, she’d had a rep in the rough-and-tumble, what Bhaaj called “street fighting,” never mind that they had no streets, only canals. It had taken Angel time to learn tykado, what with all its odd rules, moves, and other stuff, but she liked it. So yah, now she had black belt in tykado, only first degree, but she was working on her second. She could crush any pissed-off poker bitches who wanted to smash her for counting cards.
Gabrial stopped at a tall archway and stepped back, inviting her to enter, but still looking as nervous as a jump-kit. Angel had the impression that she terrified the woman. She couldn’t see why. She’d done nothing except walk with her and say a few words. Odd. She’d have to—
Ho! Angel stopped pondering Gabrial, poker, or anything else as she entered the office. The room could easily fit twenty people standing side-by-side without even touching each other, yet only one desk stood to the left. One? Didn’t they put the number of desks in an office to match the number of people who used the place? Maybe she had to share the desk. The size of the room meant nothing, though, compared to its windows. The entire wall across from her, from waist height to the ceiling, consisted of glass. The panels were tinted, probably to mute all that sunlight pouring everywhere in the sky outside, but they still let her look out at the world.
Angel walked to the windows and stood there, staring. She could see for a long, long way, past the towers of Cries to the desert beyond, a rolling expanse of red sand and rock that went on forever, all the way to the horizon in every direction. Almost every direction. On her right, the mountains towered beyond the city, stark peaks with nothing green. Somewhere up there, hidden from view, the Majdas lived in their spectacular, golden palace surrounded by imported green stuff that would die anywhere else on this parched ball of rock they called home.
“I’m sorry the office is so small,” Gabrial said.
Small? Angel turned to see her host standing in the doorway, framed by its giant keyhole shape, vertical sides that ended in what people called an “onion-shaped” arch far above her head. A stained-glass circle in the onion showed the insignia of Pharaoh’s Army. Gabrial still looked nervous and apologetic.
When Angel had first heard the way above-city people said, “I’m sorry,” she’d thought they were too naive to realize how much those words invited attack. Apologizing looked weak, and weakness got you killed. However, she’d soon realized that in Cries, “I’m sorry” offered a shorthand explanation, like what she sensed from Gabrial, a way of saying, “I’m sorry we gave you an office smaller than everyone else, but you’re new and we only have so many to spare, not that we have many Kyle operators to give offices to, but this is the smallest division in the building.” Angel approved of any attempts by the slicks to say more with less words, besides which, the office was huge. So she just said, “It’s fine.”
“Well. Good.” Gabrial smiled again, and this time it didn’t look offensive, mainly because Angel had decided she liked her shy host. She could sense Gabrial’s intentions better than she could with most people. The woman meant well.
Gabrial showed her the desk with its shiny tech, including a holoscreen. When her host touched a panel, the screen raised up and displayed a menu with holographic icons, or holicons, reminding Angel of the screens that cyber-riders played with in their dens. This one looked new, though, instead of cobbled together from salvage and black-market tech.
“Pretty,” Angel commented, her version of above-city “small talk.”
“The orientation module is here somewhere. . . .” Gabrial’s forehead furrowed as she flicked her fingers through holicons. The screen responded by showing displays, none of which made sense, like one of a brain neuron and another of people looking happy for no reason. “Where is it . . . ah, here we go.” A screen came up with intelligent-looking people gathered in a big room. It said Orientation, Kyle Center Four, Pharaoh’s Army Division, Selei Tower.
Gabrial motioned to the desk chair, which resembled some sort of cyber artwork with glossy tech-mech along its arms and back. “You can sit here while you go through the materials.”
Angel sat and surprise! The chair-art felt comfortable. She flicked her finger through the holicon of a door floating in front of the screen with the word entrance.
“Welcome to the Pharaoh’s Army Kyle Center orientation,” a woman said. “In this orientation, we will walk you through the purpose, history, and functions of the Kyle division.”
“Eh,” Angel told it. She already knew the purpose, history, and functions of the Kyle division. The army used it to pound Traders. Then again, having more details could be useful.
“I can go through it with you,” Gabrial said at her side.
Angel glanced at her with no comment. When Gabrial just stood there, waiting, Angel realized she didn’t understand. So Angel spoke in Cries dialect. “Thank you. But I’ll go through it myself. I’m looking forward to learning about the division.” So many words! She sounded like an idiot. It had the desired effect, though. Gabrial nodded as if Angel had answered in a reasonable, courteous manner. She even looked relieved.
After Gabrial left, Angel scrolled through the orientation. They wanted her to learn the duties of a telop, one of the Kyle operators who linked to the Kyle mesh in Kyle space and allowed non-Kyle people to use the Kyle network. A lot of Kyle, and who knew what it meant.
She soon got the gist of it, though. In the Undercity, word spread through the Whisper Mill. Tell someone your message, news, gossip, or whatever, and they’d tell someone else, who’d tell more people, and soon everyone knew. Things got changed sometimes, but usually not too much. The Kyle mesh acted like a mental Whisper Mill. You thought your business instead of speaking. It wasn’t that easy, though. You couldn’t just think to the receiver. Nothing happened. You needed a person—a telop—to link you to Kyle space, a place “located outside spacetime.” A network existed in that outside place, one built by the two people in the normal universe who were better at being Kyle than anyone else alive, said persons being the Ruby Pharaoh and her nephew the Imperator, the dude who commanded all the Imperialate gangs.
It baffled Angel that they had one high boss over the Pharaoh’s Army, Imperial Fleet, Jagernaut Force, Allied Services, and all the other Skolian gangs. It’d be like having a super boss in charge of the cartels and all their drug punkers. Never work. Then again, the cartel bosses were shitholes who murdered people and destroyed lives. Maybe this Imperator was more like Bhaaj, in charge of all the Dust Knights even though they came from different gangs, even a few punkers who’d wanted out of the cartels and needed the backing of the Knights so they didn’t get whacked by a cartel queen for leaving.
A buzz sounded in the room.
“Eh?” Angel lifted her head to survey the office. She saw no one.
The buzz sounded again.
Huh. It came from the desk. She squinted at its glossy panels. No lights showed on any of them. She looked under the desk, but nothing showed there, either, except the underside of a desk.
Another buzz.
Angel sat up. “What the fuck?”
“Are you addressing me?” a woman asked.
“Not know,” Angel said. “Who the fuck are you?”
“The profanity is unnecessary,” the voice said. “I am Aide 142, the EI for this office.”
“You make that buzz?”
“The sound is your comm,” Aide 142 informed her. “Someone is trying to contact you.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” The buzz came again. “I suggest you answer the comm.”
“How?”
“You can either tell me to answer it,” the EI said, “or you can tap it on your desk.”
“Where on desk?”
“The menu is to your right. Do you see the narrow strip of platinum metal?”
She peered at the desk. Its panels all looked the same.
The buzz came again.
“What color is platinum?” Angel asked.
“It looks silver.”
“All look silver.”
“Can you read?”
“For fuck’s sake,” Angel said. Besides, none of the panels had words or icons.
“Does that mean no?”
“Means yah, I can read. Means stop being an asshole.”
“I am incapable of functions that involve the administration of human excrement.”
Angel couldn’t help but laugh. “Fooled me.”
“I have no wish to fool you.”
“Good.” The annoying buzz sounded yet again. “What message I got?”
“Here you are,” Aide 142 said.
A new voice rose into the air, a man this time. “My greetings. I’m trying to reach Angel Ruzik. Can you put me through to her?”
Angel winced. Slicks gave their names so easily. Telling someone your name meant you trusted them even more than if you smiled at them. You never revealed your name to strangers. Except up here, they threw around names like they were giving candy to kids. It sucked. This unknown person knew her name, how to reach her, and who knew what else.
“Why you want her?” Angel asked.
A pause. Then the guy said, “Whom am I speaking to?”
Whom indeed. “You want Angel,” she said, “you tell me why.”
“You don’t sound like an EI. Or anyone at the Kyle division.”
“Tough.”
Another pause. Then the slick, who was apparently smarter than he sounded, spoke again. “Are you Angel Ruzik? That’s who I’m trying to reach.”
“Angel,” she said. “Not Ruzik.”
“Oh.” He sounded confused. “Ruzik isn’t your last name?”
“Not got last name.”
“Ah,” the guy said.
Be polite, Angel reminded herself. She switched into the Cries dialect. “What can I do for you, Goodman—” She let the title hang without a name, an obvious pressure for him to reveal what people called him. By Undercity standards, that got as rude as you could get. Bhaaj hadn’t said she had to be cool by Undercity standards, though, only according to the above-city.
And sure enough, not only did he offer his name, he apologized. “Ah, of course. I’m sorry for the confusion. I’m Mason Qazik. I coach the Raylicon Track and Field Olympic team and run the tryouts in the City of Cries.” Goddess, now he sounded even more apologetic. “I’m not trying to be grandiose here. I’ll be honest with you, Raylicon has one of the worst Olympic teams in the Imperialate. It’s because we draw on only one city, Cries, which only has a few million people. Other teams draw on entire worlds or habitats. However, we do usually manage to qualify.”
Huh. Angel had no clue what he meant.
After a moment, he added, “I’m sorry if I’m blathering. I’ve never been good with this recruiting business.”
Another apology. She wondered how this man had managed to survive into adulthood without getting flattened into the ground.
“It’s just that I saw the recordings of you running in the Selei City Open on Parthonia,” he continued. “It was beautiful. We’ve a couple of great runners on the team right now, but I don’t think either could beat your time. Your style is, well, unconventional. With some coaching, I’ll bet you could improve your times even more. As it is, your finish at the Open qualifies you for the classic Greek marathon in the Olympics. I mean, it’s not a medal-worthy Olympic time, sure, but it’s a start. Hell, it would qualify you for the Imperial marathon. Just barely, but that’s all it takes. I know, seventy kilometers and all that climbing, but it’s the most prestigious track and field event.” He took a breath. “That is, um, if you’re, uh, interested.”
Angel blinked. Amazing. Truly. How could he string together so many syllables and make so little sense? She ought to respond, though, given his efforts to show respect. She appreciated that, particularly after what had happened in the lobby.
“You want me to run?” she asked.
“Yes!” Enthusiasm bubbled in his voice. “I’d also like to talk to the fellow who came in fifth. Ruzik? Was that his name? He came in a fraction ahead of your coach, Major Bhaajan. Hell, I wish I could ask her to run. I’d heard she was an Olympic medalist decades ago in the classic marathon. I can’t, though. She’s got biomech in her body. I mean, I know, she deactivated it for the Open. But they don’t let you into the Olympics if you’re augmented, not even if you can turn it off.”
Angel had no idea how to respond to this earnest and excited guy. So she told him a truth, an obvious one everyone knew. “Like to run.”
“Good! We’d love to have you join the team.”
“I think about, yah?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t get that.”
She switched into Cries-speak. “I will think about it, yes?”
“Ah, yes! Of course. I’ll leave my contact info with your EI. The official tryouts aren’t for a while, but you could meet the other people preparing to compete. Get to know everyone.” Dryly he added, “It’s not a huge group. Not even medium sized. Hell, it’s probably the smallest group of Olympic track-and-field hopefuls anywhere. They’re a good bunch, though. I think you’ll like them.”
Angel needed to ask someone about this before she committed to anything. Remembering her promise to Bhaaj, she said, “I will let you know. And thank you for thinking of me. I appreciate your interest.” There. Lots of words to make him happy. He seemed like a good dude.
“You’re welcome! I look forward to hearing from you.”
“Eh.” Angel waited. When nothing more happened, she said, “EI 142?”
“What can I do for you?” 142 asked.
“Am I done with the comm?”
“Goodman Qazik has signed off, if that’s what you mean. He gave me his contact data.”
“Good. If I get any more buzzes, you find out who is buzzing and let me know. Then I’ll decide if I want to answer.”
“Very well. I will update my protocols.”
Angel was about to turn back to the intriguing, albeit talky, orientation, when another buzz came, this one a discreet, barely audible hum from her own gauntlet.
“You have received a buzz,” Aide 142 said helpfully. “However, it is on a private, secured, and hidden system that I have no way to access.”
And I’m not giving you access. Angel tapped a panel on her gauntlet. “Ruzik?”
“Eh.” His voice came out of her comm. “Got problem.”
“With Majda?”
“Yah. And cartels.”
Angel stiffened. “What goes?”
“Want to meet Majda queen.”
“Fuck.”
“Yah.”
“You want me get help?”
“Nahya. We deal.” He paused. “We check in each hour. With you. No check, you call Majda. Use secret line to Matriarch.” He said all three syllables of her title with respect, indicating honor. “Tell Majda we need help.”
“I ken.” Angel hesitated, worried for him. “You good?”
His voice softened the barest amount. “Yah, good. You?”
“Yah. Good.”
With that great outpouring of love, they signed off.
Angel checked to make sure she still had the Majda link hidden in her comm codes. Satisfied, she went back to the Kyle orientation to learn more about the things she could do with her Kyle brain, which apparently almost no one else in the universe could manage despite their wealth, heritage, power, titles, and words. She couldn’t wait to figure out everything she could get away with as a telop, or no, she meant all the support she could give the slicks. Really. She meant support.
Learning to do what slicks couldn’t do just might be fun.