Breakaway: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel (v1.1) (21 page)

he was awoken at 9:03 by Vanessa, ringing the call button. Sandy blinked her eyes awake, uplinked to check the outside corridor through the cameras there, and unlocked the door. Curled up again as Vanessa came in and shut it behind her.

She came through the bedroom doorway a few moments later, and took a running leap onto the bed, and onto Sandy in the process. Shouted, "Wake up!" into Sandy's ear, propped over her on all fours, as Sandy pretended to ignore her, liking bed better than the promise of the new day dawning. The sunlight was bright despite the polarised windows, but somehow the glow was missing, failing to warm her skin properly in the now not-so-early morning.

"Come on," Vanessa said, lying heavily on Sandy's side, "GIs aren't supposed to be lazy, you're setting a very bad precedent."

"Go away," Sandy complained, pulling the sheets more firmly about her.

"Hey, you due for your five hundred thousand K check-up, or what?" Rapped her repeatedly on the head. "Did your elastic band break?" Sandy snorted, and made no effort to move. "Come on, Sandy, don't do this, this is a bad sci-fi plot-revolt of the machines, y'know? What if our toasters stopped working in the mornings, the hot water systems went on strike, the cars decided not to start? You can't go on strike in the middle of a techno-metropolis ... the next thing you know, all the kitchen appliances will be demanding better hours and the refrigerators will refuse to turn on their little lights when you open the door, and then the entire city will go weak with hunger from not knowing what to eat ..."

Sandy grabbed her into a fast headlock and stuffed the pillow over her head. Vanessa protested, with little effect beyond a muffled shouting, and ineffectual whacks from flailing limbs.

"Silence can be so relaxing," Sandy told the pillow. "Don't you think?" Removed the pillow. Vanessa stuck her tongue out defiantly. Sandy pushed her off the bed, and she landed with a thud.

"Ow."

Vanessa's head reappeared over the bedside, dark hair in disarray, grinning broadly.

"Pain," Sandy accused her, head back on her pillow, pulling her sheets back into some kind of order.

"You getting up? It's not like you're short on work, SWAT or no SWAT."

"Just a half hour longer." Burrowing back into her pillow.

Vanessa sat back on her heels, studying her with a smile.

"You're getting slack. This isn't the military spec cps officer I know and love. I mean, look at you, you're getting into fights with your superiors, your hair's getting long ..." She messed Sandy's already dishevelled hair, Sandy swatting her away. "... your apartment's sprouting all kinds of unnecessary decorations, and now you're sleeping in late."

"I'm evolving," Sandy mumbled into her pillow.

"Into what?"

"Vanessa, the SIBs just searched my apartment and confiscated my gear," she said plaintively. "I'm feeling very pissed off. Have some sympathy."

"You're feeling sorry for yourself," Vanessa said with amazement as it dawned on her. "That's a first."

"I told you, I'm evolving."

"No, you're not, you're regressing. I can see your maturity and self control plummeting before my eyes."

"Good. I'm due a little self obsession, I've been serving other people's interests all my life and look what I've got from it."

"You've got me," Vanessa said reasonably.

"I've got a whole city whose President's butt I saved and whose security I restored after a mountain-sized breach, all of whom now hate me and want me dead. Why the fuck do I bother?"

No reply from Vanessa. She hadn't spoken loudly, or with great emotion, but now, somehow, a silence hung in the air. And she blinked her eyes open, realising exactly what she'd said. Where had that come from?

Vanessa sighed. Hauled herself to her feet, and sat on the bed beside her.

"Sandy ... I think about two months before I met you, there was a big news story here because a senior businessman had been caught having sex with a high class prostitute. This guy was a bigshot, head of some political advisory committee or other, I forget. Anyway, he was found out because he and the girl he was screwing were getting real adventurous on the ninetieth-floor balcony-she was hanging onto the railings, he was giving it to her ... and somehow she slipped and fell.

"Yeah, exactly," as she saw Sandy's wince. "She put a big hole in a passing car, made a real spectacle on the news. Just this pair of legs sticking up through the roof, high heels and all."

"Can see why the media liked it."

"Sure you can. And it's horrible, right? I mean this girl was a col lege student, she was just working so she could afford the tech-lessons that went with the fancy tape-teach she was getting, had a whole career plan laid out in front of her, a whole life and everything ... and what a fucking stupid, undignified way to end it all in front of the whole planetary media-and then become a part of the circus sideshow of this guy's divorce and court proceedings ... and the rearrangement of that whole advisory committee.

"And you know what? Within days, people were laughing themselves stupid about it." Sandy rolled her head on the pillow to meet Vanessa's meaningful gaze. "There were jokes on all the talk shows, traffic advisories on the aerial net warning airborne commuters to watch out for rapidly descending prostitutes below three hundred metres in the Ranarid District ... Some people at the mardi gras the next month even had a car as a float, with a big pair of plastic legs mounted on top of the roof. A live street theatre group did this thing with hordes of desperate technogeeks wandering the streets of Ranarid staring skyward with great big fishing nets, hoping to catch beautiful naked women falling out of the sky ..." Sandy finally lost control of the grin that had been building up, against her better judgment. Vanessa pointed at her in knowing triumph.

"You see, it's funny, right? And why's it funny?"

"It happened to someone else," said Sandy, sobering up immediately.

"Exactly. And this girl, she wasn't a person to them, or to anyone but her family and friends, she was just this ... this joke ... this prostitute who became a Tanushan urban legend. And, of course, it sums up what every cynical person ever thought about this city, that one day we'd all party or drug or booze or fuck ourselves to death. She was just a symbol, not a person, not someone's daughter, or someone's sister or best friend.

"So, now, what are you? To all the people out there? Who do they think you are?"

"Either death incarnate, or every lonely male technogeek's masta- batory fantasy."

"Well there, you see? You're already bringing happiness to thousands of lonely young men throughout the city ..."

"If it made the general populace any happier," Sandy muttered, "I'd do the full spread, literally and figuratively."

"Sandy ..." Vanessa gave an exasperated sigh, ". . . people don't have any opinion on you ... because they don't know you. They have an opinion on murderous two-legged killing machines, but that's not you. That's just what some people are telling them is you, or what they're assuming is you. You're a symbol to them, an object of ... of ideological perception, not a person. You're a news story, like that girl. People make comment and raise all kinds of fuss, but they're not talking about you, they're talking about what you represent to them. That's different. One day they'll learn the difference, and then ..."

"You reckon?" Dryly.

"Yep, I damn well do. They're not going to have a choice. You're not about to vanish into obscurity, Sandy. If you stay here, you're going to be prominent, your skills alone make that clear enough. I mean, hell, you think you're going to stay in SWAT Four forever?"

Sandy just looked at her for a long moment. Put an arm under her head to keep the neck muscles from stiffening. "I hadn't thought that far."

"You've gotta give people around here some credit, Sandy, they're only ignorant where they think they can afford to be. I mean look at what's happened since Article 42 was introduced. Almost universal support, total revamp of local infonet protocols, even the most radical free-speechers barely whimpered. And excluding the SIB and esoteric academia," heavy sarcasm, "there's very wide support for the emergency powers ... I mean, hell, you'd think in a place like this they'd be up in arms about the CSA getting extra authority, but most people support it. Some are even demanding we set up our own military rather than just contributing to the Fed Fleet. Which we'll probably do if we end up breaking away.

"All of that's a huge turnaround in popular opinion ... If they can accept that, they can damn well accept you. And I think that whatever happens, they'll come to value you-you've got skills and knowledge they didn't value before, because they didn't think they needed them. Now things are all different, we're emerging independently into the big, bad world, and we'll need a big, bad guardian to hold our hand and help us through." Giving Sandy's leg a rough shake beneath the sheet.

"Great," Sandy murmured, "I can get a surgical upgrade for a dozen extra arms, work on my God complex." And she stretched, hugely, pushing down the bed from the wall behind her head. Something caught in her shoulder, then in several places down her back, and she pushed out harder, wriggling as she tried to get them to pop. Several did, but several more appeared ... she shifted position again, reaching one-armed for the wall. Muscle contracted, like a rippling of cabled steel beneath the skin.

"You get it?" Vanessa asked with some concern.

"Nearly." Through gritted teeth. Pushed her right leg out to its fullest as the tension caught along the thigh and hamstring, and down into the calf. Something in her achilles and ankle not so much popped as cracked, almost audibly. "Ouch," she said redundantly.

"Jesus Christ," exclaimed Vanessa, watching the spread of rippling muscle across her shoulders and back as she rolled onto her stomach, swelling to multiples of their original size, writhing like snakes ...

"If you find it unpleasant," Sandy said somewhat testily from face down on the mattress, "don't watch." Gave a final heave of tension, the bedsheet unfelt upon bulging shoulder and back muscles, and relaxed. Tension melted pleasantly away, sensation came prickling back into her skin, soft sheets and firm mattress in comfortable proportion.

"How are you doing, anyway?" Vanessa asked, a little warily. "I mean, considering ... bullet holes and all." Meaning more than just bullet holes. Upon arrival in Tanusha she had suffered much, much worse.

"I'm okay." Rolling tiredly onto her back. "I'm tighter than usual, I get more kinks in weird places ... small price for being in one piece." Vanessa's gaze trailed down her body beneath the sheet. Contemplatively. "What?" And realised that the thin sheet clung revealingly to her curves as she lay on her back.

"You're built like a hovertank," Vanessa observed.

"Damn sexy hovertank, though, huh?"

"Light recon model," Vanessa amended, "sleek, fast and high powered. Heavily armed and armoured for its size, though."

"I like that." Smiling. "I'm thinking a Ge-Vo 19. I worked with those a few times. Very sexy piece of hardware."

"Huh, I thought you'd given up all that macho hardware fascination for smelling flowers and appreciating classical music ..."

"Macho?" Frowning. "I'm technology, Ricey, I'm not macho. Why assign masculine gender to universal concepts?"

"League argument!" Vanessa said triumphantly. "Recipe for butch chicks and effeminate men. How boring!"

"That's an interesting argument coming from a SWAT lieutenant. Tell me-you think if people in this city decided tomorrow that gravity was masculine that would mean all us women could suddenly fly around the room?"

"Your subtle point being?"

"That science is universal, technology is derived from science and therefore also universal, and that if women on this planet happen to believe that science is somehow less relevant to them, then they need their heads examined. I can't understand why you'd want to believe that ... all the best jobs around are in technology, have been for hundreds of years. The things some women in the Federation pick out as being their grand ideal of femininity, you'd think they wanted to be the inferior gender ... Say this much for the League, most League women find it as incredible as I do."