Perilous Waif (Alice Long Book 1) Page 4

  Well, that was obvious.

  I jumped, reoriented and kicked off the back of the woman who’d tried to grab me. That sent her stumbling away from me, out of action for a few seconds while I rocketed through the air towards the one who’d been talking. She was already reacting, dodging out of my way while she pulled a knife from her belt.

  But I didn’t need to hit her. I just needed to get close enough to reach out as I flew past, and pluck the jammer off her belt. I tumbled to my feet, and crushed it in my hand.

  “Oops. You didn’t need that, did you?”

  “Nicely done,” Naoko said. “Distress call is out, Jin. Are you still going to be here when my backup arrives?”

  Jin growled in frustration. “A loli combat droid that’s pretending to be human? That’s the best you can do for a bodyguard? Naoko, you know that isn’t going to cut it in the long run. You’d better turn yourself in before things get serious.”

  “That will not happen tonight,” Naoko said calmly.

  “Your funeral. Come on, girls.”

  They slunk off down the alley, and broke into a run once they were around the nearest corner. I focused my hearing and listened to them go, making sure they weren’t sneaking back for another try.

  Naoko sagged in relief.

  “Thank you for your help,” she said softly. “That was a very thorough surrender code. I don’t believe I could have escaped them on my own.”

  “You’re welcome. I’m Alice Long, by the way. You aren’t going to call the proctors for real?”

  Com traffic is encrypted, so I couldn’t just listen in on someone else’s conversations. But I could see that she hadn’t actually transmitted anything. I guess the dog girls didn’t have fancy radio sensors like mine.

  “After this failure they will need to report back to their handler, and receive new instructions before considering another attempt. Which is fortunate, for I have no one to call. I’m the only crewmember who came down on the shuttle, and I don’t dare involve law enforcement. The organization the inugami serve has considerable influence, and local law does not seem well disposed towards androids such as myself. The last thing I want is to create a mess that will trouble my captain. It’s bad enough that I can’t seem to find a source for these flowers I’m supposed to be purchasing.”

  “Flowers?” What the heck would she want flowers for?

  “A special request for an offworld collector,” she clarified. “I thought it would be easy, but no one seems to sell presence blossoms.”

  “Well, of course not. They’re sacred to Gaia. No one on Felicity would dare pick one, and they don’t sell the seeds. You’ll have to sneak out of town and gather them yourself.”

  “That is a problem. I’m programmed for work in stations or aboard ship, but I’d be lost out in that wilderness. Does this planet even have a navgrid?”

  “Nope. That’s another sinful indulgence of people who’ve lost touch with nature. But, um, I could show you where to find some.”

  She gave me a wary look. “I see. And what would you want in return for this service?”

  “A ride off this planet,” I told her. “You can do that, right? I don’t care where you drop me off, as long as it’s not some crazy mind control dictatorship. I just can’t stay here.”

  She studied me for a long moment. I could see a flurry of encrypted traffic on her datalink now, and I had a feeling I knew what she was looking up.

  “You said your name is Alice Long,” she said slowly. “The missing orphan from the Benevolent Goddess Orphanage?”

  “That’s me. So we’re even, right? If I was an evil bitch I could use your surrender code on you, but you could turn me in to the port proctors before I could finish saying it. I’m sure your captain would get mad about it too, and I need her cooperation to get what I need. So what do you say?”

  “That orphanage is halfway across the continent,” she observed.

  “Yes. It was a long walk, and I’m getting really tired of hunting animals for food. Please? I hardly weigh anything, so it’s not like the lift will cost much.”

  Her lips twitched. “Indeed, it will not. The Square Deal is not a passenger liner, Alice. The accommodations are Spartan, and the captain may require you to work for your passage.”

  “I can do that. I’m not trained, but I’m smart and I’m not afraid of hard work. I don’t need much, just basic life support and a place to sleep. Give me a chance, Naoko. Pleeeease?”

  I gave her my best puppy eyes. She gave up on trying not to smile.

  “Very well, Alice. If you will help me accomplish my mission here, I will take you with me when I leave and persuade the captain to allow you passage. Until then you shall be my guide. Agreed?”

  “Yes!” I couldn’t resist hugging her. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! You don’t know how much this means to me, Naoko. You’re saving my life, here.”

  “You are welcome, little one. Now focus. We need to finish and be gone before the inugami cause more trouble. Where can we find those flowers?”

  “Oh, right. Okay, focused like a laser. Um, how many do you need, anyway?”

  “At least two whole plants, suitable for cultivation,” she told me. “There is a bonus for additional specimens, but only a small one.”

  “Then we should take at least four. Presence blossoms are delicate, so we might lose one on the trip. We’ll need something to put them in, of course. Do you have access to a private fabber? We should really use hothouse boxes to move them, but buying those from a public fabber might raise a warning flag somewhere.”

  “There’s a small fabber on my shuttle,” Naoko said. “I’m checking the database now. A ‘hothouse box’ is a small, controlled-environment container meant for transporting plants, correct?”

  “That’s right. You’ll need one about twenty by twenty by forty cems tall for each plant. If you’ve got options look for a stackable model with carrying handles, or maybe one of the fancy ones with a hover unit in the base.”

  “A hover unit would take too long to fabricate,” she objected. “Does this seem suitable?”

  She sent me a complicated message over the public datanet. I could feel my com software chewing it over, trying to figure out what to do with it. Finally it resolved into a 3D model of an odd-looking hothouse box, and a few hundred pages of technical specs.

  “Oh, neat! I didn’t know you could do that with the datanet,” I told her.

  She gave me an odd look. “You’ve never linked a fab design before?”

  “We didn’t have a datanet at the orphanage,” I admitted. “I figured out how to log in, but I’m still struggling with most of this stuff. It took my implant computer almost a hundred milliseconds to figure out what that file was. Anyway, um, let’s see. Yeah, I think this will work. It says it’s rated for tropical marsh environments, and all K-class biochemistries. Felicity’s plants are all in the K16 family, so that should be fine. Just don’t forget to plug them in when we get back to your ship, and refill them with organic feedstock about once a week.”

  “I shall do so. You seem to know a great deal about plants, Alice.”

  “That’s mostly what they teach in school here,” I explained. “Gardening and animal care for the little kids, biology and genetics for the older ones, and then stuff like weather management and ecological caretaking for advanced students. It’s kind of boring, but learning it was better than failing all my classes.”

  “I’m sure. Well, the boxes will be ready in fifteen minutes, and once they’re built a utility drone will deliver them to us. Now, how do you propose to leave the port? Offworlders are not allowed outside, you know.”

  I snickered. “The security here sucks. I guess they figure there’s no reason to worry about people on foot, since there’s nothing around here but jungle and marshland. Can you climb buildings, and sneak? Our best route is over one of the big square buildings on the east side of town.”

  “The warehouses? Yes, I can manage that. Which way?�
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  I led her back across town to the spot where I’d come in. Her dress morphed as we walked, gradually turning into something a lot less eye-catching. The floating ribbons that hovered around her merged into the fabric, the strategically placed cutouts closed, and her plunging neckline rose to something a lot more modest. The high-heeled shoes melted into practical boots, the gloves extended up her arms to fuse with the sleeves of her dress, and then the skirt started to get shorter. By the time we got where we were going she was wearing a skinsuit that covered everything from the neck down, with a short skirt and a light jacket that kept the tight garment from being too revealing.

  I’d never seen smart matter clothes in action before, so it was kind of cool to watch. But I thought Naoko was more interesting.

  She was beautiful, of course. Spacers always have enough money for cosmetic mods, and what kind of weirdo wouldn’t make herself look good when it was so easy? But it was a different kind of beauty than anyone I’d seen before. Her face was pure aristocratic elegance, with high cheekbones and dark eyes. She was taller than any of the matrons, pushing a hundred and seventy cems, which left her towering over my puny hundred and fifty. Her hair was two-tone, dark red woven with pure black, like a smoky flame cascading over her shoulders and down her back.

  She was slender, but her figure was much bolder than anyone I’d seen on Felicity. Something about the way she moved kept drawing my eyes along sculpted legs and swaying hips… darn it, I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or jealous.

  Maybe both. I resolved then and there that someday I was going to have breasts like hers. I’d never realized that big ones could make a woman look so sexy.

  She caught me looking, and raised an elegantly sculpted eyebrow. “Is there a problem, Alice?”

  I flushed. “I, um, no. I just, well, no one on Felicity looks like you. You’re really pretty.”

  She smiled. “Thank you, Alice. But do try not to get distracted. You can gaze in wonder all you like once we return to the ship.”

  I gulped, and looked away. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to stare. Oh, look, we’re almost there. Just down the alley here, and up the wall…”

  Her knowing smile made me feel like a little kid. Thank Gaia she let it go at that.

  I was more in my element once we started our sneak. I found the spot with the overhanging branches easily enough, and scampered up the side of the building. Naoko stared up after me for a minute, and shook her head.

  She made a throwing motion, and something smacked into the side of the building near the roofline and stuck. I took a closer look, and realized it was some kind of grappling device attached to a thin cable of woven carbon fiber. I guess it had a motor on it too, because Naoko just held her arm out and the cable pulled her up. She swung herself up onto the roof with a nimble acrobatic maneuver that caused enough bouncing to pull my eyes right back to where they weren’t supposed to be. Darn it, was she doing that on purpose?

  I turned around, and made my way to the branch I’d used to get in. It was easily within jumping distance, although Naoko used her gadget again for some reason.

  “Hold up, please,” she said when I turned to go. “My drone will be here with the boxes momentarily. It’s best if it doesn’t try to cross the fence.”

  “Alright,” I said.

  We waited quietly for a moment.

  “Alice,” she said hesitantly. “Will you be offended if I ask what you are?”

  “Just a girl with a lot of enhancements. Why?”

  “May I see your hands?”

  I didn’t see a reason to say no, so I let her examine them. “What are you looking for?”

  “The way you climbed that wall looked like setae gloves,” she explained. “But your skin feels completely natural now. That’s very impressive engineering, Alice. Well beyond what one normally sees in civilian hands here in the Federation.”

  I shrugged. “The navy found me in a pirate base when I was a baby. I’ve always wondered who my mom was, but I don’t know anything. Maybe there’s a clue there?”

  “Perhaps,” she agreed. “We should talk to Doctor Misra about it when we get back to the ship. He might be able to tell you something.”

  “You have a doctor on the ship? Like, an actual medical doctor who’s a person, and not a bot? Wow, that must be expensive.”

  “You’d have to ask the captain about that,” she said. “But yes, Doctor Misra is human, and certified to work on a wide variety of morph types and cybernetics.”

  “Sweet. Maybe she can tell me what’s up with some of these malnutrition warnings I keep getting. Oh, there’s your drone.”

  The little messenger bot was a lot like the ones that sometimes made deliveries to the orphanage. A sticklike body with four thruster pods mounted on it, and a cargo bundle slung underneath. Naoko waved it down and unpacked the boxes with brisk efficiency, then sent the bot back to her shuttle.

  That was the last thing she did efficiently.

  I swear, the moment we passed the fence line it was like she lost thirty points of IQ and turned into a complete klutz. She had no idea how to climb a tree, and I had to take the boxes and hold her hand to get her down without falling. She tripped over a tree root before we were even into the forest, and then she walked right into a bush.

  “Alice, help! Something’s got me!”

  “It’s a bush, Naoko.”

  She flailed aimlessly at the branches, and somehow managed to trip herself. “It’s eating me! Help! Get it off!”

  “Naoko, it doesn’t even have a mouth. Ugh. Fine, stop panicking.”

  I pulled her out. She stumbled backwards, falling on me and knocking us both to the ground.

  “Eep!” She threw her arms around me and hung on like I was a life preserver. “Is it gone, Alice? Are we safe now?”

  I groaned. “Great galloping consumerism, what’s gotten into you Naoko? It was just a bush. You do know what bushes are, right?”

  “Bushes don’t jump out of the dark and grab you,” she objected. “It’s a monster. Is it gone now? Are we safe? What do I do? I don’t know what to do, Alice!”

  “Naoko, calm down. It’s alright. You’re safe.”

  I hugged her, because it seemed like the thing to do. Was she trembling? Wow, why was she so freaked out?

  After a minute she stopped shaking, and seemed to get herself back under control.

  “I’m sorry about that, Alice.”

  “Are you alright, Naoko?”

  She pulled away, glancing around at the dark forest around us. She flinched, and buried her face in my chest again.

  “I hate it when this happens,” she said, sounding exasperated with herself.

  “What’s wrong? You’ve got night vision, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. But I’m not programmed for this kind of environment. I’m getting buffer overflows in my visual processing, and every time I try to make sense of that vegetation my situational awareness module crashes. I’m sorry, Alice, this was a bad idea. I’m going to be completely useless out here.”

  “It’s going to be okay, Naoko,” I reassured her. “Look, can you trust me? I can get around the woods just fine. All you have to do is follow me, and don’t make any loud noises. Can you do that?”

  She nodded, still looking a little shaky. “Yes, I suppose I can. Are you sure you can find your way? We’re almost out of sight of the fence. Without a navgrid I’m going to be completely lost.”

  “I’m sure, Naoko. I grew up in places like this, and I’ve got at least five different ways to navigate without locator beacons. I can wander around all night, and still find my way to anywhere I want to be. Now come on. These flowers bloom in moonlight, so the next few hours are our best time to find some.”

  She sighed. “Alright, Alice. I’ll trust you. Please, take good care of me.”

  Gaia, but she needed a lot of taking care of. I had to point out every root and hollow in the forest floor as we walked, or she would have been tripping every fe
w feet. She’d walk right into the bushes if I didn’t keep her on a safe course, like she couldn’t even see them, and every time some animal made a noise she’d flinch and hide behind me.

  Then we got into the marsh, and she thought the mud was trying to eat her.

  “Are you going to panic again when you see a hexagator?” I asked.

  “A what? There are predators out here? I thought you said this was safe?”

  “Hexagators are big six-legged lizards that live in wetlands,” I told her. “Sort of like alligators, only bigger. They don’t normally eat people, but if you start flailing around next to one it’s going to think you’re attacking it. So take a deep breath, and calm down.”

  She gasped. “Something just bit me!”

  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “Yeah, there are mosquitoes in the marsh. They’re annoying, but they can’t really hurt you.”

  “Why are they biting me, and not you?”

  “Because I’m secreting a chemical that keeps me from smelling like food. I’d offer you some, but my feedstock reserve is just about empty.”

  “It is? Are you going to be alright? You aren’t going to collapse, and leave me lost in the middle of this terrible place?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Naoko, get a grip. I’m fine, and so are you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “Everything out here confuses me, and I get all skittish and stupid when I don’t know what to do. Are you certain we’ll be alright?”

  “I’m sure, Naoko. Just stay calm, don’t make loud noises, and do what I tell you to, alright?”

  She took a deep breath, and slowly let it out.

  “Very well, Alice. I’m shutting down most of my planning functions, so they’ll stop glitching out and making me panic. I’m going to seem half asleep until I bring them back online, but I should be able to walk and follow simple directions. I shall rely on you to see me safely back to the port.”

  Wow, that sounded scary.

  “Alright, Naoko. If that’s what you need to do. I promise, I’ll get you back to your shuttle safe and sound.”

  Chapter 3