The Settlers (4 page)

Tasneem leaves the office with the doctor's words echoing in her head.
Suddenly every step she takes is a possible broken ankle.
Every corner she turns is an opportunity to be flattened by an oncoming pod.
Every window is a potential airlock ready to fire her into space.

Her wrist vibrates, and she looks down to see a warm glow in the soft skin between her ulna and radius.
She presses her thumb to the warm spot, and in her ear, a voice recording begins to play.
 

Neem!
Come find me as soon as you're back, Neem.
David -- well, David's gotten the treatment.
I think something's wrong, but maybe you'd know better.
Please hurry.

Tasneem wrinkles her nose.
How could David have gotten the treatment?
 

Unless he bypassed the stability checks, like she had.
 

Except he would still have to wait seven weeks.

Black market
, she thinks.
Oh, shit.
 

She follows the concourse, passing the shops and common areas quickly.
She had thought about celebrating her treatment approval by stopping for a pastry and spending some time in the green belt, but there's no time now.
She bypasses the green belt as well, leaving its acres of gardens and streams and its lovely glass rooftop behind.

At the first juncture she comes to, Tasneem darts onto the inner ring and grabs a tether.
The ring's momentum is startling, and she loses her balance, bumping roughly into a young man.
 

Sorry, she says.

He nods, and returns to his screenview.
 

Station Aries was built for efficiency.
The lessons learned from Ganymede and Cassiopeia were both social and functional.
Cassiopeia did away with the failed class-leveling experiment of Ganymede, but stumbled in its own way.
The station was a vast labyrinth, a warren of cubbies and corridors and wings and sub-levels.
Traveling anywhere could take hours, and there were stories of people becoming so hopelessly lost that they never found their way back to their quarters.

Aries solved that with a classic ring design.
Residents called it the donut, or the wheel.
It was not much different from the visionary concepts that scientists devised in the mid-twentieth century.
Its interior was an effective series of rings that revolved at different speeds, and sometimes in different directions.
The primary concourse was home to Aries's commercial interests, from shops to religious structures.
Rotating at a slower speed one level below the concourse was a deep residential track, carefully planned to offer a variety of homes to the station's twenty-three million residents.
 

At junctures throughout the station, one could switch to a fast-track -- a ring that moved significantly faster than the other tracks, allowing for rapid transit between around the station.
The ring never stopped, which made boarding and disembarking quite interesting.
A grav-free track surrounded the ring, so that when someone stepped off of the fast-track, they would simply float.
Of course, the fast-track's momentum was transferred to each passenger as they disembarked, and it was quite amusing to watch passengers flung into a zero-gravity space.
The walls were deeply-cushioned to protect riders as they hurtled from the fast-track.

Boarding was never easy, though.
One simply had to go for it, and hope for the best.
 

Tasneem holds to the tether, and with her free hand, taps her wrist.
Audra, she says.

Her implant responds almost immediately.
Audra is unavailable, it says.

David, she says.

David is unavailable.

Shit, Tasneem says.

The young man with the screenview glances up at her briefly, then away.

Locate Audra, Tasneem says.

Audra is unavailable.

Locate David, goddammit, she says.

David is --

Unavailable.
Alright.
Shit.
She thinks for a moment.
Dr.
Widla, she says.

One moment, her implant responds.

Come on, come on, Tasneem urges.
 

Dr.
Widla's office, a female voice answers.

Dr.
Widla, please.
It's Tasneem Kyoh, and it's an emergency.

Okay, calm down, please, the woman says.
Can you tell me --

I don't have time.
Please, Tasneem says.
Tell him that a friend has had the treatment, and I believe it may be a black market strain.
I'm going to him now and I need Dr.
Widla's help.

The doctor does not treat patients who have acquired the treatment in out-of-office experiments, the woman's voice says.
I'm sorry, but --

Please.
Listen to me.
The man who took the treatment is David Dewbury.
 

I'm sorry, did you say --

Yes.
I did.
And you'll understand now why this is important, so please, please, tell Dr.
Widla to call me.
It's very urgent.
We cannot let anything happen to him.
Am I clear?

The
David D--

Yes.
Yes!
Tell him!
Tasneem cries, and presses her wrist to disconnect.

The young man behind her taps her shoulder.
 

What?
she says, rattled.
 

Did you say David Dewbury had a black market treatment?
Do you know how dangerous that is?
 

If you eavesdropped on that much, then you must have heard the rest of my conversation, Tasneem says.
So yes, I fucking know.
 

Wow, the young man says.
Excuse me.
I was just going to say, I might be able to help.

Tasneem's anger vanishes.
How?
How?

I think I know where he might be.

I don't have time to be lied to, Tasneem warns.
 

I'm not lying.
I'm Blair Hudgens.
 

Tasneem's expression is blank.

Blair Hudgens, the young man repeats.
Oh, never mind.
I'm a pulse journalist.
I did a piece about illegal treatment scams last week.
So I'm not lying.
You can trust me.
I really do think I can take you to him.
 

Tasneem nods.
Please.
Now, please.

Okay.
We'll get off at juncture seven.
 

Juncture seven?
Tasneem says.
That's --

The Upper Ward.
I know.
Please trust me.
 

Okay, Tasneem says.
I sure do hope you're real.

Oh, I'm real, Blair mutters.
I just hope I'm right.
I'm Blair, by the way.

You said that already.

I know, I was just hoping you'd forget and tell me your name.
 

Maybe later, Tasneem says.

Blair raises his eyebrows.

Fine, she says.
Tasneem.
I'm Tasneem.
Can we get moving?
 

The Upper Ward is a direct response to the class-leveling failure of Station Ganymede and the clutter of Station Cassiopeia.
On Earth, the Upper Ward might have been a gated neighborhood of multi-million-dollar estates.
On Station Aries, the Upper Ward is a sleeve that cups the outer ring of the station.
It follows the rotation of Aries itself, though at a slower speed.
 

Access to the Ward is limited to station officials and residents, which would explain how David gained entry.
Audra was one of the first administrators brought to Aries.
 

Most of the black markets are run from here, Blair says.

Tasneem follows as closely as she can.
She's distracted by the opaque glass buildings and what looks like real grass carefully blanketed at their feet.
The canopy over the Ward is electronically tinted, filtering the view through a color that corresponds with the time of day back on Earth.
Right now the canopy is a brilliant gold touched with blue.
 

There are even artificial clouds bobbing across the artificial sky.

The stench of entitlement here is overpowering.
At this moment, Tasneem sort of wants to punch out the first Ward resident she sees.

You said something, she says.

I said that most of the markets are run from here, Blair repeats.

How is that -- but -- why?
 

Blair is hard to keep pace with.
Where's the last place you would look for a black marketeer?
 

Here, I guess, Tasneem says.
 

That's partly true, Blair answers.
When you look for the guy dealing the shit, yeah, you're right.
He's not here.
But when you start connecting the shit to the money?
It almost always leads to places like this.
 

He glances back at her as they run through the Ward, which almost feels abandoned.
She hasn't seen a single person here since they entered.

You still look uncertain, Blair says.

I just --

You just thought that the Ward was more noble than that, he finishes.

She nods.
 

Don't worry about it, he says.
Everybody thinks that.
 

Where is everybody?
 

He looks around.
You're right.
Kind of quiet today, isn't it.

Not kind of.
It's completely silent.

Well, they're the upper-upper-upper class, he says.
They have people to go outside for them, so why should they?
Their views are better than anything on the rest of Aries.
 

Yeah, but -- don't they work?
Or socialize?
 

Maybe not, Blair says.
Nobody had to give up their wealth or status when they came to Aries.
It's not like Ganymede was.
You know?
 

Tasneem says, Yeah, I do.

Blair points.
That's where we're going.