Archon's Queen (18 page)

Is this all I am? A pair of bristols?

Penny kept at her to quit taking drugs. Anna did not want Faye to start, and now even her ‘employer’ wanted her off the shit.

What nerve
.

A pimp―what he essentially was no matter how he dressed it up―telling one of his ladies to
stop
taking drugs. Her knuckles whitened, clutching at the wood through the fabric, far angrier than she would have gotten without the smiley in her. Knowledge the drug did it let her keep the rage out of her face and maintain the placid stare of disinterest at the stuffed bird.

How fucked up am I that a bloody pimp tells me to lay off?

She felt the tears banging against the back of her eyes trying to get out, but held them in. Crying was only good if there was someone around to give a rat’s ass. She would have a good sob on Penny’s shoulder later; these people did not need to see such a display.

Perhaps it was a good thing that she had been fired. Every time she left the place, she felt a little dirtier and a little less human. Penny may have been right, she should try to watch tots or walk dogs. Maybe she could shake off the rust and go back to pinching things.
No, too dangerous. That will draw the CSB.
It was time to stop letting life give it to her in the bum.

The sound of people shuffling about snapped her out of her musings.

Who am I kidding? I’m just a tramp sitting naked on a box.

Professor Gresham approached, offering a grandfather’s smile and gesturing at the easels. “That’s all for today, luv. There’s some good work about. Can I interest you in coming back tomorrow, say another hundred for your time?”

She eased her weight off the wooden cube, stretching the stiffness out of her legs. Her clear lack of modesty brought a touch of crimson to his cheeks.

“That’s fine, guv’na.”

He turned away. She found his courtesy strange; it made tears rush to the brim of her eyelid to get a closer look at him.

“I’ll leave ya to get your kit back on then, lass. I’ll be in my office at the end of the hall when you’re ready to collect your pay.”

Motionless, she stared at the figure in the dull blue sweater and tan pants. He left without trying to sneak a look back at her, out of sight behind the dark chestnut door below the owl. When he had gone, she padded to the partition behind which she had stripped before class.
What was the point of this?
She frowned at the old folding barrier, gold-hued wood painted with white orchids.
They’re goin’ ta see me anyway.

On a desk nearby, an old NinTek 900 sat under a layer of dust, collecting more. Two feet tall, three feet long, and half a foot thick, it now served as a bookend. She gathered her clothes from where she tossed them, staring at the archaic terminal. Before holograms or M3 jacks that plugged the brain into the net, it had been the latest and greatest. It had to be a hundred years old. The last time anyone turned it on was long before her dad was an itch in her grandfather’s pants.

Anna looked down and pulled her skirt into place, ashamed her only thought about such a thing was about how much it would fetch at pawn. The old prof had been civil with her; she would feel guilty swiping it. Not to mention its size, something like that would not be an easy lift.

Once she dressed, she tugged at the hem of her skirt. So short, it felt little different than wearing nothing. Penny offered to lend her some jeans, being only two inches taller. She fidgeted with the material, wishing she had taken her up the loan. She felt like a cheap slut for wearing something so skimpy; complete nudity would have seemed less sleazy.

Maybe this is why Old Bill keeps giving me the biz.

Drawing a breath, she steeled herself and walked past the easels. The students would be back the next day to continue working, so they left their work in situ. Curiosity gnawed at her, and she lifted the shrouds, peering at the smudges of charcoal.

She choked up; the angelic figures posed upon the pages looked so far removed from any way she had thought about herself. The students restored innocence in her face that had long been absent. By the fifth sketch, tears escaped, lost in the purity of it.
Is this how people see me?
This was what they thought of her when they did not know she was from Coventry, or high, or a whore.

She crumbled her fingers into her mouth, trying to stifle the sound of sobbing.

Memories flashed while she walked among the standing frames: herself as a child watching a sheet-covered gurney wheeled out of her old house. A close call with a psychologist seeing her create lightning. Running away. As a child begging at restaurants, and then the ignored beggar was stealing. The counter of Mason’s pawnshop appeared again and again, seeming lower with each repetition. She had grown up dropping purloined goods on that pale blue surface. A face appeared out of the dark, the picture of exaggerated handsomeness mounted atop an impeccable black suit. Stealing from the wrong place earned the notice of the Syndicate, and Mr. Carroll. They knew she was more than a simple thief. She had made good money with him doing unsavory things for unsavory people, but those sort of things attracted the CSB. The zoom worked at first to hide her from the government; she’d thought she could control it.

She’d been wrong.

Anna swallowed; the sandy grit of the smiley ground at the underside of her tongue. People used them to enhance pleasure and happiness, especially when having sex. The drug oiled the path her emotions tried to walk, and they slipped in it, falling headfirst into a spiral of sorrow and regret.

Among the henge of easels, she basked in the fading sunlight, the warm brown-orange glow of this time-forgotten space cloaked in ethereal serenity. Her doppelgangers looked off at an unseen bird; their facing changed a few degrees from one to the next. When she reached the students who had a clear view of her from the front, she sniffled at what was on the paper.

They had not focused on her sex; one man had spent the most effort on her eyes and the delicate nose between them. Another had gone over and over her hair, capturing the feathered layering of her pixie cut. A third had defined the curves of her silhouette with near photographic precision, faint smudges of his fingers bringing her musculature out in three dimensions. Only one hinted at anatomical correctness, with a simple curved line. The flick of an artist’s wrist to indicate a change of light, a passing charcoal acknowledged the physicality of her being a woman without dwelling upon it.

The sketch with the most attention paid to the breasts had been done by a girl. She marveled at the roundness, wondering if the artist had given her too much credit. Two dozen black and white apparitions stared into the air, proud and innocent―two things Anna felt far removed from.

“Are you all right, miss? It’s been almost an hour.”

She jumped at the voice; the professor had returned.

Blushing at being caught with wet eyes, she looked at the floor. “I’m fine… these are beautiful.”

His grey moustache curled with a smile. “They have potential, but still have much to learn.”

Anna offered a sheepish nod, and walked with him to collect her credits.

I suppose I do as well.

he smiley had to have worn off by now. The rat of sobriety gnawed upon her brain stem. She gathered her thin coat about herself and moved among the crowd. The usual reaction to someone of her obvious station never bothered her as much as it did right then, but she held on to knowing she was no longer a stripper. She found a tiny scrap of self-respect. The wind tugged at her microskirt, causing a few men to stare.

Even the advert bots seemed to ogle.

She had survived by flashing her assets in the faces of drunken men, but now she wanted to disappear. For the most part, the citizens obliged and disregarded her. She wanted to turn invisible to all of London, but the best she could hope for was two or three people in close proximity. Each gust of the breeze made her feel naked. Head down, she shuffled through the crowd. Telepathic invisibility could not help, but there were far more mundane solutions to be had.

A short distance later, two panels of inch thick glass slid out of her way, granting entry to a small clothing shop. Anna flashed a grateful smile at the mechanical doors that spared her the need of having to uncurl her arms from around her chest. The smiley gone, the zoom had been absent long enough to hurt. She had to focus and keep her mind on an even keel or she would attract the wrong kind of attention from the wrong kind of people.

A dozen freestanding shelves jammed into the center of the place made walking through it a bit of a challenge. Clothing, still a popular item for physical stores, had not done quite as well with the to-your-door market as most things these days. People much preferred to see and touch things they wanted to wear before spending on them.

Selecting a pair of loose black pants, the kind with pockets down the legs, she checked the size by holding it against her hips. A passable fit, her boots would absorb the extra length in the legs. Two hundred and sixty credits, a hair less than a quarter of her remaining money, but she wanted it bad enough. There would always be more pieces of jewelry to steal, and she could not put a price on dignity.

The clerk’s gaze had not left her ass since the moment she entered. Had she zoom in her system, she would have changed right there in the open in hopes of a discount; sober, she went for the dressing room. Thin black material slid up and over her legs, cool, smooth, and best of all―form obscuring. The belly-baring shirt did not bother her even an eighth of what the skirt had as a lean too far gave people a show.

She decided to keep the new pants on, and wadded the skirt before stuffing it into her purse. On her way back out, she selected a thin nylon belt and put it on right from the shelf. After ripping the tags off both, she approached the counter and set the stubs by the drooling young man. He made perfect eye-to-tit contact and smiled. His hand missed the tags twice before he found them.

“That’ll be all then, miss?”

“Quite.”

“Two sixty for the Ruperts, thirty five for the belt… after tax that’ll be three forty-five.”