Steel Beneath the Skin (22 page)

‘No idea where the names came from, have you?’

‘They were taken from Old Earth names, I think.’

‘There was a continent shaped a bit like that on Earth. It was called America, and there was a big city on the east side called New York. It had a lot of bridges.’

Ella smirked. ‘Was it ruled by King Elvis?’

‘Elvis came from a place called Nashville, I think, or Memphis. I think it was Memphis. I was never a big Elvis fan. He had a good voice, sure, but not my kind of music.’

‘What was?’

Aneka laughed. ‘Does it matter? None of them exist anymore. I’ll have to take the time to listen to some new stuff and see if I like it. You’re getting distracted. The spaceport?’

‘Oh, right. About ten kilometres off the coast there there’s a chain of islands. The largest has the university on it, along with various government buildings. The spaceport is on a smaller one further out into the ocean. The other islands out there are residential.’

Aneka nodded. Even with her vision set to maximum magnification she could not make out any islands yet. ‘You live on one of those?’

‘Oh… I wish.’ Ella gave a giggle. ‘Gillian earns more than me and she can’t afford those houses. No, I live in Yorkbridge. It won’t take long to get there once we’re down. There’s a high-speed monorail system from the spaceport, through Hegemon Island to the mainland. Gillian has the longer trip. She’s out in the suburbs on the west side. I doubt you’ll find it much different from the city you used to live in though.’

‘I didn’t live in a city. I lived in a town called Aldershot, when I was actually home.’ She looked at Ella, who was staring at her, wide-eyed. ‘What?’

‘I didn’t realise you were that rich back then.’

Aneka wrinkled her nose. ‘I was well paid, but I wasn’t rich.’

‘Weird. I think you’re going to find my little place a bit… rough by comparison.’

Aneka gave her a shrug, wondering what on Earth she was letting herself in for. ‘Well, I’ve never been afraid of a bit of rough.’

Yorkbridge Mid-town, New Earth

“A bit rough” seemed about right as Aneka came up from the subway and found herself standing in some sort of cyberpunk future version of New York. The buildings around her were huge and dark, and little sunlight made it down to ground level. The planners in Yorkbridge seemed to think that building up was the right way to go, even though they had vast amounts of space to spread out in. Light from streetlamps and dull, red neon signs provided more illumination down here than the local star did.

Despite the gloom, Ella had a skip in her step, and Aneka thought of the song.
It’s nice to go traveling, but it’s so much nicer to come home.
Mind you, Ella was not carrying her suitcase and had changed into a translucent, wrap-around top and a micro-skirt at the spaceport, so there was little to slow her down. Aneka was wearing the top and jeans they had bought on Harriamon and had been the entire time; commercial regulations did not require ship-suits be worn at all times and half the passengers on the shuttle had been in street clothes. Despite the lack of sunlight, neither were cold; New Earth had an average temperature more like the equator of Old Earth.

‘Almost there,’ Ella said. ‘We just need to grab one of the elevators up a few levels and we’ll be home.’

Aneka was not entirely convinced they would make it. The change of clothes had seemed a good idea, but they were getting some interested looks from the people standing around on the streets, and those people looked more like local gang members than model citizens. Here they were, two half-dressed women, one of them carrying cases which had to have something worth stealing in them… Well, as long as they did not carry firearms they were in for a shock. Aneka reconsidered. She was a xinti combat robot with a human façade and a few newly learned tricks up her sleeves; even if they
did
have guns they were going to regret it.

Except that interested looks was all they got. No one did or said anything as they walked down the street to something which looked like a heavy garage door. Aneka still watched the nearest of them as Ella pressed the button beside it and waited. After a few seconds the door opened upwards and they were able to step onto the elevator car. There was the sensation of movement and they walked out into the upper levels of the city.

Up here the city looked like an oil refinery. Maybe less pipes, but the blocky buildings were circled by walkways at various levels and linked by bridges which could easily have belonged on an industrial plant. It was not exactly looking better than street level, but at least there was more light up here. Ella skipped off along the walkway to the right, turning onto a bridge where a couple were standing looking down at the street below. Aneka’s eyes flicked down as she turned the corner and she wondered how they could see anything. A haze cut off most of the normal light about two storeys down and Aneka could only make out people by their heat signatures.

The couple looked like street punks, him in a camo-textured tank top and leather jeans, her in what could have been biker leathers and a top which looked like a fine nylon mesh. He had the look of a man in love with his body, and making sure it had as much muscle-mass as possible. Easily six-foot-six, his tank top was stretched over a frame which would have given a young Arnold Schwarzenegger a run for his money. His heavy-set face was softened a little by his long, dark brown hair tied into a pony-tail. He had a dragon tattooed over his left bicep; not bad ink either. She had an oriental skin tone, but distinctly occidental features, and she looked like she worked out while he was pumping iron. Her body showed great muscle tone, and she had a narrow face with high cheekbones and pouting lips. Her blonde hair was formed into tight dreadlocks. Through the mesh of her top Aneka could see what looked like Chinese characters tattooed on her back.

Ella appeared to know them. ‘Hey Katelyn, hey Dillon.’

‘You’re back then?’ Katelyn said. She had a soft, sexy voice, deeper than Aneka would have expected with a slight burr which gave it an exotic hint. ‘You got a new friend, too.’

‘Uh-huh and yup. This is Aneka. She’s staying with me for a while. Can’t stop, I’ll drop by and catch up later.’ She carried on past them to a door set into one of the old brick walls, pressing her hand to a panel beside it. Aneka saw the authentication pulse from the ident scanner just before the door slid upward to let them in.

The interior corridors looked far better than the outside of the building. The paintwork looked fresh, if rather institutional. There was a flight of stairs in front of them and Ella started up it. ‘Kate and Dillon live on this floor,’ she said, ‘we’re above.’

‘They seemed… nice.’

‘Oh, they are. Dillon’s a
little
obsessed with his weights, but that has some advantages.’

‘What was tattooed on her back? It looked like Chinese, but I thought everyone spoke Federal.’

‘Hmm? Oh! It’s Federal, but it’s written in Hani. It’s an ideogram set that used to be used during the Long Dark for just about everything. Still is for Rimmic. Uh, that’s an old language still spoken on the Rim. Hani use died back a bit when communication speeds improved. It can be transmitted in far more compact form than Latin script, but you have to know how to read it. It still gets used for advertising, signs… and tattoos. You should learn it.’

‘I’ll add it to the list. What does hers say?’

Ella giggled as she put her hand to the panel beside another door at the top of the stairs. ‘Hers says, “Fuck me harder.” Welcome to my home.’

The inside of Ella’s apartment came to life as she walked in and the building recognised her. It was an almost jarring change from the outside and even the inner corridors. The ceiling glowed with warm lighting. The walls also glowed, but this was with a video image of a beach; there seemed to be water lapping up against the edge of the large, open main room. The furniture was cream leather, or leather-like material, and chromed steel. There were three large sofas set in a square around a coffee table, a smoked-glass desk with three monitors on it and a desk chair in front of it, and a dining area, again with a smoked-glass table. To the left of the door, tucked away over the outside staircase, was a small kitchen.

‘Wow,’ Aneka said. ‘Looking at the outside I was expecting… I don’t know, but not as nice as this.’

Ella beamed, bouncing on her toes. ‘Thank you. The bathroom is over there…’ She pointed at a door to the right and Aneka walked over to look inside. The room beyond was large with a big, walk-in shower cubicle as well as the usual other fixtures. No bath though. When she turned back Ella pointed in the other direction where there were two more doors. ‘And those are the bedrooms. I’m in the right hand one, you’re free to use the other one if you want.’

Aneka gave her a quirky smile. ‘Why would I want?’

‘Well, you can use the wardrobes anyway, and if you want some privacy for… any reason, it’s there.’

‘Or if you want some.’

Ella frowned. ‘Why would I want privacy?’

‘Well if you bring a man back or…’

Now the little redhead giggled. ‘I thought you’d got over your threesome thing. If I bring a boy back, I’d want to share him.’ She went all serious. ‘Now, we have tomorrow free so we’re going shopping. You need more clothes. For now we’ll just get settled in. Have a night in front of the vid screen.’

‘That sounds good, except for the shopping.’

Ella rolled her eyes. ‘Oh… Computer, recognise Aneka Jansen for building and apartment access.’ Almost immediately Al notified Aneka of a request for her identification key and that he had accepted it for her. ‘Access level, resident,’ Ella added. ‘Have her home address listed as here.’ Another message went up from Al, this time indicating that he had received the apartment’s identification key and stored it for retransmission as her home address. It might be a real Big Brother system, but she had to admit it was efficient.

‘Resident, huh?’

‘It gives you full access to the apartment’s systems. Al should be able to hook in and use the comm-system, environment controls, entertainment system, all that stuff.’ She reached behind her back to untie the ties on her top. ‘I’m going to grab a shower.’

‘Okay.’

Ella’s lips twitched. ‘It’s, uh, a lot bigger than the ones on the Hyde…’

Aneka started to undress. What the hell, it would save water.

22.5.254 FSC.

Shopping was not improved by having more choice. Ella had decided that a local mall was the best place to outfit Aneka in and the Cornwall Mall was a ten storey edifice packed with stores and boutiques for every kind of fashion statement you could want. Ella seemed determined to drag Aneka through every last one of them.

So far Aneka had managed to pick up a pair of sneakers which would be more comfortable to wear than the heels Ella seemed to want to put her in at every opportunity, and some underwear which Ella had agreed to only because it was sexy. Aneka did have to admit that her new body had no need for a bra, but she felt better knowing she had a couple. They had also bought a miniscule string bikini because Ella fully intended that they should go to the beach sometime soon.

Beyond that, the choices were very much going Ella’s way. A cropped T-shirt, a couple of skirts which would have made good belts, two mini-dresses barely long enough to be called dresses, and one of those was translucent. Aneka had considered the idea that Ella was treating her like an adult version of a Barbie doll, but had finally rejected it, mostly because the outfits being selected could be seen on pretty much all the women she could see walking around the mall.

They were walking past a shop on the top floor when Aneka stopped, her eyes spotting a dummy in the window, and she did a double-take. ‘What’s that?’ “That” was the “dress” the dummy was wearing. It seemed to consist of thousands of tiny lights which were changing colour constantly to make a shifting pattern across the surface of the garment.

Ella followed her gaze. ‘Oh! That would be
perfect
for you. It’s a swarm dress. Each of the little lights is an individual microbot. Tiny little buoyancy-neutral robots hover around your body in whatever shape you want. You can’t move very fast in them, but Al could program them so you’d be able to vary the shape any time you like instead of having to use a PDA.’

Aneka watched the shifting patterns and smiled. ‘Alan, my brother, would have loved that. I thought people didn’t like robots?’

‘People don’t really think of them as robots. Robots are big things, these are tiny and
obviously
couldn’t hurt you.’ She gave a shrug. ‘Prejudice isn’t logical.’

‘Looks expensive.’

‘Not especially.’

Aneka grinned. ‘Okay, sold.’

~~~

The swarm dress had not exactly been cheap, but Ella had decided she was treating Aneka to some of the outfits they had bought and the idea of dressing in a swarm of robots appealed to Aneka’s inner geek. The army had more or less trained her inner geek out of her, but it was still there. In fact she was a little worried that it was going to make a full-force comeback living in what was basically the future.

The “dress” came in an attractive, metallic box with a smoothly edged hole in the top. The directions said to plug it into the mains and warned that the swarm could not be assumed to be at full charge without a two hour charge. Well, she just wanted to try it out, not wear it for the day. Aneka set it up in the spare room, her room with its pristine, unused bed, and started to undress.

‘I’ve downloaded and translated the control software,’ Al said to her. ‘I made a few improvements to the interface…’ A 3D mannequin appeared in Aneka’s vision field, surrounded by a rotating swarm of dots. ‘…basically, you imagine what you want and I’ll display it. Then you can fine tune your image and initiate when you’re ready.’

‘Okay,’ Aneka replied. ‘Ella is waiting expectantly for me to appear. We’ll start with a basic, black jumpsuit.’

A cloud of black, metallic spheres, each perhaps a millimetre in diameter, flooded out from the hole in the top of the box and began to form themselves around Aneka’s body. She could feel them bouncing off her skin randomly as they packed in to form an opaque, skin-tight suit. Grinning, she turned and headed for the door.