Steel Beneath the Skin (30 page)

Despite this, Aneka was having difficulty. She was planning to make a Thai Green Curry. Back home in Aldershot, she could have got the ingredients at practically any supermarket. She had expected she would have to do some substitution, but figuring out what the substitutes should be was taking significantly longer than she had expected.

She was on the third storey, which housed a lot of smaller stalls selling various kinds of spices, when she spotted her tail. There were two of them, trying to look inconspicuous while they hunted for her. She figured they had lost her in the crowd and were trying to reacquire her. It was not like she was trying to hide; she was just wandering among the stalls dressed in a cropped, string-strapped top and one of the stupidly small skirts Ella had had her buy. When she spotted the man giving her a surreptitious look around the side of a stall, she was busy trying to find a suitable replacement for coriander at a very well stocked shop where the proprietor seemed to know what she was talking about.

‘Try this,’ the woman said, handing over a star-shaped leaf from one of the many bundles she had behind the counter. ‘It’s Beliamon leaf. It has a lemon hint and it’s quite sharp.’

Aneka took the leaf and sniffed it, grinning at the spicy, lemon-like scent. She took a pinch of it between her teeth and let the flavour wash over her tongue. It was a little hotter than coriander, but it had a hint of orange to it and was not quite as soapy. ‘That should do perfectly. I’ll take…’ She cupped her hand in a vague gesture. ‘…a good handful. Now, lemongrass…’

The two stalkers were carrying. They were both wearing short jackets, not ideal for concealing a weapon, but good enough that
what
they were carrying could not be seen. Of course, they might have been undercover Peacekeepers, or even some of Winter’s people. It just seemed unlikely. Well, there was one way to find out, but it could wait until she was finished. And there was no way she was letting them spoil her evening.

~~~

‘Are you sure this is wise?’ Al asked as Aneka turned down a narrow alley between two tower blocks.

‘They aren’t going to use anything lethal on me,’ Aneka replied silently. ‘If they wanted me dead they could have used a laser rifle or something. These two are carrying handguns at best. I’m giving them a chance to try to grab me. If they do, then they’re bad guys.’ She slipped her hand into her bag, closing it around the grip of her gun. A thought switched the weapon to non-lethal mode.

‘If they don’t?’

‘I’ll lose them before I head over to Gillian’s place.’

‘You are not invulnerable, you know? You are heavily armoured, especially your skull, but there are weak points. Your skin is bullet-proof, but it’s flexible armour…’

‘So sufficiently large blunt trauma could cause damage. Yes, but they’d need to know what I was for that and I don’t think they…’ She stopped as something stung her back; a burst of electrical discharge which danced across her bare skin and a warning regarding a charged particle attack flashed in-vision. She turned, dropping to one knee to make a smaller target, and brought her pistol up and around.

The two stalkers had the kind of look on their faces their compatriots with the sonic carbines had had; bemused astonishment. They were both carrying slim, nasty-looking pistols which Aneka figured were blasters set to stun.
Range: 21 yards. Target immobile.
She fired, the crack of the discharge barely louder than a silenced pistol, though it echoed in the narrow confines of the alley. One of the two men, probably the one who had fired, jerked violently and then collapsed backward onto the paving stones.

His friend fired back, the pulse of charged particles going well wide from the panicked aim. Aneka’s pistol swung toward him and he threw himself sideways just as she fired. He was not so lucky with her third shot and a second later he was lying on the ground beside his friend, twitching slightly.

Getting to her feet, Aneka walked over to the fallen men and checked their pockets. They had no identifying documents on them, not uncommon, but their transponders were not responding to requests either and they had nothing at all on them aside for the blasters and shoulder-holsters. She took the guns, taking each by the muzzle to slip into her bag, and then went back down the alley the way she had come. Maybe Winter could have their fingerprints checked, if they did that sort of thing these days.

‘We’re just leaving them there?’ Al asked.

‘I know what they look like and they’re disarmed. And I have cooking to do. If I get the cops involved I’ll be stuck in an interview room for hours. Again.’

‘You’re going straight there? Dressed like that?’

Aneka laughed as she turned onto the street, causing a couple of people to grin at her, even if they did not know what the joke was. ‘What are you? My mother?’

Tristar Township.

Aneka followed her navigation system out from the subway station, heading about a mile west to the low wall and fence, and the gatehouse which allowed you through and into Tristar Township. It was, basically, a gated community similar to the ones you could have found dotted around America in her time. There was a stiff-looking man in the gatehouse who gave her a look which suggested that maybe she should have changed clothes. When her identity interrogation pulse apparently indicated that she was allowed through he looked almost disappointed.

‘You’re cleared through to Doctor Gilroy’s house. Straight in, second left, keep going to the end of the road.’

Aneka gave him a smile. ‘Thank you.’ Then she headed on through the slalom of pedestrian gates and carried on walking down the main road through the town.

There were a few shops along this road, interspersed with high walls with houses behind them, and she stopped off at one of them to buy a bottle of wine, noting the hike in prices, before carrying on to the second road on the left. Here the houses had open fronts, usually with large lawns. Few of the buildings had more than one storey, but they seemed quite large, probably at least three bedrooms. The walls, the visible ones anyway, were all painted over with cream-coloured material giving a stucco effect. The spectral image Aneka was getting suggested Plascrete rather than any form of plaster; the combination of ceramic and polymer was quite distinctive.

She saw almost no one as she walked down the road. There were no children about, though she spotted one girl sunbathing on the lawn, and she looked young. There was a hint of teenage ganglyness about her, and she was lying naked on a lounger in full sight of the street which suggested a hint of teenage rebellion. The girl either did not see or ignored Aneka as she walked past. A man parking his car five doors down gave Aneka a look which was meant to be disdainful, but just managed to look hungry.

The road widened into a circular area, Aneka’s navigation system pointing her at the house right at the end as the guard had indicated. That was when Aneka spotted the only other person; one of Gillian’s neighbours was peeking around a curtain. She probably would not have noticed if the nosy neighbour’s heat signature had not given him away.

As she walked up to the door Al flashed up a message indicating that he had responded to an identity check for her, and the door slid open on silent runners. Good quality mechanics; it had not occurred to her that the door to Ella’s apartment gave a slight hiss when it opened. She carried on in and the door slid closed behind her.

‘Good afternoon, Miss Jansen.’ The voice was soft and female, and came from concealed speakers. ‘Doctor Gilroy has given you guest access to the house and instructed me to show you through to the kitchen.’ The room she was in was basically a hallway which seemed to run the length of the building from one side to another. Opposite Aneka, the plain, cream wall changed, displaying a moving arrow which pointed to the right.

Aneka smiled. ‘Thank you.’ She started off in the indicated direction. ‘Do you have a name?’

‘I am designated House Two-three-nine,’ the house answered. ‘You may call me House.’

Aneka passed a couple of doors on her left, but kept going, following the dancing arrow. ‘Pleased to meet you, House. You should get Gillian to give you a proper name. Mind you, “House” is better than “Computer,” I guess.’

‘I believe so, Miss Jansen.’

‘She’s non-volitional,’ Al commented. ‘She’d likely agree with you if you said “Dung” was a good name.’

Trying not to grin too much, Aneka walked through into a large, open, lounge. Ahead of her was a sunken area with seating around it and what looked like a padded floor. The expanse of wall it encircled suggested an entertainment area. Part of it lit up to show a left-pointing arrow and, sure enough, Aneka turned to find a dining area at the back of the house next to a kitchen half as big as the lounge.

Aneka’s smile grew. ‘Oh… this is perfect. I’d cook more often with a kitchen like this.’

‘Thank you, Miss Jansen. It is nice to be appreciated.’

Aneka put her bag down on the large, granite surface which formed the centre of the kitchen. ‘My pleasure.’

~~~

‘This is… actually very nice,’ Gillian said.

‘You don’t have to sound quite so surprised,’ Aneka replied, grinning. If she had to say so herself, the curry had come out tasting more or less how she had wanted, and it was quite nice. ‘We didn’t manufacture our food out of dirt, y’know?’

‘What did you say it was again?’ Ella asked.

‘Thai Green Curry, more or less.’

‘More or less?’

‘Well… You don’t have chickens, so I used mycoprotein and I had to substitute for… well, pretty much all the herbs. You still have peppercorns and soy sauce, and something enough like olive oil to be workable… And rice, you still have rice. But you’re eating almost an authentic, Old Earth meal.’

‘I like it,’ Ella said. ‘We don’t get much in the way of spicy food these days.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Gillian replied. ‘I cook quite a lot of spicy food. I just didn’t know you liked it.’

Ella giggled around a mouthful of curry. ‘I didn’t either.’

‘First time for everything,’ Aneka said. ‘I should point out that this is only traditional English food in that we adopted anything we liked from all over the place. Curry we got from India.’

‘The British Empire,’ Gillian put in.

‘Yup. Responsible for the English obsession with curry, and the invention of gin and tonic. We screwed up an entire subcontinent, but we got food and drink out of it.’

‘I’d imagine we could do quite well on an Old Earth cookbook. If you could remember the recipes.’

‘I’d probably drive myself insane trying to replicate the flavours. How’s the xinti archive coming along?’

‘Well. No recipes yet, but a lot of very interesting historical data. I discovered a database of xinti colonies and bases which the computer is currently searching for places we don’t know about.’

‘If you find any?’

‘We see about mounting an expedition.’

‘Isn’t that kind of dangerous? I mean, aside from the possibility of booby-traps, and robots, there’s the Herosians to consider.’

‘We won’t tell the Herosians,’ Ella replied.

‘That’s pretty much the plan,’ Gillian agreed. ‘As for the other stuff, that’s why we’ll have you, Bash, and Monkey along. With three facilitators we’ll probably be able to take a larger team. I think I can get the budget out of Barriman.’ She laughed. ‘I’ll sleep with him if it’ll get me the budget for that.’

‘Any word of those men who are after you?’ Ella asked. Aneka had had to tell her all about it; it was a warning if nothing else.

‘I left a couple of them unconscious in an alley before coming here. They’ve moved up to blasters set on stun.’

‘Trying a different way to incapacitate you,’ Gillian suggested.

‘Uh-huh. Electrical discharge, at least at that level, doesn’t work on me either. Al says I’m not invulnerable. I guess a big enough electric charge could disable me, but if they keep this up they’re wasting their time.’

‘You be careful,’ Ella told her, frowning. ‘Aside from anything else, I’ve just found curry and you’re the only person I know of who cooks it.’ The frown turned into a grin. ‘Is your hot tub working, Doc?’

‘The house turned it on when we arrived.’

‘Fridgy! We can finish the wine off there.’

Aneka gave her an innocent look. ‘But I didn’t bring a swimsuit.’

~~~

No one else was wearing anything either and the bubbling, hot water did feel good. Aneka did not get aches anymore, but she could imagine them drifting away in the heat. Something was preying on her mind, however.

‘There’s something I want to bring up,’ she said after about thirty minutes of soaking and chatting.

‘That sounds serious,’ Ella replied. ‘Drink more wine.’

‘I don’t get drunk, remember? It is serious… and it’s not. Doctor Wallace found something in the scans he took of me. Some artificial glands. They produce… well, pheromones. Chemicals designed to change the behaviour of people around me. Apparently they can induce trust, enforce dominance, and… generate lust.’

Ella’s brow wrinkled for a second. ‘So?’

‘I’d imagine,’ Gillian said, ‘that Aneka is worried that she has used these pheromones on us. That your attraction to her is the result of them.’

‘I understand that,’ Ella replied, ‘but that’s so much, what do you call it, bullshit?’

‘You seem pretty sure,’ Aneka said.

‘I wanted you the first time I laid eyes on you.’ She looked to Gillian for confirmation.

‘It’s true,’ the doctor replied. ‘You know how transparent she is. I could see her drooling over the idea of taking you to bed when you were still in isolation.
Have
you actually activated these glands?’

‘Apparently,’ Aneka replied, glad she could not blush, ‘the sex pheromones are released when I have sex.’

‘I
knew
things got wild faster than usual!’ Ella exclaimed. She giggled. ‘Don’t worry about it. We haven’t even got near what I’m happy doing so you haven’t pushed me to anything extreme.’

‘Still,’ Gillian said, ‘I think we’ll keep this ability quiet. Not everyone will react to the possibility that they were influenced as well as Ella has.’