Crashlander   ::   Нивен Ларри

Light beams danced down through the water and played over the wonderful landscape of Sharrol Janss. But I'd missed brunch. I nudged her and said, «I'm going for provisions.»

She didn't turn. «Good! Handmeal, red, yes on veggies. Popcorn. Juice, any.»

I left my backpurse in the seat. I glanced back when I reached the aisle. Sharrol was lovely in profile, and entirely absorbed in the game.

* * *



The stands didn't include food stalls. You had to go under the stands and all the way across the Strand, by elevated slidebridge, and into a fair-sized food court.

Or you could walk twenty yards along the glass, use a transfer booth, and save fifteen minutes.

I flicked in on the second-floor balcony. I looked over the railing at several long lines. The longest was a window for handmeals. My attention snagged on a face below.

He caught me looking.

Or not. I didn't wait to be sure. I stepped to the lone phone booth at the end of the row of transfer booths. Found a coin and dialed. I did not want this call registered on my pocket phone.

We might have had a whole lifetime, I thought. We'd been promised that, but it had been a lie. But we'd had our year and a half.

The glass at the back of the booth reflected the top of the slidestair if I held my head right. I watched while Sharrol's phone chimed six times.

She was looking past her phone, watching the game.

«Bey? What?» She showed flat in one of the walls. Her pocket phone wasn't sophisticated enough to give me a hologram.

I said, «I saw a face.»

«Who?» Now she looked at me. «Not her. Tell me it's not her.»

«No, of course not, but it's not good. He was my ghostwriter —»

«Bey? Your what?»

«Dear one, I'm short of time. Ander Smittarasheed shouldn't be here. I think he knew me —»

«Unlikely!»

«I was looking over a balcony. He saw just my head and shoulders, foreshortened. But maybe he doesn't know about you. So book a single for me at the Pequod as Persial January Hebert.» It was a name I hadn't used in a while, but she knew it, and we'd stayed at the Pequod once. Furnish the room a little? Luggage? No, but — «I left my backpurse on my seat. Leave it in the room. Nothing else.»

«Next?»

The man I'd seen hadn't appeared yet.

She was taking it all in, but muscles were flexing at the corners of her jaw and her eyes were wide and frightened. I asked, «How tough are you?»

Her eyes slid away, watching the game, because someone might be watching her. She said again, «Next?»

«If you can.