Kim ordered heavy whipped cream, a protein shake, some vitaminized ice cream, and two glasses of mineral water. Without a second’s hesitation over her choices, she traced her finger along the menu, touched the picture of the “enter” button. Threw Alex a questioning glance.
“Coffee for me,” he said. “Just coffee.”
“I spent all your money?” Kim asked bluntly.
“Yes. But that isn’t a problem. I am fully formed, and you …” Alex lowered his voice, “are a nymph.” The girl’s face blazed red.
“Take it easy,” continued Alex quietly, “please relax. Everyone goes through this. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“How did you know?”
“The food. You ordered a very typical meal. Fat, protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, water. Nothing else. How long do you have till pupation?”
“I don’t know.”
“Kim, I’m not your enemy.”
“I have no idea!” she shouted. A family at a nearby table—two naturals and their son, a boy-spesh—stared at them. The boy’s eyes, narrow and too wide-set, were unnaturally bright. It occurred to Alex in passing that he could not even begin to guess the direction of the boy’s transformation.
“Kim …”
“I really don’t know,” the girl said a little more calmly. “My metamorphosis is off track. According to the schedule, the chrysalis stage should have happened a month ago.”
Alex shook his head. Awful. Really awful. An off-track metamorphosis was no joke. He ought to keep away from the girl, but … he might have already made one step too close.
“You have medical insurance?”
“No.”
“I won’t even ask about money, but parents? Friends?”
Kim was silent, her lips tight. Mad, it seemed, at the stupid questions.
“I see.”
Alex reached for his cigarettes, lit up. Glanced sideways at the Demon.
The little devil held its head in its hands, its little face looking lost and scared.
“I’ll be going,” Kim said quietly. “Sorry.”
“Stay where you are,” said Alex curtly. “Your order is on its way.” A young fellow in bright orange shorts, a white T-shirt with the McRobbins logo, and a smile on his face, unloaded all the cups and glasses one by one upon the table. Obviously a natural, he took the girl for a sweet tooth, and the strange selection of food told him nothing.
“Where is the nearest place to stay, friend? Something cheap?” Alex stretched out his arm, holding a credit card by its activation center. The waiter moved his wrist over the card, and his electronic bracelet beeped softly, reading off the payment.
“Hilton, of course,” he answered. “The closest is a five-minute walk down the boulevard toward the center.”
No surprise, no contempt. McRobbins did not get any other kind of customer. Only those who stayed in the cheapest chain hotels and preferred municipal transport.
“Thanks, friend.”
The fellow left, obviously not hoping for a tip. And he was right. They simply had no money for it.
Alex took a sip of coffee—surprisingly tolerable—and watched the girl.
Kim was eating.
She started off with ice cream, and that was bad. Everything was bad, of course, but especially the carbohydrate craving. It was a sign that pupation was close; otherwise, the nymph would have picked the protein shake first. Time was running out.
At this point, Alex did not even want to look at the Demon.
Kim shook her head, as though the soft, slightly melted ice cream was hard to swallow. Her dark hair spilled over her shoulders. She gulped down half a glass of water, scraped out the ice cream cup, and without a pause, with the same spoon, moved on to the whipped cream.
Really awful. Her body had already stored up enough protein for the metamorphosis. Well, actually, it only seemed like there was enough. Skin and bones … Breasts were barely noticeable under the sweater. What was going on here? The creation of a fighter-spesh was one of the most expensive genetic procedures, affecting the whole body. To disrupt this kind of metamorphosis with bad nutrition, sleep deprivation, and stress was like having an unusually large diamond and then failing to cut it properly.
“Thanks very much, Alex.” Kim was finally done with the food. She had looked as if she was forcing herself to finish the protein shake. Her eyes were now glazed over, drowsy. “I guess I … needed that …”
Alex nodded. He had not decided anything yet, or maybe was afraid to admit to himself what he had decided.
“Why is your Demon looking away?”
The tattoo on his shoulder had changed dramatically. The Demon was crouching and looking away, the tip of its ear twitching nervously.
“It’s like a cartoon,” said Kim, not waiting for an answer. “Was it a part of your transformation, or can it be added afterwards?”
“Afterwards.”
“I’ll also … get one … just like it.” She was getting really sleepy.
“Let’s go.” Alex got up. Grabbed her by the arm. A fighter-spesh should have reacted to the sudden movement, but Kim did not even twitch. “Let’s go. Quickly now.”
The girl followed him as if hypnotized. The transparent doors of the eatery opened, letting both of them out into the street, where the cold wind revived the girl a little.
“Not so cozy out here, is it?” she said with a laugh. “Why are you holding me like that?”
“We’re going to a hotel,” answered Alex without stopping. “You need to sleep.”
“Yes, I do,” agreed the girl. She seemed drunk or drugged. And in some sense, she was—her body had already begun to release endorphins into her bloodstream. “It’s so uncomfortable out here.”
Alex knew all too well what she meant. The chrysalis stage was the most dangerous time in a spesh’s life. As its onset approached, a person suffered intense agoraphobia. To remain out in the open was not just uncomfortable, but insanely frightening.
“We’ll walk really fast,” Alex told her. “We’ll get to the Hilton and get a tiny, cozy room, nice and quiet. I’ll put you to bed, cover you up with a blanket, turn off the light, and you’ll get some sleep. When you wake up, everything will be fine.”
“All right,” said Kim. “Let’s walk really fast.”
She let out a light, faltering giggle, familiar to any man whose girlfriend had ever had too many drinks. A second later, the tone of her voice changed completely.
“You won’t harm me? Will you?”
The girl put her hand on Alex’s shoulder. She was not quite tall enough to hug a grown man, but Alex fully realized that even these slender fingers, now barely touching his neck, were capable of breaking his spine in an instant.
Suspiciousness, at times completely unreasonable, was also a sign of approaching pupation. And the two of them were, after all, practically strangers.
“I won’t harm you,” replied Alex. “Let’s hurry up. It’s cold.”
“All right.”
The boulevard was deserted. There were few people on Quicksilver Pit who enjoyed walking at night, so it was empty and completely dark. Walking fast along the street, Alex felt the girl’s hand tremble a little on his shoulder. It trembled, getting dryer and more and more feverish.
Damn! What was he doing?
The waiter had not lied. The Hilton really was close. Alex knew that a long, long time ago, before the space era, the hotel chain had been considered posh and expensive. But at the beginning of the galactic expansion, its owners made a bet on cheap mass lodgings. As it turned out, their bet paid off.
The outside of the hotel, a squat three-story structure, did look rather decent. Its walls, covered by plastic-crumb panels, retained their juicy orange color for decades, and the laser ad hovering in the air above it was as truthful as it could be. It promised “maximum comfort at minimal price.”
With Kim hanging onto him, barely able to shuffle along, Alex pushed his way into the hotel
lobby.
The night clerk, a natural of about forty, threw an appraising glance at them. Gave a friendly smile. To him, of course, it all looked very simple—a spesh out for a good time had picked up a young natural for the night. Alex had no intention of arguing with him.
“A room with minimal parameters … for three hours,” said Alex, catching a glimpse of the price list. That completely cleaned out his account.
“Second floor, number twenty-six,” said the clerk, reaching out with his cash scanner. Alex took out his credit card, approved the transaction. “Hey, you’re with him, kiddo?”
“Yes,” said Kim, almost inaudibly. “I’ll get to bed, get a blanket, and we’ll turn off the light.” At this, the clerk discretely winked at Alex.
“Let’s go.” Alex had a feeling that the girl might collapse any second now. “Let’s go where it’s dark and quiet …”
This seemed to have the desired effect. Hanging on to him, Kim moved towards the elevator.
Alex had kept his promise about the silence. The Hilton management knew how irritating noise could be to the customers of their hotels, be it street noise or the sounds coming from the adjacent rooms. It wasn’t sound-suppressors they had installed, of course—the thin walls had been filled with cheap vacuum foam.
The lights in the tiny room came on mercilessly bright, showing its squalid interior—a double but rather narrow bed with unimaginably bright-colored bedding of synthetic fibers, two plastic chairs, a plastic table, a cheap screen on the wall, and a half-open bathroom door with a sticker above the knob, proudly proclaiming that it was “Sterile.”
Kim whimpered feebly, covering her eyes with her right hand. Her left was still clutching Alex.
“Dim the lights!” ordered Alex, forgetting for a second where he was. Cursed. Touching his finger to the sensor, he lowered the brightness of the lights. The ceiling lamps dimmed, turned a pallid blue for a second, and began flickering in a happy disco mode. After a few more attempts, he managed to achieve a dimmer pinkish tone—cloying, but easy on the eyes.
“It hurts,” complained Kim weakly. Her receptors surely had a higher pain threshold, and now she was also in a state of pre-metamorphosis self-anesthetization. But pain was still breaking through all the barriers.
“Hang in there, give me a second,” said Alex, scooping her up into his arms. “You do understand what is happening to you, right? You’ve entered your chrysalis stage.”
She said nothing, giving only a limp nod. Alex put her on the bed, started unbuttoning her coat.
“But you promised … not to hurt me …” said Kim.
“Don’t worry. I only want to help.”
He peeled off her coat, her jeans, and her sweater. All she had on now were thin panties, freshly soaked with blood. She must have felt herself bleeding—she made a weak attempt to cover herself with her hand.
“You’ve got your period?” asked Alex.
“No … Too early.”
“I see.”
Hesitating no longer, Alex took off her soiled underwear, flipped the blanket open, and arranged her body more comfortably on the bed. Kim did not help him in any way, but offered no resistance, either. All better now. She must have postponed the metamorphosis as long as she could. Not consciously—the mind had no control over the process—but just by realizing how vulnerable she had been. Alex’s presence had broken the delicate balance between the genetic program and the pupation-inhibiting hormones. The girl put her trust in him, and the tightly wound spring had started to unravel.
“Does the light bother you?” he asked.
“No …”
Her voice was changing. The larynx was being transformed.
“Kim, try to understand what I am saying. It’s very important, okay?”
“Okay.”
“You are entering a transformational trance. Soon you’ll start seeing things … all kinds of things. Your body will be changing according to the prescribed program. Everything will be fine, I’m sure. But it will hurt a little. You think you can handle it?”
The girl nodded weakly. A few drops of blood slid down from her nostrils.
“Thirsty?”
“No … Not yet.”
Alex sighed. What he knew of the chrysalis stage was no more than any other spesh with a basic education and personal experience of the process. The main thing was that the transformation should take place under a specialist’s care. And in case of a disrupted metamorphosis—in the hospital.
Damn it …
His pockets were empty.
And he knew nobody here.
A strange planet, a strange town, and a strange girl, entering the chrysalis stage …
He slid his hands under her little, trembling body, lifted her up.
Eighty-five, maybe eighty-six pounds. Unforgivably little for a metamorphosis. And … there was something else alarming, irregular. A body-mass imbalance uncharacteristic of humans.
“Kim!”
The girl opened her eyes.
“Are you cyborged?”
“No …”
“No artificial organs? Pacemakers, transplants, built-in weapons?”
“No.”
“Is your body biologically clean? Completely? No foreign objects?” He could be mistaken. His sense of balance was enhanced for the rare occasions when a master-pilot had to use a really tiny craft, such as a glider or even a rocket pack.
But Kim was silent, looking at him in fear.
“You can’t enter chrysalis if you have implants, kid! Your body won’t be able to handle it!”
This was a complete disaster. If for some reason the girl had been slipped an artificial organ, she was doomed.
“Swear on your life …”
“What?”
“Swear that you’ll keep …”
Her hand crawled down her stomach, stopping somewhere above the right kidney. For a second, her fingers weakly pressed and stretched the skin. Then a shiver ran down her body, and the skin beneath her fingers came open, revealing a small pocket.
It was not an artificial organ, after all. Not even a built-in gun. Just a hiding place, a practically undetectable cavity.
“Here …”
Alex lowered Kim onto the bed and carefully took a heavy crystal out of her hand.
A truncated cone with a one-point-nine-five-inch base. Clear as a diamond. And as expensive as a diamond of its size.
Alex lifted the crystal up, looked through it at the light. The ceiling lamp’s pink glow turned white. He squeezed the crystal and felt a tough resilience.
Exactly. A gel-crystal.
“Where did you get this?” was all that he managed to say.
“Keep it safe …” Kim’s fingers squeezed his wrist with such force that Alex gave a slight gasp from the pain. “Swear to keep it safe!”
“I swear.”
How absurd. A homeless, starving child was carrying around a huge fortune. Crystals of this size were used on star cruisers, in planetary computer centers, in virtual reality bases, and in navigational centers of the largest spaceports. There were probably not more than five or six such crystals on the whole planet of Quicksilver Pit.
“You promise me?”
“I promise.”
Alex leaned over and touched his lips to her forehead.
“Sleep. I know how to care for gel-crystals. Don’t worry.”
She believed him. She simply had no other choice. After a few seconds, the girl’s eyes closed, but it was not sleep. Obeying the program, her consciousness faded.
Alex threw the blanket over her.
A short respite, an hour, an hour and a half at the most. Now her body would begin to prepare for the metamorphosis.
Still, she probably wouldn’t make it.
Clutching the crystal—though it was almost impossible to break, he did not wish to take any chances—Alex walked over to the table. Put the crystal into a glass, then poured in some water from a decanter. That was good for gel-crystals.
> Glanced sideways at Kim. The girl’s breathing was slow and deep. Her nose had stopped bleeding … for now.
“Computer,” said Alex forcefully, inwardly ready for the terminal not to work.
To Alex’s relief, the screen flooded with a dim white light. The management of Hilton didn’t exactly have to make information services available in a unit of “minimal parameters.”
“This is the basic service mode,” announced the computer courteously. “Your connection is limited to the local city area. Only free information services will be provided.”
Alex hissed through clenched teeth. Wanted to look at the Demon, but changed his mind. Most likely, the Demon would be sitting with its back to him. Perhaps it had even left altogether, offended by its master’s stupidity.
“Information on gel-crystals,” said Alex.
“Completed. Limited mode.”
Great …
“Gel-crystals with base diameter larger than one point nine inches.”
“Completed. Limited mode.”
“Crimes connected to this group of crystals.”
“Completed. Limited mode.”
“Theft of crystals with base diameter larger than one point nine inches.”
“Completed.”
Alex smiled.
Of course, he wouldn’t be able to access any secret police archives. Well, this would have to do.
“List the last five cases.”
“Unable to comply. Gel-crystals of specified size were objects of theft three times. Shall I list data?”
“Yes. Brief descriptions only.”
“Year 2131. Base crystal of space liner Sri Lanka. Stolen during mutiny on board ship, supposedly by master-pilot Andreas Wolf, spesh. Recovered and returned to the Lunar Express corporation after the mutiny had been suppressed. Currently used on space liner Sri Lanka. Further details not available.”
Alex scowled. He already knew this case, but it hadn’t immediately come to mind. He hadn’t connected the shameful story of the spesh who led a mutiny and the theft of the crystal.
“Year 2164. Gel-crystal of amusement complex Andalusia, planet Athena. Stolen by technician Dyeri Doneskou, natural. Recovered during an attempted resale. Recycled upon loss of function resulting from improper storage conditions. Details?”