Page 4 of Delivered and Devoured
“Got it. Yes. Got it.”
“He is also terrific at his job, which is the relevant detail.” Flossie taps the datapad with her pen. “Morrison has flagged a salvaged stasispod for SNAG processing. Origin unknown. Manifest blank. OOPS contained it, Morrison took one look and said it wasn’t theirs. It’s ours. Ereux is bringing it in on his long-haul route. He’s docking at Bay Fourteen in,” — a glance at her wrist — “thirty-five minutes. I need you to meet him at the ramp. Sign the chain-of-custody. Escort the pod back through the service corridor. Don’t let anyone else handle it. Don’t open it, don’t peer at it, don’t be charming to it. Bring it home.”
“Bay Fourteen?”
“Bay Fourteen.”
“Sign the chain-of-custody.”
“Yes.”
“Bring it back.”
“Yes.”
She holds my gaze. Her eyes are warm. Her eyes are also doing a thing that is faintly a test.
“This one is a personal favor to me. Morrison and I have a thing. She sends me work; I don’t make her regret it. So.” A small, level smile. “Show me what you can do, lovey, and then come back and have a second cup of tea with me. All right?”
“Yes. Yes. Bay Fourteen, Ereux, chain-of-custody, don’t open it, bring it back. Got it.”
“Off you go. Service corridor’s faster. Mind the splash zone on Level Three.”
On my feet. The jacket does not creak. The lucky top, under the jacket, is suddenly aware of itself like a stone in a shoe — present, insistent, not going anywhere. I sit back down to put the mug on the desk because I have somehow forgotten I was holding it. I stand again.
The datapad is still on the notebook. The face is still on the datapad. I do not look at it. I am being adult about this. I am a professional. I have a task.
I look at it.
Oh, that’s not fair. That is not fair at all. What is going on at this station?
“Lorri.”
At the door. Flossie has not got up. She is, however, looking at me the way she looked at the dent. A little wry. A little fond. Like she has seen this particular thing before and has suspicions about how it ends.
“Breathe,” she says. “You’re allowed.”
The corridor swallows me. The fairy lights end at the door. Bergamot gives way to lubricant in three steps.
Bay Fourteen. Ereux. Chain-of-custody. Don’t open it. Don’t fuck this up, don’t fuck this up, don’t —
Under the jacket, the lucky top has finally found something to say.
It says: prove her right.
I keep walking. The face on the datapad, the one I did not dwell on, walks with me.
The service corridor on Level Three has a splash zone.
Someone has taped a handwritten sign to the wall that reads CAUTION: SPLASH ZONE and below it, in different handwriting:and also: don’t ask.A maintenance pipe weeps steadily into a collection bucket. My left boot goes through the reflection on the floor, and I do the hop-skip-pivot of someone who cannot afford wet socks today,and then I’m through, and the corridor spits me out onto the Docking Ring concourse.
The concourse does not ease you in.
It hits all at once — fryer oil spitting from a vendor stall three kiosks down, the bass thrum of a docking clamp releasing overhead, two separate conversations at volume in languages neither of which is mine. A child is being told off in something liquid and fast, and the music of it isI told you not to touch thatin any tongue. A cargo trolley shunts past, and my elbow catches the edge of a signage board, and the signage board is fine, I am fine, nobody saw.
Two OOPS couriers come the other way, shoulder to shoulder, moving like people who know where they’re going. Fresh patches — chevrons I haven’t memorized yet. Mother’s people. The thought comes and goes.
Bay Fourteen. Ereux. Chain-of-custody. Don’t open it. Don’t peer at it. Don’t be charming about it. Bring it home.
