SULIMAR GETS ANOTHER JOB

1560 4D

The workwall at Aswar Tyrae had colored sheets plastered all over it: plenty of jobs. Most of the sheets carried the circle-arrow slogo, with the embedded lapscript word for growth in it. These were all cleaner work. I took one. It read:

“New life comes from old. We need women and men to reclaim for us. Pay is 2.5 standard, hours vary, lots of shifts. Contact Kaliagni by comm, check our sensi pull, read our bens, work for us.” A soft picture of a smiling face, its eyes closed.

I got on comm, called them. A man’s voice said, not waiting for me: “Three streets down from Tyrae west, on Murch Line, second door.” I went.

Three guys sat at a table behind the door. One looked at me. “You lift?”

“I can lift.”

“Two at once?”

I hesitated. “Sure.”

They looked me over. Another one asked, “What do you do now?”

“Cook tube and burg.”

The third one chuckled. “Ever hack meat?”

“Sure.” That was true for a couple of days, when I’d worked at an upcity birdcooker‘s.

“All right,” the first one said. “There’s a lot of fighting down in Sobi, and you’re going to have a lot of work. When can you start?”

“When do you want me to start?” I was dead exhausted, but the anger in me pushed the words out, and I knew it’d last me a whole shift at least.

“Follow me,” the third man said. He opened a side door, and we moved into a larger room where a bunch of andros sprawled in cushions, bored and waiting.

“You,” the man said, pointing at a young andro female. She scrambled to her feet and glared at me. “You’re his helper. Do what he says. He’ll pay you.”

“Me?” I swiveled back to him, but he was gone back through the door and I was stuck losing part of my own stack before I even started. I turned and looked at her.

She continued to glare at me. Her pale face was lean but curved, with a long narrow nose, and big eyes that she squinted from time to time as if adjusting her thoughts about what she saw. A large steel clench in the shape of a hand restrained her black and wiry hair, pulling it back and up. Her lips made a thin firm line with a slight bulge behind it – she seemed to be pulling them in, disapproving. She wore a tight skinsuit like all the others. She looked wiry but strong.

“Through here,” she finally said, pointing to another door. She led me to another table where a woman waited.

The woman said, “Here’s the terms, give us your codes, coin will be there every eightday. Come here for assignments, or call. Here’s your first. That’s all. Kits are in the corner.”

We each took a kit and left. In the street, I said to my andro helper, “My name is Sulimar. Call me Suli if you want to.”

“Sulimar what?” She wanted to know my family.

“Sulimar Asjan Dureko Manjan Anassi.”

“I’m Annie.”

“Annie what?” I was feeling a bit playful – andros don’t usually have extra names.

“Annie Thing.”

I started to laugh but she glared at me so fiercely that I never got out more than a “Huh-“

“That’s my name. But you just say Annie, okay?”

“Okay.”

I read the assignment. It was down in Sobi, of course, the pit of the City, except for Babiar where nobody goes. We got there just as the corpos and the police were getting ready to leave.

“About time,” a bluecop said. “You better tell Gringatina that we’re hiring somebody else if she doesn’t get you guys down here sooner. In there.” He pointed to a rubble-sided hole in a stone wall.

“Gringatina?” I muttered to Annie.

“The woman back at the office,” she said softly. “Don’t listen to him. He just wants to get out of here like all the rest of them.”

We slipped through the hole to find the bodies, partly rotted, partly eaten, the smell making us dig in our kits and get the scented plugs. We coated up with stretch, and went to work. Bag it all, sing if you have to, ignore the gawkers, toss it over your shoulder, and head for recycle: that was my new second job. I’d just have to be sure to wash the stink from me before I started at Galrana‘s the next day to pick up the food stink there.

“From stench to stench,” I said, putting the last piece of leg in my bag. Beamers amputate things nice and clean.

“From wench to stench,” Annie echoed, stuffing a female arm in hers. She grinned. One of her side teeth was missing.

“Wench to clench?” I said to her.

She frowned, then laughed. “You’re a fool.” Her lips looked fuller now.

“I know,” I said, securing the bag and tossing it over my shoulder. “But I need the job.”