The Beam: Season One (21 page)

Nicolai looked off into the distance, not rising to Doc’s jocularity.
 

“I’m waiting,” he said.

“Waiting for what?”
 

“To see what happens next.”
 

Doc scoffed, then laid back on the sand just as the beach disappeared and was replaced by cool black dirt pocked by tufts of rough grass. The blue sky darkened to black until the only light and warmth was coming from a campfire that had appeared between them.

“Great,” Doc said, sitting up and pulling on his shirt, shuffling closer to the fire’s warmth. “You get vague with ‘what comes next’ and they give us a campfire. I
could
have some girl hanging off my knob right now, but now all I can do is make s’mores.” As he said the last, a red box containing graham flats appeared at Doc’s side along with a bag of marshmallows and a cube of chocolate discs. Doc laughed in spite of himself.
 

Camp chairs materialized beside them. They climbed onto their seats, then dragged the chairs closer to the fire.
 

“You know,” said Kai, “we’re just doing what they want, behaving as if this is a real fire out in the real wilderness.”
 

“I’ve never been in the wilderness, hon,” said Doc. “I just know that
that
thing is hot and I’m cold.”
 

Nicolai nodded. “I doubt they’ve been in the wilderness either,” he said. “This is a caricature of camping made by someone who’s never been. There are no stars overhead. In the wild, you can still see a few through the lattice. The tiny noises are missing, too, and the sounds I
can
hear are echoing wrong, as if bouncing off walls that are…” He stretched down, picked up a rock, and threw it into the blackness. Where the rock struck an unseen obstruction, the night rippled like a pool of ink. “… right there, no matter how open it all looks.”
 

“What are you, a boy scout?” said Doc.
 

Kai looked at Doc. The two men — two of her favorite clients, but for different reasons — had known one other before their internment because Nicolai was also Doc’s client, but they hadn’t known until today that they were both
Kai’s
clients. It was easy to forget that everything wasn’t already out in the open, given Doc’s unflappability and his salesmanlike ability to become overly familiar with everyone instantly.
 

“I spent a lot of time in the wilds in the thirties,” said Nicolai. “I came up from Italy and across Europe on foot with only a backpack, a crossbow, and more blindly stupid guts than you can believe.”
 

“The
thirties?
How old are you?” said Doc. Nicolai looked like he might be thirty-five or forty, but appearances, more than ever, were often deceiving.
 

“Old enough.”
 

“How the hell did you get into the NAU from the Wild East?”

Kai already knew the story, but as with all Nicolai’s stories, she loved hearing it. She had traced her long, manicured fingers across Nicolai’s chest many times in a post-coital haze as he recited her favorites. Most men today were soft. Nicolai, artistic appearances to the contrary, was hard. Today, in the civilized west, a man displayed his power in terms of wealth. But there had been a time when survival had come down to brute strength.

“I went up into France from Italy, avoiding Switzerland for obvious reasons, staying as far west as I could. Made my way to Paris, then hiked north until I hit the English Channel. I wanted to score a ride through the Chunnel into England, but I didn’t know about the Chunnel Crew, or the fires. Today I might have turned back when I couldn’t find a conveyance that hadn’t been ransacked, but I was young and stupid enough back then to just start walking right through with an air converter and my crossbow out. Most of the Chunnel, save the infernos, was pitch black… and I do mean
pitch
. I had IR goggles, but they failed halfway through and I had to go through two sections — including the corpse of a stalled train — by feel.

“Somehow I avoided the Crew and made it into England, but England, even then, wasn’t much better. Eventually I realized that the west was getting close to cutting itself from the rest of the world and sealing its borders, so I decided I had to find a way there or die trying. That was when they were grounding everything other than military aircraft and old America was blowing everything out of the sky, so as the barbarian armies came up north, I sneaked into a shipyard, stowed away on a transatlantic ship, and hoped for the best. I got lucky and after eating rats for weeks, I arrived in Philadelphia’s harbor and got into an immigration line. I hear I was one of the last — maybe
the
last — person allowed in before they closed the borders and started gunning ships.”
 

Doc was probably impressed, but if he was, he wouldn’t allow himself to show it. He speared a marshmallow on a sharp stick and started to roast it.
 

“And how do you know our lady here?”
 

“We’re friends,” said Kai before Nicolai could answer. Something in Doc’s manner made Kai nervous, and she didn’t want to add any sort of testosterone-fueled competition to their already messy situation. Outwardly, it looked like Doc was keeping cool, but there had been an edge growing in him over the past few hours. Doc didn’t like to show weakness, but Kai could read it on him. Among her handful of add-ons that didn’t require Beam connectivity was a heat map in her right eye. She could see Doc’s pulse and how his breathing had shallowed. Fight or flight. Doc was already keyed up, and for some reason his agitation was increasing as he listened to Nicolai.
 

“
Friends
,” said Doc, not at all fooled.
 

There was a moment of quiet. In it, Kai could hear a few noises she thought might be frogs and the buzz of something she couldn’t identify. Overhead, a few stars had dotted the sky. Their captors had heard Nicolai’s criticism and had made adjustments. Kai hadn’t been out in the wilderness much either, but the camping experience felt authentic to her. The fire was nice, and she found herself wanting to get closer.
 

She watched the two men over the fire’s dancing orange light. They were both tense. She could see stress in Nicolai too, despite his calm exterior.
 

“Let’s play a game,” she said.
 

They both looked at her as if she’d suggested swimming in acid.

“Seriously. If they’re going to give us a quiet night and a fire, let’s use it. Let’s tell our best client stories. Tell the truth. The others have to try to keep the storyteller honest, to see if they believe it.”
 

“Shouldn’t we be drinking for this?” said Doc.
 

Three bottles of Clearzo appeared on the ground. Doc picked one up, raised it, and said loudly, “Anyone else not want to play while a bunch of Beamer assholes are listening?”
 

Nicolai looked at Doc. Kai’s gaze went from one man to the other. Doc’s comment should have been funny, but nobody was laughing.

Nicolai’s eyes softened first. “Okay. You start, Kai,” he said.

Kai watched Doc’s temperature drop half a degree. Some of the tension left his neck and shoulders as he lowered the bottle.
 

“I had a client who wanted me to dress like a man,” she began. “But not a sexy man. A fat freight driver. He brought a holo synth to make me look like I had a huge gut and was all hairy. I wore a cap and a filthy white shirt. He brought a pair of jeans with him. They smelled. He said that when I wore them, I was supposed to let my ass crack hang out.”
 

Nicolai snickered, but Doc looked disgusted. “You did it?” said Doc.
 

“He didn’t even want to fuck me. He just watched me walk around like that while he beat off. Paid me very well for a half hour of being a guy.”
 

“Who was it?” Nicolai asked.

Kai smiled demurely. “I can’t tell you that.”
 

“A fat freight driver himself,” said Doc, looking at his bottle.

“My clients are at the top of the food chain,” said Kai, insulted. She wasn’t a bargain streetwalker, and she never did anything for money that didn’t amuse or please her in some way. At least not anymore.
 

“A high-ranking Directorate official, then. They’re all secretly perverts.” He looked at Nicolai. Kai wondered if it was a jab. Doc practically wore an Enterprise flag on his head everywhere he went, and he knew that Isaac was Directorate. But she couldn’t tell if it was a playful joke or a shrouded insult.

She let it go and shrugged, playing coy.
 

“How about you, boy scout?” said Doc, still looking at Nicolai.

“I only have one client and our relationship is confidential. So I can’t play. Should I leave?”

“Such an important man,” said Doc, still using that odd, almost-joking tone. “Tell us something else then, champ. You ever kill a man when you were out marching around the Wild East like Daniel Boone?”

Nicolai took a swig from his bottle of Clearzo.
 

“We didn’t say when you should drink,” said Doc. “So is that a yes?”
 

Nicolai shrugged, then drank again.
 

“Okay, I’ve got one,” said Doc. “I had a client who used to buy a new digestive upgrade from me every month. Big fat Directorate slob — one of the few with dough to burn.” Again he looked at Nicolai. “I don’t think this piece of shit ever moved. He had a cush job for a while, then got a dole high enough that he didn’t have to work and sat around all day like a lot of Directorate do. I had to go to him to sell to him, but I was happy to do it because he paid me so much. You know how a lot of the do-nothings have a ton of useless knowledge about one dumb thing? This guy had encyclopedic knowledge of 80s entertainment. Not twenty-eighties…
nineteen
-eighties. The whole time I’m hooking him up and helping him unpack the latest crap to send down his throat or inject so he could eat more and more and more, he’s telling me about this guy named John Hughes and something called the Brat Pack. But he’s telling me about it all sideways — like about Molly Whatever’s later projects instead of who the fuck Molly Whatever
is
. That’s the way these fucking savants are, like their obsession is something that everyone else understands and gives a shit about.”
 

Nicolai gave Doc a polite smile. Kai watched them both.
 

“I sold him something to install in his throat once,” Doc went on. “It cut his food like a sink disposal so he didn’t have to chew. Even then, he got like seven varieties of digestive nano injections. Everything was centered around liquifying his food as fast as possible so he could keep eating. He’d do this
with
EndLax, not instead of it. You know how EndLax will turn you into a bottomless pit and give you one meal of insane gluttony? But even then, you eventually, after hours, fill up, right? Laws of physics; there’s only so much space in a person. But see, this fat piece of shit had tubes going out as much as in, into a reclaimer he could empty through a port. All he did was eat and shit out his tubes. It stunk in there. He spent whatever money he had left on cleaning.”

“I thought this was a drinking game?” said Nicolai.
 

Doc drank half of his bottle of Clearzo. Kai could see his irises already starting to shake. You couldn’t bolt Clearzo like that. He’d be on the floor in twenty minutes if he kept at it.
 

“There ya go, boy scout,” said Doc. “Your turn.”
 

“I don’t drink Clearzo,” said Nicolai.
 

“Well ain’t you perfect,” said Doc, taking another swig.

“Maybe I should go next,” Kai offered.
 

“I’m not finished,” said Doc, even though he clearly had been. “I want to tell you more about this fucking Directorate pig who couldn’t get by without making his body half robot, like a weak piece of…”
 

“What’s wrong with you?” Kai snapped. She and Doc had had the add-ons conversation too many times. Doc sold enhancements for a living, and Kai had bought most of her significant number from him. She felt that everyone could use a little mechanical help to be their best self, and Doc usually agreed.
 

“What?”
 

“You
sell
enhancements. You have plenty yourself.”
 

Doc shrugged. Kai didn’t know what to make of Doc’s spiny mood, but now she was getting pissed, too.

Doc took another sip of Clearzo. “Hey, I thought this was a game where we tried to outdo each other. That’s all I’m trying to do, sunshine, is outdo my boy here’s fantastic wilderness story and his outdoorsman knowledge.” He gave Kai a toothy smile. “Now… if this is a drinking game, I know
you
drink. You’ve downed shots between sucking my…”
 

“Fine,” said Kai, re-crossing her legs. “You want to see if I can out-do your story? I can. I’ll tell you about another of my clients. Most of the guys who I work with are okay, but in the end, it’s all just business. But one time, a man took me out to dinner, and…”
 

“I’ve taken you out to dinner,” said Doc. He took another sip.
 

“This one
just
took me out to dinner. Twice. That’s all we did those two times.”
 

“That’s one hot story, sunshine.”
 

“But,” Kai continued, running her fingers through her long, dark hair and then trailing them down her neck, “on the third date, when the check came, I insisted on paying. The guy fought for a moment, but then I said I was insisting because I wanted for him to owe me a favor.”

Kai almost smiled at the memory. She’d had men before who wanted to date her and “get to know her,” but those cases fell somewhere between annoying and pathetic. Kai was excellent at what she did, and had spent vast amounts of time and credits perfecting the art of making her clients feel loved, as if they were her boyfriends rather than paying customers. It was one of the things that made her so in-demand and allowed her to charge exclusive clients such exorbitant prices, but a side effect was that sometimes guys fell in love with her. Kai didn’t have to turn them down; she subtly cut them off with an anti-pheromone and they stopped being interested and eventually didn’t come back.