The Slums of the Solar System Books 1-3

Chapter 2-1

Chapter Two

Rabia

“Shouldn’t you be in school?”

Rabia looked up at the guard. She couldn’t remember the last time one had actually spoken to her. “You’re new, aren’t you?”

“Answer my question first.” He leaned forward as he said it, something merry in his eyes. Rabia barely checked herself from stepping back. She would swear he was flirting with her, except that was impossible. She was Rabia; no one flirted with her. He must just be colossally bored. Rabia raised her hand, fingers spread wide, then touched it down on the palm reader built into the desk. Her handprint remained for a moment, then turned bright green.

“Not a truant,” Rabia said.

“You work the night shift somewhere, then?”

“Hardly! I’m only seventeen.”

“Early graduation?” the guard ventured. That flirty vibe was starting to fade away.

“Nope. Dropout. I’m learning in the school of life now, and life is just a little bit beyond this airlock. See you later!”

This wasn’t fair to her father, who was technically her teacher now, but telling people she studied all the usual subjects just on her own always led to question after question. Plus, saying she was a dropout just sounded cooler.

Rabia completely ignored the ladder in favor of leaping over the edge to the lip of the open airlock some eight feet below, then started down the long, steep path into the heart of her home away from home.

Ah, Barnacle Town. A place with a smell like no other. Rabia breathed it in, closing her eyes as she sorted and labeled each component. Greasy food cooked over an open flame. Stray dogs and doglike children doing their business wherever. Families of ten or more packed into a space no bigger than her bedroom with the only available method of bathing a bucket carried up from the community tap—or more commonly bathing at the tap itself, modesty be damned. Closer to the market the smells of ripe fruit and spices took over. Nothing back home in Chandi V ever smelled like anything in particular. Not even the food.

She didn’t mind that her days as a corporate resident were numbered. She didn’t even mind that she had no idea what she would do that last day she walked past the security gate, the day when she wouldn’t slip back through just as curfew was sounding. Living life from moment to moment, doing whatever work was available just to keep the meals coming—the thought rather excited her.

But it scared her mom. She had been acting weird for weeks now, but last night Rabia had gotten up in the middle of the night to pee and heard her mother’s tears from the next room and her father’s deep voice murmuring sounds of comfort. She didn’t have to hear the words to know she was the one behind her mother’s quiet weeping. It was a long-established rule of the universe that her sister Teresa was incapable of doing anything to upset their mother. No, it had to be Rabia and her rapidly approaching eighteenth birthday.

It was far too late to attempt making herself over as just another piece in the corporate machine, even if she wanted such a fate. She didn’t think that would please her mother anyway; as a human resources analyst, she knew better than anyone how ill-suited Rabia was for such a life. Still, perhaps it was time to come up with a plan. If she knew what was going to happen next, perhaps her mother wouldn’t worry so much.

She would talk to Si Fu about it. He always had lots of ideas. More than that, he had a way of bringing them out of Rabia with pointed looks and smiling silences rather than speaking them himself. An afternoon of kung fu and tea would be more than enough to get her going on the road to having a plan, she was sure.

“Look here, Tom. Jumpsuit is back.”

Too much woolgathering; she should have noticed all the urchins crawling out of their little hidey-holes before she was surrounded. They weren’t moving too close to her, but they didn’t need to. Their job was to get her to where Alain and Tom lurked under the awning of the coffee stand, and she saw no reason not to keep walking since she had been heading that way anyway. There were always more of them about than she could see, and she honestly did try to avoid fights when possible; she would have taken a different lane if she had noticed them.

The urchins that ran with the gangs had the advantage in this little game of theirs. They blended in with the rest of Barnacle Town, not just the other people but the very walls: nondescript hair, dingy T-shirts and faded jeans, canvas sneakers so old and battered and full of holes they could almost be called sandals.

She, on the other hand, in her bright indigo jumpsuit with the prominently displayed Chandi Corporation logo, was a little hard to miss, especially in the middle of a workday when few corporate residents were out and about. The fact that her hair was one long braid of vibrant pink probably didn’t help either.

“Hey, boys,” she said as she stopped a nonaggressive few paces away from Alain and Tom. She could remember when they had both been urchins as well. Alain could nearly pass as a corporate higher-up now, with his white silk shirts and polished shoes. She had no idea where in Barnacle Town he got his clothes or who did his laundry. She did appreciate that he didn’t favor the loud colors and flashy jewelry of the other gang boys. But then Alain always did do things his own way.

Tom, on the other hand, looked like he had only half molted from urchin status. His clothes were nicer than those of the boys who answered to him, but they were already showing signs of neglect. And of sloppy eating habits.

“Didn’t we tell you not to stray down our lanes again, Jumpsuit? Didn’t we, Tom?”

Once upon a time Alain had called her by name, back when she had zipped out of her jumpsuit and stashed it in a hole in the wall before going to Si Fu’s. Then one day he had followed her after class and saw her getting back into her mandatory corporate uniform. Rabia didn’t know why he had spied on her. Perhaps someone else had seen her first and told him; Barnacle Town was full of eyes. But for whatever reason, he had called her only Jumpsuit ever since. She wore her corporate clothes openly now; there was no one left worth hiding things from.

Rabia fixed her gaze on the middle of Alain’s nose. Looking into his eyes brought that moment back in too-sharp clarity, and she would not let him see again just how much dumping her as a friend had hurt her.

“Yes, you did mention. Then I kicked both your asses, and four of your friends’ asses. I rather thought that had settled the matter,” she said.

“Well, it didn’t.”

“Do we really have to go through this every time I come to Barnacle Town? Because honestly, my fists get tired.” She thought about adding something about how the definition of insanity was repeating the same actions and expecting different results, but she decided they wouldn’t really get the humor.

“Tom and I actually have a proposition for you,” Alain said.

“Is that right, Tom?” Rabia asked.

Tom raised one eyebrow but said not a word.

“The boss has put me in charge of the Saturday fights,” Alain began, but that was all she needed to hear.

“Not interested,” Rabia said, all humor and sarcasm gone.

“Come on! You were a mainstay when my brother Luc was running it. And it can be worth serious coin to you. I’ll give you a cut on what my bookies make. Everyone is dying to see you fight again.”

“Do I look hard up for cash to you?”

Tom snorted and mumbled something only Alain could hear.

“Well, that was the carrot,” Alain said with a dramatic sigh. “Would you like to see my stick?”

“Is it bigger than your carrot?”

“I know Si Fu isn’t teaching anymore, leastwise no one but you goes up there. He lives smack-dab in the center of my little territory; I know everything that happens in my lanes. He isn’t teaching anymore, and that’s an awfully big space for one frail old man.”

“Is this a threat?” Rabia asked, not quite suppressing a laugh. After the last lesson she’d taught his little gang, one would think they would be reluctant to take on her si fu. Of course, Si Fu had been very disappointed in her for her part in that little ruckus, but they didn’t know that.

“You’re not always here, are you? Every night at curfew you have to scuttle back to the corporate part of the space station, don’t you?”

“Technically, the corporate part is the space station. The rest of this is just junk welded to the outside. Or didn’t you know why they call it Barnacle Town?”

“Am I not being clear?” Alain asked with a glance at Tom.

“You’re being perfectly clear,” Rabia said. “It’s just that I’m not worried about your stick. I, the student, have already thoroughly spanked both of you and a nice selection of your toadies. That’s nothing compared to what my teacher can do to you.”

“I don’t know, Jumpsuit. I’ve seen the man around and he’s moving pretty slow these days.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and rely on that, you ass,” Rabia said and turned her back on him. Not the smartest move, perhaps, but neither he nor Tom made an attempt to jump her from behind, and the urchins were keeping their distance. She would have to walk the streets more alertly from now on, though. Alain and Tom would favor ambush for the next encounter, and they would certainly bring weapons.

It could be fun.

As she turned, she saw the reason the two of them were loitering outside the coffee shop: Alain’s older and taller brother was hassling the owner of the curry stand across the lane, shaking him and growling right in the man’s face.

“Hey,” Rabia said, stepping forward. Si Fu loved vindaloo, and Prakash’s curry stand made the best vindaloo in Barnacle Town. Not that he had a lot of competition. But still, Prakash was a good man who looked out for Si Fu when she couldn’t.

“Stay out of it,” Alain growled, but she easily slipped out of the hand meant to restrain her and marched across the lane into the curry shop.

“Let Sri Goyal go,” she said.

Alain’s brother Luc looked over at her coolly. He had been running the fights before she had quit; she didn’t have to make any threats. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“That’s funny, because I feel concerned,” Rabia said, taking another step closer.

Luc thought over the situation, glancing past her in a way that let her know Alain and Tom were standing in the doorway behind her. She adjusted her mental picture of her surroundings but made no outwardly defensive move, not even so much as a shift of her weight. Something in the kitchen was starting to burn, a caramel smell just turning to a smoky one. Then Luc let Prakash go with a backward thrust that was just short of knocking him down, as if he had calculated the limit to how aggressive he could be without Rabia feeling compelled to treat it as an attack.

“It’s fine, Rabia,” Prakash said, although he looked far too pasty to be fine. “Please, there is no need to fight here.”

“Yeah, save it for the ring. Yes?” Luc said.

“I think I’ve earned you enough coin for one lifetime,” Rabia said. “Get lost. And don’t hassle my friends.”

“I’m not hassling anyone, missy. I’m here on official Barnacle Town business.”

“Official? That’s funny. It implies anyone here actually holds an office,” Rabia said.

“Watch your step,” Luc warned.

“You don’t scare me.”

His lip curled up in a humorless sneer. “Indeed. Safe every night beyond the airlocks, snug in your corporate apartment, with your corporate mom and corporate dad. But who says it’s you we’ll be after?”

Then he reached out and grasped the nearest support beam. The curry stand, like the rest of Barnacle Town, was welded together from bits of space debris. The kitchens had once been a storage container, with a door formed from the jagged hole left from a collision with some meteor or piece of space junk that rendered it useless for its old purpose but quite sufficient for its new one. Prakash and his wife lived over the curry stand in a long, narrow pod, which had once been a sleep compartment for one of the tiny space stations that had first housed humans in space. The pod was long indeed; it overhung the storage container by a considerable margin. The addition of a few mismatched support beams to hold up the pod overhead had made an open space for tables and chairs. Dining areas were almost nonexistent in Barnacle Town, and the curry stand was as popular for being a place to sit as for its cuisine.