“C’mon, you bastards,” he added in gruff embarrassment. “Let’s find a proper cathouse.”
As the sailors strode off, arms akimbo and kicking their toes out with each step, one of those who had grabbed the pimp turned. “Hey, Lieutenant?” he called. “See you round!”
The prostitute half knelt, half squatted beside her pimp. Her clothes, though brief, were constraining.
The pimp groaned softly, which meant his head was harder than anybody would’ve expected. Ran nodded toward the whore and started to walk away.
She moved fast and with birdlike grace, putting herself in his way. Wanda stepped forward but paused.
The whore looked tiny up close. What Ran had thought was a skullcap was her own hair. It was dyed in streaks of black and a color close to that of her garments, then lacquered down. The marks of the sailor’s fingers were red against her pale throat.
“I suppose you expect a freebie for what you did, huh?” the whore demanded in a shrill voice.
“I don’t expect anything,” Ran said. He tried to step around her.
She blocked his way again. She wasn’t as young as he’d first thought. “I guess you think you’re too good for me!” she said. “Is that it?”
He looked at her and she glared back. Whatever she saw in Ran Colville’s eyes didn’t bother her the way it did others when he wasn’t careful; when he forgot or remembered, however you wanted to say it.
“I’m not too good for anybody,” he said aloud. “Quite the contrary.”
“Then come on up,” the whore said crisply as she took him by the hand. “It’s just up on the third.”
Ran looked over his shoulder at Wanda Holly. “I’ll be a little while,” he said without inflection.
She raised an eyebrow. “Take a long time,” she said. “Take twenty minutes. I’ll have another beer.”
She turned and stepped toward a drink kiosk—a different one—before Ran could reply.
If he intended to.
CALICHEMAN
Ran Colville drew in a breath whose cool humidity felt good in his lungs. On Calicheman Trident Starlines docked at Longleat, a broad canal served along both sides by railways. Starship landings generated huge quantities of steam, most of which recondensed into droplets before the gangplanks lowered.
From the Empress’s pilotry data, society on Calicheman was similar to that of Ohio in the 1820s. It was a less uniform culture than many. Not surprisingly, its worst—and most extreme—aspects were concentrated in the district surrounding the starport.
A train, aided by scores of cabs and hire cars, had carried off those of the Empress’s passengers who disembarked—for good or just to stretch their legs. Calicheman’s main export, beef from the feral cattle which roamed all three of the main continents, was coming aboard by the carload from the broad—2-meter—gauge trains drawn up alongside the dock.
The beef would fill what had been the Third Class spaces, now refrigerated. The cargoes were comparable from a commercial viewpoint; on a bad day, Ran might have said that the connection was closer than that.
But this was a very good day, as sunny as Ran’s disposition, and so far as he could tell, he was off duty now. He’d already freed Mohacks and Babanguida. Now he touched his transceiver to the lower end of the First Class gangplank and said, “Colville to Holly. Want to see what’s happening on Calicheman, Wanda? Over.”
“A lot of cows are turning grass into methane, unless the place has changed in the past three weeks,” replied Wanda’s voice, thinned by the transmission channel. She didn’t need to cue Bridge, because the AI routed the response by default to the initial caller. “I’d take you around, but I’ve got deck watch. Sorry. Over.”
A train energized its bearings and clanked upward from the rails. It chuffed forward the length of one car. Then it settled with a similar clang and resumed offloading its pallets.
“This is the Commander’s watch,” Ran said in puzzlement “Over.”
“He’s got something hush-hush at the embassy,” Wanda explained. After a pause, she added, “The Brasil didn’t touch down here either, you know. It looks as though she, well . . . But go enjoy yourself. Calicheman’s not a bad place, so long as you mind your own business. The locals get pretty touchy about individual rights, though. Over.”