“I think I know where that is,” Vrel said. “It’ll just take a few minutes. How will I know you?”
Ramona laughed. “I think is better if I look for you, no?”
* * *
Vrel found the Gold City without difficulty. It had a window with orange lights inside looking out over the street, a flashing neon sign overhead, and a bright red door. It was only when Vrel was halfway through the door that it occurred to him that he might just have walked into the most elementary trap imaginable. But if so, the place would be staked and he was already spotted. Hudro would never have done this. He swore inwardly at his own naïveté, braced himself, and went in.
Inside was a long bar with mirrors behind running the length of one wall, a dance floor taking up one corner of the room, the rest being filled with tables and chairs. The place was busy and crowded. The throng included several Hyadeans, all male, in a knot clustered at one end of the bar, clearly military although out of uniform. A few others were scattered around at the tables, and two somewhat clumsily and self-consciously working hard at mastering the mystique of dancing. While Vrel was still looking around, a petite dark-skinned girl with wavy, shoulder-length hair and wearing a bright red, tight-fitting dress materialized in front of him. “You are Mr. V.?” she said.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I learn to tell these things.” Without further preliminaries, Ramona took Vrel’s elbow and steered him toward some tables by a wall forming the side of some stairs going up. None of the tables was empty, but Ramona said something in Spanish to two girls seated at one of them, and they got up and left after a brief exchange. Ramona sat down and waved for Vrel to take the other chair. She had a lot of the artificial coloring that many Terran women wore around the mouth and eyes, he saw. Makeup was unknown among Hyadeans—although he had heard recently that some youngsters were causing all kinds of reactions by introducing the practice back home. A waiter came to take their order. Ramona asked for simply “a beer.” Vrel decided he had better stick with fruit juice.
“So Luodine didn’t talk to you directly,” Vrel said.
“No. A friend that she has called me. I guess maybe she thinks someone might be checking her calls, eh? Sounds like some kind of trouble.” Ramona shrugged in a way that said whatever it was, it didn’t worry her. “Luodine has many friends everywhere. She travels around, makes movies of people. People like her. She listens to what they say. Too many of the aliens, they don’t listen.” She gave Vrel an approving nod. “See, you are listening. You’re okay too.”
“Have you met Luodine yourself?” Vrel asked.
“Oh sure. A couple of months ago, when everything here is like a camp. She is making a movie about the Terrans that Hyadeans meet when they come here to work—and then when they are not at work. She is very interested in the working girls who come to the mining town. It sounds like a lot of people where you come from are not too happy about it, eh?” Ramona eyed Vrel saucily and smiled. Vrel realized with a start that she was one of the Terran women who hired themselves out for sexual pleasure. Such a thing was highly illegal on Chryse, even its depiction in fictional settings being banned. There had been calls from home to have the Terran authorities close such practices down on parts of Earth where young Hyadean soldiers were posted. The Americans that Vrel had met in California called them “fishers” . . . or something like that. His first impulse was to express some kind of disapproval. But he controlled it and forced himself to see things the way he had learned to since coming to Earth.
“The girls, they all like her too, when they get to know her better,” Ramona completed.
Vrel pulled himself back to matters of the moment. “On the phone, you started to talk about Luodine needing something,” he said.