“Last name’s Maria. First name’s Beautiful. Bag be getting away.”

  Cody snatched the bag, then looked up at her. “Shooter Maria. You and the bossrider had different fathers, then?”

  Ubu stifled a laugh. This was the kind of question planet-dwellers always asked. Their social systems, whatever they were, were always stuck firmly in the mud of their little dirtball and they never understood anything about people who lived their lives unencumbered by all the ponderous bureaucratic kiddyshit, all the tax records and education certificates and housing forms and permits even to have people cart your junk away, all the Mudville stuff that weighed them down more than gravity.

  Even Maria’s patience was wearing thin. Her flat tone indicated her growing annoyance. ”Same father,“ she said, ”but we take whatever names we like. Sometimes I’m called Pasco’s Maria after my father, and sometimes my brother is Pasco’s Ubu. Ubu’s given name was Xavier, but he didn’t like it and named himself after someone he saw in a hype. His master’s certificate is in the name of Ubu Roy, so that makes it official.“

  ”Sounds confusing.“

  Beautiful Maria looked at him with slitted eyes. ”None of us are ever confused.“ Ubu laughed out loud.

  Cody didn’t say anything after that, just tapped into the first container. Presumably he was satisfied, since he didn’t object to what his analyzer was telling him.

  “The Admiralty Court is meeting on your case in two days,” said Mahadaji. “It would benefit your case if you were to appear in person.”

  “Fine,” said Ubu.

  “You also might dress more formally. If the magistrate doesn’t like your looks, he might quibble at our settlement.”

  Ubu considered this. “Okay,” he said, his voice doubtful.

  “It’s Bannerji, otherwise I wouldn’t mention it. He’s lived downside all his life, till he got this appointment, and he’s very conservative.”

  Ubu gave an impatient shrug. As soon as he got the payment from Portfire he could buy however many Mudville costumes he needed. Maybe even a uniform like Bannerji’s. “Whatever it takes to get this all settled,” he said.

  The 15 A autoloaders kicked in again. Mahadaji winced as the sound of grinding metal rang from the dock’s hard alloy surfaces.

  “Perhaps you and your sister can join me for luncheon onstation,” he said. “We can meet the Portfire people afterward.”

  “Fine.” A wave of the magic wand, Ubu thought, and the hypothetical bank balance would turn real.

  “Luncheon is the big meal here. Takes two or three hours. Then tea, then a light supper.”

  Ubu wasn’t interested in any of this, but he smiled at Mahadaji anyway. Ubu knew from the records he’d called up that Mahadaji had done a lot of work with shooters. The lawyer knew his way around, and also knew better than to ask any stupid questions about shooters’ names. He’d be useful later.

  “We had lunch about five hours ago,” Ubu said, “but we’re used to flexible schedules.”

  “Good. It’s settled, then. Forgive me for a moment while I call my office.”

  Cody only examined four of the containers before he got tired of Maria hauling him around the cargo stacks. Maria carried him to the shuttle that took them to Port Town on the station. On the shuttle, Mahadaji and Maria witnessed the signing of the settlement between Runaway and OttoBanque. The rest of the journey was made in silence.

  Cody was last seen tugging at his jacket, his grips fixed firmly on the velcro surface of the moveway that took him to the planetary shuttle. Ubu waved after him and laughed. Fucking invincible, he thought. I’m invincible. He rolled his shoulders, looked up at the tented metal sky. His body felt as if it were a conduit for energy.

  Mahadaji led them down the low-gravity docks to a bullet-shaped gauss shuttle that would take them down the length of the station. They sat down on seats of contoured metal. The smell of electricity snarled in Ubu’s sinuses. The shuttle started moving in absolute silence, built up speed. Bright holograms marched overhead, announced the next stop in several different scripts. Apparently people on Bezel spoke a lot of languages.

  They stepped out at the third stop. Well-dressed people moved on soft black streets that gave slightly at each step. Some of them stared at Ubu. Ubu stared back, and the others looked suddenly away. He grinned. This was fun.

  The ceiling was arched, each radiating beam scalloped and perforated in an intricate baroque design. Mahadaji led them to a building faced sternly in bronze. The floor was laid in some kind of grey stone that must have been shipped up from the planet below. Ubu could feel his grin begin to fade. He’d never been this far into Bezel Station or ever seen a place like this.

  The interior of the elevator was plated gold and polished to a mirror finish. Mahadaji pressed his thumbprint to a receptor labeled “Pan-Development Klub” and the elevator began to rise.

  PDK, Ubu remembered. The Kompanie. They’d sponsored the first settlements here, built Bezel Station. Still had a lot of say in how things were run.

  “My club,” Mahadaji said. “I think it has the best food onstation. And the best view.”

  Ubu’s skin shone gold in the perfect mirror of the elevator doors. His energy began to return. He grinned, and the golden god in the mirror grinned back.

  The gold-plated room rose forty stories. Gravity grew perceptibly lighter. When the mirrors opened Ubu stepped out into a bright wide room with glass windows and soft white carpets. A string trio played dolores music with a subtle ladino counterpoint laced into its structure. Maria smiled as she dug her bare toes into the shag. Conversation murmured in the background.

  “Mr. Mahadaji.” A grave copper-skinned man, in a short jacket with bright yellow buttons and a high collar and stock: “Your table is this way.”

  Overdressed people watched Ubu and Maria as he walked past the bar to Mahadaji’s table. The table was set in a cloverleaf-shaped projection cantilevered from the side of the building, bubble-roofed. The dolores music followed: great acoustics, Ubu thought, or subtle sonics. He couldn’t tell which.

  He could look straight up and see stars, the lights of Bezel Station’s night side. Looking down, he could see the black absorbent avenues, distant holo adverts, patches of green that looked unnatural against the structured metal geometries of buildings and streets. One of those places, he thought, where they put soil down, grow things, and pretend they’re on a planet.

  Mahadaji called up the menu. Ubu recognized few of the items, and he and Maria let Mahadaji do the ordering. First there were snacks and a bottle of wine. Then hashish in an ornate brass water pipe— Ubu had always thought smoking a filthy Mudville habit, but he took careful puffs out of politeness, thankful it wasn’t something completely disgusting like tobacco. The pipe was followed by sherbet to cleanse the palate. Then some kind of spicy soup. All the dishes were white bone china with the PDK insignia blazoned in gold. Another bottle of wine appeared, with a small animal, native to Bezel, cooked in its shell, which had to be broken open with a special tool. More hashish, more sherbet. Mahadaji explained each course and its preparation in words that skittered over Ubu’s consciousness without coming to light. Ubu saw brightly colored birds floating over the dome, and remembered Bezel Station had let them fly loose as a tourist attraction.

  The main course was a thick slab of pinkish meat sitting in its own juice, with steamed vegetables on the side. The roast whatever-it-was seemed naked. Ubu waited for the waiter to bring the sauce, saw Mahadaji and Maria begin eating, and decided to cut a piece. He ate it carefully, waiting for the flavor.

  “Bland,” he said.

  Maria looked at him. “It’s supposed to be subtle,” she said.

  Ubu laughed. “Too subtle for me.” He looked at Mahadaji. Wine sang a bright melody in his head. “Can I get some chile sauce? Mustard maybe?”

  “It’s not grown in a vat, see,” Maria said. “It’s supposed to have a flavor of its own. Not supposed to need sauce.”

  “That’s perfectly all right, Shooter Maria,” Mahadaji said. “I should have anticipated. My fault.” His small dark hands danced in the air as he summoned the waiter.

  “I like it,” Maria said insistently. She cut another piece of meat.

  The waiter brought a bottle of chile-and-garlic paste and offered to heat it in a little chromium warmer. Ubu declined and poured the red stuff on the roast and vegetables both. They tasted better after that.

  “I have already had inquiries,” Mahadaji said, his knife cutting delicate bite-sized pieces of the roast, “concerning the origin of your cargo.”

  Ubu looked at him. Wine eddied through his veins. “What did you tell them?”

  “I told them I did not know, and that all questions should be addressed to you.” He touched his mustache with one little finger. “Some of the inquiries,” he said, “were from the Navy. Special Investigations Department.”

  “What’s SID’s interest?”

  “They want to make certain the cargo wasn’t hijacked.”

  Ubu laughed. “If they can find a cargo that big that’s been hijacked, they’re welcome to try to pin it on me.”

  Mahadaji looked at Ubu with pebble eyes. Suddenly the air seemed chill. “Should I know where the cargo comes from, bossrider? Is it something you can safely tell me?”

  Energy flamed through Ubu, burning the wine fumes away. I’m not that drunk, he thought.

  “It’s legitimate. We have contracts: the pharmaceuticals come from an exclusive source. There will be more shipments, perhaps more valuable than this one.”

  Mahadaji nodded slowly to himself. “You are an extremely fortunate man, bossrider.”

  “I don’t want anyone to know about the future cargoes. Not till we sell this one for the highest possible price.”

  “There will be a great many inquiries. People will want to know on whose behalf you are working. Perhaps there may be attempts at espionage.”

  Ubu looked at Maria and grinned. She seemed startled by this thought. “There’s nothing they can find out.”

  “You have taken precautions, then?”

  “Yes. There’s nothing to discover.“ Then he thought of Twelve hanging in Runaway’s auxiliary control station, and his grin froze on his face. He covered his hesitation by reaching for his wineglass, taking a gulp.

  “SID may investigate you whether they have any real evidence or not. Your earlier difficulties have made you the object of suspicion. I think you should both know that you have the right to tell them nothing.”

  Ubu nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Mahadaji.”

  “The sudden exploitation of new sources of wealth is... against current Multi-Polly doctrine. You know that, of course.”

  Ubu glanced at Maria, saw her solemn, wide eyes on him. “Yeah,” he said softly. “We know.”

  Suddenly he needed a breath of air. He stood. “Toilet,” he said. Mahadaji gave him directions.

  In the toilet Ubu could still hear the dolores music. He was surprised to see a small, wizened woman there, handing out towels in exchange for money. He paid for a towel, used a urinal, washed his hands, stepped out into the restaurant again.

  The bar and its stools were padded with matching white plastic-covered foam, as if the management was expecting the gravity to disappear at any moment and the customers to start caroming off the furnishings. A black-skinned girl with brilliants floating in her puffball hair looked at him over her shoulder. Ubu walked to the bar and stood next to her. “OxyGen,” he said.

  He glanced at the girl. She had been lightly moned and it was difficult to be certain of her age— eighteen, he thought, on the outside. She wore silver sandals with straps that went up her calves and a one-piece sleeveless blue dress of some shiny material. She was still looking at him, nodding her head slightly to the beat of the trio. Her earlobes were elongated, almost reaching her shoulders, with big ornate silver plugs in them.

  “Never seen a shooter before?” he asked.

  She laughed and showed white teeth. “No, I haven’t. Not in the real.”

  He raised his four arms. “Look all you like.” Invincible, he thought.

  “My name’s Magda Desmond.”

  “Ubu Roy.”

  The bartender brought Ubu a disposable chak painted in bright red and yellow. OxyGen was an enzyme that would help his body metabolize alcohol. Suddenly he didn’t want it. He paid for the inhaler and looked at Magda.

  “You live here?”

  “I’m here on vacation. Came with a friend, for the gambling.”

  “From downside?” Remembering not to call it Mudville.

  “Yeah. A city called Parbhani.”

  “Where’s your friend?”

  Magda grinned. “She’s in bed. Bad hangover. A noncheeper.” Whatever that meant.

  Invincible, Ubu thought. “Wanna come see Port Town later?”

  She seemed dubious. “Anything there?”

  “Shooter stuff.” He laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”

  “Can I bring my friend?”

  “If you like.”

  She smiled again. “Okay. Where shall I meet you?”

  “Port Town exit on the gauss shuttle. Sixteen hundred, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “See you then.”

  “It’s a cheeper.”

  Ubu headed back to Mahadaji’s table, then remembered the OxyGen in his hand. Better sober up, he thought, before the meet with the Portfire people. Then have fun after. He swayed slightly as he used the inhaler, alternating nostrils till the contents were gone. He put the empty chak in a disposal labeled “Light Metals” and stepped into the bubble. Maria looked up at him, gave him a tentative smile. A snake crawled with cold, deliberate sloth down Ubu’s spine. Ubu thought about Maria and Magda, black skin and white, and sobriety seemed to strike him all at once. He had never felt less drunk in his life.

  Get it over with, he thought. It’s gonna happen, might as well happen now.

  “Mr. Mahadaji was talking about putting security on Runaway,” Maria said. “He knows some people.”

  Ubu sat down and reached for the wine bottle. “Fine,” he said.

  Mahadaji smiled. “I can make the arrangements this afternoon. There can be a guard on your personnel gate by sixteen hundred, and people can install alarms on your outside airlocks.”

  Ubu drank one glass, then poured a second. “Sounds good,” he said. He was aware that Maria was looking at him.

  “I think I should set up a meeting with our finance specialist. Especially if there will be more shipments. There’s an excess-profits tax, part of Consolidation.”

  “Excess profits,” said Maria. “That’s something we’ve never had to deal with.” There was a slight smile on her lips, but her wide dark eyes still watched Ubu.

  “The capitalization rules are complex. But there are ways of getting around them.”

  “Yeah,” Ubu said. “Let’s do it. Let the Multi-Pollies get their funding someplace else.”

  Mahadaji touched his mustache with the little finger of his right hand. “They just want things to be predictable.”

  Ubu scowled. “That’s their problem.”

  *

  There were two rounds of dessert, each with a different liqueur, followed by the water pipe and a last dab of sherbet. Ubu was floating again by the end of the meal. He looked in the bar for Magda as they moved on, but she’d gone. Mahadaji led them to the Portfire office, a foam-walled office building near Port Town, just a giant beige room filled with desks and terminals and lit by hanging fluorescents— all that happened here was that data got shuffled from one desk to the next; Portfire moved its actual goods out of a series of warehouses downside and in Port Town.

  Ubu signed and printed and was handed an electronic fortune, out of which the Multi-Pollies collected a swashbuckling forty percent as a foretaste of further government depredations. OttoBanque was paid off, and Ubu looked in satisfaction at the resulting zeroes.

  They said goodbye to Mahadaji after the signing, then headed for a moveway that led to Port Town. Ubu looked at his pocket watch, saw it was fifteen-ten. “I’m gonna have a party,” he said.

  “We’ve got people coming by. Guards. Remember?”

  “Shit. Forgot.”

  “If there’re actually gonna be groundlice looking into our business, we gotta protect Twelve.”

  “Yeah. Shit.” He touched her on the arm. “Look, you take care of it, okay? I gotta go celebrate.”

  “We could celebrate tonight.”

  Anger snapped in Ubu’s mind like a whip. “Just do it, okay?” he said. “Be a lousy favor, all right?”

  Beautiful Maria looked at him with her dark, depthless eyes. One white hand fluttered to her throat. “Okay,” she said. “If that’s—”

  “How I want it, yeah.”

  They rode to Port Town in silence. The moveway gave out onto a metal street: no soft black cushion here. Music clattered from bars. Shooters, systers, and dock workers careened by on tiptoe in the negligible gravity. Except for the warehouses, the buildings were all of tempafoam. There was still a shooter life here, and it crackled around Ubu and Maria as the moveway carried them toward the docks.

  “Bye,” Ubu said, waving to Maria, and he shrugged off her frozen, pursuing glance as he chose a bar at random and dove in. The foam walls were painted a garish blue. There was an autographed photo of Evel Krupp over the bar. A dozen systers sat onstage hacking at their instruments as they floundered through a dross song. The singers couldn’t remember even the chorus; the sitar player was practically asleep. The discordant sounds brought bright, razor-edged colors to Ubu’s mind, perfect accompaniment to the brutal energy that seemed to roar through him like the flame of a reaction drive.

  Ubu drank some Sharps while the systers staggered through another song. After that he asked if he could sit in on keyboards and played four-handed, giving the systers some direction for their incompetence. His weird synaesthesiac disharmony baffled them. Their drunken staggering around his pounding atonal chords only sharpened his amusement.

  He remembered his meeting with Magda at the last minute. He relinquished the synthesizer to a loud chorus of protest from the other players, who claimed they were just getting the hang of his playing. He bought a chak of Red Four at the bar, sniffed just enough to put a blade-keen edge on his intensity, and headed for the shuttle station.