He looked at her. His fingers tightened around hers. “I might have,” he said. “A computer ghost. Jesus.”

  “We try to turn off all the holographic projectors we can. But they’re in use all the time. We can’t disable them all.”

  “No.” He fired beer again. “One of my cousins is a genius programmer. I could talk to him about it.”

  “Not if it’ll end up in your uncle’s files.” She looked at him. “Please,” she said.

  He licked his lips. “Okay. I won’t tell anyone.”

  She leaned forward and kissed him, citrus and curry. Her breast brushed his arm. Then she laughed.

  “The only haunted ship in the universe, and I’m on it. I mean, who else?”

  He looked down at the bulb in his hand. “I don’t know that it’s so bad. At least you can turn your relatives off if you have to.”

  “Poor boy.” Her white, even teeth closed on the lobe of his ear. Fingernails whispered down his spine as he felt her breath on his nape. He propped the bulb against his knee and turned to her. Put his hands around her, felt the play of flesh over ribs. Her kisses slid over his throat, lodged in a place between clavicle and larynx that made him gasp. She shifted her weight forward, slid her long legs around his waist, adjusted herself in his lap. Her long hair caressed his chest like black smoke. The phone rang.

  Maria lifted her head. “Who is it?” she asked. Kit kissed her throat.

  “It’s me.” Ubu’s voice came louder than life from the room speaker. “I got your message about where you are. Are you alone?”

  “No.” She could feel the muscles in Kit’s thighs trembling. She grinned.

  “We gotta talk in private. It’s important.”

  She arched back in his lap and looked at Kit with her head cocked to one side. His fingertips touched her breasts, tracing the outlines of the nipples. He was getting very hard against her. “Okay,” she said.

  “Now.”

  Maria smiled a little ironic smile. “Now,” she said. “Bye.” She looked at Kit. “Sorry. Maybe later.”

  “I understand.” He was still pressing against her.

  Maria dismounted by kicking one leg up over his head and then slid smoothly off the sheets. She held her grey robe up over her head. Kit watched the play of her milkwhite skin over the knobs of her spine. The sight of her sleek hormone-fed body made him feel clumsy. Fat, sweaty, absurdly tumescent. Maria twisted her shoulders and the robe fell and draped her to her calves. She looked over her shoulder.

  “Meet somewhere tonight?”

  He pulled the sheet over his lap. “Sure. Where?”

  “You’d better let me call you.”

  He looked up at her quickly. “Not at the Abrazo, okay? Use the station message board.”

  Beautiful Maria shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “I’ve got a couple days till we start loading. How about you?”

  “Maybe that’s what I’m meeting with Ubu about.”

  Kit slid out of bed and put his arms around her. She drifted gently against him, brushing against his body while she smiled absently and gazed off over his head, into space. In spite of the fact he knew her mind was elsewhere, Kit felt his nerves go warm. He thought about an engagement in a freefall chamber near the station’s hub, picturing a slow, gentle loving going on forever, the two of them spiraling toward one another as their own miniature gravities called to one another. She kissed his damp forehead and extracted herself from his arms.

  “Sorry. Gotta go. Tonight. Okay?”

  “Station board. Let me know.”

  Maria padded from the room on bare feet, throwing him a farewell smile with a quick turn of her shoulders that transmitted itself into a long undulating ripple that swept through her hair. The door irised closed. Kit looked after her for a long moment, then returned to the bed and finished the curry and beer.

  He showered, shaved with the hotel razor, and put on his shorts, vest, and battered grey sneakers. He walked through the lobby of the Hotel Susperides without attracting a look from the clerk, then stepped out onto the metal of the rim.

  “Hey! Little Brother!”

  Kit winced at the sound of his cousin Ridge’s voice. He looked deeper into the twilight of the rim and saw Ridge swaggering up the alloy path with a couple riggers he hadn’t seen before.

  Ridge was a couple years older, Marco’s only grandson. He was proud of his torso, and above the waist he wore only jewelry. “Little Brother!” he said again, grinning. Kit could tell he was drunk.

  “Riders,” Kit said politely. Ridge came up to him and threw an arm around his shoulders, catching his neck uncomfortably between a steel forearm and a rock-hard biceps. The family embrace, Kit thought. Masculine and painful and forever. Smelling of spilled wine and careless brutality.

  “These aren’t riders, Little Brother. These are Capra and Tuck, a couple syster pilots I know,” Ridge said. The insystem haulers nodded hello. Ridge looked at the Susperides lights. “Coming out of the hotel, huh? Get lucky with some Mudviller tourist?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Better hope you didn’t get lice. You bring lice on board, you’re gonna be sorry.”

  “No lice.”

  “Thought for a second there I’d take you with us. We’re gonna go up to a hookshop I know in the hub and get some frog ladies. They can do some amazing things with those extra arms they got ’stead of legs. But that tourist lady of yours probably got you all tired, right?”

  “Yeah. Tired.”

  Ridge pinched him in the crook of his arm again. “Yeah. Tired,” he mocked. He looked up at the two men with him. “The boy does all right with girls, even if he don’t look like much. But getting him to talk about it is like pulling teeth. Why’s that, boy?”

  Kit looked up at him, at the handsome, leering face. He hadn’t lived with Ridge for so many years without learning how to handle him at least part of the time. “I don’t want to show you up in front of your friends,” he said.

  Ridge whooped with laughter and punched Kit in the chest with his free hand. Kit tried not to look like it hurt.

  “Don’t worry about that, boy,” Ridge said. “I be figuring I show these systers here a thing or two in a few minutes. You tell me about this tourist cooze, okay?”

  Kit nodded and tried to think of someone as far removed from Beautiful Maria as possible. “Blonde,” he said. “Short hair. About my age. Diamond implants in her cheekbones, like some of them wear. She was here with her mother, who came up to gamble.”

  Kit saw the spreading grin on Ridge’s face and knew he’d made a mistake. “Her mother?” Ridge asked. He laughed. “You wanna introduce me to Mamma, boy. I figure the whole family ought to get the benefit of de Suarez talent, right?”

  “They’re going down the well on the next shuttle. Sorry you missed ’em.”

  Ridge tightened his grip on Kit’s neck. “The little bastard’s lying,” he said. “He wants the whole family for himself, the fucker.”

  “It’s true,” Kit grated. He could feel Ridge’s forearm cutting his artery. Blue stars spun in the corner of his vision.

  “Yeah? What are their names? I’ll check the manifests, asshole.”

  Kit fought for breath. The blue stars were going nova. “Crystal something,” he said. “Check it, for Rice sake!”

  The pressure eased on his windpipe. Kit gratefully dragged in air. He realized he should have told Ridge that his girl’s mother had her boyfriend with her.

  “Yeah. Fuck. I wanna go to the hookshop anyway. See you later, Little Brother.”

  “Cousin. Systers.” The sarcasm in Kit’s voice could have been taken for a result of the bruise on his larynx. He blinked splashes of stellar color from his eyes and watched the three heading for the belt conveyor, a reverse quicksilver waterfall, that would take them to the hub. Laughter cascaded from them as they walked. Kit rubbed his throat and turned away from them.

  He was de Suarez; he had accepted that. The family was everything, all that mattered in the war of de Suarez against all: that was the de Suarez way. Kit had accepted that, too, with certain reservations. He owed the family his duty, his labor, his talent. As long as he gave them this, whatever else he did was his own affair: this was the quiet deal he had cut with himself. A treasonous deal, by de Suarez standards. Kit knew this, knew also that it couldn’t be any other way.

  Beautiful Maria was going to stay his secret, one of the few things he didn’t have to share with his uncles, aunts, and cousins on his crowded ship. A small, private detente in the war De Suarez Expressways, Ltd., was fighting with the human race. Here, on Angel Station, a few moments of peace.

  *

  Ubu reclined on a padded couch in the command cage. He’d called up a dross tune from the comm board, and cool spectra shifted through his mind as the audolin bent notes on the harmony line, each a catfooted glissando along Ubu’s nerves. Maxim sat on Ubu’s bare chest, feet tucked under him, his forehead butting up against Ubu’s chin. With all four hands, Ubu stroked the cat fore-and-aft in time to the percussion. Maxim’s purr grated in pleasant disharmony. White hair floated in the light station gravity.

  Our symmetry is broken, and our time, chanted the lyrics, Our hope is a token, and a crime. A song by Fetnab and Sanjay Gupta, who had been shooters once, before abandoning the life for success elsewhere.

  A shooter lyric, an early one. Maybe no one else would understand it.

  Ubu’s nape prickled, the brief equalization in pressure that meant Maria entering through the station tube. Maxim’s ears flicked back at the same instant. Ubu reached to the keyboard on the couch arm and snapped off the music.

  Maria began to descend the ladder, the white high arches and taut Achilles tendons followed by the drifting grey cloud of her gown. Her long hair rebounded as she dropped to the deck, a slow blueblack wave rising and falling. She turned, bent over him, kissed him gravely. Her lips had the taste of lemon. Maria began scratching Maxim’s neck. The cat put out one foot for balance against the pressure that the new pleasure was exerting on him. Ubu felt the prick of claws against his skin.

  “Our shit is weak,” Ubu said. “Marco de Suarez bought the miners, but not their brains.”

  “How much do we still owe?”

  Ubu pointed with his chin. “It’s on comp. Take a look.”

  She turned, triggered the display, bit her lip as she saw the figures. She shook her head. “Not good.”

  Ubu sat up and lowered the cat to the floor. Maxim scratched his ear with a rear foot. “How much did you win at blackhole?”

  “Not enough. The stakes aren’t high enough in blackhole. It’d take me weeks at this rate. Or I could lose everything, if I get tired or careless.”

  “We could get into a tourist club with what you won. Play rouge-et-noir.”

  Her face was turned away from him. “I’ve never played that.” Her voice vanished into the hiss of recirculated air.

  “If you lose, we haven’t lost much.”

  “It’s a tough game. Totally abstract. Not easy for me.”

  “Maria.”

  She was silent. Ubu could see her body outlined in the greygreen glow of the holo display. He waited.

  “Okay,” she said. Her voice was smaller than before. Ubu had the feeling he was hearing her with TP, that his ears couldn’t possibly have picked up that tiny whisper.

  “What else can we do?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  He came up behind her and put his arms around her, pressed his cheek against the warmth of her ear. He could feel the tension in her. “Want to rest first? We’ve got a few days.”

  “I’m rested. Maybe a couple hours under the alpha trodes, though.”

  “Whatever you want. I’ll find the rules to rouge-et-noir somewhere. Let you study them.”

  Her dark eyes were looking a thousand yards away, not seeing him. Ubu’s hackles rose as he realized what she was looking at: a place where there were no choices left, a place filled with litter like Runaway, like the Long Reach colonies, like Pasco dying, rotating amid his rubbish. Ubu dropped his arms, turned away, picked up the cat. Maxim purred loudly against his chest.

  “I wish...” Maria’s voice.

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing.” She rubbed her forehead with her thumb. “Maybe I should get some rest, after all.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  Maria brushed past him and went up the ladder slowly, like she hoped Ubu would call her back, tell her she didn’t have to do it. He didn’t say anything, just stood with the cat in his arms and a knot in his stomach and let her go.

  He didn’t understand it, but he wanted to cry.

  *

  Maria had four hours under the trodes, then called the station board and left a note for Kit to meet her on Runaway at zero-thirty. She figured it would be over by then, one way or the other.

  She and Ubu left the Fringe at twenty-two hundred, stepping from the fever-filled twilight to the brightly lit high-commerce zone. They walked slowly over the marble floor, arm in arm as if they had all the time in the world. They were trying to get a sense of the place. The casino’s facade was a long three-level-high hologram, just bright shifting colors, like a planetary aurora. It was a new building, built of permanent materials, not tempafoam, constructed in the last three years as the Angelica System’s economy began to develop enough wealth to support high-stakes gambling outside Angelica’s gravity well.

  “It’s called the Monte Carlo,” Ubu said. “Funny they named a casino after a statistical methodology. You figure it’s a clue to how to win?”

  Ubu and Maria were dressed in dark grip shoes and dark socks, grey pipestem pants, light shirts, dark jackets that were almost but-not-quite uniforms. Ubu had his lower arms crossed behind his back, hiding them under the jacket—his modifications weren’t precisely unknown outside shooter culture, but they were rarer. Ubu was wearing mascara to blend in with the hiline crowd, and Beautiful Maria had surrounded her eyes with kohl, dusted glitter on her cheekbones, and put a handful of Red Nine in one jacket pocket and Blue Heaven in the other. She felt like an impostor: her nerves crackled as she walked past the casino’s auroral facade and into the arching lobby. She tried not to look at the doormen, knowing that if she made the wrong move they’d stop her and ask her what she was doing here, if she had credit. But their eyes passed over her without stopping, and Ubu followed her in and gave a little laugh as he realized he was past the guards. All they had to do now was win a lot of money.

  The casino was on their left. Looking at the gaming tables, Maria was surprised by how quiet it was—instead of the constant barrage of arcade noise in the Fringe clubs, here there was only a low murmur of conversation. This impressed her more than anything else: there was the sense that serious money was being won and lost here.

  Ubu was waiting for her to say something.

  “The bar first,” she said. “I’ve got to give the Red Nine a chance to work.”

  She’d taken pills rather than used an inhaler. She didn’t know if a chak would be accepted here. The compound rolled up her nerves like an incoming tide. She could feel the electron world buzzing in her ears.

  The bar had a lick piano and a view of the casino. The rouge-et-noir tables were on the far side of the room and Maria didn’t want to look at them. She sipped slowly at her drink and waited. She didn’t want to talk, and Ubu must have sensed that, because he just waited, not saying anything but downing three drinks in the time it took her to finish one.

  She was trying to get a sense of the place. She closed her eyes and tried to let the casino speak to her.

  White noise. Too much input. She would have to get closer.

  Maria stood up. “Gotta go,” she said. Ubu followed her. She let her long legs carry her through the casino at a pace that was close to panic. The quiet in the place was frightening. Hiliners and Mudvillers gathered intent around tables, eyes focused on their play. Sometimes Maria heard a laugh from somewhere, a sound that floated over the crowd like a bird, but Maria could never see anyone laughing. She clutched her credit counter in her white hand. Her scalp was prickling with sweat. This wasn’t her world.

  A rouge-et-noir table glittered in front of her. Colored lights played on the faces of the three players, two women and a man, the light shining up from below, making them look sinister. The tourneur was a small pale-skinned man with a large white forehead and a surprising amount of black hair on the backs of his hands. He watched the play with emotionless eyes set beneath perfectly even brows.

  Red Nine told Beautiful Maria to play. She dug her nails into her palms and told herself it wasn’t time yet. She stepped up to the table and watched. The woman on her left had the bank: her skin was black, her hair platinum, and diamonds had been implanted on her shoulders and breasts. She wasn’t dressed like a Hiliner, and she didn’t have the body of someone from Mudville: maybe she was a shooter turned professional gambler. Beautiful Maria didn’t want to think how much money she’d paid for the bank.

  The other bettors were nondescript. The man was in a dark blue uniform jacket and the woman in a bright, expensive sheath. Her face was painted in fluorescent stripes.

  Ubu spoke, and Maria jumped. She turned to him with wild eyes.

  “What you say?”

  “Do you want to bet?”

  She clenched her teeth. Her heart beat madly in her throat. “In a minute.”

  “You need betting chips. Shall I get you some chips?”

  There was an insistent, hectoring tone in his voice she didn’t like. “Yes,” she said. She wanted him to get away from her.

  “I’ll need your counter, then.” He held out a hand. Maria slapped it into his palm and turned back to the table. The black woman was looking at her. A roar of anger went through Maria and she clamped it down, realizing this was the drug. She twisted her hands together below the level of the table and watched the play.

  Rouge-et-noir was an electronic game, run by the Monte Carlo’s computer. It was based on an old Earth game called roulette, a popular game until small computers were developed that could judge the tiny biases of the wheel and the tourneur, and which forced the game to go electronic. Since no artificial intelligence could produce truly random play, the random factors were added by the players, who could press keys from 1 to 36 in hopes of influencing the outcome. Each bettor had to press at least one key during the fifteen seconds of play or her bet would be confiscated.