Cardoso stood between two sets of closed glass doors and let the security cameras look him over. An overhead monitor showed him what they saw: a guarda in a raincoat with crow's feet around anxious eyes and tension lines around his lips. His hands were in his pockets. He couldn't smile for the camera.
He said into the grille, when it demanded ID in a woman's voice. "Cardoso. If this is Camila O'Flynn, I'm your 8:00, remember?" That was how she'd put it---8:00, not 20 hours, and he noticed things like that. Like he'd noticed that she lived closer to Purgatorio Field than to Sao Paulo, on the Colar de Silicio; like he'd noticed that in her data-pull it said, under employment, major interspacial corporation. And under her preferences, adventure.
He shuffled his feet in the pause before the buzzer sounded, thinking that, if she liked his looks at all, he could surely give her some. He'd planned for it, shocked at himself, as if it were a foray. Whatever interspacial corporation she worked for, he was willing to bet that her job had never taken her 1 inch off the ground. He was going to do a lot better than that.
The pause was too long, though; maybe she'd changed her mind. He ran his hand through his overlong brushcut, thinking she'd seen his picture, like he'd seen hers.
And then, with a crackle that clipped the 1st word, the grille told him: "---ome on up. I'll only be another minute or two---door's open." And the buzzer sounded, allowing him to push through. Cardoso took a look back at the rented sportster he'd left at the curb and at the buzzer panel that listed her apartment. Then he headed for the elevator, hands still in his pockets, whistling. His therapists thought this was a great idea. If he got laid at the end of it, it would be.... Even if he just had a good time with her---if she liked the flight plan he'd filed---he'd be winning.
Why was he nervous, then? The computers had matched them up; she wasn't going to look at him and faint---she'd seen him, had his vital stats on tap. Maybe it was because some computer had decided they were compatible---computers screwed up all the time. Or maybe it was because his therapists were so goddamn happy about the date. Or maybe it was because the high-rise whose elevator he stepped into was so fancy, so high-security, so moneyed.
Whatever this Camila O'Flynn did for the corporation she worked for wasn't limited to making coffee. Cardoso leaned back in the swanky, wood-paneled elevator and let the cameras scan him, his right hand curled around the 10-millimeter belly gun in his pocket to mask any signature the surveillance gear might pick up otherwise.
When the elevator opened at her floor, he blinked. Before him was a glass-block alcove that had just one door opening off it, and that was ajar. Camila O'Flynn's apartment was the only one on this whole floor.
He stepped out of the elevator, through the alcove, and into a room the size of a little airport, full of eye-teasing effect lighting and post-modern U.S.A.-style furniture.
"Hello?" a woman called from somewhere down a pink hallway.
"Hello yourself," he said reluctantly, hearing the thickness in his voice, there wherever he had to raise it.
"I'm back here," she called again.
He knew that. He was fingering a rock sample on a presentation stand, one of several, and thinking there was time to back out. The computer had made a mistake---this lady's idea of adventure was likely solar sailing with a bunch of her corporate buddies---or using chemicals as rec-drugs that Cardoso would have shot is way out of a security facility to avoid. He turned to leave, hesitated, pausing before the display cabinet, the sample still in his hand. All he was risking was rejection. So he'd find out he didn't belong in groundsider society---so what? He knew that already. He conjured up the image of Camilia O'Flynn that Dream Date had shown him; it wasn't as if she wore tridescent contact lenses or---anything.
But he wasn't ready for this. He'd tell her he was sorry when she came out dressed for the Sao Paulo Symphony, and let it go at that. He didn't want encounter therapy. The only person he wanted to encounter was Garcia, and he hadn't had shit for luck trying to do that.
He was about to put the sample down on its stand beside the others on the fancy shelf when he heard her moving around and glanced down the hall.
She was smiling, striding towards him, one hand out in a practiced gesture. And she was just as advertised: nearly 5-foot-8, slim and athletic, with a bright smile and hair almost as short as his. Not a hint of druggie or vamp about her, just a clean and sweet-selling woman in a form-hugging purple dress that showed off her legs, waist and breasts enough that Cardoso felt a tremor of physical recognition run over him: a functional member of the opposite sex, all right. She swept down on him like a guest of fresh air; by the time he'd taken her hand she'd come up on tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek.
Startled, he looked her over again and then realized she'd been talking to him for a while. "....sorry. I tried not to be late, but today was my last day at work before vacation, so I had to clean off my desk. Hope these clothes meet with your approval." She stepped back, turned with unpremeditated concern. "I mean---are they okay for wherever it is we're going?"
"Fine, I guess." It was the first response he'd made and it came hard. He'd have preferred her without clothes, by then. "I filed a flight plan---after I read your printout. 2 hours, up the coast..." He shrugged.
She looked at him unblinkingly, waiting for him to finish. When he just watched her breathe, she said softly, "Maybe I should change?" Into something more like your...."
"I'll get you coveralls at the base. You're OK for dinner... Camila." She was standing close enough to touch and he wanted to take her arm.....for starters, but he didn't dare.
"Good," she smiled again, brightly. "Let me get my purse."
She threaded her way around the sectional, picking up her things. Cardoso turned away, looking again at the rock samples, hefting the one with a pale vein which he thought might bear some titanium. When, from behind him, she said, "Oh? Are you a rock hound too, Ivan?" he nearly dropped it.
"No. But I've been known to run into this kind of thing sometimes." Nobody called him Ivan, but she'd gotten his data from a computer card; she wouldn't know that.
She slid her hand under his arm and it was resting in the crook of his elbow so smoothly he didn't know how it happened. "Sometimes when you're working? Hmmm. In case you haven't noticed, we gave almost the same job description."
Somehow they were moving toward the door. "Yeah, I noticed that. Hey, I don't want to pry...." Cardoso didn't want her to pry.
She took her hand from his arm to lock her door and punch up the elevator. "You're not. I'm an administrative assistant at EICSA. That's where the rocks came from---terraforming projects."
The elevator door slid open; it must've been waiting there. He ushered her inside like he hadn't done since a high school dance. EICSA? He was supposed to return the confidence, obviously. Maybe she already knew. It did smell like a set-up.
"Where's that rock from?" Cardoso asked quietly in a voice that Camila O'Flynn didn't know him well enough to take as a warning. "Z-42B?""
"Que?"
"Nothing. Sorry. Fishing. I work out-system, mostly. This is the first time I've been back in--a long time."
But she'd heard what he said; there was a shadow over her smile. "Out-system? You work for us? We're the biggest...."
The elevator door opened to reveal people there. She changed conversational gears, saying, "It's going to be such fun, flying up the coast. When I logged onto the dating service, I was bored to tears. Everybody I know does the same thing I do; we just talk shop. And Dream Date didn't seem to have anybody for me. I mean, this is the first meeting they arranged for me. What about you?"
"I'm a first-timer, too. I haven't been groundside long, remember?" Oh, how he wished he hadn't gotten into this. Out of the doors, and into the Italian sportster. He'd rented the fastest ground-effect machine he could find, but she wasn't impressed. Just took it for granted.
And she was so direct; she kept surprising him. She was too rich for his blood, that was for damn sure. She crossed shapely legs in shiny hose and he cranked the car away from the curb, watching the rearview mirror. Even so, he nearly cut off the silver sedan pulling out behind him. He waved at the driver in apology but the man didn't respond.
She was asking him how he'd chosen Dream Date.
"I was calling a friend of mine and got a wrong number. Then it seemed like a harmless thing to do. Then I got your data and...." Again he shrugged. He wasn't used to this kind of small talk. "You didn't tell me when I asked....about your affiliation. Some military, right? And then corporate? If you're from one of our competitors, a spy sent to pump me, let's get it off the table so it doesn't wreck our evening." This time her grin was disarming and yet challenging: this was the true Camila O'Flynn, some kind of executive female.
"Cardoso, 203rd Batalhoa de Guarda, Comando Espacial; I've sheep-dipped for you people. You know what that means?"
"I----paramilitary, right?" Light splashed her face intermittently from the oncoming traffic.
"Sometimes."
"That's why you know about....rocks."
"It is." He wheeled the fast little sportster up the on-ramp, punched up his destination preset, and watched as the map came up on his windshield. "That's us," he pointed to one blip, then another. "That's our destination. We've got a few minutes to change our minds. I'll take you home, sem problamas. Call it a misfire. Well, you did say you didn't like shoptalk." Although the idea of fucking one of the people involved in getting his guarda unit blown to bits was tempting, it was probably more trouble than it was worth.
"What's wrong?" she asked, honestly confused, hurt in her voice.
"What's wrong, senhora, is that I really thought this wasn't part of any rehab or debrief program and I'm pissed. I don't need my ashes hauled that bad. So...." He slapped at the control panel and the routing display vanished. "I'll just take you back to your place and you can tell your people I wasn't amenable to coerc...."
"Aguente!" she said in a voice accustomed to command. "I didn't know anything about you, if you'll recall. It's just an unhappy coincidence, I think---I'm sure."422Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyAyn6AC9av
"You don't sound sure." He had the car on manual now and it was risky to spend so much time looking at her face, but he did.
"I resent a number of those implications----more than whether you'll get your ashes hauled. I just got aced today---a 3-month vacation I didn't ask for. My boss is Brooks Wooten..." She broke off and bit her lip.
He whistled. One did not live in Brazilian space and not know that name. "I'm sorry, I'm not used to it down here. And that was a piece of Z-42B in your apartment, what with that much titanium in the..."
"Look, I don't want to talk about Z-42B. It's what got me on vacation."
"It's what got me grounded, menina." He couldn't help telling her. He'd never been close enough to one of those bastards to get a chance to say what he felt. "You people shipped us in their with no fucking concern for what withholding that much data was doing to our casualty rate. You know that out of the 13 of us, 2 came back and I can't find the other one? You think hazard pay and pensions make up for that kind of shit? You think I like being boxed by your medical people and treated like some kind of psycho with delayed stress when there's nothing wrong with me that going back to work won't fix?"
He got hold of himself, stopped talking, his hands aching on the steering wheel. HIs therapists would be proud of him, unless he strangled her here in the car like he wanted to, cut the clothes off here and teach EICSA something about the value of human life.
"God did this," she whispered. "It's no kind of coincidence. How could he do this to me?" She was talking to herself, not to him, and her knuckles were as white as his own. She looked at him then with fear-pinned pupils. "What are you going to do with me?"
"Me? I was going to take you to dinner and fly you up the coast," he reminded her----and himself. "Look, I'm sorry I got hot with you. You want, I'll take you home. Otherwise, I'm still game for the rest of this. You're right, it's probably no coincidence. But what if it is? And, if you're telling me EICSA's giving you a hard time, too, maybe we can help one another---figure something out."
"Figure something out?! Like what?"
"For one thing, how come every move I make in this buggy that silver sedan does the same?" He inclined his head towards her. "Wanna eat? Or go home and see if he comes too?"
"Um---eat," she said, her shoulders squared, leaning forward to look in his rearview mirror. Her breast brushed his arm as she did so. And this time the heat of her burned him like the fires of Mount Chimborazo.
A civilian date was something scary; this he could handle---whether she was hear on EICSA's behalf or the car behind her was here because she wasn't, it was a chance to hit back at a target Cardoso had thought was out of his reach---if he wanted to take it.
And if he didn't, and she was just as advertised, she still knew people. If he asked her nicely, maybe she could get his file sealed and convince EICSA to return him to the military. At the price of dinner and three hours' worth of flight time, it was a cheap shot.
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