Today's Reading
CHAPTER ONE
SENSE ENOUGH TO COME IN OUTTA THE RAIN
Asentient space station should have perfect temperature, Mallory Viridian thought. This has got to be far below freezing. When the station imitated weather, it should be Los Angeles weather, not Pluto's bloodred snow. And when it was helping a resident, it should produce a pleasant flat walk, or even something downhill, not an uphill, snowy, windy trek that gave one frostbite.
The fact that there could be people aboard the station who wallowed in frigid, bloodred snow like a pig in slop, she refused to consider.
It was possible, she thought, squinting through the crimson swirls, that the massive space station was just in a bad mood.
Red snow stung the exposed skin on her face. Her ears ached. She shoved her hands deep into her jeans pockets and shivered. Her destination lay at the top of a freaking mountain—a fabricated mountain—inside a cave, also fabricated. She wanted to rest, but the risk of dying of hypothermia on the way felt very real.
She probably should have put on a coat, but she hadn't thought she needed it. The station took care of its residents. Why would she suddenly need to travel through a deadly storm to go to a meeting?
This isn't worth it.
When Mrs. Brown calls, however, you answer. The tiny woman had a steel spine and a personality that filled a room, yes. And she was more than capable of protecting herself and those she loved with deadly force, sure. But she was also the human host who had a direct connection with the station itself, so when she asked to speak to you, you answered.
The cave loomed ahead, a dark cut in the harsh red drifts all around her. She was almost there. Probably. She didn't know what she'd do if it wasn't there. This was a great place for someone to lure her to an ambush. Or, more likely, according to her experience, lure her to watch someone else being killed, giving her a new murder to solve.
Her fingers and toes tingled with the beginnings of frostbite, and Mallory gritted her teeth around her rubber oxygen breather to keep them from chattering. How much damage would Eternity allow her to suffer? And good Lord, why? Would she let Mallory die here? Mallory didn't think so, but she wasn't entirely sure.
Almost there.
Station Eternity liked her, that much she knew. She probably wouldn't let Mallory die of hypothermia. Eternity's whims overrode everything—except, perhaps, Mrs. Brown's own whims. Mallory wasn't entirely sure how the symbiotic connection worked. Mrs. Brown didn't seem to know much either.
The snow got deeper as she got closer, until she was pushing through knee-deep powder with a crusty layer of bloodlike ice on top. She gritted her teeth and pressed on, the muscles in her thighs hot and threatening to turn to loose rubber and then seize into a massive cramp. What is going on? Am I being punished?
The cave opening shimmered in front of her and then appeared much closer than it had been previously.
Inside, Mrs. Brown paced, hands on her hips.
"I guess you took the long way around?" she demanded.
* * *
Mrs. Brown had sent her a message that morning. Mallory had been going through the list of new clients to her detective agency, dismayed at the lost items, the stolen items, and the requests to find incomprehensible things for aliens—including, apparently, a lost day.
Reading a message from Mrs. Brown asking to see her that afternoon was at least something she could understand and be interested in doing.
Mallory wasn't too fond of solving murder cases, but it was what she knew, and she hadn't known how, well, boring it would be to do other detective work. Or, admittedly, how difficult it would be to investigate alien crimes done to aliens by aliens.
The weird thing was that Mrs. Brown had requested that Mallory meet her in a place she had never visited on the station. After getting the information, Mallory approached the wall terminal and pulled up a complex 3D map of Station Eternity. She had a bizarre impulse to rotate the map to look for a secret port that she could torpedo and blow it up, à la Star Wars. She shook her head to clear the connection; she had no desire to blow up Eternity. Where would she go then?
...
