No, she was real. My tele registered the new three grand. I left the apartment and briefly considered the elevator, but decided on the stairs.
CHAPTER 10
I woke up to Garm at my front door. Sucks having a friend who doesn’t need to sleep.
“What?” I asked, resting my head against the door, my eyes shut.
She pushed past me and came inside.
“What do you mean, ‘what’? Didn’t you feel that this morning? It was like the whole station was going to break apart.”
“You felt it too? I thought I was going crazy.”
I went to my kitchen for something to eat. I found some packets of rations, a real space station staple from the early days. We had decent food now, but I had eaten rations for so many years I was used to them.
As I chewed, Garm paced around, agitated.
“They’re out there,” she said. “The Dredel Led. One of the techs, one of the old-timers, was looking through our computer systems and said someone broke in.”
“Could it be one of the bosses snooping around?”
“Why would a boss want access to our facilities? Besides, he could trace where the access point was. It was out west. No one’s going to be out there. Not with what was printed in The News. People are scared to walk outside, let alone the 220th block.”
Western Belvaille had been dark for decades. It was just too much hassle keeping utilities functioning across a sparsely populated city. When people left the space station after the Portals were closed, those folks that remained were forced to move east.
“I didn’t even know the street numbers went that high. Well, what do you want to do?” I asked.
“I want to go out there. They must have done something to cause that shaking.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. Do you want to wait a week? We might not be around that long. We tracked the break-in.”
“Alright,” I said with little enthusiasm.
A hot shower would have done me a world of good, but I changed my clothes, grabbed my guns, and walked to the door where Garm was waiting impatiently.
Garm and I were in the back of one car with a driver up front. The rest of her soldiers were in a separate vehicle. The car was spacious, with tinted glass, had six wheels. I think Garm had “commandeered” it long ago from a gang boss for some made up fraction. The other car was more functional and about half the length. I continued to eat my rations as we drove past apartment buildings.
“I wonder what parents tell their children in situations like this,” I said dreamily.
“I told my son to sit tight and not let his daughter go to school.”
I turned to stare at Garm.
“You have a son? Belvaille has schools?”
“You didn’t know that?”
This was like someone suddenly telling me that in actuality I was a twelve-year-old girl with pigtails and gap teeth.
“Who’s he work for?” I asked.
“Threezo-threez Finance. He’s an accounts payable clerk.”
“Here?”
I just couldn’t see any spawn of Garm being anything but some rough go-getter. I figured a junior gang leader at least.
“Not everyone on the station does illegal work. We have plenty of decent folks.”
“Yeah, I know that,” I said quickly.
“My son is just a nice kid with a good family. Though I told him he could do a lot better. The pay is good.”
“So you’re a grandmother too?”
Garm was now aggravated, her lips pressed so tight I thought they might burst into flames.
“Yes! Just because you’re anti-attachment…”
“What are you talking about? I have attachments. I know half the people on this station.”
“Half the felons, maybe. But as long as you’ve been here I bet there’s not more than a handful who even know where you came from.”
The car moved smoothly along, the hum from its engine a constant.
“I lost a daughter once, too. Bet you didn’t know that,” she said.
She gave a small shrug, not dismissive or uncaring, just something to do with her shoulders as she gazed at the empty streets.
This was a sorry topic of conversation. It never would have occurred to me in a million years she was a grandma with a sad past. Not that that carried any significance. It’s not like she wasn’t Garm because of it.
But a clerk? Really?
We came to the block that had been tracked and everyone got out of the cars. The soldiers were taut, their heads swiveling every which way as if they were trying to wrench them off their bodies. They had on bulky, padded armor connected by cords and topped with a hard shell. I’m sure it would protect great against rocks or debris hurled in a riot, but a Dredel Led seemed likely to laugh at it.