Free Angel Stations by Gary Gibson Page B

screen and text messages from her over the past few weeks. ‘Mind if I join you?’ she asked.
    ‘Sure, sure, sit down,’ he said, although she was already seated. ‘Want a beer?’
    ‘Not right now, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying for some time to get hold of you.’
    Bill sighed, and flashed a wide grin. He shook his head slowly, in a theatrical way. ‘If you knew what my life’s been like.’
    ‘Bill, I’d like to get some more of those Books I ordered from you last time.’
    ‘Well, things are kind of difficult right now – after the big find, and everything. You know they’ve raised the security rating for the whole Station?’
    ‘Big find? What big find?’
    He peered at her. ‘You have been out of the loop, haven’t you? One of your rock hermit friends found something way out by Doran – stuff that looks like real old Angel technology.’ He leaned in close to her. ‘Something that might turn out to be Angel Books too, maybe. How about that?’
    She stared at him. ‘Angel Books? Are you sure?’ Probably, it was something else altogether. Real Angel Books were still a fantasy. It didn’t take much imagination to picture how lucrative a find like that would be.
    Doran was an irregularly shaped lump of rock barely worthy of being called a planet, really a captured asteroid with an orbit that kept it far from the heat of Kasper’s star. It had little in the way of mineral deposits worthy of exploitation, and so had been largely ignored both by the Station authorities and the rock hermits. Even so, it struck her as strange that something so significant could have been missed by the initial exploratory missions into the system.
    ‘I never heard anything on the Grid,’ she said. During those long, slow weeks of approach, her mind had been too preoccupied to pay much attention to whatever random information was bouncing around out there. Maybe she should have listened more closely.
    ‘That’s because they’re keeping it all hush-hush up there in Command,’ said Bill, referring to the nexus of pods and living quarters that housed the bureaucrats and military types who administrated life on board the Station. ‘So whatever it is, it’s back here now. So up goes the security rating until they know what they have. End result is,’ he raised his eyebrows, ‘it’s a little harder now to get people some of the things they ask for. They’re paying a lot of attention to anyone going in or out through the Gate.’
    ‘I just saw some people come in off a ship who looked like scientists, not tourists. They let them in.’
    ‘Yes, but that’s coming in, not going out,’ he said. ‘What this means is, for the next few weeks, very little of anything is going back out – of anything.’
    Kim shook her head. ‘So what? It’s only Books I’m after, and you know the only Book distillery is in Command. They’re just Memory Books. It’s not like an addictive drug.’
    At that, Bill gave her a long, cool stare, and she found herself flinching from his gaze. ‘Everything’s addictive, sweetheart. Just depends how badly you want it – or need it.’
    There was silence, then, for several long seconds, as music drifted through the air, emanating from hidden speakers. The way Bill looked at her, and spoke to her; it always made her feel as if she’d done something wrong. Books were just something she needed. Because her own bioware had come through the black market, she required Bill as a point of contact, because official channels for the distillation of Books weren’t accessible to her. But maybe he didn’t realize that.
    After the silence had dragged on long enough to get uncomfortable, she opened her mouth to speak – but Bill beat her to it.
    ‘You know, Kim, I make a lot of money just sitting here getting old and fat. I don’t intend to do it forever, though, and believe it or not I do sometimes give a damn about some of the people who come to me. But do you know what?’
    He looked at