Free Sparks in Cosmic Dust by Robert Appleton Page B

about.
    Two things surprised Varinia about the place: how full it was, north of four hundred souls, and how loud the chatter was. She’d expected loners, wasters, smoggers hogging two or three beds each. What she got was a teeming hive of quite startling variety. Tin men, tool-pushers, orcs, the obligatory smoggers euphoric in their own private funk, but also good-looking lads, haulers and war vets, vociferous, close-knit groups of women, trench-coat traders nipping from bed to bed peddling their wares, families, dying men and women receiving the last rites from dodgy-looking pastors wearing fingerless gloves. As overseer to the whole thing, a single, tough-looking black maitre d’, armed with an Enfield auto pulse gun and a holo-phone strapped around his neck like a lunchbox, received a blowjob under his kilt.
    Solomon led Varinia across one of the center bridges to a pair of cots behind a half-eaten pillar. They set their pillows, blankets and carriers down, then she snuggled close to him on the edge of his cot, indulging a huge yawn. The crude shape of a white horse had been drawn in crayon on the pillar. A child’s artwork? How long ago since she’d seen anything so innocent? Spry memories of her riding lessons as a young teenager flickered in, each one sweet but cutting—soon her heart ached. From here to there, no bridge existed.
    “I once knew a stud looked just like that,” a raspy voice called from the next aisle, several feet opposite.
    Against her better judgment, Varinia spun to see who it was. An elderly woman glared back, her hawk eyes glistening with the amber from a nearby drum fire. She was lying on her side, wrapped in a Cody’s blanket and a few of her own besides. Her worn cream rucksack on the floor bulged, looked easily as big as her, and had more color.
    “What was that? The drawing?” Varinia asked her, ignoring Solomon’s elbow in her side.
    The old woman stopped turning away, rested her glare on Varinia once again. “I said I once knew a stud looked just like that. He asked me to marry him, so I put him out to grass.”
    Varinia faked a quick grin. To her surprise, the old woman sat up, cocked her head to one side as if studying the woman inside the urchin. It made Varinia shudder. She poked Solomon’s arm, whispered, “God, I think she knows me.”
    “Who?”
    “That old woman. Say something to her.”
    By the time he leaned over, the woman was snug in bed again, facing the other way, busy talking with another couple, a pale, not unattractive man, early thirties, with longish black hair and a voluptuous, even younger woman who looked like the worst sort of vamp.
    “Just ignore her.” Solomon dragged their beds together, then spread his blanket. “Now don’t worry about anything. I’m a light sleeper, and we’ll keep the carriers between us, right here.” He tapped his knuckles on the plastic bed rims.
    “We’ll be fine.” She turned back to the conversation across the aisle. Words like gold, capital and farther into space piqued her curiosity. The old woman seemed to be doing most of the talking between coughs, her sharp-tongued rasp drawing snickers from the other couple.
    “Yeah, you might not think it to look at me but I’ve dug pretty much everywhere anyone’s raised a flag or a beer out here. Course, it’s tough luck when you pick your way to a fortune only for some high-falutin’ satellite to give your position away. The trick isn’t in the finding and the getting of it—it’s in the hiding and the getting away with it. Prospectors have to be sly, they need a flair for misdirection. Being handy with a gun doesn’t hurt either. I’ve lost more goods to ambush parties than a virgin eel has wet dreams. Trust me, it might be an adventure at the start, but by the end of month one you’re at each others’ throats, and if you hurdle the first quarter, God help you when the pile gets too big to camouflage. Every suck-bait down to their G-strings becomes Sherlock