Crash Deluxe by Marianne de Pierres Page A

inordinately beautiful - I’d always maintained that beauty fucked with people’s minds. Or maybe it was that she was soft and feminine and polite and I didn’t know how to deal with that.
    She shook her head. ‘Thanks, but I need to think about something else.’ She smiled shyly.
    I tried hard to tell if it was practised or real and came up with nothing.
    ‘So when you’re ready . . .’ she finished
    Try never.
    She left me and I paced the room in agitation.
    I badly wanted to have a wash but not with an audience. I was allergic to strangers watching me naked.
    ‘Merv,’ I called.
    ‘Yes, Jales?’ A thin disembodied voice came back.
    ‘I’m going to wash. You eyeball me and I’ll flush Snout down the san. Understand?’
    I took his silence to mean clear-as-Viva-water.
    It would have to do.
    Before I thought about it any more, I stripped, dumped my clothes in the separate cleaner and jumped into the san. When I’d finished, I repacked my kit and sat it by the door. I wanted out of here the moment I could. I certainly wasn’t settling things neatly in drawers.
    Hell, I never put things in drawers.
    I paced again until the indecision of what I should do next made my limbs heavy with fatigue. The entertainment unit told me it was late afternoon of what already seemed like a very long day.
    Now I was here I had to wait for Merv to find the information I needed. Frustration sandpapered away under my skin. I hated having to do anything slowly. Impatience was my virtue - my curse. I wanted to tear the fabric of Viva apart and make someone answer for Mo-vay.
    And Roo.
    And Wombebe.
    But I couldn’t do that with my fists. I had to be smart for a while. I had to learn.
    Calmed a little by that thought, I lay down.
    Not meaning to, I slept. Dreams crowded in, worse than ever before, semi-waking dreams full of blood and the deep ache of unfulfilled orgasm.
    Sometime later the bed got too soft and I woke finally, on the floor, twisted up in the sheet in a corner of the room. The sky through the window polariser looked like morning. The Entertainment Unit said five a.m. when I asked it. I stretched and disentangled myself.
    ‘What time is breakfast, Merv?’
    ‘Morning, Jales. Were you comforable on the floor? I didn’t like to wake you.’ He sounded weary, like he’d been up all night.
    ‘Fine,’ I lied.
    ‘Lam will show you the way to Breezas for breakfast when you’re ready.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    ‘They often run out of bacon by seven,’ he added casually. ‘I always like to be there before that.’
    I took his hint and nodded at nothing in particular. I-bugs made it odd to have a conversation with him. Not even a camera lens to look into.
    ‘Where can I exercise?’
    ‘Delly doesn’t allow the Amoratos to leave the building. But three doors up from Glorious there’s an aerobics glove.’
    Aerobics glove. Uugh. The memory of Gigi’s vreal set was fresh in my mind and this sounded like something you might get buried in.
    ‘I think I’ll settle for bacon,’ I replied.
    Lam was waiting in exactly the same position that I’d left him, cross-legged chewing something that looked like last-century biltong.
    ‘Don’t you get cramp?’ I sniped.
    He gave me the benefit of his perfectly bland smile again and sprang up, immediately limber and agile.
    Obviously not.
    ‘Lead me to the bacon,’ I said.
    He turned on his heel toward the lift.
    I tried a couple of times to lure him into conversation as we whizzed up two floors and made our way through some heavily glazed security doors and an ID check.
    The Korean wasn’t biting.
    We stepped through into an abyss. The transparent walkway gave me instant vertigo as though I was flying without an engine or wings. Annoyingly, Lam didn’t even seem to notice the drop of thousands of feet to the pavement.
    My thoughts of a hearty breakfast faded.
    How on earth did people eat up here?
    Others walked behind us, emerging from other floors. They were suits, mainly, with