Fish Swim in the Lake

Part 3.5 | Under that honey lake of the sky

alphaDana jerked around to face the front seats. "What?"

"I didn't mean anything nasty by it, darling, it's just that sometimes you're the tiniest bit difficult about it. I don't think it's much to ask!" Hastily, Lola said, "what do yoooooou think, Tony?"

Tony rumbled, "I think--"

"Wait a cess, Lola," alphaDana said. "What did I say I'd do?"

"You said you'd give me an nonexclusive-rights copy of whatever you dumped. In exchange for my hooking you up with Eggy."

"What? That's robbery! A whole day like that could be worth thousands of nallars even if there's nothing illegal on it. There could be celebrities or natural light on here. No, that's completely out of the question."

"Don't be so paranoid, baby. I only want to option it for my compilations. Probably there's nothing at all interesting in it anyway."

"Just for your compilations?"

"Darling, what else would I want it for?"

"You'll signe on that?"

Lola extended her lean brown arm out the window. Supple shiny green leaves slapped her wrist. "Mmm... Of course."

"In blood?" In addition to being unimpeachable, if things got really tight, I could probably sell the blood sample. Lola's genes were clean, super-clean, so clean enough that they'd been spliced into a thousand different projects.

This generated royalties in the bank if not the bloodstream. alphaDana privately thought it highly unlikely that such a solid genotype came from centuries of inbred Euristocrats.

Lola crumpled her mouth and jerked her chin. "This is exactly what I expected of her, Tony. I ask for one little thing and--"

Tony said, "I think--"

"It's not little. Come on, Lola, this is my livelihood, I have to take every transaction seriously. Even if it's with a friend."

"Would it a few hundred nallars help?"

"I need twelve hundred to make my rent for the quarter." For the next quarter. The sweetness of potential laziness curled over alphaDana like a brown sugar trenchcoat. To have paid a half year in advance at the co-op! She could always scrape a little food or power here and there, get the client to pay for lunch and surreptitiously charge up over coffee -- it was the place to sleep and keep the armload of things one didn't carry around every day, that was the hard one to keep going. But without it one tended to go insane.

Lola said shortly, "twelve hundred? What happened to thousands?"

alphaDana half-closed her eyes and leaned sleepily against the seat. "I'm not trying to scalp you, Lola, just to be fair."

"Fair enough," Lola said. "You're such a dear. It's not so much money if one's helping a friend. Tony, give her some money."

Tony tossed three folded squares over his shoulder. Fifteen. Fifteen hundred.

"I don't have change," alphaDana said, trying to keep a greedy shake out of her voice.

"Keep it all then," Tony said. He put his hand on Lola's knee and Lola took it off.

alphaDana stuffed the money into her magnosealed pocket with the Trudeaus from Pijai that afternoon. Her mind was a blissful, eloquent blank, like a white rose that's just burst.

Posted by gtaylor at April 26, 2002 06:08 AM