Nova Swing Read Online Free PDF Page A

kiddy trade—in a hullshot Dynaflow HS-SE or -SE2, its cheap navigation tools leaking the illegal daughter-code used to negotiatate the complex gravitational attractors and junk-matter flows of the Bay. His rule: make two trips maximum then throw the ship away. The code itself was the risk in that trade. Relax, and it would come down out of the mathematical space and into your head at night. As long as your hygiene was good, the code kept you one step ahead of EMC, but you still had to be a pilot. In consequence the stresses were high. Antoyne didn’t do anything at all since he fetched up in Saudade except run errands for Vic Serotonin, and he was therefore widely assumed to be a burn-out.
    He pushed his way between the tables and sat awkwardly on one of the chromium stools at the Long Bar. He seemed dispirited. He spent some time trying to order a drink which, when it came, the bartender placed in front of him with exaggerated care, and which settled out quickly into distinct layers of pink and yellow. It was popular, he told the people near him, on Perkins’ Rent. No one seemed convinced. Aschemann watched him swallow half of it then went over and said, “You’re a long way from Straint Street.” Then when the fat man stared at him uncertainly:
    “Antoyne? Maybe you don’t recognise me. Maybe in this light you don’t see me as well as you could.”
    “I know who you are,” Antoyne said.
    Aschemann smiled. “I would usually find you at Liv Hula’s this time of night, caning it with Vic Serotonin.”
    “Only I got work now. It’s temporary.”
    “That’s good news, Antoyne!”
    The fat man didn’t seem to know how to encounter the enthusiasm of this. “It’s temporary work,” he said.
    “So how is Vic?”
    Fat Antoyne swallowed the other half of his drink and stood up. “You know,” he said, “I like the light in here. I always liked a low light to drink by. It’s the music I don’t like.” He wiped his mouth and gave the band a look which he transferred somehow to Aschemann.
    “I was leaving anyway,” he said.
    “There’s no need for that,” the detective insisted. “Look, I’ll just sit here and have another drink. You should have one too.” He would be hurt, he implied, if Antoyne went off like that. He pulled up the bar stool next to Antoyne’s and took a moment to get comfortable on it. “You don’t mind if I sit,” he said. “We’re both out of place here, surely we can sit together?” He took a matchbook off the barman—it had a tiny hologram of the Live Music Nightly sign, which he turned appreciatively this way and that—and then another glass of rum. “Do you mind if I just fold my coat,” he asked, “and put it here on the bar?” He held up his drink to the light. He had a habit of smiling around at people to show that he was enjoying the evening the way it had turned out. He tapped his fingers to the music for a minute or two, then concluded, “Myself, I don’t mind this. But what I like is that old New Nuevo Tango.”
    The fat man received the news without interest.
    “A lot do,” he acknowledged.
    Aschemann nodded. “I heard Vic is taking more risks than he needs to,” he said, as if that was part of the same discussion.
    “Vic’s OK,” Antoyne said defensively.
    “Still, people will get hurt.”
    “There’s nothing wrong with Vic. Vic Serotonin to my mind never hurt anyone.”
    “And yet, you know, he’s in and out of the site, like all those people. We can’t stop them finding new entrances—” here, Aschemann gave a small chuckle “—sometimes we have our reasons we don’t even want to try. But then the next day he’s at the Semiramide Club. He’s in bed with Paulie DeRaad. Are those kinds of connexions without risk, do you think? For someone in Vic’s trade?” After a moment of reflection he added, “All those travel agents have a reckless streak, Antoyne. The trouble in Vic’s life proceeds from that.”
    Something new seemed to