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And then, Lucerne would say, hooking Toby back into her story -- and then a strange thing had happened: she'd recognized Zeb.
"I've seen you before," she'd said. "Didn't you used to be at HelthWyzer? But you weren't working on the grounds then! You were -- "
"Mistaken identity," said Zeb. And then he'd kissed her. That kiss had gone right into her like a knife, and she'd crumpled into his arms like -- like a dead fish -- no -- like a petticoat -- no -- like damp tissue paper! And then he'd picked her up and laid her down on the lawn, right where anyone could have seen, which was an unbelievable turn-on, and then he'd undone her kimono and pulled the petals off the roses he was holding and scattered them all over her body, and then the two of them ... It was like a high-speed collision, said Lucerne, and she'd thought, How can I survive this, I'm going to die right here and now! And she could tell he felt the same.
Later -- quite a lot later, after they were living together -- he'd told her she'd been right. Yes, he'd been at HelthWyzer, but for reasons he wouldn't go into he'd had to leave in a hurry, and he trusted her not to mention that earlier time and place he'd once inhabited, not to anybody. Which she hadn't mentioned. Or not very much. Except right now, to Toby.
Back then, though, during her Spa sojourn -- thank god she hadn't been having any skin procedure that would have made her scabby, she'd just been there for a tuneup -- back then, they'd had several more appetizer-sized helpings of each other, locked into one of the showers in the Spa pool's changeroom, and after that she was stuck to Zeb like a wet leaf. As he was to her, she added. They couldn't get enough of each other.
And then, after her Spa sessions were over and she was back at her so-called home, she'd slip out of the Compound on one pretext or another -- shopping errands, mostly, the things you could buy in the Compound were so predictable -- and they'd met secretly in the pleeb-lands -- it was so exciting at first! -- such funny places, junky little love hotels and rent-a-rooms, you took them by the hour, so far away from the buttoned-down ambiance of the HelthWyzer Compound; and then, when he'd had to travel in a hurry -- there was some trouble, she'd never understood why, but he needed to get away very fast -- and, well, she couldn't bear to be apart from him.
So she'd left her so-called husband, not that it didn't serve him right for being so inert. And they'd moved around from one city to another, from one trailer park to another, and Zeb had bought a few black-market procedures, for his fingers and his DNA and so on; and then, when it was safe, they'd come back, right here, to the Gardeners. Because Zeb had told her he'd been a Gardener all along. Or so he'd said. Anyway, he seemed to know Adam One quite well. They'd been to school together. Or something like that.
So Zeb was forced into it, Toby thought. He was ex-Corps, on the run; maybe he'd been black-marketing some proprietary item, such as a nanotechnology or a gene splice. That could be fatal if you were caught. And Lucerne had put face and ex-name together, and he'd had to distract her with sex, then take her with him to ensure her loyalty. It was either that or kill her. He couldn't leave her behind: she would have felt scorned, she'd have set the CorpSeCorps dogs on him. Still, what a risk he'd taken. The woman was like an amateur car bomb: you never knew when she'd blow up or who she'd take down with her when she did. Toby wondered whether Zeb had ever thought of stuffing a cork down her epiglottis and slotting her into a carbon garboil dumpster.
But maybe he loved her. In his way. Hard though that was for Toby to picture. However, perhaps the love had run out, because he wasn't doing enough maintenance work on her at the moment.
"Hasn't your husband looked for you?" Toby had asked the first time she'd heard this tale. "The one at HelthWyzer?"
"I don't consider that man to be my husband any more," Lucerne said in an offended tone.
"Excuse me. Your former husband. Haven't the CorpSeCorps ... did you leave him a message?" The trail of Lucerne, if followed, would lead right to the Gardeners -- not only to Zeb, but to Toby herself, and to her own former identity. Which could be uncomfortable for her: the CorpSeCorps never wrote off skipped debts, and what if anyone had dug up her father?
"Why would they spend the money?" said Lucerne. "I'm not important to them. As for my former husband" -- she gave a little grimace -- "he ought to have married an equation. Maybe he doesn't even notice I've gone."
"What about Ren?" said Toby. "She's a lovely little girl. Surely he misses her."
"Oh," said Lucerne. "Yes. He probably does notice that."
Toby wanted to ask why Lucerne hadn't simply left Ren behind with her father. Stealing her away, leaving no information -- it seemed like a petty act of spite. But asking such a question would simply make Lucerne angry -- it would sound too much like criticism.
Two blocks away from the Cheese Factory, Toby ran into a pleebrat street fight -- Asian Fusions versus Blackened Redfish, with a few Lintheads shouting around the edges. These kids were only seven or eight, but there were a lot of them, and when they spotted her they stopped yelling at one another and started yelling at her. Goddie goddie, whitey bitch! Get her shoes!
She swivelled so her back was against a wall and prepared to fend them off. It was difficult to kick them really hard when they were that young -- as Zeb had pointed out in his Urban Bloodshed Limitation class, there was a species inhibition against hurting children -- but she knew she'd have to, because they could be deadly. They'd aim for her stomach, ram her with their hard little heads, try to pull her down. The smaller ones had a nasty habit of hoisting the Gardener women's baggy skirts and diving in under them, then biting whatever they could find once they were in there. But she was ready for them: when they got close enough, she'd twist their ears or chop their necks with the side of her hand, or bang two of their little skulls together.
Suddenly, however, they swerved like a school of fish, rushed past her, and disappeared into an alleyway.
She turned her head, saw why. It was Blanco. He wasn't in Painball at all. He must have been let out. Or got out, somehow.
Panic gripped her heart. She saw his red-and-blue flayed hands, she felt her bones crumbling. This was her worst fear.
Take hold, she told herself. He was across the street, and she was inside her baggy coverall and had her nose cone on, so maybe he couldn't recognize her. And he'd given no sign yet that he'd noticed her. But she was alone, and he wasn't above a random stomp-and-rape. He'd drag her up that very same alleyway, the one where the pleebrats had gone. Then he'd rip off the cone and see who she was. And that would be the end, but it wouldn't be a quick end. It would be as slow as he could make it. He'd turn her into a flesh billboard -- a not-quite-living demonstration of his rank finesse.
She turned quickly and marched away as fast as she could, before he'd had a chance to focus his malevolence on her. Breathless, she turned the corner, went half a block, glanced back. He wasn't there.
For once she was more than happy to reach the door of Lucerne's apartment. She raised her nose cone, twitched the muscles of her professional smile, and knocked.
"Zeb?" Lucerne called. "Is that you?"
SAINT EUELL OF WILD FOODS
SAINT EUELL OF WILD FOODS
YEAR TWELVE.
OF THE GIFTS OF SAINT EUELL.
SPOKEN BY ADAM ONE.
