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.Simple clothes, yes, but not cheap.They were designed from smart-cloth, able to warm or cool her body, clever enough to change color if needed, and supple enough to aide her movements.She wore the outfit with the casual disregard of someone who didn’t care about its quality, a rare trait in the undercity.The years had changed her almost beyond recognition, but I would know her anywhere.“Dig,” I said.She nodded.“Bhaaj.”“Met your punks.”She said only, “Yah.Dumb punks,” but that was enough, an apology, undercity style.It was also her admission that yes, they were her punks, which meant she now ran the Kajada cartel.No surprise there, but I wished it weren’t true.“Long time,” she said.I nodded.How else could I answer? Dig was the last person I had seen before I enlisted.We had stood together by the exit from the undercity into the Concourse, and in all the years since, I had tried to forget our bitter argument that morning.Today she said only, “You done with the army?”“Yah,” I said.“I work private.”“Heard.” Her dark gaze remained impassive.“Whisper says Majda.”“ISC.”“So you’re still military.”“Nahya.” I wondered why she cared.“They just hired me.”She nodded.I waited, wondering what provoked her to come here in the open, which punkers avoided like the plague.It seemed a big deal just to apologize for her runners doing something stupid.She could have done that down deep.“You,” she finally said.“Me?” I asked.“Almost shot my jan,” she said.Ho! Did she mean “my jan” as in “my daughter”? I was Bhaajan because my mother had been Bhaaj.It was the sole piece of ID found with me as a newborn, a scrap of film with the words She is the daughter of Bhaaj.Had one of those punkers that jumped me been named Digjan?“Which?” I asked.“Had knife.Not gun.”Not the leader, then, but one of the other two girls.Yes, I remembered.The taller of those two had seemed familiar.Of course.She looked like Dig.So Dig had a kid.No surprise there.She had always valued family and would make sure her children knew their mother as Dig had never known hers.I wondered about the father.Undercity lovers ignored the elaborate courtship rituals followed in Cries.Young women approached young men with no fuss, and the fellows enjoyed their compromised honor as they pleased.Contrary to what the above-city believed, that didn’t mean we valued our relationships less or that we didn’t respect our men.Our code of honor placed great value on the ties people formed.I would never forget how Dig and I had run laughing through the aqueducts like sisters, confident we ruled the undercity, though of course we hadn’t ruled even our own misspent lives.The day I left for the army, angry words had flown between us, filled with a pain neither of us knew how to articulate.How could I walk away? I tried to tell her how much my meager education meant to me, the schooling I’d hacked from Cries, how it opened my eyes to the rest of the empire, but the terse dialect of the aqueducts left no way to express my wanderlust, not even to Dig.I said only, “Digjan’s father?”“You don’t know him.” Her closed expression said Stay out of my business as clearly as if she held a gun on me.I changed the subject.“You train Digjan?” She’d want her daughter to take over the cartel someday.Right, multi-generational drug cartels, just what the human race needed.She spoke flatly.“No train.”“Why not?”“So she can enlist.”That I hadn’t expected.“Does she want that?”“Mostly.” Dig leaned forward, her face intent.“Get out.”I read her meaning from her body language.She didn’t mean get out of my business this time, she meant she wanted her daughter out of the family business.Apparently I wasn’t the only one here who didn’t like what Dig did for a living.“She has to want it enough,” I said.“She’ll have to work harder than the rest to survive.”“She’s smart.Strong.” After a moment, Dig added, “No punking.”Another surprise.Dig didn’t let her daughter run drugs.Good.It was the smart choice.“Keep her clean,” I said.“No criminal record.” Cries had no prisons.They sent convicts to a colonies on the moon of another planet in the system.I could have seen Scorch in that miserable place, but not the stunned girl who had gaped at me in the canal.“What else she need?” Dig asked.“Got to pass tests,” I said.“Reading, writing, numbers.”“Hacked her learning from the above-city.She can pass.”I hadn’t expected Dig to school her daughter, not after our argument that day I left to enlist.If Digjan was like her mother, though, she would do well.Dig was damn smart.I lapsed into full speech so I could give a better picture of what her daughter faced.“She’ll have to go to the recruitment office in Cries.She won’t have any problem with the physical tests [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]