Probability Space Read Free Page A

brain on how to help him. “Think. Reason it out. That’s what you have a brain for.”
    At the Cambridge station, she studied all the signs until she figured out how to buy a ticket for the train to Walton Spaceport, halfway across the state. She used money chips at the ticket machine; they couldn’t be traced. There were no kids on this train, but nobody bothered Amanda. She sat up straight in her seat, looking as old as she could, trying not to appear upset that her father had been kidnapped and she was afraid for her life and his life and nothing was the same as it had been two hours ago, when all she had wanted to do was find out that she looked pretty in her dead mother’s yellow dress.

TWO
    WALTON SPACEPORT, UNITED ATLANTIC FEDERATION, EARTH
    A t the spaceport, Amanda had her first big problem. She couldn’t buy a ticket to Luna without showing her passport, which had her name on it, and maybe the people who’d taken her father could get the passport list. Also, a ticket to Luna cost more than she had in money chips. She’d have to cash in a gem, and how did you do that? She had no idea.
    Amanda locked herself in a public bathroom. She took just one gem from the blue plastic bag. The bag with the rest of the gems she put in her underpants, shoving it down between her legs where it didn’t show through the swirling yellow dress. Then she walked as confidently as she could to a public information terminal and put in her money.
    “Ad search, diamond buyer, private, closest.”
    “Linked,” the terminal said. “The advertiser closest to you that buys diamonds privately is Trevinno Brothers, Walton Spaceport, Building T, fifth level.”
    Right here! What luck! Although, it made sense. Probably a lot of people decided to leave Earth quickly and didn’t want to be traced, and so they’d need a lot of money chips fast. But what kind of people would they be? Criminals, maybe. They might try to hurt her. Oh, God.
    But what choice did she have?
    She could call Marbet on Luna. Marbet might be able to arrange a ticket for Amanda from there. She could use a public phone.
    No. If Marbet bought the ticket on Luna, she’d have to give Amanda’s passport information, and it would be in the deebee from then until the next flight. The kidnappers might get the data and know where she was. But if Amanda bought the ticket at this end at the very last minute before the flight took off, there wouldn’t be time for anyone bad to stop her until she was safe with Marbet. Marbet would know just how to protect Amanda. Marbet was rich and famous and had powerful friends (high probability). The important thing was for Amanda to get to Marbet.
    For just a moment, she wondered if Marbet was really her best choice. A lot of people didn’t like Sensitives. Marbet worked a lot of negotiations, criminal trials, dangerous government stuff. She got death threats. Maybe Amanda should go to somebody else.
    There wasn’t anybody else.
    Lifting her chin, Amanda said to the terminal, “Search. Diamond prices, now, a diamond—” she hesitated, estimating, the diamond was big “—weighing ten grams.”
    “Price depends on diamond clarity, color, cut.”
    “Range.”
    “Ten thousand credits to one hundred thousand credits.”
    That much! And she had so many gems from the vug … too late, she remembered that half the gems were supposed to be Sudie’s. Well, she’d bring that half back home.
    She said, “Directions to Building T from here.”
    “Go down the corridor to your left, take the Number Sixteen train, get off at the third stop.”
    “Thank you,” she said, even though her father always complained that it was stupid to thank machines. Her father …
    “You’re welcome,” the machine said, which suddenly made her feel better. Her father didn’t know everything. And he was the smartest man in the Solar System, so that meant the kidnappers didn’t know everything either.
    Train 16 was full of soldiers who whistled and