Probability Space Read Free Page B

called out to Amanda. Frightened, she let that train go by and waited for the next one. It was empty, and not very clean. Neither was Building T. The fifth level wasn’t, as Amanda had supposed, the fifth story up, but the fifth story down. Traveling on the escalator, Amanda clutched her dance bag tighter. Too late, she realized the name of her school, SAULER ACADEMY , was emblazoned on the front. Anybody could have seen it. She turned the bag so the logo was against her body. Her heart was doing strange things, first beating fast, then in slow, painful thumps.
    A woman looked at her as she got off the elevator, a bizarre woman with purple hair and flashing lights in her belly button and no top to her dress. Shocked, Amanda looked away. She should leave. This wasn’t right. The woman abruptly laughed, a laugh that to Amanda sounded crazy, scary. She should just leave.
    But the woman went away, and just down the dirty corridor Amanda could see an e-sign glowing: TREVINNO BROTHERS BUY AND SELL. WITHOUT QUESTION . An animated question mark popped up and was instantly “killed,” over and over. After six “deaths,” more words appeared after WITHOUT QUESTION , so it now read WITHOUT QUESTION THE BEST .
    Even I can tell that’s not what they really mean , Amanda thought, and that gave her courage. She was smart enough to do this. This shop would buy her diamond without demanding her passport. It would only take a minute, and then she’d race back up the escalator to the train and return to the clean parts of the spaceport. It would only take a minute.
    She walked up to the door and it opened for her. The inside was small and grubby, the foamcast walls badly discolored, but relief flooded through Amanda. It was a machine! No people, just a machine to buy things. No one to hurt her.
    Almost cheerful, she stepped up to the terminal, which had slots and trays of various sizes barnacled onto its front. “I’d like to sell a diamond, please.”
    “Rest the gem on Tray A.”
    Amanda hesitated. What if the machine just swallowed the diamond without giving her any money? But if it did that, then Trevinno Brothers wouldn’t stay in business very long, would they? Anyway, she had no choice. She laid her diamond on the tray.
    It didn’t get swallowed, but a clear dome settled over it and somewhere machinery hummed softly. The machine said, “Offer: five thousand credits.”
    That was a lot less than the library terminal had promised. Could this machine know she was only a kid? Maybe it was a near-AI. But near-AIs were very expensive, her father said.
    Surprised at her own boldness, she said, “I want ten thousand credits. A library said my diamond is worth at least that much.”
    “Eight thousand credits.”
    “All right.” It was enough for the ticket to Luna. And at least she’d gotten it up by three thousand.
    Her diamond, still under the dome, disappeared. From another slot came a pile of money chips.
    Amanda, grabbed them without counting (machines were reliable, high probability), turned, and ran to the door. It was locked. The window, clear when she’d come in, was now opaque.
    “Let me out! Let me out!”
    “Not yet,” a man’s voice said behind her. Amanda whirled. “Why, you’re just a little girl.”
    She was too terrified to say anything.
    “A little girl whore, who suddenly has a huge uncut diamond. Who’d you take it off of, honey? Is he still alive to miss it?”
    Amanda started screaming. It was almost as if the screams filled the air with powder as well as sound, because when she tried to remember later exactly what had happened, everything was clouded. But she recalled the man’s hands on her, ripping her mother’s yellow dress, fumbling first at her breasts and then at her underpants. And then there was the sound of ripping foamcast and the wall collapsed, and another machine was in the room. The man let her go and he started screaming. Something or someone picked her up, and she beat at it or