Ragamuffin Read Free

streets, waterproof paper houses and greenhouses. She found a market packed with several hundred people. It was the first time in two years she’d seen that many people gathered together that weren’t lined up for the food kitchens. As on the reservation, they spoke Anglic here, not human imitations of Gahe’s thumps, growls, and whistles.
    She pulled out the last of her coins and stopped at the nearest toy shop. Several kids behind the table of used equipment smiled at her. The tallest bowed and stepped forward with a flourish of his waxy red robe.
    “Help you?”
    “I need a lamina viewer,” she said. “Got anything?”
    They handed her an oversize, bright green wrist screen. Designed forclumsy kid fingers, it strapped on easily enough, and she tapped it on. A simple point-and-shoot viewer. She pointed a finger at the boy and information popped up for her.
    His name was Peter the One Hundredth, fifteen years old, owner of the stall. Previous customers rated him “competent” on average, with some complaints about equipment breaking down.
    “You like it?”
    Some speculated that the goods were stolen.
    Of course they were.
    Nashara stopped pointing and tapped some more, accessing Villach’s various streams of public information, and checked the habitat’s outbound transportation schedule. She found what she was looking for. The
Stenapolaris
, due to leave in two hours.
    Cutting it close. But she had a berth reserved, and
Stenapolaris
would be headed close to New Anegada. Once she was aboard it, the Gahe would be hard-pressed to ever find her.
    “Lady?”
    Nashara looked up. “Yes, I’ll take it.” She threw him the reservation coins from her pocket.
    “We don’t take this,” Peter the One Hundredth protested. “It’s devalued crap.”
    Nashara sighed. She propped her boot up on his table and dug her thumb into her thigh until she broke skin and peeled it back with a grunt. She slid a piece of silver out and wiped the blood off it. “Assay this.”
    She needed the lamina viewer. All around her in the habitat’s information-rich data streams lay important information. Such as directions to get to the docks, or what elevators to take. Whom you were talking to. Layers of it tagged everything, a myriad of ways to view the entire world lay around them.
    Kids ran around the stall seeing virtual monsters they chased and shot with their friends. Merchants quietly passed information among themselves. The station’s public lamina carpeted the sky with up-to-date general information, or provided tags about everything one saw.
    To be unable to view lamina meant being illiterate among those who read to survive.
    Nashara had to use lamina indirectly or the technology built into her head would get out of control. She bit her lip and focused on the transaction in front of her.
    Peter passed the piece of metal to the kid behind him, who walked back into the tent for a moment. Peter’s head snapped up as he heard something inside his own head. “Silver?”
    “Good enough?”
    All three nodded. Nashara turned and walked into a bulky man dressed in trousers and a yellow utility jacket.
    “Nashara Cascabel?” She liked her first name, but always kept the second one changing.
    She looked him over. “Who’s asking?”
    “Steven.” He looked around, dropped his voice. “We’ve been trying to contact you.”
    Nashara held up her wrist and looked at the tag that popped up when she pointed at him. It identified him as Gruther. “I just got access.”
    “Shitsticks,” the man swore. “That explains that.”
    People up here in orbit had the technology implanted behind their eyeballs from late childhood on. Only four-year-olds or the impaired couldn’t wrap their minds around constantly seeing things that weren’t really there.
    “I have my reasons for not plugging directly in,” Nashara said softly. “Your organization and me, we’re done. I’m getting ready to leave. What the hell are you doing bothering