The first time I met Mess, it was on the upper deck of a ferry to Port of Iokasta.
The ferry was crowded, so crowded I wondered whether the security limits had been breached, and I was sure nearly everyone on board had the same idea and the same plan as myself: get to the Port no matter how and figure out how to get to the space ship only then.
I was trying to look casual, a bored girl on a twelve-hour ride trying to find some pastime, be it alcohol, sex, drugs or some other less-than-legal thing the Iokasta Ferries were so famous for. I was trying to look like I was looking for the usual stuff, but I was in fact after something else entirely: the right person, the right criminal. A ‘ship tickets dealer. That was when I noticed Mess.
There was something different about her. She did not look like yet another ferry traveller, and certainly not like one of those thousands of people who wanted to get to the Port and see how far their luck would take them. Careful not to jump at conclusions, I observed her for a while, trying to guess whether she could be the person I was looking for.
She looked almost like a typical Iokasta hippie. Almost. She wore a long white skirt with flower print, a black sleeveless T-shirt and a military style khaki blouse with rolled sleeves. Her hair was plaited in two braids and tied with bands with artificial daisies. She was sitting in one of the cheap white armchairs provided on the upper deck, her feet resting on a life jacket box. There was a small black gym bag under her chair, and she was reading something on a tablet. So far so good, but there was something a little off with her look. Almost like all her stuff was too new and too perfect: as if she tried to emulate a hippie a bit too hard.
I came closer and I noticed the final thing that gave her away: her shoes. She wore sandals, yes, but instead of plain leather strap sandals, so popular with the hippies, she had something on her feet that looked like the latest generation of a minimalist self-adhering Kevlar thing.
I tried to guess whether she was a criminal or secret police. Arguments for a criminal: she looked almost like a genuine hippie, but not quite; she looked like she was not interested in people around her at all; she looked like she was alone; she looked like she was not looking for me. Arguments for secret police: she could well be pretending to be a criminal, with all the above-listed points, and then arrest anyone who decided to be so foolish to approach her.
Right. Time to take some risks.
I took another armchair, which was very conveniently placed about two metres from her, and I sat down next to her. She looked up and regarded me with a question mark in her eyes; almost like what the hell do you want.
“Do you offer?” A Iokasta black market question which was almost traditional. It was an opening which gave anyone the chance to look confused and ask you what the hell did you mean, or try to sell you something less illegal than you wanted.
“Depends on what you wanna get.” Good answer. Sounded to me like she was doing the same thing as me, trying to figure out whether I was a genuine buyer or secret police. In theory, this answer could allow her to get away from the business with me if there seemed to be something funny about me, pretending she was selling sex or drugs and not what I was about to ask her for. She also immediately looked around us in a stealthy, careful way, which made me believe she may indeed be a genuine criminal rather than an informer… or something even worse.
Okay. Time to take some more risks.
“There is a space ship in Iokasta orbit,” I said. “I am interested in a trip.” I made it sound fairly unambiguous. She could still talk her way out of this, say that she was selling sex, not ‘ship tickets. I couldn’t say anything like that. But that didn’t matter too much. If she was secret police, I was probably dead before I started talking to her.
“I may have something for you,” she replied. I looked at her questioningly. She spoke softly and did not look at me; she was looking at the sea instead. She had a funny accent which she was trying to hide – this was not a Iokasta accent, and almost for sure not even Earth Standard.
“Tell me more,” I demanded.
“It’s pretty straightforward really. I can get you on board that ‘ship. Got a spare ticket just for you.”
Shit. Shit. I felt a tiny tingling of hope, but I suppressed it immediately. Seemed that I found the right person, but the business was far from concluded, and who said she was not lying anyway. She could still be a secret agent, or an organ harvester for that matter. There were about five thousand people on board this ferry looking for exactly the same thing as me, and I was not ready to believe that after only ten hours of searching, I found the one person who could actually save my life.
“How much?”
“You will pay me later, when we are in space. I assure you that you will be able to afford the price, and you will be happy to pay it.”
“Can you elaborate?” The problem in dealing with criminals usually is that you are dealing with criminals. Can you trust them? Generally, no. But many of them have some sense of ‘professionalism’, and if they make a deal with you, they do not break it. I wanted to make such a deal, make her promise she would not make me a slave or something. It would’ve made me feel a bit safer.
“Not at the moment I’m afraid,” she refused to play along. “It’s not safe for either of us. You will have to take my word for it.” She made a small gesture with her hand, just like someone explaining something fairly trivial. I suspect it made the conversation look quite casual, like a talk between two incidental acquaintances, or a prostitute and a customer. In a split second, I decided to mimic her attitude, just in case someone was watching us.
“Fine, let’s say I trust you. What’s next?”
“I need to confirm your identity.”
“Fuck. Okay. I’m off then.” I started to get up. I was willing to give a lot in exchange for this trip, all my old life in fact, but I was not ready to say my name.
“Don’t. Sit down.” She spoke with an unexpected authority, and I obeyed before I knew it. “Listen. I have what you want: I can get you off this planet. But you will have to do what I say.”
“Why the fuck should I trust you,” I muttered while I was trying to look as casual as herself.
“I know you have no reason for that,” she acknowledged. “But you have no other option. If your plan is to go to the Port and figure out what to do then, I tell you such plan is bound to fail.”
“Come on.” I knew even without her helpful advice that the chance of success was tiny. I didn’t need anyone to tell me.
“Think. The ‘ship can take 280. You know that, I know that. There are about five thousand on this ferry alone. There are another maybe fifteen thousand in the Port already – two or three other ferries worth. Do you have a good chance of winning the lottery? No. Do you think I am playing games? You do, but you will have to take the risk. Either I give you what you want, or I am secret police, or I intend to trick you for some other dubious reason. Which one is it?”
“How should I know?”
“Bollocks,” I uttered. “There’s no such thing as contact lenses or fake tan.” Fuck. She, or they, or whoever, knew about my disguise. The brown lenses I used to disguise my blue eyes, the black spray I applied to my blonde hair to hide their unusual colour, the cream I applied to my skin to make it less pale, everything.
“Well anyway, you know how it works – secret police do not need excuses to make people vanish.”
“What do you want to know then?” I am not sure what convinced me. Her statement about no need for excuses was certainly right, but there was something more than that. I had nothing to lose. I could trust her and see, or go away and try someone else on board this ferry, but in the ten hours since we left Talia, I assessed just about everyone and I asked many, many questions, and the result was nil.
So I decided to stay.
“Come with me. Let’s pretend we are about to have sex.”
“Cool. Let’s go.” I made my look just a bit dirty and followed her to the Ladies’. No one was around. We entered the disabled cubicle and closed the door. I expected retina scans or fingerprints despite them being super easy to cheat, but she did not bother with those. No, she had something more sophisticated. She pulled a tiny DNA kit out of her bag.
“Open your mouth,” she whispered in my ear, so quietly that I nearly missed that. I did as she said and she stuck the sample collector deep in my throat. Clever. DNA could also be cheated, but it was much more difficult, especially if you stuck the sampling bud so deep one nearly threw up.
She put the bud in the analyser and in about a minute she had a green light. “I am convinced, you are you. Now let’s get out of here.” We left the loos – there was still no one around.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked once we were back on the upper deck and could talk relatively freely. This was getting more and more interesting. The kit she had was supposed to identify a single person – meaning they (whoever that was) had a sample of my DNA and knew my identity the whole time. That could only mean one thing: when I saw her on the upper deck, she was waiting there for me, and it was not a coincidence that I found her and decided she could be the person I was looking for.
“The less you know, the better,” she dismissed the question. “I am here to take you away, that’s all you need to know for now.”
“You seem to know awful lot. Unlike me.” I didn’t like the asymmetry in this.
“That’s right. Let’s keep it that way. It’s safer for both of us. Well, for me, really. I am taking a substantial risk here, as what I am doing is far from legal.”
That was absolutely right. If she was really going to help me, and if the Iokasta authorities caught her in the process, she could find herself in front of a firing squad in no time.
Unless she herself was Iokasta authorities, obviously.
“I will explain everything once we are both safely up there, okay? I promised that already, and I intend to keep my word.”
I nodded.
“Do you have a passport?”
“Yes.” My passport was fake, obviously. I could not leave Iokasta under my real name.
“Give it to me.”
“No way.” I was not giving up something that cost me so much, something that was my only chance of getting out of here alive. “I like this less and less.”
“I know. But my goods are genuine. You need a name on your passport that matches the name on the ‘ship ticket. I can provide you with that, and we have about two hours in which you need to memorize the story of your new identity in case someone asks some stupid question. Come on, the sooner we start, the better. It must look genuine and that will take time. You are not a pro in this.” Yes, okay, the name had to match the name on the ticket, fine. But still, I was unwilling to give up the only lifeline I’ve got, my fake passport. I said so.
“If they search you and find two passports on you with two different names, what do you think will happen?” she asked in reply. I gave that a serious thought; nothing good, that was obvious.
“But if I give it to you, either you get rid of it, which will immediately attract attention, or you keep it, and then you have the same problem, two passports in two different names.”
“Just give it to me and leave this with me.”
“No. I don’t like this.” I was about to leave and I got up. I did not walk away – yet – but I was not ready to trust a total stranger. Not this much.
“Look. If you leave now, we are done. I can only help you if you let me. I would personally regret leaving you behind, but I am not ready to break the Convention for you and kidnap you.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You’ve heard me. You and I share a common goal: getting you away from this planet. However, I am not ready to get you out of here without your consent. If you don’t follow me, you don’t follow me and that’s it. I appreciate I am not giving you enough information for you to be able to decide, but I cannot tell you more than I’ve told you already.”
“Fuck.” I didn’t know what to do.
“If I wanted to see you dead, you would be dead by now. If I were police, I would have arrested you already. And even if not, then what’s going to happen if you leave me now? Secret agents do not work alone. They would not let you get away. If I am after you, you are dead, one way or another.”
“Right. How very encouraging. Shit.”
“Let’s do it like this. You give me your passport, and I give you another one which matches the name on the ticket I have for you. If you change your mind before this ferry lands, we swap the documents back, you walk away, we never see each other again. How about that?”
I found my passport in my bag. “Fuck. Fuck.” I was conscious that people could still be watching. There was no one around, most people were drinking in one of the bars, sleeping on the benches or doing something illegal somewhere in hiding, but better safe than sorry. So I pretended I was showing her something in my tablet, and under the tablet, I handed my passport over. She used essentially the same trick to hand me another one. Still a Iokasta passport, but the one she gave me looked more genuine than the one I had. If it was a fake, it was a better, more expensive fake.
“Great. Now we seem to be getting somewhere.” She smiled at me. “There’s one more thing. You will have to remove your contact lenses and use these.” She handed me a small container. “There are two little problems. First, the picture in the passport I just gave you is you with blue eyes, not brown; second, these will emulate a matching retina scan. You can be sure you will need it.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” By that time, it was very obvious to me that I had fallen straight in the middle of a spy game. Either this was some Old Earth shit, one of their games they were so good at, or it was a hyper-complex Iokasta secret police trick the purpose of which was totally unclear to me.
“Not at all.”
She spent the next two hours – all the remaining time before the ferry made an approach to landing – making me memorize details of an entirely new identity. Name, address, occupation, reasons for travelling, education, family, name of my dog, name of my boyfriend, how my future wedding dress was to look like, where I shopped for fruit and veg, which bus number I took to work, which other buses stopped by my house, thousand little details. She even had a story ready about why we started talking on board the ferry, why we kept talking until the end of the journey, and how did that happen that we were separated in the crowds. “Just in case someone asks,” she explained when we got there.
“Are you still willing to do this? Do you want me to give you your papers back and leave you?” she asked when the ferry was getting past the Port of Iokasta beacons and barriers and the people on board were going totally crazy.
“Yes. I mean, no. Yes, I want to do this; no, don’t leave me.”
“I will leave you for a bit, but I will see you again,” she said with a smile. The ferry was about to make its final approach to the pier, and we had about half an hour before disembarking. The engines were roaring, the water was like boiling, the ferry was making bold manoeuvres and people were absolutely nuts. Crowds, pickpockets, onlookers, everyone trying to get somewhere, everyone apparently nervous. “Once we are out of here, you walk through the ferry terminal security, then you go straight through to the Gateway. Act like someone who does not want to attract too much attention. Don’t talk to anyone, don’t mention me, don’t do anything funny during the security checks, and for fuck’s sake don’t panic. You will see me again once we are both past the security – if all goes well, I’ll be in the shuttle.”
“Fine. Fuck.”
“Yeah, see you.” She disappeared in the crowd.
I was exceptionally nervous when I was leaving the ferry. Technically, the ‘ship tickets were not like some pieces of paper that could be picked out of your pocket, but I was still quite self-conscious, feeling like everyone was watching me and plotting to kill me. Surprisingly, I felt a bit better once I was with the police officers and they were scanning my passport and asking their routine questions.
Once my documents were checked and stamped, I left the ferry terminal and headed to the Gateway, the shuttle terminal from where one could go straight to the orbit – and to the ‘ship.
The security checks in the Gateway were much more thorough than when leaving the ferry, but interestingly enough I did not have a single problem there. The full body scan revealed nothing illegal or illegal-looking; my passport was not found suspicious; nobody questioned whether I had a ticket for the trip; my bag was scanned and unpacked by a bored police officer, checked, then repacked in a routine procedure which took less than ten minutes.
By the time the officers were done with the checks, I was much more confident, and I allowed my hope to blossom. I had been suppressing it the whole time, not allowing myself to feel that emotion, but now I felt like I could afford it: it seemed I did not make a mistake in trusting the mysterious hippie lady. Hopefully.
As soon as I cleared the security checks, I found that the next shuttle was due in about forty minutes; I was happy about that as I did not want to sit around the Gateway, thinking, doubting and getting nervous again. I waited a bit, I didn’t do much, and as soon as I could, I went straight to boarding.
I was not surprised at all to see a familiar face there. The hippie girl was sitting in one of the front seats. She was reading something in her tablet and ignored me, but I expected nothing else. The seat next to me was empty, so instead of a conversation with a total stranger, I was watching the output of the cameras on the outer surface of the shuttle.
This was not the first time I was in space, not even the first time I was about to travel through the bent space, but the ‘ship still impressed me. It was big; bigger than anything I have ever seen. It looked a bit like a huge plane without wings, an enormous shiny black-and-silver pod with no angles, no windows, no protrusions, nothing to disturb the perfect smoothness of the hull. The pod was connected to the even bigger structure of the Iokasta space docks and it all looked very impressive. I have never travelled in a cargo ‘ship like this. It could maybe accommodate 280 passengers, but the payload bays had space for so much more, tons and tons of goods.
The ‘ship’s registration shone on its front and back, huge black letters on the silvery hull: 627-83-5721 – Καλυψο – Earth. The Greek letters surprised me, but I didn’t think about it too hard. I was nearly there, my salvation was nigh, and I hoped that leaving the shuttle and passing through the docks and the locks to the ‘ship would mean suddenly finding myself in paradise.
It took another two hours and one more careful security check to reach the point of entering the Kalypso. And then…
“There she is,” a familiar voice said just as I was passing through the locks. Mess was still wearing her hippie outfit; next to her, there was a big guy in black attire with quite some loops and Velcro patches on it – it resembled Flotilla uniform so much that it just had to be one. The guy also had a ray gun, a baton and a pair of cuffs on his belt, and, perhaps more importantly, he had a ray rifle in his hands; a big, black and scary ray rifle. He was probably the security officer of the ‘ship, there was no other explanation. Nobody but the security was allowed to have any weapons here.
“Hello. Do you still want to leave Iokasta on board this ‘ship?” Mess asked.
I took a deep breath. I had to trust her one more time. “Yes.”
“You come with us then.”
I followed the two of them inside the ‘ship, through the corridors to a place which looked like a prison cell.
“I do apologize for this, but we need to verify a few things before we can let you walk around freely,” she said, closing the bars behind me.
Shocked, I was wondering whether this was it, whether this was the end. My hope was turned into ashes. “This is a temporary measure, I assure you. I will come to see you later and explain everything, but now I have to leave and do something else. You will understand soon.” She turned around and left me, just like that. Her gorilla followed her.