Edge of Infinity Read Online Free Page A

of privacy, especially on the job. It’s not just sushi, either – all their two-stepper employees, in the Dirt or all the way out here, are under total surveillance when they’re on the clock. That’s total as in a/v everywhere: offices, hallways, closets, and toilets. Bait says that’s why JovOp two-steppers always look so grim – they’re all holding it in till quitting time.
    But I guess as long we get the job done, they don’t care how we wiggle our tentacles at each other or what colour we are when we do it. Besides, when you’re on the job out here, you don’t want to worry about who’s watching you because they’d better be. You don’t want to die in a bubble waiting for help that isn’t coming because nobody caught the distress signal when your jellie blew out.
    So anyway, we consider the missing matter and the markers we shouldn’t have been picking up on in Big J’s storm systems and we whittle it down to three possibilities: the previous crew returned to finish the job but someone forgot to enter it into the record; a bunch of scavengers blew through with a trawler and neutralised the markers so they can re-sell the raw materials; or some dwarf star at JovOp is seeding the clouds in hope of getting an even closer look at the Okeke-Hightower impact.
    Number three is the stupidest idea – even if some of the sensors actually survive till Okeke-Hightower hits, they’re in the wrong place, and the storms will scramble whatever data they pick up – so we all agree that’s probably it. After a little more discussion, we decide not to let on and when JovOp asks where all the missing sensors are, we’ll say we don’t know. Because the Jupe’s honest truth is, we don’t.
    We pick up whatever we can find, which takes two J-days, seed the Halo with new ones, and go home. I call over to the clinic to check how Fry’s doing and find out if she managed to get the rest of the crew on The List so we can have that picnic on her big fat bed. But I get Dove, who tells me that our girl-thing is in surgery.
     
     
    D OVE SAYS THAT, at Fry’s own request, she’s not allowed to tell anyone which sushi Fry’s going out for, including us. I feel a little funny about that – until we get the first drone.
    It’s riding an in-out skeet, which can slip through a jellie double-wall without causing a blow-out. JovOp uses them to deliver messages they consider sensitive – whatever that means – and that’s what we thought it was at first.
    Then it lights up and we’re looking at this image of a two-stepper dressed for broadcast. He’s asking one question after another on a canned loop; in a panel on his right, instructions on how to record, pause, and playback are scrolling on repeat.
    The jellie asks if we want to get rid of it. We toss the whole thing in the waste chute, skeet and all, and the jellie poops it out as a little ball of scrap, to become some scavenger’s lucky find.
    Later, Dubonnet files a report with JovOp about the unauthorised intrusion. JovOp gives him a receipt but no other response. We’re all expecting a reprimand for failing to detect the skeet’s rider before it got through. Doesn’t happen.
    “Somebody’s drunk,” Bait says. “Query it.”
    “No, don’t,” says Splat. “By the time they’re sober, they’ll have to cover it up or their job’s down the chute. It never happened, everything’s eight-by-eight.”
    “Until someone checks our records,” Dubonnet says and tells the jellie to query, who assures him that’s a wise thing to do. The jellie has been doing this sort of thing more often lately, making little comments. Personally, I like those little touches.
    Splat, however, looks annoyed. “I was joking,” he says, enunciating carefully. They can’t touch you for joking, no matter how tasteless, but it has to be clear. We laugh, just to be on the safe side, except for Aunt Chovie, who says she doesn’t think it was very funny, because she can’t laugh unless