Audacious

15

Abby found that the old neighborhood had changed a lot…and not changed at all.

Tram Line 79 no longer went to Five Corners. It was now Line 128. But the tram Abby rode in could have been the same one she rode out fifteen years ago. She was tempted to peel off the layers of graffiti to find what it had sported back then.

The evil-eye of the tram cop suggested he'd be none too happy if she produced a knife and took it to his bit of Eden. On reflection, the layers of graffiti might be all that held the old wreck together.

Abby had been careful to dress down. Still, she wasn't nearly as shabbily dressed as the young woman whose name Abby refused to remember after she left Five Corners and swore it had seen the last of her.

So why was she coming back?

She'd already been greeted. Twice.

She'd pulled one young girl's hand out of her purse. The kid had her hand already around Abby's wallet. The maid of many faces restrained the urge to break a wrist. The kid, maybe ten, was just trying to make it through the day.

Abby had sent her on her way with five bucks. Eden. Not all that much.

The cutpurse had not gotten off so easy. Abby hadn't returned his knife by plunging it between a rib. Not quite. It had been a close thing. But blood on the streets made the neighbors talk. That was not something Abby wanted.

No, she'd confiscated the knife and shoved the fourteen-or fifteen-year-old boy into a brick wall. Maybe he'd learn something from the lesson.

Maybe not.

Not everything that was the same in the old hood was that exciting. Old man Artork's ice cream cart was still on the same corner. Closer approach showed he wasn't still running it. Had he been late once too often with his ''insurance check'' and actually ended up sleeping with the fishes…as he'd often joked with the kids? Or had he actually lived to retire and turn it over to his son?

Abby ordered a chocolate cone, her old favorite. It was still down there in the frosty cool. One lick and Abby scowled. The memory was much tastier than the having.

She started to toss it. Then caught sight of the wide eyes of a little girl. Seven, maybe eight. Or six. Now that Abby recalled, the kid had been lurking nearby. Not so close as to be accused of trying to steal anything. Not so far as to miss any scent of those wonderful concoctions. How often had a young—no, forget that name.

Abby handed the cone to the girl.

The urchin eyed Abby for a long moment, to see what this icy delight would cost. Only when Abby let the silence stretch, did the girl half run, half skip away.

Hopefully, Abby hadn't taught the little thing a bad lesson. That you could get something for nothing. That someone could give her joy. A very bad lesson in Five Corners.

Abby watched the kid go, trying to remember the taste of cold chocolate on a warm day. Trying to remember a happy moment here. There had been a few.

Then she turned and walked purposefully toward a place that held very few good memories. It was always better to walk as if you knew where you were going. Needed to be there ten minutes ago. Slow down and who knew what might overtake you.

At that pace, it didn't take Abby long to turn the final corner, to bring the last place she'd lived on Eden into view.

Then she had to slow. There wasn't all that much to see.

Half the houses on this block were broken down and abandoned. It had been headed that way back then. The brown house was now among the derelicts.

She really shouldn't be surprised. She'd been gone fifteen years. How long had Momma Ganna ever lived anywhere?

That was a big mistake. Suddenly Abby was flooded by feelings. The feelings of going out in the morning, maybe to school, maybe to something that might earn an Eden dollar for her…or Momma.

Only to come back to an empty house. Not just empty of Momma, but swept of anything that Momma called her own. Momma totally gone.

Abby tried asking around among the neighbors to see if anyone knew where Momma had vanished to. None knew. She went looking for a grown-up that might admit to knowing Momma.

People who knew Momma were never that easy to find. Not easy for a short person who couldn't read or write all that well.

The first time had been the worst.

That time, Abby hadn't been much older than the kid she gave the ice cream to. She'd spent a night and a day on her own before she stumbled into someone who knew someone who knew where Momma Ganna had set up shop.

That time Abby got a beating. As if going to school one morning expecting to come home to the same place was somehow wrong. She didn't deserve a beating, not for that.

And it taught Abby a lesson she never forgot.

As Abby slowly ambled by the gutted brown house, she spotted the telltale signs of squatter occupation: the smell of smoke, a bit of movement in the deep shadows.

Her first thought was to keep walking, circle around to the trolley station, and get back where she belonged. She'd worked hard to get there. To be Abby Nightingale, the maid of many skills. If she was smart, she'd get gone from here.

Abby glanced over her shoulder at the crumpling brown house. She could ferret out any secrets it still held about Momma. Yeah, me and a squad of Marines.

Or maybe just me and the chief and Penny.

No way would she take them to the hell that was Five Corners. No way would Abby risk seeing the look on that Longknife girl's face when she saw where her maid came from.

Okay, smart kid. You gonna just give up cause Momma ain't here with no cake? You gonna call it quits that easy? What about Myra? You gonna forget about her?

If this was a job for the princess, you'd think of something.

That jab hurt.

Abby paused. If she went right here, she'd almost be at the green house.

''Computer, mark the brown house, two blocks back. Mark the green house, one block farther down this street.'' The green house still looked in decent shape.

The brick house would be two blocks farther along that street, and one over, she told her computer. Three data points showed on the map reflecting on the glasses Abby wore today.

The maid walked a few more blocks, remembering two more homes of her youth. And spotted the pattern about the time she spotted the wasteland.

Two blocks beyond, Five Corners came to an end.

Not really. Actually the five corners that gave the place its name was out there, surrounded by the baked ground and struggling weeds of half-begun urban renewal. A few houses still stood out there, surrounded by nothing. They huddled alone, waiting for someone to put up a shopping mall and chic housing for the wealthy, or those on their way to wealth.

But it hadn't happened yet.

With Five Corners's luck, it might never happen.

Abby frowned at the conundrum ahead. Her old homes might still be standing, out there in the baking weeds. On any other planet, all Abby would have to do was call up an orbital photo.

Not on Eden. Not without paying a chunk of money and facing a human with a need to know that met their rules. Abby had almost been killed on Earth before she learned how easy it was elsewhere to get pictures.

With a sigh, Abby turned her back on the hardscrabble that was the only mark left of the first two homes she remembered.

To find a guy sauntering toward her, a leer on his face.

He was no stranger. To the extent that he'd been leaning against a wall in the spare shade of a fallen-down roof with three other guys, Abby knew him. She'd logged and stored the memory of quite a few clumps of local dudes like them since she left the station. She knew their kind from years back.

''Hey, bird, whatcha doing all dolled up for?''

Abby tried to ignore him. ''Pardon me,'' she said, and made to step around him.

''Whatcha doing for the next five minutes,'' he said, sidestepping to block her way, and reaching for her.

She could smell alcohol on his breath. It came through a wicked, knowing grin that was missing a couple of teeth.

His right hand was in his pants pocket. When he pulled it out, it would hold a switchblade. Abby knew that as sure as she knew the sun would rise in the east.

When she left the embassy compound for this little trip down memory lane, Abby knew things could get terminal. Now her heart didn't so much as skip a beat.

She was trained for this. She'd experienced it many times. Both here in Five Corners and so many light-years from here.

Abby took a step closer to the man, putting on the face. Abby's game face had been the last thing many a man had seen in life. If the guy was smart, he'd head back for his friends. ''I got no plans,'' she said, voice level. Deadly level.

''Whatdaya say I make them for you.'' His grin now got lopsided. Jack had a lopsided grin, but not like this one. There was nothing of a leer when Jack smiled.

''I'd have to think about that,'' Abby said.

Then closed the distance to him with one quick step.

Her right came up to wipe that grin off his face. Her knee took care of that other matter he had so much on his mind.

In half a breath, the idiot was withering on the ground.

His three friends had ambled around the corner to enjoy the show, maybe get involved if she was easy.

Abby raised a questioning eyebrow. You want some of this?

If all three of them jumped her, matters might get a bit exciting. For them, not her. Abby figured she could put all three down without breaking a sweat.

Still, fools had been known to get lucky.

They fled back around the corner.

Abby eyed her would-be assailant. His knife was out. She kicked it into the gutter. It rattled on a sewer grating before falling through. As for this optimistic dude, she didn't want to see him again for a long, long time.

She'd chosen her shoes for walking—maybe running—and for fighting. They were steel reinforced. She gave him a hard kick in the kidney.

He screamed.

Abby doubted she'd done permanent damage. But if she had, that was why he had two of them. Maybe he'd be more careful with the other one.

She crossed the street and took a right, not wasting a backward glance. If she heard footsteps, she'd turn.

She didn't hear anything. At least not for now. Maybe later she'd find out how bad an enemy she'd made.