The Spinrad Contract

Boy, that does sound petty, doesn't it."

"Just a bit," I said, though I held my thumb and forefinger more than a fraction apart.

"This is a hologram I'm wearing, Mister Norman."

"What do you mean?"

I'd heard some crazy stuff in my time but this dame was really taking the pie from the window sill and running with it.

"He left me to die. In a fire. Everyone else in the gallery was out. He was above me, on the balcony, everybody escaping through the fire-exit up there. The stairs had collapsed and they were lifting people out via a chair tied with the velvet ropes that keep the public from all those ancient paintings. It was a party. We were there celebrating both our third wedding anniversary and his promotion to head of marketing, executive branch, at Spinrad Corporation. That, plus what he'll collect on my life insurance, the bastard."

Grace actually spat, a wet loogie that shone black on the tabletop.

I was really regretting her having kissed me.

"There we were, just the two of us," continued Grace. She took a sip of my gin, handed it back. I moved it as far away from me on the table as I could. "He insisted everybody else get out, told them he could save me. He didn't send the chair back down, just looked at me. It might have been a look that said I'm sorry, but it was one without any real regret. He left me in the inferno he might have caused or which might have just been an accident he took advantage of. He left me for dead and I barely survived.

"There was only so much the med-bots could do for my dead skin, my ruined features. Damn, I hate robots."

"Join the club," I said. I took out my wallet and showed her I was a card-carrying member of the local Robot Haters 304th.

"I don't even like pink, it's just the only unit Fletcher's Holographics had in stock. I'm going to show you what I really look like."

"No, really," I said. "That's not necessary."

She pressed an activation stud -- located just under her armpit -- and for a second or two I saw her naked and blackened flesh, her hairless head, her messed-up face. Then she brought the illusion back online.

"You see what he has done to me," said Grace.

"He thinks you're dead?"

"I am dead. I can't feel anything. The pain itself would be killing me if not for the black-market mega-morphine I buy from that lowlife Eddie the Graznel."

"Hey, I know that lowlife and trust me, you don't wanna buy from him," I said. "Half the time he dilutes his product, the other half he'll give you baby aspirin and call it cyanide. You ever tried to fulfill a contract killing on a Dragafen diplomat with baby aspirin? Trust me, I know this great fella who imports all the best product from the moon of Io."

I took out my wallet again, handed her his business card.

"Thank you, I'll look into that," said Grace, reading the card.

"Sure, no problem."

After that, it was all business.

*****

Grace told me I'd find her deadbeat, immolating son-of-a-leech Haugasian husband on Neptune, at Spinrad Corporation's head office. I hadn't been to Neptune since forever. Can't say I missed it. I was travelling under the identity of Preston Bradbury, a minor bureaucrat visiting Spinrad to negotiate a government contract for a new variety of self-inflating emergency pressurized tent.