Sanders rolled his eyes. “For Christ’s sake, stop with the movie villain thing and just tell me.”
“You’ve lost your Kaiju Earth privileges,” I said. “This is your one and only trip.”
“You can’t do that,” Sanders said. “MacDonald makes the rules here.”
“This would be between you and me,” I said. “That is, unless you want me to tell MacDonald.”
“It would be your word against mine.”
“Well, see, MacDonald already has your number, so I would win that one. But just in case—” I reached into the jumpsuit front waist pocket that didn’t have the screamer and showed Sanders my phone, which had its audio recorder on. “This is already uploaded to my account on the local cloud, so don’t try wrestling me for it.”
“So, you want me to just never come back here.”
“Yup, that’s pretty much it,” I said. “Or I could just give MacDonald the audio file and she could tell you never to come back, and also, you’d probably get strung up for smuggling or whatever it is that they would charge you for—I don’t know, but it would be interesting—and I imagine they use secret courts or something for this because, well.” I motioned to encompass the world. “Your choice.”
“You really are an asshole,” Sanders said.
“What can I say, you were a role model,” I replied. “Now, come on, we have to get you back for dinner.”
“Wait,” Sanders said, and I could feel him centering himself. “You won this round. Fine. Well done. But—if you don’t do this, I could make it worth your while.”
“Tempting,” I said. “But nope! Also, I’m walking now, and I’m turning off the screamer. You can keep up with me. Or not.” I started walking. After a second, Sanders followed me. I kept the screamer on the whole time. Even if they won’t kill you, tree crabs are the worst.
As we got to the door, Sanders looked up at the stairs. “Isn’t there an elevator?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “No, there is not.”
CHAPTER
20
After the drama of our first set of tourists, the next two sets of tourists were delightfully sedate. They were scientists and politicians, with only one billionaire, who, thankfully, behaved himself just fine and did not require a mock feeding to tree crabs. As requested, I acted as cruise director, and kept them all engaged and entertained. I answered their basic questions, made sure they were where they needed to be when they needed to be there, and on one occasion volunteered to do a karaoke duet of “Under Pressure” with a shy winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It was not rocket science to babysit rocket scientists.
When I wasn’t playing cruise director, I was trying to make up the workload as a Lifter of Things, on account of Val having to take the majority of our shared work when I was ferrying about our spectators. Val never complained about me doing the other work and leaving her to pick up the lifting slack. That didn’t mean I didn’t feel bad about it anyway.
My commitment to guilt, and lifting things, did not go unnoticed. “You’re going to wear yourself out,” Tom warned me. “You’re barely just a month through your tour. You keep this up, there’s not going to be anything left of you but a nub five months from now.”
I considered this. “It’s really only been a month?”
“A month and a week, but yeah.”
“Wow.”
Tom grinned at this. “Feels longer?”
“Not longer,” I said. “Just, like I’ve always been here.”
Tom nodded. “Time works differently over here. We’re cut off from the rest of humanity and pretty much nothing they do reaches here. Remember news? Like, when was the last time you thought about COVID? Or the election?”
“Well, I voted,” I said. KPS had delivered absentee ballots for Tanaka’s Americans on the same trip Sanders had been on, and we sent them back when they left.
“Sure, but are you thinking about the election anymore?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “I’m actually vaguely surprised it hasn’t happened yet.”
Another nod from Tom. “That’s what I mean. Time means almost nothing over here. You’re going to get home to New York in March, and your first two weeks back are basically catching up with news and saying, ‘They did what?!?’”
“I’m not sure I’m looking forward to that.”