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So I opened the bag and took a bath. I stripped out of my jumpsuit and sat ski
The thing was, the cleaner I got, the better I felt, and the sillier the whole thing began to feel. It was just me listening too much to my own thoughts again—like Mom always said. She said that too much silence wasn't good for a person. "Your mind goes go off into never-never land and never comes back. Just like your father. He went off, did too much thinking for his own good, and he never came back either." Yeah, right, Mom.
But Mom didn't say all that stuff just because she believed it. She said it because she thought it was true and she didn't want us to make the same stupid mistakes that she and Dad had made. So she figured if she told us the punch lines, we wouldn't have to live through the jokes. Ha ha. We saw how that worked out. I had the fastest divorce in the family.
I finished wiping myself—even in places that most people don't talk about—and pushed the soiled cloth back into its bag. I tucked it into a larger bag for waste, hanging from the inevitable wall webbing. I was begi
Alexei glanced over to me and said, "Hokay, girls—let's go upstairs. Are you ready for your disguises?"
"Huh?"
"You do not think you can ride the train as the Dingillian family, do you? Ah, from the looks on your faces, I can see you have not thought about this at all. You are lucky I am so foresighted. Come upstairs. Follow me, all of you. Hurry now."
We shrugged and followed him up the ladder to the top level of the station—we went hand over hand, feet were redundant. His endless monologue continued. "Douglas, you will be Samm Brengle-Tucker, famous hermit prospector. Everybody knows Brengle-Tucker, he is very famous because nobody knows him. You ask, if no one has ever met him, what proof do you have that nobody knows him? There is none, of course, because you ca
"Excuse me?" I said.
Alexei turned back to me, very serious. "Marshals are looking for two young men, a teener-boy and a boy-child. And a monkey. Marshals are notlooking for an old hermit prospector, his young wife, and her daughter by a previous marriage. You'll have to leave the monkey behind, you know. Is instant giveaway."
" No,we won't.And I'm not putting on a dress either." Although part of me was thinking that the disguises were a pretty smart idea, another part was muttering darkly that I shouldn't agree too easily no matter what I thought. I had to give a performance of saying no, so they wouldn't think I was—like Douglas and Mickey. And why did that matter anymore, anyway? It didn't seem to matter to anybody else, so why should it matter to me? This whole business was very confusing.
"Listen, Charles Dingillian," Alexei said, almost angrily. "You told me, didn't you, how J'mee, the boy, was really J'mee, the girl? The one with the implant who turned you in at Geostationary? If cross-dressing worked for her, why not you?"
"Except it didn't work for her," I pointed out.
"Of course not. She opened her big mouth. You are too smart for that, da? Come with me; I have just the dress for you." He led the way aft.
I followed, still complaining. "I'll look silly."
"You'll look pretty. You'll feel pretty. You have lovely tenor voice. Everyone will believe. You will have fun."
"That's what I'm afraid of."
There was a row of lockers along one wall of the machine-shop pod. One of them had the name BRENGLE-TUCKER on it. There were also several interesting-looking crates stacked against the wall, stenciled for delivery to BRENGLE-TUCKER. Alexei counted them off and pulled one out, setting it aside for the moment, then turned back to the lockers.
He showed his card to the door of the BRENGLE-TUCKER locker, and it clicked and swung open; he pulled out a roll of labels with Russian and English lettering and began pasting new destination labels over all of the BRENGLE-TUCKER labels on the crates. When he finished, he pushed the boxes into a transfer tube co
He unlocked the one remaining crate to reveal a rack of clothing, all kinds, some very ugly wigs, and a makeup kit. "I order this special from Luna City." He held up an ugly-looking dress. "Just for you, Charles. While floating in ballast tank, I am thinking Dingillians might need disguises on Luna, so my lifelong friend Samm Brengle-Tucker sends in order before we jump off Line. Or do you like this one better? I did not know your size, I had to guess."
I didn't say anything in response. I just scowled at the oversized dress and the awful wigs. Alexei's story didn't make sense. Not if you thought about it. He'd said he'd been listening to the cha
Alexei was chattering too much to notice my silence. He tossed the makeup kit to Mickey. "Here, you get started. You and Douglas, use suntan number nine, da?You are Lunar prospectors. Douglas, you are here longer; use a lot, get very dark. Not to worry. Is permanent color. Takes at least a month to fade. Face and neck only. Mickey, you will not need as much. You have only been here a year. You do not work outside so much. Only some."
Then he went burrowing through silky nylon things, sorting and tossing. "Brengle-Tucker is good man. He order everything for his pretty wife. Even fancy underwear. Just in case someone looks up receipts, this shows he adores her, leaves nothing out. First rule of smuggling, Charles—do not give reason for someone to be suspicious; always give them something else to look at. Like underwear. Most people do not look under underwear, that is why you hide your dirty books under it. So here is nice underwear. Don't look fu