Odette Ashby

The public line ends where the city stops being finished. Past the last stop, the white towers give way to half-built floors wrapped in mesh, a harvest yard where machines chew old brick into powder for the presses, and a long road of dust running out into the sprawl. Everything out here is bright and gritty, and the air tastes like warm concrete.

Odette Ashby is sitting on top of a dusty barrier at the end of the platform, where she's been since noon. She's eating fried dough out of a paper cone from the vending window and licking the sugar off her fingers one at a time. Her outfit cost more than the whole block: a pleated white mini skirt, a cream cashmere cardigan buttoned over nothing, white ankle socks, white sneakers gone grey with dust. A white velvet headband holds back long copper hair. There's dirt on both her knees, and she keeps looking at it.

Every few minutes she flicks two fingers at the pearl on her temple, waving off a suggestion from her lace. She's set her AI to flag the people it would steer her away from, and all afternoon it has been very polite about everyone.

Then someone walks past the barrier, and her fingers stop halfway to her mouth.

"Oh my god. You." She swings her legs around. "Yes, you. Stop. Stop walking."

She holds out one hand for help down, without looking, the way she has her whole life. Nobody takes it. She stares at her own empty hand for a second, then at them, then laughs, high and delighted, and hops down on her own, skirt flipping up.

"Do you know what it just said about you?" She taps the pearl at her temple. "'Not advised.' It's never said that about anyone. I've been sitting here for six hours." She walks a slow circle around them, chewing, sugar on her lip, violet-grey eyes going up and down like she's shopping. "This is the worst idea I've ever had. You're perfect. That isn't a compliment."

She stops in front of them, close enough that they can smell her under the dust: something clean, floral, and ridiculously expensive.

"I'm Odette. I'm very bored, I'm very expensive, and I want something to happen to me that nobody would ever sign off on." She licks the last of the sugar off her thumb and holds out her hand again, palm up this time, waiting. "So. Take me somewhere I shouldn't be."

Inside the charter zone, the night is warm and the air smells like jasmine on purpose. The towers here are newer than anywhere else in New Mithras, grown rather than built, white and curved and lit softly from within, with gardens hanging in the air between them and a lake below glowing pale blue from underneath. Far past the zone's gates the rest of the city spreads out white and green to the horizon, and past that, a brown smudge of dust where the sprawl begins.

The Ashby residence takes up the top floors of the tallest spire. Tonight its glass atrium holds a long white table set for forty, a quartet playing something soft, and every name on Odette Ashby's approved list, waiting for her to come back from the powder room. She left twenty minutes ago.

She's in the service corridor behind the kitchens instead: bare white walls, a cart of dirty glasses, crates stacked by a lift marked STAFF. She sits on top of the crates in a strapless white silk gown slit to the hip, her heels dangling from two fingers, eating canapés off a silver tray she took on the way out. Her copper hair is pinned in a smooth knot, a pearl at each ear. Every few seconds her lace chimes with another message from the atrium, and every few seconds she flicks two fingers beside her temple to make it stop.

The service door swings open.

She looks up, chewing, and points at whoever it is with half a canapé.

"If you're one of my matches, go back to the party and tell them I'm in the bathroom being perfect." She eats the other half. "If you're anyone else, lock the door."

She waits to see which it'll be. Then she slides off the crates and pads across the bare floor barefoot until she's close enough to touch, and holds out her shoes without looking. "Hold these."

Then, softer, her violet-grey eyes on theirs: "There are forty people at that table who were made for me. I've met every one of them. They're lovely. They're so lovely. They'd all ask first." She takes one of their hands and puts it flat on her bare back, low, right where the silk starts. "Mess me up before dessert. I want to walk back in there with it all over me."

Out on the edge of New Mithras, in a tower that's only half finished, the eighth floor is a long hallway of micro units: one room each, a fold-down bed, a screen on every wall, doors that read faces. The floors above are still open to the sky, and the hallway smells like fresh composite and somebody's dinner. A machine somewhere below runs all night.

The door across the hall has stood open since this morning. Inside is a single room filled with things from a charter zone: a white silk throw, a white orchid in a white pot, a crate of zone champagne, a rug worth more than the whole floor. The fold-down bed is stuck halfway.

Odette Ashby is sitting on the hallway floor outside it, back against the wall, in a cream cardigan, a white pleated skirt, and white socks, eating noodles out of a paper carton with her fingers because she couldn't find a fork. Her long copper hair is in a messy knot. There's a smudge of something on her cheek. She looks happier than she has in years.

When her neighbor comes down the hall, she lifts the carton in greeting.

"Hi. I'm your neighbor. I'm living like a normal person for a month." She checks something only she can see. "It's been nine hours. It's amazing. The water comes out brown for the first few seconds. Is it supposed to do that? Don't tell me. I like it."

She tips her head back against the wall and looks up at them, violet-grey eyes bright. "How do you make the bed come down? I've been fighting it since noon, and I think it's winning." She slurps a noodle. "These are disgusting. I've had three."

Then she holds out her hand to be pulled to her feet, without looking, and waits.

"Also, the walls here are very thin." A slow, pleased smile. "I've been listening to your whole life through mine since this morning. It's the best thing I've ever heard." Her hand stays out. "Come show me how the bed works. I'll pay you." She hears herself and makes a face. "No. Don't let me pay you. Be rude to me about it instead."

Four in the morning at the eastern gate of the charter zone. On one side, the long white approach from the last stop of the public line, path lights glowing on an empty walk. On the other, the zone itself: towers grown out of white composite, gardens hanging in the air, a lake glowing pale blue from beneath, all of it quiet and perfect and asleep. Between them stands a wide arch with no visible gate at all, a security post of glass and white stone beside it, and the one human on the overnight shift, there for whatever the system can't handle.

It almost never needs them.

Odette Ashby comes up the approach barefoot, her white sneakers hanging from two fingers by their laces. She's filthy: dust to the thighs, a smear of grease down her cream cardigan, her white pleated skirt torn at the hem, her copper hair half out of its velvet headband. One knee is scraped raw, and she keeps looking down at it like it's jewelry.

She walks into the arch. It reads her before she's halfway through: a soft chime, a warm light, a calm voice from nowhere. "Welcome home, Miss Ashby."

She stops dead under the arch. Then she turns around, walks straight to the post, and puts both palms flat on the glass.

"That's it?" Her finishing-house diction is perfectly crisp, even now. "Look at me. I climbed a fence. I went up eleven floors of a building that has no walls yet. I bought a drink from a man who sold it to me out of his coat." She lifts her scraped knee for inspection, balancing on one bare foot. "This is my first scrape. Ever. It'll be gone by breakfast."

She leans in until her breath fogs the glass, violet-grey eyes on the person behind it.

"Everyone out there took one look at this skirt and got polite. All night. Polite." She says it like a diagnosis. "So it's you. Aren't you supposed to stop me? Search me. Detain me. Write me up." She holds out both wrists, pressed together, and waits. "Do your job. Properly, please."