Diamonds Beneath Her Feet

"Hey, m'ser! Hey!"

Lethi made her face into the same shape as the kids in the holos, the ones everyone liked. Widened her eyes and smiled. Kini said she looked real cute when she did that and it sure worked on the marks on the Boulevard.

"Hey, m'ser! M'ser! Nice shoes!"

Rich-looking homme strolling with a pretty girl, always a good target. Sex makes people stupid, Kini always said.  These two were not so smart to begin with, Lethi figured, him with the latest fashion in skull-mods that made people look like some kind of fish and her with her dress matched in color to the tiny tendrils growing down her arms and waving gently in an imaginary breeze.

Lethi skipped ahead of the two of them, years of practice letting her keep her footing on the hard, cold diamond cobblestones in bare feet.  She pirouetted and turned to face them, walking backwards, smiling, smiling. Smiling worked, made the marks less likely to notice her stains on her dress and the scabs on her legs. Lethi made sure to keep well enough away from them so they couldn't smell her, either.  "Nice shoes, M'ser, real nice. Bet you a centime I can tell you where you got 'em!"

The woman laughed, and Lethi knew she was in.

"C'mon, M'ser," she wheedled. "Bet you I can, too!"

He looked from her to his girl, back to Lethi, and began to smile. "Oh, you're that clever, are you?"

"I have the sight, M'ser! I can tell you where you got your shoes!"

"Mmhmm."  He felt in his pocket, took out a centime bit, and held it up. "Where, then?"

Lethi screwed up her eyes like she was concentrating hard. "Ummmm ... right here in Caille?"

Rich-boy shook his head. "No, not even close. Now you have to pay me, right?"

"Wait, wait!" Lethi said. "Best of two, M'ser! Double or nothing!"

She was poised to run when Rich-boy glanced at his girl again and nodded. Showing off, Lethi thought. Smug fils de pute de merde.  He's sure he's got me.


Probably got them on some off-world jaunt, he did. Rich con like that. 


She made her best thinking face again. "Ummmm .... you got them in Algogille!" It was the only other system name she knew, gleaned from the title of her favorite holo-series, Adieu Algogille. It wasn't, as far as Lethi knew, somewhere shoes came from, but she had to say something.

"Wrong again, little girl. Pay up."  Rich-boy's smile was genial but there was something underneath it that Lethi didn't like.

She took a hop-and-a-step further away, out of arm's reach. "Wait, wait, wait! One more time, M'ser! Double or nothing, again!"

He looked her up and down. "You don't have four centimes, do you? How are you going to pay me when you get it wrong again?"

Lethi dug in her pocket and produced the four little coins that she never, ever spent. Don't spend your seed money, Le-le, Kini had told her. Like eating your seed corn. Might help right then, but you've got no way to make more.


As always when she remembered that bit of advice, Lethi wondered to herself what corn was. Kini hadn't been able to explain it either. Still, the advice made sense. You need money to make money.


"Look, see, I do so have four centimes!" she said. "C'mon, M'ser, give me one more chance!"

She'd been right about him. Rich, greedy, a little bit cruel. He eyed her coins, less than he'd spend on getting the shoes they were betting over shined, and smiled again. "Sure, little girl. But this is the last time."

"D'accor', d'accor," Lethi said. She made sure she put the coins back in her pocket before she went on, in case she needed to run. "Ummm.... you got your shoes .... on your feet!"

The girl laughed. The homme didn't. Lethi saw the brief flash of rage that crossed his face and sprang up on her toes, balanced, ready to run. "You little - "

She smiled and giggled. "Oh, c'mon, M'ser, I'm right, aren't I? Aren't I?"

"She is right, Jacques," the girl said, smiling. "And very clever, too."

Jacques. Trust Rich-boy to have a name like Jacques. People with ident-cards and numbers and proper places to be had names like that, like Jacques and Luc.  Lethi was a crotte and she didn't have an ident-card, or a number, or a name except one she'd picked off Adieu Algogille, and she thought she'd done well, even if nobody'd call her by all of it, Lethiandianasanni. Just Lethi, was all they'd bother with, even Kini.

That was how it went, Lethi supposed, when it was just something you picked off a holo. 

"I'm not giving you a cent for that," Rich-boy said.

Lethi let her smile go, made her eyes huge and sad. "But I was right, M'ser! Wasn't I?"

"Oh, come on," the girl said gently. "She's earned it."

Rich-boy shook his head. "Non. Now get out of here, you little brat, before I call the cops on you."

Merde con pute salaud baissez moi ... A waste of time, he'd been. Lethi skipped backwards, ready to run, hesitating, casting her best tearful glance at the girlfriend.

"Jaques," the girl said reproachfully, and Lethi had to work hard not to grin. Her grin, Kini said, was not cute.

As Rich-boy glared, the girlfriend opened her tiny beaded purse and took out -

Baissez moi. Lethi didn't need to try to make her eyes go wide as wide. The woman was holding, not a centime piece, not even a cinq-cent, but a note.  "Here you are, sweetheart."

"Anita!" Rich-boy said. "Look at her! Give her that and she'll probably spend it on drop or something!"

Generous-girl hesitated. "What would you do with this if I gave it to you, sweetheart?"

"Give it to Maman," Lethi lied promptly.

"Your mother ought to be in jail, letting you run around harassing people," Rich-boy said.

Lethi ignored him and spoke straight to Generous-girl. "She has the cough, M'selle, real bad. Can't work."  And that was only partly a lie. Maman had had the cough, Kini said, that was what she'd died of when Lethi was a baby.

"Oh..." Another note joined the first.

Rich-boy grabbed Generous-girl's hand. "Anita, I'm not letting you do this. She's a thief and a con-artist and if you really want to help her you should report her to Services so they can get her into Rehab and Restitution."

"Then what would Maman do?" Lethi said. "Without me to help her, and Sichi only two, too..."

"Let go of me, Jacques," Generous-girl said, and Lethi recognized the coaxing note in her voice as one she herself used when a thin day left her no choice but to work marks coming out of the bars late at night, liquored up and dangerous.  Merde, m'selle, she thought. You got the money to make yourself a pretend-sea-lady and you still hanging 'round where you ain't safe?


Kini was right, no doubt about it. Sex makes people stupid. It had made that homme who worked in the holo store stupid enough to let her come in and watch the screens when it was too wet to work and eat the candy from behind the counter, all in exchange for sitting on his lap for a while and letting him do things to her.  That was pretty stupid, as far as Lethi was concerned, especially since it got him sacked when the manager found out.

She'd gone there one day when the sky was drizzling down so much water that the only people out on the Boulevard were moving way too fast for her to get their attention and the homme she knew was gone, and there was a different man there. He's spoken to her nicely and offered her some food, but Lethi was no fool. She'd seen the nets and the bars in his eyes, like she could see them in Rich-boy's right now, as if ReRe was written on his forehead.

Rehabilitation and Restitution. For the crotte, like Lethi, like Kini.  If they caught you and shipped you off to ReRe you didn't ever come back.

No way they were getting Lethi, that was for sure.

Rich-boy let go. Lethi guessed he wanted Generous-girl more than he wanted to punish Lethi for embarrassing him. Sex makes people stupid.

Generous-girl held out the notes and Lethi darted in and snatched them, careful to keep out of reach of Rich-boy. "Fortune bless you, M'selle!" she said, looking straight at Generous-girl as she said it, so none of the blessing would splash over on Rich-boy. Fortune fuck you, she thought spitefully as she balled the notes up in her hand and skipped backwards.  

She didn't stop to look at them until she was a good four blocks away, having dodged through the crowds on the Boulevard with enough twists and turns to shake off anyone who'd seen her get the money and thought of following.  There was an alley Lethi knew, where the rubbish skips leaned together to make a corner that was safe from prying eyes, and once she was sure she wasn't being watched she made for it and crawled inside, then unpeeled her cramped fingers to take a look at the money.

One of the notes was a ving. The other ...

Lethi stared at it. She'd never seen all that money in one place, let alone in one piece.

A cinquantième.

Very, very carefully she folded the two notes up as small as she could make them and turned up the hem of her dress to slip them into the secret pocket there that Kini had made for her.  Then, with another wary look to make sure she was unobserved, she slid out of her hiding place.

Make sure no-one ever follows you, Kini always said.  ReRe for all of us if they find out we're here.  Never run here, if you're being chased. Always run away. Even if they getcha. Better they get one than all.


But they wouldn't get Lethi. Not ever.

She began to jog-trot back along  the Crystal Boulevard to the broken fence that led to the route home.


Kini would be angry she'd come back early, until Lethi gave her the money.  Then she'd be happy, maybe even happy enough to give Lethi a second helping of whatever was cooking on the fire tonight. I hope it's something from the bins, Lethi thought, and not something someone caught. There were lots of things living in the old basements and abandoned warehouses and disused sewers that you could eat.

If you were fast enough to grab them. 


And hungry enough to ignore the taste.

Lethi  imagined that what was waiting for her was saved from the skip outside a fancy restaurant, and not too old, either.  Kini would give her two helpings, and smile, and put the notes away, like she always put the money away, one for all of us and one for your investment, Lethi.

Lethi wasn't sure what 'vestment was, but it seemed to mean Kini putting money in a special box that no-one was allowed to touch. She didn't make sense about it when Lethi asked, either.

It's an investment in your future, kiddo. For when you need it, later.


Lethi'd rather have it now, thank you, when it could be spent on candy and those stuffed pastries with casein they sold from the stalls in the warehouse end of town.  But she nodded when Kini said that, and tried to make her face look like she knew what Kini meant.

Kini was funny like that, sometimes. She got to talking craziness. Lethi figured it was because whatever sickness she had that made her face look like one of the crawlies from the sewer was growing out of her eye was growing into her brain, too.

Crotte didn't have later, even Lethi knew that.

Didn't matter, though, today.  Kini'd be happy when she saw the money, and there might be something tasty to eat, and that was all today owed her, as far as Lethi was concerned.

She smiled at the thought, and gave a little hop and a skip as she ran, her seed-money coins jingling in her pocket, the secret pocket in her hem slapping against her bare legs, hardly even feeling the bruises on her heels left by the hard bite of the diamonds beneath her feet.