Furious

15

“So what do you think of our quarters this time?” Penny asked a groggy Kris as light streamed into her slightly opened steamer trunk.

Kris yawned and stretched. That brought her up against the boundaries of her trunk. She pushed it open wider and stood. Her new quarters were a whole lot smaller than her last. Several of this room would fit quite comfortably into the sitting room on the Archie. And this room, and a small bathroom off to one side, were all there was.

Still, it was larger than her stateroom on the Wasp.

But then, she hadn’t shared that room with Penny.

There was one comfortable-looking chair, a desk with its own station chair, and a bed. Two could likely sleep in it if they didn’t mind being too friendly . . . and if one of them didn’t roam around the bed at night.

Kris had never shared a bed with anyone in her life.

“Think we could order a cot in?” Kris asked.

“And what would one old maid need with a bed and a cot?” Penny answered with a raised eyebrow.

“You have a point,” Kris agreed, and tried, unsuccessfully, to keep from making a face at the prospects before her.

“Your Highness, we are on the run, you know,” said Penny, her eyes sparkling.

“All too truly,” Kris said, pushing her trunk open more and stepping out. Beside her trunk was the other, as yet undiscovered, one. Kris eyed it, wondering at its contents.

There was a knock at the door.

“Who is it?” Penny asked, her voice coming out cranky and creaky.

“Captain Tidings,” came back, and the monitor on the door came alive to show a middle-aged man in a gray merchant-marine uniform with four stripes on the sleeve.

“Please come in,” Penny said, and the door admitted him.

“I’m glad to see that you both made it on board, Your Highness,” the captain said with a smile and an offered hand. “I never had a chance last time you were on Eden to thank you for saving my daughter’s life.”

Kris shook the offered hand and found herself smiling back. “I did have to leave precipitously.”

“Yes. I never did understand that. I know that many of your Marines were injured while saving so very many of us, but I should have thought that you could get care just as well on Eden as on Wardhaven.”

So, Kris thought, once again, what politics ordered was not necessarily what politics confessed to have done. “We do what we are told,” Kris said.

“Well, I’m glad that I can do something for you now. If you wish, I can open the room next door for you. You are our only set of passengers.”

“Set?” Kris said.

“Yes. I’ve officially signed aboard Mrs. Travaford and her traveling companion and medical assistant, Stephanie Ootlaw. Line policy allows me to open up vacant rooms for the comfort of such important passengers as Mrs. Travaford.” With that he produced a key pad, tapped a few numbers, and a loud click came from the restroom.

Penny and Kris followed the captain to that necessary facility. It was small, but sported a shower tub that had a small sign asking passengers to limit their showers to no more than five minutes. A second door in the room opened onto a room identical to the one whose measurements Kris had found depressingly limited.

“Two rooms will certainly be better than one,” Kris admitted.

“Now about meals. We normally require passengers to come to the mess deck. The ship’s crew and officers eat together because there aren’t that many of us. I really don’t want to have the cook bring your meals to the room. That would be very unusual and create talk. On the occasions we’ve had a passenger of the status we’re affording Mrs. Travaford, their servant has collected the meals.”

Kris frowned. “That might be a problem since I’m the one we’re trying to keep out of the spotlight.”

“Certainly you have a disguise you intend to use on Wardhaven,” the captain said. “The first time a camera gets a good picture of you, and they run face recognition, there will be all kinds of problems.”

Penny nodded, displaying a grin that ill became one of her advanced age. “Yes, we do have a few tricks up our sleeves. We might as well start applying them during our time aboard and see how well Her Princessness here adapts to them.”

“Huh?” ill became Kris, but it was all she got out.

The captain seemed to be enjoying some private joke. He nodded, and excused himself. The belly laugh didn’t start until the door closed behind him.

“What was that all about?” Kris asked.

“You’d be laughing, too, if you saw the look on your face.”

“So, how are we going to get me past face-recognition software?” Kris grumbled. “Will I have to look as old as you?”

“I don’t think Abby had that in mind. But let’s see what she has in that other trunk for you.”

An hour later, Kris eyed herself in the mirror and didn’t recognize herself. She had curves. All kinds of curves. Far more than any woman would ever want.

Her breasts were now double E’s or F’s. She had trouble just walking in them, and God help her if she ever had to run. However, her extra top hamper was now balanced by a butt that was double something or other.

There was also a wrap around her waist that added volume there as well.

Over it all was a size-twentysomething dress that covered it all with no style at all.

“Oh,” Penny added as if as an afterthought, “if you need to, you can pull the foam out of your boobs and your butt and fill them with grenades, spare ammo, explosives, whatever.”

Kris studied all the padding. “I could supply an army if I could lug the weight.”

“Well,” Penny said, fluffing her gray hairs, “I sure couldn’t hide anything.”

“We could trade places,” Kris offered. Or maybe suggested. Strongly suggested.

“You’re known throughout space as a tall beanpole. Security will take one glance at this and look elsewhere for you.”

Nelly cleared her throat diplomatically. “But that face of hers will be spotted in two milliseconds by any security camera.”

“So we change the face,” Penny said, and headed back to the trunk to return with a plain brown box.

“You have a lovely nose,” she said.

“It’s too big,” Kris shot back.

“So, we’ll make it bigger,” Penny said, and produced a bulbous nose that not only went out farther, but also added breadth and width to Kris’s own.

“A funny nose will not fool a good computer,” Nelly pointed out.

“We’ll do more than just mess with her nose,” Penny said as she glued up and applied the false proboscis smoothly onto Kris’s face.

Done, she delved once more into Abby’s box of tricks. “Cheekbones. How do we mess with such lovely cheekbones? Ah, this will do it.”

And Kris found her cheeks fleshed out. Her jaws grew jowls, and, with a flourish, Penny added a double chin.

“I look horrible.” Kris sighed.

“You sure don’t look like yourself,” Nelly agreed. “But you need to do something about the forehead.”

“I’m coming to that. How about beetle brows.” A moment later, Kris’s brows had been shaved and a new forehead glued in place.

“I don’t look natural. Anyone who looks at me will tell I’m loaded down with plastic junk,” Kris growled.

“Okay, try smiling,” Penny said.

Kris did. In the mirror she saw something fit to frighten children or curdle milk. “See?”

“Looks just like my aunt Frieda,” Penny said. “Lord, how I hated when she came visiting. Everybody has an Aunt Frieda.”

“I didn’t,” Kris insisted.

“Well, everyone but you has an Aunt Frieda, and one look at you will make them want to be anyplace else but where you are.”

“Gee, thanks,” Kris said, and frowned. Which, in the mirror, gave her back something that looked like it might have crawled out from under a bridge to dine on children’s toes.

“Kris,” Nelly said. “I’ve run you through standard security face recognitions. You do not come out anywhere close to your normal profile. I’ve also run you through the best available commercial recognition programs. Even they give you less than a forty-nine-percent probability of being you, and they are all set in the factory not to report anything below fifty percent to cut down on the false positives. This disguise should get you through security.”

“If you say so,” Kris said, and tried to saunter across the room. She managed it, but she’d never be able to do it in high heels. Fortunately, companions and aids in Kris’s putative job only wore reasonable shoes: solid, low, ugly.

Finally, an upside to this charade—at least her feet would like it.

As if Kris didn’t feel hideous enough, Penny added the pièce de résistance.

“Roll up your sleeves and close your eyes.”

“Why?” Kris asked.

“Do it, then you’ll see.”

Kris was none too sure about this. She’d been dressed by Abby and Penny before. Just once. They had her walking the worst streets of Turantic as a streetwalker. Only passing Jack off as her trick had kept her from a whole lot of worse fates than death.

Admittedly, she’d be wearing a whole lot more in this disguise; still, Kris strongly suspected that Abby and Penny would be laughing for a long time about what they’d talked her into this time.

Kris rolled the three-quarter-length sleeves of her dress up past the elbows and closed her eyes. She heard the “pssst” of an aerosol can but kept her eyes shut until Penny announced, “You can look.”

Kris did.

“I’ve got freckles! A million of them!”

“Or more,” Penny said, glee on her face and in her voice.

Kris took her new self in. “Even Jack would never recognize me.”

“And he certainly wouldn’t want to kiss you,” Penny agreed.

“This is horrible.

“Prison might be worse,” Nelly offered.

“Much worse,” Penny agreed.

“Will I need an hour to get all this on every time I go out?”

“Nope,” Penny said, “this is you. You’ll walk in it, sleep in it. Until we decide to take this off, you are the woman you see.”

“Do I get to take a bath?” Kris asked in a small voice.

“If the advertising on this box can be trusted, you could swim the English Channel in this and it wouldn’t come off, whatever that is.”

“We’ll see if I can take a bath in it first,” Kris said.

“How about you get us some lunch?” Penny said. “I’m starving. Getting you all fancy-dressed worked up an appetite.”

Kris frowned, but she went to do her mistress’s bidding.

Penny was right about the disguise. Nobody recognized Kris Longknife as she collected two dinners. Also, no one tried to strike up a conversation.

The men and women of the crew took one look at her, and their eyes just kind of slid away to somewhere else. Even the captain’s.

Kris had heard other girls in high school complain that ugliness was an invisibility spell all its own. Kris had had other problems at the time and hadn’t given their complaints much thought.

She owed them an apology.

Or maybe being someone’s servant made you invisible.

Kris smiled to herself. Being someone’s ugly servant, now that really put you out of everyone’s notice.