Scorpion by Christian Cantrell (best english novels for beginners txt) 📗

Amberley-Ash, where he will pick up a bespoke order he placed months ago. The second is a company called PLC, run by the twins Naan and Pita, who, if all goes well, will hand him the last name on his list.

There are ferries that move people between Doha Port and Grid exclaves at no charge, but they are slow, inefficient, and usually crowded. In contrast, a well-established international Chinese ride-sharing company provides premium autonomous quadcopter transport. They are even cleared to take passengers directly to Hamad International, if you can stomach the exorbitant convenience fee. The insect-like devices are known as Qīngtíng, or Dragonflies, and are in constant algorithmic rotation, constituting one of the most efficient logistics operations Ranveer has ever seen. In just seconds, after a launch carefully designed to feel like a lightweight thrill ride, he is looking down between his British-tan wingtips at the fleet of public ferries below, each carving its own long white wake into the emerald-green Gulf.

The Grid is not nearly as industrial-looking as one might expect from thirty-six regularly spaced structures built using technologies derived from offshore oil-drilling platforms. They are essentially multitiered, steel-framed glass boxes supported at each corner by funnel-shaped pylons with accents that reveal themselves, after dark, to be customizable RGB plasma lighting. The last time Ranveer was forced to make an in-person visit to The Grid, he unexpectedly ended up spending the night and found that he rather enjoyed the cognac he took out on the balcony off one of the exclave’s living quarters. He even briefly considered a nice corner unit as a retirement option for himself, but he knows he is much too restless to spend his remaining days confined to a thirty-by-thirty-meter, four-story artificial island. While he may, when absolutely necessary, visit the odd exclave, waking up inside one every single morning would feel far too much like a cage.

Cantilevered off the southeast corner of each unit is a sizable blue disc that, if you didn’t know better, you might mistake for a trampoline. In the center of each disc is painted the Chinese character for “quad” (), which looks like an exotic mutation of what was once the universal symbol for helipad. Ranveer cannot remember which platform belongs to Amberley-Ash, but he poked “Corpuscule”—the unique name her exclave is registered under as required by Qatar’s articles of incorporation—into the hologram floating above the directory panel back at the launch and therefore trusts he will be conveyed accordingly.

There is a brief moment of panic as the Dragonfly swings precipitously back toward shore, and he imagines it continuing along a hijacked path and touching down right in the center of a circle of CIA officers and Interpol agents who have been waiting for days for the safest and most dramatic way to take him. But then he sees that he is losing altitude and closing in on one of the exclaves nearest to shore. Amberley-Ash, Ranveer now recalls, was an early investor in The Grid, and therefore has coveted, low-number coordinates.

After touchdown, the Dragonfly pneumatically squats, and all four rotors abruptly halt in perfect unison. The canopy splits and lifts like a pair of transparent wings drying in the sun, and the side panel facing the exclave’s entrance unfurls into three grippy steps connecting the Italian-leather cabin to the vulcanized-rubber platform. Even though there is no chopper wash to duck away from and shout over, the regular spacing of exclaves creates channels for leisurely Gulf breezes to merge together into sizable gusts, so the transition from quadpad to exclave is buffered by an airlock. As he steps through the initial entrance, Ranveer buttons his coat closed, hoping that the gas-powered bulk strapped to his side will go unnoticed.

—

Amberley-Ash waits just beyond the second set of doors. Her hair still occupies that portion of the visible spectrum right in between red and orange that, being an accomplished molecular biologist in possession of a very high-end spectrophotometer, she has, Ranveer suspects, spent cumulative years painstakingly perfecting. It’s longer than it used to be—just past her shoulders rather than the layered bob he remembers framing her fair and delicate complexion before—but her overall style clearly hasn’t changed. She is wearing what Ranveer assumes is a black bodysuit beneath a pair of torn denim shorts and a fitted white T-shirt with the word “Recovered” printed across the chest. She is barefoot, which reminds Ranveer that she has a moon tattoo on her ankle and a star on the nape of her neck.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Amberley-Ash is pretty close to the antithesis of Ranveer’s attraction template. His usual weakness is tall, dark-skinned brunettes with expensive bikini waxes who know how to navigate a novella-length wine list. In his mind, there is no bigger turnoff than a grown woman who doesn’t understand the concept of age-appropriate fashion. And yet there is something about this woman that he deeply admires. And sometimes admiration has a way of manifesting itself in unexpected ways.

Ranveer suddenly remembers her smell—a combination of dryer sheets and baby powder and plain white soap. To an only child who grew up as a Hindu in Tehran among the aromas of cumin and rose water and incense, such bouquets of Western domesticity were once foreign and exotic, and he is surprised by how much he is looking forward to inhaling them again. But even though the glass doors behind him are now sealed off to the Gulf winds, the doors ahead are not parting. And Amberley-Ash is not smiling.

“I’m surprised you came in person,” she says. These days, most structural glass is manufactured with microscopic patterns of engineered imperfections that bat a wide range of sound frequencies around until they lose most of their energy, eventually emerging from the other side as nearly imperceptible white noise. Therefore, Amberley-Ash’s voice emanates from an acoustic panel embedded in the ceiling.

Ranveer slips his hands into his trouser pockets and shifts his weight. “Aren’t you going to invite