The John Varley Reader (96 page)

“I'll bet he was shocked when he got up here.”

“Maybe, a little. Oh, he knew there wasn't any black market meat up here. Hell, it was rare enough down there.”

“What . . . what's a chicken?”

Babcock laughed. “Sort of a bird. I never saw one alive. And I never really liked it that much, either. I like steak better.”

Bach thought it was perverted, but was fascinated anyway.

“What sort of steak?”

“From an animal called a cow. We only had it once.”

“What did it taste like?”

Babcock reached over and speared the bite Bach had just carved. She popped it into her mouth.

“A lot like that. A little different. They never get the taste just right, you know?”

Bach didn't know—had not even realized that her steakplant was supposed to taste like cow—and felt they'd talked about it enough, especially at mealtime.

 
They returned to Hobson's that night. Bach was at the bar and saw Steiner and Babcock enter. They took a table across the dance floor from her. They were nude, faces elaborately painted, bodies shaved and oiled.

Bach was dressed in a manner she had avoided for eight months, in a blue lace maternity gown. It reached to her ankles and buttoned around her neck, covering everything but her protruding belly. There was one other woman dressed as she was, but in pink, and with a much smaller bulge. Between the two of them, they wore more clothing than everyone else in Hobson's put together.

Lunarians tended to dress lightly if at all, and what was covered was a matter of personal choice. But in fleshparlors it was what was uncovered that was important, and how it was emphasized and displayed. Bach didn't care for the places much. There was an air of desperation to them.

She was supposed to look forlorn. Damn it, if she'd wanted to act, she would have made a career on the stage. She brooded about her role as bait, considered calling the whole thing off.

“Very good. You look perfectly miserable.”

She glanced up to see Babcock wink as she followed Steiner onto the dance floor. She almost smiled. All right, now she had a handle on it. Just think about the stinking job, all the things she'd rather be doing, and her face would take care of itself.

“Hey there!”

She knew instantly she'd hate him. He was on the stool next to her, his bulging pectorals glistening in the violet light. He had even, white teeth, a profile like a hatchet, and a candy-striped penis with a gold bell hanging from the pierced foreskin.

“I'm not feeling musically inclined,” she said.

“Then what the hell are you doing here?”

Bach wished she knew.

 
 
“It's definitely the wrong sort of place,” Babcock said, her eyes unfocused and staring at Bach's ceiling.

“That's the best news I've heard in months,” Steiner said. There were dark circles under his eyes. It had been a strenuous night.

Bach waved him to silence and waited for Babcock to go on. For some reason, she had begun to feel that Babcock knew something about the Bellman, though she might not know she knew it. She rubbed her forehead and wondered if that made any sense.

The fact remained that when Babcock had said to wear blue instead of pink, Bach had done so. When she said to look lonely and in despair, Bach had done her best. Now she said Hobson's was wrong. Bach waited.

“I don't care if the computers say they spent their time in places like that,” she said. “They probably did, but not toward the end. They would have wanted something quieter. For one thing, you don't take somebody home from a place like Hobson's. You fuck them on the dance floor.” Steiner moaned, and Babcock grinned at him. “Remember, it was in the line of duty, Erich.”

“Don't get me wrong,” Steiner said. “You're delightful. But all night long? And my
feet
hurt.”

“But why a quieter place?” Bach asked.

“I'm not sure. The depressive personalities. It's hard to cope with Hobson' s when you're depressed. They went there for uncomplicated fucking. But when they got really blue they went looking for a friend. And the Bellman would want a place where he could hope to take someone home. People won't take someone home unless they're getting serious.”

That made sense to Bach. It followed the pattern of her own upbringing. In the crowded environment of Luna it was important to keep a space for yourself, a place you invited only special friends.

“So you think he made friends with them first.”

“Again, I'm only speculating. Okay, look. None of them had any close friends. Most of them had boy fetuses, but they were homosexual. It was too late to abort. They're not sure they want the kids, they got into it in the first place because the idea of a kid sounded nice, but now they don't think they want a son. The decision is to keep it or give it to the state. They need someone to talk to.” She let it hang there, looking at Bach.

It was all pretty tenuous, but what else was there to go on? And it wouldn't hurt to find another spot. It would probably help her nerves, not to mention Steiner's.

 
 
“Just the place for a snark,” Steiner said.

“Is it?” Bach asked, studying the façade of the place and failing to notice Steiner's sarcasm.

Maybe it was the place to find the Bellman, she decided, but it didn't look too different from fifteen other places the team had haunted in three weeks.

It was called The Gong, for reasons which were not apparent. It was an out-of-the-way taproom on 511strasse, level seventy-three. Steiner and Babcock went in and Bach walked twice around the block to be sure she was not associated with them, then entered.

The lighting was subdued without making her wish for a flashlight. Only beer was served. There were booths, a long wooden bar with a brass rail and swiveling chairs, and a piano in one corner where a small, dark-haired woman was taking requests. The atmosphere was very twentieth-century, a little too quaint. She found a seat at one end of the bar.

Three hours passed.

Bach took it stoically. The first week had nearly driven her out of her mind. Now she seemed to have developed a facility for staring into space, or studying her reflection in the bar mirror, leaving her mind a blank.

But tonight was to be the last night. In a few hours she would lock herself in her apartment, light a candle beside her bed, and not come out until she was a mother.

“You look like you've lost your best friend. Can I buy you a drink?”

If I had a tenth-mark for every time I've heard that, Bach thought, but said, “Suit yourself.”

He jingled as he sat, and Bach glanced down, then quickly up to his face. It was not the same man she had met on the first night at Hobson's. Genital bells had become the overnight sensation, bigger than pubic gardening had been three years before, when everyone ran around with tiny flowers growing in their crotches. When men wore the bells they were called dong-a-lings, or, with even more cloying cuteness, ding-a-lingams.

“If you ask me to ring your bell,” Bach said, conversationally, “I'll bust your balls.”

“Who, me?” he asked, innocently. “Farthest thing from my mind. Honest.”

She knew it had been on his lips, but he was smiling so ingenuously she had to smile back. He put out his palm, and she pressed it.

“Louise Brecht,” she said.

“I'm Ernst Freeman.”

But he was not, not really, and it surprised Bach, and saddened her. He was by far the nicest man she had talked to in the last three weeks. She allowed him to coax out her make-believe life history, the one Babcock had written the second day, and he really seemed to care. Bach found she almost believed the story herself, her sense of frustration giving a verisimilitude to Louise Brecht's crashingly boring life that Bach had never really achieved before.

So it was a shock when she saw Babcock walk behind her on her way to the toilet.

Babcock and Steiner had not been idle during the twenty minutes she had been talking to “Freeman.” A microphone hidden in Bach's clothing enabled them to hear the conversation, while Steiner operated a tiny television camera. The results were fed to a computer, which used voiceprint and photo analysis to produce a positive ident. If the result didn't match, Babcock was to leave a note to that effect in the toilet. Which she was presumably doing now.

Bach saw her go back to the table and sit down, then caught her eye in the mirror. Babcock nodded slightly, and Bach felt goose pimples break out. This might not be the Bellman—he could be working any of a number of cons, or have something else in mind for her—but it was the first real break for the team.

She waited a decent interval, finishing a beer, then excused herself, saying she would be right back. She walked to the rear of the bar and through a curtain.

She pushed through the first door she saw, having been in so many taprooms lately that she felt she could have found the toilet with her feet shackled in a blackout. And indeed it seemed to be the right place. It was twentieth-century design, with ceramic washbasins, urinals, and commodes, the latter discretely hidden in metal stalls. But a quick search failed to produce the expected note. Frowning, she pushed back out through the swinging door, and nearly bumped into the piano player, who had been on her way in.

“Excuse me,” Bach murmured, and looked at the door. It said “Men.”

“Peculiarity of The Gong,” the piano player said. “Twentieth century, remember? They were segregated.”

“Of course. Silly of me.”

The correct door was across the hall, plainly marked “Women.” Bach went in, found the note taped to the inside of one of the stall doors. It was the product of the tiny faxprinter Babcock carried in her purse, and crammed a lot of fine print onto an eight-by-twelve-millimeter sheet.

She opened her maternity dress, sat down, and began to read.

His real, registered name was Bigfucker Jones. With a handle like that, Bach was not surprised that he used aliases. But the name had been of his own choosing. He had been born Ellen Miller, on Earth. Miller had been a negro, and her race and sex changes had been an attempt to lose a criminal record and evade the police. Both Miller and Jones had been involved in everything from robbery to meatlegging to murder. He had served several terms, including a transportation to the penal colony in Copernicus. When his term was up, he had elected to stay on Luna.

Which meant nothing as far as the Bellman was concerned. She had been hoping for some sort of sexual perversion record, which would have jibed more closely with the profile on the Bellman. For Jones to be the Bellman, there should have been money involved.

It was not until Bach saw the piano player's red shoes under the toilet stall door that something which had been nagging at her came to the surface. Why had she been going into the males-only toilet? Then something was tossed under the door, and there was a bright purple flash.

Bach began to laugh. She stood up, fastening her buttons.

“Oh, no,” she said, between giggles. “That's not going to work on
me
. I always wondered what it'd be like to have somebody throw a flashball at me.” She opened the stall door. The piano player was there, just putting her protective goggles back in her pocket.

“You must read too many cheap thriller novels,” Bach told her, still laughing. “Don't you know those things are out of date?”

The woman shrugged, spreading her hands with a rueful expression. “I just do what I'm told.”

Bach made a long face, then burst out laughing again.

“But you should know a flashball doesn't work unless you slip the victim the primer drug beforehand.”

“The beer?” the woman suggested, helpfully.

“Oh, wow! You mean you . . . and, and that guy with the comic-book name . . . oh, wow!” She couldn't help it, she just had to laugh aloud again. In a way, she felt sorry for the woman. “Well, what can I tell you? It didn't work. The warranty must have expired, or something.” She was about to tell the woman she was under arrest, but somehow she didn't want to hurt her feelings.

“Back to the old drawing board, I guess,” the woman said. “Oh, yeah, while I've got you here, I'd like for you to go to the West 500th tube station, one level up. Take this paper with you, and punch this destination. As you punch each number, forget it. When you've done that, swallow the paper. You have all that?”

Bach frowned at the paper. “West 500th, forget the number, eat the paper.” She sighed. “Well, I guess I can handle that. But hey, you gotta remember I'm doing this just as a favor to you. Just as soon as I get back, I'm going to—”

“Okay, okay. Just do it. Exactly as I said. I know you're humoring me, but let's just pretend the flashball worked, okay?”

It seemed like a reasonable enough suggestion. It was just the break Bach needed. Obviously, this woman and Jones were connected with the Bellman, whoever he or she was. Here was Bach's big chance to catch him. Of course, she was not going to forget the number.

She was about to warn the woman she would be arrested as soon as she returned from the address, but she was interrupted again.

“Go out the back door. And don't waste any time. Don't listen to anything anyone else says until someone says ‘I tell you three times.' Then you can pretend the game is over.”

“All right.” Bach was excited at the prospect. Here at last was the sort of high adventure that everyone thought was a big part of police work. Actually, as Bach knew well, police work was dull as Muzak.

“And I'll take that robe.”