The Luna Deception (12 page)

“Why should we donate it all to the recyclers?” Franckel said, jerking a thumb at the fire, which was indeed burning garbage. “We’re a good cause, too.”

Mendoza squatted among the indigo-colored people, numbed by all this strangeness. He accepted a cup of instant coffee. A
cup,
whose contents threatened to roll out over the rim every time he lifted it. Curtains hung on the walls of the cavern, framing screen views of forest and seashore as if they were windows. It was unbearably poignant.

Simon at Farm Eighty-One had uttered a truth that people in Shackleton City rarely mentioned. Dr. Miller had alluded to it, too. The spaceborn could never ‘return’ to Earth. Their long fragile limbs and weak lungs, their lazy hearts accustomed from the womb to micro-gravity, made it physically impossible for them to endure Earth’s gravity for more than a few weeks at a time. And they numbered in the tens of millions, thanks to sheer organic population growth.

They were a problem.

So what did you do with them all?

Answer, according to the Shackleton City bigwigs: You established a faux-Victorian regime that generated lots of service and menial jobs. And you created mythologies to explain why only human beings
could
do those jobs. (“Animals won’t thrive for bots. They need the human touch.”)

The spaceport squatters had no such illusions.

“They could automate the fuck out of our operation anytime they wanted to,” said a navy-skinned woman. “And they do want to. But the one time they tried, we sabotaged their bots. So they haven’t tried again.” She smirked. “If they want to get rid of us, they’ll have to come in here with gas or sub-acoustic weapons. Smoke us out like rats. And people would find out. There’d be vids of dead children all over the internet. So we’re still here.”

Mendoza knew better than to ask why they
wanted
to keep living in holes, bathed in life-shortening radiation, mainlining hyralonin, scavenging for necessities. Never ask anyone why they love their home. His coffee left a coating of grit on his teeth. Moondust in here, moondust in everything. He’d probably just swallowed a year’s quota of rads.

“We’re all interdependent, Rachel,” Father Lynch said. “You need the city, and they need you.”

“Oh, sure,” the woman shrugged.

Mendoza said, “About how many people come through here on average? Running away, like me?”

“NOMB.”
None of my business
, the motto of the spaceport squatters. But Mendoza figured the answer was quite a few. Enough people chafed under Luna’s paternalistic regime. And some of those might conclude that anywhere was better than here.

“The city turns a blind eye,” Fr. Lynch said. “They’re very happy for people to
leave.”

Mendoza nodded. “But there are no emigration controls. Anyone can leave, anytime. So why—”

“So why,” Rachel said, “aren’t
you
up there, sipping champagne in the departure lounge?”

“Ah …”

“Exactly. I’m not asking what you did. But whatever it was, you aren’t the only one. Plus, a lot of people just can’t swing the fare.” She stood. “C’mon.”

Mendoza glanced at Fr. Lynch. The Jesuit was talking to a guy with a bandanna hiding his lower face, presumably another runaway. The guy was spooning nutriblock hash under his bandanna like he hadn’t eaten in a week.

Mendoza followed Rachel, limping.

“Something wrong with your feet?”

“Long story.”

“I get it. NOMB. Oh well, you’re not going to be doing much walking for a while.” She giggled, for some reason.

They descended crude stairs blasted out of the rock. The firelight from the main cave threw their shadows ahead of them. The stairs bottomed out in a workshop with an airlock at one end. The other end was blocked by a mountain of rubble. Molded plastisteel crates stood around, partially filled with parcels and packets.

“Let’s see if you can fit into any of these crates. You’ll have a suit on, so there has to be room for your helmet.”

“Not again,” Mendoza said.

“What, did you think we were going to hand you a fake ID and a first-class ticket? You’re going cargo class. I have to weigh you, any stuff you want to take, plus your extra oxygen tanks, etcetera. Then we make up the difference with LVHPs—low volume, high profit goods. Plus rocks.” She looked from Mendoza to the crates. “You’re little. You’ll have room to move around some.” She hesitated. “What
did
you do? I can’t remember the last time we had an Earthborn person through here. I mean,
you
could go anywhere you wanted to … Oh, sorry, sorry. NOMB. Try that crate over there.”

Mendoza felt guilty for being Earthborn. Like he owed her some kind of explanation. “Maybe I just want to go home.”

Her eyes widened, white in her blue-black face. “You mean, back to Earth? But you’re not going back to Earth.”

“What?”

“We don’t do flights to Earth. Why would anyone want to go
there,
and get squashed like a bendy straw? Not that
you
would get squashed, of course. But no. You would have to find someone else to help you out with that.”

“Is there anyone else?”

“No.” She giggled, appreciating his plight. “Oh, boy. I thought you probably had quote, business, unquote, on Ceres. Maybe you can transfer when you get there.”

“Is that where I‘m going? Ceres?”

“Or somewhere in the Belt. I dunno. It’s wherever the ship is going.” She looked cross, as if Mendoza were finding fault with the service the squatters provided.

“I can’t go to Ceres. I need to go to—to Mercury.” As he spoke, he found a hard core of resolve. He was going to Mercury, to pull Elfrida out of Derek Lorna’s mess … and if she was already dead, he’d avenge her.

“Mercury?” Rachel said. “Well, we do do flights there. But not right now. There’s been a riot at UNVRP HQ, in case you haven’t heard.”

“I heard.”

“Star Force isn’t letting anyone land. Much less illegal immigrants.”

That sounded like a dead end. But maybe Fr. Lynch could fix it. “I’m sorry,” Mendoza said. “I’ve got to talk to my—my friend.” He backed out of the workshop.

“He doesn’t owe you any more favors,” Rachel yelled after him. “You blew the whole fragging network.”

Mendoza limped up the stairs to the main cavern. He could not see Fr. Lynch or the man the Jesuit had been talking to.

Franckel got in his way. “Looking for the priest?”

“Yeah.”

“He had to get moving. Said to tell you bye. His pilot couldn’t wait.”

“He’s gone?”

“You deaf as well as short?”

“One-seventy-five is a perfectly respectable height where I come from.” Mendoza could not believe Fr. Lynch would vanish without even saying goodbye. Maybe these people were treacherous. Maybe they’d overpowered Fr. Lynch, were holding him somewhere … “Did he say where they were going?”

“Dunno. Probably out to the Belt.”

Mendoza bulled past Franckel.

“Hey!”

Which way was the airlock? He limped into one of the corridors that led off the cavern. Within a few paces, it narrowed to a crack stuffed with rags. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, these people maintained their pressurization by splarting
garbage
into the cracks of this warren.

Franckel came up behind him. “Calm the hell down, guy.”

The spaceborn man was half a meter taller, perhaps stronger, but Mendoza had a laser pistol, and Franckel was not to know it was out of change.

Franckel backed up, red crosshairs wavering on his chest. He raised his hands. “OK. OK. The priest didn’t mention that you were fucking crazy.”

“That’s right,” Mendoza said. “I’m fucking crazy. Which way is the airlock?”

“That way.”

Everyone in the cavern skittered back. Mendoza sensed movement. He whirled to confront frozen men, like a game of Red Light, Green Light.

“Leave him alone,” Franckel shouted. “Let him go.”

Mendoza understood that Franckel’s goal was to get him and his pistol out of the hab. He slammed the airlock in the squatters’ faces. His Star Force surplus suit had been taken away. Coughing on moondust, he put on one of the squatters’ filthy patch-jobs. The legs and crotch sagged, stretched out.

He exited the airlock, ran past the control center, and bounded out along one of the platforms. Through a gap between two cargo containers, he spotted Fr. Lynch—
he
still had his Star Force surplus suit—and an extremely tall spaceborn individual, presumably the guy Fr. Lynch had been talking to. They were walking out of the terminal.

Mendoza sprinted after them. His over-large suit hampered his stride.

A row of divots appeared in the side of a container ahead of him.

Something smacked him in the arm.

He glanced back, saw two or three squatters stride-gliding along the platform. They carried what looked like long sticks.

Susmaryosep, those are guns. They’re shooting at me.

He glanced at the arm of his suit. The outer layer of fabric was torn, revealing a pristine white thermal layer.

He leapt between the moving containers to the next platform over, trying to deny the squatters a shot. But zigzagging like this slowed him down. They would try to cut him off.

He caught up with a robot forklift heading out of the cavern, leapt and clung onto its load, digging the toes of his suit’s boots into the gaps between sacks of beetroot. His feet screamed for mercy.

The entrance loomed. Maybe, just maybe he’d make it.

The sun shone into Faustini Crater almost horizontally, glittering on rock scarred with overlapping blast-melt patterns. Parked spaceships of all shapes and sizes dotted the crater floor. Service vehicles zipped around.

And there were Fr. Lynch and his companion, walking into the launch zone, just as casually as if they were taking a stroll in a park on Earth.

Mendoza located the suit’s radio. He enabled ALL FREQUENCIES. “Father! Wait! Please!”

They didn’t look back.

He jumped down from the forklift and ran after them. They hadn’t picked up his signal.

★

But someone else had.

As Mendoza would’ve realized if he had given it a second’s thought, ALL FREQUENCIES included the shipping terminal’s public comms band. This was monitored by the Spaceport Authority, so they could keep tabs on the squatter community.

The Shackleton City elite regarded the spaceport squatters as semi-feral pets. They played a useful role in purging the city of the unhappy and the criminally inclined.

Mendoza’s shout of “Father! Wait! Please!” merged into the babel on the local radio frequencies—and was instantly intercepted by the searchbots that Derek Lorna had set to hunt him.

VOICEPRINT MATCHING: 65% (the microphone in Mendoza’s stolen suit was lousy)

KEYWORD MATCHING: FATHER (Derek Lorna knew how Catholic priests were traditionally addressed)

“Worth checking out,” Lorna decided. He told his MI assistant: “Triangulate the source of that signal and get me some visuals.”

★

Mendoza bounded out of the shipping terminal into the sunlight.

Far ahead, the tiny figures of Fr. Lynch and his companion had vanished between the parked spaceships.

Something struck him hard between the shoulders.

Falling, he looked back at a mountain. The cargo terminal was in the central rubble pile left over from the days when Faustini Crater had been a water mine. He saw the squatters standing in the entrance of the terminal. One of them, probably Franckel, gave him the finger.

His faceplate bounced off the rock. He struggled to breathe.

A three-wheeled buggy whizzed across the launch zone and braked beside him. The driver jumped out. Consciousness fading, Mendoza admired the luminous halo of backscatter around the shadow of the driver’s helmet. It was like an angel had come to rescue him. If only such things could be true.

x.

Mendoza woke up with industrial-strength lights glaring in his eyes. The syrupy voice of a medibot informed him that it had removed a .22 caliber bullet from his back. The bullet had just missed his left lung, the medibot said. Mendoza was lucky.

He didn’t feel lucky.

Doped up, leaning on a helper bot, he hobbled out of the clinic into what seemed to be an administrative area of Faustini Spaceport.

The bot kept a vise-like grip on the compression cast on his upper torso. It guided him to some kind of employee lounge. Windows commanded a reduced-glare view of the launch zone, framed by clumps of ferns. There were two sets of pew-like ergoforms, one set facing the window, the other set facing a grotto with a waterfall trickling into a little pool. The tinkling of recorded wind chimes accentuated the hush.

Half a dozen miserable-looking men and women sat on the benches. They looked up when Mendoza and his helper bot came in.

“Whoa,” one of the men said. “What’d they do to
you?”

“What is this place?” Mendoza said.

“Chapel,” said one of the women. “Non-denominational.”

Mendoza’s helper bot lowered him onto a pew. “I didn’t know there was a chapel at the spaceport.”

“The Muslim employees sued.” The woman touched a button. Her pew collapsed into a long prayer mat. She lay down on her back. “I might just stay like this,” she said.

Mendoza sympathized. He was still woozy from the anesthesia. “Are you guys employees?”

“Of the spaceport? No,” said the man who’d spoken first. “I’m a travel agent. She works for the Shackleton City Visitor Center. So does he. She’s in customer service at Harrods. They’re from the post-sales feedback analysis division at Victoria Construction.”

“I’m getting a funny feeling that you aren’t here by choice.”

“Define
choice,”
said the travel agent. “The Leadership in Robotics Institute approached me about this job. I
chose
to accept. I didn’t ask any questions, either. What did you do, try to run?”

“Something like that.”

The travel agent raised his eyebrows, and all of them turned away from him, as if stupidity might be contagious.

Mendoza gazed blearily out of the window. The dark filter on the glass turned the lunar morning into twilight. A ship launched like a sparkler burning up. He wondered if Fr. Lynch had gotten away.