Joker Moon

by George R. R. Martin

  “Strangers?” Tiago blinked and leaned forward. Vasilisa’s face smelled of iron and copper, but unlike with the mysterious Indian woman, Tiago could sense the human flesh beneath her metal carapace. “How could there be any strangers here? We are literally on the far side of the Moon.”

  “Jokers come in air lock without going out first,” Vasilisa replied. “Jokers no one recognizes. So I hear.”

  “Ghost stories,” Bo scoffed. “I’ve heard ’em, too. But the perimeter sensors haven’t picked up a thing.”

  Vasilisa shrugged, her shoulders creaking. “Sensors or no, if nuke plant goes down and stays down, will get very cold in here.” Tiago shivered. Having grown up in Brazil, he didn’t deal well with low temperatures.

  “Ha!” Hardbody guffawed theatrically, slapping the table with one enormous paw and making Tiago’s beer slop out of its cup. “You all are so soft. Real jokers don’t care about a little rough living!”

  “To real jokers!” Bo proclaimed, and they all clacked their gray plastic cups together.

  The shock of the impact on the regolene sent a painful jolt down Tiago’s arm, and he gulped down the last of his beer to mute the pain.

  There was one other Carioca—a native of Rio de Janeiro—at the Moon base, though her family had money and as such she might as well have come from a different planet than Tiago. Her name was Isabelle, she was lean and angular with too many joints, but her dark brown face was entirely human and wore a constant wry smile. Their meetings were only occasional, because she worked in the nuclear power plant at the very bottom of the base.

  After that conversation with his digger companions, he made a coffee date with her. “E aí,” she said when she met Tiago in the commissary, clapping him on the shoulder and kissing both cheeks. “Como vai?”

  “Tudo bom,” he replied automatically, though really all was not well.

  Her face showed she’d noted the lie in his words. “Oi?”

  He hesitated before replying. “I’m worried,” he said, still in Brazilian Portuguese. “I hear rumors of sabotage at the nuke plant.”

  She looked both ways, then leaned in close. Speaking very low, also in Brazilian Portuguese—a language that few, if any, other jokers on the Moon shared—she said, “The rumors are true. People keep slipping in past security—we don’t know who, we don’t know how—and messing with the controls. They don’t seem to know what they’re doing, so the disruption has been minimal so far, but they keep pushing and whenever they find something that works they do the same thing again, and more.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know who? Aren’t there cameras?”

  “Of course there are cameras!” She gestured to one of the ubiquitous lenses in the ceiling. “But the intruders are … well, they aren’t any of us. Jokers, of course, or they’d stand out like a sore thumb, but no one anyone recognizes.”

  “Where are they coming from?”

  “At first they were coming in the north lock. But there was no sign of them approaching from outside! It looks like they just appeared in the lock, came inside, and wandered around until they found something worth sabotaging. But since they found the plant they’ve been appearing closer and closer to the plant itself.”

  “Teleporting?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe they are some kind of … construct? When we catch them they just vanish, leaving behind a little bit of moondust. We’ve tested it and it’s just ordinary dust from this area.”

  Tiago sat back, considering this new intelligence. The north lock was the one closest to the plain where he’d encountered the mysterious woman. And vanishing in a puff of moondust sounded extremely familiar. “You should take this information to Schwartz.”

  “Oh, he knows about it! He’s the one who told us to keep the sabotage a secret.”

  Tiago blinked. “Wouldn’t it help to have everyone keeping an eye out for the saboteurs?”

  “You’d think so. But he says it would be bad for morale. Schwartz won’t let anything slow this project down, and everyone’s scared to cross him.”

  “Maybe I can talk to him. He did say that if there was anything he can do for me I should ask.”

  That made her blink. “He said that to you?”

  “He seemed to take a personal interest in me.”

  She shook her head; it might have been an expression of awe and wonder, or perhaps concern. “You are swimming in very deep waters, companheiro. Take care you don’t get washed out to sea.”

  “Thank you for your concern. But if I don’t do something … we might all get shipwrecked.”

  Schwartz, Tiago learned, would be arriving on the Moon in just a few days, so he put in a request for a meeting. He was actually rather surprised when the request was granted, and indeed when he appeared at Schwartz’s office suite—the space was larger than Tiago’s quarters, and located deep underground, but everything was made of the same plain plastic and metal as the rest of the base—the secretary who met him looked him up and down suspiciously with her one large eye. “Tiago the digger?” she asked.

  “I suppose so.”

  “What makes you so special? He hasn’t even met with the environment team yet.”

  “I really don’t know.”

  Schwartz, when he emerged from the inner office, was grinning broadly and bouncing like a flabby rubber ball. His coverall, Tiago noticed, was made of the same gray material as everyone else’s, but was as impeccably tailored as the suits he’d worn on Earth. “So nice to see you again, Mr. Gonçalves!” he said. “Nearly as nice as being back in lunar gravity. I cannot wait until I can stop this endless shuttling back and forth and live here permanently.”

  Tiago waited until Schwartz had closed the door to his private office before raising his concerns. “I understand that no one likes to argue with the boss,” he said after describing what he’d heard—but not identifying his sources, nor sharing his personal experiences. “But keeping this sabotage secret is counterproductive. We should have every eye on the situation.”

  “I thank you for bringing your concerns to my attention. It shows initiative. But there are aspects of the situation to which you are not privy.”

  This took Tiago aback. “What ‘aspects’ could be worse than sabotage at the nuke plant?”

  “We are doing as much as we can to balance safety with productivity.”

  Tiago couldn’t fail to notice that Schwartz hadn’t answered his question. “You are certain this is the best course of action?”

  “We are doing as much as we can,” Schwartz repeated, tapping a finger on the table before him to emphasize each word. “And part of what we are doing is controlling the information available to the general population. To avoid issues of morale, you understand. I thank you again for bringing these issues to my attention, but I must ask that you not discuss them with anyone else.”

  Tiago felt his hands bunching into fists beneath the tabletop, and shook them out. He could tell from Schwartz’s body language that there was something he wasn’t saying … something significant. “Will you at least post guards at the plant?”

  “This project is a machine with many moving parts, Mr. Gonçalves. Sometimes you cannot fix one thing without creating problems somewhere else. Rest assured that I and my staff are working with full information and with the project’s overall best interests in mind.”

  This response didn’t satisfy Tiago. “If the sabotage doesn’t stop soon,” he said, trying to hold his voice level, “I will put the word out myself.”

  Schwartz’s black eyes contemplated Tiago for a disquietingly long moment before he replied. “My feelings toward you are avuncular,” he said, “but my affections are not bottomless. I would encourage you not to test their limits.” He leaned forward. “I will not allow anything, or anyone, to hinder the destiny of jokerkind. Not even you, my dear boy. Do we have an understanding in this?”

  Tiago didn’t look away. “I believe we do.”

  Just because Tiago understood Schwartz’s positi
on didn’t mean he agreed with it. Sabotage was happening—Schwartz had as much as admitted it—but rather than pulling out all the stops to combat it, he was keeping everyone in the dark. To Tiago that made no sense, but he knew that if he told anyone else, Schwartz would find out about it and come down on him hard. Also, Tiago had information on the saboteurs—or at least he thought he did—which might be significant, but which he had not wanted to share with Schwartz for fear of seeming insane.

  So he had no choice but to try to stop the sabotage himself.

  Isabelle had told him that the saboteurs were entering the base through means unknown, making their way to the nuclear power plant, and doing as much damage as possible before being physically apprehended, at which point they simply vanished. The saboteurs struck only during the day—the base’s day, that is, in the same time zone as the House Secure in South Carolina, rather than the two-week-long lunar day outside—and the attacks seemed to come in waves, daily for a few weeks followed by weeks of respite.

  Working backward from the strikes, security camera records showed that the saboteurs were making good use of the base’s crowded conditions—the same conditions Tiago and the other diggers were working hard to ameliorate—to hide themselves in the masses of jokers moving through the corridors between wherever it was they were gaining access to the base and the plant. The entry point, or points, must be in the cameras’ many blind spots … but Tiago could see things the cameras could not.

  With considerable difficulty, Tiago changed his work schedule to allow him to patrol the corridors during the vulnerable periods. Hundreds of jokers passed before his eyes as he pressed through the crowds, but it wasn’t his eyes he was paying attention to … it was his other sense, his special sense, which would tell him who was made out of meat and who was just a ghost made of vacuum and moondust.

  It was weird to focus on the slight, fluttery attraction of living flesh—a sensation he usually simply ignored, as it was drowned out by the much stronger tug of nonliving organic matter and the tingly discomfort of the regolene from which so much of the base was built—and even weirder to seek its absence. He wasn’t even sure he would know it when he saw it … and he was even less sure that he would ever see it at all. All he had was a hunch, an educated guess, that the saboteurs were somehow connected to the mysterious Indian woman he had met on the surface so many months ago … if she even existed.

  But still, he had to do something.

  Already spread thin, Tiago now felt as though he had two jobs: building the base and stopping the saboteurs. The latter job had to be conducted in secret, and without any assistance from anyone other than Isabelle, who because of her position couldn’t act overtly to help him. But she could provide information.

  One thing Isabelle told Tiago was that the saboteurs were getting bolder … and more effective. Power outages were now occurring on a nearly daily basis during the weeks of attack, and she confessed that the saboteurs were coming perilously close to doing permanent damage. If the plant had to be shut down permanently, or even for an extended period, they would have no choice but to evacuate the base, which would set the project back by months or years.

  So Tiago stepped up his patrols, forgoing sleep and all forms of recreation in favor of hours wandering the bustling corridors. As he didn’t wear his space suit inside, he was constantly jostled, stepped on, and knocked into by larger jokers. It was mind-numbing, dispiriting work, constantly shouldering past grumpy and often smelly jokers who were just trying to make their way to the commissary or their quarters after another exhausting shift. Tiago, too, was exhausted—his own work in the tunnels had not slacked at all—but still he pressed on, keeping himself going with cup after cup of the base’s harsh, acidic coffee.

  And then came the day he had been waiting for, hoping for … and dreading.

  He almost missed it. If a chance rebound off of another joker had not sent the stranger stumbling into him, he would never have noticed the absence. But once their shoulders touched, the strange sensation of not-being-there, which he had only experienced once before, was unmistakable.

  Tiago’s head whipped around to see a broad back, clad in gray regolene fabric like all the others, moving away from him through the crowd. The joker was tall, a hundred and eighty centimeters or more, and the back of the head was covered in red lumps. “Oi!” Tiago called, waving.

  The joker turned, regarding Tiago suspiciously. The figure was distinctly female, but her face was as red and lumpy as the back of her head, looking nothing at all like the beautiful Bollywood goddess Tiago had met on the surface. For a moment Tiago was certain he was making a tremendous mistake. But then he noted that her jumpsuit lacked epaulets.

  The epaulets had been introduced only a few weeks ago. It had been a remarkably large point of contention—derided by some as a useless frippery and hailed by others as a welcome injection of fashion into the otherwise completely utilitarian garment—but once the design change had been approved, all new outfits coming out of the fabricators had included them. And because all clothing was recycled and remanufactured rather than being washed or even stored, the change had rolled out across the entire population of the base in short order. There was almost no reason for anyone to be wearing a weeks-old garment.

  Unless they were an intruder who had missed the debate.

  “Oi!” Tiago repeated, approaching the stranger as though she were a long-lost friend. “Como você está?”

  “Do I know you?” she replied in English. Her voice was remarkably high and soft for such a large person, and incongruously carried a lilting Indian accent.

  “Mi viejo compañero!” Tiago insisted, and embraced the big joker woman about the waist in what seemed a friendly hug.

  The close contact left no doubt whatsoever that this was no ordinary person, not even for a joker. For though the thick waist was firm enough, and the hands that pushed at Tiago even more so, there was no organic matter to her at all. Even her clothing, which seemed authentic enough to the eye, lacked the grating tickle of true regolene fabric.

  But the strangely familiar sensation apparently went both ways, as their eyes met in a mutual wide-eyed stare of shocked recognition. “You!” the big joker said. “The white robot!”

  “I didn’t recognize you without your sari,” Tiago replied, in English, acknowledging their previous meeting.

  She pushed him away. “Do not try to stop me,” she whispered. “You do not understand how important this is.”

  Tiago pressed forward, maneuvering the two of them out of the crowd and into a quiet side corridor. “Who are you?” he asked. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Who I am does not matter. But the Moon … the Moon and I, we share a special connection. And I cannot allow anyone to pollute Her purity.”

  The vehemence in her voice took Tiago aback. “You sound like a nat,” he said. “They’re always going on about ‘purity.’ Are you one of those self-hating jokers? Or are you really a joker at all? Is this just some kind of disguise?” He poked her shoulder, lumpy beneath the gray fabric.

  She brushed his hand away. “I am as much a joker as anyone here! But not even the jokers have any right to the Moon! The Moon belongs to Herself alone!”

  “And you, apparently?”

  A flash of something—annoyance, or perhaps recognition that he’d scored a point—crossed her face. “You do not understand,” she repeated. “You have to leave the Moon. You all have to leave. I will make you leave if I must.”

  “Look, you … you don’t know what you’re doing. You could really mess up the nuke plant. You could cause a … a meltdown or something. People could die!” Her face showed he’d scored another point. “You don’t want that.”

  She looked down. “I only want to be left alone.” But when her gaze rose to meet Tiago’s it was filled with determination. “And I will not be denied in this.”

  “We—we jokers, and you say you’re one too—we only want to be left alone, too. And the Moon
is our best chance.” He reached to take her hand.

  “Stop touching me!”

  Immediately Tiago backed off, hands upraised. “I’m sorry, I won’t do that again. I really don’t want to hurt or offend you.” He paused, considering. “Please, let’s see if we can work out some kind of compromise. I can set up a meeting with Malachi Schwartz, the man in charge.”

  But at the sound of the name her lips drew back to show clenched teeth. “Schwartz? He is the worst of all of you!”

  Again the stranger’s vehemence took Tiago aback. “What?”

  “He has secrets. I have seen things he keeps from the rest of you. He is an evil, evil man.”

  Tiago’s hand approached the woman’s shoulder as though of its own volition, but he held it back to respect her wishes. “He’s been good to me, personally, but I’m sure we can talk to someone else if you—”

  She waved the offer away. “You must all leave!” Then a new expression, sly and calculating, crossed her face. “And now I know just how to make it happen.”

  And then she vanished, leaving just a few motes of dust dancing in the harsh artificial light.

  After that Tiago felt he had no choice but to go to Schwartz with what he knew, no matter how unbelievable the project manager might find it. But it took several days to arrange a meeting, during which time there were two more power failures, the second lasting over four hours. The temperature did indeed begin to drop, as Vasilisa had predicted, and Tiago’s relief when the lights came back on was very great.

  There were two burly jokers from the base’s security detail standing in Schwartz’s office suite when Tiago showed up for his appointment, and to his surprise they immediately began moving toward him. But even as Tiago was backing away, hands upraised, Schwartz appeared. “Leave him to me,” Schwartz commanded, and the guards backed off, though they continued to regard Tiago with suspicion.