Joker Moon

by George R. R. Martin

  Schwartz ushered Tiago into his office, where he offered coffee. It was much better than the bitter stuff in the commissary. “I apologize for the guards’ overenthusiasm,” he said. “The tensions have been appreciable.”

  Tiago told Schwartz the whole story, beginning with his meeting with the Indian woman on the lunar surface. After some hesitation, he even included the burly red joker’s accusations against Schwartz.

  “And you believe these two are the same person?”

  “I can’t be certain, but yes, I think so.”

  Schwartz stroked his almost nonexistent chin, his black eyes narrowing. “I’m sure you appreciate how implausible this story is.”

  “I do. Which is why I didn’t tell you about it before.”

  “It is also extremely … convenient.”

  Tiago blinked. “What?”

  Schwartz stepped to his desk, opened a laptop, and began tapping at it. “I must confess I have also not been completely forthcoming with you. One important datum I omitted was the primary reason for secrecy regarding the sabotage.” He turned the laptop around so Tiago could see the screen. “Which was that we harbored suspicions that the sabotage was in fact an … internal matter, and we did not want the saboteurs to know what we knew.”

  The screen showed a black-and-white video, security camera footage from the nuclear plant. The image was still at first, save for a few blinking lights, but then a figure entered suddenly, immediately moved to a control console, and began bashing at it with a crowbar, sending sparks and fragments flying. The room lights began to flicker.

  The footage was silent.

  The figure was small and lithe, with parti-colored skin and hair.

  It was Tiago.

  “That isn’t me!” Tiago protested.

  “It certainly looks like you.” On the screen, security guards entered and the figure faded away to nothing. The lights flickered once more, then died. “And you were in the vicinity of the power plant immediately before the incident.”

  Tiago looked at the time stamp frozen on the black screen. It was at the beginning of the four-hour power outage. “Of course I was! It was right in the middle of the vulnerable period. I was wandering the corridors near the plant, looking for the saboteurs.”

  “We also cannot verify your location afterward.”

  “Well, things got pretty crazy when the lights went out.”

  “How convenient.”

  “This … this makes no sense!” Tiago stammered. “If I could teleport and look like someone else, why would I do that”—he gestured at the black screen—“with my own face on?”

  “You contend that the saboteurs are a single shape-shifter. Their behavior could also be explained as the actions of a coordinated group of base personnel. Which of these explanations passes Occam’s razor?”

  Tiago gaped in astonishment for a moment before formulating a reply. “But if I were a member of this … conspiracy, why would I risk myself like that?”

  “Such a group’s decisions as to which operative to employ in any given operation are not, at this time, open to us. But is it not rather suspicious that immediately after you were captured on video, you appear in my office with a rather implausible story about a mysterious shape-shifter who can teleport and breathe vacuum?”

  “But I met the saboteur immediately before that! If she’s a shape-shifter she could have, have, uh, imitated me! To cast suspicion on me.”

  “Is there any evidence for Mr. Gonçalves’s meeting with the supposed red, burly joker?” Schwartz said to the air.

  “No, sir,” came a voice. “We’ve reviewed security footage for the time and area he mentioned and found no indication.”

  The whole conversation, Tiago realized, was being monitored and probably recorded.

  Of course it was.

  “We met in a, a side corridor,” Tiago protested half-heartedly. “There might not have been a security camera there.”

  “How convenient for you.”

  Tiago’s shoulders slumped. “Look, I didn’t do it. That’s all I can say.”

  Schwartz considered Tiago for a long time, his black eyes hard and cold. “Suppose I accept this story at face value.”

  “It’s the truth!”

  “‘Though love repine, and reason chafe,’” Schwartz declaimed, “‘There came a voice without reply, ’Tis man’s perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die!’”

  “Que porra é essa?” To Schwartz’s blank expression he translated, “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “In this case it means that sometimes the ‘truth’ can be a matter of opinion.” He held out his fat, flabby hands in a gesture of supplication. “This project has already come so far, Mr. Gonçalves, and has so much further to go. And you, too, have much farther to go. I put you where you are not only because it is a good match for your wild card abilities, but because I want you to literally have your hands on the foundations of this world.” His expression now seemed genuinely pleading. “You have so much potential, my boy. Your abilities are … I believe you are capable of much more than you have as yet realized. I can see you growing up with this world … growing to take control of it. It would be a shame to waste so much potential over a … difference of opinion.”

  “So you don’t really believe me.”

  “I am prepared for your sake to behave as though I do. But let us say this. If you do not persuade your supposed vacuum-breathing shape-shifting teleporting friend to immediately cease all efforts at sabotaging this project, I will not be so generous in the future. Not to you, and not to your coconspirators. And we will find them.”

  Tiago felt his heart pounding, slow and hard, as he considered Schwartz’s words. “I don’t have any influence over her. I don’t even know if I will see her again!”

  Schwartz shrugged, though the gesture was barely visible given his ball-like form. “At this point the choice is yours, Mr. Gonçalves. Return to your duties, and stop the sabotage—how you do so is not my concern—or be delivered at once into the gentle hands of base security.”

  It wasn’t much of a choice … but if he retained his freedom, he would at least have a chance to prove himself innocent. “I will return to my duties.”

  Schwartz’s hand was soft and flabby, but he seemed sincere as he shook Tiago’s. “I want nothing but the best for you, my dear boy. Please do not disappoint me.”

  Tiago found himself smiling grimly. “I’ll try not to.”

  Three days went by. Three days of vulnerability to sabotage. Tiago managed to change his work schedule to patrol the corridors during the day, but though he pushed through the crowds as fast as he could, rudely touching as many jokers as possible, he found no sign of the saboteur—or saboteurs, he had to admit. There were no further power failures, at least … until the end of the third day, when the lights went out right at the beginning of Tiago’s dinner.

  A collective groan arose from the jokers in the crowded commissary, for whom this was only a sadly-too-common annoyance and not a sign of ongoing sabotage. For this, at least, Tiago had to thank Schwartz’s secrecy policy. But the groan and following grumbles began to take on a worried tinge as the darkness continued, with even the emergency lighting failing to come on. Phones and work lights flickered on here and there, giving Tiago enough illumination to set down his tray and begin making his way to the exit, heading toward the power plant in hopes of spotting the saboteur there. But as he was descending the stairs to the lower level the lights came back on, and when he reached the plant he found nothing but a phalanx of security personnel keeping everyone away.

  He made his way back to the commissary, but the place had been thrown into chaos by the power failure, and he wasn’t really hungry anyway. He returned to his quarters, where he turned out the light and lay on his bunk, his mind spinning.

  He felt completely helpless. Was there anything else he could be doing to protect the base … and himself? Even if he did find the saboteur, what could he do to
stop her when she could simply vanish from his grasp? And what would happen to him if he failed to do so?

  Then his anguished ruminations were interrupted by a featherlight touch on his cheek, accompanied by a faint greenish light through his closed eyelids. Immediately his eyes snapped open.

  Hovering above his face, wings lofting languidly in the low gravity, was an enormous moth.

  Tiago’s entire body jerked in astonishment, but he managed to keep himself from swatting the fragile creature away. It was beautiful and, apart from its unexpected appearance, seemed harmless enough.

  The moth was the size of a dinner plate, mostly green but with pale blue and purple edges to its wings, and had a fuzzy body with long feathery antennae. Its wings glowed in the darkness, a pale green glow that was oddly soothing rather than menacing. The wings trailed off in long swallowtails that reached nearly to Tiago’s waist.

  This was no dream—Tiago’s heart pounded and he knew himself to be completely awake. The slow motions of the moth’s glowing wings sent a gentle breeze across his face, and his own exhalations stirred the fine hairs on its legs. But, on the other hand, Tiago didn’t think that real moths glowed, or that they grew this large, and he couldn’t imagine how one could have gotten into his room. And as he examined the creature closely he realized it didn’t look exactly natural … it seemed more like a three-dimensional painting. The subtle green and purple patterns of its wings looked like brushstrokes, and moved slightly, flowing like ripples on the surface of a windblown pond.

  And then the moth spoke, adding yet a greater degree of peculiarity to the situation. “I’m sorry.”

  “Wha?” Tiago managed.

  “I’m sorry,” the moth repeated. It had the same feminine voice and Indian accent as the red, knobby joker, and now Tiago realized that its body had the same lack of presence to his organic sense. “I … I thought I could rid myself of two problems at once. But I’ve only made the first problem worse, and put you in terrible danger you don’t deserve. You seem a nice enough boy.”

  “Danger? What?” Tiago chided himself for his ineloquence, but felt completely out of his depth. “I don’t understand.”

  “Hush! I have so little time to explain…” Suddenly the moth’s glow began to dim. “Damn! Beware of—” Then the voice, the glow, the brush of air from the moth’s wings, and the peculiar sense of absence all vanished completely.

  When Tiago switched on the light he was not surprised to see nothing at all where the moth had been. But a few grains of grit dusted his face and chest.

  He lay for a long time staring into the darkness, his already troubled mind now more anxious and confused.

  He must have drifted off to sleep eventually, because the next thing he knew he was being awoken by an angry pounding on his door. It was Mike, the crab, accompanied by the rest of his digger crew. “You’ve slacked off enough,” Mike said. “You’ll be on shift this morning or there’ll be hell to pay.”

  Groggy and incoherent, his protestations ignored, Tiago was dragged to the air lock. Eventually he gave in and suited up.

  “What’ve you been doing with all your time off?” Hardbody asked as they set up at the rock face.

  Tiago considered his answer carefully—as carefully as he could in his exhausted, distracted state, anyway—before replying. Hardbody was a coworker but not really a friend … in fact, he was kind of an asshole. Tiago didn’t feel he could bring him into his confidence. “I’ve been dealing with a … personal problem.”

  “We’ve all got problems. I don’t see why you’re so special.” Hardbody punched the rock wall then—it was not just a gesture, it was the beginning of his work for the day—and Tiago bent to clear the small amount of rubble that slipped past Hardbody’s ace power and fell to the ground.

  But as he stooped, he felt a tickle in his feet and looked up.

  One of the robot forklifts was charging directly toward them—much faster than he’d ever seen one of them move. Faster than he’d thought they could move. It was now only a couple of meters away, and its headlights glared in Tiago’s eyes. “Watch out!” he cried, and shoved Hardbody out of the forklift’s path, incidentally pushing himself away in the opposite direction.

  But, to Tiago’s surprise, rather than slamming into the wall between Tiago and Hardbody, the runaway forklift immediately turned, spewing dust and chips from beneath its wheels as it slewed to a halt just short of the wall. This was more sophisticated behavior than Tiago had ever seen from a robot forklift before, and he suspected that someone must be remote-controlling it. This suspicion was reinforced as the forklift’s wheels spun, making its whole body shudder and veer in the silence of vacuum as it built up speed … heading directly toward Tiago. Tiago leapt to one side, but the forklift immediately turned to follow.

  The damn thing was fast. It nearly clipped him with its raised fork, then reversed itself in a couple of body lengths and charged him again like an enraged bull. The headlights splashed the walls as it turned, throwing crazy shadows in every direction.

  But there was a reason jokers were better at this work than robots, even remote-controlled robots, and that was adaptability. The tunnel ceiling here was nearly six meters up, and in the lunar gravity Tiago could easily leap that high … where no wheeled forklift could follow. He sprang to the top of the wall and clung to a beam there. He could feel the beam’s pain as his weight was added to the stresses upon it, but those stresses were far from its breaking point. He would be safe here until someone could come and disable the runaway forklift.

  “Mike!” he called into his radio. “We need help here!”

  But only silence came in response.

  “Bo! Vasilisa!” No response. Letting go of the beam with one hand for a moment, he switched his radio to the emergency channel. “Mayday, mayday!” he called. “Equipment malfunction, tunnel sixteen, northwest work face! Immediate assistance requested!”

  Silence.

  “Filha da puta!” Tiago swore.

  Looking down, he saw that the forklift, which was much faster and more maneuverable than Hardbody’s bulky form, had him trapped in a corner. He was dodging it for now, but sooner or later it would pick him up and fling him against a wall, smashing his helmet. Tiago switched his radio back to the diggers’ channel. “Hardbody, can you hear me?” he asked, not really expecting an answer.

  “Yeah!” came Hardbody’s panting voice. Graças a Deus!

  “Climb the wall! It can’t follow you!”

  Hardbody replied with a grunt and immediately began climbing, his huge shovellike hands digging into the solid rock. Most of the resulting rubble vanished due to Hardbody’s ace power, but some fell onto the forklift, visibly denting its housing.

  “Throw rocks!” Tiago shouted into his radio. “Kill the damn thing!”

  Again Hardbody grunted—he was close enough now that, despite the harsh uncertain lighting, Tiago could see the wicked smile on his face—and he ripped a chunk of rock from the wall, flinging it down at the rogue machine. But the forklift dodged, bouncing on its wheels in the low gravity, and the rock shattered harmlessly and soundlessly on the rubble-strewn floor beside it.

  With a roar, Hardbody reached and pulled an even bigger chunk from the wall. But in his haste and anger he also pulled down several of the supporting beams that braced up the fractured rock of the tunnel ceiling. Tiago, too, cried out, the broken beams’ pain transferring through the structure to him, then again as he felt the damaged structure begin to collapse. Hardbody dropped the chunk of rock and clung tightly to a girder … an uncontrolled fall from this height could easily break his helmet, even in this low gravity, and even if the fall didn’t kill him the forklift might.

  Gritting his teeth against the pain, Tiago extended his awareness into the web of regolene beams that held the ceiling up. They were stiff and resistant to his power, but he flexed as hard as he could … and the half-broken structure stirred, like an injured spider, pressing back against the tons of rock above, w
hich seemingly wanted nothing more than to crush this tunnel out of existence.

  It might have worked. But the forklift, or whoever was controlling it, quickly realized what Tiago was doing … and began to ram repeatedly against one of the main supporting columns. The sharp edge of its fork broke big pieces off the column on every strike.

  “Ai!” Tiago cried with each blow, tensing every muscle in his greatly extended plastic and regolene body, trying to hold it together by will alone. But will alone could not win out against thousands of tons of moon rock, a damaged system of beams and girders, and a murderous forklift.

  With one final blow of the fork, the column shattered. Tiago screamed as he felt the regolene part, the stress transferring to other, already overstrained structural members, which snapped and buckled in turn. In the chaos Tiago was shaken from the beam to which he clung—the pain, at least, vanished immediately, but he found himself looking up at the cracking, collapsing ceiling as he fell helpless toward the floor below. He landed hard, feeling something break in his back, but of more immediate concern was the huge, sharp-edged fragment of rock that tumbled with the majestic slowness of one-sixth gravity directly toward him.

  He couldn’t move. He couldn’t stop it. And he couldn’t survive the impact.

  And then a shadow blocked the light … and the falling fragment shattered into a million pieces, most of which immediately vanished. Only a peppering of small stones remained, striking painfully on his plastic skin but doing no serious damage. Tiago gasped and turned his head to the shadow, which turned out to be Hardbody, grinning with self-satisfaction and cracking his enormous knuckles. “Get up,” he said, extending a hand.

  He tried. “I can’t!” Was his back broken? He’d heard something snap when he landed, and the pain was fierce.

  But when Hardbody bent and tried to gently pick Tiago up, he didn’t budge. “Shit,” he said, then peered beneath Tiago’s body. “There’s some kind of black goo sticking you to the floor.”

  “It must be sealant.” There was a container of sealant, in case of suit rupture, in Tiago’s backpack unit. It must have broken open in the fall. Now that he knew what the problem was, Tiago pressed his arms and legs against the floor with all his might. It didn’t help. “You’ll have to pull me free,” he gasped.