Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon

by Richard Roberts

  I had an unpleasant feeling it would work even better on humans. I did not intend to find out.

  Claire’s hand gripped my shoulder. “One more thing. Juno and Calvin are dating, and I mean if we weren’t such a big distraction, it would take a pry bar to separate them.”

  Remmy blushed hugely, and stared at her boots. Claire had scored a direct hit. She also wasn’t done. “In my professional opinion, the desire is one sided. She’s got him on a hook.”

  Since Claire’s professional opinion consisted of a hundred stories from her super-powered temptress mother, I might have to take that one with a grain of salt. It certainly got no comment from Remmy, only a sour look that replaced the blush.

  Seconds later, footsteps thumped on the stairs. Juno led, and while I could see hip and leg movement under that long dress, other than that I would swear she floated across the rubble. Fawkes more prosaically had his guns out, but gave us a cheery grin and tapped a pistol against his forehead when he saw us down the hall.

  Juno’s smile was warm, admiring, but also detached. Of course, it might be hard to emote with your eyes covered up by glowing white. She addressed me with a small bow. “The Jovians tell me you have performed a miracle, Bad Penny.”

  Remmy answered her, still sounding nervous. “She made meat puppet parasites. She can use Puppeteer cysts like she’s operating a machine.”

  Hey! “That’s an exaggeration.”

  “No it’s not. Hers even control machines. Look!” She pointed at the automaton. It started to lift its head, but I glared at it and it turned off again.

  Calvin gave his guns a twirl, and tucked them back into their holsters. He walked over to Remmy and laid his hand between her pigtails. “Remmy, don’t be jealous just because Bad Penny is some kind of super-mechanic. Her power is a gift. We’re lucky that someone showed up with the powers we need.”

  Juno smiled wider. “There is no luck. The Jovians sent us to meet them.”

  I expected skepticism over this. Instead, Remmy folded her arms and muttered, “I guess.”

  Calvin left her there, walking up to me and getting down on one knee. He took my hands―one of them still bare―and completely ignored Ray’s bristling to tell me, “I’m going to be up front with you, kid. You’ve walked into a bad situation. There are a whole lot of folks just barely surviving after the war. The Jets are so desperate, they might start another war to keep from starving to death. The automatons don’t care. Everyone who doesn’t obey their rules can die, as far as they’re concerned. The Rotors are good people, and they have enough to share, but their masters won’t let them. I know you’re not a hero, but sometimes life puts you in a spot you never expected.”

  He was right about that, and Claire’s description of Calvin was playing out right in front of me. “I just got here, Mister Fawkes. Supervillains aren’t real big on authorities in general, but asking me to overthrow a government I’ve never even seen is a bit much.”

  Remmy thumped her wrench down on top of the condenser with a loud clang. “We don’t need a revolution anymore, Calvin. We’ve got a whole colony! Europa is right there below us, all the fish and water we need! I can override enough automatons to get basic services, and we can let all the Jets and Rotors who want come live here. This place can be self-sufficient. All we need is about four more tanks of aetheric fluid, and some seeds and farm animals.”

  Calvin looked over at his sister with a pained, tolerant-big-brother look. “The automatons won’t sell us stock, and they won’t sell anyone aetheric fluid. If we get them, what do you think Thompson will do?”

  He still held my hands, so I gave Calvin’s a squeeze to get his attention. “Mister Fawkes, we’re not rebels, but we are supervillains. Stealing aetheric fluid is the kind of thing we do best, and since it’s for a good cause, we’ll do it just for fun. No charge.”

  Calvin laughed suddenly. Remmy was right, he was a lot like Ray, just burlier. He had the same easy grin. “I think I understand you, Miss. I’ve been an outlaw so long; Remington has never lived a normal life. You don’t want a fight you don’t believe in. That’s fine. We’ll get you to Callisto. You can take some time, scout out the robbery. If all we get is a few aetheric tanks, you’ll have worked a miracle and we’ll be grateful for it. I’m confident that once you’ve seen how the automatons treat people, you’ll want to do more.”

  Juno stepped up next to Calvin, her hand on his shoulder. “She will. This is a special child, the hero we’ve been waiting for.”

  Okay, she halfway had me with that one. Being the Hero of Jupiter would be great practice getting my name cleared back home.

  “Special is right.” Calvin peered at the pulsing red mass that fixed up the automaton. “There’s never been a mechanic this good.”

  Remmy growled. I shot her a sheepish look. “We’ll steal the fluid, and see where we go from there. But let Remmy come with us. We’ll need a native guide, we can use her help, and she could use some fun.”

  I flashed my most wicked grin across the room. “And trust me, Remmy Fawkes. This will be fun.”

  urns out, on a functioning Jupiter space station, the landing fields are those big wings. Not that I even knew until we were practically docked and I could look out a porthole. The Fawkes ship was lousy for sightseeing.

  Ooh, listen to me. Penelope Akk, jaded space tourist!

  Most of the cynicism came from spending a couple of hours sitting on wooden boxes and metal chairs with nothing to look at while Calvin piloted us between Jupiter’s moons. Just when Callisto reared its pockmarked head and I got a peek at the orbiting colony, Juno stepped into the room. Claire looked up from the book she’d found and Ray stopped trying to figure out the ventilation system.

  Juno folded her hands in front of her stomach, right below her corset-exaggerated bustline. The gesture looked formal and just a little alien. With her glowing eyes, I couldn’t tell who she was looking at or talking to. “I look forward to your successful return, children. You will be successful.”

  Tilting his head, Ray eyed her quizzically. “Is that a statement of confidence, or precognition?”

  She smiled, dreamy and blissful, gazing up through the ceiling and towards the back of the ship. “The Jovians see things we cannot, and they tell me that you have already changed the destiny of humanity across all the moons. You are heroes.”

  A bubbly laugh accompanied Claire dropping her book and draping an arm over the back of her chair. She gave Juno a sparklingly white grin. “Heroes is the exact opposite of what we are.”

  The statuesque woman with her waist-length braids looked down at Claire. Her faint, serene smile showed no sign that she took Claire’s joking either as an insult or a game. Her voice remained just as smooth. “The Jovians are wise and powerful, but also trapped by the storms of mighty Jupiter. Until they are freed, they can only touch us in the gentlest of ways. You have your role to play, and so does he”―she nodded at Ray―“but it is Bad Penny who will save us all.”

  Save us from what? I didn’t get to ask. The ship bounced under my feet, and I nearly fell over. Remmy hurried in from the control room, followed at a more leisurely pace by Calvin.

  “Yeah, yeah, Bad Penny is amazing, gods of the endless gas ocean, and their plan to set us free,” Remmy flapped a hand.

  It turned out their ship had a nice ramp for letting people on and off in an atmosphere, and I’d been standing right next to it. Remmy turned a crank, starting the ramp descending. I didn’t even wait for it to hit the metal floor. I grabbed Remmy by the shoulder and leaped right off the end.

  “We’ll be back tomorrow, kids. I’m not real―” her brother tried to say, but I hadn’t come to space to hang around listening to adults lecture. I could do that at home. I was here to see alien vistas and mad science!

  I got them. The fake gravity of Calvin’s ship gave way to the fake gravity of the space station right at the end of the ramp, and out here on the wings, the push was weak. We soared through the air, and had to
skip when we hit the ground.

  What a view!

  All I could see in Fawkes’ ship were metal walls. On the landing strip of a space colony… I didn’t know what to look at first. The moon Callisto loomed in space off to our right, a huge speckled circle. A dark rainbow like the wings of a mockingbird made up most of the surface, but white spots everywhere gave Callisto a terminal case of lunar acne. Kind of a reverse of our moon’s white surface and dark craters.

  Past Callisto and off to the side, hung Jupiter. We were too far out for the planet to dwarf Callisto, but it was still big. From that dust colored globe, Jupiter’s permanent red storm watched us like a bloody pupil. It reminded me of the universe’s biggest Conqueror orb. All around it, around us, stars glittered in vast numbers. The largest were probably more moons. Jupiter had a lot of moons.

  And that was just the sky.

  A couple of other spaceships sat on the landing deck. These didn’t look like Calvin’s flying saucer at all. They looked like fat, wallowing boats with biplane wings and propellers on the front.

  Beyond those ships I got my first look at an inhabited Jupiter colony. It looked, more than anything, like a carnival.

  ‘Carnival’ had been the first comparison that came to mind, but maybe that was a bad description. Other than the giant glowing rotor, there weren’t any obvious rides. Most of it looked more like a park. Trees, grass, bushes, and lines of growing crops covered most of the surface. The few small buildings all had red and white stripes, which maybe gave me the carnival impression.

  An extra-atmospheric starscape. Outer solar system planets close enough to touch. Most of all, a space station and spaceships. If―no, when―I got this supervillain thing straightened out, I had to take Dad to see all this.

  A couple of men in overalls on a bench at the edge of the main deck tipped their caps when they saw me staring, then went back to doing not much.

  They would have freaked if the Red Herring landed in front of them, which was the reason I’d reluctantly left my cool space fish behind, and Juliet with it. No fool, I had Ray carrying a duffel bag full of the food I’d looted from the Red Herring’s kitchen. A deactivated Vera weighed down one of my pouches. Remmy, Ray, Claire, and I made a line as we ambled down the long, long, long landing strip.

  Ray rubbed his gloved hands together. “So, what do we do first?”

  “We go to bed.”

  My attempt to sound like an unquestionable team leader failed completely. Claire didn’t even hesitate before protesting, “Are you kidding? I want to meet people! Look at those guys! They’re right out of an old photograph. An old black and white photograph.”

  She shook her hands at the two men on the bench. I’d originally thought they were wearing overalls. As we got closer, those turned out to be baggy blue pants with thick suspenders and white sleeveless undershirts. They were thin, but all muscle everywhere, and floppy blue caps. Claire had a point. These guys could not be more obviously dockworkers if they’d been stamped out of a machine.

  A possibility I could not rule out.

  Their picturesque nature did not prove Claire’s point. I wagged a finger from side to side. “Oh, no. I know we’re not in California anymore, Toto, but our bodies don’t know that. Back home it’s pushing midnight. We’re looking for a place to crash.”

  Remmy reached up with both hands, dislodging my grip on her arm. She pulled her goggles down over her eyes, smoothed her hands back over her pigtails (spreading a little more grease on both) and walked backwards, facing the rest of us.

  “Relax. Your gang is in my hometown, now. Just follow Remmy Fawkes.” She flashed us a confident grin, and a wink that wasn’t quite hidden by the goggles.

  She strutted ahead of us past the dockworkers. They’d been friendly at a distance, but up close they gawked. They had too much expression to read. Confused, suspicious, amused, we were sure not anything they were used to seeing.

  That part made sense. Ray had on his black eagle-faced masquerade mask, and with the gloves and the hat, hardly any skin showed at all. My inventor’s safety jumpsuit had more than once been mistaken for power armor. Remmy looked like she’d had to stop and build a new car on the way to being knighted by the Queen.

  Despite the rest of us being the freak show, Claire got the direct stares. She was at least wearing a skirt. She had to look by far the most normal of us, but while we all got looks, their stares focused on her.

  She ate it up, of course. She even leaned back after we passed to flash them a smile. Her power wasn’t turned on. Her ponytail shone its normal ivory in the direct light of the rotor, not gold.

  A concrete path, tidy as you please, led from the wing towards the center of the colony. On our left, mixed rows of beanpoles and cabbages. On our right, a short hedge blocking us from a park scattered with fruit trees.

  The hedge might block us, but a goat stuck its head out through the branches. Its bulging yellow eyes followed us through alien rectangular pupils, but it showed no sign of Puppeteer infection. I was pretty sure goats just looked like that.

  The farm seemed to continue forever, but we got past the hedge and the park opened up. Men and women strolled around in pairs, or sat on benches talking in groups. More than two people together were always either men or women. Only couples, arm in arm, mixed the genders. The men… actually, except for the mask and the all-black theme, Ray might fit in. A few were stripped down like the dockworkers, but most wore suits, including waistcoats, and some kind of hat. The women’s dresses went right down to the floor, with skirts so narrow, it had to be hard to walk. Like Remmy, they all wore corsets, but unlike hers, most of those corsets had been cinched so tight, I couldn’t figure out how these poor women breathed.

  Practically every woman wore the same dress, and every man the same suit, but at least they broke things up with color. Reds, blues, yellows, purples―Callisto could be renamed Peacock City.

  A few of them knew Remmy. I saw some tipped hats and heard declarations of, “Evening, Miss Fawkes.” The bright, fake sunshine didn’t look like evening to me, but we must be on a similar clock.

  Remmy swaggered through all of this. We skipped down stairs just like the huge set back at Europa, passed through an intact but mostly closed down-market hallway, and wound through smaller corridors until one last stairway took us down into a big room with balls and blocks and rocking horses stacked along the walls. Metal rails crisscrossed the floor, heading down a spider web of side passages. An automaton slid out of a cubbyhole in the wall, rolling along the rails to meet us.

  It had taken a genius of mad science to make something with no electrical parts function as an AI. There was even a spring winding key in the little alcove where the automaton had been resting.

  In every other respect, the creator’s genius had failed. It looked a little like a department store mannequin, and a lot like some horrible animatronic from a carnival booth. Its head and shoulders jittered as it talked, the colors on its metal-sculpted dress and face were due entirely to peeling paint, and the fake eyes didn’t focus on us at all. A nametag built into its left breast read ‘Miss Rattlebottom.’

  The voice worked just fine, wobbling a bit but conveying plenty of emotion. Specifically, disapproval. “Remington Fawkes, you and your companions are out after curfew.”

  Remmy bobbed her knees in what might have been the most perfunctory curtsey in the solar system. “Yes, Ma’am. We just arrived from Europa. My friends are foreigners who have never been here before. Could you assign us rooms?”

  Miss Rattlebottom stood there for several seconds, clacking and, yes, rattling. The mannequin only went down to mid-thigh, where a post connected it to the rails it used to travel around. The post was the only part of the body that seemed able to stand still. The rest constantly twitched and generated a quiet but high speed clicking.

  Finally, she said, “Security says you did come straight here. I forgive you for missing curfew this one time, Remington, but you are all dressed improper
ly, and will go to bed without supper. Do you understand?”

  Remmy bowed her head. “Yes, Miss Rattlebottom.” She sounded apologetic, but she looked smug. The automaton obviously had no sense of smell. The aroma of Claire’s mother’s cooking would tell any human that we’d brought our own supper.

  Miss Rattlebottom let out a loud sigh, her mouth opening and shutting as stiffly as a nutcracker’s. Clearly, we were well-loved but impossible children. “Proper attire will be made available in the morning. Names?”

  Remmy pointed us out each in turn. “Bad Penny, Reviled, and E-Claire.”

  “Dormitory M, rooms 60, 59, and 59. Room 58 is still assigned to you, Remington.”

  Remmy brightened in what looked like honest delight. “We’re all together? Hey, thanks, Miss Rattlebottom!”

  That apparently ended the conversation, because Remmy darted off down the nearest hallway, and we had to scurry to catch up. Once we had, Ray reached out an arm with theatric slowness to lay it across Claire’s shoulders and give her a leer. “It sounds like we’re sharing a room. I know―”

  Remmy cut him off with a hiss and a swat at his arm. Claire was already giggling, but Remmy growled darkly. “Don’t even pretend. Not if you want to sleep in a bed tonight. House mothers have no sense of humor.”

  Yet more hallways branched off this one at regular intervals. With the wooden wall paneling and recessed ceiling lights, the whole place looked like a hotel. One of those hallways had the letter M over it, and Remmy led us there.

  Another automaton stood in an alcove by the doorway, but she didn’t move when we entered. Only two things differentiated this hallway from the one we’d come in. First, identical doors ran in perfectly even spacing down both walls. The numbers on the doors shattered Ray’s lascivious suggestion he and Claire would be roommates. Opposite doors on either side of the hall had the same numbers, starting at 1 near us and going down the line. Rooms on the right were for boys, and rooms on the left for the girls.