by Wil McCarthy
Miyuki just shrugged. “Okay, yes. He’s a bastard. That’s not exactly new information. What do you want me to do about it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Dan ran his fingers through his weightless, not-washed-in-a-few-days hair, and sighed. “What happens if we cut Earth out of the picture? Can we find a derelict Cold War satellite with a working RTG? Maybe Harvest Moon can dig up some thorium for us. Are there supplies of it anywhere on the Moon? Find out for me, please. Meanwhile, what’s the status on the fusion tokamak? We launched that one already, right?”
She nodded, and pointed a finger toward the ship’s aft. “It’s in the lander’s cargo hold right now. The hold was specifically designed to accommodate it, Dan. If we put something else in, we might need to rip out bulkheads or pound a big dent in the wall. Something. It’s late in the day for this kind of disruption.”
“And yet, here we are,” he said. “Great. That’s just lovely. Still, there’s no point crying about it. Let’s figure out a replacement power supply, and get it the hell in here.”
Miyuki, who needed Mars more than she’d ever needed anything else, looked him in the eye and said, “Will do, boss.”
4.2
23 March
✧
Clementine Cislunar Fuel Depot
Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 1
Cislunar Space
“Why didn’t you wake me?” Grigory demanded.
Nervously, Andrei Morozov answered, “You said the asset at TPS had its instructions already. The same woman, on the same channel, contacted me a few hours later, saying she was in control of a shuttle departing Transit Point Station. She demanded I upload rendezvous instructions to get her to Clementine, and I did so. I assumed she was working for us.”
“She was,” Grigory said, “but not here. She’s not supposed to be here, Morozov.”
The two of them were in the pressurized hangar, holding onto grab rails with their feet. They were contemplating an entire space shuttle that didn’t belong in here. Parked in the arms of an insectile handlerbot, beside a similar structure holding Grigory’s own shuttle, the new arrival seemed to glare accusingly. It might as well have STOLEN PROPERTY spray-painted on it in big Cyrillic letters.
“This is a major fuckup,” Grigory said heavily, though Morozov’s explanation did make sense. “You have fucked us all right in the ass.”
“I take it that’s not our shuttle,” Morozov said. Quite unnecessarily, because although the two side-by-side spacecraft were identical Lockheed Martin LMS-50s, the new one had the RzVz logo painted prominently on the tail.
“Funny,” Grigory said, then sighed. “How many people know she’s here?”
Morozov rubbed his hands together uneasily. “You mean, besides the radar satellites of every space-faring government? Six. At least six. Maybe more; she’s sitting in the mess hall right now.”
“Wonderful. Really exceptional work.”
This was exactly the sort of problem best handled with a quiet disappearance of the person involved. Poof, gone. Unfortunately, six people were too many to trust with a secret like that, even here. So, since true quiet didn’t appear to be an option, Grigory must roll hard to the opposite rail.
“What else did she tell you?”
Morozov shrugged. “Nothing, until a few minutes ago, and even then she didn’t say much. She said she was ‘burnt,’ and they put her on a shuttle home.”
“This is not her home.”
Morozov paused a moment and then said, “Understood. She did at least hack the running lights on that shuttle. And the location transponders. She came in dark, so it’s only the superpowers who could’ve tracked her course changes.”
“Only our greatest adversaries, you mean. Only the people capable of doing us real harm.”
That didn’t please Grigory, but it did give him an idea.
“If the crew of Transit Point put her in there alone, that technically makes her the captain of the ship, as well as an obviously persecuted individual. If she was seeking asylum here on Clementine, of course she commandeered the ship. How else could she get herself to safety?”
“So we return it, then? The shuttle?”
“No,” Grigory answered. “Not unless they sue for it, in which case we’ll demand proof they know it’s here. But for now we keep the whole matter as quiet as possible. Make sure everyone who has seen her knows this. Quiet.”
It wasn’t easy to keep things quiet in this chattering age, but Orlov Petrochemical and its associates did have a better field record than most, and Clementine was a small and frankly elite community within it. His people knew what was good for them and, more importantly, what wasn’t. And when they failed and word got out, which it certainly must at some point, then it would be Grigory’s own version of the story that circulated. It was hardly the best solution, but it was all he could come up with on short notice, and so it would have to do.
“And what do we do with her?” Morozov wanted to know.
“An excellent question. I’ll go and speak with her, but unless she steps outside for a breath of fresh air, she’s going to have to stay here for the foreseeable future. And it occurs to me, I’ll need you to strip all the identifying information off that shuttle. Not enough to fool a crime lab, you understand, but enough to thwart a casual inspection. You, personally, must do this, and keep everyone out of here until it’s done. The transponders were deactivated? Yes? Replace them with our own—something from the gatherbots; I don’t really care. Suspicion is fine; people are suspicious of us all the time. But let’s have no smoking guns in plain view, ah?”
Morozov, who’d worked for Grigory a long time now, simply nodded.
“Understood, sir. I’ll order some clothing for the woman; right now she’s dressed in RizzVizz blue. Not exactly blending in.”
“Mmm. Damn. All right, I’ll go talk to her.”
Morozov nodded, happy to have the problem out of his problem basket. “Right. Do we know her name?”
“Not officially,” Grigory said, and kicked off toward the hatchway to the station proper.
“Ms. Donna,” he said to her.
She was a slight woman, but wiry with muscle. Her skin was very black against the blue of a Renz Ventures space coverall, and she smelled of sweat and perfume. A forlorn little flight bag hovered beside her on a strap.
“Ms. Obata,” she corrected. “Dona Obata.”
Indeed, it said so on her name tag.
“You’re African,” he said, surprised by her accent. “They told me you were French.”
“I can not both?”
Ugh, her Russian was atrocious, and Grigory had no French at all. Annoyed now, he asked her in English, “Why did you come here?”
Grigory rarely spoke English, but only a fool didn’t know it well, and he was no fool. He’d been told, in fact, that his English was quite good. When foreigners made the mistake of speaking “privately” in English within his earshot, they usually found cause to regret it later.
She replied in the same language, “It was that or go back to Earth, where I’d be no use to anyone.”
“Mmm. And what makes you think you are of use to anyone here?”
She had no reply to that, but neither did she look embarrassed or nervous, or anything really.
He told her, “Your persecution was political and perhaps racial in nature. From the way you’d been treated, you feared for your safety should you return to Paramaribo. You were sent off alone in that shuttle, and by your understanding of maritime law, this entitled you to commandeer the controls and set a destination of your own choosing. You are thus a refugee, and you saw Clementine as a possible refuge. You have asked me for political asylum. You are to volunteer no information, about this or anything else, to anyone save myself, and if anyone questions you, you are to answer in small words. But this is the story people will glean from what little you tell them.”
Again, she said nothing. Her face impassive, unafraid, simply waiting.
That she did reply to, saying, “That sounds difficult to undo.”
“Is it? Hmm. Not my problem. You have created a number of issues by coming here, where you are neither trusted nor known. These are issues that I and my people must now deal with, while you stay hidden from public sight.”
Carefully, she asked, “What if I don’t want to renounce citizenship?”
He snorted. “Are you really asking? I could, for example, put you right back on that shuttle. Or out an airlock.”
“You could try,” she said, an edge of warning now in her voice. He reminded himself that this was a dangerous person, trained by the French and U.S. militaries to kill with her bare hands, in zero gravity. And she’d had no compunctions about betraying France and the U.S. on Grigory’s behalf, for the promise of money. That made her even more dangerous. But Grigory was dangerous, too, and laughed.
“You have what the Americans call a ‘bias toward action.’ I approve of that. Truly. But you are being more rude than smart, and I haven’t got time to explain to you just how fucked you are. This is no soft target, Ms. Obata. My people are not soft people. Nothing is owed to you, and the thing you owe me is nowhere in evidence. You’ve failed in your mission, and you’ve come straight to me with your failure, which is in itself another failure, because now you and I are linked. For nothing. For no reason and no gain. Do you see?”
After an uncomfortable pause, she nodded. “Yes. Sir.”
“Good. Then we understand each other. We will create some paperwork for you to sign, as a refugee seeking political asylum. It has never happened in space before, so the precedents are ours to set. Look on the bright side: you will owe no taxes to any nation.”
Carefully, she asked, “What else?”
He laughed sourly. “Ms. Obata, what I wanted from you, what I wanted you to secure for me, is now beyond your grasp. For the moment, you are pure liability. Every time you open your mouth to speak, I would like you to consider this. We also have no empty quarters in which to stash you. The station is quite full, and in need of expansion. But this gives me another idea: you will sleep in my own quarters.”
She raised an eyebrow, and the corners of her mouth turned down a bit.
“Relax,” he told her. “This isn’t Renz Ventures. We will sleep separately, in shifts, and you will not be touched. You think I have nowhere better to ink my quill? But placing you thusly will further tangle any rumors that might attach to you. People will see you coming and going from there, and it will make them think still another thing about why you are here with us. And they will not ask questions about that. Do you see? The more different stories there are about you, the less anyone really knows. And you want them to know nothing, because if the real truth came out about what you were supposed to be up to, you would be real liability. No, if we play this right, your stupidity can still be useful, in confusing and wrong-footing our opponents.”
The woman thought about that, and said, “I’ll take it as a positive omen, that you said ‘our.’”
“Inefficiency of the language,” he said dismissively. “The Russian word, nash, is more precise. I did not mean to include you, verbally, as part of the team here. But your words are also interesting, as the interpretation of omens says more about the . . . interpreter than it does about the ominous facts themselves. Your point is visible: having accepted an offer to corrupt yourself and betray your government and your strike team for me, even having failed at it, you imagine yourself now in my employ.”
She shrugged. “That’s accurate, although it sounded a lot less stupid in my head. I will tell you, it wasn’t the money you were offering that attracted me. It was the offer itself—the fact of what you intended. ESL1 is a soft target, and the future belongs to the bold.”
“And the competent,” he said, snorting. “There are two other operatives on their way there, yes? The American and the Kiwi, who will seize Esley Shade Station without your help. Benefiting no one—not even the governments ordering the seizure. It is shortsighted foolishness, and an excellent example of why I have cut ties with the governments of Earth.”
A middle-aged workman in the stretchy gray uniform of Clementine stuck his head through the doorway.
“Good morning, sir,” he said in thickly accented Russian. Bulgarian? Polish? His name tag said Szczepanski. A Polish mechanic or tank handler? Something like that. “Is breakfast still serving?”
It was a foolish question; the serving windows were closed, and the drink dispensers and food printers covered. Grigory didn’t know this man; Clementine had staffed up quickly to get ahead of the growing need, and Grigory hadn’t spent enough time here in the past several months to know even half of the senior staff. The junior staff he wouldn’t normally bother with, except to tweak the noses of the people above them, and Grigory frankly didn’t know which category this man belonged in.
“No breakfast,” Grigory told him, regretting not having closed the hatch on his way in. “And we’re having a meeting here.”
“Ah,” said the man. “Who’s the new meat?”
“Her name is get the fuck out of here and close the hatch behind you.”
“What? Oh. Sorry.”
“Indeed.”
The man retreated into the connecting module, closing and latching the bright yellow hatch behind him.
“The famous Orlov charm,” said Dona Obata, with something like approval in her voice. Clearly, she’d understood at least something of that exchange. He couldn’t tell to what extent she was joking or serious, and he didn’t really care. But all right, part of him was beginning to warm to this strange woman.
Sighing, he asked, “You wish to remain here as part of the staff? Is that your goal?”
“Basically, yes,” she agreed.
“Hmm. Hmm.”
Under the circumstances, it was a bold request indeed. He tried to imagine what sort of job she’d even be qualified for. Throwing people out of airlocks? He already had people for that, or people who he believed were at least capable of it. Clementine was fully staffed with, despite his grousing, mostly quite competent, no-nonsense-type people. But he considered personal initiative one of the greatest qualities an employee could possess, and he had to admit, stealing a spaceship and coming here uninvited—to demand a job!—showed rather a lot of balls.
“My better judgment bends two directions on this,” he admitted, “but you have . . .” he struggled for the right English words “. . . roused my curiosity. So very well, I will set you a task, to spend a quiet week figuring out what you can do for me. Without drawing attention to yourself or causing any additional problems. Impress me, Ms. Obata, and you may find . . .” he paused a moment for dramatic effect “. . . that the future still has you in it.”
3.2
23 March
✧
St. Joseph of Cupertino Monastery
Shoemaker-Faustini Plateau
Lunar South Polar Mineral Territories
My Dearest Father Bertram,
This letter hopefully answers your queries about a day in the life of a Lunar monk, of which there may be only three at this moment, but still. As we prepare our souls and ourselves for the imminent touchdown of Brers Fox, Bear, Huey, Dewey, Dopey, Grumpy, Ham, and Eggs, we are indeed well advised to advise them well. And you, their sternest taskmaster!
Each day is different, and being that they are 709 hours long and varied, I shall presume you mean an Earth Day, which we Lunatic Monastic refer to as a Vatican Day, relic as it be of a past we’ve shed like skin cells.
The valley in which St. Joseph sits is a kilometer off the Harvest Moon mining road, and bears some description since I get the impression you don’t quite understand how it’s situated. Craters Shoemaker and Faustini sit within a few latitudinal degrees of Luna’s southern rotational pole, which puts the noonday sun here just a few degrees above the horizo
n, and the midnight one just a few degrees below. This casts the broad, flat floors of both craters in full shadow all the time, which over geologic ages has permitted water ice to accumulate there, though it elsewhere sublimates and escapes as cosmic vapour upon the solar wind. This much I think you understand.
What may be less clear is that the taint of land betwixt these holes is in permanent sunlight, albeit slanty and long-shadowed. For this reason also, the Earth we send you in pictures always appears to be newly risen or else about to set, when in fact neither thing has occurred or is about to, or ever shall. This is also the reason our solar panels sit upright, like the playing-card soldiers of Wonderland’s Red Queen, guarding the rim of Saint Joe’s little valley and turning slowly about on their heels, completing a revolution once per month.
I mention this because said valley splits the difference, with low hills and dips that first block and then admit and then block again the nourishing rays of Ra, so that rather than enduring a fortnight of harsh day followed by a fortnight of harsher night, we get four “nights” per month of durations 26, 22, 49, and 17 hours respectively, where the sunlight doesn’t reach us direct, but only reflected from the crests of the opposite hills. Call it twilight if you must, although black sky and bright gray hills are not particularly “twi” in the sense you might mean it.
At “night” we can see the brighter stars, and in the intervening “days” we cannot, although the planets Venus, Mars, and Jupiter remain visible as the zodiac permits. The Milky Way, alas, eludes us always, which is a fine strange loss for those who’ve relocated permanent to spaces outer. We can, however, see it beautifully from the ice mines themselves.
So understand, Bertie my love, that “morning” comes when it pleases, and any circadian rhythm that attempts to track it is doomed to disappointment. Melatonin is the main product of our drug synthesizer, and also guaifenesin booger liquefaction syrup, about which more anon.
