The Dark Side

by Anthony O'Neill

  “Vote again,” demands the droid.

  “What the fuck? Man, you just killed Spyder Blue!”

  “Vote again.”

  “This is fuckin’ insane!”

  “This is a democracy, sir. Vote again.”

  But Dustproof Shockproof doesn’t vote again. In fact, it’s clear the band doesn’t know what to do. Probably they realize they’re in no condition for a fight—there’s nowhere to run if things look bad—but on the other hand they’re not inclined to bow to anyone, least of all a neatly groomed android who looks like a narc.

  “Fuck you, man!”

  “Who the fuck—?”

  “Fuck your democracy!”

  The droid says, “Are you forfeiting your vote, sir?”

  “What the fuck are you taking about?”

  “Are you relinquishing your right to vote?”

  “I’m not relinquishing anything!”

  “Then are you acquiescing to the wishes of your superior?”

  “No—fuck you, no!”

  “And the rest of you?”

  No answers.

  “Then it seems the vote is now even,” the droid says. “There is no majority. So to prevent a leadership crisis, which would be most undesirable at this delicate time, I will assume command. Driver, kindly turn this vehicle in a northerly direction.”

  “No, driver—fuck this!” says Maxx Dee.

  “Don’t you dare turn this thing!” says Q’mar Kent.

  The droid, puzzled, addresses Kent. “But sir,” he says, “you previously wanted to go to Purgatory.”

  “I did!”

  “Then are you changing your vote?”

  “I am!”

  “Why are you changing your vote, sir?”

  “Because I am!”

  “That is not a rational answer.”

  “Well, fuck you, your democracy, and your fuckin’ tin asshole!”

  Macleod still doesn’t turn his head. But he hears what comes next. The droid has clearly risen from his seat. There are shouts of protest. There is movement—the whole vehicle rocks. There’s a smack, like a piston hitting a side of beef. Another smack, and a crack. And then there’s chaos.

  Macleod still doesn’t turn. But there are screams. There are ripping sounds. Something fleshy hits the back of his head. A spray of blood splatters across the glass in front of him. There are cracking sounds. Gurgling sounds. Moaning sounds. Dying sounds. And still Macleod doesn’t turn. Nothing he can do about it, no point trying.

  But surreptitiously he starts turning the VLTV north. He steers off the hard-packed track, and weaves between some craters.

  Finally there is no noise at all apart from death rattles. All in all, it’s taken about four minutes. He hears someone—the only survivor—move forward, shift a dead body, and drop into the seat behind him. Macleod just keeps driving, as if this sort of thing happens every other day. He’s just relieved he hasn’t got a pulse-light attached to his face, because it’d be flashing like a disco lamp.

  Finally there’s a voice.

  “You are heading north, sir.”

  Macleod gulps and nods. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “It is, sir. I am the King.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I am the democracy.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Macleod can feel the droid’s eyes on him. It’s absurd, but he reckons he can feel the droid’s breath too, prickling the hairs on the back of his neck.

  He coughs. “You just tell me if you wanna change direction or anything . . .”

  “Not at all, sir; you are a skilled driver. Please keep driving.”

  So they continue for about fifteen minutes, Macleod going through the motions stiffly but efficiently—at least his heart has stopped pounding—and the droid remaining perfectly silent. It’s not that different, Macleod tries telling himself, from those times when he’s had a disagreement with a passenger, or some uppity celebrity. He decides to speak.

  “The night will overtake us soon.”

  “Will this affect your driving, sir?”

  “I’ll just turn on the floods.”

  “Let me know when you do that, sir.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Let me know when you make any changes at all.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The toggle at the top right of the left panel—that is for directing the lights, sir?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And those guarded buttons—they’re for the airlock doors?”

  “Uh-huh—I flip the guards and press the buttons one after the other.”

  “Both doors will not open together?”

  “Only if you press the buttons at the same time.”

  “And what is the maximum speed of the vehicle, sir?”

  “Hundred and twenty on tarmac. But out here, I don’t go higher than a hundred on hard track, fifty at most on rough terrain.”

  Silence again. Macleod is perversely proud of himself, for conducting the conversation in such bizarre circumstances—and while still under the lingering influence of Selene—but inevitably he starts wondering why the droid is so interested in the operations of the VLTV. And inevitably, even through his drug haze, he sees that it can’t be good.

  But Macleod is a realist—or so he keeps telling himself—and he’s not interested in sustaining false hopes. So he’s determined not to cry about it.

  “Can I ask a question?”

  “What sort of question, sir?”

  “I just wanna know where you came from.”

  “Why do you want to know that, sir?”

  “I just like to talk to my passengers.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  “Well . . . where do you come from?”

  “I come from nowhere, sir. There is only the future.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “When you’re on an express train, you don’t get off till the end of the line.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “When I see a hurdle, I hurdle it.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Silence for another minute or two and then Macleod chuckles. He chuckles for so long that the droid says to him, “Why are you laughing, sir?”

  Macleod says, “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”

  He can almost hear the droid manufacture a frown. “That is a strange question, sir.”

  “You killed the others . . .”

  “They contributed nothing to the bottom line.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “They were surplus to all requirements.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But you, sir, are a valuable commodity.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Slowly and imperceptibly—with such stealth that he hopes the droid doesn’t notice—Macleod puts the vehicle in high-terrain mode. If uncorrected, it will burn out the batteries much quicker than normal. It will stop the vehicle well before Purgatory. This little action, thinks Macleod, is possibly the most heroic and selfless thing he’s ever done.

  “You know,” he tells the droid, partly as a distraction, “I once worked in a post office. Many years ago.”

  “I did not know that, sir.”

  “At a sorting office. There were about fifty of us. Then one week an ‘efficiency expert’ came along, observed us in action for a few days, and wrote up a report. He spoke like you.”

  “In what way, sir?”

  “He told us all we were doing a good job. He said we should have no concerns about our future. He even said we were valued contributors to the company.”

  “I am very pleased to hear that, sir.”

  “Uh-huh. And a month later we were all fired. Because in his official report to the management team, which we weren’t supposed to see, he said we were ‘surplus to all requirements.’ He said we were ‘economically obsolete.’ And so we were replaced—by robots.”

  “I am sorry to hear that, sir.”

  Macleod chuckles some more. “Anyway, it was at that momen
t that I made a deal with myself. I said I was never going to work for a listed company or government department ever again. I was never going to wear someone else’s name on my shirt. And I was never going to believe anything said by a guy in a suit.”

  “That is an interesting reaction, sir.”

  “So I know you’re going to kill me, man. I just want you to do it quick.”

  He drives on in silence. And on. And on.

  He drives on for so long that he begins to think he was wrong—that the droid isn’t going to kill him after all. Maybe he is a valuable commodity after all. The day-night terminator, meanwhile, has closed in on them. They’re minutes away from being engulfed by blackness.

  “Here comes the Dark Side,” Macleod says, to no one in particular.

  The droid’s hands wrap around his head, wrench it sideways, and snap his neck.

  31

  JUSTUS’S FIRST THOUGHT—AND the first thought of all the gasping tourists at the top of the Temple—is that the killer is leaping to his death. That it’s a suicide. That he’s been driven into a corner and sees no way out. In fact, Justus has seen it before: the assassin so committed to his personal ideology that he’s willing to sacrifice his whole life rather than be caught.

  Except that this killer, whoever he is, doesn’t look like he has any sort of ideology. He looks like a kid who’s been blackmailed, or just paid a life-saving amount of money, to commit a murder. An opportunist, not even sure whom he’s killed, not sure who’s hired him—certainly not the sort who’d end his life just because he’s being pursued.

  And as it turns out—as Justus sees right now—he’s not committing suicide at all. From the top of the ramp he’s spearing upward—a trajectory impossible on Earth—and soaring over the guardrail, arms outstretched. And then his hands are locking around one of those ceiling bars—one of the thousands of rungs, struts, ventilation pipes, water dispensers, and power cables that make up the ceiling grid of Sin. Then he’s swinging forward, propelled by his own momentum, then back, then forward and back again. And when he’s sufficiently stable he reaches out and latches onto another rung, then another and another, like a monkey on horizontal bars. And just like that, as everyone watches, he’s getting away—he’s already gone at least fifteen meters.

  But Justus, still gaining his breath, isn’t going to be beaten. Not like this. He’s already done his own horizontal-bar exercises at Copernicus, where the instructor taught him how to “walk” with his arms and shoulders. And with thicker muscles he figures he’s roughly equal to his quarry, just as they’d been in the ground-level pursuit. The kid might have had more practice—his very digression into the Temple suggests he’s escaped this way in the past—but that doesn’t mean Justus can’t catch up to him again. Provided he doesn’t waste any time.

  So he draws a huge breath. He sets himself. And right before the astonished tourists he takes ten bounds, charges up the ramp, and launches into the air as well—propelling himself upward with all the power in his legs.

  He spears up, he spears out, and for just a moment he thinks he isn’t going to make it—that he’s going to arc through the air and plummet to the parkland below. But then his palms slap into a bar, his fingers clamp around it like claws, and his lower body swings up, up, so high up that his shoes almost touch the girder in front of him. On Earth this momentum alone might wrench him free and send him plunging—but on the Moon he weighs about as much as a whippet, so the fallback is gentle, the strain on his arms mild. And within seconds he’s stopped swinging and gained enough equilibrium to reach forward again, seize another bar with his right hand, then a different one with his left, and begin his orangutan-like pursuit of the tousle-haired killer—who still has about thirty meters on him.

  It isn’t easy at first. Sometimes he has to stretch perilously. Sometimes he has to kick away dropping vines. His hands slip on moisture and bird shit. Birds themselves flap around him. He passes sometimes through swirls of vapor. Water drips across him. But he gains confidence—and distance—with each movement forward.

  Sinners far below have noticed now—they’re shouting encouragement, or abuse; Justus isn’t sure which—and the killer turns again, registers another moment’s surprise, and starts changing course—heading for one of the great arrays of incandescent sunlamps.

  Justus changes course too. He’s moving high over the thoroughfares, the temples and tabernacles, the gables and pinnacles, the flourishing gardens—he’s really mastered it now, feeling no significant fatigue or strain, and the only danger is moving too fast or mishandling a bar. But even when that happens—when one hand snags on something or he fails to gain a good hold—he’s able to hang on with his other hand, find a separate purchase, and keep swinging forward.

  But the glare from the sunlamps is so hot and blinding that he can no longer see the killer: He has to squint and turn his head. He sees his own shadow blooming over half a block of Sin. And not just that—there’s another shadow moving rapidly away from him, in the other direction. And suddenly he realizes he’s been lured into the lights purposely, so the killer can take advantage of the brightness to change course and escape.

  Justus experiences a renewed sense of anger and determination. He cuts across the front of the lamp, eyelids squeezed together, grappling blindly in some cases, but moving relentlessly, faster even than the killer, and now he’s the one who’s coming out of the sun—it’s the killer who can’t see him.

  And there he is, thirty meters away, directly ahead. Justus closes in like a spider. Twenty meters. Fifteen. When he’s just ten meters away the killer finally notices him, his whole face contracts, and he struggles to pick up speed. But in so doing he very nearly loses balance and falls. And Justus gains more ground.

  In desperation the killer heads for one of the huge pillars—ornate brass surrounded by scaffolding—and dodges around it like a kid hiding behind a tree. Caught off guard, Justus has to check his own momentum and haul himself back, swinging his whole body, changing direction. Meanwhile the killer drops onto the scaffolding, dislodging a couple of shrieking birds.

  Justus tries to follow him, but the killer is swinging at him with his bowie knife. The blade strikes Justus’s shoe. Justus shifts sideways and takes a firmer grip. He kicks out again. The killer slashes wildly and the tip of his blade cuts through the hem of Justus’s pants. Justus shifts away, slightly out of range, and waits. The kid, with his teeth clenched and knife poised, also waits. The two of them are tensed, motionless—the kid on the scaffolding, Justus hanging in front of him—in a bizarre Mexican standoff a hundred meters above Sin. Then something sails past them—a dime-store rocket, shot from far below—and the kid is momentarily distracted. Justus seizes the opportunity and tries a flurry of kicks but succeeds only in driving the kid back against the pillar. Another rocket whizzes past: This one almost strikes Justus. And now the kid’s got a gleam in his eye. He’s holding the knife by the tip. He’s going to hurl it at Justus like a dagger. And Justus can’t just duck. So he swings in closer, before it’s too late, and kicks out violently, frantically, striking the kid on the forearm. The bowie knife goes sailing into Sin, and the kid is weaponless.

  Justus readies himself to drop onto the scaffolding, but the kid is way ahead of him. He moves to the other side of the pillar and launches himself back onto the bars. The chase, it seems, is on again. Except that the kid has enjoyed a break now, and Justus is starting to feel the strain.

  Sinners below are following them through the streets now, a moving audience, cheering, whistling, shouting—“Justice! Justice! Justice!”—as the killer heads energetically for the industrial district of Nimrod, where a pall of eye-stinging smoke is clouding the air.

  And now there’s something else to contend with. In the catwalks above him police have appeared with metal rods. The rods have clamps on the end and resemble glorified reach extenders. The cops are thrusting them through the bars, trying to catch hold of the killer that way, and one of them actually ma
nages to snag ahold of his forearm. But in response the kid just tears the pole free, swings it around, tries to shake it off—it’s hanging from his arm like a spear.

  He’s struggling for momentum when Justus catches up again. But just at that moment the cloud of smoke, caught in artificial currents, changes direction and envelops both of them. Momentarily blinded, Justus tries to lock his legs around the killer but the kid swings the pole and it smacks him in the side of the head. Dazed, Justus takes a firmer grip on the bars, coughs smoke from his lungs, squeezes his eyes shut again, and kicks out blindly. But he’s not making any contact. And when the smoke clears he sees the killer is no longer in front of him. He looks around frantically, but the kid is nowhere in sight. People below are shouting and pointing. And when Justus follows their directions he sees that the killer has dropped onto the top of a building far below. He’s unclamping the pole from his arm. He’s scrambling for the fire escape.

  For a moment Justus just hangs above, fighting his instincts. On Earth a fall of that distance—more than twenty meters—would break his legs, possibly his spine. On the Moon it will be much less dangerous, but how much so? Justus’s mind fills with images of goats springing thirty feet into the air at the Agri-Plex. Lunar basketballers he’s seen on TV, dropping from huge heights. An athlete at Doppelmayer Base landing gracefully after falling from a diving-board distance.

  So he releases the bars. He plummets. It seems endless, but he has plenty of time to prepare his body. And then he hits the top of the building. He performs a commando roll. He gets to his feet. The impact isn’t painless—he’s shaken and jolted, and the air has been punched from his lungs—but he’s not seriously hurt. And he doesn’t have time for relief.

  He tries descending via the fire escape but the killer has such a head start that he decides to jump again—all the way to street level. He braces himself in midair but when he hits the ground this time his ankle twists before he can effect a roll—he winces, gasps, and is struggling to his feet when he sees the kid dash past him, back into the streets of Sin.