Then the smile slipped, revealing a trace of something that lasted just long enough for him to realize she might have other secrets. Like him and Jenn. Him and the baby—Lily, who would never know him. In space, everyone had something. Some talked. Most didn’t.
Then the deeper glimpse was gone as quickly as it had come. Caeli glanced over her shoulder, leaned in conspiratorially. “Oh, hell. I just walked through with them. Called ’em baking supplies. You know, for muffins.”
Raz knew more than he wanted about hiding from deeper truths. Light conversation was safer. Flirting better yet. “That’s a damn lot of muffins!”
“And who the hell thinks flowers are toxic waste? Though I guess I wouldn’t have planted ’em on my shuttle. Had a damn cigarette smoker a couple of runs ago. And I have no idea how she got those through customs.”
“So, how long you up for?”
“Twenty-five days, can you believe it? Nearly a whole loon of sleep and R’n’R. But first, I wanted to tell you I think you’ve got a gwipp.”
“A what?”
“Gwipp. G-W-I-P-P. Government Witness in Personal Protection.”
“You made that up.”
“Yeah. Sounds good, though, doesn’t it?” She leaned close, for real this time. “I’m trusting you, okay. If I’m right, I wasn’t supposed to figure it out.”
“Got it.” His tone startled him. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know her story. “What can you tell me?”
“Not much, specifically. I’ve got a friend at the other end. Someone in Immigration who has been known to . . . imbibe. She told me that putting together the passenger list was odd. Said they weren’t allowed to do more than standard checks.” She cocked her head, looking for words. “Usually they pick a few passengers at random and work like hell to dig up skeletons.”
Lily. Everyone had them. Immigration might not care, but nobody wanted them found.
“Anyway, she told me the order seemed to come from very high up. Said she’d never seen anything like it. A gwipp’s the only thing I can think of.”
“Any idea who?”
“Nope. Those folks don’t just get a new past, right? They get plastic surgery, bodywork. I bet they can make a twenty-year-old look fifty. I wish they could do it vice versa.”
“You’re nowhere close to fifty.”
She laughed. “How do you know? Maybe I’m not really me and I’m a hundred-year-old crone from . . . where is it they live practically forever? Moldavia?”
“Yeah, with the legs of”—he tried to think of the latest vid phenom, but came up blank. At first, he’d ignored them all because they reminded him of Jenn. Then he was out of the habit.
She leaned back, crossing said legs for his inspection.
They’d played this type of game before but suddenly he was uncomfortable. “Maybe it was the Lebdekov assassination.”
“No way!” Caeli uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, the debater returning. “Whoever that was is long gone or dead! More likely some refugee from the mob crackdown in Philadelphia.”
That was interesting. Could it be that easy? McHaddon would probably have the grab-plate vandals within the hour. Would the Feds leave such an obvious trail?
Meanwhile, Caeli needed her rest. “Thanks,” he said. “You’re the best.”
She leaned forward again, but instead of a peck on the cheek deposited the barest touch, right on the lips. “Be good to yourself,” she said. Then, before he could react, she turned to go, auburn mane blazing in a halo of backlight.
III
He called himself Beau Guest. He liked it when people laughed. As far as he knew, no one knew his real name. Sometimes he’d been the one to make sure they could no longer remember it.
This assignment was lucrative but a bitch. If the intel was right, the hare had gone to the Moon: a move both stupid and smart. The smart part was that LunaShuttle security was as tight as it got. So, once the hare made it off Earth, it had reason to feel safe. Not to mention that here, even the cops didn’t carry guns. Earth might never figure out gun control but the Loonies knew bullets and vacuum made a bad combo. In the domes, there could be no clean kill from afar.
On the stupid side, there were plenty of other ways to kill. And if you had enough money, you didn’t need to deal with shuttle security. All you needed was a spacesuit, a private launch, and a willingness to hike. And then, the target would have nowhere to run.
IV
Finding a place to sleep proved harder than expected. Eventually, Drew wound up back in the Skyview, where dimming lights heralded the official sleep shift. Not that it seemed to matter to the bars and slots.
Above, the view was grander than ever, the stars simultaneously closer and more remote. For the first time he noted that there was more to the view than the sky. By climbing to the Overway platform, he was able to see the lights of Luna C’s other domes—bright curves rising above the regolith. And not everything else was dark. High on the crater rim, sunlight etched brilliance—a wire-thin slice of heat and light that would always be up there, never down here. Higher yet, set back far enough from the rim to be barely visible from this angle, dark rectangles rose on enormous stilts: power panels for grab plates, casinos, dome lights, farming, and everything else.
Then fatigue hit and the awe faded. He needed a place to sleep. But he wasn’t sure what would happen if he tried to duck into a side passage. Would cameras bring police to roust him out? Would Loonie derelicts roll him for what little cash he had?
Anger at his handlers helped wake him up. All he needed was a bit more money. As a kid, wanting to get as far from the things he’d been born to as possible, he’d dreamed of space. And now, if he was going to do this, then by hell, space was where it was going to be. But he’d been too confused to think of that, back when he’d turned traitor to all he’d been born to protect. And now, while they’d reluctantly agreed to let him try, they’d insisted it be as the person they’d already created.
Drew Zeigler barely had the assets to get to the Moon. He certainly wasn’t going to be able to live in luxury.
He studied the hotels, eventually picking the Grand Eclipse. Back home, its twenty stories would have been minimal, but in the Skyview, it rose halfway to the stars.
Getting into the hotel was easy. Drew slipped through as a guest was leaving, found a stairwell, and started climbing. At this hour, most floors were quiet, although one echoed with voices and clattering dishes. Up was high-rent territory. Lower was cheaper. Eventually, he found a dark corner, hugged his duffel to his chest, and dropped asleep.
After what seemed like only an instant, he was awakened by voices.
—“I dunno. A guest . . . ?”
—“Or a drunk Loonie Too. Didn’t the BelleView get one last week? Maybe we ought to ask Erin.”
A door closed and Drew was up like a shot. Down, he headed. Down and out. But on the second floor he spotted a men’s room, and moments later was inside. Time to get back to the plan. Clean up, get out of the hotel, start calling about jobs.
Using hand soap, he washed his hair and face over a miserly spigot of slow-falling water. At long last, he peeled off his emergency suit, sponging off as best he could. He stuffed the suit into his duffel, found a semi-clean shirt, and tried to assume the guise of a tourist. But it was only once he was outside the building that he again breathed normally.
The light was still dim. He glanced at his watch but couldn’t remember when he’d bedded down. Four hours ago? It would have to be enough. His stomach growled, so he bought a candy bar along with the latest download from a sleepy-eyed clerk who assured him his shop wasn’t hiring.
Job. Any job. He needed a job.
There was a bank of public coms on the far side of the dome. Calling up the news holo before him, he headed that way to wait for the start of the business day.
Seven hours, no food, and twenty-eight calls later, he was talking to a male voice—no holo—at SEA Technologies, which was seeking a “solar-pa
nel maintenance technician, EDA experience preferred.” He had no idea what SEA was—much less EDA—but he was running out of prospects.
“Yeah, the job’s still open,” the man said. “You’ve got to come in, fill out an app, then interview. You got experience?”
“No. But—”
“Well, come in anyway. Luna II, west side, third tier, room 312. Got that?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Okay, then.” And the line was dead.
Luna II snuggled in the bottom of a secondary crater that broke the main rim’s symmetry like a giant divot. It wasn’t all that far away, but it was a long way up, which meant Drew had no option but to splurge on rail fair on a train whose backward-facing seats tilted at a forty-degree angle that only made sense when it started to climb. It moved at a decent clip, however, and he reached Luna II still in early afternoon, hoping his quick follow-up would show sincerity. Only then did he realize he hadn’t had a real bath since leaving Earth orbit. But didn’t that also show sincerity?
“Hi,” he said to an impressively tattooed and nose-ringed man behind a metal counter. “I called about the job.”
Nose Ring motioned to a com station. He appeared to be in his mid-fifties. “Fill out the app and hit ‘send.’ ”
This was probably the best chance Drew would ever get. Everyone else had turned him down cold. Earther. Nah. Why you when we got plenty of locals? But good luck elsewhere. As if any of them really meant it. None of the others had even suggested he show up in person.
But the form was full of potential traps.
Name? No problem. Immigration number? Easy.
El Paso would stand scrutiny as place of birth and he could answer questions about it, even though he’d never been there. Desert. Yucky rock mountains. A good place to leave, even if the university did have history as a track powerhouse. Though on his official resume, he’d never been an athlete. Next question?
That was the problem. His official employment history was an eclectic mix, mostly designed to make him marginally employable in anything other than the fields in which he was actually qualified, the theory being that anyone chasing him would think he’d be stupid enough to still bill himself as a CPA/lawyer. Why couldn’t he have been either a CPA or a lawyer? And what the hell use, here on the Moon, was a stint as a taxi driver? Though he had to admit the Moon hadn’t been where they’d wanted to send him.
But that was just the beginning. There were also questions he had no idea what they meant. What the hell was photovoltaic rehab technology? Eventually, he said a prayer to a God who might or might not be in the answering mood and figured he’d done the best he could. If experience in photovoltaic rehab technology was critical, he was screwed. At least he now knew that EDA was exta-domal activity. That wasn’t on his resume, either.
“You have to list an address,” Nose Ring said a moment later. During the twenty minutes Drew had been struggling with the form, the man had been busy with a computer, but, Drew realized, the com had never buzzed. What kind of job had he just applied for that nobody wanted?
“I, uh, don’t have one.”
The man studied his screen.
“I’m on a tourist visa.” Drew hesitated, then poured out his cover story, which involved the recent deaths of his father, a brother, and what seemed like half his extended family. “So you can see I’m very motivated. Your ad said experience preferred, not required. I’m a fast learner and I need a new life.”
The man hesitated. “Okay, kid.”
Drew started to object that at thirty-six he was nobody’s “kid” but thought better. Surgery, he reminded himself.
“Show up at 0730 tomorrow and we’ll start your training. Show up at 0731 and you’re on the shuttle back to Earth. We’ll know soon enough if you can hack it. On the pel, it’s my rules, or no rules. Leave now if you can’t take it.”
“The pel?”
“You really are desperate, aren’t you?”
Drew hesitated, then nodded. “I want to stay here.”
For the first time, the man seemed to look at him, not his application.
“Good. That’s probably better than a decade’s experience steaming gas, driving EDA donkeys, or punching tunnels.” Another look. “We really don’t care about your past. You do the work, you’re one of us.”
The man looked again at his comp. “The PEL is the Peak of Eternal Light. No surprise you ain’t heard of it. It’s not in the travel guides. The guy you’re replacing snagged his suit on a panel bracket and vacuum-froze his arm and half his shoulder.” He paused again and Drew wondered if this was an attempt to scare him. If so, Nose Ring had a surprise coming.
The silence stretched. When it broke, Drew had won something, though he wasn’t quite sure what.
“It’s supposedly the only place on the Moon that’s always in sunlight,” Nose Ring said. “The Peak of Eternal Light, get it? Bullshit, of course, but near enough true, not counting eclipses and a couple of damn big mountains.”
Drew wanted to ask about salary, but didn’t. He had no other options, and they both knew it. “See you at 7:30,” he said instead.
V
There is a song they sing in Loony Too, where the workers toil on the Peak of Eternal Light and wish for shade. Razo had heard it many times on visits to the outlying dome.
Back in Central, most people disdained Luna II’s working-class culture, but Raz found himself drawn to it ever more strongly as the years mounted and pains refused to fade. Could he have gone back to the life he’d left? It wasn’t Jersey he’d fled, per se. It was the family that wasn’t a family, the life that was a living death. It had taken years of working two jobs to save enough, but he’d had to get a new start or the nameless cop had saved him in vain. Then Jenn couldn’t handle it, and he’d had to choose.
At its best, Luna II reminded him of childhood—the good parts, of which there had been a few—though if you looked hard enough you could still find the crackerjack. But not much, even though here the stuff was legal. People who’d worked that hard to escape to a new world didn’t hide in a chemical one.
But that didn’t mean they didn’t like their synthanol. At shift’s end, you could find them, the stench of suit still thick upon them, descending from the always-day above to this dome on the edge of the never-light below.
We drink from the Sun but we eat from the Earth,
Ain’t many here standing who’ve been here from birth;
One of these days we’ll all say goodnight,
But from now unto then just leave on the light!
They were singing as he walked into Archie’s, one of two bars in Luna II’s main lobby, the other being the Waddup Widdat.
The dust never falls to the cold lunar ground,
It spins and whirls like a Loonie-go-round;
One of these days we’ll be buried all right,
But from now unto then just leave on the light!
It was one of the better verses, referring to the way the photovoltaics drew dust, even though the eggheads claimed it wasn’t possible. Nothing like an egghead who got it wrong to make the workingman happy—that was another thing Raz remembered from youth. Even though the egghead was never the one who had to clean up the mess.
Archie Skaggs was behind the bar. He and Raz had known each other for years, the respect more than grudging. Arch ran a business. Raz ran the domes. Neither liked trouble.
Archie smiled, reaching for a shelf under the bar where Raz knew he kept the good stuff, but Raz shook his head. Sober tonight. Then, before he could speak, Archie’s patrons launched into another verse. There were a lot of verses, not to mention those invented on the spot. Sometimes the new ones even made sense.
The river Sol flows and the panels they burn,
One of these days they’ll be done to a turn;
We’ll switch off the churners and wrap ’em up tight,
But from now unto then just leave on the light!
Raz stepped for the courtyard, motioning
for Arch to follow.
“Hey, Art,” Archie said when they’d reached the relative quiet beyond the bar.
Arch had never explained why he refused to call Raz by his nickname. He certainly wasn’t formal about anything else. Perhaps he too had a secret. Before Jenn, there’d been a woman who wouldn’t call him Art. For her, that name would always be her abusive father. To her, Raz had always been Artemis. Secrets didn’t have to be deep. Just painful.
“Long time, no see,” Archie continued. “I got up some Johnny Walker, couple a’ shuttles ago. Nobody better to drink it. Where ya’ been?”
“Busy. Damn council won’t hire new cops. We’re all working overtime. They figure as long as the tourists keep coming we can get along with the force we had a decade ago.”
“So is this business or pleasure?”
“Business, I’m afraid. There’s a young man just up from Earth, trying to hook on with SEA. Drew Zeigler. You heard of him?”
“Can’t say’s I have.”
“Well, he’s the kid with the duffel bag, over there.” Raz hooked a thumb toward a dome-side table.
He had no proof Drew was Caeli’s gwipp but Philadelphia Fidel had not only been too obvious, he’d been applying for top-line jobs at places like Lunar Nanosystems and Vacuum Molecular BioSyn. Zero-prospect applications: not the type of thing a well-schooled “gwipp” would do. Zeigler was the next-best guess.
“So do me a favor and let me know if you hear anything.”
“Anything like what?”
Raz flapped a hand. “You know, if he’s doing okay with Lum. If he gets into trouble. Stuff like that.”
“Is he trouble?” Archie feigned a disinterested glance. “Kinda scrawny for an Earther. He do somethin’?”
“No. And this is just between you and me, okay? No reason to make trouble for him.”
Archie leaned back, took a sip of whatever drink he’d carried from the bar. Probably nonalcoholic. There’s a difference between making your customers feel at home and blending in too well. “Sure.”
Behind them, the song showed no sign of winding down. Raz wondered if anthropologists back on Earth, the ones who loved to prattle about what the Moon “meant,” had ever tried to count verses to songs like this, and if so, how they distinguished “official” ones from those made up on the fly. If it even mattered.
The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 26 (Mammoth Books) Page 26
