“Mike will wait for me.” Elfrida climbed on the bed to get around Cydney to the clothes rail.
“Maybe you’d better call him and tell him you’re on your way.”
Elfrida turned around. “Are you jealous, Cyds?”
“Of course not.”
“Because if anyone has a right to be jealous, it’s me. You were all over that raddled bimbo, Angelica Lin, at the reception a couple of days ago.”
“That was for work.”
“Well, so is this. And can I just tell you how ridiculous it is for you to be jealous of Mike Vlajkovic?”
“I’m not—”
“He’s married. They have two kids. I’m spending all this time with him because we work together! I don’t even like him, let alone like like him. He’s a man!”
An unspoken accusation rang in Elfrida’s mind: Genital differences didn’t stop you from fucking John Mendoza. But what Cydney actually said, in a near-scream, was, “I am NOT jealous of Mike dog-be-double-damned Vlajkovic!”
Elfrida got dressed. Thermals, jeans, an old Las Nerditas sweatshirt. Wear stuff you don’t mind getting dirty, Vlajkovic had said.
“See you later,” she said coldly.
“Oh, Ellie—” Cydney came to her, and they embraced. Elfrida rested her cheek on Cydney’s shoulder. How had she managed to screw up this relationship so badly?
★
“At freaking last, Sleeping Beauty,” Vlajkovic said. “Get lost?”
“Yeah,” Elfrida said. In my own emotional crap.
They went out to the parking lot. Cavernous, it held only a few vehicles: a handful of three-wheeled surface rovers, and one large half-track that looked like military surplus. All the rovers bore faded Hotel Mercury decals. One flashed its headlights at them. They clambered in through the rear-opening airlock.
Vlajkovic drove across the parking lot, into a vehicular airlock. “This is one of two exits from the hab. The other one’s up top. You can exit directly from the old hotel lobby to the crater floor, but this is the only way out if you’re taking a vehicle.” He manually checked the rover’s pressurization, using a handheld gasometer. Then he put on some music. To the sound of ferocious guitar riffs, they drove along a tunnel, which forked after a hundred meters.
One fork led under the wall of Tolkien Crater, back to the surface, and the road to Goethe Spaceport. Vlajkovic took the other fork, which sloped up steeply. They emerged onto the floor of the crater.
The rim of Tolkien Crater varied from one to four kilometers high. The crater itself was 40-odd kilometers across. The peaks on the far side of the crater shone white, a row of snaggleteeth bleached by the sun’s light. Closer, another sunlit island floated in the blackness—the tip of the crater’s central peak. The rest of that massive mountain was invisible.
Down here, no sunlight had ever penetrated. Ever.
The rover’s headlights skated across a field of black ice.
“The whole bottom of the crater is covered with ice,” Vlajkovic shouted over the music. “It’s been here since the solar system was formed, and now we’re drinking it. And breathing it. Split a molecule of H20, you get hydrogen and oxygen, the building blocks of life.”
Elfrida glanced at the navigation screen.
“Going down,” Vlajkovic yelled. “Hold on.”
Abruptly, the ice field ended. The rover’s nose dropped, and they lurched onto a ramp winding around the inside of a vast pit. Elfrida clutched the edges of her seat so hard that her fingers ached. But the pit wasn’t that deep. They soon reached its floor, just a few tens of meters below the ice field.
Vlajkovic turned off the headlights and the interior lights. The music built to a crescendo, and cut out.
“See that?” Vlajkovic said.
“What?” She saw tyre tracks in gravel. A scrape in the skin of a hostile planet.
“Nothing. You can see, is the point.”
“O-oh.” Now she got it. The darkness was not absolute. The sun-drenched peaks above them reflected a bit of light into the crater. “It’s like walking down the street between skyscrapers. The windows reflect sunlight down to the sidewalk.”
“Do they?” Vlajkovic was uninterested in Earth, a planet he would never see, bar extensive surgery and/or the use of powered braces. “Well, I just thought you’d be interested to see that. Here we go.”
The rover bumped across the floor of the pit and into a lateral shaft. Glowstrips came on overhead, turning the walls of the shaft sodium-yellow. Vlajkovic explained that the ice field was thought to go down hundreds of meters, but it was stratified with rock. “We hit a rocky layer at 40 meters. We don’t have the equipment to drill deeper, so now we’re going sideways.”
“There’s what, 1018 kilograms of water in these craters? Has no one ever thought of exporting it?”
“Well, all the polar craters belong to Wrightstuff, Inc. And exporting water from Mercury wouldn’t be cost-effective. NEO water traders hop from rock to rock, extract H2O with thermal energy, export it to Luna, Midway, the Earth orbitals. They’ve priced the Belt out of the market. Razor-thin margins. Supermajors can’t operate that nimbly.”
Elfrida knew of the NEO water traders he referred to. They’d achieved every immigrant’s dream of de facto independence. Are there any unclaimed NEOs left? Could we find one for our people? Are any of the supermajors hiring …?
Her thoughts trailed off. The lateral shaft opened out into a cavern forested with square-sided pillars. Vlajkovic drove between them. “Room and pillar mining,” he shouted, as another rage-rock track came on the stereo. “Wide spaces between the pillars; one-third Earth’s gravity, you don’t need that much material to hold up the roof. But these pillars are made of ice, so they’re not that strong. One failure, everyone down here is dead … Not that there is anyone down here. Just these guys.”
Chrome flashed in the headlights. Mining bots attacked the ice face with cutter heads. Scrambling on six or eight legs, they loaded the rubble onto motorized trolleys, which were articulated to snake between the pillars.
“Suit up!”
Elfrida worked her legs into the EVA suit that had been stowed behind her seat. She strained to close it over her bulky sweatshirt, and put her helmet on. “Comms check,” Vlajkovic said.
“Copy.”
“We’re out of range of the wifi network, so we’re dependent on our suit radios. You have an emergency beacon, manually triggered from your wrist display. See it?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go. Watch out for flying ice chunks.”
The warning was timely. As Elfrida jumped out of the rover’s airlock, a chunk the size of her head came skidding across the ice. She dodged just in time. “Sorry! Sorry!” squeaked a mining bot, crabbing past her to retrieve the chunk.
For hours they explored the mine. It was uninteresting. When you had seen one room full of ice pillars, you’d seen them all. Elfrida hid her boredom. She understood that Vlajkovic was showing her what they had here, how much work they’d put into developing this crater … how fickle it would be to just abandon everything. But she already knew that.
Tired out from walking, she sat down on a heap of rubble at the foot of yet another ice face. “Mike? I’m sorry, but it won’t do any good to appeal to my better nature. Not that I haven’t got one. Smile. But it’s out of my control, don’t you understand? It’s not my decision.”
She had told him about her orders. Of course she had. CLASSIFIED be damned. How the hell was she expected to come up with a plan for resettling 1000-plus people without help?
He stood without moving, inscrutable in his EVA suit. Then he said, “Laugh! Get up. I know it’s a long walk, but we’re almost there.”
Huh? Elfrida got up and followed him.
They soon came to another lateral shaft. Half of its width was taken up by a conveyor belt. An articulated trolley arrived at the same time they did. It raised its rear end like a caterpillar and poured ice chunks onto the conveyor belt.
“Now we get to ride.” Vlajkovic hopped onto the belt. Elfrida scrambled after him. “This belt takes the mine’s output up to the water refinery on the surface. We’re not going all the way, though …”
Ten minutes later, he signalled her to get off.
The conveyor belt angled upwards. A smaller tunnel doglegged off. They walked that way for a couple of hundred meters, until they reached an airlock. Inside the chamber, Vlajkovic took off his helmet and gestured for her to do likewise.
The valve on the other end opened on a brightly lit passage.
Elfrida screamed.
A machine-gun was pointing at her face.
ix.
Cydney grunted blissfully and slid deeper into the water.
The Rivendell Spa—left over from the Hotel Mercury era—offered only basic treatments. But compared to a hut in a village infested with fleas and rats, this was a little corner of paradise.
Steam rose from the surface of the hot pool. The masseuse kneeling behind Cydney, dressed as an elf, drove expert knuckles into her shoulder muscles.
On the other side of the pool, Angelica Lin relaxed in the hands of another masseuse. Cydney had forked out for them to have the spa to themselves this morning. After their bath, they would enjoy a micro-facelift, followed by a mani-pedi, and finally a blow-out and styling.
By the time they got done with all that, Cydney expected to know a lot more about Angelica Lin.
They were already chatting easily about their shared interests.
“Urrrr,” she said. “Mork Rapp? Give me a break. Stricter recycling laws? Is that what he thinks the voters want? He hasn’t a chance in hell.”
You know. Girl talk.
“He’ll drop out,” Angelica said. “He’s just using this campaign to raise his profile. Same goes for Pyls O. Mani and the NEO colonies’ candidate, that Patel woman. Hasselblatter, I’m not so sure about.”
“He’s on the President’s Advisory Council.”
“Yes, and if he won, he’d have to quit the PAC as well as the Space Corps. That would be a demotion, in terms of raw power.” Angelica’s tone was detached. “I can’t see why he’s standing at all … unless the President ordered him to.”
“Right. But even the President can’t buy him a good favorability rating. Snerk. He’s polling in the low single digits. Who does that leave? Dr. Ulysses Seth. I guess he is the obvious choice.”
Angelica’s husky laugh rippled across the water. “It’s early days yet,” she said. “Someone else might declare.”
Her face shone, damp. With her make-up off, it was easy to see that she’d had a lot of cosmetic surgery. Cydney didn’t think any less of her for it. You did what you had to do to sell your brand.
★
Elfrida shrank back into the airlock, trembling with fear.
“Oh, it’s you, Mike,” said a voice like ice being crushed in a blender. The machine-gun pointing at Elfrida’s nose did not waver. “Who’s this?”
“My new gofer. Doug knows about her,” Vlajkovic said.
“Oh, OK.” The sentry had a face like a patchwork of beef jerky. Sunglasses hid his eyes. His biceps were the size of Elfrida’s thighs, which was saying something. Were this Earth, with Earth’s gravity, the gun on his shoulder would have had to be vehicle-mounted. In fact, were this Earth, the gun would have been illegal.
He lowered it and smiled at her. “Howdy, ma’am. Didn’t scare you too bad, did I? Welcome to the United States of America.”
“Uh?”
“We ain’t got much in the way of immigration procedures. I’m it. Guffaw! You wanna freshen up? That’s a long-ass walk.”
Elfrida tried to sort it out in her head. They had driven about 10 kilometers to the mine. Underground, she’d gotten turned around, had had no idea which direction they were walking. It was now clear that they’d covered another five kilometers on foot, to end up at Wrightstuff. Inc.’s new hab beneath the central peak of Mt. Gotham.
Too late, she remembered Lal Subramaniam’s words. Vlajkovic is in the pay of the Americans. I’m certain of it.
Vlajkovic said, “We’ll just go straight up, if that’s OK with you, Rob. I think Doug is waiting for us.”
“Sure! Y’all go ahead. Have a nice day now.”
“Is he for real?” Elfrida hissed, scurrying after Vlajkovic as he strode down the corridor.
“He wouldn’t have shot you, if that’s what you mean.”
“No, I mean ‘Welcome to the United States of America.’ What’s that about?”
Vlajkovic gave her an amused look. “There speaks a good little UN citizen.”
Elfrida flushed. She didn’t want to admit that her question had been a basic one: what is/was/had been the United States of America?
Her new Unicorn Tears® contacts had an encyclopedia, so she could look things up even with no network connection. The information was pitched at ten-year-olds, but accurate as far as it went. She read fast, the text overlaid on service corridors and warning signs. (Vlajkovic seemed to know his way around.)
“‘The United States of America,’” she muttered aloud, “‘was a federal republic consisting of 67 states and a federal district. It existed from 1776 to 2170.’ But this is just a map of America.”
“It was a sovereign nation between those dates. The Wrightstuff people are kinda nostalgic about it.” Vlajkovic pushed an elevator button.
“My unicorn says it was the richest country on Earth. A pioneer of space colonization. Wow.”
They got into the elevator.
“Elfrida,” Vlajkovic said, “while we’re here, just keep quiet about your unicorn, OK? They’ve got an imaginary country; you’ve got an imaginary friend … I feel like we’re at a party, and I’m the only one not simming.” He shook his head, smiling slightly.
The elevator went up … and up. A display showed, not floor numbers, but altitude, measured from the floor of the crater. 0 meters. 200. 300. Elfrida swallowed. Her ears popped. She decided she didn’t care if there were microphones. “Mike, I need an explanation here. What are we doing? Who’s that guy you mentioned, Doug? Help me out.”
“There’s nothing to explain.”
“If there’s nothing to explain, why didn’t we drive here on the surface?”
“Because I don’t want to explain to Dr. Seth. All right? Now I’m in your hands.” He gave her a strained smile. He wasn’t being dramatic. He was deadly serious. “I appreciate that you told me about your orders. You didn’t have to do that. But you did, you took me into your confidence. So I’m doing the same.”
400 meters. 450.
“This is something to do with money, isn’t it? Drugs, black tech. That tunnel is a smuggling route. Mike, I’m kind of shocked. I didn’t think you were in on that racket.”
500 meters above the floor of the crater. The elevator stopped. Technicians in white printable scrubs ushered them into a clinic-style setting.
“Decontamination,” Vlajkovic said out of the corner of his mouth. “Just trust me, OK? Doug will explain everything.”
“This way, sir, ma’am. If you wouldn’t mind removing your clothes.”
Elfrida was familiar with this process. Isolated habitats could be devastated by the introduction of new organisms. She handed her clothes over, to be bathed in X-rays strong enough to kill any mites or bugs that might have come along for the ride, and took a microbead shower. Billions of minute polymer beads pelted her, stripping every trace of dirt off her skin. She kept her eyes closed and her fingers in her ears—it really sucked when the microbeads got in your ears. As it was, she’d have an awful case of dry skin.
Dressed again, they walked out of the decon clinic into a parking-lot.
Elfrida turned in a circle, disoriented. They could almost have been back on Earth. Four Hyundais with tinted windows sat on a square of regocrete in the middle of a field. Cows—real cows, albeit a bit spindly—grazed on genuine, lush grass.
Elfrida raised her gaze. More fields. Crops, nearing t
he harvest phase of a growing cycle. A scattering of ranch-style houses.
All enclosed in a really, really big cavern inside Mt. Gotham.
The breeze smelled like the communal toilets in the R&D village. The downside of organic farming was manure.
Even the sunlight felt real. It came from widely spaced UV lights in the roof. They’d nailed the spectrum—trickier than it seemed. The only giveaway was the absence of shadows, due to the spacing of the sun-lamps.
“Told you it was spendy,” Vlajkovic said.
Elfrida rallied. “Looks like a zillion asteroid habitats I’ve seen. They always go for the pastoral ideal. I wonder why? There are so many other lifestyle concepts out there, that don’t involve livestock. Not to mention the cost of importing or manufacturing soil. Dog … there must be a million tons of the stuff out there …”
“A hundred and twenty thousand tons, actually,” said a voice behind them.
Elfrida whirled. A man had got out of one of the parked cars. He leaned on the open door, smiling into the sunlight.
“What’s the point of money, if you don’t buy dreams with it?”
He sauntered towards them, sticking out a hand. Vlajkovic shook it, and after a second’s hesitation, Elfrida followed suit.
Uniformed men and women in sunglasses eased out of the other cars. Guns glinted in their hands.
“Nice to meet you, Ms. Goto. I’m Doug Wright.”
“President Wright,” Vlajkovic clarified with a sycophantic titter.
“Am I supposed to curtsey, or something?” Elfrida folded her arms, ruffled from the shock of having guns aimed at her, again.
Doug laughed—a high, scratchy hee-haw! that made him suddenly seem nicer. He was tall and paunchy, in his forties. Like everyone else here seemed to, he had a melanin-challenged complexion and non-black hair. He removed his sunglasses and focused hazel eyes on her. “Oh hell, no, Ms. Goto. I don’t expect deference from the UN. That battle was fought, and lost, a century back. What you see now is just a hab in a rock, no better than a thousand others, as you rightly point out. But we’re kinda proud of it.” He smiled wryly. Elfrida decided that he was actually quite nice. “‘Sides, I think you and I share an interest, isn’t that right?”
The Mercury Rebellion: A Science Fiction Thriller (The Solarian War Saga Book 3) Page 7
