by Simon Royle
Exiting from the Moon port, I came into a large open area with a see-through ceiling – the night sky and earth shining brightly in blue-green. Consulting my Devstick for directions, I set off a new stream of color in the lights inlaid into the walkway. I turned on my grav boots and headed for the Lev port that would take me to Shackleton Moonbase on the Far Side of the Moon. There, buried fifty meters below ground, and with access to the surface of the Moon, was the Nineveh Hot Springs Resort.
Taking a seat in the Lev, I relaxed as I called up the map on my Devstick. It showed the little Lev oval tracking its way through a maze of tubes within the Moon’s core. The route to Shackleton Moonbase took us to within twenty kiloms of the Moon’s molten core and was the fastest route available at a total distance of about three thousand five hundred kiloms. Traveling at just over one thousand three hundred and fifty kilos per hour, I would arrive at Shackleton in another two hours and forty minutes or so.
I watched the new global events datafeed in the Lev for a while but kept the volume off. I was bone tired. I felt a little surge of guilt and excitement as UNPOL reported that they still hadn’t caught Jibril and again warned the public that he was dangerous. Then the whole screen turned bright yellow, and white letters on a black strip scrolled across the screen: Breaking News. An earnest woman with a bad haircut stood outside the remains of what looked like it had been a cafe. Bright aluminum chairs and glass were scattered amid pools of blood, mingled in with the food that people had been eating. The text running along the bottom told of a bomb being set off in Paris in the Geographic of France – fifteen dead and forty-five wounded. No one had claimed responsibility but coming so soon after the UNPOL report, it was obvious they were tying the bomb to Jibril. Possible reasons given for the blast were religious extremism, political or business motives and terror tactics. No evidence was given as to who was supposed to be terrified and why. Right after this the Mayor of Paris came on and subtitles told me that this act of terror on innocent Christmas shoppers had to be punished – and that if the Tag Law had been implemented this wouldn’t have happened. I thought that was a giant and mistaken leap in logic but nevertheless I could feel his anguish as his hand waved wildly in the direction of the destruction behind him. The next image was that of Sir Thomas, as Director of UNPOL. I turned the sound up.
“...The perpetrators of this crime against humanity shall be hunted down like the beasts they are and caged as such. We have not seen this kind of action in European cities for many years, and unfortunately it shows that we have become complacent in our security. There are those in society who would seek to impose their will or their doctrine on free-thinking citizens and it is our sworn duty to defend against that imposition. Our condolences and thoughts are with the families and friends of the deceased, and we wish the wounded a speedy and whole recovery in regen. However, our grief will not dissuade nor delay us in our task of hunting down these violent, base criminals. Thank you; that is all I have to say. I have work to do.”
The woman with the bad hairdo came back on, standing in the Paris street outside the bombed cafe. “That was Sir Thomas Oliver, Director of UNPOL, telling us that they are working on this case, and that their thoughts….”
I turned down the volume, shocked by what I had read and heard. A bomb. I looked around the Lev, its normal interior suddenly threatening, and turned off the feed. I felt strangely proud of Sir Thomas and what he’d said. Not just that, but the way he had handled himself and how sincere he looked. Was Gabriel certain that this earnest, sincere man who I called uncle had killed my father? Trying to reconcile these thoughts within myself was too much for my brain in this tired state.
It was 9:05pm New Singapore time when I emerged from the Lev port at Shackleton Moonbase. Consulting the Devstick I pulled up the map that would route me through to the Nineveh. It was now fifteen hours since I’d woken up and I needed to have a clean and get some sleep. Checking my image on the Devstick brought up red eyes with bags underneath them, tussled, sleep-mashed light brown hair and a slight but discernible stubble across my chin and jaw. A shower, or better still an assisted sponge bath with or without a happy ending, beckoned.
The Shack, as it is called Far Side, is the least populated of the Moon’s six bases and there were only a few other people in the tube that I was walking down. A small entranceway, cut into the side of the tube with a white trellis set into it, was where the lights indicated I should go next. I walked into the entrance and took a look at my Devstick to confirm the route. I had looked at this route a hundred times in the last few hours but still it had not etched itself firmly enough in my memory for me to trust the recall. The datafeed from earth showed that service was temporarily unavailable now that I had left the craft and was actually on the surface of the Moon. Of course, the network of satellites usually kept us online, even on the Far Side of the Moon not visible to Earth, where radio waves are blocked by the Moon itself. Must be a sun flare, I thought, and checked the local map. My Devstick had defaulted to the Shack’s environment, providing me with the map I was following and local news. There wasn’t much of it.
Suddenly the map on my Devstick disappeared. I said, “Find Nineveh Hot Springs Resort,” but a glance confirmed that there were no hits for my current location. The tube was quite dark and a door opening about ten meters away cast a yellow glow through to where I was standing. A man came out and stood in the doorway. I looked at him, and taking a step towards him so that I could ask where the Nineveh was, I stopped.
“Hello Jonah,” said Gabriel, and holding his arms wide walked towards me haloed by a golden light. He reached me and smiled into my eyes, wrapping his arms around me in a tight hug that nearly squeezed the air out of me. Putting his arm around my shoulder and pulling me towards the open door, he said, “We have much to talk about, brother, but first you must eat and rest.”
At first glance the room inside the doorway was a storage unit for tube cleaners, and with a grin at the puzzled expression on my face, Gabriel walked to the far end of the small room and pulled a shelving rack out to reveal another smaller door set into the wall. We went through the door and inside was a hole in the floor about two meters in diameter with a spiral staircase going down. Gabriel led the way as we wound our way down the stairs.
“This was one of the early titanium mines,” he said over his shoulder, “but was abandoned and we took it over.” About five minutes later we reached the bottom and emerged into a larger chamber about fifty meters in diameter, lit by a single string of lights suspended from its ceiling and disappearing around what seemed like a downward curve. In the middle of the chamber was a golf cart. It looked incongruous in the setting but Gabriel climbed into the driver’s seat and I into the passenger seat. With a flip of the red switch between us, he pressed his foot on the accelerator and away we went down the tube.
Chapter 13
A Disturbed Sleep
The Marq V, Penthouse Env, Sir Thomas’s New Singapore Residence
Friday 13 December 2109, 1:21am +8 UTC
Three hundred and eighty-four thousand, four hundred and three kiloms away, Sir Thomas was awoken by the persistent but soft buzzing of the Dev’s speaker set into the headrest of his bed. Sir Thomas encouraged the perception that he never slept, and his image had already answered the call, recognized Agent Sharon Cochran, and deciphered enough keywords to initiate Sir Thomas’s wake up experience.
Already fully clothed in his uniform as Director of Operations of the Political and Corporate Security Unit of United Nation Police, and Head of UNPOL, Sir Thomas examined his image in the full length screen, zooming in on his face to check for the debris of sleep. None seen, he took over the conversation from his facs.
“Agent Cochran, no apology required. What do you have to report?”
“Jonah has gone missing on Far Side, sir.” Agent Cochran, like the Director, looked the same at 1:22am in the morning as she did at 8:30am in the morning, or indeed at any time of the day or night in public. U
nwrinkled, neat, professional and calm, her blonde hair cut in an attractive but subtle bob, she looked directly into the Dev and waited patiently for the Director to issue his commands.
“Exactly when and where did he go missing?”
“Exiting the Lev port at Shackleton base is the last image we have of him, Sir, and that was at 9:05pm.”
Sir Thomas glanced at the time set in the lower right corner of his Devscreen, 1:23am, Friday 13 December 2109.
“Are you a suspicious person, Agent Cochran?” he asked without expression. “Do you believe in omens, good and bad luck?”
“No, sir, I believe we are the masters of our own circumstance,” replied Agent Cochran who seemed to straighten up as she said it.
“Ah the valor and ignorance of youth,” said Sir Thomas in a voice halfway between a whisper and a sigh.
Cochran’s face flushed slightly along the edges of her angular cheekbones and her jaw muscle tightened considerably. She did not like being played with like this, but knew better than to respond. Everything is a test and you either pass or you fail. She didn’t fail.
Sir Thomas, his face set again in an inscrutable shield that forbade discernment, smiled inwardly, the image of a puppet dancing on a string coming to mind. “You did well to interrupt me, Agent Cochran,” and he allowed the smile onto his face. “What actions have you taken over the past four hours?”
“Communications with Far Side have been cut off, Sir Thomas. Peary’s comms unit says that solar flare activity on the Far Side may have disrupted the Commsat network. Unable to contact Shackleton directly, I ordered a plainciv unit from Peary to Shackleton. They investigated the area outside of the Lev port and that was the last recorded position of Jonah’s Devstick. Other Devsticks in the area appeared to be in a similar situation and again the comms unit says this is probably connected to the network problem on Far Side. We dispatched a forensic team with sniffers to see if we could track, and so far they have tracked him to an area of approximately three square kiloms – but they cannot yet narrow that down further. All of Shackleton’s primary exit points have been manned, sir.”
“You have made an excellent contribution, Agent Cochran, thorough with rapid, accurate assessment of circumstances, and efficiently and beautifully executed.” the Director smiled again. “However, I am sure that there is nothing to worry about. As you say, Devs in the area are acting strangely and Jonah informed me he was taking self-time and traveling to the Moon. Even so, it is better to be cautious about these things, especially given the sensitivities of these times.”
Praise from Sir Thomas was as rare as rain in the desert and Cochran glowed inwardly, being careful not to show her pleasure.
“Keep me updated about the situation as and when you see fit. Thank you, Agent Cochran,” he said, and with a last very small, very quick twist upwards of the corners of this mouth – something that was communicated to Sharon Cochran as a very scary smile – Sir Thomas cut the feed.
Cochran took a deep breath in and out to release the tension she felt. She didn’t know why Sir Thomas made her feel so inadequate, and often wondered about that. With everyone else, including herself, she was supremely confident. She knew that she was in the top one percent of female humans her age in the known universe. Top in intelligence score, muscle to body fat, optimum height to weight ratio, and, as she’d been told by more than one person, in her looks, but Sir Thomas could take all that away with a word or a glance.
Shaking her head softly as if to rid it of the negative thoughts, she turned from her comms Dev and looked around her work area. There was nothing personal here that signified this was her workspace. Everything she needed to exist in this space was in her head. It was time to make her way back to her Env. A glance at the Dev showed her she was alone in the section complex.
“Turn off all the light between me and the Lev door,” Sharon told the Dev. The subdued optimum lights in her space shut off. She smiled in the total darkness, and turning ninety degrees to her right, took two long steps forward. She stopped, turned again ninety degrees to her left, and then taking six strides forward ordered the Dev to open the door. Without hesitating, she walked through for two strides, halting and again turning ninety degrees left, started striding towards the Lev door for her section.
Eighty five measured strides later, she stopped. The Lev said, “Where do you wish to go, Agent Cochran?”
Not in a talkative mood, Sharon tapped the car icon on her Devstick and the door to the Lev slid open, flooding the corridor with a soft blue light. She didn’t sit; the trip would be a short one as her Bulgari T8 was parked right outside the Lev port on level one. Exiting the Lev, a few contemplative moments later, she emerged from the Lev port as the matt black gull-wing door on her T8 rose to the three-quarter position.
Sliding into the custom seat, she tapped manual on the steering wheel. Jurong Island to the southern tip of Sentosa was twenty kiloms. The Travway at this time of night would not be as busy as during the day. For some reason, people still preferred to drive in daylight, but even so, this was New Singapore, and the lion always roared. Her best time was five minutes flat, her new target was four point eight minutes. The barrier light changed and the barrier went up, her foot stamped on the throttle and the T8’s twin turbines sent her airborne as she raced up the ramp, but only for a millisec as the car’s aerodymics came into play, and she was glued to the rubberized surface of the Travway.
Her focus absolute, she allowed herself the luxury of a small smile of satisfaction as the slumbering Devs controlling the norms in their Toyota autopiloted EVs came alive with the computational reality of her velocity among them.
On the other side of New Singapore, fifty kiloms away from where Cochran was weaving through the early morning traffic, a recently promoted level two officer of the Trav Control Center turned to his colleague in alarm. The screen in front of him had swooped from the placid traffic on the Travway on Marina South and focused on the West Coast Travway. The screen flipped image Devs as a vehicle went through their ranges in secs.
“It’s OK lah, it’s just her. She does it nearly every night, and hasn’t hit anyone yet,” his colleague said and turning off the tracker on the vehicle, sat back in his Biosense to watch and marvel at the performance on the screen in front of him.
Sharon glanced at the speedometer and the timer. Speed two hundred and eighty kilos, time at four minutes exactly. She navigated the off-ramp before rapidly decelerating to a hundred and ten kilos for the S-turn that took her into the final half kilo stretch. The ‘Private Road - No Entance’ sign marked her finish line. Four minutes nine secs. A flash of annoyance; it was the S-turn, she could have gone a bit faster there.
Her body massaged by the G-forces exerted during the run from her contribution space, Sharon slowed the T8 to a sturdy prowl as she entered the driveway of her partner’s complex. The Ent residence of the Pres of SingCom was as opulent as one would expect, but Sharon paid little attention to the finely manicured gardens along the driveway nor to the marble fountain she parked behind.
I wonder if Sunita’s awake, she thought. I need her advice.
Sunita Shido had been her lover and mentor since the age of twelve. She hadn’t actually made physical love to her until she was legal, despite Sharon wanting her to, but then Sunita was nothing if not perfectly correct. It had been sixteen years since they had first been introduced.
With a soft metallic click, the gull-wing door shut behind her as she went up the steps, and the Dev, recognizing her, opened the house door without instruction. Never breaking her stride, she marched straight up the steps inside the reception area and at the first landing turned right to walk down the corridor to the master bedroom. Reaching it, the door opened and she walked in.
“You made it so quickly....” Sunita said, smiling and rising naked from the Siteazy; the image of the West Coast Travway on the screen behind her. Her hand snaked around Sharon’s neck and her lips brought the taste of an alky. “I don’t
like it when you trav that fast,” she murmured, nuzzling Sharon’s ear.
“It turns me on,” whispered Sharon in a little girl voice, as reaching up with her left hand she found the release strip for her tailored UNPOL outers, just as her right found Sunita’s breast.
Chapter 14
We could talk forever, talking on the Moon
Titanium Mine Shaft, Shackleton Moonbase, The Moon
Friday, 13 December 2109 1:45am
“Jonah, Jonah, wake up.” I felt a hand lightly shaking and squeezing my shoulder. Turning my head away from the wall, I saw Gabriel sitting on the edge of the sleeper I was in. I pushed myself up and lay back resting my weight on my elbows.
“What time is it?”
“It’s 1:45am New Singapore time. You’ve slept for four hours. Here take this, it’ll get you back on your feet.” He handed me a cup, warm on the outside. “We have until 6am. Then we have to get you visible again. Comms are down across the sector but we can only hold that for another four hours, and then we have to put you in a hot tub in the Nineveh,” with this last softly spoken comment Gabriel smiled and patted me on my knee. He crossed the room to a small table in its center.
I looked around the concrete-walled room. It was Spartan: two sleepers lengthwise against each wall, polymer storage racks, black rubberized flooring and next to the small table in the center of the room was a mobile Devcockpit. There must have been at least fifty Devscreens arrayed in a semi circle in front of a Siteazy. It was the largest I had ever seen. In contrast to the setting it was in, it looked singularly out of place. Like a shiny high cred luxury unpacked from a drab package.
