by Martin Tays
“True. I didn’t promise she wouldn’t.”
“Whoo-hoo!” Ami started moving in again.
“But…” Mattie grabbed the back of Ami’s shirt just before she got into range. Ami reached out toward the reporter, her fingertips just brushing the front of his tunic. He flattened himself against the wall, sweating. “… I did say you could speak your peace, first.” Mattie continued, unperturbed. “Moses?”
Moses looked at her speculatively, then turned to Ami. “Okay. Later, Ami. Let’s listen to what the man has to say. Then you can rip off his arms and salt the bleeding stumps. Fair enough?”
“Someone hold him down, then.” Ami replied.“I’ve got plenty of salt in the kitchen, and energy to burn.”
“No. He’s mine. Ami’s just going to have to take sloppy seconds.” Sher, joining the group by the entryway, spoke with a frighteningly quiet intensity as she slowly pushed her sleeves up. Beside her, Leo growled.
Moses looked over at the reporter. “Oh, you have got just such a way with people, don’t you?”
He looked at Moses, then over at Sher. After a blank moment, his face lit up. “Ah! You were that dancer! That’s right! Sorry.” He looked her up and down. “I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on…” His voice trailed off as Leo growled again and began shoving his sleeves up.
Moses held his hands up. “Hold it, everyone. No one beats the reporter up. Yet. Even if he is a no account, dirty, rotten, slimy, rat bastard.”
“Um.” Suave looked over at Moses. “Thanks?”
“No problem. Everyone… “ Moses turned and waved toward the main living area. “… back there. Let’s see if we can find out what Mattie could possibly have been thinking when she brought us our present.” He spoke to her out of the side of his mouth. “You were thinking, right?”
“I think so.”
“Oy.” He rolled his eyes and followed the group, wrapping his hand first around Suave’s upper arm to steer him.
“You know, you don’t need to do that.” said the reporter, nervously.
“Well, it’s that or your throat.”
“Ah. Arms fine, then.”
Moses nodded as he dragged the reporter with him. “Thought so.”
Everyone was staring at him as they came in the door. Suave fought the urge to ask for a blindfold. Moses waved him to a seat, then hopped up to sit on the counter, facing the group.
“Okay, Mattie. Give.”
Mattie nodded. “First, of course, sorry. But I have a reason. This thing…” She jabbed a thumb at the intruder, “… was waiting for us when we arrived to pick up the unit. It was apparently too tempting a story for the business owner not to pass on. Which reminds me, Moses… we have got to work on your evil schemes.”
“Told you.”
“Shush, Ami. So he was there to break the story of the movie shoot?” Moses turned to look at Suave. “Isn’t that kind of beneath you?”
“Hey. I’m a reporter. I report.”
“Feh.”
“Hey…”
Moses glanced over. “Sorry, No.”
“And thanks!” Interjected Ami.
“Oh, yeah. And thanks.” He turned back toward the reporter and continued. “So then when Mattie came in, you realized that you had a juicier story than you had originally imagined. Right?”
He nodded. “You’re pretty quick.”
“I’m just getting started. Mattie…” He pointed over at her, “… made a split second decision and offered you something much larger in return for your shutting the hell up for the short term. Pig in a poke, sight unseen. Am I right?”
Sher stood up quickly enough to rise up off her feet in the low lunar gravity. Leo quickly grabbed her leg as it went past, pulling her back down as she spoke. “Mattie! That’s not true, is it!?”
“Sorry, but yeah.” Mattie looked over at Moses speculatively. “Damn. You are a bright man, sometimes.”
“I’ll try not to let it go to my head.” He looked over at Sher. “Don’t be hard on her. She really didn’t have a choice.”
“But… damn it, you mean we can’t hit him?”
“Not today, anyway.” Clapping his hands together, Moses turned toward Suave. “So, what was the deal, exactly?”
“I shut up, first off.” The reporter leaned forward. There was a shrewd look on his face. “You explain to me what the hell’s going on, here. I record whatever of it I please, I wait until you give me the okay, then I break the story. Oh… and if I don’t think it’s a big enough story, I get to break it now.” He finished smugly.
Moses cocked an eyebrow at Mattie, who shrugged and said “What can I say? The man drives a hard bargain.”
“Fine. Okay.” He hopped down off the counter and turned again to Suave. “I think I can live with that. Because ― and you can trust me on this, Rico ― you’re sitting on the story of a lifetime.”
The reporter grinned wryly and shook his head. “Um, Jin. And sure… I’ve heard that one, before.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” Moses reached over to the counter top behind him, picked up a datatab, and held it up in the air. “But you haven’t heard this.”
☼
After the recording stopped, the room was utterly silent. Moses and his friends had heard it enough, now, to be a bit used to it, but it was still awe inspiring.
Jin Suave stared at the man in front of him. Moses had explained only that the recording was made from some radio telescope back on Earth, then played it. Jin was not an extremely smart man, but he was an intuitive one, and he put together what he knew of Moses with the recording’s origin and quickly came to a correct conclusion. “Oh, man. That’s… that’s just… son of a bitch!”
Moses smiled. “Yeah, that was about our reaction.”
The reporter looked at Moses, then around at the group. He finally turned back to his host with a look of astonishment on his face. “You’re going to steal the ship, aren’t you?”
Moses threw his hands up in the air. “See? Now I just don’t get it. Am I that transparent?”
Everyone nodded. Mattie added “That reminds me… I want to play poker with you, sometime.”
Ami looked over at the reporter. “We’re the good guys.” She explained. “We don’t steal things. However, we are planning on borrowing the ship for a while.”
“Borrowing?”
“Yep.”
“A starship?”
“No one else is using it.” She replied defensively.
“Oh, my God, this is…” He waved his hands. “This is just crinkly.”
“No.” Said Moses, raising a finger. “If I can’t use that word, you can’t use that word.”
Jin looked at Moses, confused.
Moses shrugged. “Long story. Okay, here’s the deal, then. You’re in. I mean all the way in. You get all the info your tiny and ill-formed little reporter’s heart can desire. All you’ve got to promise in return is that you’ll sit on the story until they… until we leave. After that, you can scream it from the rooftops for all I care. Deal?”
“Deal. Way deal.”
“And remember.” Growled Moses, “If you back out… if any of this information for any reason gets out…”
“I know, I know. You’ll hit me.”
“Are you kidding? I’m… ” Moses pointed at Sher, then Leo, then Ami. “Fourth in line. I just get to sponge you off the walls. I never get to have any fun.”
“Actually…” Mattie said brightly, “… before he cleans up I get to spit on the bits.”
Suave looked around at the crowd and gulped. Finally, though, his reporters instincts kicked in. He pulled his newsbug out of his pocket and activated it. It rose obediently and hovered on its fans. “So, then… start at the beginning. The very beginning. I want to hear every la
st single detail.”
Moses sighed, then began to talk.
☼
Sam looked around at the crowded surveillance compartment. She appreciated having all the extra help, yes, but she kinda missed the solitude.
“Ma’am?”
She turned to look at one of the new techs brought in to assist her. “Yes?”
The tech, a rather decent looking if terminally short dark haired man with a serious expression, pointed over toward his console. “We’ve got something odd, here. Maybe you want to take a look at it.”
Sam sighed. So this is what being a boss felt like. She rose to follow him over to his console. “Okay, astonish me.”
He sat down at his console and began pulling records forward on the various vid windows he had floating over the controls. “Okay.” He finally said, pointing to the window in front. “As you instructed I’ve been running personnel records. I’ve noticed an interesting pattern in them.”
“Good, that’s good… um…” She paused, then turned to the tech. “What did you say your name was?”
“Miles, ma’am. Miles O’Hannihy.”
“Okay, Miles, thanks.” Sam nodded. Then, as an afterthought, she continued as she turned back to the display. “If I ever call you ‘you’, by the way, you have my permission to hit me.”
“Oh, that’s… um, thank you. Ma’am.” Miles blinked, looked back at the data, and cleared his throat before continuing. “Ahem. Anyway, here’s the interesting bit. Over the last twenty years there’s been an unusual trend in personnel. Positions that normally wouldn’t open up opened up. Out of sequence transfers and the like. And as they opened they were filled.”
Sam looked down at the tech. “And that’s astonishing why, exactly?”
“Well, that’s not astonishing.” He looked confused. “At least, not in and of itself, anyway. What is astonishing is who was moved in to replace them.”
“And the replacees were…?”
“I’m not sure that’s a word, ma’am.”
“You may be amazed to hear this, but there are worse places to work than here.” Sam cocked an eyebrow at the tech. “Like me to prove it to you?”
“Erm. Yes, ma’am. I mean no, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.” Miles hurriedly got back to his report. “All of the new personnel were vets. Exploratory Corp vets. A couple of dozen or so.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, really?”
“Yes, ma’am. All of them rated for various aspects of deep space flight, none of them working a job they couldn’t do in their sleep.” He looked up at her quizzically. “Why would people with that much experience want to do menial tasks?”
“Because…” Sam stared off into the distance, thinking. “Because they’re waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“That…” Sam slapped his back as she leaned back. “Is what we’re getting paid the big bucks to find out. Good job. Really. Now keep digging. Let me know what else you can come up with.”
The door opened and Celestine Grace stormed in. Seeing the expression on his face, she sighed and looked back over to the tech. “And Miles?”
“Ma’am?”
“I really meant it about the ‘you’ bit.”
“Um. Of course, ma’am. I promise I’ll hit you if you call me ‘you’.”
Sam nodded. “See that you do.” She moved over to intercept Grace before he could get to the techs. Part of her job, she knew, was to act as shit-sponge so that the workers could get on with their work. She put on as bright a face as she could. “Good timing, sir. We just pulled up something interesting thanks to Miles, there.”
“So?” Grace looked over at the tech, an expression of supreme disinterest on his face. “It’s his job, isn’t it?”
Sam stared at his back as he brushed past him and walked over to her master console. She shrugged at the expression on the tech’s face and hurried to follow Grace, who had sat in her chair and turned it to face her.
“Okay.” He spread his hands, then dropped them onto the arms of the chair. “What have you got?”
“At this point?” She replied under her breath. “Ennui.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing, sir.” She pointed back over to the still fuming tech’s station. “We’ve found out something interesting about the personnel Deppner’s been hiring. Positions in his staff have been filled, over the last twenty years, with his old shipmates.”
“Again, so? What’s extraordinary about someone helping an old friend? Not that I’ve ever abused my position like that.”
“Of course not, sir. Because for the most part the people taking the positions are vastly overqualified for the job. Look here.” She reached past him to slave Mile’s data to her display. “These people, here? Any of them could get a job in a heartbeat paying ten times more than what they’re getting. It makes no sense for them to be doing this. Unless…”
Grace studied the data in the window, then turned back to her. “Unless what, pray tell?”
Sam looked at the list, hesitant to continue. Suddenly, she felt a bit dirty. She finally replied in a quite tone of voice. “Unless they’re waiting for something. Something big.”
Grace looked at her, then back to the window. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Hmmm. That’s very interesting, um, you. I believe we may be onto something. Follow it up, of course, and I want a tracer on each of those individual’s locations. I want to know where they are at all times, in case we need to... speak with them.” He looked up and jabbed a finger into her face. “Got it?”
“Yes, sir.” Sam looked back at the fields. Something was going on. She could feel it in her bones. Deppner, and Dunn, and that Spindowski woman, were all up to their armpits in some scheme.
But.
She looked over at Grace, then back to the names highlighted in the personnel records. But… just because they were up to something, did that necessarily mean that they were up to something bad? She didn’t know. She just didn’t have enough information, and that bothered her.
Sighing, she turned again to study Grace. There were two sides here. There was the side with the good guys, and there was the side with the bad guys.
And she was suddenly unsure which one she was on.
“Hi, kids! I’m Nannie the Nanite, and I’m here to tell you about all my tiny little friends that are inside your body right now!
Did you know that people used to get old and die? Isn’t that terrible? Wouldn’t it be sad if mommy and daddy got old and died?
Well, about two hundred years ago, a nice lady named Joclyn had to sit and watch her daddy die. This made her very sad, and she decided to do something about it. And she did.
Something wonderful.”
‘Nannie the Nanite’ on “Your Nannies And You”
“So there we were. We had to make a conscious decision on animals, and we knew it. What would the world be like if all of the animals were immortal? I mean, let’s face it… they’re not the most cerebral of creatures. They aren’t going to look around and think ‘say… there’s too many of us. I think we’re going to have to stop reproducing, now’. No, to pretty much all animals the world is divided up into just four parts: ‘something I can eat’, something that can eat me’, ‘something I can fuck’ and ‘rocks’.
So animals had to be mortal. It sucks, but there you go.”
Harold Brian James, from “Missing the Ark”
“What was the silliest thing I ever did? Oh, that’s an easy one. Black market animal life extension.
It’s just amazing. On one side you’ve got these idiot laws about animal longevity. And on the other side you’ve got some schmuck who’s crying because his little Wuggums is about to kick the bucket.
I didn’t get it. I don’t get it. But then I didn’t have
to understand. All I had to do was a simple cloning job, transplant the brain, a little cleanup neural work, and ‘bam’, there’s a hundred grand. Candy from a baby, baby.”
Dr. Anton Wainswright, from an interview in the LA Times
Chapter 13
“Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.”
Groucho Marx
“UEMS Exxon Antares to UESS Endeavour. UEMS Exxon Antares to UESS Endeavour. Ready for docking and transshipment. Exxon Antares to the Endeavour. Hello? Moses? Wake up, you old coot!”
Moses had been working on software upgrades on the bridge. He glanced up, then pushed over to the communications console. “Madeline?” He said, uncertainly.
“Awww… you recognized my voice!” A vid window popped up over the console and a dark skinned woman in a bright red shipsuit looked out. “How sweet. Rafe said you were involved in this brouhaha. Cool! We’ve got a hot, steaming load for you, and about a one hour window to get it done. What say we get cooking?”
“Damn.” Moses smiled in spite of himself. “He’ll let just about anyone into this secret squirrel club of his, won’t he?”
“Look in a mirror, sweetie.” The dark haired Madeline replied. “You tell me.”
“Well, yeah, you’ve got a point there.” Moses grinned. “Okay, Cath’s waiting in engineering for you. How much do we have?”
“Oh, cutie buns…” She waved grandly around her. “This here’s a bunker ship. How much do you want? Well, that’s how much we got.”
Ami, who had stayed to safe the computer console, drifted up to stare at the speaker. She saw a short haired, muscular woman who was grinning and staring at Moses intently — maybe a little too intently. She turned to Moses and asked sardonically “Cutie buns?”
