Ceres

by L. Neil Smith

  “Five to ten times … ” Lafcadio leaned forward and had to stop himself on the desk to keep from tumbling. “Then you got yourself a deal.” He turned at last to Wilson. “Good luck, kid—pardon, not-a-kid. You got yourself a ride. Your grandma is a bargainer. And I, Lafcadio Guzman himself, hope that you catch a rhodium nugget the size of your head, or maybe the Diamond Rogue.”

  It was theoretically possible, but unlikely. Still, it was a very nice wish—for everybody but DeBeers, Ltd. Wilson accepted it with thanks.

  Julie raised her baggie. “To Mighty Mouse’s Girlfriend!”

  “To Mighty Mouse’s Girlfriend.” Wilson answered.

  “Mighty Mouse’s Girlfriend?” Lafcadio said. “Why not just call her Minnie?”

  ***

  Llyra shook her head—and nearly lost her balance. It was difficult to decide which was more humiliating, what she was doing at this minute, shuffling along across the ice like an old lady behind a trainer—a sort of icegoing walker made of lightweight metal tubing—or what she’d gone through earlier in the rink office suite.

  “Welcome to the Heinlein,” the woman with the frizzy red hair had told them. She was probably about her mother’s age, Llyra thought, but like most people born and raised away from Earth’s gravity—like her own mother, in fact—she looked younger. Virtual letters neatly painted on the virtual glass set in her virtual office door had read, “Armstrong/Heinlein Representative, Lunar Figure Skating Association”. The door had vanished when they’d started to knock. Jasmeen, who knew about such things, had explained that if they were going to buy contract ice time for the foreseeable future, it would be best to be affiliated with the local figure skating club.

  One entire wall of the woman’s office was transparent, and looked down on the rink area, two hundred feet or more below. The view was breathtaking—and dizzying. The woman led them from the door—back in place again, Llyra noticed—to a pair of chairs in front of her desk. Politely turning her back while they made an awkward transfer from their walkers, she went around the desk to seat herself behind it. “I’m Shirlene Hofstaedter, local representative of the Lunar Figure Skating Association. And what can I do for you ladies this afternoon?”

  Llyra’s coach leaned forward in her chair. “I am Jasmeen Khalidov, instructor certified with Martian Figure Skating Association and Solar Figure Skating Union. Home club is small, only fifty members so far, but growing.”

  The woman nodded and smiled. “Then everybody knows everybody else in your home club. That must be nice. I’m afraid we have over thirty thousand LFSA members. Figure skating is a very popular sport in the Moon.”

  “Hockey, too,” Jasmeen observed, gazing through the windows for a moment down onto the ice. She and Llyra had stayed down in the rink area gawking for an hour before coming up here. “You do have very beautiful facility here. Six rinks under one roof. Is flabbergasting spectacle.” The woman smiled again, but didn’t laugh at Jasmeen’s choice of words. “Why, thank you, my dear. We’re building three more ice sheets on the far side of those you see. But wait until we’ve finished with our surface facility. Unlike our other sheets, it’ll be up there in the sunshine and starlight, under a dome.” She punched a few buttons on the virtual keyboard showing on her desktop. “Here you are, all right, Khalidov, Jasmeen Mohammedova, Adult Gold, Certified SFSU Instructor. Let’s get your student signed up, shall we? Your name, dear?”

  For some reason, she felt nervous. “Llyra Ayn Ngu—two Ls, one Y.”

  “You don’t say. What a pretty name, Llyra. It is Welsh? No? Ayn must be A Y N, like the novelist. How do you spell your last name, dear?”

  Llyra told her. It was extremely strange not to hear her last name recognized. It was the first time in Llrya’s life that it had ever happened. “And you are from—not Mars?”

  “Not Mars. Curringer, on Pallas.” “Curringer, on Pallas. That’s an asteroid, I know that much.” The woman had been making quick-fingered notes on the virtual keyboard in her desktop. “Very well, dear. And what would you say is your best jump?”

  “My best jump … ” She glanced over at Jasmeen, who gave her an encouraging smile, but otherwise said nothing. “Well, my Salchow, I guess.”

  “Salchow,” the woman tapped it all down. “And how many turns—documented?”

  Llyra blinked. “Well, Jasmeen has movies. Best I’ve ever done is nineteen.”

  It was the woman’s turn to blink. “Nineteen turns. And you landed it?”

  Llyra grinned at the memory and saw Jasmeen do the same. It had been a good day, Llyra’s twelfth birthday. “Yes, I landed it—that time.”

  The woman stopped typing and looked up her. “And how many here?”

  “Here? None, now. I haven’t even skated here, yet.” She pointed a thumb to the walker standing beside her chair. “Here, I can hardly stand.”

  The woman made more notes on her desktop. “Do you think you can you manage a waltz jump? No? Then how about a bunny hop? Not even swizzles?”

  Llyra shook her head slowly, feeling ashamed, although she knew she had no reason to be. In one of those unMartian gestures she was given to, Jasmeen reached across the space between their chairs and took her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” said the woman. “I’m going to have to put you down as a Beginner One.” She sighed. “I guess you’d better have this, too—rink rules.”

  She reached back toward a stack of bright fabric piled on a shelf behind her desk, and handed Llyra a small vest made of interplanetary safety-orange mesh. Stenciled across the back, in fluorescent lime green, were two words:

  BEGINNER ONE

  The woman said, “Wear this at all times when you’re out on the ice. I’ll get one of our rink guards to find you an adult trainer frame.”

  “Please,” Jasmeen asked, “to give me Beginner One vest and trainer also.”

  ***

  Wilson was buried in antiquated wiring when he heard the airlock cycle. Twisting his torso and craning his neck, he saw his grandmother skim through the inner door, fly to the opposite wall of the ship, and seize a handhold with one hand. In her other, she held a large mesh bag.

  “Good morning, Captain my Captain!” Julie had taken to calling him that ever since they’d signed the papers transferring ownership of Mighty Mouse’s Girlfriend from the Guzman Brothers (Lafcadio Guzman, Prop.) to the partnership of Wilson and Julie Ngu. He didn’t know if he liked it or not. Maybe he’d feel better about being called captain once he’d finished the classes on shiphandling he’d signed up for as a condition—one of several conditions—she’d insisted on before becoming his partner.

  In the course of acquiring a spaceship, Wilson had discovered, to his dismay, that, even with the bargaining Julie had done for him, he didn’t have enough money for operating expenses, port fees, initial reaction mass, provisions, and so on. Julie had offered to become his partner and “grubstake” him. But first, he had to take shiphandling lessons.

  Wilson had agreed.

  “Look,” she exclaimed now, laughing and holding up the mesh bag. “I’ve brought you a shrubbery! And you didn’t even have to say, ‘Niii!’”

  Shaking his head, he squirmed out of the utility access niche, gave a little tap of his foot, and floated toward her. He’d meant to start replacing the vegetation that had once carpeted the cylindrical walls of the ship. It was just one of those things he hadn’t gotten to yet.

  It was weird, sometimes, having Julie for a grandmother. Filled to the brim with energy and enthusiasm, she looked about a quarter of her genuine age. He was glad they weren’t on Pallas, where he’d have to explain her to his friends before they embarrassed themselves. Then again, maybe she wouldn’t want him to explain. Now there was a sobering thought.

  Still, Julie was a pioneer. These were circumstances the human race in general was going to have to get used to. He certainly didn’t intend to get old and die, himself. Which meant, with any luck, that he’d look nineteen when he was ninety. (He’d heard that there
were sects on Earth that forbade life extension therapy to their members as evil and unnatural.) Nor did he want old age to happen to anyone he loved. If they lived long enough—say a thousand years—maybe his parents could finally work things out.

  Wilson had always liked freefall. Alighting gracefully beside her on the wall just aft of the pilot’s canopy, he asked, “Why would I say ‘knee’?”

  “No, it’s ‘Niii!’ It’s from an old movie. I brought you this, too.”

  She held out a bright blue metallic object the size of an aspirin tablet, meant for use in his personal computer. He squeezed it between thumb and forefinger and in the air, above his thumb, colorful letters formed:

  MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL

  Python (Monty) Pictures 1974

  Before he could say anything, a buzzer sounded. The comm system had been startling him with false alarms all day. He gave another kick and floated to the pilot’s chair. It would be a long trip by ladder when the ship was underway. The screen was activated and showed a familiar face.

  “Willie darling!” It was Amorie, speaking in what was almost real time. “We’re headed for the Earth-Moon system! We’ll be there in 24 hours!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY: AMORIE SAMSON

  A surprising number of people want to know why, in my “old age”, I have decided to go off exploring aboard the Fifth Force with my husband and our friends. Well, first, because my husband is going and there’s no face I’d rather see on the pillow next to mine when I wake up in the morning than his. And second, because I’m not dead yet, and there’s the sheer adventure of the thing. And third, because I don’t relish ending up a dotty old woman, sitting home alone, nursing my resentments and regrets. —The Diaries of Rosalie Frazier Ngu

  One of the men was her father’s brother, Ali Khalidov.

  The other was her mother’s brother, Saladin Uzhakhov.

  Together, the two Chechens took up so much space in the tiny living room of the modest apartment Jasmeen shared with Llyra, that it made her feel claustrophobic, like being in a coin-operated SolarNet booth.

  “What is an uncle to do, Jasmeen? You never call!” Ali wailed. He appeared to be on the verge of tears, an alarming condition for an individual of his distinguished middle years and rather substantial proportions, especially one who wore a patch over one eye. “You never write!”

  With a sudden feeling that she was about to sink beneath the weight of unexpected and unwanted family obligations, Jasmeen began, “But I … ”

  The distress must have shown on her face, because Ali suddenly pointed at her and grinned, while Saladin burst out in uproarious laughter. “You got her, Ali! You got her good!” Saladin was taller than Ali, and would have weighed at least three hundred pounds on Earth.

  “You owe me,” Ali said, wiping tears from his eye. “one ounce silver.”

  “You two are just plain no good!” Llyra scolded them, although she was laughing, too. Jasmeen had warned her, in a general way, that her uncles were a pair of incorrigible jokers, a trait that they shared in common with Jasmeen’s father, Mohammed. They both remained unmarried, an ongoing source of scandal to her mother, Beliita. Jasmeen said she didn’t think they were gay. Llyra had warmed to them instantly. She loved her parents and her brother, but in her family everyone was so serious.

  These men, who, according to Jasmeen’s mother, had worked together for years at some important scientific facility in another city in the Moon, had called their niece the day after she and Llyra had arrived in Armstrong. They had then given the two girls some time to settle in.

  “Now here we are back, my little sunflower seed, to take you on Lunar excursion!” Although he was the smaller of the pair, Ali was a big, noisy man, much given to sudden, sweeping gestures that told the girls (if they had thought of it) that his living room was much larger than theirs.

  “What sort of excursion?” Jasmeen asked to know. Secretly proud to do it without a walker, she’d gone to the kitchenette as the teapot on the cooktop began shrilling. She poured hot water through a strainer containing the darkest leaves she could find—tea wasn’t grown here and was remarkably expensive—into tall thin-walled glasses in platinum holders made to appear woven, like baskets, a precious gift from her mother, one of the few frivolous things she’d brought with her from Pallas.

  Seeing her struggle with the task, Saladin came to her rescue, offering the girl his arm, and taking the laden tray to the coffee table.

  “I hear from your mother on Mars that both poor, brave girls are having plenty of trouble adapting themselves to Moon’s gravity,” he told her. “Call up environmental services before bedtime tonight. Order ten percent increase in partial pressure of oxygen for next ten days.”

  Jasmeen was surprised. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “It will help,” her uncle said. “Also,—although I don’t like to admit it—borscht, very hot, lots of strong beef broth and sour cream.”

  “Yugh!” Ali exclaimed. “Is no good eating that Russian swill!”

  “High protein Russian swill,” countered Saladin. “Besides, I happen to like beets.”

  Ali ignored him, “Now where was I—ah, excursion!” He waited until Jasmeen was seated once again and tea had been poured, heavily sugared, and thick cream added. (Cows were grown on the Moon, and milk products were relatively cheap.) “Excursion to posterior of Moon—or ass-end of universe, depending on who says it! Graduate students are unappreciative lot. But—to marvelous System-famous Larsen Farside Observatory, where distinguished uncles poke and squeeze cold and ungenerous universe for valuable astronomical information, which they then sell to asteroid hunters and others like them at extortionate price!”

  He winked his one good eye.

  Llyra nodded in sudden recognition. “My brother told me about that!” she said. “I’d just forgotten about it. He’s training right now to be an asteroid hunter—he’s going to find the Diamond Rogue—and rebuilding a little ship he bought. So you’re the people who detect and report on incoming asteroids. Wilson never said anything about the information coming from Jasmeen’s relatives.”

  “Jasmeen’s relatives plus staff numbering just under two hundred,” Saladin admitted modestly. “Figure includes unappreciative graduate students. Most are to be found at Larsen Farside, some administrative personnel work here in Armstrong, a few—one or two from time to time—”

  Ali seemed to give him a warning look and shook his had almost microscopically.

  “—at mostly automated observatory in Lagrange position on opposite side of Earth. Humorists call it ‘L-Sex’, but is actually L-Three. Larsen Farside boasts largest and most powerful radio telescope array in Solar System. Also it has largest, most powerful optical telescope. Other location has radio and optical telescope, one half million miles away, for parallax—we see in three-dee!”

  “Speak for yourself,” the one-eyed Ali grumbled. “Sounds too much like 3DTV commercial. Never and nonetheless, you will come see what we see?”

  “Oh, yes!” Llyra exclaimed. “Oh, can we please do it, Jasmeen, please? Our contract doesn’t begin until next week, so our time is free.”

  Jasmeen nodded, excited herself, at the prospect of a trip around the Moon. “I think so—but we should consult DeGrey clinic and tell your grandmother.”

  Ali gave a massive shrug. “She is invited. Also asteroid hunter brother.”

  Jasmeen raised her eyebrows at Llyra, making her laugh out loud, and conveying her suspicion that her bachelor uncles had been looking forward to an excuse to meet the beautiful and famous Julie Segovia Ngu.

  And what red-blooded human male wouldn’t?

  ***

  The colorful 3D moving posters outside the entrance proclaimed that it was Kirk Thatcher night at “The Edge of Etiquette”, the most popular and up-to-date nightclub in Armstrong, and therefore, in the Moon.

  Inside, the place was huge and dark, although there were points and pools of light everywhere, at the tables, on the
ceiling (hung with artificial stalactites, since, without ground water, the real thing didn’t grow here), at the bandstand, and among the dancers, themselves.

  The young hostess escorting them to their table was half a head taller than Wilson, pale as a corpse—which she was made up to resemble—and so emaciated that she appeared to be a victim of some infamous twentieth century government atrocity. Her glossy black hair was cropped so short that it looked painted on her scalp. A pair of contact lenses made her eyes look like they were fashioned from dull aluminum; they brought the cruel artworks of Simon Benson and Robert Bishop to mind. Her narrow little face was pierced for metal bars and hoops more times than he was able to count in the two or three minutes she was with them.

  “Tonight,” she told them, having to shout at them over the raucous music, “we’re happying ourselves over the hundredth annivert of the Thatcher glomphing the Nobel Peace Prize, whatever the herbert that was—”

  And whoever “the” Thatcher was, Wilson thought. There were lots of old-fashioned 2D “flatties” of the man up on giant screens all over the otherwise dark and cavernous room. For some reason, most of them showed him with his hair cut and shaped into an impressive orange crest, and many of the pictures seemed to have been taken within five minutes of one another, aboard some variety of antiquated public conveyance.

  “Yeah,” the girl yelled when Wilson asked about it. “The Punk on the Bus. Boom. Box. Until that pointy-eared bathrobe came a-vulckin’ around, anyway. He’s the patron saint of punk—part of the Trinity: Johnny, Sid, and Kirk. You know this whole-in-the-wall’s labed for his clatch.”

  Holding his arm firmly, Wilson’s companion asked, “What for his what?”

  “His clatch, courtney. His orch, orfah. His band, beverly. This deepdive is named for it. Where are you in from, anyway, the Ultima Asteroids?”