"Minus ten minutes, thirty seconds, and counting." JoJo was no longer clowning around. "Um . . . Sammy? You're not going to . . ."
"Easy, pal. I got you covered." I pulled out my pad, rinsed its memory, then slapped it against his chest. A few seconds passed, then a light flashed on its panel: JoJo's higher functions had been downloaded into the pad, leaving behind only the basic routines necessary for the 'bot to continue its primary mission.
"Bye-bye," I said to the mindless automaton. Its head swiveled in my direction, but I wasn't a threat and so it ignored me. I jumped off the platform and landed next to Jen.
"You could have just left him behind." She was already headed for the restaurant where we'd come in.
"JoJo's good. I'd like to work with him again." No point in wasting a good AI for no reason. The casino floor was nearly empty; nothing stood between us and our escape route. "Clock's ticking," I said, slapping her behind. "Beat it, sugar mouth."
"After you, lizard lips."
The getaway was easy. Jen and I went back the way we came, through the service kitchen. By now the whole place was deserted, save for a few 'bots still carrying orders out to customers who had split without waiting for the check. All the same, I glanced inside the wine cellar to make sure the steward was no longer around. He was wise; he was gone. So we headed for the basement, skipping the slow-moving elevator and using the stairs instead.
The cargo hauler was right where we had left it. All the other vehicles had been taken, but no one had managed to break into our vehicle. Cab pressurization took ninety seconds—that was the only period in which I was truly scared, watching the atmosphere meter rise while the countdown ticked back at the same rate—and once it was done I put the hauler in reverse and put the pedal to the floor. No time to wait for the vehicle airlock to cycle through; I rammed the doors with the hauler's back end, and let explosive decompression do the rest. Jen swore at me as she was thrown against her shoulder straps, but I paid little attention to her as I locked the brakes and twisted the yoke hard to the right, pulling a bootlegger-turn on the ramp. Then I floored it again and off we went, up the ramp and out into the cold blue earthlight.
I glanced at side-view mirror, giving Nueva Vegas one last look as the hauler raced across Mare Tranquillitatis, its steel-mesh tires throwing up fantails of moondust. Lights still gleamed through the crater windows, yet escape pods were rising from the outer wall, tiny ellipsoids heading for orbit. By now, the casino should be empty. Fifteen minutes is a long time when you're running for your life.
The lunar freighter was right where it was supposed to be, two klicks due east of Collins Crater. Its cargo ramp was lowered; I drove the hauler up it as fast as I dared, then slammed the brakes once we were inside the hold. The pilot wasn't taking any chances; he jettisoned the ramp, then shut the hatch and fired the main engines.
Jen and I were still in the hauler when the countdown reached zero, so we didn't get to see the nuke go off. I'm told it was beautiful: a miniature protostar erupting within a lunar crater, rising upward as hemispherical shell of thermonuclear fire. All we experienced, though, was a faint tremor that passed through the lander's hull as it raced ahead of the shockwave, heading for the stars.
After a while, the pilot repressurized the cargo bay. I unsealed the cab and we climbed out, carefully -making our way through zero-gee until we reached the open interior hatch. The crewman waiting on the other side cracked up when we came through, and it was only then that I realized that we were still wearing our masks. I tore mine off, took a deep breath, and grinned at the silly lizard face I'd worn for the last hour or so. Jen shook out her hair, scowled briefly at her fly head, then pitched it aside and let me give her a quick kiss.
I'd just made my way up to the command deck, with the intent of downloading JoJo into the nearest reliable comp I could find, when the pilot informed me that he had an incoming transmission. Mister Chicago wanted to talk to me.
I glanced at Jen. She was in the passageway behind us, floating upside-down as she peeled out of her sweaty skinsuit. We gave each other a look, then I told the pilot I'd take it in the wardroom. He nodded, and I squeezed past Jen to the closet-size compartment just aft of the cockpit.
Mister Chicago was waiting for me there, a doll-size hologram hovering an inch above the mess table. He was seated in lotus position, naked from the waist up, his dead-white skin catching some indirect source of light behind him. His pink eyes studied me as I moved within range of the ceiling holocams.
"I understand you destroyed my casino today," he said.
"Yes, I did," I replied.
Rumor had it that Mister Chicago made his base of operations somewhere out in the belt, within an asteroid he'd transformed into his own private colony. If that was so, then he couldn't be there now, because he nodded with barely a half-second delay.
"And I also understand that you managed to steal . . ." He brushed his shoulder-length hair aside as he turned his head slightly, as if listening to someone off-screen. "Six hundred and eighty megalox from my casino before you detonated a nuclear device within it."
"Six hundred eighty million, seven hundred fifty thousand." I shrugged. "I haven't checked the exact figures, so there may be some loose change . . . yes, I did."
"Well done, sir. Well done."
"Thank you. We aim to please."
To this day, I still don't know exactly why Mister Chicago hired us to rob his own casino and then blow it up. Perhaps it had become a liability. Nueva Vegas was an expensive operation, after all; it may have cost more to keep it going than it brought in, and once its bottom line slipped from the black into the red, he may have decided to torch the place, once he'd made sure that he'd recovered every lox he could. He'd gone so far as to supply everything we needed—JoJo's nuke, schematics of the Nueva Vegas's sublevels and gaming areas, the codes to disable the security 'bots and provide direct access to the DNAI—and even furnish a means of escape.
Yet even a gangster has to answer to legitimate underwriters: insurance companies, banks, investors, the Pax Astra itself. So what better way to cover himself than have his property nuked during a heist? If his scheme was successful, he could always claim someone else did it. And if it failed . . . well, I doubt our conversation would have been so pleasant. If it happened at all.
But that's just my theory. Not for me to ask the reasons why.
"No lives lost, or so I've heard." His right hand briefly disappeared beyond camera range; when it returned, it held a glass of wine. "Quite professional. I'm satisfied, to say the least. Add . . . oh, shall we say, another one percent to your take. Is that good for you?"
We'd agreed to do the job for five percent of whatever we managed to grab. A bonus was unnecessary, but welcome nonetheless. I felt a tap on my shoulder; looking around, I saw Jen hovering over my shoulder. She smiled and nodded. "Thank you," I said. "Yes, that's quite acceptable."
Jen kissed my ear; I gently pushed her away. "Well then, I believe our business is concluded, "Mister Chicago said. "If I ever need your services again . . ."
"You know where to find us."
"Very good. Thank you. Goodbye." A final wave, then his image faded out. I let out my breath, turned around to find Jen behind me.
"Want to know what six percent of six hundred eighty megalox is?" she asked.
"Um, let's see. That would be . . ." I shrugged. "You do the math. I'm busy right now."
She grinned, moved closer to me. I reached out, shut the compartment hatch. Until the freighter reached the nearest Lagrange station, we had a long ride ahead of us. And we still hadn't opened the bottle of wine she'd stolen.
MOON MONKEYS
We all know that the ambient temperature of outer space between the stars is mighty cold, about 2.7 degrees Kelvin. Even in the warm environ of our own solar system, space can make you cold. In the shadows, the moon can get as cold as 120 degrees Kelvin or -243 degrees Fahrenheit. That's still so darn cold it's funny. So is this story. . . .
I happened to be at the staging area when the first monkey arrived on the moon and departed. I was checking in cargo from the supply shuttle, doing double duty like everyone else. I glanced up and saw Banter coming toward the soft lock with something moving wildly in her arms.
"What the hell is she carrying?" I asked the Russian who had just arrived on the shuttle. I never caught his name; it used to be that we were small enough that every new colonist was greeted warmly, their name and bio fully memorized. Those days were already past; now there are people I don't even know.
"A monkey," he said in English so thick that I didn't understand him until he repeated, scratching under his armpits and hooting like an ape, "a monkey."
"Whose fucking bright idea was—oh shit!" The monkey had suddenly ripped the oxy line free on Banter's suit.
Banter dropped the struggling form and grabbed at her whipping air line. The Russian had already unsuited, so neither one of us could go out onto the surface to save her. The monkey took off, taking giant bounds in one-sixth gravity. Fortunately, Banter stumbled through the soft lock into the staging area, where we could help her.
The connector on her airline was broken, so her helmet had to come off. While it was designed to go on quickly, the old models still had toggle locks that took a minute to disengage. Finally the Russian and I jerked off Banter's helmet.
"Damn little f-hole!" she screamed once she had sucked in enough air to talk.
"You okay?" I asked. "Come on, stop swearing and talk to me. Are you okay?"
"It almost killed me!" she screamed.
I wanted to hug her but knew she'd slug me if I did. "Okay. You're good. I better suit up and go after it."
"No rush," the Russian said.
I turned and spotted the monkey slowly tumbling groundward, the air line of its miniature spacesuit ripped free in the same manner as Banter's.
The first monkey on the moon lasted approximately five minutes.
We sent down a "sorry, the monkey died" message, and Earth demanded a full report and its body returned, complete with the damaged spacesuit. We packed the monkey in dry ice and shipped body, suit, and report back.
The next shuttle arrived with another monkey.
"What do you mean, there's no cage for it?" I asked the Lithuanian who came up with the new monkey. We had gotten it through the soft lock into the safety of the staging area and stripped off its newly improved suit. The animal was actually quite sweet looking, with warm brown eyes and nearly human face. It came with a supply of monkey chow, a small bed, brightly colored toys, a high chair, and diapers, but no cage.
"What the hell are they thinking down there?" I asked the Lithuanian, getting a shrug. I checked my translator to see if it had English-to-Lithuanian on it; maybe he didn't grasp English that well. Russian was the best I could do, getting the same result.
I dug through the incoming cargo, wondering if maybe the cage had just been mislabeled, and discovered that Earth had sent up new air line seals, ones with improved safety locks. I showed them off to Banter when she stormed into staging area from landside.
"What is this about another monkey?" she snapped.
"Yeah, they sent up another one." I held out the air line. "Look, they improved the connectors."
"So where's the monkey?" She scanned the staging area, and then—with eyes going wide—looked out through the soft lock.
I jerked around. A small, dark furred body smudged the gray starkness of the moon surface. "Oh, damn."
The second monkey on the moon lasted approximately ten minutes. Talk about embarrassing.
I had to send down another "sorry the monkey died" message with an apology. Earth demanded a full report including any modifications we made on the soft lock since it had been shipped up, and of course, the dead monkey.
We met the next shuttle with a cage, but it proved to be unnecessary. This time Earth had sent up a monkey wrangler.
She was a little thing, eyes dark and solemn as her charge, but there was something about her that made me want to get primitive with her. "No cage." Her simple English statement was made beautiful by some exotic accent. The sweat-dampened hair clinging to the elegant curve of her neck reminded me how long it had been since I'd been with a woman.
"It's a nice cage." Banter showed it off. "We padded the bottom. There are blankets, and a mirror, and some toys."
The wrangler shifted the monkey in her arms, and spoke in a fluid, wonderfully liquid language.
"What is she saying?" I asked Banter.
"Tell me what language it is, and I might be able to guess," Banter growled, fiddling with her translator. "Well, let's get the damn thing far, far away from the soft lock."
"Ah!" The wrangler gasped, and pulled out a data stick. "Soft lock!"
We got her and the monkey settled into one of the bachelor cubbyholes—since a goodly number of people had paired up and moved into the new burrows, even with the steady influx of personnel, we had plenty of cubbies standing empty. The data stick had an interesting modification for the soft lock. Using the suit's com device, the lock would check items trying pass out of the lock to make sure it was either a human or cargo being handled by a human. It slowed down the process of walking out of the staging area, making you hesitate before crossing the field barrier. We started to play with this, seeing if we could extend the authorization zone, when the monkey wrangler appeared, eyes wide in panic.
"Carly gone!" she cried. "I sleep. She goes!"
"Who's Carly?" I asked.
She said something and we looked at her blankly.
"Carly," she repeated. Then seeing we didn't understand, said, "Monkey?"
It turns out that the ventilation system screens had fasteners that any semi-intelligent creature with fingers could turn. The shafts were built so a man could crawl through them, just in case the need arose. (Don't ask. Yes, shades of B-rate vids come to mind.) Unfortunately, to move air through such the extensive airways, there were massive air handlers at intervals. Read "fans." Read "whirling blades of death."
The third monkey on the moon lasted approximately four hours.
We were improving.
Because she was the only one who didn't have a job—currently—our poor monkey wrangler, Emma cleaned up the fan while we sent off the "the monkey is dead" report to Earth. We figured she'd go on the next shuttle, but instead they sent up another monkey, new fasteners for all the ventilation system, safety screens for the air handlers, and a plea to try and make this monkey last.
We had a long fight with Emma over Danny, the new monkey. While we were all for caging this monkey, Emma insisted that Danny couldn't be imprisoned. Or at least, we're fairly sure that was what she was saying. The translators proved useless. Most of her side was little shakes of her head and exotic-flavored "no's" and occasional outbursts in her own language. We did lots of miming monkey's deaths: loose air hoses, chopping blades, dropping limp onto the ground. In the end, she won by sheer determination.
Unfortunately, Danny discovered the positive pressure toilets late that night. Who would have guessed that its head could get stuck that way? Still, at ten hours, he'd set a new survival record.
It takes nearly two weeks for the shuttle to go and come back, so you would have thought we'd start to wonder "why monkeys?" way before little Ethan showed up. So far as I know, though, Banter was the first to ask. She and I were in a gravity training area, working up a sweat, talking about how totally dippable Emma was. A foundation of our friendship is that I usually manage to ignore Banter's total babe exterior to see the guy inside. Not an easy task to do, sometimes, since we're occasionally the only single people on the moon.
It was our shared opinion that it wouldn't be right to hit on someone just after the death of their pet. With Emma, though, it was always right after her monkey died.
"So," Banter paused to see that we were still completely alone in the gravity lab. "Why do you think someone is shipping monkeys to the moon?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, animal testing has been mostly banned." Banter walked to the wallcom and did a quick search. "It says Emma's studying the effects of the moon on the development of primates."
"It kills them, that's the effect." I got a nasty look from Banter. "Well, who are the idiots that keep sending up the monkeys?"
Banter stood for several minutes, showing off her really fine assets as she searched through databases. "It's hard to say; it looks like someone is purposely covering that information up. Hmmm, all her monkeys are clones—different series, but all from bio cribs."
At that point, the lights flickered as Ethan departed from this world.
I visited Emma later that night to console her. The ventilation system had removed all smell of electrocuted monkey out of her bachelor cubbyhole, but toys still littered the floor, and Emma—-surrounded with photographs of smiling people—looked forlorn. With the addition of all the monkey stuff, I found the apartment claustrophobic when in reality it was no smaller than my place. The reminders of her dead monkeys were unavoidable, from the scuff marks of the shopvac around the air vent to the new scorch marks encircling the ceiling power coupler.
"Why don't you move into another cubbyhole until the next monkey comes?" I spent several minutes pantomiming out the English question.
"Burrow?" Emma pointed out toward the new warrens.
"No. No." How could I explain the housing rules? "Burrows are for couples. Two." And then in case she misunderstood that, I pointed to a picture of a monkey on one of the chow bags. "Emma and -monkey—no burrow. Emma and human." I pointed to myself, "Yes burrow."
Cosmic Tales - Adventures in Sol System Page 15
