THE ANARTEK

By Michael Patrick Aiello

Part One of Two

Chapter 1

I woke up breathing ashes. My nose was stuck straight in the oyster shell ashtray she’d bought, and ashes went up my nose and were blown around the compartment. The ashes hovered out around us and circulated around the currents of our breathing and were slow to settle down before the vents could suck them all out. I woke up regretting her new smoking hobby and checked the time. Almost midday.

I nudged her softly, but she groaned beneath the sheets and turned away, and waved an arm in half-awake annoyance. I felt badly about it, but shook her a few times till she came to. Her eyes fluttered open and tried to focus.

“Sharon,” I tried to say, “Wake up,” but my voice was too gravelly from too much liquor, too much secondary cigarette smoke, and too little sleep.

She turned again and lay on her back, eyes open and starring. Her face was very pale and the flesh around her eyes was puffy.

I sat up and tried not to breathe too hard. I leaned over gently and set open the doors to clear the air. The cube doors came open and the ashes went streaming out with their motion.

Sharon had that soberide hangover look I used to get. She got up slowly on one elbow, turned a few shades of green, then vomited in my bed. I pulled a shirt from the pile and pushed it into her hands and she wiped her mouth with it.

I sincerely I wished I could have left her to sleep, but I needed to clear her out of the cube before I left for the day. The Cube Authority permitted overnight visitors without a penalty, but guests staying more than sixteen hours were considered residents, and they’d increase my rent over it— I’d have to file forms in triplicate and then file a petition to get the rent back down. It had happened once before, and I had no desire to repeat the experience. I coughed a little at the smell of vomit and jumped out of the bed and came down outside on the landing.

“Could you hand me those?” I spoke softly, and pointed to my shirt and trousers when I thought she’d regained her composure. She stared for a second or two, and then her eyes followed my motioning finger. When she figured it out, she threw me the clothing.

I had to get out. My head was thundering, but the smell in the compartment was worse; the walls were already too damn close when they started closing in. I closed my mouth and kissed her gently on the forehead, then donned my shirt and trousers and shoes, and headed for the Tenderloin.

I took the lift Topside and hopped the tube to Macey’s at the Spiderdome.

Steiner was Macey’s token lush: a fat emigre from Austria. Well, Steiner was fat here, anyway; on Earth he was elephantine. Back home he carted four-hundred and fifty pounds of baggage on his frame. He was too poor for gene therapy, but in the natural gravity districts of Luna he was a seventyfive pounder with a spring in his walk, and a fair chance of living past a hundred. In the Spiderdome district, of course, he was a lot heavier— but he liked the pull of gravity on him once a day, and he spent part of his off time at Macey’s , sitting and eating and drinking, with rolls of fat falling over his chair. His said the gravity helped his digestion.

“McAuley,” he greeted me in his thick Austrian accent when I walked in.

“Steiner,” I returned, pronouncing it ‘Schtyner’, like a regularDeutsche . He was still crocked on last night’s flightgum and this morning’s soberides. His belly bubbled and vibrated as he laughed to my made-up accent and the whisper of a terse Teutonic bow. His bulk took up nearly three seats at the bar and I wandered down away from him and sat safely out of conversational range. Macey spilled a mug of beer in front of me and I drained it half down before the foam settled.

Macey watched me have at the cheap brown liquid for a little while and looked so pregnant that I stopped slurping and dropped the mug and gave him a hard stare back.

A sly smile came around his lips.

“You’re a popular fellow, McAuley,” he baited.

Macey and his conversational tour bus. I looked back at him without comment, waiting for the punchline.

He snorted a little at my impassivity. “There’s been a guy here looking for you the last couple days.”

I stop for a second as my heart sank. “Not charmers?”

Macey laughed and waved a fat palm at me. “No, no, McAuley; why don’t you relax? You’ve been spending too much time at the Health Division— and I don’t think it’s doing your health any good. This guy’s no charmer— he’s an Earth man. He says his name is Tanner. Says he’s a friend of yours.”

The unpleasant adrenalin retreated as I took a few deep breaths. I went back to my beer and came away from the drained mug licking froth off the rough stubble on my upper lip. “I don’t know anybody named Tanner.”

“Something tells me you will,” Macey laughed, and leaned over the bar. “He was here three times looking for you,” he said, adopting a conspiratorial tone. “Wednesday, a little past nineteen, he tried to pick up on that skirt you used to be friendly with. The one with the overbite?”

I choked back a grin.

“At first she didn’t like him. I think she’s got some phobia about Earth people, I don’t know— but she got used to him pretty quick after he whipped out the plastic. All Earthside gold cards. One of ’em had a UN seal on it, so maybe he’s a G-man.” Macey flashed his big eyebrows at me, still smiling. “Anyway, the cards changed her opinion of him all of a sudden. Steiner and I watched the whole thing, and we drank to his health after they left together. The next day she came back in here all gummed-up. Steiner asked her if her opinion of Earth men had improved— but she couldn’t remember a thing about what she’d done with the guy after they left. She drew a total blank on the whole date. All she could remember was the plastic.” Macey leaned back, slapped the bar gently with the flat of his hand and smiled broadly with significant eyes.

I stabbed a finger at my mug and he refilled it in front of me. “You saying he scrammed her?”

“I’m not saying anything. I’m only telling you what I saw. The guy was an Earth man, he wore a black suit, and he had New York gold card with a UN seal.”

“Lots of Earth people are patriotic— I’ll bet most business people in New York have the UN seal on their credit cards. It’s part of the city’s identity. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Okay, fine— it doesn’t mean anything. But the next day— that was yesterday— he came in again. Only this time, he tried to make time with Steiner! He started on him in German. Steiner told me later what they talked about. He said he was an of old friend of yours, and was trying to track you down.” Macey stood erect with this information and folded his arms across his chest. “But Steiner— God bless ‘em— played dumb, and Tanner lost interest pretty quick; Steiner kept hitting him up for rounds of synthoscotch.”

Macey shook his head and snorted a laugh, making no effort to contain his good humor. “Wait a minute: there’s more. Because the next thing is that the guy starts on me; he wanted to know where to find you, and when it was that you usually came in—” Macey stopped and stared hard over my shoulder. He shot his chin up towards the door and narrowed his eyes purposefully. “And here he is; happy hunting, McAuley,” he said softly, and he moved slowly away down the bar, drying a glass with a towel.

I took a draught from the contents of my mug and dropped my eyelids a fraction.

Tanner didn’t idle. I saw him in the bar glass. He pinned two eyes on mine in the mirror and sprang lithely on Earth-hard legs to the bar where I sat drinking. He plugged himself between me and the seats next to Steiner and motioned Macey for a beer. His head and face and hands moved with bourgeois finesse over his drink, and then a smile cracked halfway out of his head and he turned sharply in my direction.

“Mr. McAuley.”

I ignored him on purpose till he spoke, then returned the eyes.

“How do you do?” He said, all teeth and dimples. “My name’s Sam Tanner.”

I nodded my head in greeting, but did not return the smile. “Have we met?”

Tanner’s smile faded a little. “In a manner of speaking,” he said. “I know enough about you to know I’d like to retain your services— if you’re free to offer them.”

I took a swig of my drink. “I haven’t done any private contracting for a while.”

“I’m aware that your business has suffered, and I’m prepared to offer you a substantial sum for your assistance.”

“Yeah? There’s an understatement. I don’t even have a business anymore— I don’t have a license to conduct business on Luna anymore.”

“Of course. And I’m aware of your status with the Franchise Board. No offense. Mr. McAuley, but the people I represent expect a certain thoroughness from me, and I spent some time familiarizing myself with your case, and I am aware of your tax problems. I’m also aware that you live in New Frisco, and that you used to live in New Venice, and that you used to have offices here in Spiderdome a few years ago. You lost them because you had most of your personal wealth in Merovian securities when the market crashed, and you lost your business license when you couldn’t pay the taxes on your income. Bad luck. I also know that you had debts afterward, but managed to pull clear of them in, shall was say, an unorthodox manner. But please, don’t take offense; I don’t mind telling you that I researched not only you but also a number of other private investigators. It was my research and subsequent knowledge of your career that brought me to you.”

I could smell his billfold well enough. Real leather, I’d bet. Black, and fat with plastic. Folded in two like a cigarette case. Coat pocket. A go-fer, though; he looked well trained, but not born to it. And he didn’t strike me as an Earth native; Belter, maybe.

“You’ve been on Luna for eight years,” he shook his head. “With your offices gone, it made it tough for me to track you down, not knowing where to look.”

“I pay extra not to be in the book.” I leaned back and looked at him. “You’ve certainly done your homework, though. Congratulations. I’m flattered.”

His eyes were on me in the mirror. He turned his head and we looked at each other.

“I’ll bet you miss Earth,” he said. “Who wouldn’t? I mean, you’ve got your fertility rights, and you can’t even exercise them on Luna.”

I held my breath for a second. The guy was laying it on pretty thick— starting a family was about the last reason I had for returning to Earth— but I tried to bury my desire to get off Luna with a show of resignation.

“That doesn’t bother me,” I said. “And there’s freedoms here that Earth never heard of. And you can sink damned low here and still come back; Luna’s a lot more forgiving than the UN.”

“Come on, McAuley,” Tanner said, suddenly informal “You’re an educated man. I know you came here for the gum— but now, even though you’re clean, Luna won’t let you get back up on your feet. You’re locked out of Spiderdome and living in a cube, for Chrissake. You think you’ll ever get an apartment up here again? There’s opportunities for someone like you back home. But here you are living like a rodent in an underground cage on a planet that doesn’t even have weather.”

“Luna’s got a bad rep, but it’s perpetuated by people who never lived here.” I felt suddenly defensive, and behaved as if I believed that what I was saying was actually true. It wasn’t exactly an act— I’d lived under both systems, and despite the sometimes exasperating living conditions, Luna had something to recommend it.

Anyway, I felt uncomfortable about letting this guy know what I wanted out of life; he knew too much already.

Tanner dropped his mug on the bar. “Hey,” he said, and ran a tongue across his lower lip, then showed the muscle in his face to mark his thoughts without looking at me. “You ever heard of a Belter kid named Raoul Simonson?”

My brows pulled together involuntarily and I pursed my lips. “Simonson,” I said. “Sure. I’ve heard of the family.”

Tanner nodded. “He was born on Ceres, and emigrated to Luna about three years ago when the gum trade was suspended in the Belt Worlds. His mother was an Anartek Belter and his father was Erich Simonson, the Earth industrialist.”

“Him I remember.”

“The Erich Simonson made big profits on war contracts supplying weapons to both sides during the Martian Rebellion, about ten years ago.”

“Pretty big scandal. I was the dick who cracked the case. But you already know that.”

“Yes, I do,” said Tanner. “Anyway, this kid, he’s the last one— the last Simonson. He’s a gumhead, and he lives in the dens. He used to be a Belter gumhead, but when the Belt decided to suspend the flightgum trade into the Belt Worlds, all the gumheads there migrated en mass to Luna.

“When he got here three years ago, the kid turned around and sued the old Simonson estate on Earth for his inheritance under the legal residency laws. So long as he was a Belt citizen, he could never get his hands on the money; as a Lunar citizen, which he is now, he has every right to it.”

I nodded and drained my beer.

“You might already know from the Newslines that there’s been a lot of noise on Earth about the disposition of the Simonson estate,” Tanner said. “The Financial Security Council wants to claim jurisdiction over the whole thing. Their position is that Simonson’s money’s a forfeit under the supranational security laws. Raoul, naturally, doesn’t think so.”

I nodded and Macey brought me a refill for my beer and a soycake sandwich.

“The trouble is that Raoul Simonson has been missing for three months. I have reports that he’s been living in New Frisco— down in the dens. The attorneys need his deposition to continue litigations with the Financial Security Council over the disposition of the estate.”

“And that’s where I come in,” I said, between bites of the soycake.

“That’s right. I represent the law firm that’s handling the case— Hiembrecht, Garcia & Wayne,” he handed me his card. “I looked over a lot of people, and I decided to talk to you before I went to somebody legal. There could be some question of coercion if Simonson didn’t come forward voluntarily and we had to hire somebody find him. With you— since this is going to be an all-cash arrangement— we can obviate the possibility that someone at the Financial Security Council will make that charge somewhere down the line.”

“Sounds square enough.”

“I can advance you five hundred Loonars right now,” he said. “That should be plenty enough for expenses, just to get you started. In addition to that, I’ve been authorized to pay you two hundred a day while you’re on the case, and a bonus of twenty-five hundred if you can find Simonson within the week. On top of that, I personally will promise you passage to Earth after you’ve found him, if that’s what you want. I’ve got a company space craft, and it’s an easy matter to take a passenger back with me when this is all over. I can even arrange to have your fees converted into UN credits— market rate, of course.”

I chewed on it and swallowed and washed it all down with a sip of beer. “Generous.” I said. “And an offer I can hardly refuse.”

Tanner smiled and cocked his head back triumphantly. “Bravo.”

“What about pictures of Simonson?” I asked. “ Last known whereabouts? Names of friends?”

Tanner produced a small brown envelope from his vest pocket. “Holographs, names, addresses and dates. It’s everything we have.” His brows arched as he handed it to me. “There’s five hundred Loonars enclosed here, and a number where you can reach me. And, if you don’t mind, a number where I can find you.”

I took the envelope and stuffed it into a pocket and downed my beer. Tanner took my card, shook my hand and left.

I went home to New Frisco.

Chapter 2

I unlocked the cube and the doors swished open and the air inside was thick with vomit and cigarette butts and stale sweat. I worked off the source of the odors one by one as best I could. Then I closed up the cube and poured the contents of the envelope Tanner had given me into a pile in the center of the bed. It contained three holos of Raoul Simonson, copies of his passport and visa, his application for citizenship on Luna, papers involving the litigation of his suit against his father’s estate and the Financial Security Council, his current address, his former address, dates of departure, arrival— and a brief biography.

Raoul Simonson— son of Erich Simonson, the late industrialist. During the Mars rebellion, about ten years ago, it came out that the elder Simonson had been supplying weapons to the Martian rebels in return for resource development rights; at the same time the UN bought weapons from Simonson to fight the rebels. When the UN’s Financial Security Council got wind of it, they tried to brake the contracts. But Simonson refused, and so the Council had him murdered by the BCI— the UN’s secret police.

That was ten years ago. I’d worked on the case myself, which explained something of Tanner’s interest in hiring me. Since then, Erich Simonson had become something of a posthumous folk hero in the outer worlds. He was supposed to be a champion of the downtrodden, but it was all bullshit; in the outer worlds they tended not to believe that he was a double dealing scoundrel — I guess they needed a martyr.

The kid was just an adolescent when his father was killed. Raoul Simonson lived a brats’ existence for twenty-six years before the flightgum prohibition in the outer systems sent the little gumhead scurrying for New Frisco where all vices are legal.

Simonson’s case was coming up for review before the Lunar Judiciary in two months. If he was going to beat the Financial Security Council over his piece of his father’s estate, he needed to make depositions and to appear before the Court to prove he was still alive.

I counted the Loonars one by one. Five hundred Loonars was a damn fortune here; but still not nearly enough to get me home to Earth. The fact that the five hundred was clear cash meant everything, of course. If the money had been registered, my cube rent would have shot up in a big way, if I weren’t evicted outright. To each according to his need, from each according to his ability. In practical terms, it meant that if I could afford to live in better accommodations than the cubes, the Cube Authority would either force me out to more expensive housing, or eat the money I already paid them at an even faster rate. Under those circumstances, it was practically impossible to put away enough money to ever get off the planet— which accounted for the pervasive addictions there; if you couldn’t get off Luna, you were better off getting out of your mind with gum and liquor.

I plugged Simonson’s holograph into my wall plug and looked him over. Twenty-six years, but looked older. Tall and thin, but wirey, like all Belters. Something about nutrition standards in the Belt Worlds contributed to the development of their bodies, so they all looked and moved like Olympian string-beans. Hair black, eyes blue. The holo had him at a Belter social club— he milled about in a crowded and noisy room full of thin, tall, and wirey looking socialites, all bright-eyed and gesticulating enormously. I pulled the holo and checked his last known Lunar address: Lower Eastside New Frisco. The heart of the gumhead dens. Well, for a spoiled Belter kid— it’s where a gumhead goes, alright.

Chapter 3

I took the lift straight down to the Lower Levels. A kilometer deep and dark as hell when the lights go down. I caught a tube East and walked from the terminal to Simonson’s cube.

The Eastside dens were a hang-out for the worst cases in New Frisco: dumb kids from all over the solar system who sold their futures to be drug addicts. They were rawest cases on Luna.

The Lunar Government always provided free passage to Luna from any place in the solar system. Luna guaranteed free housing, warmth, food, and all the gum you could chew. Guaranteed it, and enforced it; once you were there, if you weren’t working, there was nothing left but to be an addict.

Most every vice was legal on Luna: it was supposed to be a hedonist’s dream, but really it was a hedonist’s nightmare, because your senses got dim to the life around you. On Earth, at least you’d die relatively quick from the enviropoisons, or you might even be executed by the State for violating some idiotic law. But down there in the Eastside— Christ, you’d live a whole life like a walking zombie, dead but for the fact that you were animated.

Down in the dens— it was the worst. Nobody had anything and everything was free. Nobody paid rent, because no one worked. It was humanity in its most liberated form. Only the young survived there. There wasn’t much traffic in and out of that part of town; it was self-contained and shunned by the rest of civilization nearer the surface. I put gravel in my belly and bit on something sour when I got there.

I found Simonson’s cube all locked up, but a cube just down the corridor was open and a young blond kid of maybe nineteen leaned against the door panels, smoking a cigarette and trying to look dangerous. He wore a black plastic jerkin and black plastic pants that stopped just short of his knees, and was barefoot with filthy unwashed feet. His complexion was bad and his hair was long and unkempt, and stringy wisps of oily blond hair hung across his eyes like a raggedy Andy. His arms were muscular and scarred and he smelled like old sweat and alcohol.

“Know who lives here?” I jerked my head at Simonson’s closed-up cube.

The kid had been making a visible effort to ignore my existence when I spoke. He stopped his show and cocked his head a little insolently and hacked at his sinuses and spit across the tubeway. I watched the performance and held back applause.

“Eat shitcake— Boris .” He expelled a breath fast and short in what I suppose was a show of amused contempt. His lip curled and his chin moved up and I watched his cheeks pull back to show yellow grimy unbrushed teeth and a wide band of whitish gums above them.

I guessed he figured I was a surface dweller and would only hold me in sheer contempt because of it. They don’t generally like outsiders in the Lower Levels; they consider surface-folk rather uncommitted to the adventure of complete social chaos. I held back my impulse to be unreasonable and employed psychology.

“I’m looking’ for a Belter named Simonson,” I began. “I got a present for him.” I growled convincingly, and cracked my knuckles.

The kid got interested, and smiled, and suddenly there was a very cruel glint in his eyes. “Gonna break his balls?”

I let my eyes turn dead and my expression went blank. The kid let go a long whistle and he dropped his eyelids knowingly.

“You want Lucy,” he said.

“Lucy,” I repeated. “She live here, too?”

The kid shook his head yes. He hacked and spit again and took a long draw on his cigarette. “She’s probably at the Jawbreaker , man. Fifty cubes down.” He jerked his thumb towards the tubeway.

Chapter 4

The Jawbreaker was a little gumdive, decorated with a pink tile and chromium motif. Harsh electronic musak and a multi-colored stobe light bombarded the few patrons within. I walked in and stepped up to the bar and ordered a cheap brown liquor. I leaned back against my seat with my drink in my hand and studied the room. The place was half empty but for couple of patronless whores and a few obviously terminal gumheads. The barkeep wouldn’t look me in the eye when I asked him if he knew somebody named Lucy, but only jerked his thumb to a small partitioned table in a far corner of the room where the lights were very low and very red.

Lucy was a big boned whore with no hair and perfect skin and two big gaps where her front teeth should have been. She was wearing a short black frock opened midway, and a short red skirt and black sandals. She was chewing gum intently and her eyes were dopey and solicitous when she saw me approach the table. They went half mast and all bedroomy when I sat down across her without verbal invitation.

“Is your name Lucy?”

Her lips parted and curled rakishly and she leaned back a bit as if to appraise me. “My, where did Gilbert find you ?” She asked, and her hand darted out and landed on my forearm.

“Gilbert didn’t send me,” I said.

A puzzled expression came frowning through. “Well, then?” she said. She had stopped chewing and she stamped her foot with impatience.

“My name is Angelo McAuley,” I said. “I’m looking for Raoul Simonson. I understand you know him.”

She seemed clear enough to that point, but suddenly the gum took over and she smiled to herself and began chewing it lasciviously. In terminal gumheads the gum asserted itself in waves, overcoming the addict with uncontrollable sensations of pleasure. Lucy had obviously been a gumhead for a long while.

“Lucy,” I said.

“I hear you, big man,” she said dreamily.

I felt the power of her sexuality like an impact. I don’t think she did it on purpose, but the combination of the gum’s earthy pleasure and the force of her personality combined to produce hypnotic emanations of eroticism. I felt suddenly heavier in my seat as I came under her spell.

“Raoul Simonson,” I said, still feeling her magnetism, but trying to redirect our exchange to the purpose of my visit.

“Raoul,” she purred. Her lips parted and she took in a sudden sharp breath and sighed.

“Know where I can find him?”

Her eyes refocused and the gum let go of her a bit, and she spoke. “How should I know?”

“Well, where do you know him from, Lucy?”

“We shared a cube.”

“And you don’t know where to find him.”

Her face suddenly got all screwed-up, but the gum kept the unpleasant emotion short-lived. “He left me,” she said. “a few months ago.”

“He left you? How come?”

“I was sick.”

“Gumloaded?”

“Not that time.”

“What, then?”

“We got beat-up by some skinheads.”

“Charmers?”

She looked at me squarely. “Not charmers. Just thugs. They took our money. We were going to go back to Earth on my fuckmoney. I got raped. Raoul got hurt bad, too. His head got cut. Concussion or something. I lost my front teeth.” She smiled her gums at me. “Good for business,” she said, and winked.

She went back to her drink and the gum welled up in her again, and again I felt the tension of her sexuality. I tried to bring her attention back to the subject. “What about Raoul, Lucy,” I said. “Where his is now?”

“I told you,” she said— and again the foot stomp. “He left .” And she smiled again. She batted her eyes and turned her face away, a jaunty grin on her too red lips. “Well,” she breathed. “He had to go to the hospital. They said he was going to be alright, but he never came home.”

I had an idea. “Can we go to your place?” I suggested.

Her eyes widened with interest again, and a tongue darted through the hallow space in her grin as she looked me over. She was dripping with it. “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

We left the bar together and headed up the corridor towards her cube. Lucy’s magnetism was undeniable, but what I really wanted was the opportunity to search the cube where Simonson had been staying. If the walk sobered her a bit, so much the better. I would have preferred a straight conversation with her to the distraction of her gum-charged orgasms— but I would do what was necessary.

When we arrived, Lucy was as gummed and as charged as ever. She brushed up against me at the cube door, and pressed her palm to my chest before opening it. The blond kid I’d seen earlier saw us together and smirked in an ugly way and spit his mucus and fell back to smoke another cigarette.

Lucy opened the cube and stripped and fell on the bed. Her body was not voluptuous, but white and narrow and sensual. I felt the animal in me respond and I fell upon her and abandoned myself to the moment.

Afterward, I sat up in the bed and looked around the cube. Like all cubes, it was very small and there wasn’t much there— certainly nothing that might have belonged to Simonson. After her rash of orgasms, Lucy was awake and alert and refreshed— though unwilling to discuss the subject of Raoul Simonson.

It was fruitless: she was too gummed up to have an interest in focusing on anything other than pleasure, but she was the only lead I had. I made the decision to coax her back to my own cube in the upper levels; Sharon had taken her soberides with her, but I still had some left over from my own gumhead days— and I always knew where to get the unregistered stuff. I reasoned that if I could get her down off the gum— even for a short time— I might be able to get some sober answers out of her.

Chapter 5

Lucy was agreeable, and I managed to get her back to my cube without incident; she enjoyed the the tube ride and sat passively beside me, exuding her sexual magnetism.

I had to admit of a sympathy for Lucy. She looked terminal, and the gum had no inclination to let go of her unassisted. When we got back to my cube, I handed her the soberides in a bulb of water. She accepted it without comment and drank it down and soon after, she fell asleep.

I left her to sleep it off and hopped the tube out to Spiderdome Admin. I figured I’d have a need for more soberide before I was finished with Lucy, and so I called up to the Health Division and asked for Gusto Sanchez.

Sanchez was a transplanted Spaniard and used-to-be gumhead who got off the stuff and made his way up the Health Division bureaucracy at Spiderdome by abetting the illegal distribution of soberides to the Eastside dens.

The Eastside District was managed by a private contracting firm that received its operating subsidies from the Lunar government based on the number of active gumheads in the population. Since Spiderdome had a vested interest in attracting and maintaining a body of sober and productive citizens, this put them into conflict with the Eastside denlords.

Soberides were the sore point between them: while legal in Spiderdome and in some of the adjoining neighborhoods—like my own, in upper West New Frisco— distribution of soberides in the dens was punishable by death. Spiderdome Admin had a policy of catering to the political sensibilities of the denlords, but in real life they encouraged by advancement the activities of people like Gusto Sanchez, who made soberides readily— if not legally— available to anybody who needed them. Gusto was therefore a particular thorn in the side of the denlords, but as a Spiderdome administrator he was untouchable.

After a short wait, Gusto greeted me on the comline, and invited me up to his office.

“Hola, amigo,” he said, taking my hand.

“Same here, chum.”

“Glad to see you, Angelo.” He closed the door behind us and we both sat on a couch near a viewport. The Spiderdome Admin offices were located in a tower at the center of the city, and the view from Gusto’s suite was commanding. It was a rare pleasure to sit in a room with a view of the surface; the sun had just been rising over the past few days, and—through the opaque window of the viewport— it cast long and beautiful shadows over the wide Lunar plain.

“It’s good you showed up,” he said. “I’ve been leaving messages for you all day.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s Deatherage. I guess he found out about about the deliveries last month. Somebody spilled.”

My heart sank for the second time that day. I had been doing occasional free lance work for Gusto on and off since I’d lost my business license. It was all under the table, and it helped make ends meet— and kept me from slipping into the dens.

The month before he had asked me to go between him and his Eastside distributors. I had misgivings about this particular job, but I agreed to do it. A dangerous fruitcake named Charming Deatherage was the Eastside denlord whose turf had been targeted for soberide distribution. I was nervous about the whole thing from the start because Deatherage’s contract boys— we called them by the pejorative ‘charmers’— were notorious for their brutality and excess.

“They got our whole operation,” Gusto continued. “Uploaded everybody. Your contact must have provided a perfect description of you, and somebody figured out who it was. They’ll probably try and make an example out of you.”

“When did all this happen?”

“I just heard about it this morning, but I think they’ve been rounding our guys up all week. No telling how long they’ve known about you.”

“And what am I supposed to do about this?”

Gusto shrugged. “It’s tough for you, buddy. They’ll probably try and upload you.”

“I’m not interested in having my brain uploaded into Charming Deatherage’s mainframe, Gusto.”

“Don’t worry about it; I can fix you up with plates.” He pointed to his left temple while he looked at my forehead. “They’ll get a surprise if they try to probe you there.”

“How’s that going to stop ’em? They’ll just bring me in and pull the fucking plates right out again, and then they’ll probably program me for a slowboat or mining robot— they’ll sell me off to fucking Mercury.”

Gusto laughed when I said it, then went serious. “We can’t let them have your gray matter, Angelo; you know too much. We’ll fix you up with some specialized brain protection and I’ll see if we can’t issue you a flashblaster, maybe some other toys. We’ll make sure they’ll have to destroy most of your higher brain functions to get the plates out.”

I looked at him, hard.

“I’m sorry, Angelo.” He said. “There’s not much we can do. You know you’ve always been a free lancer— the Division can’t claim you. That’s politics.”

“You said something about toys?” I tried to read Gusto’s expression.

He smiled sheepishly. “A blaster, maybe a passcrambler— whatever you think you need.”

“You fucker.”

He arched his eyebrows and spread his hands. “Hey— you took the job, Angelo. It was easy money, but you knew what could happen. And anyway, you’ve been walking around with ice bowels ever since we did the Charmland job; now at least you know where you stand. This puts your destiny back in your own hands. Sounds like a deal to me.”

Gusto was offering me the job of striking at Charming Deatherage before he could get to me. Gusto was a shit. He was trying to stink me up in his little turf war, and it looked like I didn’t have much choice but to go along.

“I’ll send you down to Supplies with a blank check— you can have anything you want, and its yours to keep. And get the plates before you leave.” He pointed to my temple. “I’ll call down to the clinic and tell them you’re coming. You should be out of there in half-an-hour.”

With my back against the wall, I agreed. He signed over an authorization and sent me off to the candy store, “By the way, if you didn’t get my call, how come you came out here today?”

“I’m subverting the masses. I got a little dearheart from down below. I wanted to get enough sobers to pull her out of it.”

“I don’t know what you do with your time.” Gusto shook his head, walked to his desk, pulled out a small bottle and threw it to me. “I think you’d get into trouble without my help, hombre.”

I waved him off and headed for Police Supplies.

Chapter 6

When I got home after a swing by the bar Lucy was still asleep, so I sacked out next to her for the night and let the soberides do their work.

The next morning she came to, her head puffed-up by the gum on one side and the soberides on the other.

“Who the hell are you?” She said it through squinting eyes. She had trouble pronouncing ‘th’ because of her missing teeth, but I understood her well enough. Her manner carried a certain weighty unhappiness as she perceived the world more or less soberly— probably for the first time in years.

“My name’s Angelo,” I replied to her. “You’re in the upper Westside.”

“What’d you slip me?” She continued to squint like she was under a hot lamp.

“I had soberides. I was a gumhead myself once. Don’t worry- a friend gave them to me unregistered. I figured I’d give you the opportunity, if you wanted out. If not— well— there’s plenty of gum to go around. You can catch the lift back down to the dens any time you please. It’s a free planet.”

“Your friend’s got balls if he’s dealing soberides; the denlords don’t piss around with people stealing their markets.” Her eyes seemed to widen all of a sudden. “Hey— what the fuck am I doing here?”

“I brought you here yesterday. I was hoping you could tell me something about Raoul Simonson.”

She expelled a breath from her nose and turned her head away. “Oh, yeah. That little shit.”

“Do you have any idea where I might find him?”

She looked at me as she searched her memory. “I don’t know.” she said.

“You must have been gummed up for a long while.”

“Don’t ask me how long— seems like years.”

“Maybe it was. Anyway, your memory will improve the longer you’re on the soberides. Here, I’ll get you some more.”

She sat cross legged on the bed as I poured another bulb of water from the spigot and mixed in the soberides. She accepted the bulb and sipped at it.

She looked at me again, a little quizzically. “You’re an investigator?”

“I’m non-institutional; it’s a personal business.”

“And you’re looking for Raoul?”

“That’s right— hired by his attorneys. He’s been suing the Financial Security Council on Earth for rights to an inheritance.”

She pushed back and furrowed her brow at me. “Bullshit,” she drawled.

“I’m only telling you why I was hired, ma’am.”

“Well, that ain’t the reason, you dumb dick.”

“Okay, gumhead, you tell me why.”

She lowered her eyelids half way and laughed like she knew a joke on me.

“I like you,” she said, and smiled like the professional coquette she was.

“Seemed like it yesterday.”

“Oh, yeah,” she smiled and blushed. “I remember that much.”

She was much more attractive on the soberides than she had been on the gum. She was more vulnerable— more accessible. Before, her magnetism had been close to off-putting; now, while she wasn’t so mysterious and powerful, she made up for it by seeming human.

“Okay,” I said. “What about Simonson?”

“He was a gummer, no doubt; but I haven’t seen him for at least two months. Nobody’s seen him in all that time. I bet somebody sobered him, the shit.” She pulled her legs up and cupped her knee caps. “Got a cigarette?”

I winced at the thought of more cigarette smoke and ashes in my cube, but offered her the pack that Sharon had left the night before. She lit it and took a long drag from rakish lips and held the cigarette between her middle fingers when she exhaled. The foul smell of the smoke threw water on any desire I may have been entertaining.

“You say nobody’s seen him,” I said. “Could you tell me who his friends are? Maybe somebody else knows something.”

A kind of sick expression came over her face and she stamped the cigarette out nervously in the oyster shell ashtray. “Cute,” she said looking at it. Then, “Shit— my head hurts.”

“It’s the soberides; don’t worry, it’ll pass, and then you’ll feel at lot better, believe me.”

“I believe you,” she said, holding the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. “Look,” she said after her head cleared. “Just find every gumhead Belter in the Eastside dens— and a few sober ones from up around here, and you’ll have all the friends Raoul ever had.”

“Popular, eh?”

“Popular ? You kidding? Nobody could stand him. All he ever cared about was dope and screwing. He did every trip and fucked every whore in the Eastside— man or woman. All those supposed friends of his from Topside shouldn’t of given a shit about a gummed up fuckup like Raoul— but they did. And how come? Because he already owned them . So don’t tell me about how he was suing for an inheritance. I don’t believe that bullshit. Raoul doesn’t give a piss about Earth— he hates Earth. All he cares about are blacksuits and Anarteks and technoshit.”

I started. “What do you mean? Why blacksuits?”

“Who the fuck knows? Raoul used to talk on the comline with this blacksuit. He never let me listen, but he told me once that if I ever said anything about him to anybody, he’d call up his suitboy at BCI and have my brain uploaded. Fuck him, the little shit.”

She picked up the crushed cigarette again, and tried to light it. “That blacksuit was the only one Raoul ever respected, though— I’ll tell you that.” She struck the lighter and got the cigarette lit. “All those other ones used to come over with their dicks in their hands. Raoul owned every one of them, and they all called him ‘sir.’ All except the blacksuit. Raoul always got a straight back when he talked to him. Inheritance? Fuck me. Raoul was going back Beltside. That’s probably where he’s gone to. And good fucking riddance to him, I say.”

She finished the cigarette and stamped the remainder out again and then her face turned a little too pale.

“The soberides make you sleep a lot,” I said to her. “They’re working the gum dependency out of your body; the longer you’ve been on the gum, the longer it will take to detoxify. You’ll keep feeling sleepy when you take the soberides as long as you’re addicted to the gum; when you get clean, the soberides won’t effect you anymore.”

“That’s comforting.”

“You can even go back and use the gum again— as long as you keep using the soberides, you’ll never get addicted. You can have your cake and eat it up here, you know.”

“Does this mean we’re married?” It was the last thing she said before she nodded out.

Chapter 7

After Lucy fell asleep, I made a call to a Belter immigrant I knew who lived in my neighborhood in the Westside. His name was Jack Nabo. When I called, his wife answered the telecom and said he wasn’t home, but she did say she’d heard of Raoul Simonson.

“I heard of him. But I don’t follow politics too much,” she said incongruously.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you know, both Jack and I were gumheads Beltside. We lived in the dens when we got here, and now Jack does freelance work for the Embassy. But I try and stay out of politics.”

I took her for gummed or drunk, because she wasn’t trying very hard to make any sense. I spoke slowly into the telecom, as if to a child: “Excuse me, but when I asked you just now if you knew Raoul Simonson, you said you did. I understood that either you or Jack might give me some idea where I could find him.”

“Oh, Mr. McAuley,” she laughed and put her hand to her breast chuckling. “Jack might know— but I never get involved in things like that. Not that Jack does, either, mind you! It’s just that Jack follows those things more than I do.”

I felt like I’d walked into the wrong Virtual house. “Follows what kinds of things, Mrs. Nabo?”

“I’m not going to say anything more to you, Mr. McAuley,” she scolded me. “You’ll just have to talk to Jack about it. I don’t know a thing.” She had suddenly lost her good humor, and was beginning to get edgy.

“Well, could you tell me where I might find Jack?”

“I don’t know where he is today— he works for the Embassy, like I said, and now we’re off the gum and we’re hoping to return home. Jack’s made some friends at the Embassy, and we don’t want to rock the boat— so maybe you’d just better ask someone else your questions.” Her tone had definitely become defensive.

I saw no point in aggravating her further, but I was intrigued. What was it about Raoul Simonson that made her so jumpy? “Alright, Mrs. Nabo— but before I say goodbye, is there someone else you can think of that might help me find Mr. Simonson?”

She though about it a minute, trying to decide if it was an improper question. When she decided it wasn’t— or maybe that it would help to get rid of me if she answered— she gave me the name and address of a Lower Eastside gumhead named Tad who she said probably knew where to find Raoul Simonson.

I was nervous about venturing into the Eastside again after what Gusto had told me. I went back to my cube to check on Lucy and found her deep in sleep. I pulled open a drawer and took out the flashblaster Gusto had issued to me from Police Supplies. I hadn’t been able to carry a flashblaster legally since I lost my business license— although I rarely carried one even then. The one I now had was heavier then I remembered my old blaster to be. And smaller. I joggled it in my hand to test its weight, then adjusted the setting to a heavy stun level and dropped it into my side pocket. It felt heavy to me there, but it wasn’t obvious that I was carrying anything.

Before I left I wrote a note to Lucy explaining that I’d be gone for a short while, and to wait for me until I got back. I left the bottle of soberides out where she could see them, and instructed her to take a small dose if she felt the urge to chew the gum again.

Tad’s cube was in a thankfully remote corner of the dens, and I did my best to remain as anonymous as I could. I got off the Eastside tube a short walk from Tad’s address, and began walking North up the corridor. As the tube tram pulled away, I felt the hackles on my neck go up and I stood silently for a moment peering down the corridor in the direction I had been walking. I stood near the tubeway platform at a three-way corridor junction. The direction of Tad’s cube was just ahead of me, leading up a dim-lit corridor that ran parallel to the tubeway. Another corridor branched off at a right angle. As the sound of the speeding tram died down, an unhealthy silence enveloped the neighborhood. There were no human beings to be seen, only the grimy and defaced walls of the corridors.

Something was wrong. I heard something fall and an echo of something else come from the direction of Tad’s cube. A low din of voices. I felt for the flashblaster in my pocket and wrapped it around my hand, but did not pull it out.

A moment later the artificial gravity cells beneath the corridors cut out, and I was suddenly at the mercy of Luna’s feeble natural gravity.

Charmers.

“Angelo ,” a deep voice sang from the North corridor.

“Angelo ,” sang another voice from the South.

“Angelo , I’m home ,” sang a third voice from the West corridor.

I backed up toward the tubeway, facing the West, my head looking first forward, then right, then left, and back again.

They emerged slowly from the shadows, walking deliberately, unaffected by the sudden diminution of gravity.

They were enormous; they filled each corridor, and would have prevented me from getting past them by their sheer bulk. Like Steiner, they must easily have weighed five hundred pounds each on Earth. But now— with the gravity in the corridors suddenly reduced— they carted their incredible bulk with ease, while I could only hop, and that awkwardly.

“Angelo ,” sang the one in the North corridor again. “You’ve been a bad egg, little boy.”

“And now we’re going to crack you,” said the South.

“And no one will put you back together,” laughed the West.

They were closing slowly but inexorably. Each held a blaster in his right hand, and the North had something else in his left. He waved it at me when he saw that I’d seen it.

“It’s for you,” he said. It was a compressor. They’d try and upload me— but they’d fail because of the plates. If they tried to pull the plates, they’d rip my whole brain out and do themselves no good. And when they discovered I’d spoiled their uploading fantasies with the plates in my head, they’d probably sit on me and turn the gravity back up. Charming.

I had only the tubeway behind me; I wasn’t sure if they’d stop me if I ran in there, because it was a sure death— it was only big enough for the trams, and when next a tram came through, I’d be cut to pieces if I were in there.

I did it anyway.

None of the three stooges reacted as I pitched backward. I fell against the inside wall of the tubeway and bounced off, falling forward and smashing my chin against the platform edge. I slid down into the curve of the tubeway on my belly, and pulled the blaster from my pocket. I pulled the blaster down into my midsection, and crouched with my legs under me as I slid further towards the bottom of the tubeway curve.

In a moment, the three of them were standing together on the edge of the platform, looking down at me in at the bottom of the tubeway.

“This should be interesting,” said one of them.

“When’s the next tram due? I’m hungry; let’s go to Denny’s ; it’s ‘all you can eat’ night.”

“We’ll take the tram when it gets here. Charming won’t like it— but we already know this prick works for Sanchez.”

“Last chance to come out, Angelo!”

“Hey,” said the third. “Let’s piss on him. When they scrape him up out of there, they’ll think he pissed his pants!”

The three roared with laughter and proceeded to pocket their blasters and unzip their flys. I waited till each of them had started, then pulled up and zeroed all three at point blank. I fired left to right, and the three stood staring at me with frightened eyes holding their dicks and unable to decide between an interrupted piss and evasive action. It was a turkey shoot.

I hopped out of the tubeway instantly and came up on the platform. All three were sprawled unconscious in a row and each continued urinating from their elephantine members.

I pulled all three blasters out of their pockets, and the compressor, too, and threw them all into the tubeway. Damn them . I pulled my blaster and readjusted the settings to a full flash and pointed.

Damn them .

I couldn’t do it.

The tram was coming; I could hear the whistle in the distance and a gentle breeze began to blow from the tubeway.

The ridiculous penises of the three giant stooges had finished urinating. I’d been partly drenched, but I had had the last laugh.

I’d gotten away.

Chapter 8

Lucy woke a few minutes after I’d returned to my cube. Her mood was irritable, and she didn’t much feel like responding to my questions about Raoul Simonson. I had earlier made some purchases at the market, using some of my new found wealth to restock my food cabinets with something other than soycakes and nutrajuice. I hadn’t been able to cook anything since I’d lived in the cubes, so I bought stuff that didn’t need to be cooked so much as prepared. Lucy had never had a roast beef sandwich before— though she’d heard of it. She had spent her childhood in North America, but her parents had been vegetarians, and, while she had no firm opinion about the eating of animal flesh, she was wondered if live animals were bred and slaughtered on Luna.

“Or is the flesh imported from Earth?” She asked as I prepared the sandwich for her.

“They grow the meat in vats,” I explained. “They don’t grow the whole animal, just the parts they sell.”

“I’ve never seen anyone on Luna eat this stuff.”

“It’s a small enterprise. Mostly the manufacturers cater to the big hotels where the tourists stay.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“I know a guy who works in the kitchen at the Sheraton. It’s expensive, but one gets tired of Lunar cuisine.”

“Everything tastes like ripe strawberries when you’re gummed,” she said.

“Well, here’s a reality sandwich.” I said, handing it to her. I was proud of it, indeed, and set myself to work on my own. Roast beef and Swiss cheese on a French roll with mayonnaise, poupon mustard, horseradish, fresh green peppers, a few sliced up Roma tomatoes— all made right here, right on Luna, almost exclusively for the tourist industry, and a few well-off Spiderdomers. It’d had cost me over two-hundred Loonars for my one bag of groceries— all courtesy of the Sheraton Hotel— but it was worth it when I bit into the first roast beef sandwich I had since I lost my business license.

Lucy was quizzical about the whole thing, but she ate her sandwich dutifully, and washed it all down with a bulb of water mixed with soberides.

After we had eaten, I called Gusto and told him about the incident with the charmers in the dens. He looked at me like I was crazy and told me I’d been a damn fool to go back down there after what he’d told me about Deatherage’s contract. I told him he was probably right, but that I was only trying to make a living. He said I was closer to dying than making a living so long as Charming Deatherage was alive. I told him that was trite, but that I got the message.

Lucy sat through the whole exchange scowling out of sight of the telecom. The soberides were starting to work on her again, and she passed out shortly after I ended the conversation.

My attempt to confront Tad was a failure because of the threat of charmers on my neck. I had one of two options: either devote my energies to figuring out a way to kill Charming Deatherage, or follow up on the Simonson case in the upper levels, where charmers fear to tread. I remembered Tanner’s offer to return me to Earth if I could find Simonson, and that made my decision.

I decided that I would talk to Jack Nabo.

His wife said he worked for the ‘Embassy.’ Jack Nabo was from Astros, so I started at the Astros embassy.

I changed out of my clothing and sponged down a little bit, dressed again, then wrote Lucy a note, and made to leave my cube and head for Embassy Row in North Spiderdome.

Blackness came next; well, maybe a sharp report like lightening in my brain for a split second— somehow the lightening and the blackness intertwined in my memory.

I don’t know how long I was out; the shock itself wasn’t life threatening, but it could easily have been worse. I woke shivering cold and with a throbbing head.

Lucy was naked and cool on the sheet next to me. The blaster had burned her badly, and it lay on the floor just a few inches from where my fingertips had been as I lay unconscious— as if it had been placed in my hand while I lay inert and had fallen sometime before I awoke. The small holes in her temples indicated that she had been uploaded.

The cube doors were closed tight. They’d been open before— I was just leaving when the lightening struck I pulled myself up and found the wash basin and splashed ice cold water in my face.

Justice was swift and merciless in New Frisco; the denlords had to operate within constitutional rules, and murder guaranteed a sure response. In the Eastside, human life was valued by a head-count of gum addicts. Lucy’s death meant one less gumhead subsidy, and I looked responsible for it. If it wasn’t enough that the flashblaster could be traced to me, the fact that the murder had taken place in my cube would certainly be all they needed to identify me as the prime suspect.

And when Eastside Homicide finally figured out that the person suspected in Lucy’s murder was the same guy marked by Charming Deatherage for soberide smuggling, there would be no place for me to hide. Since the murder involved an Eastside citizen, jurisdiction would be turned over the Eastside den authorities— into the hands of Charming Deatherage himself.

I covered Lucy’s body with a sheet and regrets, and tried to think.

Gusto’s advice had been plain: get to Deatherage before he could get to me. Given the hot water I now found myself in, I didn’t suppose his advice would change much.

I was jammed. I’d been set up for a murder, and now I was jammed.

I called Sharon on the telecom and explained what had happened.

“Christ, McAuley.” She said, shaking her head.

“The set up stinks like Deatherage,” I said. “ I don’t know. The stooges couldn’t have come all the way up here— they can’t even walk unless it’s natural gravity. It had to be somebody else working for Deatherage. He found out what happened down there today, and now he’s fixed me. They could have set the blaster up to stun us both, and when they figured out I had plates in my head, they couldn’t upload me on the spot.”

“Then why are you still alive; why didn’t they just kill you? It doesn’t wash, Angelo.”

“Sure it does. Think about it: Charming Deatherage put me on a contract list. Gusto Sanchez takes that as an invitation to use me as his counter strike; my only protection from Deatherage is to kill him first— that’s why Gusto sent me to Police Supplies with an empty Christmas stocking.”

“That still doesn’t explain why they didn’t just kill you.”

“Look: if Gusto maneuvered me into assassinating Deatherage, he can do the same with someone else. If Deatherage just kills me, it’s too easy. He’s got to make an example; he doesn’t want to worry about somebody else gunning for him. He’s going to get it out on the Newslines and then he’s going to make it painful for me. Got it? I’ll end up uploaded and sent to work as a machine part on the hot side of Mercury. Deatherage wants to send me to hell, and he wants to tell the world he did it.

“What about evidence? They can’t convict without evidence.”

“Even though it was Westside territory, I can’t assume that the killers would go through all the trouble of setting me up without sweeping the cube clean. It’s easy enough to use micro-bugs to destroy incriminating genetic evidence— the police do it all the time. I can’t assume they didn’t do that. And anyway, who would question them?”

“What about your friend Sanchez?”

I snorted. “Fat chance. He doesn’t even know me anymore.”

Sharon cried when I told her to wait for an hour, and then to call the Spiderdome cops and explain exactly what transpired during our conversation. I was aware that all public comline conversations were digitally recorded and stored in the city’s mainframe. It was only a matter of time before they found it, so to save Sharon the charge of criminal association, I instructed her to come clean. The Spiderdome cops would treat her okay.

Chapter 9

The minute I was off the phone with Sharon, it rang and nearly sent me out of my skin. It was Tanner.

“Heard you had some bad luck today, Mr. McAuley,” he said.

I started. “How do you know—”

“I’ve got a monitor on police comlines. A Lower Eastside prostitute named Lucy Van Holsty has been reported missing, but your name hasn’t come up yet.”

I had a sudden realization. “You’ve got a monitor on my line?”

He smiled. “Listen, McAuley: I can help. I was aware of the trouble you had with the denlords, and now I feel responsible for putting you in their way. Let me help.”

It looked bad for me. I was convinced that the Eastside authorities would be on me any minute. The lousy five hundred Loonars Tanner had given me wouldn’t be enough to attract a criminal attorney, and the only other way I could see out was to escape the planet altogether.

Only Tanner could help me with that one. “What do you propose?”

“I have a cruiser out on the plain somewhere.” He said. “I’m going to send you the navigation codes. All you have to do is rent a shuttle to take you there. After that, I’ll be communicating with you.”

“I’m puzzled, Tanner. This is my fight; why are you helping me?”

“I told you: I feel badly about sending you down there. The murder of that girl is half my fault. And anyway, it doesn’t cost me a thing to lend you a hand.”

“Except charges for abetting a criminal’s escape.”

“But you’re not a criminal yet, McAuley; no one’s accused you of anything.”

I shrugged. “True enough. I’m in a bag, Tanner. I’ll be there.”

I took the blaster and the other goodies I had gotten from Supplies and walked out of my cube and took the tubeway to the shuttle port.

When I got there I laid down the balance of the Loonars Tanner had given me to rent a small surface shuttle. While I waited for the shuttle to be brought around to the bay, I called up Joe Macey.

“McAuley?” He said. “You’re a popular guy!”

“Not again.” I said. “Is Tanner there?”

“Some other guy, Angelo,” said Macey, his voice gone serious. “He says he’s from the BCI. Can you believe that shit? What’s going on with you, anyway?”

I didn’t know what to think about the arrival of a BCI agent asking for me at Macey’s ; it didn’t make sense. If Deatherage was going to pin me for Lucy’s murder, why not just use his own police bureau? Why involve the secret police?

Something in me wanted to hang up on Macey and wait for the shuttle in ignorance.

The BCI agent at Macey’s stopped me. The resources of the secret police were essentially unlimited; if the BCI knew where I was, there would be no escape.

Another thing hit me— why would a BCI agent get involved in a den murder? I had never heard of such a thing. Still, it had been about an hour since I’d left Lucy’s body in my cube. It was entirely possible that they could have been on to me by now.

“Macey,” I said. “Is the guy still there?”

“Yeah,” he said, and was barely audible. “I’m looking right at him.”

“Okay,” I said, “Put him on.”

Macey nodded and the screen went blank. A few moments later another face appeared.

“Mr. McAuley?” The man smiled congenially. He was a dark haired, round headed, moderately built guy with a very relaxed look about him. “My name is Gordon DeButte. I’m the Executive Lunar Branch Officer of the Bureau for Council Intelligence.”

I nodded. “How do you do?”

“Mr. McAuley,” he began slowly, firmly, speaking with prefect BCI-Brahmin diction. “I have been given to understand that you have had some involvement with a murder recently committed.”

Yeah: they had me, alright. “I’ve never heard of BCI agents working slum homicides, Mr. DeButte.” I said.

DeButte forced a fractional smile.

“Mr. McAuley,” he said. “I have— for the moment— suspended the Eastside Police investigation of this matter entirely on your account.”

“No fooling?” I was serious.

“So far as I am concerned, Mr. McAuley, whether it was you who committed this murder or not is immaterial; and if you cooperate with me, I might arrange to have the charges against you suspended altogether.”

I was confident that DeButte could not trace the call from Macey’s phone at the Spiderdome to the phone I was using at the shuttle port; at least he couldn’t begin the trace until the call was over. Macey’s telecoms were on a private comline, and even the BCI had to go through legal channels on Luna.

“I’m listening, Mr. DeButte,” I said.

DeButte leaned forward into the phone and his voice lowered a bit. He looked down at some papers he had in his hand and his eyes darted up from them to look at me very squarely. “Now, then,” he said. “This woman. The murder victim. Were you aware that she had any connection with a Belter immigrant named Raoul Simonson?”

The question surprised me. I thought I saw DeButte make a mental notation of my reaction with a flicker of his eyebrow. He scribbled something on his pad and looked up at me again.

“Yes,” I said, a little dumbfounded.

“Very good,” DeButte nodded shortly, as if he already knew the answer. He dropped his eyes, took in a breath and pursed his lips, nodding his head affirmatively. “Now, Mr. McAuley, I wonder if you could tell me exactly what your purpose was in searching out the murder victim? Did it have anything to do this fellow Simonson?”

I shook my head and pushed slowly back from the phone, and my hands went up involuntarily like the Pope giving a benediction. “Now just a minute, Mr. DeButte, fair’s fair: I’ve told you something— now it’s your turn.” I mustered a stern tone. “This whole thing is out of hand. You know I didn’t do this thing; a five minute brain scram could tell you that. It’s a set up: I offended a denlord. So sue me. I knew I was in trouble— but this is too complicated; something here smells like bio-degraded fish parts, Mr. DeButte, because I can’t figure out why the BCI is so interested in a missing Belter kid and a murdered Eastside prostitute.”

DeButte leaned back a little in his chair and eyed me very seriously. I held his stare for a few moments, and then his gaze dropped and he seemed to shrug his shoulders fractionally.

“Very well, Mr. McAuley,” he said. “I don’t really have the time to find you and I don’t have the time to employ more persuasive methods to get the information I need. Therefore I’ll have to be very frank with you.” He looked down at his papers again and spoke. “We’ve had word that an Anartek agent has infiltrated the BCI.”

DeButte moved closer to the telecom again, and I monkeyed his movements unconsciously. Anarteks. Anarchist Technologists: it was what the radical Belters called themselves. DeButte’s words were interesting, but the alarm bells in my brain went off like a room full of Swiss clocks; I had enough experience to know that BCI operatives were inveterate liars. It was a way of life for them, and, I’ve always believed, a requirement for the intelligence profession. If I had interrupted DeButte’s interrogation in the innocent hope of getting a straight answer, every instinct I owned told me I wasn’t going to get one.

“We suspect,” continued DeButte. “That this man Simonson may be involved in the illegal dissemination of Anartek propaganda to the impressionable youth of Luna. He may even be involved in the spread of outlawed technologies.”

I took in the information, and tried to guess the delimits of fact and fiction.

“We believe that the Anartek Underground has infiltrated the BCI, and are working to aid Simonson in his subversions of our social order.” said DeButte. “What we do not understand is how you became involved— and why. We need to know who put you on to Simonson.”

At that moment DeButte was interrupted. Someone had tapped him on the shoulder from behind and he turned and flipped off the volume on his telecom so that I couldn’t hear what was being said. A moment later, he returned and spoke into the telecom.

“Mr. McAuley,” said DeButte. “I’m afraid our conversation’s been interrupted. I would ask you to meet me here at this bar—Macey’s — this evening at 20 hours; I may be able to arrange some leniency for your part in this whole affair, provided that you explain to me everything you know. If not, I shall leave you to the Eastside authorities and that will be the end of it.” He seemed very serious. “I will see you, then, this evening,” he said. “Goodbye.” The line went dead.

Chapter 10

I walked out of the telecom booth and into a great commotion in the lobby of the shuttle port. There was a crowd of people in the bar watching the Satellite Network Newsline screen. I walked over to see what was happening, and saw an amazing sight of a freighter ship— the AZORE— burning internally, still in its refit dock. The Newsline screen was broadcasting the live pictures of what appeared to be a terrorist assault on the AZORE.

A news commentator at the scene of the disaster spoke on another screen:

“This is Timothy Dell Rio reporting live from Lunar orbit, near the sight of the AZORE disaster. We’re going to recap what we know so far. As you can see from these live pictures, the United Nations freighter AZORE has suffered a severe calamity while sitting idle in its refit dock. This story began to unfold just about twenty minutes ago, when the twelve man crew on the AZORE’S refit station sent a mayday signal and reported flashblaster discharges aboard the AZORE; this is apparently what started the explosions. We’ve had no confirmation of the number of dead at the refit station, but as you can see by these pictures, the AZORE has suffered a terrible fire within her hull.

“Satellite Network News has been told that BCI authorities have been alerted and that their ships are heading for the sight of the disaster even as we speak.

“We understand that the AZORE was a freighter ship which had returned just a few hours ago from a four year voyage to the outer systems. She’d brought cargo and relief to the United Nations Research Colony on Titan, among other UN stations in the outer worlds.

“There is speculation that this may have been an Anartek terrorist attack. If the Anarteks prove indeed to have been the perpetrators of this attack on the AZORE, we can only guess at the sort of reaction this might have at the UN...”

I pulled away from the crowd and made my way towards the shuttle bay. If the Anarteks had attacked the freighter, it certainly made no sense. The United Nations had already been looking for provocation from the Anarteks, and this incident with the AZORE would provide them with an excellent excuse to launch an attack on the Belt Worlds, and probably the Martian Colonies as well. I was puzzled by the whole business, and I wondered if Raoul Simonson— or even Tanner— had anything to do with the attack on the AZORE.

In any case it was good luck for me; I reasoned that Gordon DeButte would be too preoccupied with the AZORE affair to put too much effort into tracking me down. When my shuttle arrived in the bay, I took the navigation codes that Tanner had sent me through the comline and punched it into the navigation rig. Then I buckled up and leaned back as the shuttle skimmed out over the surface of the planet.

I reached Tanner’s ship after about an hour of travel. It was nestled in a small crater and hidden in the shadows between two very large rocks.

The ship was a one man vessel of a design I’d never seen before. It was wedge shaped, maybe 10 meters long and about a third that length from wing to wing. I speculated that the propulsion was some kind of condensed-particle drive, because it was very small, and there was no evidence of a chemical engine on her.

If she was a condensed-particle drive ship, then it was almost certainly Anartek designed, because the United Nations Bureau for Science and Technology had very firm controls on the use of anti-gravity in space transportation. Only the BCI military wing were allowed to manufacture them, and that meant that only Anartek Belters would be bold enough to flaunt UN regulations about their production.

On the other hand, if Sam Tanner was Gordon DeButte’s Anartek spy, then the ship I saw in front of me could well have been a BCI police boat.

I dropped the shuttle down into the dust of the crater and parked her there. Next, I activated the snake portal which emerged from the airlock and moved outward towards the other ship. The other ship’s docking port was at the top and to the rear of the wedge. I maneuvered the snake portal to fit over the docking port and locked it in place. I activated air pressure in the snake, grabbed my belongings and walked into the airlock. The diameter of the snake coil was small enough that I was forced to crawl through it, pulling myself along using the hand grips inset along the wall of the coil.

I arrived at the portal after a few minutes and tried the lock. When she didn’t give way immediately, I pulled out the passcrambler and set it to work. The passcrambler was one of the two toys I had taken from Spiderdome Police Supply— the other was the flashblaster. The passcrambler had the ability to alter the the scramble code on virtually any electronic lock; in a minute, the ship’s port gave me entrance and I crawled through it and into the airlock.

I resealed the port and entered the ship proper. The airlock let on through another portal to the master’s cabin, which was the control center for the spacecraft. I slipped out of the airlock by pushing through the portal, legs first, and fell directly into the master’s seat.

The ship was a very claustrophobic place and I hoped I wouldn’t have to spend much time in it. The master’s seat was at the center of an array of unmarked interactive controls, with a holographic projection screen set in the middle of it all. The cabin itself was surrounded by a window on the outside and I could see the shuttle just behind me with its umbilical snake like a giant intestine linking the two vessels. I used the shuttle’s remote controls to retract the snake portal, and the umbilical was severed instantaneously.

A second later the holograph came on. I jumped back in my seat instinctively, but there was nowhere to go inside the cramped cabin.

“The computer has identified you as Angelo McAuley,” said the image materializing on the holograph. It was Tanner. He stood in front of me on the projection screen. “Glad to see you, McAuley.”

“Likewhys.” I said. Then: “Where are you? What’s going on, Tanner? I’m in a jam, here.”

Tanner shook his head. “Bad news for me, I’m afraid.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, if you’re here in my ship, and I’m talking to you through the holograph, then it means I’m either dead or incapacitated.”

“You’re not transmitting this?”

“No; the ship’s brain has been programmed to adopt my image and personality in communicating with you. Under the circumstances— given your personality profile— I thought it would be better for both of us if you got to know me a little better, especially if I were already dead. It would be difficult to speak with you frankly, if I were already dead.”

I laughed. “That’s axiomatic.”

Tanner laughed, too. “Okay. Let me put it another way. I ran a profile on your personality through a psychogram, and the results indicated that you would be more likely to act in an way that was favorable to my interests if you and I spoke candidly and face to face.”

“Okay,” I said. “Fair enough. But you said you thought you might be dead.”

“That’s right. In all probability, I am dead, or soon will be; if I weren’t, I would have arrived at this vessel long before you ever got here, and I would have been long gone.”

“Then I guess it’s lucky for me you are dead.”

“From your point of view, it’s lucky.” Tanner paused, appearing introspective.

“Okay, so you’re dead; now what?”

“The first order of business should be to get this ship aloft,” he said. “You’re the captain now, so you’ll have to give verbal orders to the ship’s brain; I can only advise you.”

“Your advice is well taken; where do you recommend we go?”

“Destination is key, my friend. But wait a minute. Did I tell you that the Beltside Anarteks have come up a matter transporter?”

“No, you haven’t mentioned it—but I’m interested. What’s the connection?”

“A group of Belters figured out a way to convert matter into impulses of energy that can be sent in a tight beam over a short range to another point in space where the energy is reconverted back to matter. And it’s not like a comline, where you need both a broadcaster and a receiver; instead, the transporter converts itself into energy pulses, and then arrives at the destination where it acts as its own receiver, reconverting itself— and anything in a field around the transporter— back into its original material form.”

“That’s wild,” I said. “And I’ve heard it was possible. But what’s it got to do getting out of here before the BCI figures out where I’m at?”

“I’m coming to that. Anyway, this matter transporter— they call it a Field Transporter— leaves a residual disruption in space-time. The ship’s brain here is always scanning for this disruption, and automatically records its trajectory. Therefore, whenever the transporter is used within a couple hundred thousand kilometers of this ship, you ought to be able to get a trace indicating the point of departure and destination.”

“That’s not exactly an answer, but I get your point. Listen, Tanner: there’s no doubt that I want to get out here, but I also want to hear more before I put my head into another noose on your advice. I’m sorry you’re dead, but you’ve got the BCI on my tail; and now you’re giving me polite reasons for why I should be your proxy. I’m not paid enough for this.”

“Money’s not a problem,” he said. “And anyway, your profile puts money on a low priority with you; you’re motivated by money only to the extent that you have a good time earning it.”

“You call this a good time?”

“Relax, we’re just getting started.” Tanner waved his hand at me, dismissing my objections, and continued: “Now, anticipating your next question, I’ll start by telling you that there’s nothing to the story about Simonson suing the Financial Security Council for an inheritance. That was just something I made up to pull you in.”

“I was having my doubts. Pull me into what?”

“Listen: the Field Transporter was developed by a Beltside consortium called the Ceres Group. Raoul Simonson was Chairman of the Board for the Ceres Group, and he was Chairman when they were developing the transporter.” Tanner paused for moment, then seemed to change the subject. “What do you know about the gum prohibition?”

“I know that the Belt governments agreed to ban the gum trade a few years ago. They said gum was part of a UN conspiracy to anesthetize Belt populations. From what I’ve read in the Newslines, it sounds as though the gum prohibition was politically motivated.”

“That’s more true than you know,” he said. “The prohibition was Simonson’s idea. The Ceres Group has a lot of political and economic power in the Belt worlds. He used that power to get the Confederation Council on Astros to approve prohibition of the gum trade to the Belt. All that stuff about opiates anesthetizing the masses was just cover to smuggle Simonson and his team into Luna. Over a hundred thousand gumheads migrated to Luna in the first two months after the prohibition; the BCI couldn’t possibly have screened all of them very closely. Simonson and the others came in virtually unobserved.”

“Unobserved so they could do what?”

“Good question. You’ve probably already heard about the AZORE—it was a slowboat on continuous voyage. It passed near UN colonies and outposts in the outer worlds for resupply, and Luna was its only dock. Just before he left in the gumhead migration, Simonson put the field transporter aboard the AZORE while it was passing through the Belt on the way to the outer system. All he has had to do for the past three years is wait for the AZORE to return to Luna, where he planned to recover it. After that, the plan was to use the transporter to brain scram selected members of the Security Council in order to make them act in Anartek interests.”

“You planned to scram the Security Council,” I was both stunned and amused by the audacity of their scheme. “And I guess that makes you an Anartek.”

“Earth-based,” he said. “But, yes, I was working with Simonson and his team.”

“Then what happened? Why are you dead?”

“I suspect that Simonson must have killed me purposefully, then escaped the AZORE with the Field Transporter before it was destroyed. I’ve had my suspicions about that bastard, but since I don’t even know who the other team members are, I haven’t communicated my doubts about Simonson to anybody else.

“The last entry I made into the ship’s brain indicated that Simonson was headed for the AZORE, and that I was going to follow him. The ships’s brain has been monitoring the Newslines, so I know that the freighter blew up. I can only speculate that Simonson successfully recovered the transporter.”

“DeButte said there was a double agent— an Anartek— working for BCI; I’m guessing you’re it.”

Tanner smiled and crossed his arms. “Ah, DeButte; you met him, eh?”

“He tried to bust me for the prostitute’s murder. He wanted to know who put me up to following Simonson, and implied he’d let me off the hook if I came clean.”

“Did you tell him?”

“I never got the chance. After the AZORE blew he got distracted; the navigation card you sent gave me the option of skipping out. So when the freighter blew up, I took the opportunity; in my experience you can never trust BCI.”

“Wise choice,” said Tanner. “But to answer your question, I’ve been with BCI for ten years— an agent provacateur , as we say. I was ordered to have myself transferred to Luna so that I could watch Simonson; apparently I’m not the only one who had doubts about him.”

“Okay, Anarteks spying for BCI spying on Anarteks— I think my head is spinning. But why am I in it?”

“DeButte is BCI Division head for Luna. As I’ve said, I was assigned to watch Simonson, and, if necessary, to aid him in recovering the transporter. What I didn’t know until just a few days ago was that Simonson and DeButte are familiars; they’ve been communicating over the past few days through BCI network channels. It looked to me like Simonson was double crossing us.”

“Were you able to monitor the communications?”

“No— I’m sure they’re talking to each other— but I didn’t dare tap DeButte’s comlines.”

“I’m clear on this so far, but you still haven’t told me why you brought me in,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “You were right: DeButte was on to me. He was aware that someone in the agency had noted his calls with Simonson. I couldn’t help that— BCI communication lines are smart, and they know when they’re being listened to, or even observed. If I had listened to the conversations between Simonson and DeButte, the comlines would have recognized me. Instead, I only reviewed existing records. But even that was enough to send off the alarm bells; when DeButte found out that someone had reviewed his communication records, he ordered an internal investigation. I knew I’d be found quickly.

“My purpose in approaching you to probe into Simonson’s affairs was to give me enough time to try to keep Simonson from getting to the transporter before I did. I set you up to cause a diversion.”

“But what about Lucy,” I said. “What happened to her? I thought it was Deatherage; you’re telling me what? That it was Simonson?”

“I’m not entirely sure, McAuley, but I’d have to guess it was Simonson that killed him. He had been living in the Eastside dens since he got to Luna; it was good cover for him, and I think he was enjoying himself down there.

“He had been mixed up with several prostitutes over the past few years, and Lucy was the latest. She was a terminal gumhead who could probably never get a fix on who he was, and I think that must have made him feel safe. I knew that he’d dumped her a few weeks ago; maybe he heard you were asking about him in the wrong places, and maybe that spooked him. Maybe he killed her because he was afraid she might talk about him.”

“But why would he leave me alive, and try to pin the murder on me?”

“Maybe he saw an advantage in it. Maybe he wanted to use you for the same reason I did: to keep DeButte occupied long enough to get the transporter free and clear. If Simonson was negotiating with BCI, he may not have had any desire to just give them the transporter without recompense.”

Tanner remained quiet while I mulled it all over. “Where do you think Simonson went with the transporter?”

“The trace of the transporter shows that it was activated just before the explosion on the AZORE, and it leads from the freighter and to the Belter embassy at Houston, Texas. The evidence, therefore, indicates that Simonson got the transporter, set the explosives to destroy the AZORE— I still haven’t figured out why— and then transported to the Houston embassy where he would have diplomatic immunity from any repercussions.”

“You must have been killed in the explosion,” I offered.

“That’s a good guess.”

Chapter 11

Nothing had changed. I was still wanted for murder on Luna, and a BCI operative was still interested in how and why I was involved in it.

Tanner had cornered me perfectly; I was going to be his proxy whether I liked it or not, because I had no choice. The murder of Lucy was his insurance, and I still wasn’t sure whether I believed his speculations about Simonson; for all I knew, Tanner might have committed the murder himself, just to maneuver me into a no return scenario. That would explain why he sent me the navigation card, and why his goddamn ship identified me so quickly and was so goddamn cooperative. The bastard. He knew that if he were killed and Simonson escaped with the transporter, that I would have no choice but to follow the trail in his place. What else could I do? The BCI wouldn’t give a damn that I was ensnared; and the information that Tanner had given me made me very dangerous to them. There was no place I could go and nothing I could do on Earth or Luna to escape the BCI.

The ship Tanner had left for my use gave me options; but where would I go with it? Nowhere safe. Tanner knew— damn him to hell— that I would chose the uncertainty of following up on his investigation of Simonson, to the uncertainty of doing nothing with nowhere to go.

I sent the ship aloft. It rose evenly and very quickly above the Lunar plane. I could see the Spiderdome in the distance as the ship rose, its whitish tentacles stretching outward from the central disk, like a splotch of milk spilt on the floor of a desert. Within a few minutes the ship was entirely free of Luna’s sphere, and we glided with increasing speed toward the blue crescent of the Earth.

I grew disgusted with the image of Tanner in the holograph, and so asked the ship’s brain to communicate to me in a soothing woman’s voice. The ship accommodated my request very well; I called her ANNIE, for the An in Anartek.

In the few hours it took ANNIE to bring me across the void, I was able to familiarize myself with some of her capabilities. The ship was a marvel of advanced technologies: weapons systems, condensed-particle drive with an anti-gravity field, a practical invisibility system, and a sophisticated ship’s brain. She was sure to make a fine target for a BCI attack.

ANNIE would have been a BCI target even in times of peace; she represented, after all, a passive assault on fundamental United Nations doctrine. Anartek philosophy held above all things the free flow of information and technologies. Thus, as I understood it, their society possessed the highest standard of living in all the solar system, and their technology was second to none. This was a sore point with the UN, which held a policy of controlling the introduction of potentially disruptive technologies into the world economy. The Anartek’s particular joy seemed to be the flaunting of the UN’s rules on new technologies, and so relations between them were often poor.

The Anarchist Technologist Movement began a few decades before I was born. The World Assembly for the Control of Science and Technology was created by the United Nations to put a rein on new technologies.

Individual corporations had been developing technologies too quickly, and the world economic order had become a system endangered by the introduction of technological innovations. The UN felt that rapidly advancing technologies threatened the economic system, and so corporate organizations that released technologies into the market place that were considered disruptive to the economy were penalized and overtaxed. Governmental regulations drove many of these businesses into bankruptcy.

Rising to the threat of extinction, some of the largest corporations used their brains and economic surplus to reestablish themselves in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. Under grudging UN approval, these corporations launch a program of city-building, and eventually invited any and all citizens of Earth and Luna to start a new and open society there. Each city had its own Constitution, and governed its own affairs, free of UN regulation or taxation.

Eventually, though, the UN became wary of the success of the Belt cities; many of Earth’s best minds were emigrating to the Belt, and, while the initial city-building program diverted resources from research and development of new technologies, by degrees the Belt cities began again to devote more of their resources to the development of technological innovations. In response, the UN banned all technological imports from the Belt cities, and began restricting emigration.

After that, Anarchist Technologist Movement emerged on Earth as a forum for those unable to emigrate to the the Belt worlds, and who would have deregulated the Earth’s economic system to allow for the free flow of technologies there. Before long, the Bureau for Council Intelligence— the United Nation’s secret police force— began arresting scientists and thinkers who violated the new rules on technology control. There were uprisings on every continent and many people sympathetic to the cause were persecuted and imprisoned.

The Anartek Belters had always declared themselves politically autonomous from the UN. The UN had never acknowledged this, and attempted to assert their territorial rights on Mars and throughout the Belt.

Alarmed by the UN’s growing belligerency, the Anarteks declared themselves politically independent from the UN. In response, the UN sent ships to the Belt to put down the rebels, but the Anarteks had prepared for their uprising, and the UN police vessels were all destroyed by a newly developed particle weapon. With no way left to enforce their policy, the UN reluctantly recognized the sovereignty of the Anartek Belt Worlds— though they were never happy about it.

All of this happened well before I was born, of course. But about ten years back, relations between the UN and the Anarteks became strained again almost to the point of war when the Anarteks supported an uprising on the Martian Colonies. The UN fleet put the rebellion down, but did not dare attack the Anarteks.

In the past few years, though, the UN Assembly for Science and Technology had been developing war technologies, and given the vast resources of the UN and its colonies, it had begun to appear as though the Anarteks had lost their military edge.

The destruction of the AZORE was sure to upset the tenuous peace which had preserved the solar system these past ten years. The United Nations would now probably feel comfortable enough to take on the Belt Worlds militarily, and to put an end to the Anarteks once and for all.

Ó 2000 by Michael Patrick Aiello

The author lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is married, has two children, and works as a developer for web firm DigitalFX.com