Simon at Farm Eighty-One had uttered a truth that people in Shackleton City rarely mentioned. Dr. Miller had alluded to it, too. The spaceborn could never ‘return’ to Earth. Their long fragile limbs and weak lungs, their lazy hearts accustomed from the womb to micro-gravity, made it physically impossible for them to endure Earth’s gravity for more than a few weeks at a time. And they numbered in the tens of millions, thanks to sheer organic population growth.
They were a problem.
So what did you do with them all?
Answer, according to the Shackleton City bigwigs: You established a faux-Victorian regime that generated lots of service and menial jobs. And you created mythologies to explain why only human beings could do those jobs. (“Animals won’t thrive for bots. They need the human touch.”)
The spaceport squatters had no such illusions.
“They could automate the fuck out of our operation anytime they wanted to,” said a navy-skinned woman. “And they do want to. But the one time they tried, we sabotaged their bots. So they haven’t tried again.” She smirked. “If they want to get rid of us, they’ll have to come in here with gas or sub-acoustic weapons. Smoke us out like rats. And people would find out. There’d be vids of dead children all over the internet. So we’re still here.”
Mendoza knew better than to ask why they wanted to keep living in holes, bathed in life-shortening radiation, mainlining hyralonin, scavenging for necessities. Never ask anyone why they love their home. His coffee left a coating of grit on his teeth. Moondust in here, moondust in everything. He’d probably just swallowed a year’s quota of rads.
“We’re all interdependent, Rachel,” Father Lynch said. “You need the city, and they need you.”
“Oh, sure,” the woman shrugged.
Mendoza said, “About how many people come through here on average? Running away, like me?”
“NOMB.” None of my business, the motto of the spaceport squatters. But Mendoza figured the answer was quite a few. Enough people chafed under Luna’s paternalistic regime. And some of those might conclude that anywhere was better than here.
“The city turns a blind eye,” Fr. Lynch said. “They’re very happy for people to leave.”
Mendoza nodded. “But there are no emigration controls. Anyone can leave, anytime. So why—”
“So why,” Rachel said, “aren’t you up there, sipping champagne in the departure lounge?”
“Ah …”
“Exactly. I’m not asking what you did. But whatever it was, you aren’t the only one. Plus, a lot of people just can’t swing the fare.” She stood. “C’mon.”
Mendoza glanced at Fr. Lynch. The Jesuit was talking to a guy with a bandanna hiding his lower face, presumably another runaway. The guy was spooning nutriblock hash under his bandanna like he hadn’t eaten in a week.
Mendoza followed Rachel, limping.
“Something wrong with your feet?”
“Long story.”
“I get it. NOMB. Oh well, you’re not going to be doing much walking for a while.” She giggled, for some reason.
They descended crude stairs blasted out of the rock. The firelight from the main cave threw their shadows ahead of them. The stairs bottomed out in a workshop with an airlock at one end. The other end was blocked by a mountain of rubble. Molded plastisteel crates stood around, partially filled with parcels and packets.
“Let’s see if you can fit into any of these crates. You’ll have a suit on, so there has to be room for your helmet.”
“Not again,” Mendoza said.
“What, did you think we were going to hand you a fake ID and a first-class ticket? You’re going cargo class. I have to weigh you, any stuff you want to take, plus your extra oxygen tanks, etcetera. Then we make up the difference with LVHPs—low volume, high profit goods. Plus rocks.” She looked from Mendoza to the crates. “You’re little. You’ll have room to move around some.” She hesitated. “What did you do? I can’t remember the last time we had an Earthborn person through here. I mean, you could go anywhere you wanted to … Oh, sorry, sorry. NOMB. Try that crate over there.”
Mendoza felt guilty for being Earthborn. Like he owed her some kind of explanation. “Maybe I just want to go home.”
Her eyes widened, white in her blue-black face. “You mean, back to Earth? But you’re not going back to Earth.”
“What?”
“We don’t do flights to Earth. Why would anyone want to go there, and get squashed like a bendy straw? Not that you would get squashed, of course. But no. You would have to find someone else to help you with that.”
“Is there anyone else?”
“No.” She giggled, appreciating his plight. “Oh, boy. I thought you probably had quote, business, unquote, on Ceres. Maybe you can transfer when you get there.”
“Is that where I‘m going? Ceres?”
“Or somewhere in the Belt. I dunno. It’s wherever the ship is going.” She looked cross, as if Mendoza were finding fault with the service the squatters provided.
“I can’t go to Ceres. I need to go to—to Mercury.” As he spoke, he found a hard core of resolve. He was going to Mercury, to pull Elfrida out of Derek Lorna’s mess … and if she was already dead, he’d avenge her.
“Mercury?” Rachel said. “Well, we do do flights there. But not right now. There’s been a riot at UNVRP HQ, in case you haven’t heard.”
“I heard.”
“Star Force isn’t letting anyone land. Much less illegal immigrants.”
That sounded like a dead end. But maybe Fr. Lynch could fix it. “I’m sorry,” Mendoza said. “I’ve got to talk to my—my friend.” He backed out of the workshop.
“He doesn’t owe you any more favors,” Rachel yelled after him. “You blew the whole fragging network.”
Mendoza limped up the stairs to the main cavern. He could not see Fr. Lynch or the man the Jesuit had been talking to.
Franckel got in his way. “Looking for the priest?”
“Yeah.”
“He had to get moving. Said to tell you bye. His pilot couldn’t wait.”
“He’s gone?”
“You deaf as well as short?”
“One-seventy-five isn’t short where I come from.” Mendoza could not believe Fr. Lynch would vanish without even saying goodbye. Maybe these people were treacherous. Maybe they’d overpowered Fr. Lynch, were holding him somewhere … “Did he say where they were going?”
“Dunno. Probably out to the Belt.”
Mendoza bulled past Franckel.
“Hey!”
Which way was the airlock? He limped into one of the corridors that led off the cavern. Within a few paces, it narrowed to a crack stuffed with rags. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, these people maintained their pressurization by splarting garbage into the cracks of this warren.
Franckel came up behind him. “Calm the hell down, guy.”
The spaceborn man was half a meter taller, perhaps stronger, but Mendoza had a laser pistol, and Franckel was not to know it was out of change.
Franckel backed up, red crosshairs wavering on his chest. He raised his hands. “OK. OK. The priest didn’t mention that you were fucking crazy.”
“That’s right,” Mendoza said. “I’m fucking crazy. Which way is the airlock?”
“That way.”
Everyone in the cavern skittered back. Mendoza sensed movement. He whirled to confront frozen men, like a game of Red Light, Green Light.
“Leave him alone,” Franckel shouted. “Let him go.”
Mendoza understood that Franckel’s goal was to get him and his pistol out of the hab. He slammed the airlock in the squatters’ faces. His Star Force surplus suit had been taken away. Coughing on moondust, he put on one of the squatters’ filthy patch-jobs. The legs and crotch sagged, stretched out.
He exited the airlock, ran past the control center, and bounded out along one of the platforms. Through a gap between two cargo containers, he spotted Fr. Lynch—he still had his Star Force surplus su
it—and an extremely tall spaceborn individual, presumably the guy Fr. Lynch had been talking to. They were walking out of the terminal.
Mendoza sprinted after them. His over-large suit hampered his stride.
A row of divots appeared in the side of a container ahead of him.
Something smacked him in the arm.
He glanced back, saw two or three squatters stride-gliding along the platform. They carried what looked like long sticks.
Susmaryosep, those are guns. They’re shooting at me.
He glanced at the arm of his suit. The outer layer of fabric was torn, revealing a pristine white thermal layer.
He leapt between the moving containers to the next platform over, trying to deny the squatters a shot. But zigzagging like this slowed him down. They would try to cut him off.
He caught up with a robot forklift heading out of the cavern, leapt and clung onto its load, digging the toes of his suit’s boots into the gaps between sacks of beetroot. His feet screamed for mercy.
The entrance loomed. Maybe, just maybe he’d make it.
The sun shone into Faustini Crater almost horizontally, glittering on rock scarred with overlapping blast-melt patterns. Parked spaceships of all shapes and sizes dotted the crater floor. Service vehicles zipped around.
And there were Fr. Lynch and his companion, walking into the launch zone as casually as if they were taking a stroll in a park on Earth.
Mendoza located the suit’s radio. He enabled ALL FREQUENCIES. “Father! Wait! Please!”
They didn’t look back.
He jumped down from the forklift and ran after them. They hadn’t picked up his signal.
★
But someone else had.
As Mendoza would’ve realized if he had given it a second’s thought, ALL FREQUENCIES included the shipping terminal’s public comms band. This was monitored by the Spaceport Authority, so they could keep tabs on the squatter community.
The Shackleton City elite regarded the spaceport squatters as semi-feral pets. They played a useful role in purging the city of the unhappy and the criminally inclined.
Mendoza’s shout of “Father! Wait! Please!” merged into the babel on the local radio frequencies—and was instantly intercepted by the searchbots that Derek Lorna had set to hunt him.
VOICEPRINT MATCHING: 65% (the microphone in Mendoza’s stolen suit was lousy)
KEYWORD MATCHING: FATHER (Derek Lorna knew how Catholic priests were traditionally addressed)
“Worth checking out,” Lorna decided. He told his MI assistant: “Triangulate the source of that signal and get me some visuals.”
★
Mendoza bounded out of the shipping terminal into the sunlight.
Far ahead, the tiny figures of Fr. Lynch and his companion had vanished between the parked spaceships.
Something struck him hard between the shoulders.
Falling, he looked back at a mountain. The cargo terminal was inside the central rubble pile left over from the days when Faustini Crater had been a water mine. He saw the squatters standing in the entrance of the terminal. One of them gave him the finger.
His faceplate bounced off the rock. He struggled to breathe.
A three-wheeled buggy whizzed across the launch zone and braked beside him. The driver jumped out. Consciousness fading, Mendoza admired the luminous halo of backscatter around the shadow of the driver’s helmet. It was like an angel had come to rescue him. If only such things could be true.
x.
Mendoza woke up with industrial-strength lights glaring in his eyes. The syrupy voice of a medibot informed him that it had removed a .22 caliber bullet from his back. The bullet had just missed his left lung, the medibot said. Mendoza was lucky.
He didn’t feel lucky.
Doped up, leaning on a helper bot, he hobbled out of the clinic into what seemed to be an administrative area of Faustini Spaceport.
The bot kept a vise-like grip on the compression cast on his upper torso. It guided him to some kind of employee lounge. Windows commanded a reduced-glare view of the launch zone, framed by clumps of ferns. There were two sets of pew-like ergoforms, one set facing the window, the other set facing a grotto with a waterfall trickling into a little pool. A recording of wind chimes accentuated the hush.
Half a dozen miserable-looking men and women sat on the benches. They looked up when Mendoza and his helper bot came in.
“Whoa,” one of the men said. “What’d they do to you?”
“What is this place?” Mendoza said.
“Chapel,” said one of the women. “Non-denominational.”
Mendoza’s helper bot lowered him onto a pew. “I didn’t know there was a chapel at the spaceport.”
“The Muslim employees sued.” The woman touched a button. Her pew collapsed into a long prayer mat. She lay down on her back. “I might just stay like this,” she said.
Mendoza sympathized. He was still woozy from the anesthesia. “Are you guys employees?”
“Of the spaceport? No,” said the man who’d spoken first. “I’m a travel agent. She works for the Shackleton City Visitor Center. So does he. She’s in customer service at Harrods. They’re from the post-sales feedback analysis division at Victoria Construction.”
“I’m getting a funny feeling that you aren’t here by choice.”
“Define choice,” said the travel agent. “The Leadership in Robotics Institute approached me about this job. I chose to accept. I didn’t ask any questions, either. What did you do, try to run?”
“Something like that.”
The travel agent raised his eyebrows, and all of them turned away from him, as if stupidity might be contagious.
Mendoza gazed bleakly out of the window. The dark filter on the glass turned the lunar morning into twilight. A ship launched like a sparkler burning up. He wondered if Fr. Lynch had got away.
Derek Lorna came into the chapel. He sported a pink tailcoat over a red shirt, a white cummerbund, and baggy tweeds that ended in joke boots with tiger faces on the toes. “OK, everyone!” He clapped his hands. “We’re all here now, so we can get started. Are you psyched for this job? Just say yes and save me the trouble of making a motivational speech.”
A couple of people laughed.
“This is John Mendoza. All of you have expertise in customer relations, which is why you were chosen for this job. But Mendoza is a psephologist. That said, he’s just had an emergency operation, and a couple of days ago, brain surgery I think?” Lorna grinned at Mendoza. “So he’s only here in an advisory role. You can ask him technical questions. Apart from that, comestibles are coming. Any other questions at this point?”
The woman from Harrods said, “Uh, would it be possible to clarify what we’re here for? Sir.”
Lorna grinned. “We’re here to steal an election.”
★
“Just kidding,” Lorna said. “This is what they used to call a get-out-the-vote operation. You’re probably thinking, what’s the point of that? Voting is compulsory. Well, yes, it is. But a lot of people, especially those proud nonconformists who infest our asteroids, don’t like being compelled to do anything. Mendoza, would you explain the NOTA problem to the group?”
Woodenly, Mendoza said, “NOTA: none of the above. It’s a protest vote. If NOTA were a person, he or she would have won every election in the last ten years by a margin of two to twenty percent. In one judicial contest on, I think, Ganymede, some guy changed his name to None Of The Above and won handily. That’s the kind of trick that only works once, though.”
“Thanks,” Lorna said. “That’s it in a nutshell. Now, if everyone would gather around …”
Lorna touched a button, converting one of the ergoform pews into a long desk. He took a sheaf of portable screens out of his briefcase and laid them in a row. There were only six. Lorna clearly meant it about Mendoza just being here in an advisory role.
Lorna turned one of the screens on. “Here are the latest poll numbers from the Inferior Spa
ce Election Commission.”
UNVRP DIRECTORSHIP ELECTION
POLL DATA PROVIDED BY INFERIOR SPACE ELECTION COMMISSION
NOTA: 32%
Amanda Patel: 31%
Zazoe Heap: 12%
“And she’s dead,” Lorna said. “Those voters are either grief-crazed or mentally defective. Put them in the NOTA column.”
Angelica Lin: 9%
Pyls O. Mani: 8%
Mork Rapp: 7%
Abdullah Hasselblatter: 1%
Wow, Mendoza thought. No wonder Lorna is in a good mood.
Dr. Hasselblatter had tumbled from the top to the very bottom of the pack.
That couldn’t be fallout from the violence on Mercury. Something else must have happened while Mendoza was cut off from the internet.
“Who’s Amanda Patel?” said the woman from Harrods customer service.
“The NEO candidate,” Lorna said. “A pediatrician. That’s just the nonconformists venting their spleen. Our job today is to convert all the Patel voters, and as many NOTA voters as possible, into Angelica Lin voters.”
“How?” asked the woman from the Shackleton City Visitor Center.
“Through individual outreach,” Lorna said. “Don’t look at me like that. Yes, it’s a lot of people. Four hundred and thirty thousand, approximately. But it’s perfectly possible to mass-tailor individual outreach campaigns using story-writing MI resources. Isn’t that right, Mendoza?”
There was a rattle at the door of the chapel. A fully loaded breakfast buffet trundled in under its own power. Inhaling the aromas of coffee, toast, scrambled eggs, and sausages, Mendoza realized he was starving.
“Convert half of them, and it’s in the bag,” Lorna said.
“There’s only a few hours left until the polls close,” said one of the construction industry analysts.
“So grab some food and get on with it, would be my recommendation.” Lorna’s voice had a steely edge.
Everyone went quiet.
Except Mendoza. Rightly or wrongly, he figured he hadn’t much to lose. He cleared his throat. “It’s not that easy. You have to have a saleable product. Angelica Lin may be easy on the eyes, but her platform is just Charlie Pope lite.’”
The Sol System Renegades Quadrilogy: Books 1-4 of the Space Opera Thriller Series Page 103