by Simon Petrie
“Call me Rhys. If you must.”
“Alright. Rhys. Thing is, as Entertainments Officer, I’m required to ask each of our guests in some detail about the—uh, well, the purpose of their visit, anything of interest they might have, uh, witnessed on their travels, how they found their stay on Skytop, their feelings about cheese—”
“Cheese?” asked Ligotmi, his hand poised ready to raid the bowl of salted nuts stationed between his and Idovist’s beers.
“Sponsors,” Gordon extemporised, retaining his focus on Idovist. “Sorry. And look, I know this is a nuisance, and believe me there are other things I’d rather be doing, but if we can just step through the questions so I can keep the powers-that-be happy …” He raised his eyebrows, hoping that he was managing to strike the appropriate tone of hassled employee, and therefore perhaps getting sufficient sympathy to encourage Idovist’s cooperation.
“Seriously, cheese?” asked Ligotmi, scooping his hand into the peanut bowl and missing.
“Yes,” said Gordon. “Mr Idovist— Rhys—I was wondering, in my capacity as Entertainments Officer for this descent, if you could just provide a little bit of detail on your movements—”
“What’s this got to do with entertainment?” asked Idovist.
“Why cheese?” asked Ligotmi.
“Like I said, Mr Ligotmi, sponsors. And, er, it comes under the heading of seeking to make your descent with us as enjoyable as possible, by ensuring that we’re best meeting the needs of the travelling public.”
“That’s never entertainment. That’s market research.”
“Multitasking,” said Gordon, with more than a twinge of desperation. “Rhys—if I may trouble you, in the interest of entertainment, or market research, or whatever you wish to call it, what is your line of business exactly?”
“Really?” asked Ligotmi, this time successfully connecting with the peanut bowl. “Cheese?”
“I’m an ex-con,” answered Rhys Idovist. “Best thing that ever happened to me. Set me up for life, it did. So to speak. I mean, you learn things inside what you’d never realise out here.”
“What kind of things?” Gordon asked, fighting the impulse to take a step back.
“It’s all in here,” said Idovist, reaching into his shirt pocket to pull out a small plasticback featuring a picture of himself on the cover. He brandished the book at Gordon. “Fifty-nine ninety-five, if you’re interested.”
Gordon turned the book over in his hands. It was called Just Four Little Words and was emblazoned with glowing tributes to the author’s prowess as a communicator. “Uranus, you said?”
“You’ll have to read the book,” replied Idovist.
“I’m sorry?” asked Gordon.
“Ah—yeah. Uranus. That’s a long slow flight, and no mistake. Couple of years each way. I was there for a speaking tour.”
“So what exactly did you speak about?”
“Pretty much what I learned from prison. You know, first time I got sent to the big house, me mum was pretty distraught, gave me this big long rambling speech, tearful, impassioned like, full of do’s and don’ts. Buggered if I can remember any of what she said. Pardon my French. But me dad, who’d been in stir plenty times himself, he just said four—”
“I probably don’t need that level of detail,” said Gordon, passing the book back to Idovist. “For the entertaiment report, I mean. But just out of interest—obviously it’s been useful for you, from a professional standpoint, but, ah, what were you in prison for?”
“That time?” Idovist said. “Aggravated assault, if I remember rightly.”
“Well, I was meaning more generally,” said Gordon, who was at this moment (a) pointedly not taking a step back and (b) trying to remember if it was ex-cons who could smell fear, or if that was dogs.
“Must say I’m not sure how this comes under the heading of entertainment. But, well, pretty much everything: theft, fraud, arson, larceny, kidnapping, malicious non-return of overdue library books, you name it. I probably tried my hand at pretty much everything, back in the day. Reformed character now, of course. I mean, the prison thing is fine for when you’re in your prime, but it doesn’t really count as a career.”
“Murder?” Gordon asked, watching the other closely.
“No, that was one box I always left unchecked, somehow. Why, you got someone you want killed?” Idovist asked, offering a quick forced laugh.
“No, I meant … look, never mind. Anyway, to keep our sponsors happy, what are your thoughts on cheese? Have you encountered any interesting cheese of late? Have you—er—had any cheese-related experiences this trip, and if so, how would you categorise them?”
“Mr Modem, you people seriously need to get a new sponsor.”
“Mamon,” said Gordon. “You’re saying cheese doesn’t cut it?”
“I’m saying the last time I had a close look at a piece of cheese was probably twelve years ago, and back then I felt like shooting it full of holes.”
“That sounds a little extreme—”
“Extreme? Maybe. I’ll admit to being lactose intolerant.”
“How long—”
“Now if you don’t mind, I think I’ve neglected this lager for quite long enough.” Idovist turned back to the bar, presenting his back with an air of finality.
Not wishing to push his conversational luck too far, Gordon thanked the ex-con, and moved around to talk to Idovist’s neighbour. Yuri Ligotmi was tall, rake-skinny, sporting long, scraggly hair of a dubious brown. He was wearing a shirt on which the paisley pattern seemed not merely to have attained iridescence, but also an independent life of its own, if not a fully-functioning ecology. “Mr Ligotmi? Do you have the time to answer a few questions?”
“Cheese, you mean?”
“Well, not just cheese. I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about yourself. You’re a musician?”
“Musician? Yeah.”
“What kind?”
Ligotmi took a few moments to down a mouthful of beer. “Retro. Old school. Classical music. You know, the Beatles, the Pistols, the Abbas—”
“Have you been up on Skytop for a gig?”
“A gig? Sorry, I wouldn’t know. Our manager takes care of all our memory requirements.”
“No, I mean … look, what was your purpose for visiting Skytop? Did you go off-planet at all?”
“No, man, I’ve given all that shit up. It’ll mess with your head big time. Though I was looking at going to Mars.”
“Mars?”
“Yeah, was looking at setting up a goat farm there. Got to start thinking of my retirement. You know.”
“A goat farm?”
“Yeah, but I decided not to go, in the end.”
“Why not?”
“Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise a kid.”
“Oh. So you stayed on Skytop, then?” asked Gordon, pulling his hand off the bar while the robotic barmaid poured beer into the space where it believed Ligotmi’s empty glass to be.
“Well, I was going to visit my friend Lucy, who’s co-owner of some private asteroid that the two of them are mining for gems.”
“ ‘Was going to’? Did you go?”
“See Lucy and this guy with diamonds? No.”
“So you didn’t venture out of the Skytop Plaza?”
“Well, there was this roleplaying convention, based around a dystopian sci-fi setting, that’s currently on Ceres, I was thinking of dropping in on.”
“You went to Ceres, then?”
“No. Turns out it clashes with my schedule. So I can’t get no sad SF action.”
“Mr Ligotmi. You’ve listed three things you didn’t end up doing. Do you mind telling me what it was that you did do?”
“Well, it was all a bit of a fizzer, truth be told. We—that’s me and the band—just stayed on Skytop, and auditioned for a stint as the support act for U238’s upcoming tour of the Belt.”
“U238?” asked Gordon.
“You haven’t heard of them? T
hey get quite a bit of radio activity at the moment. Bit too heavy for my tastes, but they’re massive, and they’ve been getting glowing reviews. Anyway, I don’t think the tour’ll go ahead.”
“Why do you say that?”
“There’s a rumour they’re going to split.” Ligotmi lifted his glass, looked at it, then set it down on the edge of the slowly spreading puddle on the bar. “Oh, and there was one other thing. We’d recorded this advertising jingle awhile back, big bikkies if it got picked up, we were going to check with the company exec to see whether it met with approval. This meeting, all arranged, but the guy never showed.”
“Can I ask what the jingle was about?”
“Cheese.”
“Cheese?”
“Cheese. Pretty much, yeah. D’you know how hard it is? Not the cheese, I mean, but coming up with a decent jingle for the stuff? And something with the right vintage, to suit the demographic.”
“There’s a cheese demographic?” Gordon asked, curious despite himself.
“Oh, yeah,” Ligotmi answered. “I mean, initially, we were going to go with ‘Let It Brie’. But that’s way too soft, right? So then someone suggested ‘Won’t Get Grilled Again’, and that nearly got the nod. We thought long and hard about ‘Stilton On The Dock Of The Bay’. We went into the studio all ready to cut ‘Under the Milky Whey Tonight’, even though Alan, our drummer, reckoned it was way too ‘out there’. But we finally settled on—”
“Thank you, that’s probably more information than I need for the entertainment report,” Gordon interrupted. “I won’t disturb you gentlemen any more for this evening.”
As Gordon walked away, he heard Idovist say to the rocker, “So where were we? Yeah. Just four little words. ‘Lift with your knees’.”
* * *
Someone with responsibility for 270’s last refurbishment had evidently decided that, for the upper floors at least, ‘well-appointed’ was synonymous with ‘busy’. Which was all well and good (particularly if you appreciated a nice plastic potted palm—or ten—at every corridor corner; a live-action computer-generated wraparound mural of jungle scenery, ocean views, or Grand Canyon abseiling at every landing; and an omnipresent muzak system dispensing traffic noise, kazoo interpretations of light orchestral favourites, and the notable karaoke efforts of former guests without fear or favour), but which could make things a trifle difficult when one was trying to perform maintenance. Gordon knew there was an emergency chute cover recessed into the wall somewhere along the second-floor corridor, but could he find it among a constantly changing diorama of calving glaciers, aurorae, and erupting volcanoes? And trying to locate it by feel was a less-than-satisfactory strategy, given the architect’s apparent desire to experiment with texture on this section of the corridor’s surfaces, and to disguise any and every mandated safety feature as a work of art or a piece of unattended luggage. The whole thing was an exercise in frustration, almost as vexing as the question of the cheese magnate’s murder, the stealth cloak, the suggested connection between Havmurthy and the Saturn Propulsions wonderdrive, and the still-mysterious motive behind Gordon’s abduction. Running his fingers along a promising rockfacelike seam on the corridor’s left wall, while striving valiantly to ignore the intercommed sound of a cascading waterfall—at this point in the corridor, he was about as far as it was possible to get from any of the lift-module’s restrooms—Gordon tried to tease apart the several pieces to the Havmurthy conundrum.
Why choose to kill on Skytop, in a fairly busy public setting? Havmurthy had presumably been just passing through, had in all probability made his enemies elsewhere … possibly Skytop had the advantage, for the killer, of not being anyone’s home territory, and thus stood to disguise the motive for the hit.
Just passing through … disguise … there was something there, an idea, a thought, a connection, below the surface; but it wouldn’t coalesce properly.
And somehow, in his tactile explorations towards locating the concealed emergency chute cover, Gordon had acquired a paper cut on his index finger.
His handheld chirped. Incoming call.
“Gordon?”
“Yes?” he replied.
“Sue. You were wanting that locator.”
“Yes. D’you have it ready?”
“Raring to go. I would have had it sorted sooner, but I couldn’t find an appropriate casing for the electronics. In the end I had to go with—”
“I’m sure whatever you’ve chosen will be fine, Sue.”
“I hope you still think that when you see it. You were saying this … thing was beeping every ten minutes or so?”
“About that, I’d say. Yes.”
“Probably take up to an hour to triangulate, then. I’ve programmed it to move around the cargo bay, build up a volume profile for our mystery beep.”
“Splendid. Thanks, Sue. You still in the galley?”
“Workshop. Diners tend to get uneasy if they hear a rivet gun firing off in the kitchen.”
“Heh. OK, I’ll pick it up on my way through.”
“Fine by me. And Gordon?”
“Yes?”
“Just … take care, won’t you?”
“Caution is my middle name,” said Gordon. Which wasn’t strictly true, but on the other hand he’d never forgiven his parents for ‘Fortescue’.
* * *
Gordon was arching his back, still trying to work out the kink he’d acquired from manhandling Sue’s makeshift (and decidedly fridgelike) gizmo down three flights to the cargo deck. He should have mentioned ‘portable’ as one of the desired attributes for the thing … even with a countergrav patch stuck on the side, it had been brutally unwieldy, as attested by the bouquet of plastic palm fragments he’d picked up from the foyer’s fake arbor. And from the corner outside the laundry. And from the power-plant entranceway … really, the case could be made that a measure of deforestation of 270’s plastic-palm infestation was long overdue. Finding the third-floor recycling chute (he’d given up locating anything on the second floor until he’d succeeded in decoding the apparently encrypted blueprints), he dumped the plastic greenery and checked further along the corridor.
Suite 302. He knocked at the plastimahogany door. “Ms Miharties?”
“Yo?” came the reply.
“Gordon Mamon,” he explained, to the still-closed door.
“Yo?”
“I was just wanting a word with you, Ms Miharties—”
“Arr,” she replied, opening the door. Middle-aged, skinny, a touch weatherbeaten, but not in a bad way. Dark ringlets, black T-shirt and jeans, her face partly obscured by a black iPatch. Something about her smelt faintly of rum. She ran her eye up and down, appraising Gordon; for his part, he couldn’t get past the prosthetic ‘hand’ with which she’d opened the door.
“I hope I’m not interrupting, Ms—”
“Arr.”
“Ms—”
“Arr.”
“Ms—”
“Please, call me ‘R’,” she said.
“Short for …?”
“Not short for anything. It’s just me name.”
“Ah.”
“Precisely.”
“May I have a few words? It’s one of my duties as Entertainments Officer to check on the wellbeing of each guest at least once during our descent.”
“Yah, orright then. may as well. Time t’kill, and all that. Come in, Mr Madman.”
“Mamon,” said Gordon, crossing the threshold. He consulted his handheld briefly. “You—er—you’re a deejay?”
“That I be. Pirate radio,” she said, proudly.
“Quite,” said Gordon. “And—not meaning to pry, in any sense, but you’re booked in with Mr Ligotmi?”
“Why do you ask?” Suddenly, all trace of the accent was gone, replaced by a voice as hard and unyielding as the hook which terminated her right arm.
“Just seeking to ensure I have the right box ticked, for the statistics. If you want to see our piracy—er, privacy policy—”
“No, I don’t suppose that’ll be necessary. I’m just … a little touchy, I guess. The others in Yuri’s band, I think they see me as a bad influence. O’Rigby hasn’t put you up to anything, I suppose?”
“O’Rigby?”
“Yuri’s drummer. Alan’s a mean little sod. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“No, I can assure you I’ve never heard of this O’Rigby.”
“Right then.” She took off the iPatch, and detached the prosthetic hook. Underneath, her right hand appeared to be entirely normal. “Yes, Yuri and I are an item. Long-distance, like, of course. Been looking forward to this holiday together for months, no lie. And yeah, the descent’s been enjoyable enough so far.”
“I—well, again, I don’t mean to pry, but I noticed you weren’t at dinner.”
She sat on the bed’s end, nudging aside a black canvas-skinned suitcase. “Yeah, tum’s been a bit skew-whiff. I think the rarebit I had at the Plaza nightspot yesterday must’ve been a bit dodgy—not sure what they put in it. Didn’t want to risk dinner, this evening, in public, so I had something sent up. It went OK, though the dessert just now was a touch too rivetty for my liking.”
“I have no idea why that might be,” said Gordon. “But out of curiosity, what’s your reason for visiting Skytop?”
“No other way to get to Earth,” she replied. “I’m not exactly a local, Mr Merman.”
“Mamon. But, excuse me—I’d just assumed you were from Earth? Like Mr Ligotmi, I mean.”
“From Earth, yes. Not so often on Earth, these days.”
“Why’s that?”
“Pirate radio don’t work like that. The whole point is that we operate outside geostationary, so we’re not subject to terrestrial broadcasting restrictions.”
“I didn’t think Earth had many broadcasting restrictions left.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the fly in the whole business model, isn’t it? It’s mainly a gimmick thing, now, more than anything. Difficult to keep the wolf from the airlock, too. Devil of a job trying to drum up advertising revenue. I don’t mind telling you, we were looking at having to shut up shop, until Yuri and his band landed that advertising promo for Havmurthy. I do hope he’s been able to secure payment—he’s been very quiet since we came on board. Don’t know why I’m telling you all this—”