by Allen Steele
Then she reaches up to pull herself through the open hatch above us. A last glimpse of her long legs and her handlike feet, then the hatch cover swings down and clamps in place. Air hisses through bulkhead ducts; my ears pop as atmospheric pressure begins to equalize.
Not even a good-bye kiss. I’m on my own.
Now I’m strapped into a narrow seat in the passenger compartment of a shuttle. There’re nineteen other people squeezed into this can: passengers from other vessels which have rendezvoused with Highgate, their final destination on the far side of the Moon.
The shuttle is a Greyhound bus in space, and I’ve been riding the hound for the last twelve hours. Even though my butt isn’t sore or my legs cramped—one nice thing about zero-gee: if you don’t like your present position, you can always stand on your head—I’m tired of counting the dimples on the shaven skull of the asteroid miner seated in front of me, and that’s only slightly less boring than hearing the Superior across the aisle expound upon the principles of extropism.
So I’ve napped, woken up, read Hamlet on eyes-up, napped again, listened some more to John Lynx-Calvin’s unending discourse on vegetarianism and self-denial as the way to perfect harmony (sorry I ever asked him about the tiger tattoo on his forehead), stared out the window at total blackness (when we passed the Moon, I had the misfortune of having a seat on the wrong side of the shuttle), and napped again. A steward comes by every now and then to offer us water bulbs or tubes of tasteless paste. Twelve hours. I thought space travel was supposed to be fast.
The pilot’s voice comes down from the ceiling to tell us that we’re on final approach to Clarke County. He goes on to remind us that all passengers from outside Pax Astra territories must report to customs upon arrival and that our luggage may be subject to search.
I’m barely listening. For the first time, I can see something out my porthole that doesn’t look like a dead TV screen.
Clarke County looks like God’s own Erector Set. A colossal gray sphere inside a silver Chinese wok, with two large windows encircling its hemispheres. Beneath the sphere’s north and south poles are stacks of enormous bicycle tires, eleven in each stack, with broad black vanes jutting out from their sides. Long slender shafts form the hubs of the bicycle tires; just past two more reflector shields at either end are two smaller spheres. Pulsing red-and-blue beacons make it look like the best present a kid ever opened on Christmas morning.
Dust motes move slowly around narrow openings in the docking spheres; it’s only when the ferry draws closer that I realize that they’re spacecraft the same size as my shuttle. I get a better sense of scale when the ferry glides past the woklike main reflector: a glimpse of fields and buildings, reflected from the windows onto the massive bowl. There’s a little inside-out planet within the sphere…
But the sphere’s outer surface is pitted and creased. The panes of the reflector shields are as warped as funhouse mirrors, the radiator vanes pockmarked with holes that look small until I spot a spacesuited figure gliding through one of them. The bicycle tires are badly in need of a retread; here and there are large black patches which look as if they’re haphazardly stuck on and forgotten. From the distance, Clarke County is magnificent; it makes the Gateway Arch look like McDonalds’s. But then you get closer, and there’s something misused and neglected about it, like a cathedral whose buttresses are crumbling and gargoyles have taken wing.
The shuttle lines up with a large circular portal on the south docking sphere. Light floods the cabin as the craft gradually moves inside. It gently bumps into a berth. Workmen in hardsuits float toward it, dragging fuel lines and electrical cables. Even before the enclosed gangway has extended to the aft hatch, passengers unbuckle their seat harnesses and push themselves upward; the tiny compartment is soon filled with flailing limbs and stray baggage. Everyone wants to get out of here.
So do I, but I stay put until they’ve disentangled themselves. Besides, I’m in no hurry to deal with customs.
I’ve made it to Clarke County. Now I have to see if they’ll let me in.
I can’t stay here forever, though, so I finally unstrap, pull my bag from the web beneath my seat, and follow the crowd through the hatch and down the gangway. I’m the last passenger off the shuttle. A hand-over-hand journey down a narrow tube brings me to a near-empty carousel; a quick spin, then I’m deposited in a disembarkment area.
The last of the other passengers are being funneled through archways to a row of kiosks. Customs. I don’t have to wait long before the uniformed woman standing at one of them motions to me. Even low-gee feels funny after twelve hours of zero-gee; I’m bowlegged when I walk toward her, like a cowboy who’s been reamed with a corncob.
I duck my head for an instant before I pass through the archway, triple-blink. Chip’s online now. Then I stop before her podium.
“Hello.” Innocent smile.
She doesn’t smile back. “ID card?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I drop my bag, reach into my pocket for the plastic card.
Alec, you’ve been scanned by an electromagnetic sensor.
90% probability that your MINN implant has been detected.
I don’t know if this is good news or bad, and I can’t ask Chip which it is. All I can do is brazen it out.
The customs lady looks like Madonna when she went through her Marlene Dietrich phase. She feeds my card into a slot on her podium, gazes at a screen only she can see, then regards me with glacial blue eyes. There’s a set of silver bangles in her left earlobe.
“Your name is John Ulnar?”
“Yes, ma’am…”
“Your point of origin is Ceres Station?”
“Yes, ma’am…”
“Occupation?”
Freelance spacer.
“Freelance spacer.”
“And your place of birth is New Chattanooga, Mars?”
“Yes, ma’am…”
“Are you presently a citizen of the Ares Alliance?”
Say no. You’re a neutral.
“No, ma’am. I’m a neutral.”
She nods without comment, glances at her screen again. For the first time, I notice a man wearing what looks like light body armor standing at parade rest, about fifteen feet behind her. There’s a rapier sheathed on his left side, a blaster holstered on his right. His head turns toward me; my face is reflected in the silver visor of his helmet. I hastily look away, but I can feel his eyes on me.
“Have you received inoculations for influenza-D, Tibbit’s, and AIDS within the last twelve standard months?”
I don’t have to lie about that one; Jeri shot me up with all that stuff shortly after I boarded the Comet. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Are you in possession of any ballistic or energy weapons?”
“Only my sword, ma’am.” I pat the hilt of my rapier.
She glances at my sword, nods her tightly-bunned head, goes on. I’m waiting for the illegal drugs question, but that doesn’t come up. “My scanner indicates the presence of a mnemonic interfaced neural network in your brain’s cerebral cortex. Is this true?”
Busted. “Yes, ma’am, it’s true.”
“Is it presently active?”
Say yes.
“Uhh…yes, ma’am, it is.”
She raises her eyes. “Why are you wearing a MINN, Mess’r Ulnar?”
Before I can stammer something stupid, Chip flashes the proper answer across my eyelids. Oh, my God, I would have never thought of this…
“Umm…ma’am, I’m mentally retarded.”
The ice in her eyes thaws a few degrees. Her mouth starts to open and her face reddens ever so slightly, then she quickly looks at her screen again and taps her fingers on the keypad.
“Sorry,” she whispers under her breath. “Forgive me.”
I’ll be damned. This steel bitch actually pities me.
“That’s okay,” I murmur. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the security dude pointedly looking the other way.
The customs inspecto
r looks up at me again. The rouge has vanished from her cheeks, but her eyes are still comforting. I’m a poor retard who can only get by with the aid of a MINN; if I didn’t have its assistance, I’d be helpless. “Please raise your right hand, Mess’r Ulnar…John, I mean…and repeat after me.” She raises her own right hand and smiles a little. “Do you think you can do that?”
I make a pretense of starting to lift my left hand, then letting it drop and raising my right hand instead. “I solemnly vow…” she begins, speaking slowly and carefully.
“‘I solemnly vow…’”
“That I am a political neutral…”
“‘That I am a political neutral…’”
“And will not engage in any activities…”
“‘And will not engage in any activities…’”
“Which would compromise the internal security…”
“‘Which would compromise the internal security…’”
“Of the Pax Astra.”
“‘Of the Pax Astra.’”
“Very good, John. I’m proud of you.” She withdraws my card from the slot and hands it back to me. “Welcome to Clarke County. You’ve been granted a one-year visa, provided that you abide by the terms of your oath. If you don’t know what this means, then ask your MINN and he’ll explain it to you. Fresh apples?”
“Yes, ma’am. Fresh apples.”
“Very good, John.” Then the mask slips back over her face and she turns away from me again.
I pick up my bag, pocket my card, walk away from her podium on legs that feel like sponges. The guard motions for me to head down a corridor marked South Access Shaft—To Trams. A few passengers from the shuttle glance at me, then look the other way.
“How dumb am I supposed to be?” I whisper under my breath.
Your card states that your IQ is 65.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
Jeri Lee-Bose programmed this information into the card. She believed that you would gain more credibility if you were not aware of this until you passed through Customs Control. I was instructed not to release this information to you until absolutely necessary. Do you understand?
I understand. Oh, boy, do I understand. Jeri knew that Chip would be detected by customs scanners as soon as I walked through, so she came up with the only plausible excuse for my MINN. And since I’m supposed to be ignorant, then it’s just as well that I play the role to the hilt.
Sure, it got me through Pax Customs. But now I’m Forrest Gump in space. “Any other surprises, asshole?”
I am not an asshole. I’m a MINN.
“Same thing.” I drop my bag in front of a hatch marked South Axis Tram and try to ignore the curious eyes around me. “Just don’t do that to me again.”
I go eyes-down before Chip can reply. I’ve never been more humiliated in my entire life.
The tram travels down the South Axis Shaft, stopping along the way at each torus—the bicycle tires I saw from the shuttle—to let people on and off: Pax Astra military officers in brass-buttoned tunics, farmers in overalls, a group of schoolchildren escorted by a pair of multi-limbed robots, someone who looks exactly like Elvis Presley during his rockabilly period. Two stops later, another Elvis, this time in a Viva Las Vegas nudie suit, gets on. He acknowledges the Memphis Elvis with a peculiar hand signal, but the two take seats at opposite ends of the car. No one pays the slightest attention to the Elvi.
“What gives with the Elvis impersonators?” I murmur under my breath.
“They’re priests of the First Church of Twentieth-Century Saints, Elvis Has Risen.” Chip has gone back on vox mode. “A nondenominational Christian sect that worships Elvis Presley as a prophet of God. Its headquarters are here in Clarke County. Its ministers have their faces nanosurgically altered to resemble Elvis in one of his Four Incarnations.”
The Las Vegas Elvis is sitting only two rows away. He turns his head to stare at me through rhinestone sunglasses. “What if I went over and told him I think Bono sings better?”
“Who is Bono?”
I smile. “Someone who sings better than Elvis.”
“That would not be advisable, unless you wish to be converted.”
I shake my head and look away. I never figured out what people saw in that pork chop, and I’m not about to start now…
“Biosphere South,” the tram’s voice announces as it coasts to a stop. “Exit on both sides, please. This tram will return to South Dock in thirty minutes.”
The doors slide open; everyone stands up and begins exiting the car. I pick up my bag and go with the flow, following them out onto an underground platform. Children, robots, military officers, and the two Elvi step onto an escalator; I’m right behind them, riding up into a circle of sunlight.
And suddenly, I’m in another world.
Imagine yourself as a snail clinging to the inside of a goldfish bowl the size of a wrecking ball. There’s no water in the bowl, but its walls above and below you have been covered with fields, forest, roads, and buildings.
Wide circular windows curve around its sides, letting in sunlight reflected by the mirrors outside. A narrow river without beginning or end bisects the bowl at its equator. Little bridges cross the windows and the river.
On the other side of the river, on your side of the bowl, is what appears to be a small town; there’s even something that looks like a sports arena, just outside the town square.
At the opposite side of the bowl, across the same window but above your head, is another town. You can’t see it clearly through hazy clouds, but it appears to surround an enormous palace.
A hawk glides overhead, keening in the eternal tropical afternoon. Not far away, someone pedals down a nearby roadway on an oversized tricycle; impossibly, he begins coasting uphill, his feet not moving as his trike carries him up a ninety-degree angle.
You hear the distant sound of goats bullying one another, but don’t see them until you look straight up; there they are, several hundred feet away, standing upside-down in a meadow above your head.
A tiny boat glides down the distant river, following a gentle current that should be a vertical waterfall.
The bag drops from my numb hand. My knees almost collapse. 4442 Garcia was radical, but this…
This is Clarke County. Capital of the Pax Astra. Crossroads of near-space. Seat of empire.
“Oh, my God,” I whisper. “Where do I start?”
Chip goes eyes-up on me. My first view of heaven is suddenly overlaid with columns of fine print, and each paragraph begins with the same word:
Wanted.
“First,” he says, “you need to find a job.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY
* * *
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL EMPEROR
Where the army is, prices are high; when prices rise the wealth of the people is exhausted. When wealth is exhausted the peasantry will be afflicted with urgent exactions.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
It wasn’t hard to vanish.
Ten thousand people called Clarke County home; another two or three thousand were visiting at any one time. By city standards, this might seem small—in fact, the colony was more like a small town than a city—but since the population was spread out over the biosphere and the tori, it was possible to live there a long time and not see the same person twice. You could easily fade into the background and become one more anonymous soul, and this was exactly what John Ulnar wanted to do.
First, I located a tourist hostel in Torus N-17, on the north side of the colony, where I rented a tiny apartment no larger than my room in 4442 Garcia. The walls were thin, the futon on the floor was stained and lumpy; I had to share the bathroom down the corridor with ten other transients. It was the best I could afford on what little credit was available on my smartcard, and even then I could only pay for one month in advance: 300 kilolox, plus a fifty kilolox security deposit and five kilolox for tax. But the door had a thumbprint lock, which gave me a modicum of security; once I
stashed my bag and rapier in the closet, I keyed the door to my thumbprint, then went out in search of a job.
That proved to be a little more problematic. There were exactly 763 job openings currently available in Clarke County. Chip informed me that I was unqualified for 672 of them, and out of the remaining ninety-one, forty-seven were unavailable to someone who was officially listed as mentally retarded. Not only that, but welfare was virtually nonexistent; the Monarchist Party had abolished public assistance shortly after it came to power, and the only handouts came from a handful of underfunded private charities or various labor unions. No homeless problem in Clarke County; if you didn’t have work or a place to stay, then it was only a matter of time before the militia escorted you to the nearest airlock, and whether there was a spacecraft on the other side of the hatch depended solely upon your ability to arrange transportation to somewhere else.
So gaining employment, however difficult that might be, wasn’t something that could wait very long. I had 145 kilolox left on my card. Ten kilolox bought me a tuna sandwich for lunch while I scoured the online want ads; one centilox allowed me to visit a public toilet, and ten lox was good for a twelve-inch strip of bamboo paper. Inflation was obviously a problem.
I caught the tram to the biosphere and went to the Inn Lagrange, the sprawling resort hotel on the colony’s east hemisphere. The hotel was located near the colony’s equator; which is where I ran into my first major setback; the moment I got off the rickshaw cab that had carried me from the tram station, it was as if someone had dropped a hundred-pound pack on my back. My knees sagged and my shoulders went down. My heart started racing; I thought I was going to have a cardiac seizure.
One gee at the colony’s equator.
I had a good, strong body, but from the moment I awakened in the White Room, I had lived almost exclusively in low-gravity environments: one-sixth of a gee, sometimes less. The most I had experienced had been when I hijacked the EVA pod; three gees had caused me to black out.
I staggered to a bench, sat down, waited for my heart to stop racing while I mopped sweat from my brow. After a while, I caught my breath, stood up, and slunk my way to the front door of the Inn Lagrange.