The Dark Side

by Anthony O'Neill

  “Because I’m incapable of murder. Check my psych tests. I have a high empathy reading. It’s genetic, but not from my father. I’m ruthless when I have to be—I got that from my father—but I could never kill.”

  “Your father could, though?”

  “Of course he could. But if you’re asking if he killed Ben Chee—or Otto Decker, for that matter—well, I don’t know. Ask my father when you meet him.”

  “I’ve already met him.”

  “No you haven’t.”

  “I met him this morning.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  She says it with such conviction that Justus frowns. “Excuse me?”

  She smirks. “My father is a busy man. There’s a very narrow window for Mars launch, and he can’t afford to miss it. So his every waking minute is spent at the construction site, preparing for the voyage. And you don’t really think that a man like that would waste his time at a press conference, do you?”

  Justus just blinks.

  “Come on, Lieutenant—do you really believe you met my father? Did you get any sense of real charisma—out-of-this-world charisma—from that guy? Did he really look like a man who’s achieved as much as Fletcher Brass?”

  “You mean—?”

  “He was that actor. That wife-killing Welsh actor—the one who starred in Brass. He does most of my father’s public appearances these days. He delivers carefully scripted speeches and gets briefed just enough so he can answer questions with some authority. But he’s not very good at improv. And he doesn’t know anything really dangerous. That’s one of the reasons he’s so useful.”

  Justus frowns. “Who knows about this?”

  “If you’re big enough, you know. The press knows.”

  “The PPD?”

  “Sure. Don’t get played for a chump, Lieutenant. I wouldn’t do it to you. To me you can ask any question—anything you like—and I’ll be as open and honest as possible.”

  Justus thinks for a moment. “Did you hire me?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know who approved your application initially. I could have knocked it back when I took over as secretary of law enforcement, but I liked the look of you. For that matter, there are others who could have rejected you if they’d wanted to.”

  “Your father?”

  “Of course. Assuming he had the time. Any other questions?”

  “No,” says Justus, rising, “you’ve already given me a lot to think about.”

  In truth, he’s still not sure what to make of her. The biographies of Fletcher Brass, even the unauthorized ones, contain curiously little information about the Patriarch’s only daughter. Which makes Justus wonder how she’s managed to fly so effectively under the radar. And just what else she’s capable of.

  “Oh, one thing before you go,” she says, stopping him at the door. “Three things, actually. Three ways you can recognize my father—my real father—when you meet him. First, look into his eyes. You’ll see genuine brass flecks in the irises—not those contact lenses the actor wears—and you’ll notice the difference, believe me. Second, my father doesn’t use words like ‘goddamn’—he’s not as hokey as that. But you’ll inevitably find that out too.”

  “And the third way?”

  “He’ll make some reference to your face. He can’t help himself. He thinks he has a right to be candid, and he thinks people respect him for speaking his mind. So if that means insulting you—like suggesting you should get your features fixed up—then he’ll take great delight in doing so. And even greater satisfaction in feeling how politically incorrect he is.”

  “I’ve already had people here suggest surgery.”

  “Figures. But I wouldn’t change a thing if I were you. Men used to be proud of wearing their history on their skin.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” Justus says. She could be flirting with him, for whatever reason, but he gives her the benefit of the doubt.

  Outside her office he’s ushered out to the elevator by another valet, a strikingly handsome fellow with razor-parted brown hair, brown suit, brown tie, and brown eyes.

  “Let me guess,” Justus says. “Your name is Leonardo Brown?”

  “That is correct, sir.”

  “And you’re an android as well?”

  “That too is correct, sir. Why do you ask?”

  “Not without a cause,” says Justus.

  15

  JEAN-PIERRE PLAISANCE IS DRIVING at top speed between the minor craters north of Gagarin. The maintenance path he’s following, when it’s not sintered to concrete-like consistency, is marked with the tracks of rovers that have churned up its surface over fourteen years. In some places the grooves are inches deep. Plaisance knows the path better than anyone—he helped lay it years ago—and right now he’s furious, resentful, and concerned all at the same time. Because the droid has passed this way. And the droid is now driving an LRV—for over an hour Plaisance has been following its distinctive tracks. So the droid must have been programmed well enough to drive a lunar roving vehicle. It’s not unprecedented, but it raises the stakes to a whole new level.

  Plaisance’s own LRV, a Zenith 7, is one of the most venerable utility vehicles from the lunar bootstrapping days. It’s a six-wheel rover with four traction-drive motors, six lithium-sulfur batteries, a coolant tank, galvanized wire-mesh wheels, and a tow bar for hauling trailers. Its top speed on hard track is ninety kilometers per hour. Its range, without a battery recharge, is five hundred kilometers. Its traction is good—Plaisance has recently changed the tires—but the braking is poor. The suspension is substandard. The steering is eccentric. Many of the seals are crumbling. The bearings have been abraded by lunar dust. The rover, in truth, is old, cheap, and except for its speed and endurance not much more advanced than the LRVs used in the later Apollo missions. But Plaisance has come to know it like an extension of his own body. In the unlikely event that he was offered a more advanced model, he would reject it out of hand. He loves his LRV as men on Earth used to love their automobiles.

  He sits now on a seat upholstered in nylon webbing, his feet in the toeholds, his right hand set firmly—ferociously—on the spring-loaded controller. His throat is locked. His teeth are clenched. His eyes are squeezed to slits. Because to Plaisance this is now more than a pursuit—it’s a divine mission. After finding the body of the prisoner in Gagarin—the one with his head smashed in—Plaisance followed the droid’s prints to another igloo and found another dead prisoner. Another wall decorated with parts of a man’s head.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. Those two victims were serious criminals, after all. More than mere miscreants, they were unrepentant murderers. Or something. Plaisance doesn’t know the exact nature of their crimes, it’s true, and he’s Christian enough to believe they did not deserve to be killed. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that through their crimes they had forfeited much of their right to pity, even from a man who himself is a convicted murderer.

  But then Plaisance followed the droid’s prints north. Across Gagarin, over the ringwall, through the smaller craters, and all the way to the shack of the female geologists. And began to feel nauseated, just at the thought of what he might see inside.

  Because he’d met the women before, passing them a couple of times and saluting and gesticulating, checking that they were okay—it was what passed for a conversation on the surface of the Moon. And from this spare communication he’d developed a feeling of affection for the two ladies—something paternal, almost, as if they were his own daughters digging up rocks in his back garden. A curious but agreeable whimsy, because Plaisance never had any children. But he’d certainly grown up in a family of women: an out-of-work mother, a grandmother, and four younger sisters. He was the man of the house by age ten and the major breadwinner by fifteen. And though his relationship with his mother in particular was complex—he regularly fought, for instance, with her no-good lovers—he still carries around inside him a sense of responsibility for all women, and a determination
to preserve their honor and their safety at all costs. In fact, it was an obscene—though not entirely inaccurate—reference to his mother by one sailor, and a sneering laugh from another, that turned him into a murderer.

  Then he entered the shack of the two young geologists and saw what had been done to them. It was not just murder. They had been ripped apart. And to make things even worse, they had been arranged in obscene, undignified poses.

  And these two were not criminals. They were not prisoners. They were women.

  It isn’t supposed to make a difference, but Plaisance is an emotional man. And his rage, upon viewing the murder scene, was so fierce that he almost thumped the wall with his fist. He had to retreat from the shack, in fact, before he did something even more reckless. Or threw up in his helmet.

  But the rage still will not go away. The rage, if anything, is only building—even now, as he skims and bounces across the Moon. If he saw the droid at this moment, there’s every possibility he’d spring from his LRV and attack it impulsively, as absurdly foolish as that would be. The droid will be many times stronger than he. In fact, he is not even sure if he’ll be able to stop it when he catches up to it. He’s not even sure if he’s capable of catching up. The droid is now driving the geologists’ Zenith 18, on paper much faster and more efficient than his own model. So Plaisance has nothing but his own exceptional skills to give him an edge.

  But there’s more. His LRV batteries have just twenty-four amp hours left, less if he keeps going at full speed. And they’re currently registering as warm, which means they could soon be overheated. Plaisance can recharge them at one of the emergency substations—he knows better than anyone where they are—but that would waste at least an hour.

  And he has just six hours of breathable air left in his suit. He carries another three hours of oxygen—an emergency supply—in his PLSS (his portable life-support system, strapped to his back), and another eight hours in canisters on his LRV. But to reload is a delicate procedure that will further delay him. And if he runs out entirely, he’ll need to get to a supply cache immediately or he’ll suffocate.

  Then there’s the suit itself. Modern flexisuits are highly versatile, made of skintight spandex and nylon, temperature and moisture controlled, puncture resistant, equipped with servomotors, microdosimeters, and smart visors that adapt automatically to lighting conditions. But they cost even more than LRVs. And Plaisance certainly isn’t important enough to warrant one. So he’s in an old hybrid suit with ceramic upper torso and nylon limbs—again, not much of an improvement on the suits used by the NASA astronauts. Most of the rings are abraded, the hose connectors are loose, the visor is seriously scratched, and if his body weren’t already callused at the contact points he’d be covered with rashes and blisters. And though Plaisance has always been happy enough with it—like the LRV, it feels very much like an extension of his body—he’s perfectly aware that the suit could simply break apart in sustained combat, much like his chalky bones and tumor-riddled body.

  On top of all this, the day-night terminator is now just fourteen hours away—less if the droid starts moving in an easterly direction. And it’s not just the danger of the sudden onrush of cold, though that itself could kill a man in an obsolete spacesuit. It’s that the darkness is total on Farside. The emergency supply caches and electricity substations have beacons, as do the outposts, but apart from that there’s nothing but the occasional reflector on the path. There’s not even Earthlight. There’s only the galaxy clouds and the billion pinpricks of the Milky Way. Anyone relying on failing human eyes, as Plaisance is, will be effectively blind. He has steerable headlamps on the LRV, of course, but beyond their beamless discs—which will be trained on the ground ahead—there will be nothing but inky night. The lamplight, in fact, will only boost the intensity of the surrounding darkness. The LRV has no radio devices or infrared sensors either. There are no satellites overhead to supply GPS data. And beyond the lunar equator—if, God forbid, the pursuit takes him that far—Plaisance knows very little of Farside. There are radar arrays, he knows that. Solar panel fields. A biohazard lab. A high-security repository for treasures too valuable to be kept safely on Earth. A military site or two. Not to mention a huge test zone, where a massive thermonuclear device, bigger even than the Tsar Bomb the Soviets exploded in 1961, was detonated when Earth feared it was going to be wiped out by the wayward comet UQ178 and needed a weapon powerful to blow the object off course.

  And then, of course, there’s Purgatory.

  The last has quite a reputation. Plaisance has met numerous people who’ve been there, mainly short-timers from Earth, but he’s never had a desire to visit the place himself. Indeed, most of those who live in the southern hemisphere are ashamed of Purgatory. They think that more than anything it gives Farside a bad name. But that doesn’t mean Plaisance is prepared to let the murderous droid make it that far, and wreak more damage on innocent lives.

  So that’s why he’s got the hand controller tilted forward almost as far as it will go. It’s why he’s barreling down the maintenance path at a speed that’s dangerous even for him. He’s never liked robots anyway—they don’t get cancer, they don’t love their mothers, they don’t stare at the stars, and they don’t honor God—and this one in particular can’t claim to be a benefit to anything. It’s a demon. And Plaisance, with his blood so hot in his veins that he’s dripping with perspiration—which only condenses on his faceplate, making it even more difficult to see—feels like some sort of predestined avenger. He has one last chance. He must stop the demon before the lunar night closes in.

  There is pleasure in rage, and exhilaration in unequivocal righteousness. And Plaisance’s pleasure right now is oddly enhanced by the knowledge that no one knows anything about his pursuit. He has not cleared it with any base. He is not being tracked by any device. And he has not been seen by anyone—not a living soul—since he left Lampland. He does not even have Earth looking over his shoulder. There is only him and the bejeweled face of God.

  16

  OFFICIALLY FIREARMS ARE BANNED on the Moon—little is more dangerous in a pressurized environment than a wayward bullet—but illegality doesn’t mean nonexistence or even deficiency. In Sin, much of the PPD’s time and resources are spent in rounding up weaponry that’s been smuggled in, illegally manufactured, or crudely cobbled together out of unrelated implements. The scrutiny doesn’t extend to all parts of the territory, however, and virtually every resident of the isolated habitats and the gated community of Zabada maintains one or two firearms for “self-defense.” In Purgatory’s first major scandal (and, according to some, its first major cover-up), secretly recorded footage was televised on Earth of a human “foxhunt”—beaming mobsters with hunting rifles blowing apart a thieving gardener in a lunar cave.

  The standard-issue firearm of the PPD is the PCL-43 or plasma-channel strobe-mounted electroshock immobilization gun—commonly known as the “zapper”—which, if ratcheted up to its highest operational level, can kill with a sustained electrical charge. Justus is carrying one now, off-duty, as he makes his way home from police headquarters in Kasbah to his apartment in Ishtar. It’s shortly after midnight (the entire Moon follows GMT) and the great incandescent sunlamps have been off for hours. Artificial stars are faintly visible through a slowly swirling mist. The combined sound of nightclubs, blood sports, and street brawls, on top of all the usual hums, clicks, and hisses of a lunar base, is echoing raucously throughout the Pressure Cooker—in many ways the night is the worst time to sleep in Sin.

  With a high-profile murder case to be solved, Justus normally wouldn’t be leaving HQ at all. But he’s so suspicious of all the artificial deference that he’s decided to review most of the relevant material at home. In a cardboard satchel he carries both printouts and digital media relating to the Goat House bombing: full profiles of Professor Otto Decker, QT’s spy Ben Chee, and Blythe L’Huillier (an aide who at first glance seems to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time). And ther
e’s a long, long list of all permanent residents with experience in the manufacture of and/or trade in explosives. Justus intends to review as much as possible over the next few hours, take plenty of notes, and then, literally, sleep on it: His unconscious has done wonders unraveling secrets in the past. He decides to buy some ChocWinks™.

  Justus has spent much of his life avoiding pills. And nothing about Purgatory’s open market of poorly tested pharmaceuticals seems attractive to him. But he knew cops in Phoenix who swore by ChocWinks™—sleep aids, officially contraband on Earth—and he’s already proved, in undercover Narcotics, that he has the willpower to prevent himself from becoming an addict. Moreover, he figures that a deep sleep, even brief and sedative-induced, will be safer and more beneficial than artificial stimulants like BrightIze™.

  So he enters a LunaMart and while waiting in the queue for service he hears whispers.

  “It’s him.”

  “The new lieutenant.”

  “Starface.”

  “The one called Justice.”

  Suddenly he becomes aware of local residents—people with luminous tattoos, decorative metallurgy, and sharpened teeth—staring at him as if he’s a movie star. Even parting for him, like pigeons, and ushering him to the counter in their place.

  For Justus, it’s another unsettling experience. Already on his walk home he’s been fielding smiles, winks, and appreciative nods. It can’t be in response to his uniform, because he’s in plain clothes—albeit a blue canvas jacket and tie provided by the PPD—and he’s not wearing his badge. And it can’t be his scarring, because there are plenty of people more ostentatiously deformed in Sin.

  He tries to pay for the ChocWinks™ but the proprietor—a birdlike man with an Eastern European accent—won’t hear of it.

  “On ze house,” the man insists, waving away Justus’s cash card.

  Justus fishes around in his pocket and slaps a five-dollar coin on the counter anyway. Then, on his way out—the Sinners separate again—he notices on the news counter a printout of the morning’s Tablet. The banner headline is all about the explosion in the Goat House, which makes sense, but what gets Justus’s attention is a box-out above the masthead.