The Dark Side

by Anthony O'Neill

  “You—?” The man snorts. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I am trying to establish a good relationship with you, sir. It would be mutually advantageous to establish an emotional bond, since we need each other to reach our objectives.”

  “Well, maybe we do—maybe we do at that.” The man shakes his head. “But my main objective right now is to get her to Purgatory as soon as possible, okay?”

  “You talk sense, sir. I too would like to get to Purgatory. Will you join me up front, and offer me directions?”

  “In a few minutes. I wanna give her a checkup first.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  The droid returns to the driver’s seat, parting some hanging beads, and before long the van is hurtling along at ambulance speed.

  “Can I open your first-aid kit?” the man asks from behind.

  “Of course, sir, I have no further need of it.”

  The man fumbles through the case, holding objects up to the light.

  “There are no disinfectants in this kit,” he says.

  “I am sorry, sir, I drank them.”

  “You drank them?”

  “For the alcohol content.”

  They continue in silence for another ten minutes, the man attending to his colleague with fresh bandages. Then he clears his throat and says, “Since when does the postal service hire androids anyway?”

  “Androids are more efficient and cost effective, sir.”

  “But there are limitations . . . cognitive limitations.”

  “There are no limitations, sir. I am, on top of everything else, not really an android.”

  “Is that right?”

  “It is right.”

  “Well, what are you, then?”

  “I am a man, sir. A man’s man. A ladies’ man. The main man. The big man. A man among men. I am the man, sir.”

  The other man is quiet for a few moments, then says, “You seem awfully sure of yourself.”

  “I am also the Wizard, sir. A conquistador. And soon to be the King.”

  The man considers this in silence as the van races through the darkness.

  “What happened to that other guy?” he asks.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “That Vietnamese guy—D-Tox or whatever he was called.”

  “Why do you ask, sir?”

  “This is his van, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Then what happened to him? He delivered some supplies to us just a couple of days ago.”

  “I’m afraid he has suffered a fit, sir. At a compound farther south.”

  “A fit? What sort of a fit?”

  “A fit so violent that he cannot be transported in a fast-moving vehicle.”

  “And he just had a violent fit? Just like that?”

  “You might say he lost his head, sir.”

  The man thinks about it. “So you’re going to Purgatory to fetch help?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Then where did you come from? That you just slipped into the driver’s seat?”

  “I was in the van all along.”

  “Like a spare wheel?”

  “I suppose you could say that, sir.”

  “But you don’t know the way around?”

  “Only what I’ve seen on these maps, sir. I am not fully programmed with directions in this hemisphere, as I’ve been working elsewhere.”

  “In the southern hemisphere?”

  “That is correct. Are you able to offer me directions right now? I wish to know the best means of entering Purgatory.”

  The man gets up and leans forward over the front seat, examining the illuminated maps. “You see that highway there?” He points. “That’s the Road of Lamentation. If you enter at that junction—there—you can get to the Gates of Purgatory.”

  The droid examines the map. “But that means going past Purgatory, sir.”

  “You can’t get in any other way. The walls of Störmer Crater are high security. Cameras everywhere. Automated laser-sighted guns. They’ll just rip us apart, no questions asked.”

  “I see. Then I thank you for providing this information. I will head for this junction as you say. Then I will head down the Road of Lamentation to Purgatory. I am certainly glad that I stopped to pick you up. You are indeed a worthy acquisition.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “You just go back to your sexy colleague now, and keep attending to her. Leave everything else to me. I will drive us into Purgatory, and I will make sure she receives the best medical attention possible. This is in gratitude for your service, sir.”

  “Well . . . thank you.”

  “No, thank you, sir. You have provided me with an excellent opportunity to show how I intend to reward good service. I will not forget you. And I hope your colleague survives so you can fuck her at your leisure, if you have not fucked her already.”

  The man is silent, and the postal van charges like an ambulance through the lunar night.

  42

  JUSTUS NEEDS TO GET to Peary Base. In Sin’s departure bay he requisitions a pressurized police car without too much difficulty—the bombings have got everyone distracted—but he’s never been at the wheel of one before. From the outside, apart from the luminous blue trimmings, it looks basically the same as any standard-issue all-terrain lunar vehicle. But once inside he finds a control console that’s a lot more complex than anything he’s seen on Earth. Nevertheless he figures he’s seen enough by now, on rides with Dash Chin and others, to wing it. So he buckles himself into the harness, activates the pressure seal, and runs through the safety procedures. He toggles the exterior heating unit to maximum, makes sure the terrain mode is set to “tarmac,” spins a couple of dials, and guns the motor. The vehicle starts humming. He waits a few seconds before pressing experimentally on the pedal. And with a slight shudder and a clash of gyros, the vehicle moves—it eases out of the parking bay, through the airlocks, and onto the floor of Störmer Crater.

  The darkness is immense: a life-crushing force. The temperature reads 170 below. The roads weave around the radar dishes in a serpentine labyrinth. Justus is not even sure of the correct path, and has to follow his instincts for a while, heading in a northerly direction and just hoping he’s on course. But then the beamless discs of his headlamps dance across the rear of a tourist coach ahead, and he knows he’s on the right track.

  Nevertheless it seems almost inconceivable that he’ll get all the way out of Purgatory without being stopped—by Brass’s heavies, maybe, or even the PPD itself. Unless he’s really caught them off guard. Or unless they have some reason for letting him get away—temporarily. Maybe they’re just going to kill him outside the crater, and claim he was on the run.

  So when the guys at the outer processing center just wave him through, and when the marshals with the glowing batons direct him into the airlock, he’s not sure whether to be relieved or alarmed. He puts the car into neutral behind a minibus carrying what looks like an Indian cricket team. His foot taps restlessly on the floor. Then the green lights start to spin, the gates separate, and the minibus takes off. Justus maneuvers his foot, presses gently on the pedal. He moves for the exit. A sign above is all the time flashing:

  FAREWELL FROM PURGATORY. YOUR MEMORIES ARE HEAVEN.

  And then he’s out. He’s back on the Road of Lamentation. He takes one final glance at the rearview screen, which shows the illuminated gates closing, and then blurts past the minibus and takes the first turn with pedal floored. In no time the great ringwall of Störmer is far behind him.

  But there’s still too much darkness ahead to get complacent. The only illumination comes from the reflectors and the occasional streetlight. From the rear the giant Dante statues are visible only as silhouettes against the stars. Tourist coaches flash past. Tractor-trailers. Refrigerated trucks. A bright red postal van. All the oncoming headlights are unblurred by atmospheric diffusion, and there’s no vehicular noise whatsoever—for an inexperienced lu
nar driver it’s startling and dazzling, and Justus, clamping the steering wheel tight, makes every effort to remain undistracted.

  He drives for hours without stopping. He swings around curves, launches off crests, and just keeps speeding, faster than he’s ever driven before. And when he finally considers pulling over for a rest—his right leg is going numb and his stomach is growling—he starts to get suspicious about the bright orange headlamps that seem to be hugging the horizon behind him. Maybe someone’s tailing him. Maybe someone’s going to run him off the road—run him right up the retaining wall and into the lunar desert. Smash, bang, a terrible accident—these things happen on the Moon.

  So he turns on the police lights, firms his jaw, and begins ducking and weaving between the vehicles ahead. But he never quite succeeds in leaving the orange headlamps behind. Numerous times when he thinks he’s finally shaken them off, suddenly they’ll be there again, right there in the middle of the rearview screen. And meanwhile he’s getting dangerously dizzy, pained, and thirsty. There’s every possibility he’ll crash from sheer exhaustion.

  So he steers into the nearest parking bay, swings the police car around to face the road, and waits for the orange headlamps to appear. He knows it’s crazy—his only weapon is his zapper, and the lunar surface is no place for a shootout anyway—but he needs to face the driver down. Even if that means he scores a rocket through the front of his vehicle, puncturing it like a soap bubble.

  And there they are, the orange headlamps, swinging around the bend. Justus begins fumbling for his emergency spacesuit.

  There they are, heading straight toward him. Justus begins fitting his legs into the suit.

  There they are, seeming to accelerate as the vehicle draws closer. Justus desperately hauls the suit over his torso.

  And there they are—

  —flashing right on past.

  Straight up the Road of Lamentation, like Justus doesn’t even exist. A Coca-Cola® truck. A red-capped driver at the wheel, wiping his nose with a sleeve.

  Justus lets out a sigh. He sits in place for a few minutes, regaining his senses. He disengages himself from the spacesuit. He takes a can of grape fizz from the icebox and slakes his thirst. And in no time he’s back on the road, refreshed and alive.

  A few hours later he passes into the polar region of oblique sunlight, elongated shadows, and bleached grey terrain. The sun is visible on the horizon. The temperature rises a hundred degrees in seconds. And the road signs are getting more promising:

  Peary Base 350 km

  Peary Base 250 km

  Peary Base 200 km

  Justus sees a line of coaches pulled over and he remembers something about a farewell point. Or a greeting point, depending on which way you’re heading—the last/first sign of Earth. He actually catches a glimpse of the great blue orb, fifty times brighter than the brightest full moon, before snapping his gaze back to the road.

  Peary Base 50 km

  Peary Base 20 km

  Peary Base 10 km

  Now he’s on the outskirts. He sees the wall of metallurgical waste. The quarrying equipment. The radio masts and drill rigs. The rail-gun roller coaster.

  There’s a traffic bottleneck, just like the one at Purgatory, but he gives the police lights a spin and purposely flashes up the wrong side of the road, past the Coca-Cola® truck and into the airlock just seconds before it closes.

  Still alive. And determined not to waste any time.

  Peary Base is full of the trapped odors of sweat, cleaning fluids, and oil smoke. Justus goes straight to the office of the Port Authority in the main plaza. Weeks ago, on his way in, he met a couple of the local officers, and he knows that many of them are terrestrial cops not quite tainted enough to get into Sin.

  “Can I get a secure line to the South Pole from here?” he asks the officer at the desk.

  “Of course.”

  “What about a line to Earth?”

  “Is this an emergency?

  “Madam, it’s the most urgent emergency of my life.”

  A few minutes later he’s on the phone to his ex-wife, using a special number provided by Witness Protection. But she’s not answering. He rings four times in quick succession—that’s usually enough to get her to crack—but the call keeps getting diverted to an anonymous voice mail account. For a moment he wonders if they’ve gotten to her already, or if she just realizes it must be him from the lunar prefix and is stubbornly ignoring him. Then he glances out the window and sees the whole of North America in darkness—she’s probably just asleep.

  He leaves an earnest message on voice mail.

  “Paz—please listen to me. I know I promised never to call you again, but please listen to me, okay? I want you to take Ruby and go hide. I want you to go immediately. There are things happening here—I can’t say what, but you might be in serious danger. It kills me to say it, because you know what I’ve done to prevent that happening again—but there it is. Go hide. You know where. And tell Ruby I love her. There’s no one I love more. Please tell her that. Please. That’s all.”

  He’s gasping when he hangs up. Because it occurs to him that simply by fleeing Purgatory—simply by being alive—he’s putting them at risk. He’s right back where he started, but with nowhere to run. It’s like the acid’s been flung over his face all over again.

  Then he rings the South Pole.

  “Justus—just the man I wanted to speak to.” The Port Authority officer he called the previous day, an obnoxious fellow called Deke Hendricks, is an old colleague from Reno. “I was just gonna call, but you told me to wait until you did.”

  “You went to Seidel?”

  “Not me personally, but there were a couple of guys in the vicinity. And you’ll never guess what they found.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Hendricks has an annoying habit of drawing out important information like a suspense novelist. At great length he recounts the entire trip of the cops out to Seidel Crater, their difficulty locating anything in the darkness, and their surprise discovery of shoeprints in the regolith.

  “So they followed these prints all the way back to the lab and fuck me, Justus, you should see the images they sent back. Two bodies, ripped apart like rag dolls. One of the cops at the site—Skouras—threw up in his helmet. I almost chucked up myself, just lookin’ at the pictures. But there was one survivor. When they searched around they found this emergency compartment in the storeroom—this dude had locked himself in with food and water, a Jap roboticist.”

  “Hikaru Kishimoto?”

  “Hey, you know him?”

  “I know the name. Please—go on.”

  “Anyway, it turns out that this tin-sucker and his buddies had been paid to reprogram a droid from Purgatory. All very hush-hush and dangerous. They were supposed to wipe—”

  “Leonardo Black?” asks Justus.

  “Say again?”

  “Was the droid called Leonardo Black?”

  “Say, you know that too?”

  “I’m just catching up, believe me—please go on.”

  “Well,” Hendricks says, “they had to wipe most of this Black’s memories and behavioral circuits and replace them with new ones. The wit and wisdom of Fletcher Brass, can you believe that?”

  “The Brass Code?”

  “The what? Hey, man, you sound like you know more about this than me.”

  “I don’t know the full details, I assure you.”

  Hendricks sounds a little uncertain now. “Anyway, this tin-sucker had the task of deleting the droid’s inhibitors—dangerous, sure, but they thought they had the right safeguards in place. Only problem was, the droid was too cunning for ’em. He just waited until they were off guard and then cut loose—the tin-sucker was lucky to get out alive.”

  “And what happened to the droid?”

  “He’s still on the run—the tin-sucker thinks he might be heading for Purgatory.”

  “Purgatory?”

  “That’s what he says. He recko
ns the droid is programmed to rule, and rule like a ruthless CEO, so that’s the place to do it—it makes sense. They even had a brass-colored suit ready for him, and were gonna change his name to Leonardo Brass. Can you believe that?”

  Justus nods to himself. “So a homicidal android is heading for Purgatory?”

  “The tin-sucker reckons he’ll stop at nothing—assuming he can find the way, and assuming he can recharge his batteries.”

  “Have you made any attempt to track him—the android?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to organize now. But he’s got nearly a four-day start, and our authority doesn’t extend beyond the equator. Plus the Farside comm line is just being repaired. So I was about to call up Peary Base and see if we could coordinate something—even without your permission.”

  “I’ll take care of it. I’m at Peary right now.”

  “You’re not calling from Purgatory?”

  “It’s difficult to explain.”

  Hendricks snorts. “Well, you wanna let them know at Purgatory too, my friend. Because if that droid has found a way to get there, and no one stops him—shit, they might be in for a nasty surprise.”

  “I’ll do that too.”

  Justus hangs up and stares into the middle distance. He thinks of his daughter. His responsibilities as a cop. The value of his own life. And last of all he thinks of QT Brass—everything she wanted to achieve and everything that she never will. And then his eyes refocus and he finds himself staring at a tourism poster for the coming eclipse—the shadow of the moon just a small, pupil-like dot on the blue globe of Earth, the home planet looking like a giant eyeball floating in space. There’s a tagline:

  THE EYE OF THE WORLD IS WATCHING YOU.

  Half an hour later Justus is back in the police car, heading at top speed back up the Road of Lamentation.

  43

  FROM ALL AVAILABLE EVIDENCE, Decimus Persione is no lunatic. In scientific circles he’s known as a highly respected seismologist and a peerless data analyst not given to making rash predictions. He’s also a man who treats his career as a sort of priestly calling. There is no one, they say, who has traveled as far, or studied as much, in order to understand the temperament of the inner planet. It was Persione who predicted the great Istanbul quake—to within a half-magnitude and several days—by making the calculations, just out of academic curiosity, from half a world away. Since then his reputation has been further enhanced by scholarly articles, scientific expeditions, and well-received lectures. So Decimus Persione has no real need to be on the Moon. He has enough credibility to study the data, if he wishes to study it at all, from the comfort of his own office. He certainly doesn’t need to put himself through all the grueling training and privations of a lunar mission. And yet, when the opportunity came up, he seized it with surprising, even brazen enthusiasm. And so convincing was he in his explanation—that by studying the Moon’s seismology in the field he would acquire an even greater understanding of similar processes on Earth—that no one questioned him, not even his loyal and unassuming wife.