After Moses: Wormwood

by Michael F Kane

  “I’ll inform Mr. Kagurazaka myself.”

  “And this is a one-time trade of information,” she said. “If you want anything after today, you’ll have to pay for it.”

  He chuckled. “Freelancers. They all want to be seen as heroes, but only on the backs of the almighty dollar.”

  “Says the man paid by taxpayers,” she said. “Let’s get this over with. I trust you only a little more than Stein.”

  He nodded. “Then maybe, just maybe, you’ll live long enough for us to take him down.”

  “ALL ABOARD!” ABIGAIL shouted down from the airlock of the Sparrow.

  Grace grumbled as she dragged her bag up the ramp, not even bothering to pick it up. The vinyl duffle made a muffled buzzing sound on the ridged steel incline. “We’re all coming. Keep your screws in, alright?”

  Abigail crossed her arms. “What do you mean all?”

  Grace motioned behind her with a flick of her head, then blew a stray lock of hair out of her face. “Did you know Momma Cole would be joining us for a while?”

  Down on the tarmac, Matthew was helping Elizabeth get her bag out of Bishop Elias’ ground car. “That’s news to me,” she said.

  “Late change of plans, I think,” Grace said, dropping the straps of her bag by the airlock. “I’m kind of surprised Matthew is okay with it, honestly.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to let him out of her sight,” Abigail suggested. She’d never known her mother, but she’d heard they could be clingy. Though that really didn’t line up with what she knew of Elizabeth. “Or maybe it’s the other way around.”

  Grace turned and looked back at the pair. Elizabeth was giving the bishop a quick hug. “I bet it’s that,” she said. “The whole time you guys were gone, he was worried that someone would attack the Sparrow to get at him. He worries about everyone these days.”

  “That dummy,” Abigail muttered. “He should worry about himself.”

  “He’s got doctors for that. And they say he’s a terrible patient,” Grace said and dragged her bag into the ship.

  Abigail chuckled, imagining Matthew arguing with half the hospital staff. “I hear you’re joining us,” she said as Elizabeth approached.

  “For a time,” she said.

  “Good. Because I can’t answer any of Davey’s questions about that giant book you gave him. When you don’t answer his messages fast enough, I’m next in line.”

  They laughed. “Consider yourself relieved from duty,” Elizabeth said.

  Abigail reached out a hand to stop Matthew. “Can I have a word?”

  He nodded. Elizabeth took her luggage from him. “I can show myself to my cabin, thanks.”

  She left them and they watched in silence as the Bishop’s ground car passed through security and disappeared. “So Mom is along for the ride, huh?”

  “For now,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes at the repeated sentiment. “I’m not complaining, but what’s the deal? Are you worried about her safety here? The Swiss Guard is a permanent feature in Antioch now.”

  “It’s not about safety,” he said quietly.

  “I’m listening.”

  “She’s here for Yvonne. As a friend.”

  Apparently she’d misjudged things. “Wait you showed her—”

  “Keep it down,” he hissed. “No. And the kids don’t know about it either. Maybe they don’t ever have to know. I told my mother that Yvonne was in the middle of a crisis over her late husband, and she insisted on coming herself.”

  “You do remember Yvonne promised to never speak about it again.”

  He turned to the airlock. “If that dam should burst, she’s going to need someone and I don’t think it’s going to be you or me.” Abigail sighed as he boarded the Sparrow and then followed in his steps. It was true. She’d barely had a civilized conversation that wasn’t about business with Yvonne in three months. At least Matthew would be here when the warheads started flying.

  In the common room, Grace and Davey were already getting settled. “Hey, where’s our job?” he asked. “Where are we headed?”

  Grace snapped her fingers. “It’s the one that makes me think of Mexican food. We haven’t been there yet.”

  Abigail stopped abruptly. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “Enchiladas,” Grace said with a smirk.

  “Enceladus?” Davey asked.

  Matthew nodded. “Enceladus. Hope you guys like snow.”

  A FEW DAYS LATER, THE Sparrow dropped into orbit around Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn. Only five hundred kilometers across, it sparkled a brilliant white in the light of the distant sun. It was the brightest, most reflective object in the solar system, due to the whole world being covered with nearly pure water ice. But that didn’t mean it was featureless. Shades of white and palest blue formed ridges and canyons across the surface, while only a few fresh craters marked the pristine face. It was like a coruscating crystal floating in the void of space, a sight unlike any other in the solar system.

  Now that there were six on board the Sparrow, there was no way that everyone could cram into the cockpit at once, and given that Matthew was the only one who had ever been to Enceladus before, they all wanted a chance to see it. Rather than tempt Yvonne’s wrath, he sent those that were comfortable topside.

  Matthew was the last out of the hatch, joining Grace, Davey, and Abigail.

  “Are you making it?” Abigail asked, offering a hand to pull him up onto the hull.

  “If I can’t take a simple ladder, I’m in no condition to return to work,” he said. But he still accepted the help.

  Grace and Davey stood a few feet away, boots magnetized and stuck to the hull. “What’s going on down at the pole?” she asked.

  Matthew stepped around Abigail to get a better look. Near the south pole of the moon, a faint curtain of mist billowed from the surface to drift out into space. It was a bit like a white aurora emanating from the planet. “Cryovolcanism,” he said. “Ice eruptions. Beneath the surface of Enceladus is a liquid ocean. Water that makes it close to the surface erupts in the form of ice along stress ridges. The fine spray forms a curtain. Some of it will fall back to the surface, almost like snow. The rest will ultimately end up in orbit around Saturn and add to one of its fainter rings.”

  “Is it always erupting like that?” Davey asked.

  “No,” Matthew said. “Often enough, but we’re still lucky to see it today.”

  “We should come here more often,” Grace said. “The view is killer.”

  Abigail hummed softly. “We’re not rich enough to come here all the time.”

  Grace turned to face her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  As the Sparrow orbited around the moon, the night side crept around the horizon. Its surface was almost completely dark. “There aren’t any normal colonies on Enceladus,” Matthew said. “Not with masses of people. The belief is that Moses wasn’t too fond of destroying such a beautiful place by covering it with cities. Instead, there are a half dozen resort and sightseeing colonies scattered around the moon. It used to be a big tourist destination. Still is, I guess, but like everything else, it’s not the same. The resorts use fancy casinos to attract high-rollers and keep the doors open. A night on Enceladus costs at least a kidney.”

  “So what kind of job would a resort have for us?” Davey asked.

  “Not one you have to worry about,” Matthew said. “Abigail and I will take care of it.”

  Davey turned away from the moon, and Matthew could see the indignant expression through his faceplate. “I’m part of the team.”

  Matthew clomped forward a few feet and put a hand on his shoulder. “Yes. And you’ve been carrying the weight for the last few months. I’m thankful for that. And proud of you. Which is why you get to take a couple days off. Grace has been chomping at the bit for you guys to get some brother-sister time. And this one is really only suited for Abigail and me, anyway.” He watched as Davey chewed on th
at. His eyes had brightened when Matthew had praised him, but he still seemed like he was deciding whether or not he was going to be put out.

  “Oh, leave it be,” Grace said. “We’ll have some fun.” She paused for a moment and then continued with a mischievous lilt in her voice. “Let’s give them their alone time.”

  “What in the...?” Abigail stuttered.

  Matthew reached instinctively for his hat, before remembering it wasn’t there. “Very funny. And subtle as a solar flare.” He changed the subject as quickly as he could without making it look like that was his goal. “Get in your last look at Enceladus. It’s time to deorbit.”

  THE SPARROW HAD LANDING permits for a private yard at the Sarandib Grand Resort near the equator. Yvonne set the ship down with a gentle bump. The yard would support a ship twice the size with ease, making for a stress-free landing. “And just what are the rest of us supposed to do while you and Abigail are being productive members of the crew?” she asked.

  Matthew flipped a row of switches, initiating the final shutdown. “Chores in the morning. Afternoons are your own business,” he said. “But I recommend checking out the resort. Part of the deal on the job was an all-access pass. Includes the buffet.”

  Yvonne gave him a hard stare. “Please tell me Benny didn’t negotiate this to give us a vacation.”

  “I doubt it, but you would have to ask him yourself. It’s pretty well known to freelance crews that Enceladus jobs have perks. For most, that means losing everything they earn in the casinos.”

  “Sounds like a win-win for the resort. I imagine you’ll be giving a lecture on vices to the kids.”

  Matthew gave her a half-smile. “You think I’m so predictable. I think they’re mature enough to make their own decisions.” He left the cockpit without another word.

  Yvonne lingered for a few minutes, starting the Sparrow on a self-diagnostic. She’d get the results later and compile a chores list for their time on the surface. With Elizabeth around, the household tasks that Yvonne and Grace normally split had divided another way. They really would have a lot of free time, especially if that buffet was anything like she hoped. A few days free from the endless deadline of mealtime would be a welcome break.

  But then idleness would also bring time to think and thinking allowed her traitorous conscience to level accusation after accusation.

  When she’d given Matthew that data chip, she’d expected him to be furious. To throw her off the ship in a fit of anger. Instead, he’d quietly gone along with her request to never talk about it again. He’d watched her try to murder someone, and somehow he kept on as if nothing was wrong. But she saw the look in his eye. Condescending pity. Matthew could keep his preaching to himself as far as she was concerned.

  She was yanked from her thoughts when snow splattered across the front canopy. She stood and peered frowning. Where had that come from? There wasn’t anything above—” Another handful of snow hit just in front of her face. She sat back down and pulled up the external cameras. Davey and Grace were making balls of the white powder. She hit the external intercom. “Very funny, you two. Do you know what would be a better target than the Sparrow? Each other.”

  Grace halted mid-throw and looked at her brother.

  He wasn’t able to duck in time before she smacked him in the face with her snowball. Yvonne smiled to herself as she sat back to watch the ensuing battle.

  “I THOUGHT WE’D AGREED on no more undercover jobs,” Abigail hissed under her breath.

  “You weren’t very specific about the terms of that agreement,” Matthew replied easily. “I’m not sure my own mother would recognize me right now.”

  Abigail grunted and sat back in her wheelchair as Matthew pushed her through the front entrance of the Casino. It was the first time she’d been in public without her suit since she’d first stepped foot on Mars. It was humiliating, and she felt like everyone was staring. Worse, she was wearing a dress.

  “It’ll be okay,” Matthew said, giving her a quick pat on the shoulder. “You agreed to this a week ago.”

  “Are you sure it was me? Maybe I have a twin sister.”

  “Then she’s your equal in sarcasm, and my life just got a lot more complicated. Don’t worry, we’re just here to do some gambling.”

  Her annoyance broke and she laughed aloud, taking a look around the gaudy lights of the casino floor. There was a low buzz of noise, but she thought it felt a little empty for supposedly being the biggest casino in the colonies. “So everyone else gets a short vacation while you and I are forced to do what is furthest from our nature.”

  “The perfect disguises,” he said.

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. He really did cut a strange sight. Heavy body armor over a black combat suit and a ballistic face mask. He was playing the part of personal bodyguard to a wealthy heiress with enough money to get a masked man through casino security. In truth, it was the casino that had hired them. They were here to play the mark, winning an improbable amount of money through games rigged in their favor, before finally turning the tables on the bad guys.

  “Easy for you to say,” she finally said. “You don’t have to wear a wig and a dress. I am not a blonde, and no heels in existence would make these calves look good.”

  They passed by a row of flashing slot machines, each ludicrously themed, most alluding to Earth’s legendary times. She scowled at a scantily clad warrior woman, thinking that her armor wouldn’t protect her from a stiff wind, let alone a blade. Ridiculous, but then if it drew the eye, it was probably doing its job.

  Matthew coughed. “You look very nice, Abigail. Nothing to worry about.”

  She about choked on that. “You’re the hired help, remember? No hitting on your employer’s fabulously wealthy daughter.”

  “I wasn’t... Never mind.”

  She kicked herself for being an idiot. The compliment was making her head kind of fuzzy, even though she knew he didn’t mean it. The red evening gown was long and covered her atrophied legs entirely, but she wasn’t what men would consider an attractive woman. Or at the absolute best, she was half an attractive woman. She did keep her upper body in shape to move around outside her suit, but that was hardly all there was to it, right? She hadn’t really thought about it much since she was a teenager. In recent years, she’d craved and demanded respect more than adoration. Besides, men were more interested in tarts like that warrior on the slot machine.

  “Thanks, though,” she mumbled. “Tell you what, wheel me over to a blackjack table. Let’s win some money, and then I’ll buy you a drink for trying to butter a girl up.” Matthew started to say something, but she cut him off. “Oh be quiet. I’ll have a nice glass of ridiculously expensive wine. I’m rich, remember? But I’m sure a fancy place like this has at least one bottle of cherry soda hanging around for the help.”

  “THIS MOON IS SOMETHING else,” Elizabeth said, looking over the railing across the frozen landscape. “Beautiful. But so very alien.”

  Yvonne looked over her shoulder toward the garish casino lights spilling out onto the balcony. “It’s like being on two worlds at once. One overwhelmingly cheap and shallow and the other, a pristine wilderness.” She joined Elizabeth and looked down, amazed at how high up they were.

  The Sarandib Grand Resort, an angular structure of glass and steel, was suspended on massive arches a couple hundred meters above the surface of Enceladus. No doubt, this had been designed and built by Moses himself. The colonies certainly didn’t have the engineering capabilities to build anything on this scale. Far beneath them a group of skiers threaded down a course of flat land lit by floodlights. Grav plates could make a mountain slope out of a plain if need be, and before starting the regularly reshaped slopes, skiers could select the incline difficulty. If Yvonne was twenty-five years younger, she might have considered giving it a shot. Sadly, her knees precluded any such athletic activity these days. Tomas would have been out there in a heartbeat, but their modus operandi of setting up shop where doctors w
ere in critical shortage had certainly never brought them to Enceladus. The resort had a first-rate clinic with a surgery center for the inevitable injuries that came in from the snowfields.

  A soft snow began to fall out of the darkness. It was dropped from a massive zeppelin floating high overhead, since little of Enceladus’s natural snow would make it through the environmental shield keeping their air in. There was apparently a schedule you could look up for when the snow would fall. Yvonne pulled her coat closer around her. The resort sure went to a lot of effort to give guests an experience they couldn’t get anywhere else. Well, except for Earth. With the ice age it was currently locked in, you could most certainly find snowfall, so long as you didn’t mind a nice dose of radiation as well.

  “I can’t say I feel at home here,” Elizabeth said, finally breaking the comfortable silence, “but I’m glad to have seen it once. For all I’ve read about the weather, there’s so much of it that now resides only in imagination. To see something I’ve read described so many times in Shakespeare, Dickens, Lewis, and others...”

  Yvonne regarded the other woman quietly. She’d borne the loss of her home with quiet endurance. Yvonne didn’t think she’d managed half as well when she lost everything, first Tomas and then being chased from Ceres by a madman. But then she suspected that Elizabeth was made of stronger stuff than she was. Physically and morally. “How do you do it?” she whispered. “Keep going after all you’ve lost?”

  Elizabeth smiled tightly but remained staring at the softly falling flakes. “Well, it hasn’t been easy, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”

  Yvonne scoffed. “Never.”

  “When is the world not malevolent? Either you come to terms with that and endure, or you don’t and succumb.” She paused. “But that was a fight I fought long ago. Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

  She didn’t think she could bear to hear how Elizabeth had overcome when she had failed. The whole Cole family was as pious as they came, and Yvonne didn’t fancy any sermons from her any more than from her son. She was suspicious about why Elizabeth was along to begin with. She had the distinct impression that Matthew had brought her along as a babysitter, and not for the kids. It rubbed her the wrong way, but at least Elizabeth would speak to her. Yvonne wasn’t sure the last time Abigail had even made eye contact.