by Larry Niven
There was a perceptible lag, and then Scotty answered. “Craziness, but winding down. We lost a couple to the first days of zero gee. They’re on drugs. I’ve been demonstrating the exercise routines. I’ve figured out that funny yoga that keeps your core muscles hard, but my client is having trouble with that. He can’t learn the lunar shuffle until we’re actually on the Moon.”
Alex Griffin laughed knowingly. Kendra missed that warm laughter. Her own father had been austere and demanding, descended from a line of Tongan war chiefs. “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.”
“Not exactly danger…” Scotty drifted for a moment, and then focused on them again. “Listen, this is going to be great. We’ll all be together for the first time in what … seven years?”
“You’re sure your client is good with that?” Alex asked.
Scotty said, “I’ll see him through the game. Afterward, Foley Mason’s meeting us. He’ll escort my client back to Earth.”
“He’s a good man,” Alex said. “Did I ever tell you about the time in Cairo…?”
“This is expensive, Alex,” Millicent chided gently. “Old war stories later, please.”
“We can listen to all of them again when I see you,” Scotty said. “I can find plenty to do aboard ship to keep me busy for two weeks until you two can get up…”
“And then it’s party time,” Kendra said.
Once upon a time, there had been plans to get Scotty’s folks to the Moon. One big happy family, with the low gee offering another decade of life. But things kept getting in the way, and now there seemed little hope. “How are things there, Mom?” Her voice might have been just a little too careful.
“Fine, dear,” Millicent said. “Just some more tests, and I’ll be through the first round of chemo. There’s a new … I’m not sure, some kind of nanotech, exploiting genetic instability in the cancer cells.” Despite her optimistic tone Millicent’s voice stumbled, just a bit, on the word “cancer.”
Alex finally interrupted the uneasy silence that followed. “The doctor’s not worried, so I’m not going to be. We’ll be there.”
“All right,” Kendra said, then squinted through the window. “I’m coming up on the dock. Good talking to you—can we try again in a couple of days?”
Millicent squinted at her. “Everything all right, darling?”
Kendra sighed. “I just … miss you all.” She forced herself to smile, and focused on her adopted parents. “Mom, Dad—let me have a minute with Scotty, would you?”
“Sure, hon,” Millicent said.
Alex nodded. “We’ll talk next week.”
The two older folks winked off. Scotty alone remained.
“So … how are you, really?” she asked. “Are you ready for this?”
“I’m heading up,” he said. “I wouldn’t if I had any doubts.”
“Nightmares?”
“Got them under control. How about you, hon?”
That question caught her off guard. “What?”
“How are the nightmares?”
She felt as if he’d knocked the air out of her chest. “That’s not fair, Scotty.”
“Why not? You’ve certainly spent enough time worried about my welfare.”
“You ran away, Scotty.” Almost before the words crossed her lips, she regretted them.
Scotty laughed without humor. “I wasn’t going to be much good to anyone up there, least of all you. I didn’t need to be a quarter-million miles from Earth to work a desk job.”
After the accident, that would have been about all he was qualified for, too. No more surface travel. No vast, razor-like moonscapes and pinpoint stars for Scotty. Life here was hard enough without stress-induced phobias. All the headshrinks agreed that he should go home. Even if it cost a damned fine marriage.
“Are people still talking? If so, I’m sorry.” A pause. “I miss you. And that’s the truth.”
“Me, too. There really hasn’t been anyone much…” She trailed off. Dammit, she didn’t have to explain herself. Lunar relationships were a lot like the ones that formed in Antarctic stations: intense and temporary. Human beings did the best they could. But even given the circumstances, Kendra had always thought they had something special. Something that might have endured, even if they’d had to go to Earth to nurture it.
She felt her eyes mist, and wanted off the line before she wiped them in front of him. “I don’t have time for this right now. Let’s back off before we start fighting.”
He nodded. “I’ll be up there soon. We’ll get it all worked out. Promise.”
She sighed, and managed to smile. “We’d better. I can still kick your butt in thumb-wrestling.”
“Only if you cheat.”
They shared a time-delayed laugh, and the mood genuinely lightened. A good point to end things, while they were still smiling. “Bye, Earthman.”
“Bye, Moonmaid.”
The line winked off.
10
Arrival
November 5, 2085
The lander arrived precisely on time: a spiderlegged caterpillar settling in a fountain of dust on a wide red double-spiral target pad. The shuttlecar rolled up against its side. Automated flanges locked into place. The doors opened in sequence, three sets, sealing behind the passengers as they boarded a car that looked like a silver sausage. The car ran them to the base airlock and another triple airlock.
At first Kendra saw only two exceptionally statuesque women striding down the ramp, one Asian with straight black shoulder-length hair, the other European with brilliant red hair of similar length and texture. Both were conspicuously muscular with fashionable fat padding. Then they stepped apart, revealing a tiny man—no more than five foot two—walking just behind them as if they were a royal guard.
Even in rumpled travel clothes, Xavier radiated theatricality. Somehow he transformed his typical newbie’s lunar clumsiness into performance art, bouncing and then awkwardly catching his balance with every other step. His escorts were better at it.
Still, she could tell that he struggled to remain unimpressed by his surroundings.
“Mr. Xavier?” Kendra asked.
“Just Xavier, please.” He was beautiful for a man, shaven-headed, with blond eyebrows capping a delicate face. His eyes were a brilliant blue, intense and intelligent. He was small-boned, barely rising to her shoulder, but already flirting with her. “My assistants are Wu Lin and Magique. Magique does not speak.”
“Welcome to Heinlein base,” Kendra said.
Xavier’s angelic little face split in a smile. “I have to admit I thought I’d been everywhere and seen everything. These last weeks have opened my eyes.”
Kendra and her holographic assistant exchanged an expression of surprise.
Kendra said, “We have a pretty tight schedule today, but we want to get you to the game center, and then to your rooms.”
He nodded. “That would be fine.”
They waited for the luggage pods to be loaded onto their vehicle, and then boarded a tube-car for the gaming center.
“I understand that we’ll have privacy?”
“Yes. Much nicer than the dormitories,” Kendra said. “Your own private crater.”
His answering smile was pornographic. “Perhaps you’d care to show it to me.”
“One crater’s pretty much like another,” she kept her voice light and pleasant. “Not luxurious, but hopefully adequate.”
He was staring out through the glass partition at glare-white and coal-black scenery. “Luxury is not imperative. My requirement is seclusion.”
“I’ve heard that gaming parties tend to run wild…”
He shook his small, perfectly formed head. “Not what you think. I can become … intensely emotional when I game. Lamps and chairs and waitrons and cleaner mechs can be at great risk. There is often … a bit of breakage. ‘To create you must first destroy.’ I believe Picasso said that.”
“‘Think left and think right and think low and think
high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!’” She paused, then when Wu Lin seemed puzzled, added, “Dr. Seuss said that.”
Magique choked on a silent giggle. Xavier’s thin lips curled up in a smile.
“At any rate,” Kendra said, “if space is what you need, we have plenty of it.”
“So … Dr. Seuss,” Xavier said, nodding as if she had confirmed something. “Have you children?”
“No.”
“Married?”
Kendra said, “Once upon a time.”
The red-haired Magique smirked. She was gorgeous, and muscular with a fatty sheath, in the current European Union Fit/Fat style. The goal was to maintain a perfect blood pressure and immune profile, with the roundest curves possible. She signed to Wu Lin with her plump hands. Wu Lin giggled.
“How long have you been up here?” Xavier asked.
“Seven years.”
“And the ratio of women to men…?”
“We’re outnumbered. As you must know.” Kendra sighed. “I’m fine, thanks. No help needed on that front. While we’re at it, may I ask…? Magique said something that triggered merriment.”
Wu Lin nodded. “She said you look like a twentieth-century fitness model.” The redhead nodded happy agreement.
The trio radiated a cozy, slightly predatory sensuality. Kendra couldn’t resist visualizing a zero-gee anaconda ball, and suppressed a chill of revulsion. Maybe they just thought they were being polite, assuming she’d feel rejected without an invitation to the fun and games. Fortunately, they had reached their destination, and she was able to change the subject.
The Game Center was a dome, of course, the ceiling five meters high. The last few workers were still nipping and tucking, and the smell of fresh paint still tinged the air. Xavier bounced onto the central stage, stopped and looked around himself. He said, “Very similar to the Euro Dream Park unit.”
He waved his hands in an input field, and it calibrated. She’d thought she’d be edging her way out the door, but Xavier’s manner had become more professional the instant he began manipulating alien forms like stringless marionettes. His annoying, smarmy persona faded, and in its place appeared a virtuoso performer. Despite her irritation, she found the transformation fascinating.
A circular metal stage in the center of the room glowed, and a ball of yellow light levitated above it. Xavier bounced up the two steps to the platform. As he did, an insectoid alien bounded into the floating light field. When the little man shifted position, the insect followed his motions precisely. It wore a bandolier hung with weapons shaped to its big padded hands. It moved with an oddly disjointed grace. When Kendra glanced over at Xavier, he was performing the same odd dance.
Wu Lin doffed her shawl and joined him on the stage. In immediate response, a second creature appeared in the hovering light beside him.
Magique manipulated the controls, and suddenly six aliens crowded the field. She joined them onstage, and now there were nine. Somehow they interacted with each other as if they were actually manipulated by nine different puppeteers: talking, rolling, jumping … Xavier and his assistants lending eccentric mime-like precision to their roles, populating an entire imaginary hive with a succession of simple shrugs and shoulder hunches.
Kendra was open-mouthed with amazement. These were masters at play. No … at work. They were calibrating the equipment, accustoming themselves to the reduced gravity. She felt honored to witness such a masterful display.
Xavier stopped, and stepped down from the platform. For all the exertion, she noted that his breathing was barely elevated. His eyes seemed distant. “Tomorrow, we’ll start looping the movement for the holos, the virt, and the bots. We’ll need to meet with the local players by day after. The gamers arrive in eight days.”
“Yes. Six P.M. adjusted local time.”
He mused. “NPCs arrive thirty hours earlier. We’ll need to be ready. I want a sleep cycle adjusted for Montreal winters.”
“Polarized dome, or artificial lighting? Whichever you prefer.”
She couldn’t help it—she was actually quite impressed by the little man’s artistic focus. Subtract the egotism, and despite his height she might have found him appealing.
He yawned. “I’d like to see where I’m sleeping now.”
“May I ask a personal question?”
“I did,” Xavier laughed. “Proceed.”
“Your father is still alive, isn’t he?”
He pressed his lips together tightly. “Yes.”
She paused, trying to work out the right way to ask the next question.
“Was he … worried about his calculations? The Aeros asteroid?”
His face tightened as well. “That’s one thing he never doubted. Did you? You had to have been … what … seven years old?”
“I still remember,” she said. “Everyone frightened. Your dad bounced this asteroid out of its course. It came within ten thousand miles of Earth. Something could have gone wrong. We can’t survive without Earth—”
“Not Dad. Not ever.” His smile was entirely too bright.
“I remember,” she said. “Yes. Well … shall we take a look at the maze itself?”
“Give us a few moments first, would you?”
Kendra nodded, and left them.
* * *
Wu Lin and Magique mimed their way through phrases of human and insectile body language, as well as a few that defied simple categorization. Then Xavier froze the images.
Panting, Magique flipped her red hair and waited for approval. Her hands babbled at Xavier.
“Good as anything I’ve ever worked on,” he replied. “First rate. Kinesthetics are a little better in California, but the auditory is spot on, and I think the visual might be superior. Feels lighter, somehow. Better depth and color correction at oblique angles. I think they modified some of the French waldo gear.”
“But is it good enough?” Wu Lin asked.
He nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, sweetheart. I’m going to give them the time of their lives, and Angelique…” His smile went dreamy. “Oh, she and I have old matters to resolve. And Wayne Gibson … never in the history of the world has anyone traveled so far to be crushed so badly. My children … this is going to be fun.”
* * *
The Beehive dome was deceptive. Two hundred meters in diameter, it was smaller than the first major gaming dome, still active in California. Not large enough for a major event. Ages before, a meteor had plowed deep into an ancient maze of lava tunnels above a pool of dirty ice. Digging had not been the tricky part. Sealing the tunnel walls, making connections and barriers, creating an airtight lacework under a simple water shield, and knowing it was airtight, enough to bet lives … that was the hard part.
And now it was filled with a hundred major and countless minor bubbles of various sizes, distorted spheres of woven aluminum alloy. Doors and tubes linked the bubbles, but they would seal in case of a leak or blowout.
Five or six tall Lunies still worked scaffolding around the walls of a cavernous sphere. They paused to observe the visitors. Xavier ignored them.
“Of course,” Kendra said, “you’ll have a more complete tour later, and will be supervising the final work, but we wanted you to inspect the interior.”
He nodded. “We had a mock-up in Calgary, but the gravity … my, it really does make a difference.”
He jumped to the top of a huge, frilly mushroom and then up again. He scampered hand-over-hand up the wall, a performance that would have impressed the greatest rock climber who ever lived. Xavier’s gorgeous posse followed him up, climbing over frost that crumbled under their hands and rained down at Kendra. Again and despite herself, Kendra was impressed.
This was like playtime at the gifted weird kids class.
It was time to move on. Kendra said, “Your rooms are ready, and your luggage has already been deposited. Shall we go?” She led them away.
* * *
When hundreds of human beings breathe each other’
s recycled air for months at a time, the opportunities for chemical or biological contagion are endless. Someone was checking the system at all times, and no one paid a bit of attention to the men in the blue suits.
Doug and Thomas Frost had watched everything, pretending to check wall conduits for the dome’s trace contaminant control system. They remained silent until after the little man and his assistants retreated to privacy.
“So … that was Xavier,” Doug said.
Thomas suppressed a nasty, quiet chuckle. “I wonder,” he said, “what he’d say if he knew how strange this game was really going to be?”
11
Shotz
The twins were in the main Arrivals lounge a half hour prior to the shuttle’s drop from orbit. The silver and red capsule flexed its crab-like legs and blew a cloud of lunar dust against the view windows, then settled down as the pressure tunnel wriggled out like a metal snake and locked to its side. Five minutes later, the passengers disembarked and passed through the pressure locks into customs, where they were given opportunities to declare valuables. There were thirty-two passengers on this flight, six members of the press, twenty tourists, and six Lunies returning from mandatory Earth furlough.
The press declared their vid gear, Lunies declared luxury items ferried back from L5 or planet Earth, and most of the tourists declared only enough to deflect curiosity. On the way home, they’d have moon rocks and other mementos, but few carried anything worthy of note.
This was particularly true of the men and one cold-eyed woman who all wore Eddington Crater Tour buttons.
“Welcome,” Thomas said to the largest of them, a man he knew only as Shotz. “I hope the trip was pleasant.”
“All but the last few minutes,” Shotz said. His voice sounded like metal against metal. “The captain seemed to find it amusing to postpone deceleration until the last moment.”
If you didn’t do that, you ran out of fuel. Thomas didn’t say so.
The woman, a beefy redhead with piercing blue eyes, flexed her full red lips into a smile. “It would be interesting to have words with him.” Shotz turned his head slowly, gave her a disapproving glare. “Later,” she amended.