“You look like a complete wreck. What are we going to tell your parents?”
“We are not going to tell them anything. You are going to bring me back to my hotel. I am going to tell them that a gang of thugs chased me and that you rescued me. And we had to hide in that yard.”
It did not occur to Hieronymus until that moment that he himself was very far from home. Certainly, his school transport had already left. He was on his own, and he had almost no money. “Do you live around here?” she asked him.
“No. I live on the other side of the Sea of Tranquility.”
“How will you get home?”
“There’s a subway.”
“Will you be in trouble if you get home too late and looking like that?”
“Yeah. My father will have a fit. He always waits up for me. I just wish he would just go to bed and let me stay out as long as I like, but that’s what he does. He’s a pain in the ass.”
“Well, he can’t be as bad as my mother…” Windows Falling On Sparrows was about to recite a list of complaints against her overbearing mother, and had they been on Earth, that’s what she would have done. But instead, she looked at the black water in front of her. It sat still. No waves, no ripples. Just the division of element between gas and liquid. Then she remembered something from her science class: On the Moon, water and air had a strange relationship to each other. Because the atmosphere was artificial. And it was put in place by artificial means. And it was maintained artificially.
“You speak a lot about your father,” the Earth girl said. “What about your mother? Do you have a mother?”
Hieronymus looked that the back of her head. At the incredible mess it had become.
“I…I don’t really know. My mother. I don’t really know my mother. I have lived in the same apartment with her all my life, but she has never spoken to me. She’s actually mad. She stays in bed all day. All she does is cry. She wears a plastic raincoat in bed. She’s…well, she is…it is impossible to communicate with her…”
Windows Falling On Sparrows listened to him describe his mother.
He knew a little about some of the things she had done in her life before she turned into what she was now. She once worked in a geological institute on Earth. She was born and grew up in so-and so, before this or that disastrous event led her to leave her country. Then she met Ringo. She was very secretive about her past. There were some major things, one in particular, that she could not bear to tell Ringo about. But it haunted her, and eventually Ringo found out, and he did his best to make her happy and to put it behind her. She tried to rebuild her life, and so they got married. For a short period of time, she attempted to become a writer, and she even succeeded in getting a novel published, but it failed to go anywhere and so she quit that. It went out of print and all traces of it were lost. Then, one day, she and Ringo were ofered positions on the Moon at an Ulzatallizine refinery station. It paid well, and they figured that they would spend five years on the Moon, then return to Earth. But into their third year Lunar-side, she began to slip. She was already pregnant and so naturally Ringo just thought it was related to that, but by the time Hieronymus was born, she was pretty far gone. She lost her position at the refinery station, and because her son was registered as a bearer of lunarcroptic ocular symbolanosis, she was condemned to spending the next eighteen years on the Moon.
“That is a very sad story,” said Windows Falling On Sparrows, still unable to look away from the black water in the crater lake.
They walked to the foot of the Ferris wheel. There was a line of tourists waiting their turn, and the Ferris wheel itself looked extremely unstable. It was covered in light bulbs. It had been painted several times over, as there were peeled-off sections where a layer of maroon could be seen under the layer of turquoise it was currently covered in. They had no intention of going on, but they wanted to mark this spot. This was where they would meet the following evening. At the foot of the Ferris wheel, at eight o’clock. He told her that it would never happen. He knew that she would be gone, very soon, placed on a Mega Cruiser and sent back to Earth. She didn’t believe him. He promised her anyway that he would be there.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you were proven wrong,” she said, the revolving light bulbs of the moving wheel reflected in her black eyes.
“This would be a great thing,” he sincerely agreed.
They eventually found the Hotel Venice. She still wouldn’t allow him to walk her up the stairs and explain to her parents why she was in the worst shape possible. Even the hotel clerk and the hookers who were hanging around could not believe how horrible the teenagers looked. Would you like me to call you an ambulance? the clerk asked, a little wary as he realized Hieronymus was a One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy. One of the prostitutes shot an angry look at him. Did you do this to her? You looked at her with your goggles off, didn’t you, creep? He ignored her and walked Windows Falling On Sparrows to the stairway.
She turned, one of her hands on the banister. She looked at him, but neither spoke a word. He wondered what she was going to look like some day, and he had no doubt that she would still be as beautiful in fifty years as she was at that very moment, looking at him so questioningly.
He had the urge to beg her not to leave, but then where would they go? What would they do? A hummingbird hovering close to the chandelier cast a strange, flickering shadow on her.
She blinked both of her eyes very slowly, then she turned and walked up the steps.
He knew he would never see her again. He cursed his own certitude.
To be wrong. Oh, to be wrong!
Were all One Hundred Percent Lunar People as paranoid as he was? As he ran out the hotel lobby, the clerk strained his neck to watch him. He probably contacted the police. Hieronymous was a guilty bastard for not taking her to the hospital right away. But then, if he did that, it would mean having to admit that he had purposely done it.
He ran. He looked like a strange homeless man running in ripped rags, speeding away from one dirt pit and into another. Considering the dregs who surrounded him, all the prostitutes and junkies and addicted gambling losers, this was an extraordinary accomplishment. He sprinted directly into traffic, challenging the drunken drivers to apply their breaks for the speeding phantom in goggles. He ran through the flashing neon streets of LEM Zone One, past the tourists in their sheeplike formations, their tasteless attire, their bland way of staring at things as low and pre-fabricated as casinos with an expression of wonderment. Where do these people come from? Hieronymus wondered. And why would they come here of all places? Of course, he got his answer as he sprinted past the LEM itself, the thing from Earth. It used to be the main tourist attraction, but now it was only a pile of junk that nobody cared about, and soon it would probably be replaced with a chain drugstore. He swerved to avoid running into it, and he also dodged any kind of visual contact with the police, because this time, he could not lie his way out of trouble, because he did it, he did it, he really did it—what a stupid jackass thing to do, jackass! He had endangered that girl’s life, and he risked getting thrown into prison, never to be seen again.
Beyond two neon flashing skyscrapers, the underside of a Mega Cruiser passed slowly, a behemoth floating directly above, and he was reminded of what she told him, and what might indeed be happening to all of those One Hundred Percent Lunar Boys and Girls who disappear into the criminal justice system. Was it true? He imagined how the ability to see the fourth primary color would be applicable in the cosmos. He was so used to repressing it that he felt guilty just contemplating this idea. The world of neon passed him by. The annoying hummingbirds hovered out of his way the faster he traveled. He sprinted on sidewalks, and he sprinted through gardens and dilapidated storefronts. He turned a corner onto a residential street, and within seconds, he found himself running through an incredibly chic part of town. Expensive cars, expensive apartments. Expensive jewelry on the middle-aged women who were out walking their dogs. Some regarded him with e
xtreme fear—he must have looked like such a freakish criminal in his goggles and torn white plastic jacket that was completely destroyed by oil and filth. Again, as he passed onto a busy avenue known for its chic nightclubs and fashion models and movie stars, he figured that, once again, a call was made to the police that one of them was running amok in our neighborhood. He realized how absurd it was that he should be hunted down like this, that they needed his type to drive the Mega Cruisers. Of course, maybe that was why they hunted him down—so they could lock him up and then force him to use his eyes for them like a high-tech indentured servant, a slave. That’s what they wanted, to make him a slave who had to keep his mouth shut. To use him like captured men and women were used for centuries in the pre-ancient times, his talents exploited, his vision exploited. They needed his vision, as his vision was the vision of outer space. He had been born in the cosmos. The Moon was not a real place, but he was a real human being. And so what do human beings do but grow thumbs? His eyes, his vision, had a pair of thumbs that no one else but the explorers of the heavens could contemplate. It was not a question of looking at objects and people and predicting which direction they would walk in, and it was not a question of how freaked out people got when they saw your eyes—the real question was none of that, as he had the vision of a true star-gazer and his eyes were for looking across the vast reaches where the curving of time and space made sense to those who could see it in front of their faces — he was one of them, and all else was unfocused.
He ran down the concrete steps of the Lunar subway. He paid with cash, which was highly frustrating because he only had a couple of crumpled-up dollars, and the machine kept on rejecting them while other rushing late-night commuters and tourists passed with such ease through the fingerprint machines. He heard the train arrive in the station. The clumsy toll machine finally accepted his last dollar. He charged down the steel steps, and he almost slipped. He made it to the train just as the rickety doors were closing. The crappy slug made of ancient plastic lurched forward in its claustrophobic tunnel. He was a long way from home, but if the train maintained its schedule, he’d be home in an hour and a half, and thus, only a little past his curfew hour. He sat. He looked around. Nearly everyone was sleeping. They were all drunk, or they were junkies who were nodding, face forward, eyes half closed. The train smelled. The lights blinked. The walls were festooned with advertisements that changed every ten seconds on worn-out screens. The screen directly opposite him, hanging over the half-sleeping form of a drunken college student, had a huge gash across its middle, and a sticky material ebbed out in gelatinous bulbs.
When she entered the tiny hotel room, her parents were aghast at her condition. Their daughter looked as though she had been through a mudslide and ended up trapped under a truck. Her mother became hysterical. Windows Falling On Sparrows had planned a long monologue about having been chased by a group of thugs, but in the bright lights of the hotel room, which her parents had kept on, staying up, worried about where their daughter was, she became confused. She wandered over to the bed and lay down. She was about to speak when a flashback of the color, one that lasted only a millionth of a second, sailed quietly through her mind, and she widened her eyes. Her lungs raced with air. No! she thought. She was suddenly afraid the color would return and stay in her field of vision, and that would be the end of herself as a sane person. She vaguely heard her mother’s hysterical screaming and her father’s calm yet determined voice, at that moment unusually precise, asking her. “What happened? Did somebody do something to you? What happened? What happened?”
Her black eyes strayed from light to light. She could not look at them. She found their faces to be alien and frightening. Her mother rushed to her side with a damp cloth and wiped the side of her face with it, the cloth instantly filthy. Her father kept repeating himself, and when her mother bellowed with another nervous exclamation, it was as if she were speaking a completely foreign language. Windows Falling On Sparrows attempted to speak, but only a few words came out. Her mouth was dry. All she could think about was that spot in front of the Ferris wheel. She was going to meet him there again, tomorrow night at eight o’clock.
Her father was convinced she had been assaulted. Her knees and the palms of her hands were badly scratched. Who could have done this to her? What was that stuff in her hair? What kind of horrible ordeal did they put her through! I am going to kill them with my bare hands! I am going to kill them!
She squinted and heard the loud cannon-like sound of her mother’s voice berating her father. She could not decide if she wanted to see or hide from any more flashbacks of that color that nearly drove her completely mad.
Her parents quickly understood that they had made a terrible mistake by calling the police. Two of them arrived wearing their characteristic stovetop hats and unfashionable capes. One of them had long hair and extremely large, feminine eyes. The other officer was a short burly man who needed a shave. Exonarella noticed his extremely tiny hands. The burly one spoke in a very rude and direct manner.
“We received a report that your daughter has been assaulted. Where is she?” Before Sedenker could even answer, the officers brushed past him and stopped in their tracks. They saw Window Falling On Sparrows sitting up on the edge of her bed, blinking into the overhead light, completely unaware the police had arrived.
The officers knew immediately. One of them activated a small device on his wrist and spoke into it.
“Lieutenant Schmet, this is Officer Krone. I’m upstairs at the Venice. I think we found our Juliet, but there is no sign of Romeo. I repeat, Romeo is not anywhere in sight. You want to come up here and ask her a few questions?”
Exonarella’s blood pressure charged through her body, her infuriated brain about to explode like a hand grenade at this presumptuous officer.
“How dare you call my daughter Juliet! That is not her name!”
“I understand that, Madam, but that is only police lingo between ourselves. Not to be taken personally. Lieutenant Schmet is on his way—he’s a police specialist in these manners, and he will have some questions for your daughter.”
“What do you mean, ‘these matters’?”
The two officers looked at each other, and then the effeminate one with the big eyes spoke up.
“We are not certain, but we believe your daughter may have been the victim of a very particular type of assault that is specific to the Moon.”
“What?!” Exonarella screeched. She turned around and smacked Sedenker in the face. “You let her go! I wanted her to stay here, and you let her go and see that damn LEM thing!”
“Don’t you ever hit me again, you insane shrew!”
“I hold you responsible! You! You allowed our daughter out into that den of prostitutes and gangsters and all sorts of heathen scum! And now here she is, out of her mind because she has been attacked! Attacked, and it’s your fault!”
Sedenker walked over to Windows Falling On Sparrows.
“Who did this to you? WHO DID THIS TO YOU?” he shouted.
She looked up and began a sentence, but forgot the first few words of it before she reached the middle. She turned away, not because she intended to be rude to her father, but because for a split second, she thought she saw the fourth primary color. This time, she wanted her mind to accept it, to become one with it, to see him again.
Detective Dogumanhed Schmet was indeed a type of expert in this. More than an expert, actually. He had a keen personal enthusiasm for the law enforcement side of lunarcroptic ocular symbolanosis. He didn’t care about its scientifc or its social issues. His own mission was extremely clear—if one of them is caught showing their abnormal and dangerous eyes to any normal person, they will be arrested. That’s that. He was delighted to spend endless hours on and of duty guided by his obsession with the LOS population. What happened to them after he took them off the streets was of no concern to him—he just knew that his life’s mission was that of a sentinel, a lonely floating angel who had set out to prote
ct the Moon from these abominations, even if it meant legally catching them one by one. And he had a very good record in this respect. Fifty-eight confirmed arrests of various sorts, all of them within the same parameter—a citizen with lunarcroptic ocular symbolanosis showing his or her eyes, on purpose, to a citizen without lunarcroptic ocular symbolanosis. That was their weakness. They had to show their eyes—they could not resist. And he was always there to reel them in.
His enthusiasm was legendary in the world of Lunar Law Enforcement. That is not to say he was liked. Most policemen he came into contact with secretly detested him. They did not like his strange, manipulative manners toward his fellow officers and toward members of the public. They also did not like the way he smelled, which was inexplicable, but probably related to his unusual, fake-looking skin. And his eyes. One was false, one was real, and they were different colors. It was terribly disconcerting. But still, he was a legend.
He let himself into the hotel room without knocking. He did not say hello to the hysterical mother nor the flustered and shouting father. He simply nodded to the other two police officers before walking to the girl. He paused for a second as soon as he saw her. There was something so familiar about her. Impossible. She was a teenager from Earth. He had never been there.
“Hello. My name is Detective Schmet of the Sea of Tranquility Police Department. Your parents called because they believe you have been roughed up by some thugs or a gang, but officers Rondo and Krone over there suspect that something else entirely, a different kind of assault, one that can only happen on the Moon. Just by looking at you, I am inclined to believe them. So tell me, where is he? Do you know his name?”
“Who?” she asked, looking up at the newcomer.
“Come on. The boy with the goggles who showed you his eyes.”
One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy Page 14