Steel Beach

by John Varley

  After a bit some of that thinned out. The tracks tended to group themselves into impromptu trails. I guess humans tend to follow the herd, even when the herd is gone and the land is so flat it doesn't matter where you go.

  "You left too early last night," Liz said, the radio making it sound as if she was standing beside me when I could see her twenty meters in front. "There was some excitement."

  "I thought it was pretty exciting while I was there."

  "Then you must have seen the Duke of Bosnia tangling with the punchbowl."

  "No, I missed that. But I tangled with him earlier."

  "That was you? Then it's your fault. He was in a foul mood. Apparently you didn't mark him enough; he figures if he hasn't lost a kilo or two of flesh after pounding the sheets, somebody just wasn't trying."

  "He didn't complain."

  "He wouldn't. I swear, I think I'm related to him, but that man is so stupid, he hasn't got the brains God gave a left-handed screwdriver. After you went home he got drunk as a waltzing pissant and decided somebody had put poison in the punch, so he tipped it over and picked it up and started banging people over the head with it. I had to come over and coldcock him."

  "You do give interesting parties."

  "Ain't it the truth? But that's not what I was gonna tell you about. We were having so much fun we completely forgot about the gifts, so I gathered everybody around and started opening them."

  "You get anything nice?"

  "Well, a few had the sense to tape the receipt to the box. I'll clear a little money on that. So I got to one that said it was from the Earl of Donegal, which should have tipped me off, but what do I know about the goddam United Kingdom? I thought it was a province of Wales, or something. I knew I didn't know the guy, but who can keep track? I opened it, and it was from the Irish Republican Pranksters."

  "Oh, no."

  "The hereditary enemies of my clan. Next thing I know we're all covered with this green stuff, I don't wanna know where it came from, but I know what it smelled like. And that was the end of that party. Just as well. I had to mail half the guests home, anyway."

  "I hate those jerks. On St. Patrick's day you don't dare sit down without looking for a green whoopee cushion."

  "You think you got it bad? Every mick in King City comes gunning for me on the seventeenth of March, so they can tell their buddies how they put one over on the bleedin' Princess o' Wales. And it's only gonna get worse now."

  "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown."

  "I'll crown 'em, all right. I know where Paddy Flynn lives, and I'm gonna get even if it harelips the Mayor and the whole damn city council."

  I reflected that you'd have to go a long way to find somebody as colorful as the new Queen. Once again I wondered what I was doing out here. I looked behind me, saw the four-story stadium around the landing site just about to vanish over the horizon. When it was gone, it would be easy to get lost out here. Not that I was worried about that. The suit had about seventeen different kinds of alarms and locators, a compass, probably things I didn't even know about. No real need for girl-scout tricks like noting the position of your shadow.

  But the sense of aloneness was a little oppressive.

  And illusory. I spotted another hiking party of five on the crest of a low rise off to my left. A flash of light made me look up, and I saw one of the Grand Mal trains arcing overhead on one of the free-trajectory segments of its route. It was spinning end over end, a maneuver I remember vividly since I'd been in the front car, hanging from my straps and watching the surface sweep by every two seconds when a big glob of half-digested caramel corn and licorice splattered on the glass in front of me, having just missed my neck. At that moment I had been regretting everything I had eaten for the last six years, and wondering if I was going to be seeing a good portion of it soon, right there beside the tasty treats on the windshield. Keeping it down may be one of the most amazing things I ever did.

  "You ever ride that damn thing?" Liz asked. "I try it out every couple years, when I'm feeling mean. I swear, first time I think my ass sucked six inches of foam rubber out of the seat cushion. After that, It's not so bad. About like a barbed-wire enema."

  I didn't reply-I'm not sure how one could reply to statements like that-because as she spoke she had stopped and waited for me to catch up, and she was punching buttons on a small device on her left hand. I saw a pattern of lights flash, mostly red, then they turned green one by one. When the whole panel was green she opened a service hatch on the front of my suit and studied whatever she found in there. She poked buttons, then straightened and made a thumbs-up gesture at me. She hung the device from a strap around my neck and regarded me with her fists on her hips.

  "So, you want to talk where nobody can listen in. Well, talk, baby."

  "What's that thing?"

  "De-bugger. By which, it buggers up all the signals your suit is sending out, but not enough so they'll send out a search party. The machines up in orbit and down underground are getting the signals that keep them happy, but it's not the real stuff; it's what I want them to hear. Can't just step out here and cut off your emergency freaks. That signal goes away, it's an emergency in itself. But nobody can hear us now, take my word for it."

  "What if we have a real emergency?"

  "I was about to say, don't crack open if you want to keep a step ahead of your pallbearers. What's on your mind?"

  Once again I found it hard to get started. I knew once I got the first words out it would be easy enough, but I agonized over those first words more than any first-time novelist.

  "This may take some time," I hedged.

  "It's my day off. Come on, Hildy; I love you, but cut the cards."

  So I started in on my third telling of my litany of woe. You get better at these things as you go along. This time didn't take as long as it had with either Callie or Fox. Liz walked along beside me, saying nothing, guiding me back to some trail she was following when I started to stray.

  The thing was, I'd decided to tell it this time where it logically should have begun the other two times: with my suicide attempts. And it was a little easier to tell it to someone I didn't know well, but not much. I was thankful she remained silent through to the end. I don't think I could have tolerated any of her unlikely folk sayings at that point.

  And she stayed quiet for several minutes after I'd finished. I didn't mind that, either. As before, I was experiencing a rare moment of peace for having unburdened myself.

  Liz is not quite in the Italian class of gesturing, but she did like to move her hands around when she talked. This is frustrating in a p-suit. So many gestures and nervous mannerisms involve touching part of the head or body, which is impossible when suited up. She looked as if she'd like to be chewing on a knuckle, or rubbing her forehead. Finally she turned and squinted at me suspiciously.

  "Why did you come to me?"

  "I didn't expect you could solve my problem, if that's what you mean."

  "You got that right. I like you well enough, Hildy, but frankly, I don't care if you kill yourself. You want to do it, do it. And I think I resent it that you tried to use me to get it done."

  "I'm sorry about that, but I wasn't even aware that's what I was doing. I'm still not sure if I was."

  "Yeah, all right, it's not important."

  "What I heard," I said, trying to put this delicately, "if you want something that's, you know, not strictly legal, that Liz was the gal to see."

  "You heard that, did you?" She shot me a look that showed some teeth, but would never pass for a smile. She looked very dangerous. She was dangerous. How easy it would be for her to arrange an accident out here, and how powerless I would be to stop her. But the look was only a flicker, and her usual, amiable expression replaced it. She shrugged. "You heard right. That's what I thought we were coming out here for, to do some business. But after what you just said, I wouldn't sell to you."

  "The way I reasoned," I went on, wondering what it was she sold, "if you'r
e used to doing illegal deals, things the CC couldn't hear about, you must have methods of disguising your activities."

  "I see that now. Sure. This is one of them." She shook her head slowly, and walked in a short circle, thinking it over. "I tell you Hildy, I've seen a rodeo, a three-headed man, and a duck fart underwater, but this is the craziest thing I ever did see. This changes all the rules."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Lots of ways. I never heard of that memory-dump business. I'm gonna look it up when we get back. You say it's not a secret?"

  "That's what the CC said, and a friend of mine has heard of it."

  "Well, that's not the real important thing. It's lousy, but I don't know what I can do about it, and I don't think it really concerns me. I hope not, anyway. But what you said about the CC rescuing you when you tried to kill yourself in your own home.

  "What it is, the main thing that me keeps walking around free is what we call, in the trade, the Fourth Amendment. That's the series of computer programs that-"

  "I've heard the term."

  "Right. Searches and seizures. An all-powerful, pervasive computer that, if we let him loose, would make Big Brother seem like my maiden aunt Vickie listening with a teacup against the bedroom door. Balance that with the fact that everybody has something to hide, something we'd rather nobody knew about, even if it's not illegal, that lovely little right of privacy. I think what's saved us is the people who make the laws have something to hide, just like the rest of us.

  "So what we do, in the, uh, 'criminal underworld,' is sweep for extra ears and eyes in our own homes… and then do our business right there. We know the CC is listening and watching, but not the part that types out the warrants and knocks down the doors."

  "And that works?"

  "It has so far. It sounds incredible when you think about it, but I've been dodging in and out of trouble most of my life, using just that method… essentially taking the CC at his word, now that you mention it."

  "It sounds risky."

  "You'd think so. But in all my life, I never heard of an instance where the CC used any illegally-obtained evidence. And I'm not just talking about making arrests. I'm talking about in establishing probable cause and issuing warrants, which is the key to the whole search and seizure thing. The CC hears, in one of his incarnations, things that would be incriminating, or at least be enough for a judge to issue a warrant for a search or a bug. But he doesn't tell himself what he knows, if you get my meaning. He's compartmentalized. When I talk to him, he knows I'm doing things that are against the law, and I know he knows it. But that's the dealing-with-Liz part of his brain, which is forbidden to tell the John Law part of his brain what he knows."

  We walked a little farther, both of us mulling this over. I could see that what I'd told her made her very uneasy. I'd be nervous, too, in her place. I'd never broken any laws more serious than a misdemeanor; it's too easy to get caught, and there's nothing illegal I've ever particularly wanted to do. Hell, there's not that much that really is illegal in Luna. The things that used to give law enforcement ninety percent of their work-drugs, prostitution, and gambling, and the organizations that provided these things to a naughty populace-are all inalienable human rights in Luna. Violence short of death was just a violation, subject to a fine.

  Most of the things that were still worth a heavy-duty law were so disgusting I didn't even want to think about them. Once more I wondered just what it was the Queen of England was involved in that made her the gal to see.

  The biggest crime problem in Luna was theft of one sort or another. Until the CC is unleashed, we'll probably always have theft. Other than that, we're a pretty law-abiding society, which we achieved by trimming the laws back to a bare minimum.

  Liz spoke again, echoing my thoughts.

  "Crime just ain't a big problem, you know that," she said. "Otherwise, the citizenry in their great wisdom would clamor for the sort of electronic cage I've always feared we'd get sooner or later. All it would take would be to re-write a few programs, and we'd see the biggest round-up since John Wayne took the herd to Abilene. It's all just waiting to happen, you know. In about a millisecond the CC could start singing like a canary to the cops, and about three seconds later the warrants could be printed up." She laughed. "One problem, there's probably not enough cops to arrest everybody, much less jails to put them in. Every crime since the Invasion could be solved just like that. It boggles the mind just to think about it."

  "I don't think that's going to happen," I said.

  "No, thinking it over, what the CC's doing to you is really for your own good, even if it turns my stomach. I mean, suicide's a civil right, isn't it? What business does that fucker have saving your life?"

  "Actually, I hate to admit it, but I'm glad he did."

  "Well, I would be too, you know, but it's the principle of the thing. Listen, you know I'm going to spread this around, huh? I mean, tell all my friends? I won't use your name."

  "Sure. I knew you would."

  "Maybe we should take extra precautions. Right offhand, I can't think what they'd be, but I got a few friends who'll want to brainstorm on this one. You know what the scary thing is, I guess. He's overridden a basic program. If he can do one, he could do another."

  "Catching you and curing you of your criminal tendencies might be seen as… well, for your own good."

  "Exactly, that's exactly where that kind of bullshit thinking leads. You give 'em an inch, and they take a parsec."

  We were back within sight of the visitors' gallery again. Liz stopped, began drawing aimless patterns in the dust with the tip of her boot. I figured she had something else she wanted to say, and knew she'd get to it soon. I looked up, and saw another roller coaster train arc overhead. She looked up at me.

  "So… the reason you wanted to know how to get around the CC, I don't think you mentioned it, and that was…"

  "Not so I could kill myself."

  "I had to ask."

  "I can't give you a concrete reason. I haven't done much… well, I don't feel like I've done enough to…"

  "Take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them?"

  "Like that. I've been sort of sleepwalking since this happened. And I feel like I ought to be doing something."

  "Talking it over is doing something. Maybe all you can do except… you know, cheer up. Easy to say."

  "Yes. How do you fight a recurrent suicidal urge? I haven't been able to tell where it comes from. I don't feel that depressed. But sometimes I just want to… hit something."

  "Like me."

  "Sorry."

  "You paid for it. Man, Hildy, I can't think of a thing I would have done other than what you've told me. I just can't."

  "Well, I feel like I ought to be doing something. Then there's the other part of it. The… violation. I wanted to find out if it's possible to get away from the CC's eyes and ears. Because… I don't want him watching if I, you know, do it again, damn it, I don't want him watching at all, I want him out of my body, and out of my mind, and out of my goddam life, because I don't like being one of his laboratory animals!"

  She put her hand on my shoulder and I realized I'd been shouting. That made me mad, it shouldn't have, I know, because it was only a gesture of friendship and concern, but the last thing somebody crippled wants is your pity-and maybe not even your sympathy-he just wants to be normal again, just like everybody else. Every gesture of caring becomes a slap in the face, a reminder that you are not well. So damn your sympathy, damn your caring, how dare you stand over me, perfect and healthy, and offer your help and your secret condescension.

  Yeah, right, Hildy, so if you're so independent how come you keep spilling your guts to strangers passing on the street? I barely knew Liz. I knew it was wrong, but I still had to bite my tongue to keep from telling her to keep her stinking hands off me, something I'd come close to half a dozen times with Fox. One day soon I'd go ahead and say it, lash out at him, and he'd probably be gone. I'd be alone again
.

  "You have to tell me how this all came out," Liz said. It relaxed me. She could have offered to help, and we'd have both known it was false. A simple curiosity about how the story came out was acceptable to me. She looked at the walls of the visitors' center. "I guess it's about time to piss on the fire and call in the dogs." She reached for the radio de-bugger.

  "I have one more question."

  "Shoot."

  "Don't answer if you don't want to. But what do you do that's illegal?"

  "Are you a cop?"

  "What? No."

  "I know that. I had you checked out, you don't work the police beat, you aren't friends with any cops."

  "I know a couple of them fairly well."

  "But you don't hang with them. Anyway, if you were a cop and you said you weren't, your testimony is inadmissible, and I got your denial on tape. Don't look so surprised; I gotta protect myself."

  "Maybe I shouldn't have asked."

  "I'm not angry." She sighed, and kicked at a beer can. "I don't guess many criminals think of themselves as criminals. I mean, they don't wake up and say 'Looks like a good day to break some laws.' I know what I do is illegal, but with me it's a matter of principle. What we desperados call the Second Amendment."

  "Sorry, I'm not up on the U.S. Constitution. Which one is that?"

  "Firearms." I tried to keep my face neutral. In truth, I'd feared something a lot worse than that.

  "You're a gunrunner."

  "I happen to believe it's a basic human right to be armed. The Lunar government disagrees strongly. That's why I thought you wanted to talk to me, to buy a gun. I brought you out here because I've got several of them buried in various places within a few kilometers."

  "You'd have sold me one? Just handed it over?"

  "Well, I might have told you where to dig."

  "But how can you bury them? There's satellites watching you all the time when you're out here."

  "I think I'll keep a few trade secrets, if you don't mind."