Caught off guard, Mendoza hurriedly stuffed Fr. Lynch’s tablet back into his pack.
“Is this the guy?” the woman said.
Fr. Lynch came in, trailed by Simon and several other laborers. “That’s him,” Fr. Lynch said. “Reyes, this is Dr. Martine Miller. She’s going to patch you up.” Mendoza caught on. They didn’t trust Dr. Miller enough to let her know who Mendoza really was.
“Not often I see anyone here complying with the dress code,” Dr. Miller joked, nodding at Mendoza’s tweeds. “If you could just lie down on this cot, Mr. Reyes … Gloves,” she added to her robot assistant. She put on the sterile gauntlets it handed her, and peeled Mendoza’s socks off. “Yowch. How did you do this to yourself?”
“Went into Wellsland to sell produce,” Mendoza improvised. His brain was still full of images of carnage from Mercury. “Missed the last train and decided to walk back. Big mistake, huh?”
“I’ll say. Well, I’m going to disinfect these abrasions and clean them, then we’ll be able to tell how much damage you’ve done to yourself. But right now I’d say you will need to put your feet up for a while. Literally.”
Mendoza nodded weakly. Removing his socks had hurt. The pain made him want to punch Dr. Miller in her freckled little face—an odd reaction, unlike him.
She went to work with disinfectant and swabs. “Let me know if you’d like a painkiller, Mr. Reyes.”
“Aw, just get on with it,” Simon burst out. “The guy’s not made of candyglass. Just bandage him up and give him some meds so he can walk.”
“Let the doctor do her job,” Fr. Lynch said. “She isn’t getting paid for this. She’s working pro bono, and we’re all very grateful.”
Simon mumbled something that ended in “ass.”
“Your feelings are understood, Simon,” Dr. Miller said shortly. “If you don’t want me here, all you have to do is allow those medibots to be fixed, and you’ll never have to see me again.”
“Not likely. Let those bots get their probes ‘n’ scalpels into us, they’d sterilize every living soul in here.”
Wearily, Dr. Miller said, “I’m sorry, but it simply isn’t true that the medibots are programmed to secretly sterilize people. That would be a violation of your human rights.”
“Yeah, well, the facts speak for themselves. When we were using the medibots, the birth rate in here was frickin’ dismal. Since we jarked ‘em, people’s been having babies left and right. And if you think that’s a coincidence, I have to say respectfully, Doc, your fancy medical degree ain’t worth shit.”
Mendoza heard a ripple of laughter. More people had crowded in to watch his feet being treated. Or more likely, to watch the sparks fly. He’d already got the picture that Simon revelled in picking fights. Of course, Simon himself would call it ‘speaking his mind.’ There was one like that in every hab.
“Well, Doc?” the old man continued. “You attended some of them births yourself. You ain’t gonna deny the evidence of your own eyes? Facts are facts, and here’s another. From the City Council’s point of view, what we are, is a problem. They don’t want us having kids. They’d like this community to wither away. But if we was gone, who’d look after their silkworms ‘n’ cows for them? Animals need the human touch. They won’t thrive for bots.” Simon spat audibly on the floor.
“Don’t spit in here, please,” Dr. Miller said. Mendoza could tell that Simon was getting to her. The increasingly rough way she handled his feet gave it away. “Mr. Lynch—” she appealed to the Jesuit.
“Ain’t no Mister Lynch in here. You call him Father,” Simon said.
At the same time, Fr. Lynch said, “Honestly, Simon, I don’t think you’re right about the secret birth control program. Sterilization is irreversible. It’s more likely that the medibots are programmed to slip contraceptives to the women, passing them off as vitamins and so forth.”
Simon crowed, “That’s what I said! What you got to say to that, Doc?”
Dr. Miller dropped Mendoza’s feet and spun around. Mendoza sat up, glad to no longer be the focus of attention. “The fact,” the petite doctor said, “is we’ve got a population problem. Shackleton City was meant to be a utopia, but it’s turning into a gulag with broadband. It’s not fair that you people have to live in squalor, slaving away at menial jobs, without any real educational provisions made for you, nor any opportunities for social mobility. We’re meant to be better than this!”
Mendoza saw, though Dr. Miller seemingly did not, that she had just lost her audience. You didn’t win people’s hearts by telling them they were dirty and stupid.
“Your church could help, Mr. Lynch. You’ve got a lot of clout with the less advantaged demographic. I just think it’s incredibly irresponsible of you to support these unsubstantiated rumors about a secret birth control program!”
Mendoza never found out how Fr. Lynch would have responded. At that minute, without warning, the doctor’s assistant lunged at Mendoza.
Mendoza threw himself off the cot. The speed of his own reflexes astonished him. He rolled under the next cot. The bot crashed into the cot he’d been sitting on. People screamed and stampeded for the door. Mendoza crawled as fast as he could under the row of cots. Dr. Miller shrieked, “ASSISTANT COMMAND: Stop! Stop! Oh, why won’t he stop?”
Mendoza popped up between the cots. The bot plunged at him. One of its hands held a syringe, the other a scalpel. Mendoza dropped flat on his back and kicked up. Had his opponent been human, the kick would have connected with his groin. As it was, it boosted the bot headfirst into the wall.
Mendoza grabbed his pack and fumbled in it for his pistol.
The bot picked itself up and ran at him between the cots. Mendoza sprinted for the door.
Fr. Lynch stood there, holding the crucifix from his pack. “Go,” he shouted. Stepping past Mendoza, wielding the crucifix like a sword, he stabbed the bot in the face. The crucifix broke, but the bot staggered. Fr. Lynch leapt backwards out of the door and slammed it.
Everyone else stood at the end of the corridor, staring.
The bot hammered on the door. Fr. Lynch struggled to hold it shut. “Doesn’t this flipping door lock?” he yelled. The laborers shook their heads: no.
Mendoza finally found his pistol at the bottom of his rucksack. “Stand back, Father!”
Fr. Lynch lost the battle for the door. Bots tended to be low-mass, but they were inhumanly strong. Fr. Lynch stumbled back. The bot charged out.
Mendoza fired. He held the trigger button down. The nearly-simultaneous flashes appeared to merge into a single bolt that lit up the corridor like lightning. The bot had a charred crater in its face, but it kept coming. Mendoza remembered: Aim for the batteries. He sighted on the middle of the bot’s shirt. Fired, using up the last ergs of juice in the pistol’s supercapacitor.
The bot’s momentum carried it into the opposite wall of the corridor. It tumbled onto its back, paralyzed, smoking.
At the end of the corridor, the onlookers peeled aside with cries of alarm. Another bot skidded between them. It was the one Mendoza had seen harvesting mulberry leaves, or an identical unit. It waved its secateurs menacingly.
“Run,” Fr. Lynch said.
They sprinted through the residential hab, out into an area cluttered with skips, sorters, and processing equipment. A couple of the skips came to life and hurtled at them, potatoes falling over their sides.
A ramp led into a hole in the ground. They ran down it, amid rolling and bouncing potatoes, onto a railway platform. This was no commuter rail station. Large cargo containers waited in a line on narrow-gauge tracks. Simon stood at the far end of the platform.
“Got everything ready, Father.”
“Thanks, Simon.”
“You’ll be going too, will you?”
“Yes, I think I’d better.”
Simon gave Mendoza a sour look, as if this were all his fault. Actually, it probably was. “Put your EVA suit on,” he snapped.
The skips seemed to have lost
their way. They ran aimlessly across the platform, banging into the cargo containers and the wall, until each of them in turn fell between the containers onto the track.
“No cameras down here,” Simon said. “So the fuckers can’t see you.”
Mendoza stripped—this was no time for modesty—and struggled into his Star Force surplus suit. It was at this point he remembered about his feet. He forced them into the hated boots without stopping to inspect any further damage he may have done by running barefoot through the farm.
“Guess this is it,” Simon said. “You be careful, Father. We want to see you back here again.”
“I hope you will.” Fr. Lynch hugged the old man. “Make sure you go to confession the next time Father Tang comes. It doesn’t matter if he can’t speak English. The sacrament is still valid.” He put on his helmet. So did Mendoza.
The cargo container hinged open. They climbed in on top of vacuum-packed sacks of potatoes. By slinging sacks out onto the platform, they made a cavity just large enough for the two of them to sit in, knees drawn up.
Simon gestured for them to keep their heads down. The container sealed itself, locking them in darkness, and started to move.
ix.
“Father?” Mendoza said over the suit-to-suit radio. The cargo container swayed, picking up speed. They sat crushed together in the dark, their knees interlocking. The roof was so low that Mendoza could not straighten his neck. “I’m sorry. It was all my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t. I suppose some of the surveillance cameras at the farm are still working. I thought they had jarked the lot. But that’s the only explanation. You must have been facially recognized. Then, when Lorna got wind of your location, he hijacked the bots to try and stop you from getting away.”
“No. It was me.”
“Don’t be stupid. You evaded that little silver bugger, engaged with it, neutralized it … my self-defense lessons must be paying off. Smile.”
“I checked my email. On your tablet. While I was waiting for you in the clinic.”
Silence.
“I took precautions. I know how to log in untraceably. But I also ran a couple of searches using words, phrases, that … must have been picked up. If you’re scanning for keywords, you can trace them back to their network of origin. That’s much easier than tracing the ID that they came from. So Lorna, if it was him, would have guessed that I might be in Farm Eighty-One. Then he just had to find a pair of eyes, and the doctor’s assistant was right there.”
More silence.
“I guess there must have been some working cameras in the processing area, too,” Mendoza added.
“Yes. I was aware of those. I was going to take you around them.”
“Sorry.”
“You were probably experiencing information withdrawal. It’s every bit as addictive as dope. And unlike a junkie, an information addict can’t take a pill and be cured. But maybe this will be a start.”
“I’m cured now.” Mendoza felt no desire whatsoever to access the internet. Ever again.
“These terms, phrases, what were they?”
“Mercury. Wrightstuff, Inc. And my … my friend … Elfrida Goto.”
“You had a few minutes of stolen internet access,” the Jesuit said dryly, “and you used it to stalk her? You have got it bad.”
“I wasn’t stalking her. I can’t; she’s blocked me. Father, there’s bad news from Mercury. There was a riot or something at UNVRP headquarters. Lots of people are dead. I just needed to know if she—if she’s OK ...”
“I see. Is she?”
“I don’t know. It’s still a developing story. They don’t even know who started it. Some of the reports called it a riot, and some said it was a rebellion.”
“Or a diversion,” Fr. Lynch said, “engineered by Derek Lorna and his friends at Wrightstuff, Inc. But why?”
Mendoza had no speculation to offer. His mind was full of Elfrida, maybe in peril, maybe dead.
The cargo container rocketed on. From time to time it braked sharply. Once it stopped for several minutes. Then it started moving again. Mendoza was getting a severe crick in his neck.
“How are you feeling?” Fr. Lynch asked.
“Not great.”
“Take another painkiller if you need to.”
“Yeah. The stuff I took earlier worked great. I’ll do another dose of that if I need to.”
“What stuff?”
“It’s in the suit’s pharma suite. What was it? Nicozan.”
“Nicozan? You took Nicozan?” To Mendoza’s astonishment, Fr. Lynch laughed out loud. “That explains it.”
“What? I don’t get it.”
“So that’s why you fearlessly engaged with that bot. Nicozan is the stuff Marines take on live-fire exercises, boy. And in combat, if they ever get unlucky. They call it morale juice.” Fr. Lynch was still laughing.
“And I thought it was all me.”
“Oh, I’m not discounting your courage. But Nicozan boosts your reflexes. Deadens pain.” Fr. Lynch’s voice turned stern. “And inhibits cognitive control neural structures in the frontal cortex. Impairing your judgment and decreasing your sensitivity to risk.”
“Oh, God. That must be why I checked my email!”
“Or maybe you were just feeling lost and isolated.”
Mendoza stared into the darkness. Fr. Lynch really did know how to cheer a guy up.
“We’re almost there,” Fr. Lynch said presently. “This rail network transports cargo to and from the spaceport. We’ve passed under the Malapert Ridge, and now we’re about to reach the shipping terminal in Faustini Crater. I wasn’t planning to come with you this far, but here I am. So we’ll be able to do the next part together.”
It hit Mendoza that he had ruined the Jesuit’s life. Fr. Lynch had not planned on coming with him all the way. But now he was on the run, too. His ministry at St. Ignatius, his dojo, his semi-pro kendo career—all had been destroyed in a few moments of violence. Because Mendoza had been stupid.
Sorry didn’t cover it.
★
The cargo container inched forward in jerks. Fr. Lynch said, “The people we’re about to meet are friendly, but don’t tell them what happened at Farm Eighty-One. In fact, don’t tell them anything. Make it up if you have to.”
“I can’t believe a priest is telling me to lie,” Mendoza joked nervously.
“I’m telling you to use your brain. Simon’s people will be fine. You can get away with a lot when you’re sitting on two percent of the city’s food supply. These people have no such protection.”
The container hinged open. A gangly spaceborn individual in a charcoal-colored suit jumped up on the potatoes.
Fr. Lynch was already moving. Mendoza’s feet had gone to sleep. He stumbled. The worker shoved him down to the platform. Other workers were already unloading the container, as it continued to stop-start along the platform in a train of identical containers.
A dozen parallel tracks crossed the cavern, and carried the emptied containers back into a tunnel at its far end. Beyond, plasma flared on a sunlit plain. Giant forklifts navigated in and out of the cavern.
“Spaceport cargo terminal.” Fr. Lynch pushed Mendoza. “Move. It’s never a good idea to stand around in a soup of spaceship exhaust.”
They dodged and wove across the tracks to a control center where workers were monitoring the flow of goods. The workers’ spacesuits were not charcoal-colored, after all. They were filthy with ingrained moondust, patched and repatched. One of them escorted Mendoza and Fr. Lynch into a tunnel that ended in a hatch-type airlock.
Inside the airlock, they all took off their suits. Mendoza and Fr. Lynch got dressed. Their escort did not have to. He’d been wearing a pair of ragged jeans under his suit, and he seemed to think that was enough.
His skin was an unnatural shade of blue-black, contrasting with crimson-dyed dreadlocks.
“Hi,” Mendoza said, flapping one hand.
“It’s the hyronalin,” the man
said. The rims of his eyes and the inner surfaces of his lips looked virulently pink in his indigo face. “You’ve probably taken it if you ever went out to the Belt or somewhere. Increases cellular resistance to radiation. Well, it turns out that megadoses also cause massive overproduction of melanin. No one’s figured out how to turn that pathway off yet.”
“Nor are they even trying,” Fr. Lynch said, “since the only people who take megadoses for years on end are spaceport workers. You have no idea what it could be doing to your bodies.”
“Better blue than dead. I’m Philip L. Franckel.”
“He’s got a law degree,” Fr. Lynch said.
“Pleased to meet you,” Mendoza said.
“No, you’re not. You’re running away from something. A failed marriage, bad debts, or maybe you just got sick of tugging your forelock to our lords and masters, so you decided to GTFO.”
“Yeah, something like that,” Mendoza said, remembering Fr. Lynch’s injunction not to tell these people anything.
Franckel shrugged. “NOMB.”
The blue-skinned man threw open the hatch at the other end of the airlock. Heat and a pungent odor of burning washed in. They followed him into a smaller cavern. In the middle of the space, a fire crackled. Mendoza went closer, scarcely able to believe his eyes. But the warmth on his skin did not lie. The fire was real. Most—but not all—of the smoke went up an improvised flue that dangled from the ceiling. The smell took him back to his childhood: it was the same odor of burning rubbish that used to envelop Manila when the wind blew from the suburbs.
“Why should we donate it all to the recyclers?” Franckel said, jerking a thumb at the fire, which was indeed burning garbage. “We’re a good cause, too.”
Mendoza squatted among the indigo-colored people, numbed by all this strangeness. He accepted a cup of instant coffee. A cup, whose contents threatened to roll out over the rim every time he lifted it. Curtains hung on the walls of the cavern, framing screen views of forest and seashore as if they were windows.
Simon at Farm Eighty-One had uttered a truth that people in Shackleton City rarely mentioned. Dr. Miller had alluded to it, too. The spaceborn could never ‘return’ to Earth. Their long fragile limbs and weak lungs, their lazy hearts accustomed from the womb to micro-gravity, made it physically impossible for them to endure Earth’s gravity for more than a few weeks at a time. And they numbered in the tens of millions, thanks to sheer organic population growth.
The Sol System Renegades Quadrilogy Page 102