by Rob J. Hayes
I remember the Sanctitists in the security room. The woman taking a data stick from one of the computers. Now I think about it, they didn’t seem all that bothered about Dr Brant. The leader, the man in the red jacket, killed him, but if they were truly making a statement they could have kidnapped him. Forced a statement from him damning the use of his own technology. They just killed him and vanished. Surely there would be easier ways to assassinate the man.
They were never after Dr Brant. They were after something on the Arkotech computers, and it’s entirely possible it’s the same thing I need to prove who killed Pascal and all the other harvesters.
I have a purpose again. I have a plan. A direction. It’s been a long time since I was last on the Moon. I wonder how much Eden has changed.
Chapter 19
Courage: Bolstering. Uplifting. Strengthening. Courage has always been a good seller. Some people like to take it before making big life decisions, others just want to feel brave all the time, as though the world can’t touch them.
The shuttle gives a violent shake and I grip hold of my chair’s armrest. Fingernails digging into the hard leather. Commercial transports from the Earth to the Moon and back are one of the safest ways to travel, even more so than walking across the street, apparently. The problem is, it doesn’t matter how safe the man in the suit next to me says it is. What matters is that I’m currently so high up there isn’t even an atmosphere.
Acrophobia is a strange thing. Like most phobias, it doesn’t really make any sense. I’m not really high up at all. I’m somewhere in space between the Earth and the Moon, surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. Yet I’m scared. Scared of falling. Looking out the window gives me waves of vertigo. I hate flying. I won’t be happy again until my feet are firmly on solid ground. Unfortunately that solid ground will be Eden and that’s nothing to be happy about.
Two days on board this shuttle. Two days of avoiding socialising with the other passengers. Two days of floating weightless. I’m glad I brought a book to read. I just wish I had picked a book that wasn’t about space travel. Now we are approaching our destination, the stewards have ushered us into our seats again.
I hear a beep and the speaker in the cabin turns on. The Captain’s voice sounds over the hum of electronics and the gentle roar of thruster fire. She has a twang to her voice. An African accent, I think.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we will soon be making our final approach into Eden shuttle station. Please attach your seatbelts and stay seated until we have come to a full stop. The weather in Eden today is fair, as always.”
I let out a bitter chuckle. Some people like Eden’s controlled weather system. Not me and not the Captain by the sound of her voice. The man next to me, skinny and wearing an ill-fitting suit along with a cap that reads ‘I luv Eden’, smiles.
“First timer?” he asks. He has a cheerful edge to his voice, it makes him hard to trust.
“Yes,” I lie. I wish it was my first time in Eden. “You?”
“Nope. Come here once a month to spread the good word. See, many in Eden have stopped believing. They can no longer see hope. I try to change that. I try to give them something many of them have lost. Faith.”
The man spends the next ten minutes talking at me about his God and his religion. I welcome it, not because I believe or because I want to believe, but because his chatter helps to take my mind off the landing. He leaves me with a flyer and is the first to head towards the exit once the shuttle has landed. I leave the flyer on my chair and wait for most of the crowd to push their way out.
I’m greeted outside the shuttle by crisp, Eden air. There’s a chill out, it’s their Autumn season. Not that Eden has true seasons, the people in charge of the weather just like to pretend it does. For a colony that proudly declared its independence from Earth, it still likes to pretend it is its big brother.
There’s a slightly stale taste on the breeze. Air filters. It’s something I’d almost forgotten, but now it brings back a host of memories. Memories that once might have been happy or bitter. Now nothing but events of my past. No emotional connection at all. The Mars colonies have air filters too, only on Mars those same filters are regularly sabotaged.
The shuttleport is busy. Constant travel to and from the Lunar colonies. Eden isn’t the only colony-city on the Moon, but it’s the biggest and it was the first. A bright new start in humanity’s history. I’ve seen some of the old ad campaigns. Things don’t look quite so bright anymore. Though at least the shuttleport looks clean.
Travel regulations are strict and I’m forced to wait in line while each passenger from my shuttle is questioned, their documents subjected to the most intense of scrutiny. I see one couple get agitated some way in front of me. Security moves in, heavily armed and armoured. It’s rare to see full flexi-steel armour on Earth. Not here, they’re all dressed as if for war. The couple are removed from the line and the guards secure them in cuffs before marching them away. They don’t look dangerous. Tourists or honeymooners maybe. I wonder what discrepancy in their documents has them so poorly treated. My curiosity is working overtime now I don’t have a job to do. It’s trying to distract me by latching on to every little mystery I can find.
The queue moves forward. I’m one of the very last in line. I step up to the cubicle and place my identity documents in the tray provided, then step backwards as directed. The attendants don’t like people too close to their protective bubble of bullet-proof glass. The drawer moves and the woman inside the bubble picks up my documents, looking them over and typing something into her computer.
“James Garrick?” she asks, glancing at me then back to her computer. People from Eden have a strange accent to my ears. Clipped words and a strange way of pronouncing things, almost as though they don’t like to move their tongues.
I flash her a smile, even though she isn’t looking. “That’s me.”
“You haven’t been to Eden in six years,” she says. “Why are you back?”
“Business.” Six years ago I was signed up for unlimited travel with Langdon’s security firm. He never took me off the official records. I hope he hasn’t done it now. With the fallout from the incident at Arkotech, he probably hasn’t had time.
The woman glances up at me again. I give her the same smile as before. She doesn’t return it.
“Private security?”
“Yes.”
“You have a licence for a firearm. Are you carrying one on your person or in your luggage?”
“No. I’m travelling ahead of my firm. Most of our equipment will come with them. I’m only carrying personal effects.” It’s not the first time I’ve used the lie. Travel is heavily policed. Private security are often overlooked by the authorities.
She taps away at the keyboard a few more times, then puts my identity documents in the tray and pushes it back. I step forwards and pick them up. She’s included a baggage slip, 148C. I nod my thanks and move away, past the security line and towards the luggage handling.
Collecting my bags is a far less exhaustive affair and I soon have my suitcase and backpack. I move along into the main shuttleport lobby. Bright neon lights hang above a number of shops and restaurants. I see everything from sushi to a good old fashioned English pub. There’s people everywhere, some employees, but mostly travellers. I ignore everything, picking my way through the crowds and trying not to listen to the snippets of conversations I hear about the loud speaker announcements over upcoming flights.
Finally out of the shuttleport, I step out of the way of the people traffic and look up. I know it makes me look like a tourist, but I don’t care. Up there I see the dome, one of the five that covers all of Eden. Hundreds of thousands of reinforced glass triangles holding in the artificial atmosphere. There’s no stars out beyond the glass, the light pollution is too strong, but there is the Earth looming large above us.
Eden was built so it would always be facing Earth. At first it was so those who chose to live here would be able to look up and see th
e planet they came from. These days the Lunar citizens like to say it’s so they’ll always remember that they’re beholden to Earth. There’s a lot of bad blood between Earth and its colonies. At least Eden is currently considered peaceful and stable. Babylon and New Athens are warzones as bad as Mextown. Worse even, they both dwarf the size of Mextown.
I just like the view. Earth can seem a small place until you look at it from a distance. From up here on the Moon, I can see how big the blue globe really is. I can see how beautiful it really is. Affection. It’s hard not to have affection for the planet that has sustained us all for so long.
“Earthers,” I hear someone say as they pass. I look around. I’m not the only one taking a moment outside the shuttleport to stare up at their home. We’re all drawing attention, mostly from the Lunar citizens, those who live with the view their entire lives. I consider them lucky for that. Most of them would disagree.
I shift my pack a little on my shoulder, pick up my suitcase, and approach the nearest available taxi. No autodrivers on the Moon. A few companies tried moving them up here a while back, but they were targeted and destroyed by Lunar citizens, the culprits never found. The authorities didn’t really try to look. The people of Eden did not take well to jobs being stolen by machines.
I open the door to a waiting cab and slide into the back seat, dragging my luggage with me. The driver turns and looks at me, glances at my clothing and the day-old stubble. No doubt he’s assessing my worth and finding it lacking. It’s exactly the image I want to portray. No sense in making myself look wealthy, just more likely I’ll be driven out to the slums and mugged.
“Where to, Earther?”
“How far are we into the night cycle?” Eden has two weeks of day followed by two weeks of night. They light up the city to keep a twelve hour light and dark cycle to keep the populace happy, keep them thinking everything is normal. Lengthy exposure to darkness has long been shown to cause depression, despair, fear, and helplessness. All things that a harvester could take away, but the Lunar government has very strict policies on emotion tech, even more strict than Earth’s was just a couple of weeks ago.
“Two days in. I can barely even tell these days, but Earthers always can. What is it? Light not natural enough for you?”
I glance out the window, up at the dome above. The light flooding us all through millions of halogen bulbs. It doesn’t bother me one bit.
“The Soferia Royal hotel please,” I say and smile at the driver’s confused expression. The Soferia doesn’t usually put Earthers up. It proudly states that it caters only to Lunar residents.
“You sure?” the driver asks.
I nod. He shrugs, turns and starts driving.
I see a lot of Eden from the cab. The driver isn’t too talkative and that’s something to be thankful for. He turns the radio up, some soothing collection of pipes and synthesised notes. Eden hasn’t changed much at all. The streets are dirty, poorly looked after, and riddled with potholes. Lunar ground was never too stable to begin with and Eden has always struggled to find the money to keep itself in good repair.
The buildings are a lot smaller than I’m used to down on Earth. They’re purposefully built to be squat things, as much of them down underground as above it. Sometimes more. The Lunar buildings work with what they have and that’s a deficit of vertical real estate. The dome looks high above us, but in truth it’s only about two hundred meters.
Mining operations run deep on the Moon and so do the expenses. Artificial gravity units underneath every dome keep the whole place at just less than Earth norm. It’s almost unnoticeable apart from the slight spring in us Earthers’ steps and the light-headedness that goes with it.
As dirty as Eden looks up here on the surface, I know it’s worse down there. Unfortunately I have a sinking feeling that down there is where I’ll be going soon enough. Chances are the Sanctitist’s are hiding out in the Lunar caverns. I only hope I won’t have to try to traverse the maze below in order to find them. I’ve never had a good head for directions.
I think it’s the lack of billboards that seem strangest to me. Earth is littered with them, every building, all along the highways, on the sides of taxis, trains, and plains. Every bit of space that can be used to advertise, is used. It’s part of the culture. Ingrained. There’s always something else to buy, something else you want. There’s no billboards on the Moon. No adverts for Me.com or the latest celebrity endorsed perfume. I’d like to say it’s by choice, that the Lunar citizens refuse to take part in the consumer culture. It’s not. Most of them can’t afford to buy what Earth is selling. They make a fraction of what Earthers do and it shows in their cities and their way of life. Still, the Moon is a paradise compared to life on Mars.
The driver keeps glancing at me in the mirror. He looks away quickly, thinking I don’t notice, but I do. I wonder if I got into the wrong cab. My memory of Eden isn’t perfect, but I think we’re still heading in the direction of the Soferia. He glances at me again, then reaches forwards and turns down the radio.
“You look familiar,” the man says in his Eden accent.
I shake my head. “First time on the Moon.”
“You a celebrity? Someone famous down on Earth?”
Again I shake my head.
“Yeah, well I know your face from somewhere.”
We pass out of the main dome and into one of its satellites. The roads are worse here and the suspension in the cab lets me feel every bump and jarr. It doesn’t take long before the bright lights of the Soferia rise up into view. The cab driver pulls up outside and turns to look at me again, squinting as he stares at my face.
“Last chance, Earther. Soferia don’t really like folk like you.”
“I’ll be fine,” I say as I reach into my pocket and pull out a couple of crumpled notes. One of the first rules we were taught as Langdon’s security firm was that you never pay by card on the Moon. Always pay in cash and never let them see how much you’re carrying.
Bright lights flood the forecourt outside the Soferia and they spotlight every crack in the stone and every smudge of Lunar dust. A sign next to the big double doors reads ‘Real Lunar Ale’ and ‘Licensed Casino’. Just inside I see a number of people in black suits. They don’t even try to hide the shotguns they carry. The Moon may have strict laws against emotion tech, but its laws on firearms are nearing non-existent. There’s a reason for that.
I hesitate. Anxiety. My claim to the cab driver that I’d be fine was baseless. I’ve as much chance of being shot just for stepping foot inside the walls, as I do of organising a meeting. The cab is gone, but there are others waiting nearby. I could go. Run away. I don’t need to do any of this. But it’s not just to satisfy my curiosity. Something big is going on, something larger than me. I need to know what.
I shoulder my back pack and pick up my suitcase, and head inside the doors of the Soferia. The security clock me right away. Something about the way I walk, maybe, or the way I smell. I don’t know. All the people on the Moon seem able to tell an Earther from a glance.
The lobby is wide and open, a desk with an attendant standing behind it just before a staircase either side leading up to the first floor. On either side of the lobby are a few gambling machines. Each one has a someone diligently feeding it coins and each one emits an annoying, gaudy series of noises.
I start to walk towards the desk and one of the shotgun-wielding suits breaks away to follow me. I glance backwards to see her matching my pace, keeping a good distance between us. Her shotgun is lowered but her hand is on the stock. She nods at me to continue.
I get to the desk and drop my pack and suit case. The attendant, a skinny man with a lopsided grin that matches his hair, cocks his head.
“Are you lost, Earther?”
I shake my head. The gold panel behind the attendant is polished to a shine, I can see the outline of the woman standing behind me. I can see the outline of her shotgun.
“I’m looking for information,” I say. I hope I
don’t look as nervous as I feel.
“You’re in the wrong place,” the attendant says. He glances down at something below the counter and the smile slips from his face. When he looks up, there’s a pistol in his hand.
I hear footsteps on the stone floor behind me.
“Don’t struggle,” the attendant says. “This will go much easier if you don’t.”
I wonder what part of my request has caused such a reaction, but I don’t have a chance to wonder for long. In the reflection, I see three more figures approach me from behind. My arms are grabbed and pulled behind me. They are not gentle. A hiss of pain escapes my lips as I’m pulled backwards and then a black bag is pulled down over my head.
Chapter 20
Powerlessness: Calming. Scary. Inevitable. Some people enjoy feeling utterly powerless, they’re willing to pay for it. Others can’t stand the feeling. It’s one of the more polarising of emotions.
“James Garrick.” A male voice, light and nasally.
The black bag is pulled from my head and it takes a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the new light. I’m sitting on a hard chair, my hands cuffed together behind it. I’m underground, I felt the elevator moving downwards, but I don’t know how far. I do know that I’m in a fairly bad situation and it will be up to me to convince my captors not to kill me.
The room is light, small, cramped with armed suits and a couple of tables. On one of the tables I see my case, open and the clothes rifled through, some have been discarded on the floor. Next to it I see my pack, its contents spilling out. They found nothing of any worth in either, just clothes, a book about space travel, and a washbag.
On the other table I see my PD, my wallet, and my identification papers. Between the two tables, leaning against the far wall, is a tall man with dark, intense eyes, and a grim set to his mouth. He has an immaculately groomed chin beard that gives his face a long, pointed look.