by Allen Steele
“Hey, Cougar Joe, the man of the hour!” Kenny said heartily, holding out a cold brew. “Do your trick, big guy.” Tess’s kids, Pat and Teddy, scurried over from the slide when they heard Kenny’s challenge.
Joe glowered at him, then slowly let a low, sullen growl rise from his chest through his throat. Pat and Teddy watched with amazement, and Kenny and Tess grinned silently. Then Cougar Joe stuck the lip of the beer bottle between his molars, clamped down hard, and quickly ripped the cap off with his teeth.
“Grrrrumph!” he snarled as he spat out the cap and upended the bottle in a savage gulp.
Pat squealed with delight. “Max-Q gross-o-rama!” Teddy yelled.
“Now get lost,” Tess commanded, giving her five-year-old son a swat on the rear. Teddy turned and ran back to the slide, followed by his little sister. Tess looked back at Cougar Joe. “We’re going to be buying you false teeth one of these days if you keep that up.”
Cougar Joe grinned, then tapped his fingertips piano-like across his dentures. “Too late,” he said. “Already in.”
Tess’s mouth dropped open. “Got ’em kicked out when I was sixteen, playing football in high school,” Joe explained. “The violent days of my ill-spent youth.”
“Max-Q gross-o-rama, to coin a phrase.” Kenny pushed a folded sheet of paper across the table to him. “Did you see this?”
Joe glanced down at the computer printout. “Found it in my mailbox today,” he said, not bothering to read it again. He shrugged. “Anybody talked to Jenny about this yet?”
Tess shook her head. “Nobody’s seen her all day. Robyn Abbey tried to call her at home, but there was no answer.” She rested her elbows on the table and cupped her face in her hands. “I dunno. Maybe it’s another one of Blind Boy Grunt’s practical jokes.”
“Grunt’s never played a practical joke like this.” Kenny absently twirled the printout around the table with his finger. “Problem is, we don’t know what goes on in those executive sessions, unless Neil and Jenny tell us about it. They’re not on-the-record meetings, so …” His voice trailed off.
“There’s got to be something to it,” Cougar Joe said. “Neil’s been talking about co-oping the colony somehow, trying to get it out of the control of the consortium.”
“Yeah, but to this extent?” Tess asked. “I mean, this is pretty radical, even for Neil.”
“Maybe it’s not Neil,” Kenny said. “Maybe it was Jenny’s idea.” He tapped the printout with his finger. “It says right here that she ‘announced’ it, whatever that means.”
“Jenny doing something independent of Neil?” Tess’s brow furrowed. “That doesn’t figure. I mean, it’s no secret those two haven’t been getting along lately, but …”
“But what?” Cougar Joe asked. “Jenny’s got a mind of her own. Why couldn’t she propose something without Neil’s consent?”
“Hey, there’s a difference between disagreeing about what’s going to be for dinner and what’s going to be the future of the colony,” Tess replied. “I mean, Neil’s the Ark’s leader, right? The Ark’s block-vote got him elected to the Board of Selectmen, right?” She shook her head. “I like Jenny, too, y’know, but we can’t have our spokesman talking with two heads.…”
“The thing … with two heads!” Kenny intoned theatrically. He reached into his trouser pocket, pulled out an antique snuff can and a pack of cigarette papers. “Once it was a normal person. Then … it became a politician!”
“Drop dead,” Tess said, unamused. “This is serious.”
Cougar Joe took another sip from his beer. “Sure it’s serious,” he said, “but I’m not so sure it’s a bad idea, no matter who suggested it. I mean, this whole place could be turned into an amusement park if the consortium has its way. What if the greed-heads decide they want to put another hotel in the biosphere, right where the farms are?”
“They wouldn’t do that,” Tess said.
“Sure they would,” Kenny argued, carefully sifting a pinch of marijuana onto a leaf of bamboo paper. The pot was from the private New Ark crop the commune discreetly cultivated in Kenny’s hydroponics section. “If they thought they could make more money off the tourist trade, they could get the Ark kicked right out of here.” He put aside the snuff can and began rolling the joint between his fingers. “Ever seen the early artists’ conceptions of O’Neill colonies, back when they were first thought up in the last century? The biospheres were pictured as wall-to-wall tract housing, complete with backyard barbecue grills. Looked like New Jersey in orbit. Space as a giant suburb.”
“Okay, so it’s a nasty idea,” Tess agreed. “But I’m not sure if I’m ready to follow Neil and Jenny into a revolution, either.”
“Hey, if it’s a choice between tourists and us, I’ll pick us any day.” Kenny delicately licked the paper’s seam. “Say hey, amigo?”
“Maybe,” Joe answered. “Let’s wait till tomorrow night. I’m sure we’ll get the whole story then.” He paused. “From Neil or Jenny … whoever is in charge.”
He paused, then added, “But if they’re talking about a revolution … hell, I’ll second the motion. Who needs another goddamn shopping center?”
“Damn straight.” Kenny held up the joint. “Got a light?”
It was quitting time, but the offices of BioCybe Resources, located in the light-industry zone of Torus N-1, were still open. Art Kiminski pushed his chair back from his CAD/CAM console and, propping his legs up on his eternally littered desk, reached for the Pepsi brought to him by his co-partner and senior scientist. It was the end of another day, and everyone else had gone home for the Memorial Day weekend. It was time for the customary after-work bull session.
“I don’t get it,” Kiminski said as he popped the top of the cardboard container. “We’re finally getting this colony on the right track, and somebody gets the crazy idea that we should go for national independence.”
Yuji Kaneko took his seat at the adjacent desk, to savor the cup of hot tea he had just poured for himself. “The idea was bound to come up eventually,” he replied. “I’m only surprised that it’s happened so soon.”
“So soon?” Kiminski repeated. “You mean, before the colony’s been completed?”
“Sort of.” The Japanese-American bioengineer gently sipped his tea, then laid the delicate cup on top of a pile of printouts. “More like before there was any real chance at economic independence. Perhaps the Schorrs did not look before leaping.”
“Perhaps?” Kiminski’s lips curled. “Yuji, nobody in their right minds would even dream of suggesting something like independence for Clarke County, let alone going public with it.” He jabbed his finger at Kaneko. “Not now, not ever.”
“Ever?” Smiling skeptically, Kaneko looked askance at the cyberneticist. “‘Ever’ is a long time, Art. Maybe in ten, twenty years …” He shrugged. “Anything is possible.”
“Not bloody likely,” Kiminski said bitterly. “Who would govern this place? The Ark hippies? We’d be on strict vegetarian diets and required to carry copies of Das Kapital if they got their way.”
“Oh, c’mon!”
“I’m serious!” Kaneko broke up laughing. Kiminski, holding up his hands, quickly shook his head. “Okay, okay, maybe not literally … but you know they’d try to govern the way they run the Ark. Endless affinity group meetings, trying to handle everything by consensus, with everyone kowtowing to Neil Schorr as if he was some sort of godhead. The whole place would fall apart like that”—he snapped his fingers—“because consensus opinion would have to be reached on every matter, significant or not.”
Kaneko reached for his tea again. “Oh, we don’t know that it would happen like that. The Ark accounts for only about one-fourth of the population here. Even if they voted in a block, like they usually do, they couldn’t dictate their way of thinking to the rest of us. I think we’d probably have some sort of democracy.”
Kiminski nodded vigorously. “Maybe so, maybe so,” he admitted. “But even if Clarke County wer
e to become a democratic independent nation, what would happen to us?” He ran his finger across his neck. “Zip. BioCybe’s finished.”
The bioengineer grimaced. “I don’t follow you.”
“It’s easy. The consortium loses control, so they pull out of Clarke County. How many of them do we sell our biochips to, Yuki? Enough that, if we lost those contracts, we’d be bankrupt.”
Kaneko frowned. BioCybe Resources was a small company. Microscopic, in fact; besides Kiminski and himself, there were only three other full-time employees, one of whom was barely more than a bookkeeper and part-time test-tube washer. The biochips they produced were manufactured in an automated, zero g factory station they rented along with four other small companies on Clarke County. “The major companies would be hurt as much as we would be,” he said. “They have to buy biochips from somebody, and space-manufactured chips …”
“Could be made by anybody with a free-flier factory,” Kiminski interrupted. “They could do it themselves if they had to. Face it, Yuji. They buy from us only because we help subsidize Clarke County, so we need them more than they need us.”
Kaneko sipped his tea again. It had become lukewarm; he winced with distaste and stood up to take it to the sink. “You have a point,” he replied, pouring the tea down the drain and rinsing the cup under the faucet. “But that’s only if the consortium members pull out. After all, they have a considerable investment at stake here.”
“Hey! Hey! Whose side are you on, anyway? Don’t tell me you’re siding with the tofu-heads?”
Kaneko smiled boyishly. Actually, he liked tofu … but he wasn’t about to confess that to his partner, who thought anything more exotic than a cheeseburger was part of a leftist conspiracy. “No,” he said as he pulled off his lab jacket and got ready to leave the office for the day. “I’m just willing to listen to both sides of the argument.”
The other scientist blew out his cheeks in disgust. “Well, you can have the other side of the argument, and I’ll take mine.” He turned around in his chair, preparing to close down the computer for the weekend, then looked back over his shoulder. “Umm … are you planning to attend the town meeting tomorrow night?” he asked.
“Yes,” Kaneko said. “Why?”
Kiminski shrugged, unsuccessfully feigning disinterest. “Gimme a yell before you go. Maybe I’ll come along.”
“Oh?” Kaneko fought to control his expression. “I thought you weren’t interested in anything the hippies had to say?”
Kiminski turned his face towards the computer screen so that Kaneko couldn’t see it. “Aww,” he muttered. “Maybe it’ll be good for a laugh.”
10
The Strip Shuffle
(Saturday: 9:45 P.M.)
“What is this, Raul?” Bigthorn leaned across the craps table, staring at the lean black man sitting in the holding chair on the other side. The sheriff tapped his fingers on the numbers glowing from the polished glass tabletop. “Your odds have never been this good.”
Raul’s face expressed hurt shock. He held up his hands—thick fingers encrusted with rings, wrists jingling with gold and silver bracelets—in a wounded shrug. “What’s what, Sheriff? The numbers come straight off the table. The software’s clean, the hard drive’s Nevada standard, and I’m certified by the Guild. So I’m a good loser. Ask that guy who just walked off with my money.”
The numbers on Raul’s craps table told gamblers that their odds of winning were 25 to 1 … ridiculously low odds, in Bigthorn’s opinion, considering Raul’s rep as the most cunning shark on the Strip. It was nothing personal, because Bigthorn liked him. Yet it was his job to make sure that the game-masters stayed honest, and 25 to 1 odds at Raul’s table was total bullshit.
“I’m sure the software’s clean,” the sheriff replied. “If I didn’t think so, I’d take your table off the Strip and get it checked out by the Guild.” He ignored Raul’s hostile glare and pushed the red ROLL button on the tabletop. A holographic pair of dice appeared on the glass, spun several times with an electronic clattering sound, and stopped. One spot appeared on each die: snake-eyes. Raul grinned victoriously at him.
“On the other hand,” Bigthorn continued, “I wonder what I would find if I shook you down. Maybe an extra diskette you slip into this thing when nobody’s looking, just to sweeten the odds a little bit. Y’know, throw a few games, let the marks win a few cheap ones, improve the table’s odds a little bit. So when the table’s reading 25 to 1 again, you boot back the card that was giving you less attractive odds.”
Raul’s grin faded, but he said nothing. “I’ll give you a little free advice,” the sheriff said. “After we get through, you should close down and go take a whizz or something. Maybe empty out your pockets.” He eyed Raul’s embroidered Moroccan vest meaningfully. “Then you should come back here and start winning a little more often.”
A small crowd of tourists, interested in the exchange between the open-air game-master and the big Navajo police officer, was beginning to congregate around Raul’s canopied booth. A few other game-masters from the adjacent poker, backgammon, and blackjack kiosks were listening closely to the conversation. Raul was beginning to get nervous. If he was found to be salting his table, the Games Guild would remove his certification. His gambling license would go after that; in a week, Raul would be back in New Times Square, playing nickel-and-dime games. Clarke County was fat city for pros like him; you didn’t blow that privilege by messing with the Guild.
“Maybe I’ll get a little bite to eat, John,” he muttered. He reached to close the lid on his table.
“Not so fast,” Bigthorn said. “Let’s talk about why I stopped here in the first place.” He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out the fax of Macy Westmoreland’s TexSpace passenger photo, and showed it to Raul. “Have you seen her?”
Raul studied the face in the picture. “Haven’t seen her, Sheriff.”
Bigthorn nodded. Somehow, he didn’t think the game-master would have spotted her. Gut instincts: Westmoreland seemed to have a little more class then to play craps with Raul. “Okay. You do see her, you call me. I might think twice about your position on my shit-list if you give me a good lead.”
Raul nodded. “How long is your list these days, Sheriff?” he said, absolutely straight-faced.
“Longer than you want to know.” Bigthorn got up and stepped away from the table. “See you later. Stay cool.”
The Strip was packed tonight. The latest shipload of travelers had discovered Clarke County’s torus of entertainment and legalized vice, and the touristas who had been around for the last week were back for another helping. The Strip was always crowded every Saturday night; no surprise there. On the other hand, the party on the Strip never stopped.
Bigthorn walked away from the row of open-air game tables and stopped to stand in the concourse, arms folded over his chest, feeling the press of the crowd as it flowed around him. A young pair—guy in a fashionable wig and baggy trousers, the girl wearing a short skirt and a halter top, both carrying 3-D cameras like overweight talismans—brushed past him.
“… like South of the Border in South Carolina?” the girl way saying, “or North Carolina, whatever, it sorta reminds me …”
“North Carolina,” he said, “it’s in North Carolina.…”
“Whatever, it’s sorta like that place … y’know, the place where you found a rubber machine in the men’s room?”
Bigthorn smiled. He had heard the comparisons before, from people who have been to all the other places “sort of like” the Strip: Gatlinburg, Tennessee; Las Vegas, Nevada; the Arbat district of Moscow; the Soho district of London; the hash dens in Amsterdam; Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. He had never been to any of those places, although he had little doubt that they probably resembled the Indian bars in Flagstaff, where, when he was growing up on the reservation, his friends had lured him to drink and chase women.
Especially to drink. The Reservation Police, of which his father was a member, couldn’t bust hi
m for drinking in the border towns, as they could on the reservation, where even keeping booze in your home was illegal. He had learned to hate liquor in those seedy Flagstaff bars, where red men drank until their money ran out or their faces hit the floor, the dubious machismo of being able to guzzle more tequila and Coors than the guy on the next barstool.
Once he had come back from Flagstaff stumbling drunk, and his father, Phil, had kicked his seventeen-year-old ass all over the backyard. “You want to be another drunk Injun?” he had said. “Go ahead! Here’s a hundred dollars! But don’t come home!” Bigthorn shut his eyes briefly. That had been his first and last binge, and it was a painful memory.…
The tourists shuffled along the upward-curving concourse of the Strip, passing the game stalls, the video-game parlors (sign over the doorway of Aladdin’s Lamp: NO CYBERPUNKS.), the brothels like Chateau L’Amour (French hetererotica), Sister Mercy’s (lightweight S&M fantasy), and Great Balls O’ Fire (Texas-style macho-gay—the neon sign over the bar inside read SQUEAL LIKE A PIG!). Then there were the cheap souvenir and clothing shops (moon rocks with painted faces, T-shirts with variations on the Clarke County logo, Gumby dolls in space-suits) like Ol’ Cap Kennedy’s, where bits and pieces of orbital space junk salvaged by cleanup robots were sold as paperweights and table lamps for outrageous prices (IF YOU CAN’T FIND IT HERE, the sign read, IT HASN’T BEEN LAUNCHED YET).
They stared into the windows with the glassy, jaded expressions of banqueters picking over delicacies; husbands trying to figure out how to get away from their wives long enough to bop into Chateau L’Amour for a quickie, while their wives secretly admired the bulging codpieces of the hunks hanging around the doorway of the California Dream Inn. The aromas of Polish kielbasa, fried dough, and beer mingled with the faint tang of Lebanese hashish and Mexican grass wafting from the door of Panama Red’s, where junior executive types stared at avant-garde videos while sucking on enormous spliffs. Man, you could blow a grand in a night in that place, the sheriff thought. And they probably do.