by Brian Trent
Gethin settled into a loose habit of lunching with two guilders in particular: Natalia and Jason Argos, brother and sister. They were the nearest he ever had to friends on Mars. Gethin felt a sudden throb of remorse for not saying goodbye to either of them.
Nine years, eleven months, three weeks.
A week before his departure, he and Lori made love for the last time. There were four days left on the marriage contract. In her bedroom gloom they coupled in languid, dreamy rhythm that seemed to last many hours. Afterwards, he felt like an empty shell.
“Will you be okay here while I’m gone?” she asked. She was heading to the glaciers again in the morning.
He didn’t answer.
“Gethin?”
His breath came out in a warm sigh, wordless and pregnant with meaning.
Lori looked at him. “So that’s it? We end in whispers and silence?”
“Lori…”
“We don’t have to renew our vows. Just…stay if you want. Stay while I’m away. You can look after Cody.” Cody was their eight-year-old calico. “And when I come back, we can talk.”
“Talk?” he mimicked. “When the fuck do we do that?”
“We can talk at Evermist,” she said excitedly, “at our table in the skydome.”
“You’re going to be gone three months.”
She laughed acidly. “So? What are three months in—”
“Listen to me, will you?”
“Then fucking go!” she screamed. The sound was terrible at such close range. “Just make sure that everything you own goes with you, so when I get back this place will be mine again!” And she pounded the pillow in helpless rage, fled to the guest room. In the morning she was gone, with her equipment and no note.
That’s how Martians were. Proud and independent, frowning on emotional outbursts until they had them…and then, those outbursts were as huge as they were short-lived.
Mars is not for me, he said over and over to himself, repeating the mantra as he packed. Dust, rust, and ice. I hate it here.
And so he’d slogged through a lonely breakfast in an empty house. Packed his things. Set the housebot to care for Cody. Made a final tour of the rooms and, anxiety mounting, stopped off at the space elevator’s Save Station, his ticket to VG Flight 3107 folded in his bag.
Gethin swallowed his emotions. On the Night Train he accessed the web. Images of shuttle debris on Luna continued parading atop every newsfeed. Investigators were now confirming there had been an explosion in a Prometheus Industries laboratory just seconds before the shuttle accident. Two fatalities; again there was an ‘unverified report of a possible survivor transferred to an undisclosed medical ward’.
He grinned mirthlessly and swallowed his coffee. The caffeine was already working on him, exciting his heart into a gallop. The tomato mush gurgled in his stomach, stewing in virgin stomach acids.
He attempted to contact Id and Ego.
*Gethin,* Id said amicably, shuffling out from its neural hideout like a groggy bear called forth into April thaw. The presence of the Familiar hovered over his shoulder like a shadow. Following it down the synaptic tunnel came another shapeless entity.
“We’ve left Mars,” Gethin explained. “I need to know if all your files are intact.”
*Why wouldn’t they be?* Id asked.
Two passengers in baggy black suits walked by, eyes glowing slightly with artificial nightshine, common among miners. In the blackness they looked like panthers on the prowl.
Gethin shivered unexpectedly. “Ego, we’re going to Tycho Hospital, and there’s a sporting good chance they won’t let me in to see the patient I want.”
Recalling the details of the IPC mission dossier, he asked, “Is there a listing for Kenneth Cavor?”
“I need a security guard login, granting access to the ICU wing.”
The train trembled on its tracks. Gethin flagged the stewardess down and requested another coffee, aware that his hands were starting to shake. Outside the window, recurring pale lights flashed by like stars against the blasted-out engineering of the Lunar tunnel.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, the train doors opened on a glossy black platform. It was deserted except for a lonely cleaning bot vacuuming the floor. Gethin stepped off the train into the cold draft of the Lunar underworld. The hospital’s subterranean revolving door faced him.
Behind him, the Night Train sped away, beckoned to other locales.
Gethin approached the doors. Purple graffiti suddenly materialized on the nearest wall and, before he could react, sprayed him with a pressurized hiss. Gethin leapt back, drawing an arm up to his nose.
It was too late. A big-breasted woman with nipples like daggers slid across his body in his mind. Prowling behind her were other temptresses, flashing black-lit smiles. He felt greedy suction around the head of his penis. Lips kissed his ear and whispered: “We’re waiting for you at Lilith’s. Twenty-three Eaton Avenue, Lowell Station.”
Gethin cursed and went through the revolving door.
The lobby was an eerily empty rotunda, murky and dim. A camera studied him as he went to the desk.
“Hi,” he said.
There was no one there. His voice bounced across the antiseptic hospital like in a mausoleum. Gethin swallowed, heart pounding. A morbid thought raced in his head:
What if I’m dead?
He thought of the deserted platform where the train had left him. Black floor like in the regen center. Perhaps this really was death; he had been killed on Mars, not on a shuttle ride he couldn’t remember, and these desolate locations were simply the deranged flashes of neurons in his head, the post-mortem tautologies of dying sentience.
A pale, pretty nurse stepped out from a fileroom. Her ruby lips drew into a smile.
“I’m sorry!” she laughed. “I didn’t hear you come in. We get used to quiet during the graveyard shift.”
“No doubt. A friend of mine was careless with a moon drill. Some people will do anything for some paid comp time, eh? Harold Sikorsky. I think he’s on the third floor?”
The nurse touched her screen. “Sikorsky is in room 302. Yes, third floor.”
“Thanks.” He hesitated. “By the way, someone sprayed a pheromod on the wall outside.”
The nurse sighed. “Again? I’m so sorry! Please accept our apologies. I’ll have it scrubbed right away. Those people at Lowell have no shame.”
Indeed, he thought, alerted by something in her voice and bearing that suggested she knew more about the pheromod than she should. He was half tempted to continue the conversation just so he could activate his sniffers and get to the bottom of it; her body language and stress patterns would likely reveal a fascinating story of after-hours employment.
But Gethin only nodded and turned to find the elevators.
On the third floor he got out, located the stairs, and climbed them.
Despite the cameras, Gethin climbed the next two flights of stairs unseen, knowing that to the security system he was now registering as part of the hospital’s staff. No one looked at faces anymore. They only looked at what computers told them; if anyone happened to be glancing at the stairwell camera, they’d pay more attention to the bright green letters hovering over his head informing them that he was a hospital security guard. If they didn’t recognize his face, it didn’t matter.
He opened the fifth-floor doors. A beige hallway ran east to west, with a floor the color of coffee. Helpful wall signs pointed to the nurses’ station. By his optics’ compass, he knew Cavor’s room was westward. Room 542.
With Ego hooked into the medical database, columns of info sprouted on his eye each time he passed a room. <536, Harold Stapledon, admitted three days ago for chest pains. 537, Anya Bach on her second day of nanite scrubbing for ovarian cancer. 538, Patrice Carlotta, admitted yesterday for six pulverized spinal disks. 539>
“Cut that,” Gethin whispered. The columns blinked away.
542. Cavor, Kenneth. The information displayed black on the door’s infopanel. Gethin slid the door open, closed it swiftly behind him.
The room had a strange smell. Gethin breathed deep, letting it curl into his nostrils. It was like burned insulation, or the rancid smell of charred matter from a rocket pad when some unfortunate glop got caught beneath the blastoff.
Gethin approached the plastic curtain of Cavor’s bedside and drew it back.
At first he didn’t know what he was looking at. Kenneth Cavor was supposed to have been in the bathroom when the explosion happened at the research lab; the IPC dossier reported that had been his last biometric login. He was supposed to have been badly burned. He was supposed to be able to recover.
Gethin felt a bead of nervous sweat trickle down his face.
The hospital bed was fused with black, charred remains. It might have been tar, if not for the scorched-meat smell. Through the immolation, bones were visibly melted with the carbonized remains of clothing, ash, and the rubber bed beneath.
But the bed itself was unburned. Even the IV line was intact, snaking like a transparent umbilical cord to the obliterated mass on the bed.
Gethin felt bile in the back of his throat. He backed away from the bed.
Then he noticed the room’s vent. The metallic grate was melted. He peered down its narrow shaft. The walls were streaked with scorch marks like tigerstripes.
Gethin buried Ego and ran for the door, in time to collide with the hospital’s armed security officers.
Chapter Four
A Babylonian Mystery
Sixteen hours into the Flight 3107 tragedy, the newsfeeds were coalescing into a single mind like a living, gestalt organism, demanding answers in fear and fury. Luna’s corporate hydra was livid, and officials swarmed over the moon’s surface in a dance of desperation. Experts descended on the recovered debris, detained hapless cleanup crews, nabbed spaceport logs, and waited breathlessly for answers. Even Mars was putting pressure on the locals. And the Actors’ Guild was sure to be next.
Earthside on Level 299 in the Babylon arcology of New York’s Hudson Valley, Jack Saylor, sector chief for Prometheus Industries Babylon, rubbed his bearded jaw in mute anxiety. The Lunar landscape displayed as a sprawling holo across his office.
“There,” Internal Affairs Officer Keiko Yamanaka said, pointing to what resembled an igloo village built from Lunar dirt. “We’re looking at the PI Base 59 complex, Kepler crater, at 1451 Earthtime yesterday.”
Supervisor Drake Fincher was the only other person in the room. A handsome Zulu officer transferred from the great African state, his uniform sported the Zulu sideways green Y in addition to the green and silver PI colors. Fincher was frowning, hugging himself.
Jack watched the unchanging moonscape, waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, he nervously cleared his throat. “I don’t see what—”
One of the lab igloos exploded soundlessly.
Through the breach emptied a river of light. It shot overhead like a luminous arrow. The lab vomited desks, chairs, and assorted office inventory, and then the view was motionless and serene once more.
“They were blown up?” Jack cried.
Keiko tapped her fingers and the footage changed. A new holo swapped in, this one offering an Earthrise view from Tanabata Shuttleport. Flight 3107 was a speck in the black sky, descending towards an available landing pad.
The luminous arrow from the lab struck it head-on, shattered it like a clay skeet. Keiko moved her hands, zooming the view. Jack’s stomach lurched in sympathetic inertia.
Flight 3107 was a floating debris field, its torus ring shattered. But the focus of the zoom was the luminous arrow. Having struck the shuttle, it appeared to be on a trajectory for deep space…
…when it banked sharply towards Earth. A turn of almost ninety degrees.
Jack’s mouth was suddenly dry. “What in the holy hell?”
The luminous arrow was no longer visible. But that turn! Veering off as if by a magician’s trick.
Keiko replayed the image twice more, finally freeze-framing the moment of the impossible change of direction.
Jack stepped into the hologram for closer inspection. At six-foot-eight, two hundred and sixty pounds, he towered over it even at magnification. “At the apex of its turn, it changes shape. See?”
“I see,” Keiko replied crisply.
“There’s a complex pattern there. Fraying all along the edges.”
“Yes.”
“Like cilia, if I had to match it to something.”
Keiko was watching Drake. His ebony skin lost some luster.
“Level with us,” she said. “What did we have up there?”
Their supervisor raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“What were they working on at Base 59?”
“Nothing that could cause an explosion.”
“Not good enough.”
“I don’t care,” Drake said irritably. “You don’t have the clearance, I don’t have the authority to—”
“Then what are we talking to you for?” she yelled. “Have you accessed the web lately? Mars, Venus, the AF…all joined in a demand for answers! All flights to Luna delayed or rerouted! The IPC is going crazy and the only reason they’re not crashing down our door is that they haven’t seen this footage yet.”
Jack sucked in a breath, delighted to see that Keiko’s incendiary temper hadn’t cooled from her two years away in the Belt. The company encouraged employees to pull rotations out there – it was seen as a fast track to promotion. But it wasn’t for everyone. Jack had known men and women who went to the deeps full of arrogance and ambition, only to return…changed. As if the void had broken something in their spirit. Reduced them to an odd reticence and economy of movement.
But not Yamanaka. The firebrand he’d worked with for five years was undiminished. Great stars! She really is destined for a lofty office within the company. For all her dainty appearance, with a doll-like face and small brown eyes, she had a way of going on the attack that could freeze a bot in its tracks.
She was also a true believer. Convinced that the Promethean destiny was to propel the human race beyond the reaches of Sol…to hell with the IPC ban.
“Where did you get the clip?” Drake demanded.
Keiko’s eyes glittered in challenge. “From a friend who works at the base’s comm tower. He was driving a buggy topside when he came across debris. He saw the wrecked base, hurried back to the tower, and found this playback from its security camera.”
“Why are we only seeing this now?”
“Because he didn’t find the debris until five hours after the shuttle explosion. Base 59 is remote, Drake. By the time he discovered the aftermath, scoured the camera feed, and sent it to me…”
Drake paced once through the room. His moustache twitched.
“What did we have up there?” she asked again.
“Nothing.”
“I can already see the headlines!” She was still connected to the holomodul
e, so words appeared on the holopanel’s field in bold white letters as she spoke: “What Happened on Luna? ‘Nothing,’ Says PI Spokesman Fincher.”
Drake’s retort caught in his throat. His forehead creased and he muttered something. It took Jack a minute to realize the man was in communication with the corporate brass. Finally, he nodded and returned to them.
“It was TNO material,” he said.
Keiko hesitated. She exchanged glances with Jack.
“Okay,” Jack said, “Was there any TNO material that could—”
“No,” Drake said sternly.
“Nothing combustible?”
“Nothing. Virtual testing environments only. The most dangerous thing they had up there was a goddamn toaster.”
Jack flushed. “Then it was an attack. What about visitor logs to the base?”
“The Merrils were there. Both killed in the explosion. And assistant Kenneth Cavor was in the bathroom at the time of the explosion.”
“Have the Merrils been revived?”
“Yes. They’re being held for questioning by our query team, but of course they can’t tell us what happened.”
“And Cavor?”
“Burns over eighty percent of his body. Comatose. He was taken immediately to Tycho Hospital in secret.”
Keiko started to talk, then caught herself. “We wish our brother a speedy recovery and absence of suffering.”
Both men bowed their heads respectively. “May our brother recover with speed and without suffering,” they chanted.