Helman frowns at me. “It’s hard to impress your boss, huh?”
I stare at him. “She has standards.”
He looks at me for a moment, then shakes his head and walks out. I finish scanning the room and follow.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Moon—nearside—Hotel Tranquility
4 hours after the most mansplainy hospital tour in history
“Handsy bastard,” Jessica says, pouring herself a drink from the mini-bar in my hotel room. “Thanks for running interference today.”
“Just doing my job,” I say, sitting at the work desk and waiting for my mission recorder logs to sync down to the laptop. My left eye collected a lot of data in the hospital. “I’m curious, though, why didn’t you want me to stick my head in the brain machine?”
She looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Your brain is what you use for the pocket.”
“But he was just going to make me move my fingers, right?” I’ve seen this demonstration before: a transcranial inducer can be used to suppress or amplify signals in the brain, and if you know which areas to stimulate, you can cause specific muscle movements. “That’s not a big deal.”
“We don’t know how your brain works,” Jessica says.
I frown at her. “I’m pretty sure we do, a little bit.”
“I mean we don’t know exactly how you open the pocket or control its characteristics,” she says, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand. It’s not like Jessica to be imprecise with language. Or to drink a straight double vodka. “I didn’t want to accidentally reveal your superpower to a civilian douchebag.”
“Come on. He wasn’t that bad, was he?” I’m doing my best to lighten the mood. “I mean, he’s a doctor, he went to Stanford, he works on the Moon…”
Jessica glares at me. “I’m not in the market for a relationship right now.”
She gulps down the rest of her drink and walks back to the mini-bar. I hope she’s going for something solid, but she pulls out another tiny bottle of vodka and starts opening it.
“Anything you want to talk about?” I ask.
She refills her glass. I try to stay optimistic: at least she’s not drinking directly from the bottle. “No. How’s that data transfer going?”
I look at the laptop. “Seems fine.”
“Oliver didn’t call back?”
“Not yet.” I sent a status update when we left the hospital, but Oliver hasn’t acknowledged it yet. I’m not too concerned, but it is unusual for him to wait to tell me what I did wrong, no matter how minor the consequence. “Are you sure there’s nothing on your mind?”
“I appreciate your concern,” Jessica says, not looking at me, “but this really isn’t something you and I need to discuss.”
“Fine.” I am concerned about her long-term emotional stability, but right now I’m more interested in making sure she’s not going to lose it in the middle of our mission. “You don’t have to tell me about it. But will you promise that you’ll talk to someone about it? Soon?”
Jessica chuckles, staring down at her glass. “Yes. I promise, I will.”
The laptop beeps, indicating that the download from my eye to the laptop has finished. I start configuring the upload back to the office—we’re on a public connection to the internet here, and anything else would look suspicious, so I have to use a special program to break up our massive data files into smaller packets that get sent over different routes at different times, to avoid interception. Everything’s encrypted, but the agency is nothing if not paranoid. We always tear up the treasure map before putting the pieces through the mail.
“So,” I say while typing away on the laptop, “what are you thinking for dinner?”
“I’ll be fine on my own.”
I stop typing and look at Jessica. “I’m not sure that’s a good—”
“Don’t push your luck,” she snaps. “I promise I will talk to a medical professional about working through my grief. I promise I will not drink my dinner.” She sets her empty glass on the desk. “But I would really rather be alone tonight. I’m asking you to understand that and respect my boundaries.”
Her expression is uncharacteristically soft, and I hope that’s due more to grief than alcohol. I nod. “Can I just say one thing?”
I can tell it’s taking her a monumental effort to avoid rolling her eyes. “Go ahead.”
“I know it’s not nearly the same situation,” I say, “but I know what it’s like to lose a parent. If you change your mind and ever want someone to just listen.”
She blinks, and I can tell she wants to frown, but she doesn’t. “Thanks.”
“And remember, our doctor-patient confidentiality goes both ways.”
There’s the frown. “Get some sleep. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”
“You know, gambling is legal over in the French sector—”
“Go to sleep,” she says. “You never get enough sleep. Doctor’s orders.”
“Aye, aye, Doc.” I give her a mock salute.
“That’s insulting. Good night.” She walks back to her room and pulls the adjoining door shut.
* * *
I am not an idiot, so after I secure the laptop and set up the sensor-film alarm on the inside of my hotel room door, I follow Jessica down to the lobby bar.
Jessica and I are both wearing external personal transponders for this mission. We always have agency-standard subdermal ID implants, which we use to unlock special equipment, but those don’t transmit more than a few centimeters. Her necklace and my wristwatch broadcast secure beacons so we can locate each other if we get separated.
I bring up a map of the hotel and find Jessica’s transponder blip blinking green on the ground floor. I add a basic infrared display so I can see where all the civilians are. I’m surprised so many people are still up and about this late at night. The crowd in the bar appears to be spilling out into the lobby, and they’re not just standing around; there’s a lot of activity.
I walk quickly away from my room, toward an exit stairwell. Not that I’m paranoid or anything, but even though it’s highly unlikely that any hostile governments or terrorist groups know that Jessica and I are here and plan to abduct one or both of us, lots of random people in one place means a lot more collisions between them, and some of those interactions might turn unpleasant if one of the people in question is already tense because of the crowds and the recent death of her mother.
Sometimes it’s not the nature of the threat we need to watch out for, it’s the consequence if something goes sideways. A fistfight breaking out between two civilians is one thing. If someone happens to injure Jessica, that adversely affects our mission. I have to at least keep an eye on her, and make sure the crowd doesn’t turn into a mob for some reason—or if it does, do my best to get us both the hell out of there before the trampling begins. It’s not that I’m cynical and pessimistic about human nature. I’ve just seen too many things go wrong when you get a lot of people together in the same place and then scare the living daylights out of them.
Besides, I haven’t tried the cocktails at this place yet. I recently developed a taste for vodka martinis.
I bound out of the stairwell on the ground floor, hanging in midair longer than expected because of the one-sixth gravity I’m still not accustomed to, and nearly crash into a very tall figure wearing what appears to be silver thermal blanket material that has been sewn into a notional spacesuit. I can’t see the face behind the mirrored bubble helmet—which also has two silver antennae sticking out of the top—but I wave at the front of the person, which I can tell is the front because of the large nameplate reading ARMSTRONG across the chest.
“Sorry,” I say, moving to one side and looking for a path through the crowd.
The bubble helmet nods, and a male voice crackles through a hidden loudspeaker somewhere inside the costume: “You ought to try taking small steps, friend, instead of giant leaps.”
A few people around the silver astronaut laugh. Easy room. I flash a fake
smile and move toward the bar.
There are a lot of people in costume here. Several other astronauts, wearing different variations on antique spacesuits, most of which are not accurate as far as I can tell—what the hell are all those hoses doing sticking out of the side there?—but one does have to admire their enthusiasm. Some of the other costumes include robots, one of which I recognize from an old twentieth-century entertainment vid, and various types of imagined fantastical alien creatures. There’s a bunch of mice carrying chunks of green cheese. There’s a pile of gray Moon rocks on the ground that rises to become an articulated humanoid form—a rock creature with small formations that separate to mimic a mouth and mitten-like hands.
“Sir! Excuse me, sir!” A young man wearing at least four different lanyards with holo badges around his neck plus display goggles bounces up to me. “If you’re not part of the costume contest, I’ll have to ask you to please stand to one side.” I see some kind of display flickering in the lenses of his goggles. Probably not showing him information as critical as my own eye implant.
“Sorry,” I say, following his gestures to move toward one wall—farther from the bar, but I can circle around. Jessica’s transponder signal is still very close. “Seems like an odd time for a costume contest, though.”
The kid literally rolls his eyes at me. “Midnight events are very popular. And we have programming at all hours right now. This week is the anniversary of the first Moon landing, as you may know.”
“Yeah, kind of hard to miss that,” I say.
Something flashes in his goggles, and his head whips around. “Sir! No, please, excuse me, sir, you can’t do that here! Sir!”
I leave the enforcer to his duties and track down Jessica at the bar. She’s chatting up a very pale redheaded man with freckles. Didn’t know she was into freckles. I keep myself behind her back, using the transponder signal from her necklace as a guide, so she doesn’t spot me. I’m not sure she would care, but I don’t want to ruin her evening. It’s too noisy in here for me to make out the conversation, even with my super-hearing implants, and I can’t see her face to try out my eye’s lip-reading software.
Might as well enjoy a beverage while you’re waiting, Kangaroo.
The bar’s crowded, though there are fewer costumes in here. It takes a good five minutes for one of the bartenders to notice me, and by the time he does, Jessica has apparently made plans to leave with the redhead. I see him negotiating with another bartender to pay his bill while Jessica downs the rest of her drink.
“What can I get you?” my bartender asks.
“Vodka martini,” I say. “Dirty, with a pickle.”
He stares at me for a moment. “Did you say pickle?”
“Yeah. Kosher dill, if you have one. Is that a problem?”
“Not at all.” The bartender pulls a tablet out of his apron and scribbles something on it. “Are you staying with us here at Hotel Tranquility?”
“Yeah.” I hold out my thumb so he can press it against his tablet’s scanpad to charge the drink to my room.
“Thank you, sir. Your drink’s coming right up.”
He disappears around the curve of the bar. It’ll take him some time to run back to the kitchen and scare up the ingredients for my pickle martini. I fight my way through the crowd to the other end of the bar and see Jessica and her redheaded boy toy stop in front of an elevator.
I duck back behind the wall as she turns her head in my direction and nearly crash into a woman wearing a sleeveless white leotard with black stripes and thigh-high matching boots, and carrying a complicated bulbous prop that looks just like—
“Barbarella?” I blurt out, surprised to see a character from a cheesy mid-twentieth-century B movie. The only reason I recognize it is because I had a huge crush on the actress when I was younger. Honestly, I don’t remember much about the film besides her outfits. Or lack thereof, in certain scenes.
“Edwin?” the woman says, and it’s only then that I recognize her. She’s done her hair and makeup to match the movie character, and she looks stunningly different. “It’s me. Breyella Wilgus.”
“Right. I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you in that—” I gesture at her outfit, which I now notice is distractingly skintight. “That’s quite a costume.”
“I’m surprised you recognized it,” she says. “I mean, I picked it because I was amused that the character’s name was so similar to mine, but apparently it’s from a very obscure old vid show.”
I don’t bother correcting her reference. “Please tell me you’re in the costume contest, because otherwise this is a little weird.”
She smiles. “Hey, what I do with my personal time is my own business. But yes, I am entered in the contest.” She looks at the large round timepiece on her wrist. “My category isn’t up for a few more minutes, so I was just going to grab a drink. What are you up to?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” I say. “Jet lag, I suppose.” I look over her shoulder just in time to see Jessica and the redhead walking into an elevator. Dammit.
The bartender appears next to us at the end of the bar and sets down a glass of cloudy liquid. “Here you are, sir. Vodka martini, dirty, with kosher dill pickle juice.”
“Thanks.” I take a gulp of my drink.
“I don’t think that’s going to help you sleep,” Breyella says, nudging my shoulder with her prop ray-gun.
Speaking of flirting. I blink my left eye to show Jessica’s transponder location. It looks like her elevator’s gone upstairs. That’s fine. I’ll be able to pick up her signal anywhere in the hotel. And I don’t really need to see what I imagine she’ll be doing with the redhead for the next little while, so I might as well wait here with Barbarella. I mean Breyella. Wow, that martini is strong.
“Something for you, miss?” the bartender asks Breyella.
I set my shoulder-phone to log Jessica’s position at all times while Breyella orders a cocktail. “Put it on my tab,” I say before the bartender leaves.
“Oh, that’s not necessary,” Breyella says.
“I insist,” I say, and wave the bartender away. “I have an expense account.”
“Well, thank you, Edwin.” I hear something buzzing, and Breyella’s smile goes away. “I’m sorry. I need to take this call.”
“No problem.” I turn away as she produces a mobile phone from some hidden compartment sewn into her costume, then use the opportunity to start a face-reco search on Jessica’s redheaded friend. I blink my eye display off when I hear Breyella sniffling.
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
“I’m fine,” she says, dabbing at her wet eyes with a tissue. That’s some remarkably resilient makeup she’s wearing. “Just going through some stuff with my girlfriend.”
Now I’m confused by the flirting. “Does she also work at Lunar General?”
“No,” Breyella says, wiping her nose and putting the crumpled tissue on the bar. “She’s back on Earth.”
Okay, less confused now. “Sorry to hear that. Long distance relationships are tough.”
Breyella nods. “You too?”
She must have heard it in my voice. I really need to keep my guard up. “Sort of.”
“So where’s your partner?”
“She’s—she travels a lot,” I say, recovering. “Spaceship engineer. Interplanetary.”
“Have you been together long?”
“Just since last summer. But I’m not sure we were ever really ‘together,’” I add. “It’s complicated.”
“I hear that.”
A lot of bad stuff happened last summer, when the agency’s former D.Int went AWOL. But at least one good thing happened too: I met Eleanor Gavilán—Ellie—the chief engineer aboard the spaceliner that we saved from crashing into Mars. And she didn’t hate me.
The problem is, she doesn’t know me. Not really. And I’m not sure how far our relationship can go if I can’t tell her the truth about myself—who I am, what my job is, how likely it is I’m going to die or be
captured on any given day.
I don’t know how long I can keep lying to someone I want to love.
The bartender delivers Breyella’s drink, a large ice cube in brown liquid garnished with a curl of lemon peel, before she can pry any further. She raises her glass toward me.
“To simpler things,” she says.
I raise my glass and clink it against hers. “Simpler things.”
My eye lights up with the results of the face-reco search, and I read them over as I take a sip of my drink.
The redhead is Jeremiah Burgess, a maintenance supervisor at the municipal power utility company. He’s also flagged as an agency asset. Makes sense. Jessica wouldn’t risk having a one-night stand with just any random person; she picked someone the government had already vetted for at least minimal security clearance.
I blink my eye over to check where Jessica is now and nearly do a spit take when I see the message TRANSPONDER OUT OF RANGE. I carefully set down my drink and rack my brains for a reason to excuse myself from Breyella’s company.
“Pardon me for one second,” I say. “I’m just going to find out what vodka he put in here.”
“Not your brand?”
“I’ll be right back.”
I turn around so Breyella won’t see me staring off into space while I bring up Jessica’s transponder logs in my eye. I walk to the other end of the bar and pretend to wait for the bartender. Fortunately, he seems to be mixing a series of very complicated drinks, so I have some time to find out where Jessica disappeared to.
The log indicates that she went back up to her hotel room, stayed for just a few minutes, and then left again—but she rode a freight elevator downstairs and went out a service entrance. Probably went back to the room for some gear to crack hotel security. Possibly also contraceptives. Or cash to pay for gigolo services. I’m not going to speculate.
The problem is, Jessica didn’t leave through the tube station, where the agency has data taps, and where I would be able to pick up her transponder signal. Her date apparently had his own vehicle, and her necklace transmitter isn’t strong enough to reach our monitoring satellites. Especially if she’s riding around in a radiation-shielded surface rover.
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