Dead Man on the Moon (24 page)

"Shit, man—you hit the gravy train. Hold on to her!"

Noah frowned. "Isn't it supposed to be the woman who's looking for a wealthy husband?"

"Who gives a shit? I'd be a kept man any day."

The phrase
kept man
made Noah feel suddenly strange, off-balance. He decided to change the subject. "Hey, you know how to cook fish? I'm not good at it."

"Yeah, I can cook. Wade sucks at it, but I'm not bad."

"Cool. How about I provide the food and you make supper?"

Jake agreed to this, and Noah watched his roommate put together a quick batter of beer and breadcrumbs. He dragged several fillets through it and dropped them into smoking hot oil, where they crackled and hissed. They ate on the packing crate, dipping the hot, crisp pieces into malt vinegar.

"You'll have to teach me how to do that," Noah said when the last bite had disappeared. "At home I eat out a lot, but that'll break the bank up here."

"Unless you get your rich girlfriend to treat you."

"Uh . . . yeah. Hey, where's Wade, anyway?"

Jake shrugged. "Haven't seen him lately He comes and goes. I don't really pay close attention."

Noah helped clear the table, thanked Jake for the cooking, and headed down to the Dai Theater. He arrived exactly on time, and Judy Roberts, the stage manager, favored him with a curt nod at his promptness, and showed him to a tiny dressing room. A student whose name Noah didn't catch carefully slathered makeup on his face and hands and combed his auburn hair. When she was about halfway done, Wesley Yard popped into the room.

"I came across a couple glitches with the lighting," he said, "but they're fixed now. Everything should run perfectly."

Noah thought back to the debacle of the tech rehearsal and suppressed a grimace. Wesley's words didn't fill him with confidence. Wesley sketched a hesitant wave at Noah and disappeared.

The makeup artist, meanwhile, gave Noah's a hair a final flick, pronounced it "smashing," and left as well. Noah checked his watch. Quarter to eight. He wanted to venture onto the stage and peek at the audience, but restrained himself—not only was it unprofessional, it was bad luck. Besides, he had to figure out his lineup.

Noah pulled his monocle around and called up a news-feed to skim the latest. A story about the John Doe now carried a computer-generated image of his face. Anyone who might know him was asked to call Security. Noah studied the image with interest, failed to recognize the individual, and continued reading the feeds. Back in the States on Earth, President Fred Bachman was trying to muscle another peace agreement through southeast Asia.

Yeah, good luck with that,
Noah thought.

Three U.S. drug companies had successfully lobbied for legislation to open up various parts of South America to their market. A survey of Luna City occupations had turned up the fact that Luna had the lowest number of lawyers per capita of anywhere in the world—or solar system. Had to be a joke there somewhere.

Noah continued reading, falling into an old rhythm. First the government headlines, then a couple features, then ed
itorials, if he had time. The jokes would write themselves, if he just let the words flow. The storytelling part of the show would have to be old, comfortable material, since he hadn't had time to rehearse anything new. "Paul Bunyan" was a good one, as was the German version of Cinderella.

Judy Roberts poked her head into the dressing room. "We're ready for you backstage."

Noah rose to follow her. Showtime.

Dr. Karen Fang waited in the theater lobby. She watched the people filing in and waited. She checked her fingernail watch and waited some more. She tapped her foot and waited yet again.
Technically,
Linus wasn't late.
Technically,
curtain for Noah's show was set for eight o'clock, and it was barely a quarter of. But although Karen could be perfectly patient when it came to examining a patient or running tests, she was decidedly impatient when it came to her social life. People who showed up late to dinner parties sent her around the bend. Friends who arrived tardy at parties drove her loony. And blokes who were late for dates . . .

Karen firmly tamped down that train of thought. This wasn't a date. At least, not as far as Linus knew. They were just two friends going to see a show together. And afterward, they would get a drink together, and Karen would have a nice talk with Linus about sending their relationship in a new direction.

Or maybe she would say something now.

People moved through the lobby, laughing and chatting. Most were students. The show was free to them. Professors and researchers paid a nominal fee. Visitors and tourists paid exorbitant rates. Noah was a new performer, a new face, and that always meant a heavy turnout. Karen, for example, had never been a fan of the vaudeville revival, but here she was. She supposed the theater was perfect for Noah's kind of show. Red carpet and wall hangings gave the place a hushed, old-world elegance Karen liked very much. Carefully tended green plants hugged the walls. Ticket-sellers—people instead of computer terminals—sat in glass booths. Very posh to look at, but not particularly fascinating when you were waiting for a particular someone. Karen checked her fingernail again. Ten minutes to curtain. Where the hell was—

"Linus Pavlik, reporting for escort duty," he said next to her.

Karen's heart jumped deliriously in her chest and she turned to face Linus with a smile of greeting. Genuine gladness at his presence flooded her.

"Hoy, love," she said, and stood on tiptoe to give him a peck. His cheek had that wonderful male smell, a combination of shaved skin and a tiny bit of cologne. He wore a button-down shirt open at the neck and dark slacks, and a few curls of chest hair peeped over the line of his collar. Karen suppressed a desire to wind them around her fingers and instead contented herself with looking at him.

"What?" he said.

She paused for a single heartbeat. "Nothing," she said. "Let's go in."

"I have something to tell you," he said with a small smile.

"Oh? What's that?"

"I'll tell you when we get inside."

"That's a cheat," she said. "Tell me now."

"Not knowing heightens the experience," he said.

She gave him a playful smack on one solid shoulder. He offered her his arm in response, and they joined the shuffle
of people heading inside. Their tickets sent them to the center of the fourth row. Linus seated her with an automatic gallantry she knew he had learned in the Marines. The stage in front of them was bare except for a plain wooden stool and a small table with a pitcher and a glass of water on it. Karen glanced at Linus as he sat down beside her and experienced a delightful flutter.

It was only recently that she had realized how attractive Linus was. Stealth-handsome, she called it. She couldn't put her finger on the exact qualities. His dark hair was going silver, but it still contrasted sharply with his gray eyes. His nose, taken by itself, looked too large until you put it together with his mouth and eyes, and then it seemed strong and masculine. His shoulders were broad and powerful, his build square and reassuring. When the light caught him just right, as it did now, something in his face shifted from merely decent to surprisingly stunning. Linus would never turn heads the way Noah did, but that made it all the better—he could stay Karen's secret.

It wasn't just his looks, of course. Linus exuded a quiet strength and competence that made Karen feel like she didn't need to be so damned smart and good at her job all the time, as if she could be a human being instead of the ultra-proficient Chief of Medical Facilities in Luna City. She felt comfortable around Linus, no bullshit desired or required.

Karen also couldn't put an exact time or date on the realization that she was half in love with Linus Pavlik, but once she
had
realized it, she saw no reason not to tell him.

Except fear of rejection.

Karen had been married three times—divorced twice, and widowed once. Most people, she mused, would be soured on the idea of entering into another relationship, but Karen always kept the philosophy that you never knew until you tried.

The downside was that sometimes a try bit you in the ass.

"Any idea what Noah's going to do tonight?" Linus asked. His voice was low and sweet. Around them, the audience was settling into place, muttering to itself like a monster settling into its cave.

"Not knowing heightens the experience," she said.

"Ha ha," he said.

"Listen, love," Karen said. Her heart was beating fast and her mouth was dry. "There's something I wanted to ask you about, but I'm not sure how—"

"I know where our John Doe came from," Linus said abruptly.

Karen bolted upright and turned to face him, all thoughts of relationships driven out of her head. "You do? Where?"

"He was blown out of an airlock."

"I hope you can do better than that, love," she said with menace.

"Let me back up." His face was alight with enthusiasm now. "I was outside, following the evidence trail and thinking about our victim. He wasn't in any Luna City identification database. It was as if he had never existed here. And then I realized it was because he
didn't
exist here."

"Go on," she said. "You're clearly enjoying drawing this out. Just make sure you finish before the curtain rises or I'll drag you into the coatroom and beat it out of you."

"The victim wasn't in any of the Luna City databases because he never entered Luna City. He was blown out of an airlock, all right. But it wasn't a Luna City airlock. It was the airlock of a shuttle."

The solution landed on Karen like a second shoe hitting the floor. She smacked herself on the forehead. "I'm an idiot," she said. "Why didn't I think of that?"

"Because you weren't outside watching a shuttle come in for landing. It even explains the missing shoe and the bone Noah broke."

Most of the audience was seated and the talk was growing hushed. A small part of Karen wondered if Noah was standing backstage and if he felt nervous. "Go on. I assume
you'll explain how the body arrived at the dump site even though the shuttles don't fly over that part of the landscape."

"That's what threw me, too," Linus admitted. "Except sometimes they
do
fly over that crater—if the pilot makes a mistake."

"A mistake," she echoed.

"Every so often a pilot gets the math wrong and the shuttle overshoots the landing pad. It's rare, but it does happen. In such a case, the pilot has to flip the shuttle around with the maneuvering jets and fire the main booster to reverse course. At the moment the shuttle changed direction, the killer blew an airlock. John Doe's body was still traveling in the shuttle's original direction, so it continued going that way while the shuttle reversed. The net effect was to fling the body clear of the airlock. No one saw it happen because the shuttle was well past any witnesses at the landing site. You wouldn't see the body fly out unless you were looking at the shuttle with binoculars. No one was."

"The body landed in the crater," Karen said, picking up the thread. "That's when all the bones were broken. But what about the missing shoe and the bone Noah broke? I mean, without an atmosphere to create drag, the shoe should have traveled right along with the body, even if it came off. It wouldn't change course in a vacuum."

"There's a communication antenna between the crater and the spot where I think the body was ejected. John Doe's leg hit the antenna, which knocked the shoe off and sent it in a different direction. The impact cracked the bone partway through, and Noah broke it off the rest of the way. When the body landed, it skidded, creating what we
thought
was a drag mark. We might have realized sooner that it was an impact mark instead if it hadn't been partially obscured by all those footprints. But now we have it."

"Brilliant!" Karen said. She started to grab him in a hug, then thought the better of it. "So what's the next step? We still don't know who he is."

"Well, Hector found a file on the victim's obie that had been modified six months ago, so we know John Doe was alive then. All we have to do is check the station's records and see if any shuttles overshot in the last six months. Once we know which shuttle overshot, we'll have our primary crime scene."

The audience was growing restless. Karen glanced at her fingernail. Five after eight. The show was running behind. Normally this would have annoyed her, but at the moment she couldn't have cared less.