King's County (5 page)

From orbit we swung once around the
Earth to catch the right trajectory to hit the Moon base. Ed got a
look around and decided to sleep most of the way there. The Earth
and Sun and Moon were beautiful but you couldn't stare at them
forever, I guess, even at high speed.

I read books on the HUD, the
heads-up-display. They could be switched from print to audio. I'd
listen to one while reading another or while browsing images.
Biology, archeology, paleontology, military history, art history,
architecture, lots of photos, museums, biographies: everything was
available. It was just up to me to find it. Why didn't I read this
stuff in college? I started War and Peace but gave up on it. I
finished half of Moby Dick and saved the rest for later. Some of
the time I just stared out of the window into the nothingness, just
thinking to myself. I hadn't yet taken a pill.

Ed was in slow motion. Every so often
he'd croak something out. It took him a minute or two just to make
a simple statement. He couldn't possibly have understood my
response.

92 hours passed quickly. The harshly
sunlit, ashy gray Moon swelled in a corner of the window. I fed Ed
his wake-up pill. Details on the surface crystallized. Craters,
vague impressions at first, became discernible with edges and lips.
Smaller and smaller craters, craters within craters, came into
focus and ran off the sides as we closed in. We saw the base, a
dark gray rounded rectangle with two large orange stripes running
the length of the roof.

*

AK/WA 2092

Within a few hours of Colonel Jackson
dismissing me, they had me processed and put on a plane. I had a
temporary access card and a duffel bag. My uniforms and badges I
surrendered. I kept the infantry boots to wear with my civilian
clothes. No one asked for them and I didn't want to give them up.
They're great boots that I still wear to this day.

The transport took off from the
Anderson base and climbed to 20,000 meters, making a long, gradual
arc down to SEA-TAC airport. I was alone except for one other
passenger, an older looking Sgt. Major who sat across from me and
refused to speak.

At the ramp, a woman was there to meet
me. She knew me by sight.

"Mr Waller?" It was Sunday and she was
wearing jeans. She looked into the center of my face when she
spoke.

"I’m your placement adviser, Alice."
She held out a hand then quickly withdrew it, seeing mine occupied
with the duffel bag.

"OK. So what do we do now,
Alice?"

She had a meeting room in the airport
reserved for us. I followed her for the short walk rolling my bag
beside me on a powered cart. The glass doors opened at our
approach. Her assistant was waiting there with coffee.

Alice consulted her tablet for a moment
while the assistant checked me out from across the table. Alice
looked to be a year or two older than the assistant. They were both
sort of blandly cute, plain faced but healthy, with delicate wrists
and ankles which I liked.

"Is there something I can do
with...computers, maybe?" I asked her. She looked up and set the
tablet down. Her assistant laughed a little.

"You've been gone a long time." Alice
touched something on the tablet screen and seemed
satisfied.

"OK. You know how the access card
works? You have a job, an occupation, and that gives you access
privileges at certain places in certain cities.

"Right now, since you’re out of the
military and unplaced you have what's called a temporary card. Just
the basics, and you'll have to stay here in Seattle. We really
don't recommend leaving the airport until you are properly
placed."

"I have to stay here? How long will it
take to get placed?"

"Oh, not long," she said.

"How long? What about the space
privileges, whatever you call it? I was part of the Artemis
project."

"Yes, I know that. You’ll be placed
very soon. You’ll have that expanded access in your new
card."

"You don't know how long it will take?
Lady, Alice, I don’t want to live at the airport."

"Oh! No, you’ll be placed very soon.
Very soon." She was really struggling to give me an answer. The
attitude dropped. "Maybe...ten minutes?"

It was more like thirty minutes. Alice
asked me some questions, mostly boring details about my background.
I knew this was all for show. My answers obviously couldn't have
meant anything - they already knew everything. But the pretense
still seemed important to her. I wanted to ask Alice to drop it for
a minute and speak to me normally. What would happen if she
did?

I was placed in Seattle’s downtown
artist colony. I had no experience or formal education in anything
artistic and told her so. She said it didn't matter, that I’d learn
what I needed to know at the colony. She said individualist types
often do best in artistic environments and that my extra-Earth
experience might give me a unique perspective to contribute. This
was all read to me from her tablet.

I don't think she really believed it. I
was pretty sure that she knew almost nothing about the place I was
being sent. We finished with her presenting me my plain silver and
green card, followed by her reciting a long piece of legal
boilerplate of which I verbally affirmed my acceptance.

Without waiting to be told, I got up to
leave. Alice jumped up to stop me at the door. She asked about
Artemis. Nothing official, I think she just liked me.

*

Moon 2066

Our vehicle floated into a long gray
cave. In the rear monitor I saw a massive door close behind us.
Behind a glass wall, the Moon settlers patiently watched us,
waiting for the air pressure to normalize outside.

He had a wide smile showing all his
teeth. Ed and I had to remain embedded in our seats. We could only
communicate through the window and external instruments.

"Welcome!" He said. Another man’s face
popped into view. He gave us a thumbs up: they could now hear us.
Ed spoke first,

"How’s it going? Major Hart. This is
Captain Waller. Requesting permission to come ashore."

"Ahoy, matey!" One of the Moon guys
called out and made an exaggerated salute. The gathered settlers
laughed along with him. The smiling man held back, waiting to see
our reaction.

"Gordon." He said finally, "How are you
two feeling?"

"We’re fine, Gordon. Call me Ed. How
are we looking for the relaunch?"

"Working on it right now. We’ll know
something pretty soon. Trust me, you don't want us to rush
this."

He had a pleasant, easy way about him.
His coveralls were worn and looked comfortable.

A couple of good looking women came up
behind Gordon and peered into the module to wave at us. They wore
their brunette hair naturally long, loosely tied in the back. They
had a different look than I was used to seeing, healthy, or
something.

"Hey, what's y’all’s names?" Ed’s Texan
accent made a sudden appearance.

They laughed and glanced at each
other.

"I’m Halin and she’s Junna." said the
taller, slightly older woman. Her voice was clear and
confident.

“I'm Ed, Ed the Head. This lump here is
Captain Wally Wallerton the Fourth. I hear he's an
aristocrat.”

“I see. Very nice to meet you guys.”
She very briefly trailed her hand on the window, making eye contact
with me as she walked out of view. Her friend followed, leaving us
with a sheepish smile. I was in love with them both.

Our welcoming crowd thinned out quickly
as they went back to their duties. Ed and I could just sit and
wait. Through the external microphone, we heard various mechanical
noises coming from within the complex.

&

"Hey, Major Hart? Captain
Waller?"

We had fallen asleep. Gordon was
back.

"It's gonna be little bit." He held up
his wristwatch for us to see.

"That's GMT. We keep a diurnal schedule
here, by the way. We’re looking at around 22:45 for the relaunch,
about seven and a half hours. Sorry about that. You know we have to
have the right window."

"We’re in no hurry, man. That's only a
little behind schedule anyway." I said.

I was the flight engineer and it was my
responsibility to know the schedule but the words felt wrong when I
said them. I realized then that anyone could have sat in this seat.
I wasn't like Gordon. I was called Captain by the others and I had
a uniform with my name and rank on it but it meant nothing here. My
selection as an elite pilot meant nothing. Whatever I knew,
whatever I thought - my experiences, abilities, intentions and
feelings, good or bad, meant nothing outside of myself. Ed and I
were just passengers and would not, could not, have any effect on
whatever was going to happen on this flight.

*

WA 2092

My room at the colony was on K, more or
less the 11th floor, and overlooked the public square. It was fine.
It was enough, clean and nicer than any of the military
dorms.

The square outside was paved in
alternating basalt and granite tiles that changed their contrast
when wet by the frequent rainfall. On the right side was a cafe
with a mass of dark green and yellow tables and chairs. A squat man
in plain slacks and an apron moved slowly among them, shepherding
around a small dog on an electronic leash.

Standing at the window, looking down at
the square, I resolved to try to make the most out of the
situation.

On a small side table was a package of
fruit wrapped in cellophane with a bottle of some local wine.
Seeing the wine and its label with a map of Puget Sound gave me an
idea. I messaged Alice, thinking she might want to meet up
somewhere.

After half an hour, she hadn’t
responded so I popped open the wine and messaged her assistant. She
claimed to not remember me but said she’d maybe want to go out
later in the week anyway. Obviously she was lying but I played
along.

The wine went fast so I went out for a
look around. It was early afternoon when I walked out of the
building. The heavy clouds were thinning. By the time I crossed the
empty square, the sun was exposed in a patch of blue sky and was
burning off the film of mist that covered everything.

I walked a block east and still saw no
people or cars at all, just rows of closed up old buildings. Coming
to an intersection, it looked like more of the same down every
street. I turned around and went west toward the water.

Approaching the highway, the view of
the waterfront was blocked by a thick concrete wall holding in a
densely planted mass of tall green grass. Nearby were some stairs
that led to a foot bridge going across it.

The bridge was a clear glass tube with
slight ridges along the flattened bottom. Looking down from it, I
saw there were only two highway lanes still in use. A red and white
shuttle zipped under my feet almost noiselessly.

Seeing the calm bay made me want a
cigarette. I sat down on a damp bench and waited. People were here
off in the distance in both directions. A man leisurely pedaling a
bicycle caught my attention. He was looking at me.

Out of instinct, I turned around to
check my surroundings and got a surprise. The old downtown office
towers that I saw earlier were not abandoned. The windows were
removed out of the top floors and all sorts of plants and trees
filled the interiors. Bright white indoor lighting leaked out
outshining the weak northern sun. I wondered how I had missed
seeing them.

The man on the bicycle stopped in front
of me. He smiled at me with his big, fleshy face. He had a pointed
nose, long light brown curly hair and was clean shaven. His loose
fitting dark jeans and light brown woolen blazer looked like they
had been worn many days in a row.

"Hey, bud. What's new?" I
said.

He looked anxious for a moment then
turned to the box on top of the back wheel of his bike. He withdrew
a piece of orange fruit on a stick, handed it to me with a flourish
and a bow then rode off without ever saying a word. It was a mango,
salted a little, not bad.

I wanted to ask him about the old
buildings. I finished the mango and stuck the stick into the
ground. A couple of women came noisily through the bridge, both of
them talking at the same time. They dropped a bunch of dusty,
old-fashioned video camera equipment near my bench.

The women were dressed in coarse long
black dresses. They seemed to be flabby underneath their clothes
which was unusual nowadays. Nobody was overweight anymore. The
women both had long black hair pulled back and pallid
skin.

There was something else about them.
They seemed old but not in any immediately obvious way. They
weren't wrinkled or slow moving. Their voices were young but
toneless and flat. Everything they said came out sounding
irritated.

The women's behavior was more telling.
They fussed around with that heavy antique camera stuff while
continuously arguing with each other. There was a weariness about
them that made me think they'd done this, whatever it was, many
times before.