Lunar Descent (39 page)

Outside the storeroom and down the corridor, a couple of voices were singing: “This land is their land … it ain't our land … from the Wall Street office … to the Cadillac car-land.…”

Mighty Joe, still maintaining his lonely post by the empty vat, managed a perfectly disgusting belch, which made him weave a little on his perch. “That's depressing,” he grumbled to no one in particular. After concentrating for a moment, he bawled: “Well, standin' on the corner … with a dollar in my hand … Lookin' for a woman who's lookin' for a man … Tell me how long, do I have to wait?… Can I get you now, or must I hesitate?…”

He stopped and slurped some more moonshine from his cup. “That'll show 'em,” he muttered.

Undeterred, and just a little louder now, the voices down the hall continued singing in off-key
a capella:
“If this is our land … you'd never know it … so take your bullshit … and kindly stow it.…”

Listening to the distant voices, Lester, Annie, Quack, and Tycho broke up laughing. Joe scowled and brayed: “Well, the eagle on the dollar … says in God we trust … Woman wants a man, she wants to see a dollar first … Tell me, how long …”

The discordant voices rose even louder, the bastardization of Woody Guthrie's anthem drowning out Mighty Joe's attempt at “Hesitation Blues”: “So let's get together … and overthrow it … then this land will be for you and me!”

The song ended with cheering and more laughter. “Give it up,” Lester said, sitting on a collapsed crate of toilet paper. “You'll never beat 'em.”

“Nyehh …” Mighty Joe shook his head and sipped again on his drink. Finding his cup near empty, he swiveled around and pushed it underneath the spigot. He had lied about the vat being tapped out. There was just enough left to make a few close friends happy. Quack burped and held out his own paper cup, and Joe managed to take it between the thumb and index finger of his left hand while he refilled his own cup with his right hand. “They got the right idea, anyway … I mean, anyway. I mean, what the fuck's left?”

“No,” Lester mumbled. “We still … we still …”

Defiantly he held up a forefinger and shook it in the air as he stared fixedly between his knees. Something was stirring in his brain, weaving back and forth like a drunk driver trying to make his way home without running into a police roadblock. He remembered something Annie had said to him yesterday. Was it yesterday? A few hours ago—yep, that qualified as yesterday.…

“We've still got an option,” he managed to say clearly.

“What are you talkin' about, man?” Tycho was zipped, too, but he was more coherent than anyone else in the room. He stroked the thick black beard he had cultivated over the past few weeks—his skull was still as bald as an eight ball—and peered straight at Lester. “The company? We're shit out of luck there. One week … two weeks tops … and we're all on the unemployment line.” He shook his head dolefully. “Man, my father's gonna kill me. He told me not to come up to the Moon.”

“Man's right.” Mighty Joe passed Quack's cup back to him. “I mean, when he's right, he's right. The Japs'll have this place right in the pockets of their kimodos.…”

“Kimodo's a dragon,” Quack said.

“Their saris …”

“That's what they wear in India.”

“Well, their hibachis or their kamikazes or whatever the fuck they wear over there … Christ, where's Seki when I really need him?” Joe paused to belch noisily again. “Anyway, they'll have the base once Skycorp gets rid of it, and you know what's next?
Robots
, for the luvagod!” He swept his arm around to encompass the base. “Instead of a hundred hard-working American men and women, we've got twenty-five or fifty Japanese guys with VR helmets and wires coming outta their kazoos, sitting around teleoperating a buncha cheap-ass robots.”

He leaned forward on his box, angrily jabbing a finger at them. “But you think a robot can tell if something's not right on a job? Hell, you think a
robot
has a sense of fucking
pride
in his work? Sure, maybe they'll save some bucks …”

“Yen.”

“Go to hell, Quack. The point is …” He stopped as alcohol-fueled emotion overwhelmed his ability to form his thoughts into words. “Shit. The point is … the point is, people's what matters in the long run, not money or machines. And this is a place for people. We
made
this goddamn base, not some doohickey robot from Long Dong Electronics.”

“Fuckin' A, bubba,” Tycho said, holding up his cup in a toast. “Got that right in any language.”

“Damn straight.” Mighty Joe slumped back on his box and took another sip. Then he looked over at Lester. “So what's our option there, Les? What've you got that can save us?”

Lester opened his mouth to speak. The others turned to listen attentively, and suddenly he stopped short of saying the first words.
Jesus Christ
, he thought, in the part of his mind that still retained a little sobriety.
What the hell am I doing? This shouldn't be discussed even when I'm not cross-eyed. This isn't the time, this isn't the place
.…

And yet, there was the realization that this
was
the time and the place. And more important, these were the people. More than a hundred people had trooped into this room tonight and gotten themselves rip-shit drunk. Two days ago, he wouldn't have believed that he could allow this to happen, let alone participate in it. He would have shut down the party the minute he walked through the door.

But he had been here, had gotten plowed with his crew—no, not his crew, his fellow workers—and what had he seen? Or rather, what had he
not
seen. Not one argument. Not a single fist fight. There was a sense of …

He sought for the right word, and found it: community. The moondogs of Descartes were, as a whole, loud and obnoxious and weirder than hell. Nonetheless, they were a community. They obviously felt it among themselves, even if it was never articulated. Lester felt it operating—and counted himself a part of it. And true communities don't take this kind of bullshit lying down.…

“Les?” Quack asked. “You've got something you want to say?”

Lester sucked in his breath. He knew what Moss had been suggesting; all evening he had been pondering the idea. And here it comes.…

“Yeah,” he said. “One word …”

He stood up slowly, tottering on his feet, feeling the vile-smelling little storeroom tilt around him. Eight years on the wagon, pal, and look where it gets you: starting a goddamn worker's revolt.

“Strike,” he said. “We're going on strike.” Then he pitched forward and collapsed on the wet floor.

And just before he passed out, he heard Mighty Joe say, “Y'know, he might have something there.…”

20. Pressure Drop

Brain splitting, eyelids swollen and aching, stomach soured, bowels grumbling, tongue tasting like a rag that a sick dog had whizzed on, Lester awoke to the absolute, positively worst hangover of his life.

He lay still on the hard surface on which he had regained consciousness, rubbing his hands across his face.
Hands still work, and I've even got a face left. Doing great so far, kiddo
.

He began to size up his present condition. He was in a dark room, but it wasn't his niche in the bunkhouse. No, not quite so dark: There was pale silver-blue light streaming through a window just above him. Reggae music blared from somewhere nearby. He was lying on the floor of …
Oh, hey, I get it now. I'm on the floor of my office. Someone must have dragged me back here. Opened the door with my keycard and tossed me in. Good deal. Now, how long have I been out like this
?

He raised his right wrist in front of his face and touched a stud on his watch. The digital face lit up: 1306 hours. Good God, it was Sunday afternoon already. He should have been on his shift in MainOps hours ago.…

Lester started to sit up. His tender muscles betrayed him, though, and he collapsed back on the floor, his head striking the thin carpet. He hardly felt the impact. Perhaps he should just lie here for a few hours longer. It was dark, he was reasonably comfortable, and maybe the base could run itself without him for a day or two.
Why, sure it can
, he thought.
They don't need me upstairs. I mean, what could possibly require my attention
…?

The get-happy calypso beat of “Pressure Drop” slowly faded from the speaker nearby, drowned out by Moondog McCloud's familiar voice.
Yeaaah now, The Maytals, rat-c'here on LDSM
…” Harry Drinkwater was sounding awful today, hoarse and rasping.
That's going out by special request of the strike committee, for all our brothers and sisters in the effort
.…

Strike committee? “Brothers and sisters in the effort?” he mumbled aloud. What kind of crazy shit was this?

Here's another reminder that there will be a special meeting of all station personnel
… McCloud coughed raggedly. There was a noticeable lack of his usual hipster patter.
'Scuse me. There's going to be a meeting in the mess hall at exactly fourteen-hundred hours, for all those interested in participating in or supporting the strike. Till then, of course, work will be continuing as usual
… A dry chuckle.
For all you who are capable of working at all, that is. Just remember, now. Strike meeting at the mess hall in about an hour. Be seeing you. Now here's Wintermute and the Cowboys
.…

“What the hell?” Lester forced himself up on his elbows. Strike meeting?
Strike meeting
?

He suddenly recalled the last thing he had said last night—or rather, early this morning—just before the homemade liquor had won and he had plastered his face on the floor of Storage Two. Oh, no …

He struggled to his knees. Not that …

He lurched to his feet, retched and swallowed acidic bile, groped through the darkness for the door.
Don't tell me someone actually took me seriously
.…

At the exact same moment that he found the handle, he heard footsteps in the outside corridor and the door was abruptly opened from the other side. Standing in the shaft of bright light, Monk Walker was holding a steaming mug of hot coffee. “Lester?” he said. “Are you okay?”

One whiff of the coffee was all it took for his stomach to make one mighty, volcanic surge. “Sure,” Lester managed to croak. “Just super …”

Then he doubled over and vomited on the floor.

Monk got Lester cleaned up and into some fresh clothes, and even managed to get some fresh coffee into his stomach, but there was nothing he could do for his hangover. “At least you got the rest of the booze out of your system by vomiting,” the chief physician commented as they walked down the corridor to the mess hall. “I've been treating people like you all morning. Guess we should consider ourselves lucky that nobody came down with acute alcohol poisoning, considering the way you guys were drinking last night.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Lester still felt fatigued—why was it that getting drunk required so much work?—and even though the shower and the coffee had helped somewhat, the hangover was still very much with him. “I appreciate it, Doc,” he added, for lack of anything else to say.

They rounded a corner; the mess hall was straight ahead. The door was closed and Tycho was standing in front of it. “It was worse for you because you've been on the wagon for so long,” Monk added quietly.

Lester shot a look at him, and Monk nodded. “Butch told me, and I checked your medical records. For recovered substance-abusers, a lost night in an eight-year period isn't all that uncommon.” He paused. “As long as you don't make a regular habit of it, that is. If it happens again, I might get seriously worried about you.”

“
Nggh.
” Lester slowly shook his throbbing head. “Don't worry. I think I just remembered all the reasons why I stopped drinking.” Something else Monk had just said occurred to him; he stopped walking and turned to face him. “Butch … Susan left shortly after we got to the party. Is she …?”

“Mad at you?” Monk stopped walking and folded his arms across his brown tunic. “Sort of. More like disappointed, though.” The string of wooden beads in his right hand clicked a couple of times. “She cares for you,” Monk added softly. “Maybe a little more than you know. You let her down last night. If she wants to talk to you, though, it's going to have to be something she'll decide. Butch is stubborn that way.”

“You know her pretty well, don't you?”

“Pretty well, yeah.” Monk raised an eyebrow and frowned at him. “If you're insinuating that we're …”

Lester shook his head. “No, no, nothing like that. I know about … um, about your vow of celibacy. What I'm getting at is …” He faltered. “Hell, Monk, if she likes me that much, why didn't she do anything about last night?”

There was the faintest hint of a smile on Monk's face. “We're close friends, Les,” he said, “but that doesn't mean she always confides in me. When she talks to you again—
if
she talks to you again—you're going to have to pose that question to her yourself.” He tapped Lester on the arm and cocked his head toward the door. “Better hurry now. I think the meeting's about to start.”

However, when they got to the door, Tycho stepped in front of them to block their way. “You with the company?” he asked stonily. The question was directed more at Lester than at Monk; Tycho folded his arms across his chest and looked down at the general manager from his formidable height.

Lester sighed. “C'mon, Tycho, I run the joint. Lemme in.” Tycho didn't budge, and Riddell tried again. “Remember who brought the subject up in the first place? Now let us in …”

He started to move past the huge moondog, but Tycho put out a hand and, firmly but gently, pushed Riddell back. “Question's still the same, man. I've already thrown Quick-Draw out of here. What's your excuse?”