One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy (39 page)

“Could it be her?”

“Definitely,” one of them replied.

Schmet could not believe the gold mine of witness evidence he was uncovering with these two boneheads. Stoners. Absolute kazzer-bats. He hated them, but what they just told him confirmed his belief that sooner or later the lunarcroptic ocular symbolanosis vermin would start working together. First in teams of two or more. Then there would be armies of them. It was only a matter of time.

“Describe to me exactly what happened.”

“Well, you see, the three of us arrive at the domed building over there, and we get out our rope and we tie one end to our car and just as we are ready to start taking turns going in, this really awesome-looking vehicle pulls up, I think it was a Prokong-90…”

“A Prokong-90?”

“Yes, now that I think about it, Officer, it was definitely a Prokong-90.”

“Prokong-90…” Lieutenant Schmet said softly, no longer paying attention to the college student who proceeded to give detailed descriptions of the vehicle and the driver and especially the eccentric-looking girl in the front passenger seat. The students’ words faded. He realized that he had heard everything he needed to hear from them.

“Captain Begfendopple,” the man with the waxen, doll-like face said as he turned to his friend and commanding officer. ”Captain Begfendopple, I request an all-points bulletin for any Prokong-90 traveling on this side of the Moon.”

“Can we go, Officer?” one of the Sea of Nectar students asked.

“Yes—wait, no, not yet.” Something came to the lieutenant’s attention. His two eyes—one artificial, one real—stared intensely at them.

“You. And you. You said Sea of Nectar State University?”

They glanced at one another with expressions of terrible dread.

Schmet looked deeply into their bloodshot eyes with extreme contempt, then he stood up and ran to the door. Outside, rescue robots were piling the half-dead in front of ambulances, and the dead in front of morgue trucks.

“Belwin!” he shouted to the silver figures. ”Belwin! Come here!”

The mirror-shiny mechanical man reported to the waxen detective. They returned to the frightened students.

“Belwin, won’t you kindly scan these two gentlemen? Is it true that they are students at Sea of Nectar State University?”

“Yes, Lieutenant. They are enrolled as philosophy majors at SONSU.”

“Have you scanned the people you have rescued from that lovely circular room where these fine young men before us were so intent numbing their brains?”

“I have indeed, Lieutenant.”

“Have you scanned the corpses?”

“Of course. Identifying the deceased is a very important part of my—”

“Belwin, please do some math for me. Quickly. Tell me the percentage of people, both living and dead, whom you have removed from the Techbolsinator, that are associated with Sea of Nectar State University.”

“Certainly—that would be sixty-six percent.”

“Wonderful. Now, of that sixty-six percent, how many are philosophy majors?”

The robot had the answer before Lieutenant Schmet had even finished his question.

“My records indicate that one hundred percent of the SONSU students here tonight are philosophy majors.”

This bit of curious information sent Schmet into a raging fit. Belwin was a little surprised, as it seemed so irrelevant.

“So! Boys! It appears that we are not here just for the thrill of it all! How can it be that there are so many philosophy students from Sea of Nectar here?”

“Sir?”

“There is a rumor going around. It’s an old rumor. A rumor about a book. With three missing chapters. I myself read them a long time ago, but I destroyed my copy because I know how dangerous these ideas are. How quaint it must be that a copy somehow turns up at Gordon Chazhofer’s wonderful little alma mater! Don’t pretend you don’t know what I am talking about!”

“Sir?” mumbled one of them, petrified.

“Nothing I hate more than a goddamned
BARRELHEAD
who thinks he is a philosopher because he looks at that goddamned color and thinks it makes him smarter! Real philosophers enlighten themselves with hard work! Years and years of intellectual dirt under the fingernails! Forgoing stupid parties because you have to finish reading Hegel and Decartes and Plato! You spoiled little bastards—bad enough you look at that damn color for kicks—but to be pretentious enough to think it can enlighten you!”

He turned to Captain Begfendopple, who had not the faintest idea what Schmet was upset about.

“Send these two and anyone they associate with to the compound at Aldrin City! Order an immediate police raid on the philosophy department at Sea of Nectar State University! All reading material, especially any older versions of any works by Gordon Chazhofer, is to be impounded! Bring in all professors from that filthy department for questioning!”

Wiis Begfendopple stared at his old friend with the sweaty waxen face. Never in his life had he ever heard of such a preposterous request. And from
that
school?

Schmet didn’t wait for objections.

“Belwin!” he yelled as he charged toward his own car. ”Belwin! Come with me. The night is far from over!”

Next stop—traffic control. It should not be too difficult to track down the activities of a Pixiedamned Prokong-90 on this side of the round rock, especially if those kids decided to take Highway Zero. Where else could they go? He looked down at the cat tattoo on his hand.

If you quietly wait by the hole in the wall, sooner or later the mouse will forget you’re there…

The library was indeed hidden away. It took them so long to find it, even Clellen, who had been the longest in held-out expectations for dancing and rockin’ all night, was exhausted and bored and no longer cared about anything at all. Hieronymus had been wondering if he should try and call his uncle directly on one of Pete’s communication devices when Slue announced, "There it is. Up ahead, Pete. Don’t you see it?”

They had left Highway Zero at exit 399 and were riding along West Gong Road, which was little more than a dirt path through a series of small jagged mountains. Here, there was almost no plant life. It was a desert. The sky was darker, and Hieronymus thought to himself that this was probably what the entire Moon looked like before it was terraformed, back in the days when the Moon was just a moon…

And their destination turned out to be a little anti-climactic. Here, the road came to an abrupt end. The entrance to the library was a simple door on the fat side of a concrete cylinder that led into the colossal mountain. The only indication this was a place for books was the neon tube sign just above the door—blue neon letters that flashed on and of every few seconds with one word:
liBrary
.

“Library?” Pete asked.

“Yeah,” Slue replied. “We did tell you that we were on our way to a library.”

“Right, but doesn’t this library have a name? There is nothing for hundreds of kilometers in every direction and suddenly, we see this word, written in flashing neon, and it’s like they couldn’t decide to at least name it the something-something memorial library, or the Great Far Side of the Moon Library?” Pete put on the emergency brake and turned the engine of. There was nothing that signified any parking spaces, so he just decided to leave the vehicle exactly where they stopped.

As all fve of them left the Prokong-90, Clellen decided to weigh in on the flashing sign.

“I don’t know, Pete. I like it just the way it is. It’s funny. It’s also sexy. It looks like a forbidden club where only swingers go.”

“I agree with Clellen.” Slue was wondering how she was going to drop the pretense they were going to a happening party instead of an utterly boring excursion into the world of paper books deep in the bowels of an endless library where there was nothing to do but research authors and subjects, each long dead…

Pebbles crunched beneath their feet. They arrived at the door and when Hieronymus tried to pull it open door, he discovered that the entrance was locked.

“Oh!” he exclaimed. “What the Hell is this? It’s locked!”

“It
is
something like three-thirty in the morning,” Pete said.

He banged on the door, but it had no effect. It must have been made of a very thick alloy.

“This must be a Hell of a party,” Clellen remarked. "They keep the light flashing, but they don’t let anyone in.”

“There’s no door buzzer?” asked Slue, a hint of desperation in her voice.

“Nothing.” Hieronymus noticed a raised square plate of to the side. In the middle of the plate was a slot. ”Wait, what’s this for?”

Pete squinted as he bent over to take a closer look.

“Oh,” he replied with a resigned disappointment in his face. ”It’s an old-fashioned card reader. My father used to have one at his old job. You need a special card, probably one that is associated with the library, to get in.”

A collective sense of defeat overcame the fve of them. Pete because he really wanted to come through for Slue after the clumsy and insensitive way he had dumped her. Clellen because that flashing neon light had re-ignited in her the hope they were going to get to a super-cool late night party after all. Bruegel because he was hoping to find a bar and maybe a number of less uptight college girls he could meet and stop being the stupid loser odd-man-out that he had spent the entire evening being. Slue because she knew, she knew, she knew that inside this mountain, in the law section, was all the proof she needed to keep Hieronymus out of prison. Hieronymus because that locked door represented the end. He would get caught. His life was over. Damn his life. Damn it all…

They stood staring at the door. All fve of them. They could all hear the wind whistling through the nearby mountains and hills. The comet remained in the same position above their heads. Bright and illustrious, but only temporary.

Then Bruegel reached into his pocket, pulled out his fake ID, looked at it for a quick second, reached forward, and inserted it into the slot. Like magic, the forbidden door opened, and a mechanical voice rang out, "Welcome back to the Library, Houseman Reckfannible! We hope you have a pleasant research session!”

Slue hugged Bruegel and gave him another huge kiss on the cheek, and this time he smiled. “At least
my
date knows how to say
Open Sesame
!” she exclaimed.

They all laughed. Then the fve friends entered the library entrance, shocked by what they had encountered.

Somewhere up ahead, deep inside the complex, was loud thumping music.

Hieronymus and Slue exchanged incredulous expressions.

Could it be? they both thought at the same time,
that there really is a party here
?

They walked through the cylindrical corridor. With its black painted walls, it already looked like a club. Clellen was walking right next to Pete, and she was just in front of Hieronymus as they traveled through the long tunnel. As the music got louder, she turned around and stuck her tongue out, then mouthed the letters
P-A-R-T-Y
with her wonderfully shaped lips, and Slue began to laugh. Bruegel began to boast in his old manner, and Hieronymus was relieved his old friend was returning to his old self…

“Clellen, my darling furtonibuster of Klaxon,” he bellowed as loud as he usually did in class, making up words as he went along, “you can tongue-spell the words ’party’ all you want, as soon as you show up, the festivities shall come to a follimigoshiner end as they will think, ‘
Alas, the queen of bad dancing has arrived! End the party now!’
”

Clellen turned around again to glance at Bruegel, and with her hand firmly in Pete’s hand, she stuck her tongue out again, and this time retorted with a typical Clellen answer, and yet, with a different edge, words that would normally be considered a put down, and indeed, may have been meant as a put down, were spoken with only one real emotion: love.

“Bruegel, you don’t know a kennel-kat fve load about dancing—if you go out on the dance floor, your smell alone will drive the ladies into a volcanic rift-tango! You’ll be alone again, dancing with the invisible girl of your invisible dreams, boy-o!”

“Oh, Clellen. Assembled ladies, of which I see only two, well, maybe one, as I’m not sure that I can really call Clellen a lady—but, out of respect for Pete, for the moment, let’s suppose she is indeed a lady, you have both had your last chances to dance with genuine Lunar Royalty, as the Westminster clan are known throughout the solar system for our prowess on the disco-dance floor…”

But Slue interrupted him—she was walking with Hieronymus and she was holding his hand, but she turned to Bruegel with a look of cheerful admiration.

“Well, Bruegel, I guess I’ll have to dance with you just to see how good you are!”

“Yeah, Bruegel,” Clellen added. ”I’ll dance with you too. But you’re not as good as me.”

Bruegel, pleased with the attention, continued, “Ladies, I’m afraid that as you are women who are already accompanied by gentlemen I like and admire, so I shall have to place you both down the list below the older and more experienced women who are destined to not just make repertoire with me on the dance floor, but, shall take me away into the deep wondrous realms of adult love-communion in palaces, in mansions, in fortresses of pleasure…”