Steel Beach (72 page)

I had cleverly retained the connector hose to the air tank, so I made my way back there and filled up again. If only I could find a loose, portable tank I’d be able to strike off across the surface. Hell, if it was too big to carry I could
drag
it. Did I hear someone mention the dead soldier and his suit? Great idea, but my uncanny accuracy with the machine gun had damaged one of the hose fittings. I checked when I borrowed the flashlight, and again—because I
needed
the air, and who knows, maybe I’d been mistaken—when I salvaged the radio. Libby could probably have fudged some sort of adaptor from the junk all around me, but considering the pressure in that tank I’d sooner have kissed a rattlesnake.

These are the thoughts that run through your mind in the exhausted aftermath of a crying jag. It felt good to have done it, like crying usually does. It swept away the building sense of panic and let me concentrate on the things that needed to be done, let me ignore the impossibility of my position, and enabled me to concentrate on the two things I had going for me, like chanting a mantra: my own brain, which, no matter how much evidence I may have adduced to the contrary, was actually pretty good; and Walter’s ability to get things done, which was
very
good.

I actually found myself feeling cheerful as I reached the egress again and scanned the surface for enemies. Not finding any made me positively giddy. Move from your present position, Walter had said. As far as you dare.

I moved out of the maze and dashed across a short strip of sunlight and into the shadow of the
Heinlein
.

“Hello, Walter?”

“Tell me what you know, Hildy, and make it march.”

“I’m in big trouble here, Wal—”

“I know that, Hildy. Tell me what I don’t know. What happened?”

So I started in on a condensed history of me and the Heinleiners, and Walter promptly interrupted me again. He knew about them, he said. What else? Well, the CC was up to something horrible, I said, and he said he knew that, too.

“Assume I know everything you know except what happened to you today, Hildy,” he said. “Tell me about today. Tell me about the last hour. Just the important parts. But don’t mention specific names or places.”

Put that way, it didn’t take long. I told him in less than a hundred words, and could have done it in one: “
Help!
”

“How much air do you have?” he asked.

“About fifteen minutes.”

“Better than I thought. We have to set up a rendezvous, without mentioning place names. Any ideas?”

“Maybe. Do you know the biggest white elephant on Luna?”

“…  yeeeesss. Are you near the trunk or the tail?”

“Trunk.”

“All right. The last poker game we played, if the high card in my hand was a king, start walking north. If it was a queen, east. Jack, south. Got it?”

“Yeah.” East it would be.

“Walk for ten minutes and stop. I’ll be there.”

With anyone else I’d have wasted another minute pointing out that only left me a margin of five minutes and no hope at all of getting back. With Walter I just said, “So will I.” Walter has many despicable qualities, but when he says he’ll do something, he’ll do it.

I’d have had to move soon, anyway. As we were talking I’d spotted two of the enemy moving across the plain in big, loping strides. They were coming from the north, so I hefted the radio and tossed it toward the southeast. They immediately altered direction to follow it.

Here came the hard part. I watched them pass in front of me. Even in a regular suit I’d have been hard to spot in the shadows. But now I started walking eastwards, and in a moment I stepped out into the bright sunshine. I had to keep reminding myself how hard Gretel had been to spot when I’d first encountered her. I’d never felt so naked. I kept an eye on the soldiers, and when they reached the spot where the radio had fallen to the ground I froze, and watched as they scanned the horizon.

I didn’t stay frozen long, as I quickly spotted four more people coming from various directions. It was one of the hardest things I ever did, but I started walking again before any of them could get too close.

With each step I thought of a dozen more ways they could find me and catch me. A simple radar unit would probably suffice. I’m not much at physics, but I supposed the null-suit would throw back a strong signal.

They must not have had one, because before long I was far enough away that I couldn’t pick any of them out from the ground glare, and if I couldn’t see them they sure as hell couldn’t see me.

At the nine-minute point a bright silver jumper swooped silently over my head, not ten meters high, and I’d have jumped out of my socks if I’d had any on. It turned, and I saw the big double-N
Nipple
logo blazoned on its side and it was a sweet sight indeed.

The driver flew a big oval at the right distance from the
Heinlein
, which was almost out of sight by then, letting me see him because I had to come to him, not the other way around. Then it settled down off to my right, looking like a giant mosquito in carnal embrace with a bedstead. I started to run.

He must have had some sort of sensor on the ladder, because when I had both feet on it the jumper lifted off. Not the sort of maneuver I’d like to do on a Sunday jaunt, but I could understand his haste. I wrenched the lock door open and cycled it, and stepped inside to the unlikely spectacle of Walter training a machine gun on me.

Ho-hum. I’d had so many weapons pointed at me in the last few hours that the sight—which would have given me pause a year ago, say at contract renegotiation time—barely registered. I experienced something I’d noticed before at the end of times of great stress: I wanted to go to sleep.

“Put that thing away, Walter,” I said. “If you fire it you’d probably kill us both.”

“This is a reinforced pressure hull,” he said, and the gun didn’t waver. “Turn that suit off first.”

“I wasn’t thinking about decompression,” I said. “I was thinking you’d probably shoot yourself in the foot, then get lucky and hit me.” But I turned it off, and he looked at my face, glanced down at my naked, outrageously pregnant body, and then looked away. He stowed the weapon and resumed his place in the pilot’s seat. I struggled into the seat beside him.

“Pretty eventful day,” I said.

“I wish you’d get back to covering the news instead of making it,” he said. “What’d you do to get the CC so riled up?”

“That was me? This is all about me?”

“No, but you’re a big part of it.”

“Tell me what’s happening.”

“Nobody knows the whole thing yet,” he said, and then started telling me the little he knew.

It had begun—back in the normal world—with thousands of elevators stalling between levels. No sooner had emergency crews been dispatched than other things began to go haywire. Soon all the mass media were off the air and Walter had had reports that pressure had been breached in several major cities, and other places had suffered oxygen depletion. There were fires, and riots, and mass confusion. Then, shortly before he got the call from me, the CC had come on most major frequencies with an announcement meant to reassure but oddly unsettling. He said there had been malfunctions, but that they were under control now. (“An obvious lie,” Walter told me, almost with relish.) The CC had pledged to do a better job in the future, promised this wouldn’t happen again. He’d said he was in control now.

“The first implication I got from that,” Walter said, “was that he
hadn’t
been in control for a while, and I want an explanation of that. But the thing that really got me, after I thought about it, was…  what kind of control did he mean?”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Well, obviously he’s in
control
, or he’s supposed to be. Of the day-to-day mechanics of Luna. Air, water, transportation. In the sense that he
runs
those things. And he’s got a lot of control in the civil and criminal social sectors. He makes schedules for the government, for instance. He’s got a
hand
in
everything
. He monitors everything. But
in
control? I didn’t like the sound of it. I still don’t.”

While I thought that one over something very bright and very fast overtook us, shot by on the left, then tried to hang a right, as if it had changed its mind. It turned into a fireball and we flew right into it. I heard things pinging on the hull, things the size of sand grains.

“What the hell was
that
?”

“Some of your friends back there. Don’t worry, I’m on top of it.”

“On
top
of it…  ? They’re
shooting
at us!”

“And missing. And we’re out of range. And this ship is equipped with the best illegal jamming devices money can buy. I’ve got tricks I haven’t even used yet.”

I glanced at him, a big unruly bear of a man, hunched over his manual controls and keeping one eye on an array of devices attached to the dashboard, devices I was sure hadn’t come from the factory that built the jumper.

“I might have known you’d have connections with the Heinleiners,” I said.

“Connections?” he snorted. “I was on the board of directors of the L5 Society when most of those ‘Heinleiners’ hadn’t even been born yet. My father was there when the keel of that ship was launched. You might say I have connections.”

“But you’re not one of them.”

“Let’s say we have some political differences.”

He probably thought they were too left-wing. Long ago in our relationship I’d talked a little politics with Walter, as most people did who came to work at the
Nipple
. Not many had a second conversation. The most charitable word I’d heard used to describe his convictions was “daft.” What most people would think of as anarchy Walter would call a social strait-jacket.

“Don’t care for Mister Smith?” I asked.

“Great scientist. Too bad he’s a socialist.”

“And the starship project?”

“It’ll get there the day they return to the original plan. Plus about twenty years to rebuild it, tear out all the junk Smith has installed.”

“Pretty impressive junk.”

“He makes a great spacesuit. He hasn’t shown me a star drive.”

I decided to leave it at that, because I had no intention of getting into an argument with him, and because I had no way of telling if he was right or wrong.

“Guns, too,” I said. “If I’d thought about it, I’d have known you’d be a gun owner.”

“All free men are gun owners.” No use pointing out to him that I’d been un-free most of my life, and what I’d tried to do with the instrument of my freedom when I finally obtained one. It’s another argument you can’t win.

“Did you get that one from Liz?”

“She gets her guns from
me
,” he said. “Or she did until recently. She’s too far gone in drink now. I don’t trust her.” He glanced at me. “You shouldn’t either.”

I decided not to ask him what he knew about that. I hoped that if he had known Liz was selling out the Heinleiners he’d have given them some kind of warning, political differences or not. Or at least that he’d have warned me, given all he seemed to know about my recent activities.

I never did ask him that.

There are a lot of things I might have asked him during the time we raced across the plain, never getting more than fifty meters high. If I’d asked some of them—about how much he knew about what was going on with the CC—it would have saved me a lot of worry later. Actually, it would have just given me different things to worry about, but I firmly believe I do a better
job
of worrying when I can fret from a position of knowledge. As it was, the sense of relief at being rescued by him was so great that I simply basked in the warmth of my new-found sense of safety.

How was I to know I’d only have ten minutes with him?

He’d been constantly monitoring his instruments, and when one of them chimed he cursed softly and hit the retros. We started to settle to the ground. I’d been about to doze off.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “Trouble?”

“Not really. I’d just hoped to get a little closer, that’s all. This is where you get off.”

“Get off? Gee, Walter, I think I’d rather go on to your place.” I’d had a quick glance around. This place, wherever it was, would never make it into
1001 Lunar Sights To See
. There was no sign of human habitation. No sign of anything, not even a two-century-old footpath.

“I’d love to have you, Hildy, but you’re too hot to handle.” He turned in his seat to face me. “Look, baby, it’s like this. I got access to a list of a few hundred people the CC is looking for. You’re right at the top. From what I’ve learned, he’s
very
determined to find them. A lot of people have died in the search. I don’t know what’s going on—some really big glitch—but I
do
intend to find out…  but you can’t help me. The only thing I could think of to do is stash you some place where the CC can’t find you. You’ll have to stay there until all this blows over. It’s too dangerous for you on the outside.”

I guess I just blew air there for a while. There had been too many changes too quickly. I’d been feeling safe and now the rug was jerked out from under me again.

I’d known the CC was looking for me, but somehow it felt different to hear it from Walter. Walter would never be wrong about a thing like that. And it didn’t help to infer from what he’d said that what the CC meant to do when he
found
me was
kill
me. Because I knew too much? Because I’d stuck my nose in the wrong place? Because he didn’t want to share the super-toothpaste royalties with me anymore? I had no idea, but I wanted to know more, and I meant to, before I got out of Walter’s jumper.

Walter, who’d just called me baby. What the hell was
that
all about?

“What do you want me to do?” I asked. “Just camp out here on the maria? I’m afraid I didn’t bring my tent.”

He reached behind his seat and started pulling out things and handing them to me. A ten-hour air bottle. A flashlight. A canvas bag that rattled. He slapped a compass into my palm, and opened the air lock door behind us.

“There’s some useful stuff in the bag,” he said. “I didn’t have time to get anymore; this is my own survival gear. Now you’ve got to go.”