The Dark Side (22 page)

But Justus continues standing in place, thinking that there's one thing—apart from answers—that he didn't get. Something that QT Brass assured him he would.

But as it turns out Brass hasn't quite finished yet. Midway across the catwalk he's turned. He's looking back, with cruel, lancing eyes.

“Oh, may I say something else? Something personal?”

Justus makes an encouraging gesture.

“You should get that face fixed. Really. Because no one will take you seriously until you do.”

Then Brass turns, smiling venomously, and disappears into the
Prospector
.

To Justus it seems almost as if Brass had read his mind. As if he'd heard a recording of Justus's meeting with QT and felt compelled to offer that last morsel as definitive proof of his identity. As if everything else—the immense hubris, grandiosity, larger-than-life charm, confidence, evasiveness, obfuscation, implied threats, and colorful language—wasn't quite enough.

“How did it go?” The flight coordinator, Amity Powers, has materialized at Justus's side. She must have heard the last vestiges of the exchange, if not the whole thing, so to Justus the question seems superfluous. But he doesn't avoid it.

“Very well.”

And he's not lying. Because in the way Brass responded, or refused to respond, Justus believes he's unearthed a treasure trove.

“You don't know how lucky you are,” Powers goes on. “Mr. Brass has a lot on his shoulders right now.”

“The whole universe, by the sounds of it.”

Powers chuckles. “Well, his shoulders are broad enough, as you've no doubt seen. And a man like that should be permitted to let his tongue go anywhere it pleases.”

“Uh-huh.” Justus is suddenly sure she's more than just a project manager.

“Oh, by the way,” she adds, leading him out, “this message arrived while you were talking.”

She hands over a sheet of paper, which Justus reads as he walks. It's from the PPD.

“Is it bad news?” she asks—as if she hasn't already read it.

“There's been some trouble in Sin,” Justus says, folding the page. “I need to get back there immediately.”

I
F YOU'VE EVER BEEN
to Nearside you'll certainly know of the Overview Effect—there are whole towers, observation decks and hotels named after it. The Overview Effect is what happens when a human being surveys Earth from a sizable distance out in space. The Apollo astronauts were the first to feel the full force of it: that mind-blowing moment when in one glance they took in the home planet, the cradle of life and civilization, looking supremely small and fragile in the awesome vastness of the universe. Since then a sojourn to the Moon, in order to feel this life-changing sense of humility and fraternity, has become an essential pilgrimage for humanists, thrill seekers, and image-conscious politicians.

Torquil “Torkie” Macleod is not at all interested in the Overview Effect. To him it's been so comprehensively exploited by now that it's positively crass. And he wouldn't be able to muscle in
commercially even if he wanted to—all sorts of overpriced permits are required in the official tourist districts. So in consequence he actually
resents
the Overview Effect. He doesn't even
look
at Earth, not even over his shoulder, when he's on Nearside.

Macleod used to be an upmarket bus driver, ferrying film stars, rock bands, and other celebrities around most of the UK. A glamorous job in its way, but not particularly lucrative, at least until he began supplying his passengers with top-end hallucinogens—everything from mescaline to DMT, all manufactured by some pharmacy-school dropouts in a back-door lab in Hackney. And for a while he was making so much money from this side business that he was living out of a basement apartment in Knightsbridge. But keeping ahead of the law proved a perpetual struggle, and when the Hackney lab was raided—Macleod heard about it on the Channel 4 news—he escaped just in time to Spain. And from there he went to India. And from there, via the Malabar Coast launch site, he ended up on the Moon. He considered hiding in Purgatory, of course—it had the advantage of being beyond the power of extradition treaties—but he'd heard that Fletcher Brass's kingdom was getting stricter about whom it admitted. And he didn't like the idea of being in a constricted territory anyway. Years of plying Britain's motorways had left him with an insatiable appetite for roaming across large distances. So he decided to take his chances and find something else—something not unlike the job he had enjoyed so much on Earth.

Currently Macleod is a freelance bus driver again. He has at his disposal a very long range transverse vehicle formerly used to ferry tourists from Doppelmayer Base to the first Chinese landing zones. With eight variable-diameter wheels, six regenerative fuel-cell batteries, integrated mesh-gear transmission, eighteen high-pressure halogen lamps, seating for six (not including the
driver), and a reliable daylight range of two thousand kilometers, the VLTV is far more sophisticated, more expensive, and safer than any moon-buggy LRV. But it's still old, jarred, scratched, and even rusted; Macleod has never been much interested in maintenance. Most of the time he uses it to take scientists, technicians, miners, and company representatives on trips around Nearside. He usually parks at the ExelAnt Mining Base at Schubert Crater, where he rents a room, but he makes sure he doesn't get pinned down by any routine. Macleod prefers to keep on the move, as independent and elusive as possible, because he's again running a not-strictly-legal business on the side.

Dark Side Tours, as it is known, appears in no official brochures but is pretty much an open secret on the Moon. For a substantial fee—as much as five thousand U.S. dollars per head—Macleod will drive you and your entourage into “the forbidden realms of Farside.” And there you will experience something “immeasurably more powerful than the Overview Effect.” You will experience, in fact, its very opposite—“the No-View Effect.” Because you will be in the only place in the solar system, and possibly the entire universe, where it's never possible to see Earth, even with the most powerful of telescopes. You will be like a child completely cut off from its mother. You will be out of sight and out of mind. You will be, for perhaps the first time in your life, beyond the range of radar. You will be naked to the cosmos. You will feel, in quick succession, abandonment, liberation, and empowerment “in ways you have never experienced before.” And (if you believe the word-of-mouth advertising, anyway) you will “never be the same again.”

Today, Macleod is delighted to be driving four members of the retro rock band Dustproof Shockproof. Macleod has chauffeured lots of musicians in his career, but at fifty-one he's now
a generation older than most of them. Dustproof Shockproof, however, is almost of his own vintage, so spiritually he feels that they're on the same level. He understands them. He thinks they understand him. They make him feel like he's chilling with old friends. He hasn't even sold them the cut-down drugs.

Presently the band members are all high on Selene, an LSD derivative that's popular on the Moon, and Macleod has taken a tab too, just to be sociable. The boys, along with two hot groupies, are slumped in the passenger seats; Macleod is at the steering wheel. To this point he's kept mainly to the hard-packed maintenance tracks, veering off only to avoid an encounter with official vehicles. The science and maintenance teams don't usually enter Farside during the darkness—it's much easier to work in the fourteen days of warmth and sunlight—so it's usually at lunar nighttime that Macleod conducts his tours. But Dustproof Shockproof is returning to Earth in a couple of days, and for them he's compromised—he's racing across the sunlit surface for the day-night terminator. For the genuine Dark Side of the Moon.

“Are those penguins out there?” It's the drummer, Spyder Blue.

“Don't see no penguins,” replies the bass guitarist, Q'mar Kent.

“They're penguins, I'm telling ya—all waddling about and shit.”

“They're rocks, man—they're rocks.”

“They're moving and shit.”

“My head's moving, man—this is top-grade junk. Top grade.” Q'mar Kent locates Macleod and shouts his approval. “Top grade!”

Macleod just nods. He's taken so much Selene since he arrived
on the Moon that in small amounts it no longer has much impact on him. But he knows very well it's the best acid in the universe.

“When you gonna open the sky, man?” It's the band leader, Maxx Dee, now—he's staring at the vehicle's glass ceiling, which is covered with a radiation shield.

“When we cross the terminator,” Macleod tells him.

“Why not now?”

“Sun damage. You don't want that glare on your skin if you don't need it.”

After a while Dee grunts. “We gonna see the diamonds?”

“You're gonna see more than just diamonds, man. You're gonna see constellations, whole galaxies you never knew existed.”

“Nocturnity?”

“That's right, man—Nocturnity.”

Nocturnity—“endless night”—is the name given to the skies during the 328 consecutive hours of darkness on Farside: unpolluted, breathtakingly clear, awesomely endless. No sunlight, no Earthlight, no cloud cover, no diffusing atmosphere, no murmurs of wildlife or rustling trees—just you, the black sphere beneath you, and the naked majesty of the cosmos above. It's an experience, even more powerful than the No-View Effect, that has the potential to warp minds. They say it can turn a saint into a psychopath—and vice versa. And it's even more powerful under the influence of Selene.

“Where'd you get this acid, man?” It's Q'mar Kent again.

“From Purgatory,” says Macleod.

“This is top grade.”

“Stuff from Purgatory usually is.”

“We going to Purgatory?”

“You got an extra five grand on you?”

“What if I wash the dishes?”

Macleod chuckles but doesn't answer. He's been to Purgatory a couple of times but doesn't need to go again. And he didn't personally get the Selene from there. Drugs manufactured in Purgatory are frequently smuggled out and made available, if you know where to look, on Nearside. And on Earth too, at astronomical prices.

“We gonna see the golden dust clouds?” asks Maxx Dee.

“If the conditions are right,” says Macleod.

“Hope so, man, I'm tired of this . . . mouth. You see the mouth, ladies?”

“I see . . . amoebas,” answers one.

“I see Christmas decorations,” says the other.

“I see penguins,” repeats Spyder Blue. “Fuckin' things are dancing now.”

Macleod wonders if he's given them too much Selene. When passengers really start tripping out, in a confined and pressurized environment, it can get ugly. Once Macleod had to belt a guy over the head with the fire extinguisher. Still, he's confident nothing unpleasant will happen with Dustproof Shockproof—as long as he keeps them entertained.

“Wanna see the crashed satellite?” he asks.

“What satellite?” someone asks.

“
Luna 14
—it's Russian. Came down in 1968, a year before the Apollo 11 landing. It's one of the only wrecks here that hasn't been pilfered, because it's pretty much hidden. Hardly anyone knows it's there.”

No one seems enthusiastic.

“How far is it?” asks one of the groupies.

“Couple of klicks. Take us five minutes.”

Still no one seems interested.

“I wanna see the diamonds,” says Maxx Dee, sighing.

“I wanna see the Orion nebula,” says the other groupie.

“I want some more acid,” says Q'mar Kent.

“There's a fuckin' kangaroo out there now!” exclaims Spyder Blue.

Macleod laughs under his breath but doesn't turn. They're in a region of featureless plateaux and gently flowing hills that could be mistaken for parts of the Australian outback. He suspects the kangaroo is a twisted boulder or a broken-down robot. But Spyder Blue is insistent.

“Fuckin' thing is coming this way—the kangaroo!”

“You're freakin' out,” says Q'mar Kent.

“I'm telling you, man—a kangaroo—see for yourself!”

There's a long silence.

“What the—?”

“Ya see it—
ya see it
?”

“What the fuck?”

“I told you, man—I told you! A kangaroo!”

“But . . . but that ain't a kangaroo—it's a dude!”

“It's a kangaroo!”

“It's a fuckin' dude,
jumpin'
like a kangaroo!”

Macleod is starting to think that maybe it was a bad idea to travel this far. They left Schubert eight hours ago, and he broke out the tabs not long after that. Normally his passengers wouldn't be this amped out—not this far from Nocturnity.

“He's jumping after us!”

“He's coming this way!”

“Man—look at that fucker jump!”

“Where's his spacesuit?”

“How the fuck's he breathing?”

One of the ladies has joined in now, Macleod hears—it's like a mass hallucination—but still he doesn't turn.

“Man—that fucker's serious!”

“He's not serious—he's smiling!”

“He's coming up right behind us!”

“He's chasing us—he's chasing us!”

“You gotta stop this thing, man!”

This last is addressed to the driver, but Macleod doesn't stop.

“You gotta brake this thing, man—he's running for the bus!”

“We don't need to stop—he's catchin' up!”

“Look at that fucker!”

“Where is he now?”

“Where's he gone?”

“He's still behind us—we just can't see him!”