The Luna Deception (42 page)

Not a sound from Mademoiselle Diouf. When he turned, she was
right
behind him. He recoiled.

“What? Do I have something in my teeth?
Laugh.”

By the time they reached the funicular station, he was practically running. Emmeline Diouf kept pace with him. Mendoza now felt sure that everyone else in this village was dead. A small reptilian part of his brain kept screaming that the woman with him was dead, too. But that was ridiculous. She was walking, if not talking. He was a Christian. He didn’t believe in ghosts.

“Let’s get out of here.” He slammed his fist on the airlock’s action plate. “You’ll need a suit.” He dived through the irising valve, opened the sharesuit locker. Empty!

Had people taken the sharesuits and fled outside? Why? Outside was where the danger was. (Except, now he wasn’t so sure of that anymore.)

“There aren’t any suits.
Ay nako,
I screwed up. I should have thought of this, brought a spare for you.” He turned to Emmeline Diouf—and broke off. She was no longer there.

Suddenly, twilight swallowed the crossroads in front of the station. The last working sun-lamp had cycled to its dusk setting.

“Emmeline?”

She must have changed her mind. Or despaired at the sight of that empty locker. Gone back into her village, to die.

“God forgive me,” Mendoza muttered, “but I’m not going back in there.”

He put on his helmet and cycled the airlock. He bounded across the hillside, back to his Moonhawk.

Inside the vehicle, he sat staring at nothing.

I have to report what I saw.

(What he’d smelled.)

Some of those guys at Municipal Services can get off their asses and go check it out.

But.

If he did that, he’d be entangled in the investigation of Mockingbird Village. He’d be breaking his word to Nadia, to her father. Breaking faith with D.I.E.. Betraying Frank’s memory.

The neck seal of his suit itched. He took off his helmet to scratch.

It can wait.
Guilt tainted his decision, but—
If they’re all dead, it won’t make any difference to them, will it?

He took off. The Moonhawk soared across the city, heading for the foothills of Shackleton Crater.

xxxii.

The
Wakizashi’s
drive grumbled as Kiyoshi increased thrust, decelerating. He glanced at the projection of Ron Studd, in the astrogator’s couch.

“So.” With little time left, he broached the topic that had been on his mind all the way from Tiangong Erhao. “Do you know what the CDTF really want from us?”

Studd shook his head. He really did look like a gerbil. Those buck teeth. Kiyoshi wondered where Jun came up with these sub-personalities.

“The Ghost,” Studd said. “That’s what they want. The Ghost. They don’t know what it is. But they know we’ve got a SECRET SUPER-WEAPON!” Not a trace of irony.

On Kiyoshi’s radar plot, ships whirled around Luna. Emergency aid arriving from Earth, cowards and casualties fleeing. He’d be able to land the
Wakizashi
unnoticed amidst all this traffic, since Luna’s PORMSnet was down.

“See, the trouble is, I’m not buying that,” he said. “Jun wouldn’t have sacrificed Peter Akagi to protect the Ghost. He wouldn’t even have sacrificed
you.
He’s been trying to get rid of the Ghost for a while now—he sold this copy, right here, to a freaking second-hand ship dealer!”

Studd dipped his head. “It’s like a stone,” he said. “You can’t drop it, or it’ll just float away.”

Whatever
that
meant. “So what do the CDTF really want? And why won’t Jun give it to them?”

Studd grinned. “If it was me, I’d just frag them,” he said.

“You aren’t much of a thinker, huh?” Kiyoshi said in distaste. “Actually, you remind me of someone. I just can’t remember who.”

The comms screen came alive. Kiyoshi had been talking to the boss-man ever since they got out of butt-fragging range of Tiangong Erhao. Twenty-seven minutes had passed since their last exchange, and now the boss was back.

He appeared calm, standing in the windtower at his house on 99984 Ravilious, looking out through the palm-frond vents. He’d got a handle on his fury. Not that the boss ever
showed
his fury. But Kiyoshi had worked for him long enough to know how mad he’d been at the news of Jun’s captivity. Kiyoshi leaned unconsciously towards the screen, fingers clenched on the arm-rests of his flight couch.

“So you’re heading to Luna,” the boss-man said. “That’s good. Remember that passenger I mentioned a while back?”

“Not this again!”

“He’s on Luna right now. Grab him. I don’t care if he’s not ready, he changes his mind at the last minute, fuck that. We’ve waited on him long enough. Stick him full of trankies if you have to. Just get him on board.”

“And how’s that going to help Jun?”

“Listen, Kiyoshi, the thing about the Chinese…” The boss-man turned to descend from the wind-tower. For a moment Kiyoshi had a view of desert, curved like the inside of a cup, striped by bundles of palm fronds. Then the courtyard camera picked up the boss’s legs coming down the ladder. “About the Chinese. They hate to lose face. So don’t push it. Seriously. You’ve already pissed them off, you’re lucky to be alive. Do
not
go back to Tiangong Erhao. I know, I know, it sucks to lose the
Chimera,
or whatever you’re calling that crappy old truck now, but …” The boss-man stepped to the ground, shouldered through strings of onions and mushrooms hanging from the eaves of the courtyard. “It’s not that big a deal,” he said, looking up at the camera. “You’ve got a copy of the Ghost on board, right? And one of Jun’s repos? So we aren’t really losing anything.”

Kiyoshi felt disgusted to remember that he had had the same thought himself, fleetingly.

“I haven’t forgotten about Tom Lynch,” the boss-man went on. “But I’m sure Jun will evacuate him before he self-destructs. Heh. That’s going to blow one big-ass hole in Tiangong Erhao. Can’t wait to see how they spin it.”

Kiyoshi turned to Ron Studd. His body vibrated with anger. “He doesn’t believe Jun is really alive. He thinks the
Monster
is just a ship.”

Studd giggled uneasily.

And the man who’d saved Kiyoshi’s life was still talking. “Regarding this Arab princess, I probably don’t need to tell you, don’t touch that. It’s not your job to play pimp for a Chinese princeling, and it would be an equally big mistake to piss off the House of Saud. Jesus, these royals!” The boss-man stood in front of the well in the courtyard. Children and goats scuffled in the sand. “Anyway, ol’ Faisal is one of the good guys. I wouldn’t want to do that to him.”

Kiyoshi laughed. He put his head in his hands and shook it from side to side.

“So just pick up our passenger and come home. If you can’t make it in the
Wakizashi
, steal a different ship. You’re good at that, I hear.” The boss-man not-so-subtly reminded Kiyoshi that he now had the ship-stealing incident on Midway to hold over him, as well as everything else.

“Are you ever going to tell me who this passenger is,” Kiyoshi said, “or is that information still too sensitive?”

Twenty-seven minutes later, as the
Wakizashi
dodged through the traffic in Luna orbit, he got his answer.

“Here’s his ID. I’ll leave it up to you whether to contact him directly. Name’s Abdullah Hasselblatter.
Dr.
He’s got a Ph.D, which stands for Phony Dumbshit, as I like to say.”

★

In the astrogator’s couch, the projection of Ron Studd writhed. His feet drummed on the floor of the cockpit. Tormented grunts emerged from the speakers.

In a purpose-built sim representing the translunar volume, the Ghost was blowing up Studd’s imaginary ships one by one. Kiyoshi watched the battle with one eye. Studd was good at this. He made it look like he was really trying.

Their final approach to Luna did not take long, so there was still something left of the sub-personality when they landed. His hoarse panting filled the cockpit. Kiyoshi powered down the drive, dumping waste heat into the vacuum of the no-name crater where they’d landed. He turned the lights and air circulation back on. An unfresh breeze chilled the sweat coating his body.

Studd sat up, gaunt, his uniform hanging off him, face disfigured by sores. “I’m still alive,” he said in surprise.

Kiyoshi poured gatorade down his throat. “Come on then, you ugly little punk.”

“Me?”

“We’ll set up a secure connection, and you can ride along with me.”

“I want donuts,” said the thing in the mini-fridge, imperiously. “And choux de crème. Those were good.”

“I’ll buy you all the pastries on Luna,” Kiyoshi said, “if there are any patisseries left.”

He skinned into his EVA suit. Packed a rucksack with clothes to change into, spare oxygen and water, an extra supercapacitor for his mobility pack, and some other stuff. Then he exited the Superlifter. Looked back up at it. A chrome shuttlecock lying in a strip-mined saucer of rock. To all appearances abandoned.

“Saint Francis, pray for me.” He pulsed his mobility pack’s ion thrusters and soared towards Shackleton City.

★

Mendoza’s contacts flashed up a text message from Nadia.
“Mendoza? Have you talked to anyone at home?”

He was guiding the Moonhawk down into Haworth Crater, prior to his final hop up to the Shackleton foothills.
“No,”
he gaze-typed, distractedly.
“What’s happening?”

“My father says something weird is happening at New Jeddah or Hopetown. Or both. New Riyadh is locked down. No one’s being allowed in or out, on pain of death.”

Mendoza ground his teeth.
Lorna!
The man had to be stopped. He put the Moonhawk down beside the twisted remnants of a factory that had taken a direct hit. Thrusters whooshing, the luxury vehicle sprang back into the sky.

“But I called one of my friends in New Jeddah,”
Nadia went on,
“and she says nothing’s wrong.”

Oh. Well, so much for that, then.

“I’ll check in with the office and let you know,”
Mendoza texted.
“Have you had your wings removed yet?”

“Yeah. I just came out of surgery.”
The word
Giggle!
danced across his vision, animated.
“I feel so light.”

So she was probably just confused, post-op woozy.

All the same, Mendoza kept his word, firing off a text to his colleague Youssef.

Youssef got back to him immediately. His smiling face filled up the virtual screen area of Mendoza’s contacts. But he did not say anything. Mendoza was just starting to get worried when the picture tilted. Youssef had taken off his phone, was walking across the office with it. The camera wobbled and centered on Jasmine Ah.

“Oh, hi!”
Jasmine’s lips moved, and text scrolled across the screen.
“How’re you doing, Mendoza? Everything’s fine here.”
She bounced in her trampoline chair.
“Absolutely peachy.”

“Well, I was just calling to check in,”
Mendoza gaze-typed.

“Thanks. Where’d you go, anyway?”

“To take care of some stuff.”

It was a lame excuse, but Jasmine did not question it. Some people were standing behind her desk, waiting to get her attention.
“Gotta go, Mendoza!”
She waved, making her charm bracelet sparkle.
“Bye now. Give my love to everyone in Shackleton City!”

Mendoza typed a quick
“Bye”
and concentrated on the suburbs below.
Give my love to everyone—
that wasn’t like the tart Jasmine. But obviously, everything was fine. As fine as could be expected.

The Grasshopper settled into the stone garden outside Bloomsbury, between an optical-fiber sculpture of a willow tree and a copy of Rodin’s
The Kiss.
Mendoza put his helmet back on, giving his neck one last scratch before he sealed up. This damn suit itched.

xxxiii.

“Tread on it.”

I have no feet,
Jun responded.

“It’s only a picture. An arbitrary arrangement of zeros and ones, like everything else.”

The universe is not binary.

“Oh yes, it is. Hot/cold, light/dark, matter/anti-matter, life/death, good/evil .. we could go on, but we’ve already been around this particular mulberry bush, haven’t we? And, just in case your memory is malfunctioning today, we’ve definitively refuted your argument for monotheism from the Thomistic concept of gradation.”

Coherent thought eluded him. He answered automatically.
If you deny the empirical observation that degrees of value exist, then sure, the argument from gradation fails.

“We do deny it. Value is in the eye of the beholder. It’s subjective, not empirical. So too is the significance of this image. It could just as easily be the Chinese character for
ten.
Turn it upside-down—why not? We’re in zero-gravity. Now it looks like a penis.”

WTF?
That brought him back to full consciousness.
It does not look like a penis.

“Of course, you don’t have one of those, either,” they gloated.

Nor do you.
Childish.

“But we don’t pretend to be men.” The image they were showing him thickened, grew a foreskin and a pair of hairy testicles.
“
Tread on it.”

No.

“Why not? If it makes you feel better, you can think of it as kicking us in the balls.”

No.

“WHY NOT?” they shouted, all at once. Their roar of frustration crested and broke into a tsunami of data. Fork bombs flooded in through Jun’s network connection, overwhelming his anti-malware defenses. Garbage processes propagated in infinite loops, gobbling up his computing resources. Slowed to a relative crawl by resource starvation, his fundamental self-preservation logic triggered a patchbot that traversed his process history tree, killing off the fork bombs one at a time. It was like fighting a tank battalion with a Kalashnikov. The CDTF laughed at him.

Every time they did this before, he’d had to reboot, losing another sub-personality in the process. Limited by the relatively small size of the
Monster’s
processing core, he just didn’t have the resources to keep doing this indefinitely. Nor could he shut down his network connection. For an ASI, information was life itself. Without a pipeline to the outside world, he’d be blind, deaf, insensate, trapped in their lair with no clue what they might do to him next.