"starsiders_2_bouncing_off_the_moon_by_david_gerrold_v05_unformatted" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerrold David)
cold. I liked Maura. I liked her family. They seemed like nice people. I was sorry we were leaving them behind-I wished we could take them with us. I sat with that thought for a while. I'd had a vacation from myself. I didn't want to go back to being me. Not the me I was before-selfish and self-centered and nasty. That wasn't a lot of fun. But I couldn't stay Maura either. That wasn't who I really was. That conversation with Mickey had been as confusing as it was useful. If I took off the wig and the dress, would I be spiteful Chigger again? Would Douglas and Bobby turn back into Weird and Stinky? In a week, would things be back to what passed for normal in the dingaling family? If so, then why had we bothered? It didn't matter how far away we went-we'd still be us. Alexei finished what he was doing. He clapped his hands in satisfaction , and shouted, "Watch out, Luna! Here come the Beagle Boys!" The truck began rolling slowly forward. The readout on his main display climbed to thirty klicks. "We are almost there," Alexei said, swiveling around in his chair to face the rest of us. "Just a few more hours. Fortunately, we have a road, almost direct. The autopilot can drive. Everyone can sleep. Even me." I pushed forward to look. Alexei rapped the front window with his bare knuckles. "Please to notice, this is not a windshield-because there is no wind to shield against. Even better, we do not get bug spots on Luna. So there is no need for windshield wipers. Save very much money, makes whole thing cost-effective. Is much good, da?" Outside the window we saw only shadowlands. Alexei wasn't going to turn his headlights on unless he absolutely had to, but there was more than enough light bouncing off the rocks above to reveal the ghostly landscape around us. "Where's the road?" I asked. "Right in front of you," he said, pointing. "Open your eyes and look." I was looking for an Earth-like highway. But this road wasn't paved at all. On Luna, paving is unnecessary. This was a wide bulldozed path that found its way between steep rumpled hills. It curled off into the distance, sometimes slicing into the side of a slope, but more often winding around. Orange ribbons marked the edges of the road, and periodically, there were bright-colored signal flags on tall poles.
"Welcome to Route 66," said Alexei. "From Borgo Pass, we take great circle route eastward. Is also called Beltway. Gagarin is inside Beltway, but we are going outside. Not to worry, we will be on official road for two hours. The autopilot will stay inside the lines. When we get to turnoff, I will drive myself." There were comfortable chairs installed behind the pilot's seat; none of them matched. Indeed, the whole interior was a hodgepodge of techno-gingerbread scrounged from a thousand unidentifiable sources. Mickey and Douglas sat down closest to Alexei, Bobby and I took the couch along the opposite bulkhead. Alexei opened a floor panel and retrieved a plastic can of beer. "Anyone else?" he asked. Douglas and Mickey shook their heads; he passed out soft drinks instead. "All right, Alexei," said Mickey, opening his drink. "What's the plan? What are we doing?" "Is no plan. I take you to safety, like I promise. No one find you at Fortress of Solitude. From there, you can make all the phone calls you want. Everything traces only as far as Wonderland Jumble or Gagarin. No closer. So you can pick up e-mail, call home, do everything but order pizza. No problem, I bake pizza myself if you really want. You arrange contract for colony, whatever. Then we get you to catapult." Mickey and Douglas exchanged a glance. Douglas looked to me as well. Could we really trust him? Did we have a choice?
THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD
THE HOUSE-TRUCK-IT WAS hard to know what else to call it-trundled over the Lunar surface like a giant dung beetle, never going slower than ten klicks, never going faster than forty. When I asked why we couldn't go faster, Alexei laughed and replied, "The laws of physics. We do not weigh a ton, but we still have a ton of mass. I do not want to argue with either inertia or momentum. Especially not when momentum is coming from other direction." He pointed ahead. Another vehicle was silently rolling toward us. "An eighteen- wheeler," said Alexei. It was three truck-pods just like the Beagle, only linked together like a train. They rode heavily, Alexei said they were filled with water. The Beagle slowed automatically, to let it pass. "This road has many cargo-trains," said Alexei. "They collect from the freelance mines and deliver to Gagarin. The invisibles sell to the freelancers, and that's how they stay out of the net. Gargarin knows it and doesn't care. The market for fresh water on Luna is second only to the market for fresh air. And remember, water can be turned into air. Oxygen and hydrogen. Very useful. And we can mine water on Luna much easier than we can mine air-although I have heard of a crazy loonie who thinks he can extract oxygen from rock. All he needs is lots of rock and sunlight. Who knows? Maybe he will find that somewhere here?" A thought occurred to me. "Won't the driver of that truck identify us?" "He already has," said Alexei. "Look over there. There is HoboCo.
Miller-Gibson ice-mine. Freelance station. They buy from invisibles. Is profitable sideline, for everybody. So why should they report anything? They would put themselves out of business. HoboCo is where big eighteen-wheeler comes from. Miller and Gibson are very successful . They have found layer of ice not cost-effective for Exxon or BabelCorp, but very profitable for freelance miners. Make their own water, air, grow their own crops. Very good people. They have very nice microbrewery." He waved his beer at us to illustrate. "But it's just a sideline. Mostly they grow cactuses-astringent bases for medicine . But also very nice for tequila too. Tequila has important medicinal uses. Good for drowning worms, one per bottle. Also good on barbecue chicken. But first you have to catch chicken. Are you good with chicken net?" To my puzzled look, he said, "You have never had to catch flying chicken, have you? Ha!-you didn't know chickens could fly? On Luna, they do. Not very well, but well enough. Very funny to see look of surprise on chicken's face. Have you ever seen wings and breasts with dark meat or drumsticks with white? If you do, that is Lunar chicken. Is exercise of muscles that turns meat dark; chickens fly, wings get dark, legs don't carry as much weight as on Earth, drumsticks stay white. Very strange to see, but delicious, just the same. Oh, they also raise rabbits at HoboCo. They don't fly at all. But they are just as tasty." HoboCo didn't look like much from the road, just a distant clump of pods and domes, with a few scattered lights here and there. The whole thing was in shadow, of course. This was the place where the sun never shines-and they meant it. There were solar panels on the nearby ridges. While we watched, the two largest domes began to glow. Alexei explained that most farm domes were on an accelerated day-night schedule. Two hours of light, thirty minutes of darkness; this made everything grow faster. There was a lot to learn about Lunar farming. We rolled on for a while, we passed two other mines, and then the road got rougher, winding its way up the side of a steep crater wall. It was kind of like the access roads carved into the hills north of El Paso-only steeper. The one-sixth gee of Luna made it possible for the truck to roll up hills that no Earth vehicle could have attempted. Coming down the other side was even more terrifying. The living pod of the Beagle was mounted on a leveling platform, so whenever the wheeled chassis started to angle too steeply, the platform tilted up at
the lower end to keep us level inside. For some reason, that only made the ride scarier. From the heights, especially when we crested a hill, we could see the scattered lights of individual settlements or monitor stations. It reminded me of the time when I was Stinky's age, the first time Dad took us on vacation, and we drove through the Southwest. There were places in New Mexico and Arizona, where there was nothing to see. And at night, when the faraway mountains loomed like walls around the edge of the world, there were distant lights huddled lonely under the vast starlit sky. It was like that here. Only the stars were harder. They were bright and cold and merciless. And somehow that made them even more distant . The occasional clustered lights of humanity were desperate and desolate. No wind. No air. Back on Earth, the lights had felt like little havens against the night. I'd wanted to knock on the doors and rush into the warmth and hug the people, thank them for being alive. Here, the lights all seemed like signposts for claustrophobic little prisons. All shouting for attention. Here, I am. No, me. Over here. Me. Come see me. But why? Each one was like every other one. A couple of cargo pods and a cluster of infiatables, hiding in perpetual shadow. There was no romance here. No glamour. Only endless gloom and imported despair, flavored with the perpetual hint of sunlight lurking everywhere. A blazing furnace circled like a hungry demon around and around the shadowed valleys. As the moon turned slowly on its axis, the hills were outlined with neon fire. The house-truck reached the crest of the ridge, and it was like coming up out of a deep black sea. Suddenly, the world was blasted by a dazzling sideways glare. Instinctively, I turned my back to the light- I looked out the wide windows to the west. A layer of shadow fell across the bottom half of the landscape, cloaking everything in inky darkness. Down there was the ice. Up here was the fire. There was no in-between. And then the truck rolled over the crest and dipped back down into shadow again. The roaring sun disappeared behind the rocky horizon , and we were safe in darkness again. "Is great view, da?" asked Alexei. "You will not have trip like this from travel agent. I show you sights no tourist ever sees from the safety of a tourist-mobile. I give you trip of a lifetime, da?" I thought about how far we'd come in less than twenty-four hours. We'd crashed into the moon, bounced across the Lunar plain, climbed
a crater wall, nearly baked to death in the endless sunlight.... "The only thing we haven't done yet," I said, "is freeze to death." "I am arranging that now," said Alexei, absolutely deadpan. "We go to my house carved in ice. My own private ice mine. You can freeze to death all you want. No problem." The road etched its way down the steep side of a hill. I couldn't imagine how a construction crew had bulldozed it into place. Here, the road wasn't much more than a cut across an avalanche-shaped tumble of rock and rubble. The steep slope to the left loomed above us; it scared me almost as much as the dropaway cliff below us to the right. We were creeping along a narrow shelf of rock so light and powdery, we could feel it shifting skittishly beneath the wheels of the truck. "Is not to worry," said Alexei. I really did want to hit him then, as hard as I could. "Remember angle of repose is steeper on Luna. We are perfectly safe. Besides, road and slope have both been sprayed with construction foam to hold everything in place. This road carries much traffic, it is still here, eh?" "Um, Alexei ... ?" That was Douglas. "The more traffic on a road, the heavier the load it carries, the sooner it wears out. You should see the pavement in front of the Babylon Hotel in Las Vegas. It's buckled so badly it has ruts. If this road gets as much traffic as you say-" Alexei cut him off with a hand wave. "Is not to worry, I said. Remember , we are on Luna. If we build to one-half of Earth standards, we are still three times stronger than we need to be." I would have felt a lot more reassured by his words if the Beagle hadn't chosen that moment to slip uneasily across a patch of loose gravel. Almost like we were skidding on ice. "Rocks here are sometimes greasy," Alexei explained. "Ice-not like you know it, but black ice in rocks. Makes them clammy and changes friction quotient." Alexei helped himself to another beer, waving it aloft. "I have earned this today. I have always wondered if escape plan would work. Now I know how well I plan. Only now I have to make up new plan. Except I do not think I will ever go back to Line. So maybe I will not need one after all. I do be much welcome there for a long time, will I, Mikhail?" Mickey ignored the question. "Alexei, how come we weren't apprehended at Wonderland Jumble? Surely they must have been watching for us. And our disguises weren't that good. The old lady spotted us."
Alexei snorted. "The old lady works for me. She is invisible. I put her on train to watch you. She did lousy job of being invisible, didn't she? She watch you too hard. I am sorry if she unnerved you. She only wanted to protect. But people who should have spotted you weren't looking at all. I cannot understand why. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that all of you were apprehended at Clavius a couple of hours ago." "Huh?" "Oh, don't worry. The report will probably turn out to be false, I'm sure. But you will laugh very much anyway. Especially you, Charles. The little boy they thought was you turned out to be little girl named J'mee. I wonder how that happen, eh?" He waggled his eyebrows meaningfully . "Is very funny, da? Is family that Dingillians were supposed to decoy for on Line. You did not know that, did you? Now they decoy for you on Luna. Is only fair. Sauce for goose too." No, we hadn't known who or what we were decoying for-and in all the rush and confusion up the Line and again at Geostationary, I hadn't given it much thought-but what Alexei said made sense. J'mee and her family were very rich. She had an implant and she was always online, peeking into other people's personal histories, even stuff there wasn't supposed to be any public access to. She knew who we were and when she got mad at me for finding out she wasn't really a boy, she turned us in to the marshals at Geostationary. They might have planned to do that anyway, so they could pass through customs unnoticed while we were the center of so much attention. That J'mee and her family were now caught in the same kind of trap themselves was delicious irony. In fact, it would have been delicious revenge if we had done it ourselves, but we hadn't. Alexei had. Or someone he knew. And of course ... if he could do it to someone else, he could just as easily do it to us. If he wanted to. The Beagle finally reached the bottom of Avalanche Hill-Alexei didn't tell us the name of it until we were safely off of it. Now the truck began winding its way through a very uneven rubble field; it looked like very soon, the road would give out completely. Instead, we began seeing short bridges of industrial foam, paving the occasional gap in the way. Soon, the bulldozed course gave way entirely to a layer of foam. It sat on top of the jumbled rocks and rubble like a ribbon of fluffy icing. It wound around the larger outcrops like
the scenic course in a Disneyland ride. Except here, there weren't any pirates or bears or ghosts to jump out at you. The drive was a little smoother on the foam. From up on top of it, we looked like we were rolling on a road of whipped cream. Alexei explained how it had been poured and leveled and hardened. It wasn't all foam; there were bits of gravel and crushed rock throughout, so that over the years as the weight of the trucks compressed the foam, they'd make it even harder. "Foam was greatest invention of twentieth century," Alexei said, launching into another of his interminable peripatetic monologues. "Very silly people. They think foam is weak. They use it for stuffing and toys. With a little bit of seasoning, foam makes houses, roads, domes, spaceships, anything you want. Pour it in molds or build it up in layers. If not for foam, we could not colonize Luna. Certainly not as fast." He pounded the bulkhead. "All these are foam. We order as much cargo as Line can deliver. Yes, we want cargo, but we want pods that cargo arrives in even more. Every pod is a house. We have built whole cities out of these pods-and everything else too. We do it in less than forty years. We have as much living space on Luna now as in all of Moscow-only winters are nicer on Luna. Not as much snow. Not a problem anyway, if we had as much snow on Luna as they do in Moscow , we would all be rich. We would sell it to each other and make water everywhere. We would fill great domes with water and air and everything else. We would have wheat fields to rival the grand steppes of Asia. Someday we will anyway, even without the snow. We will capture comets if we have to. And we will do it with foam.
Alexei didn't notice. "I show you plans. We have crater, we have blueprints, we have much financing, we have eager community of people -even many invisibles. We will build Free Luna." "It sounds like a very expensive Luna," Mickey said dryly. Alexei ignored the jibe. "For you, Mikhail, we will give big family discount. All you need to do is bring big family." He finished his beer and pushed the empty plastic can into the litter bag. He started to reach for a third, then stopped himself. "No," he said. "I have had enough for now. I am driving soon." He pointed ahead. "Here comes turnoff." We rolled onto a wide bare dome of rock that pushed its way up through the foam pavement like a breaching whale. The Beagle stopped at the top. On the other side, the road split off in two directions , one curling off toward the light, the other winding back down into blackness-in some places it was visible only by its orange- outlined edges and infrequent illuminated flags. Alexei swiveled forward and busied himself with his controls, snapping switches, studying screens, flipping up plastic switch covers, unlocking and arming unknown controls. He reached overhead and snap-snap-snapped a row of switches. It was a very techno performance . The truck settled itself and made various switching and gurgling noises. Things clanked underneath as they locked themselves into position. Was Alexei actually planning to drive across this jumble? "Hokay," he said finally. "Everybody please fasten safety harness. Is not to worry. Is not too bumpy, and is very short ride." He waited until we'd all buckled ourselves in, then punched the red button in front of him. The truck shuddered-I recognized the feeling-Palmer tubes! We were boosting! Shaking like an earthquake, we shot up off the Lunar surface, into painful sunlight. Beyond the windows, the dark ground fell away alarmingly fast. It was a sea of shadow. Occasional islands of bright rocks thrust up out of the gloom. We tilted slightly forward and began to move. The Beagle throbbed and shook across the Lunar night. I swiveled around and watched as the glimmering thread of the road disappeared behind us. If the booster tubes failed now-we'd never be found. I swiveled back around. Alexei was watching his screens like money was pouring out of them. I noticed Mickey was watching our course too. A bright green line traced its way across an unreadable
map. It zigzagged from one landmark to the next. A yellow dot crept along the line. We were halfway along, but I couldn't see any correlation between the display on the screen and the terrain outside. The glare of the sun was directly ahead and everything was either dazzled out of existence or lost in shadow. Finally, we hooked around to put the sun behind us and started a steep descent into a broken arroyo. Coming in from the east, we saw a scattering of pods, as if discarded by a thoughtless tourist. They were connected by pipes and wires and lazy tubes that curled around the landscape in courses of convenience. We shuddered down toward a square of four bright orange lights. Here and there, I saw scattered towers with arrays of solar panels at the top. Most of them also had glimmering cables climbing up to huge lens arrays at the top-I recognized them as light-pipes; the lens arrays were called collimation engines. We sank down into shadow-the glare behind us switched off as suddenly as a power failure. Flurries of dust rose up around us like history. A moment later, we bumped softly down onto the Lunar surface . The vehicle stopped shaking and we were down. The Beagle had landed.
THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE
"WELCOME TO INVISIBLE LUNA," ALEXEI SAID. He began shutting down the flight controls, switching off all the things he'd switched on before, switching on all the things he'd switched off. "We are now off the map." He waved at the junk and detritus beyond the window. "This is abandoned test site Brickner 43-AX92. Not cost-effective for industrial production. Shut down seven years ago. Leased to Lunar Homestead Sites for one dollar a year, paid up one hundred years in advance, with option to purchase. All ice mined from this site must be sold to leasing company. Part of proceeds goes to company store for credit for supplies , part goes toward purchase price, last part you get to keep-only no place to spend it, nothing to do but melt more ice. Is no big deal. The more you melt, faster you earn out, sooner you work for yourself, sooner you make profit. Lunar sharecropping, da? Does that not sound like good deal? It is if you are lunatic. Even better, water prices stay high." He peered forward through the window, squinting against the gloom, then began easing the Beagle gently forward. He didn't stop talking for a moment. "More people come to moon every day. All of them need water. Two liters a day for drinking, depending how active person is. Another twelve for washing and flushing. Another fifty liters for breathing, or more for watering plants so they can make oxygen for you to breathe-plus humidity, that uses water too. Another thirty liters for crops to eat. And more if you want to eat meat, because
meat has to eat and drink and breathe too before it is meat. Lunar Authority mandates at least one hundred liters of clean water per day per person. That's hard water use, of course. Not soft. Soft includes safety margin, hard doesn't." "Huh?" That was me. "Soft water?" "Not like on Earth. Soft water means different on moon. I explain. Everything on Luna is measured in water. We have water-based economy . We buy and sell with water-dollars-or ice-dollars, which are not worth as much because you have to dig them out of ground first. After you dig them up, they become water-dollars, worth more. Is our own value-added tax, ha ha." Alexei kept talking as he drove. The ground was rougher off the landing pad, but not so rough that the truck couldn't negotiate it. The wheels were three meters in diameter, as tall as a full-grown Loonie, so they just rolled over all but the largest obstacles. They were treaded for off-road use, which was kind of a joke when you thought about it. Everything on Luna was off-road. Alexei steered us toward a cluster of three pods, lying side by side. That didn't look so bad, until he explained they weren't our destination. They were for water-processing. "There is soft-water use and hard-water use," Alexei returned to his lecture. "Hard-water use is determined by laws of physics. No room to negotiate. What you get is what you see. You need twenty-four hours of air to breathe, every day. You cannot get by on twenty-three hours, can you? You cannot get by on twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes, can you? No, you need your full twenty-four hours of air. That requires however many liters it takes to water plants that produce oxygen. Or however many liters you electrolyze. That is hard-water use. "Soft water use is negotiable. You can use some water more than once. You can wash yourself in water, then use it again to flush toilet, then use it a third time to water plants. One liter gets used three different ways. Is like getting three liters for one. You do not need fresh water for everything, soft water lets you make water work overtime. But even when water works super golden hours, there is a limit to how hard it can work. You cannot recycle what isn't there-and even softest water turns hard after a while. "We have more than three million Lunatics on this globe. That means we need at least three hundred million liters of liquid water to sustain life. If there is not enough water for everyone, demand goes up and prices rise. We have to use more and more soft water, until we
reach hard-water limit. That is good day for ice miners, because that is day we all make lots of money-if we can get our water to market. Price of hard water is floor of Lunar economy. Price of soft water is ceiling. Understand, da? Or is it the other way around? Never mind. Is big room to make lots of money. As long as sun shines, is raining soup. Grab a spoon and a bowl. Don't stand there holding fork and wondering why you are hungry. This is why Lunar sharecroppers sometimes sell extra water to invisible economy. Not to leaseholder. But leaseholders have to buy at fair market price, so if sharecropper is in it only for money, is wise to be legal. But I am not in it only for money." He guided the Beagle into a docking bay and brought it to a careful halt. The front wheels bumped firmly against a bar of foam, set across the end of the bay as a shock absorber. Alexei locked the engines down, then began punching a column of buttons to his left, watching as the light next to each one flashed green. From behind and below us came the familiar clattering sounds of an automatic hatch connection. Somebody must have gotten very rich from that patent. The docking bay was a deep trench carved into the Lunar surface. Beside it was a flattish dome with a spindly power-tower rising above it like an old-fashioned oil derrick. Multiple light-pipes fed down from the lens arrays at the top and into channels all around the edges of the dome, so the dome glowed from underneath. Alexei finished locking the vehicle down and put it in standby mode. He stopped to frown at one display. "I will have to take this machine in for service, very soon. We have put on too many miles, too many hours. Never mind. Let's get you safely put away." He unfastened his safety harness and bounced aftward. He pulled open a floor panel, revealing a hatch set into the very bottom of the cabin. The panel next to it flashed green with confirmations. He punched the unlock, armed the connecting circuits, lowered the pressure tube, connected it, checked the connections, pressurized it, checked the pressure, confirmed it, unlocked the hatch, and popped it. He unzipped the three openings to the pressure tube. There was a flat cabinet mounted on the ceiling; Alexei stood up, opened it, and dropped the end of a retractable plastic ladder down the hatch. Every door on Luna was a locked hatch. There hadn't been a death caused by accidental decompression in thirty years. And that one, according to Alexei, had been so horrible that every hatch on Luna was replaced in the next five; though some places off the map might
still have some of those old hatches installed-probably with extra warning stickers on them. Alexei climbed down the ladder. Even though the distance from the floor of the Beagle to the hatch on the ground was low enough to jump, he still climbed down the ladder. Both Mickey and Alexei had cautioned us-more than once-that more bones had been broken by Terran overconfidence than any other particular brand of stupidity. It was what Alexei called "the Superman mistake." Just because you can jump that high doesn't mean you can land safely. The pressure tube was like every other one we'd seen, an extendable plastic column. The ladder went down the center of it. At the bottom was the outer hatch of whatever airlock we were dropping down into. We pulled up the plastic ladder so Alexei could rezip the three zippers at the top of the pressure tube; then he unzipped the three zippers at the bottom. He worked the controls on the lower pressure hatch, popped it, stuck his head in, and took a deep breath. He flashed us a thumbs-up signal and we unzipped the top three zippers and lowered the ladder again, so we could climb down through the pressure tube. A week ago, I would have asked, is all this checking necessary? Now I knew enough not to bother asking. As I climbed down, I noticed that the pressure tube was made of the same stuff as the inflatable, maybe a little thicker; it unnerved me. I preferred solid walls between me and vacuum. Bobby climbed down after me, the monkey riding on his back. Alexei helped each of us down through the next set of hatches. "Ladder is strong, but it might be slippery from condensation. Please use feet here," he said. We lowered ourselves down into Krislov's Fortress of Solitude-into a surprisingly warm and humid atmosphere. Once out of the inner airlock, we were on a room-sized shelf, overlooking a wider, deeper space. The walls were rock, but the floor was the inevitable polycarbonate mesh decking. I peered over the railing, down into a rocky shaft. It looked about ten meters across and thirty meters deep. The walls were sparkly gray and very shiny; light pipes snaked down them and plugged into the rock in haphazard fashion. Catwalks and ladders wound up and down everywhere . Platforms hung from the walls at odd intervals all the way down. Everything was suffused with indistinct illumination, the seepage from the light-pipes. The air had a wet smell, like a shower room just after all the show-
ers have been turned off. And it sounded wet, as if things were dripping all over. And some of the light pipes looked wet with condensation . Alexei followed us down after securing the top hatch. "You are first people I have ever brought here," he said. "This is my very private space. Is ice mine and water factory. You will see how it works very quickly. I give you whole tour. But be careful, is slippery sometimes." He pointed us down a set of permanent ladders; most of these were anchored in the rock walls; they led all the of the ladders were dripping with condensation, some of the platforms were damp. "Comets hit Luna everywhere," Alexei explained. "Millions of years. Make lots of craters. Man in the moon has bad case of pizza- face acne or maybe even smallpox-except smallpox is extinct, except maybe for small vials here and there that nobody is supposed to know about. Never mind. Comets are made of ice, da? Sun shines on most of Luna. Ice sublimes, turns to vapor, and is gone. Everywhere but place where sun never shines. So ice is still here. North and south poles, the light comes in very low and sideways, can't get over steep crater walls to look down into shadow-valleys. So ice doesn't melt. Dig down into crust, what do you find? Crunched comet. Lots of it. Shine light on it, what do you get? Nice hot ice. Make tea, da?" He stopped us on a mesh shelf halfway down and pointed around at tangling bright tubes. "Light-pipes bring hot sun down into shaft. We drill horizontal tubes, angling slightly up. I pump light in, ice melts, water drips out. I have free electricity, free light, sun does all the work. All I need to do is collect water and sell it. But here is big joke. Ha-ha. I cannot sell my water. Is not cost-effective." He shrugged and waved us on down to the next level. "You see storage tanks upside? If I had a pipeline, I could sell every drop. If ground could hold pylons, I could send water out by train. But we are too far away, too far for pipes, too hard to build train. Lots of water, but not enough to justify expense. So I am sitting on a million water-dollars that I cannot afford to sell. I have so much water here, I could start farm like Miller-Gibson. More than I could use in a lifetime, it feels sometimes. This place was very good bad investment , da?" We reached the bottom of the shaft-well, not the bottom, but as
far down as we could go. We were on a wide mesh deck above an open- topped tank. "Loose water drips everywhere," Alexei said. "Easier to let it just drip. Water beneath must be recycled anyway. Is not unsafe, but is filled with minerals. Earth-style hard water." He pried up a floor panel, so we could see below. The bottom of the shaft had been lined with plastic. Over a period of time it had filled with water, turning it into a huge indoor pool. "Da, you can go swimming if you want," Alexei said. "Water is warm enough. Water is good for storing heat. Keeps shaft warm, helps more water melt. Everything stays warm and toasty. Heat from sun is cumulative." He pointed to the side of the pool. "There is ladder to get out. And diving shelf too. But be very careful diving. You can go very deep in water and not notice how deep because you will not feel same water pressure until you go six times as deep. You can go too far down and not have enough air to get back up. Here is question for you to ponder. Will it be harder or easier to swim in Lunar gee? Will it be float on top of water?" I frowned in thought. Before I could answer, Douglas said, "It shouldn't make any difference, should it? The relative densities are the same." "Very good," said Alexei. "You might survive. Some terries make Superman mistake in water too. Come with me, I show you sleeping quarters. Are you tired? No? Do you want a real bath? We have hot showers too, even a steam room. Is no shortage of water here, hot or cold." He grinned at us. "You feel this is wasteful, da? All this water, and it cannot be used by anyone else? I admit it, I am water hoarder. Not as bad as some though. Some folks have enough water to run fishery . Trout, catfish, shrimp, lobsters, all very big, very tasty. But I am not water hoarder by choice. The problem is always cost of shipping to market. I make more than enough to live, but not enough to sell profitably. This house will never pay for self." Alexei led us over to one wall where a cluster of partitions had been set up to define specific areas. A plastic canopy hung over everything to keep water from dripping down into the living spaces. "Here is room for Charles and Bobby. Here is place for Mickey and Douglas. Is clean clothes for everyone, as soon as we unpack Beagle. Over here is shower. Take as long as you want. Is only luxury we have. And over here is table for eating and kitchen for cooking. I have small farm here too. You will find fresh vegetables for salad. LunaFarm meals in
fridge. You will be very comfortable. Mickey, here is library, many books, and untraceable link to network. You can make phone calls, send e-mail, buy videos, whatever. You will be very comfortable." "It sounds like you're leaving us here," said Mickey. He glanced sideways to Douglas. Alexei didn't notice it. "Da," he said. "I must run errands. You will be safe here. I will not be gone too long. Only two or three days. I have to fill Beagle with water, I will take him off to invisible farm where they will service him in exchange for water. Everything from new food in fridge to new Palmer tubes on chassis. And in return, I will pump fresh water into invisible economy. Every little drip drip drip counterbalances Lunar Authority." Douglas had a thoughtful frown on his face. "You're a subversive, aren't you?" "Da!" said Alexei excitedly. "You have figured it out. Good for you, Douglas Dingillian. I am Free Luna Libertarian. The rights of the free market are the only rights. Everybody benefits from free market. Where the market isn't free, is the job of subversives to make it free for all." Mickey looked amused, as if he already knew this. Douglas had a sour expression; he didn't want to get into this argument. Unfortunately , he'd already pushed the on button, and Alexei didn't have an off button. "Do you know there are no taxes on Luna? Sounds good, eh? But instead of taxes, we have user fees on currency. You put dollar in bank, Lunar Authority takes half penny. You are paying guarantee for security of legal tender. You take dollar out of bank, Lunar Authority takes another half-penny. Most of time, you don't notice. But every transaction of dollars, you pay a little slice to government. "No law requires you to use Luna Dollars, but Luna Dollars are primary medium of exchange, each one supposedly backed by one liter of clean water-but Luna Reserve adjusts money supply up or down to thwart free market. Is really just price control so Lunar Authority can provide guarantee of stable currency. I say it is chicken and egg argument. They adjust currency to justify charging fee. Then they charge fee so they can justify manipulating currency. This makes it harder for freelancers to make profit, except by going invisible and selling in the wet market. "Is very complex to explain, is very simple in practice. Sometimes
users have lots and lots of dollars to transfer, and do not want to pay fee, or they do not want the transaction logged-then what? Then they put money in invisible bank, move money through invisible economy. How? Pump it as water. Money arrives where it needs to be without losing anything to friction. Lunar Authority does not get to sand extra zeroes off end. We guarantee our own value. Is very hard to inflate water. In fact, it used to be that water was the only barter system in invisible economy-at least, until we figure out how to transfer dollars without government fingers helping to count." "How'd you do that?" Mickey asked, and I had a feeling it wasn't just casual curiosity. "Is all done with intelligence engines," Alexei said, as if that were explanation enough. If you have one, you can be a bank or any other kind of corporation. Or even a government. Mikhail, pay attention here-it doesn't matter how many stupid processors you put into render farm; you still need intelligence core. That needs quantum chips. If you have that, you can make money jump out of here and into there, without passing through intervening space. At least, that is how it is explained to me." "A shower sure sounds good," I suggested, hoping to derail this particular conversation. Mickey looked annoyed; I guess he wanted to hear the rest. But Alexei's hyperactive mind had already leapt on to the next thought. He was already pulling back a plastic divider. "Is good question, Charles. Over here is drying area, when you get out of shower. Is heat pump, like sauna. And you can stand under sunlight here. But do not stand too long. You will get badly sunburned." He pointed at my borrowed hair. "Be careful with wig, please. In case you might need it again. Or maybe you will want to wear it again just because it makes you look so pretty. Don't look to me like that, the nights are two weeks long here. Some Loonies like to play dress up, phone friends, play games. Now we must hurry and unload Mr. Beagle so I can take care of errands ."
HIT THE SHOWERS
ALEXEI DIDN'T LEAVE IMMEDIATELY. He still had several hours more talking to do before taking his tongue in for its one-hundred-thousand- kilometer checkup. Fortunately, he didn't need to do it with us. He headed off to a space above the living quarters that was partitioned as an office; it had a ceiling and angled windows overlooking the living area. There he started making phone calls. Through the glass we could see him gesticulating wildly and hollering at his unseen victims. Occasionally , we could hear wild Russian phrases that defied translation, although at one point, it seemed as if Alexei was very upset about a lot of chyort and gohvno. He stamped back and forth through the office, waving his arms and shrieking in fury. It was like when we were on Geostationary and he was talking on the phone to people all over everywhere, making all kinds of business arrangements. He said he'd made a lot of money off the information Mickey had given him-but for a rich man, he sure didn't act very rich. He acted like the guy who ran the comic-book store in El Paso. Like every comic was a million-dollar deal. Well, some of them were-like Mad #5-but not every one. So just what was Alexei screaming about? And to who? Hell, if I had an ice mine on the moon and a rolling Beagle-truck, I wouldn't worry about anything. I'd hang speakers all over the shaft and play Dvorak's Symphony #9 "From the New World" as loud as I could. Dad had recorded it with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra once. I'd always liked that recording, it was one of my favorites. That,
and his recordings of Beethoven's nine symphonies. Dad had used the Ba:renreiter edition of the score, and period instruments tuned to the traditional A at 415 hertz, not 440 as was done later on. And he'd accelerated both the tempo and the dynamic range of the orchestra. I liked Dad's interpretation-and not just because it was Dad-but because he made the music frisky and energetic, as well as thoughtful and elegant. He brought grace and dignity to the third movement of the Ninth, playfulness and spirit to the first movement of the Fourth. The recordings had sold very well and Dad was invited to conduct all over the country. Newsleak even called his set "the definitive Beethoven ." I was very proud of him. So was Mom. Things were going well for us. And then Mom got pregnant with Stinky and everything changed. Mom and Dad started arguing over his career and all his traveling and his responsibilities-and then one night Dad got so angry, he asked her if the baby was even his- And after that, it was never the same again. Some things can't be fixed. And that only made me wonder all the more about Alexei. There was something very strange about the way he was super-polite to us, and then turned raging-belligerent to invisible people on the other end of the phone. What he was shouting looked an awful lot like the kind of stuff that couldn't be fixed-that the people on the other end wouldn't forgive. So who was he yelling and screaming at-and why did they put up with it? What kind of relationship was it that they couldn't each go their separate way? Or was this the way Loonies behaved? Polite always in person, angry only when they couldn't be touched? It didn't seem right to me. There was a lot that puzzled and annoyed and frustrated me about everything-and after Mom and Dad declared war on each other, I started speaking up too. I mean, why not? If everybody else was going to say what was wrong, I wanted to be heard too. Except it doesn't matter how loud you complain, nobody listens- and nobody cares whether your complaint gets addressed or not. It's not their problem. Everybody only cares about their own problems, no one else's. A complaint is about as useful as a morning-after contraceptive pill for men. Dad used to say that the only way to get anyone else involved in solving your problem is to make it their problem. But that didn't always
work either-if their way of solving problems was to blame them on someone else. Like Mom and Dad always did. But even though it didn't really work, speaking up was still better than keeping silent. Because if you're silent, they think you're agreeing . When you complain, when you speak up, when you argue, when you fight back-at least the blood on your hands isn't all your own. Watching Alexei in his booth ... it was like watching Mom and Dad. "Chigger?" "Huh?" "Showers? Remember?" "Oh, yeah. Right. Sorry. I was thinking." "That's a nasty habit to get into," said Douglas. "You should only do it in private, and make sure you wash your hands afterward." "I said thinking!" "I heard you-" I pulled off the wig, shrugged out of the dress, peeled out of the slip and panties. I felt weird doing it, like I wasn't just changing clothes as much as changing from one life into another. And Alexei had been right about the luxury of clean underwear. The showers were wonderfully hot. Clouds of steam rose around us. It was delicious. This was the first real scrubbing we'd had since we'd left Earth over a week ago. Since before we took the elevator up the Line, since before the SuperTrain. Our last bath was at the motel in Mexico, after the night that Stinky scared himself by almost drowning in the Gulf of Baja. But even that shower hadn't been all that great. The water had been brown and there wasn't much pressure; it had smelled bad and felt worse. We ended up feeling dirtier than when we'd started. This was better, much better, almost perfect. The water fell lazily around us in great fat drops, splattering everywhere in slow-motion bursts. It rolled slowly down our faces, down our chests and legs. It dripped like oil off our fingers and our noses and our dicks. Stinky laughed and pointed. Mickey held up his hand and angled a water spray so it arced high and slow across the shower space and splashed across Bobby's chest and face. Bobby yelped, but it didn't take him long to figure out how to splash back-and in no time at all, we were all aiming our respective torrents at each other, laughing wildly in a silly hysterical naked water fight. Everyone got doused in turn. Douglas and
Mickey ganged up on me, then Bobby and I and Douglas plastered Mickey. And then Mickey and I and Bobby aimed everything at Douglas . We were making and breaking momentary alliances, one after the other, none of us were safe from betrayal. As soon as someone had been thoroughly splashed, we all turned on his most vigorous attacker and he became the new target of opportunity. Finally, still laughing, the water fight ebbed. Even Bobby hollered enough. Then we soaped up slowly, one more time. Our skins were red with heat, shiny with water, and slippery with lather. And for a moment , we just stood and grinned and caught our breaths. We were safe on Luna, Douglas and Bobby and me. And Mickey. It was a truly happy moment for each of us. "We must have used a lot of water," I said, just to have something to say. "We didn't use it up," said Mickey. "It just goes round and round." Douglas was soaping his head. He said thoughtfully, "This shaft looks like it makes a lot of water, doesn't it, Mickey? I can't see why the corporation would abandon it as not cost-effective." Mickey shrugged. "They would if they were deliberately trying to set up a cover operation for funneling money without paying taxes." "Do you think that's what they did?" "I've heard speculations. More likely, Alexei was telling the truth. This site is too far away to make shipping water cost-effective. Gagarin is pulling enough water out of the crust, they don't need to worry about sites like this for a long time. Maybe someday the price of water will be high enough, or there'll be a settlement close by, or Alexei will go into farming and start growing his own catfish or cactus or whatever ." It sounded convincing, the way Mickey said it, but the same way I was wondering about Alexei, I was starting to wonder about Mickey too. And I was thinking about speaking up-doing the annoying brother thing-until Douglas interrupted. "Chigger?" "Yeah?" "Remember that question that Judge Griffith asked you?" "Which one-?" "About telling your left from your right? How do you tell someone else which is which?" "Yeah, what about it?"
"You gave Judge Griffith the wrong answer." "No, I didn't. The question isn't answerable." "Oh, yes it is." He pointed at me. "The left one always hangs lower." "Huh?" And then I got it. A quick look at Bobby, Mickey, and Douglas confirmed it. I blushed and laughed at the same time. And then I splashed him, because what else could I do, so he splashed me back, and then Bobby joined in, aiming his shower spray with both hands, and then Mickey too, and then everyone was shrieking as the water fight began again-
COUSINS
WHEN WE GOT OUT OF the showers, Alexei had already left. That wasn't a surprise, he had told us he would be gone; he had a water- meeting to go to. Actually, it wasn't just about water, it was also about nitrogen. "Water is gold, but nitrogen is silver. We are building new ammonia plant," he explained. "This means electricity. We will have to put up more solar panels. But we cannot build our own panels unless we build solar-cell plant. But solar-cell manufacturing plant uses as much power as small city. So we cannot make enough panels to make enough electricity to make panels because we cannot make enough panels. Is circular dilemma, da. Is hard to be invisible-we cannot buy enough electricity off the lines without someone wondering where electricity is going. So we have to use invisible electricity, of which there is not enough." He waggled his finger at Mickey and Douglas. "You think everything on Luna arrives by magic? No, it does not. Everything is connected to everything else. Everything is built on top of everything else. Is not enough electricity to make more electricity, so is not enough electricity to make ammonia or nitrogen, so we cannot make enough gas to fill all the spaces we can make. And we can make lots of space on Luna, but even if we do, without nitrogen, we cannot make soil to grow things or gas to breathe. And problem is much more complex than I can explain here. I give you word of advice. If anyone asks you to be cousin, say no. You already have cousin in Krislov and he is crazy cousin enough for you. I go now. You take shower, I be gone when you
are done. Do not go crazy from silence." He gave us all enthusiastic Russian kisses on both cheeks and pushed us toward the water. "Take as long as you want. Shower is free here, it goes round and round and never goes anywhere. More than enough. Enjoy. Least I can do is show you real Loonie household. Dos vedanya." I didn't understand half of what he'd said. But Douglas and Mickey seemed to think it made sense. We talked about it, after our shower, while we were drying off under the heat lamps. It was that place where economics and science collided-and if you had either bad economics or bad science, you usually ended up with a disaster. Like a rebellion, a coup, a war, a collapse- "Is that what's happening now?" "You heard him talking about cousins, didn't you?" I thought back. "Only a couple of times." Mickey said, "How do you think Luna got built? Especially invisible Luna?" I shrugged. I hadn't given it any thought. "People do favors for each other. They form tribes. Membership in a tribe makes you a cousin. You help your cousins, they help you. Families with cousins survive better than families without. Invisible Luna has fifteen major tribes and a couple hundred minor ones. The tribes would like to see Luna independent." "But Luna is independent. Isn't it?" "On paper." "I don't understand. "Most people don't. Follow the money. When you do that, you see that the Lunar Authority is still controlled by Earth-based corporations ." "Oh." "And invisible Luna wants to revoke that charter." "So they really are subversives." Mickey shrugged. "I think they're playing at being subversive. They don't have the power to make a difference. Not the political power, not the electrical power, not the processing power-but they're having a great time talking about what they would do if they had the power. Just like all dreamers-" "Processing power?" I asked, probably with a little too much in- nocence.
"Like an intelligence engine." "What do they need that for?" "Do you know how an intelligence engine works?" "Yeah, sort of. It's like a computer with a `do-what-I-mean' button. You tell it what you want. It tells you how to make it happen." "Right. That's close enough. Well, if invisible Luna had a lethetic intelligence engine, it could tell them six ways how to get the electricity they need and a dozen more ways to get the political power. Intelligence engines are great equalizers. That's why some people think they're destabilizing influences and others think they should be mass- produced." Now Douglas jumped into the discussion. "Some people think that the latest generation of lethetic engines have demonstrated true self- awareness. And that raises a whole bunch of questions about everything -what's the nature of sentience? Can machines have souls? Do they come from God? Or some other source of soulness? And if they are truly self-aware, then you can't buy and sell them, can you? And you can't mass-produce them either, because that's ... I don't know, what? Do they get to vote? Will they outthink us? Outvote us? If they're smarter than us, are they going to steal our world out from under us? Or what?" "Yep," agreed Mickey. "And that complicates the issue even more. If they are self-aware, what do the intelligence engines think about this? Where do they want to be?" There was something about the way he said it. I looked up, and he was looking straight at me. Did he know? Did he suspect? How could he not? "Hey!" shouted Stinky suddenly. "Where's my monkey?! I can't find my monkey! I left it sitting right here on this bench, waiting for me when we got into the showers, and now it's gone!" "Are you sure you left it there?" Douglas asked. "Maybe you left it on your bed?" "No, I left it right there-I remember! I told it to wait for me." "Alexei!" Mickey called. "Are you still here? Alexei?" Still naked, he padded over to a nearby console and punched some buttons. "No, he's gone. He and Mr. Beagle left thirty minutes ago." "Are you saying he took the monkey-?" Douglas whispered to Mickey.
But not soft enough. Stinky heard it anyway. "He stole my monkey ! Alexei stole my monkey! I want it back!" He started shrieking and crying. It wasn't fair. He'd already lost everything else-his home, his mom, his dad. Now he'd lost the only toy he had left. I felt like shit.
FIRE AND ICE
WHILE DOUGLAS TRIED TO COMFORT Stinky, I watched Mickey. He was ashen-faced. He was taking this more serious than anyone. Still naked, he climbed up to Alexei's office and began making phone calls. In private. That was interesting. At least he didn't scream and shout like Alexei did. I wondered if Alexei was monitoring everything we did here. Sure, why not? Privacy had died a long time ago. We'd learned that in school. The only defense anyone had against snoopers was not to care-live every moment as if everyone is watching . The only privacy left is inside your head. While Mickey was upstairs on the phone, Douglas tucked Stinky into bed, promising we'd find his monkey no matter what. Then I gave Stinky a hug and told him his monkey was safe and not to worry. And then Douglas pulled me out of there and told me not to get Stinky's hopes up. If Alexei had stolen the monkey, and it sure looked like he had, then we'd probably never see it again, and we had a bigger problem anyway. If Alexei had the monkey now, he didn't need us anymore, and if he was too big a coward to terminate us himself, then he was probably sending someone else to do it. And then I told him that the monkey wasn't the problem, it was Mickey. Didn't it strike him as very odd that Mickey was taking the disappearance of the monkey so hard? And why was Mickey making so many emergency phone calls now? And I'm really sorry to have to say this, Douglas, especially because I think he's nice too, I really do, but I think that Mickey knows a lot more than he's saying.
And then Douglas started to tell me that my imagination and my paranoia were dancing a dangerous duet, and he put on the Daddy voice and got all serious and comforting, and told me how we'd all been through a lot and it was normal to worry about all kinds of impossible stuff, but I should really leave this to the grown-ups to handle-and that's when I stopped him again and reminded him of the promise he'd made to me back on the cargo pod, that he'd never do this again, never again shut me out of a decision, no matter how silly I might sound at the time. And he got it and shut up and gulped an apology, and said, "You're right, I was acting like Dad, wasn't l?" Which was so insightful that I actually complimented him. I gave him a little punch on the arm and said, "That's good, my weird older brother. We might make you into a human being yet." And then we both laughed a little, even though we were in a serious mess. At least, we were going to handle it like brothers. So we talked about it for a bit, and I told him everything I knew- well, almost everything; there was one piece of information I left out- but I told him everything else I'd seen and thought about. And then I added one more thing, which hurt me to say more than anything else I'd ever said in my life-even more than asking for a divorce from Mom and Dad. "I don't want to say this, Douglas, because I don't ever want to hurt you. And I've never seen you so happy in your life as you've been since you met Mickey. But I have to say it and you have to think about it. You only met Mickey what?-a week ago? Didn't you ever stop to ask, who is he really? And what does he see in you? I mean, I love you, you're my brother, I don't have a choice. But he's not your brother, he does have a choice, so you have to ask, why? I can see why you like him. He's good-looking and he's nice and he's smart-but why does he like you? I don't mean to say you're ugly, Douglas, you're not-but we're not going to see your picture on the cover of PrettyBoy either. And it's not that you're not nice, you are in a geeky sort of way, but you're not nice in that way that makes people want to hang out with you. And you're smarter than anybody else I've ever met in the whole world, but it's not street smarts like Mickey has; it's book smarts, which is exciting only to other people who are book-smart and absolutely boring to everybody else. The same way I am with my music. Remember the time I tried to explain to you that the blues were called that because of the blue note, the flatted fifth that gave them their special sound? And you thought that was the most boring thing you'd
ever heard? Well, that's what you're like when you start talking about economic bonding among the polycorporates and crap like that. So you gotta ask yourself, Douglas, just why is Mickey hanging out with us? What does he want?" And Douglas didn't answer right away, he just sat down on the edge of the inflatable bed and hung his head down and stared at his bare feet, and as bad as I'd felt when Stinky started crying for his missing monkey, I felt a thousand times worse now. The tears were silently rolling down Douglas's cheeks and falling lazily to the floor. He didn't sob. He just let the water flow. He didn't get angry, he didn't hit me-I wish he would have taken a swing, I certainly deserved it-but he didn't even argue. That's what hurt the most-that he saw the truth in what I was saying here. And finally, after a long moment, he said, "I've been asking myself that question from the very beginning, Charles. Why am I so lucky? What did I do right? And then after we found out what was going on-or at least, what we thought was going on-yeah, I started thinking the same things you did. And it always comes back to the same question. What does he see in me? And I can't see anything he could see in me except the monkey-so yeah, Charles, maybe you're right and maybe he's using us, just like Alexei. Only I thought we'd be smart and use him to get off the planet and off to a colony, and at least we'd get that far. Only we're playing with the big kids here, aren't we-?" It was time to undo some of the damage. As much as could be undone. "Douglas-" I reached over and put my hand on his shoulder. "I can think of a lot of reasons why someone would care about you. And so can you. All you gotta do is be who you really are-" Except when I said it, it sounded really stupid. "I'm such a jerk," he said. He sounded defeated. "No, you're not." "I felt so lucky. I wanted to believe so badly, I really did. I thought I was smart enough to know better, but I wasn't. I'm just as stupid as everyone else." "Then you're normal." He almost smiled. He put his hand on mine. "Thanks for sticking by me, Charles." "You're my brother. I have to." "Yeah. That's the same thing I said, when I grabbed your hand
back at Barringer Meteor crater. You're my brother. I have to." Mickey came back then, still naked-we all were-in the excitement , we'd forgotten about clothes. "What's going on, fellas?" He looked from one to the other of us. From the expression on his face, he looked as if he already knew. Douglas stood up and crossed to the rack that served as a closet. He grabbed a jumpsuit for himself, tossed one to Mickey, found a smaller one for me. Mickey held the jumpsuit in his hands, but made no move to put it on. He looked across to Douglas, "What's going on, Douglas?" "Who do you work for, Mickey?" Douglas's voice was very cold. Mickey let out the breath he was holding. He sagged where he stood. He looked sad and deflated. "I was hoping I'd have more time before you figured it out. I was hoping-" "Who do you "I was really starting to care and I was hoping-" "Mickey. Just answer the question." He shut up. He took a breath. He met our eyes. "Not all the tribes are Lunatics. There are cousins' clubs in the asteroids, on Mars, at the Lagrange colonies. On the Line. Some of the tribes are multiplanetary." "Yeah? And which one do you work for?" "Does it matter? Do you really care?" Mickey started pulling on the jumpsuit. "You feel betrayed. And I don't blame you. And there really isn't anything I can say to you that will make you feel different. Alexei used you; you figured that out, both of you, real fast. And everybody else tried to use you too-everyone on the Line-so, I figured it was only a matter of time until you figured out that my hands aren't all that clean either. But before you give your speech, and I know you will, let me remind you that you were using everyone else too. Everyone uses everyone. You were using Alexei and me to get to the colonies. Don't deny it, Douglas. So whatever else is going on between us, there isn't any moral superiority on either side. We used each other. You used me and I used you-we're equally wrong." He straightened his collar and pulled his zipper up. "I know this doesn't excuse anything at all, but I really did care about you the whole time. And I know you cared about me too." Douglas pulled his own zipper up. "Between you and Chigger," he said, "you guys don't leave me a lot to say. You guys had it all figured out, didn't you? Only one thing you forgot-all this damn logic and
believing and caring and all this other crap everybody's been throwing back and forth-nobody ever stops to realize how much they're hurting everybody else in the process!" Both Mickey and I started to make noises of comfort, but Douglas held up both his hands, and said in the loudest voice I'd ever heard him use, "NO! Enough is enough. Both of you shut up already! Haven't you done enough damage for one day?!" And that's when Stinky came in, and said, "Don't cry, Douglas, I still love you." Which was probably the one thing he could have said which would have made both Mickey and me want to cry. Douglas scooped him up in his arms and held him tightly, and I realized that as all alone as Stinky had felt without his monkey, as all alone as I had felt these past few days, Douglas was the one who was most alone now-because everything he had wanted and believed in was forever broken. He sat down on the edge of the bed and held Stinky as tight as he could, rocking him gently. The two of them sobbed quietly together, each inside his separate loss, each inside his own particular hurt. I sat down on one side of them and Mickey sat down on the other and we all took turns crying in each other's arms about how shitty we'd all been. It didn't change anything between us, but at least it kept us from killing each other.
DOWN THE TUBES
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