A new Moon settlement, a new kid in town, robbed and down on his luck. And the first person he meets, wouldn’t you know it, is just a little less than a Good Samaritan. Perhaps he’s a little better…
The maglev sped toward Mons Malapert. Out the window, Earth was a blue-white fingernail lost in darkness, the sun a disk of harsh silver light just above the horizon. Without an atmosphere to scatter and absorb sunlight, no stars were visible.
The desolate vastness of space vanished, eclipsed by meters of solid regolith, and immediately, I felt a surge of excitement. Newton Station was always a rush. I spent most of my time tucked away in a tiny apartment below Shackleton Crater, like a bot stashed in a storage cube.
I hurried off the train, hungry for the wide-open spaces of the station concourse. No targets had appeared in my AR ‘splay yet, so I strolled toward the East/West bounceway, savoring the sunlight piped through thousands of tubes that pocked NS’s domed ceiling-like craters on the moon’s surface.
We’d go mad without light, living under all this rock.
The air was clean and crisp, thanks to the vegetated trellises covered with twisting vines, green mosses, and fragrant, multi-hued flowers, but my head throbbed. The pleasant warmth from my breakfast blast of eclipse was fading fast. When the day’s first target appeared in my ‘splay, I thought about ignoring it. But, it had been a slow month. If I didn’t land a commission soon, Ruthless Rita would pay me a visit. And I didn’t want that.
So, I allowed the helpful red dot to lead me to a busy intersection, where I discovered a young man standing apart from the flow of commuters, looking terrified. His e-suit was filthy and ripped, which meant it was useless. His watery brown eyes were bright with fear. In other words, he was a perfect candidate for Rita’s “recruitment” program.
I stopped and stared, struggling to breathe. This poor kid’s eyes looked exactly like Deni’s. How long had it been since I’d thought about my brother? My heart hammered inside my chest, but somehow, I kept the emotion from reaching my face.
“Excuse me, sir?” the young man said, voice shaky and tentative. His long, dark lashes were moist with tears. Fat droplets, ready to drift away in the low lunar gravity. “Please, may I have a moment of your time?” he begged.
I’d always thought it was strange that people found me so approachable. I suppose I was non-threatening. Thin, average height, mud-brown skin, dark hair, quiet eyes. I kept my e-suit clean. And I tended to smile, although in truth, that was only because I was usually high on eclipse. Whatever the reasons, over the years, I’d become one of Rita’s top recruiters. So I swallowed hard, buried the ghosting memories of Deni, and smiled at the young man.
“I’ve been stranded for three of the longest days of my life,” he blurted. I was surprised. He didn’t look tough enough to last that long. “My skin itches, and I’m so hungry I could eat a dust-burger. I want a shower more than anything.” His shoulders slumped in defeat. “But I lost all my money.”
Was that all? There was so much more a person could lose.
“I know how it is,” I said, nodding sympathetically. “The moon is a harsh mistress.” I pointed at the giant green dome to the southeast. “There’s a Lunatarian church with a soup kitchen and shelter down Armstrong. You could get a meal and a shower.”
The young man sniffled and wiped his nose with a bloody sleeve. “You’re the first person to treat me like a human,” he said, lower lip quivering. “Most people won’t even look at me. I’m Donnie,” he said, extending a shaky hand.
I shook it, scanning his prints on the sly. His grip was soft and clammy. Rita liked to make sure her moon slaves didn’t have anyone looking for them. And I had to be sure that this young man wasn’t my brother Deni, somehow returned.
He wasn’t.
“Nice to meet you, Donnie,” I said. “How did you end up…” I spread my hands, indicating his shabby condition.
He blushed and hung his head, ashamed. “I went out with friends, but we got separated. I ended up in a strange, dark corner of Newton Station and met a woman with rainbow hair and silver eyes. I was scared, but I asked her for directions. She laughed and pulled out a needle-gun. Took my creds, bytes, the wad of greenbacks tucked in my sock. My dad’s antique iWatch. Why did she take that? Piece of junk didn’t even work.”
Donnie lifted an auburn curl with dry, scabbed fingers, revealing an ugly wound above his left eyebrow. “As if all that wasn’t enough,” he said, “she bashed me in the head with the butt of her gun.”
“That’s awful!” I exclaimed. Frankly, I was surprised he was alive, after getting robbed by Katie Rainbow. “What happened to your friends?” I asked.
“I don’t have any friends,” he mumbled.
Tears slid down Donnie’s cheeks, leaving clean trails on his pale, dirty skin. “I rode the elevator up here with this guy, Eddie Rocket. Looks just like a space captain: six-four, strong jaw, dimpled chin. Said he had a planet-hopper and some mining drones, and was assembling a crew. He made it sound so glamorous.”
Eddie Rocket was a well-known labor pimp, claim thief, crop plagiarist, and all-around scoundrel. Poor kid. Eddie and Katie probably had an arrangement, which may have explained why Donnie was alive at all.
The kid started sobbing like a lost child. This was about the time I was supposed to put my arm around his shoulder and ask if he wanted to make some money. All he’d have to do would be keep some lonely scientist, engineer, or rock miner company for a few hours.
But, I couldn’t do it. I saw the pain in those scared, wet eyes, and it was too much. Memories of Deni after our parents died came flooding back. I couldn’t let Rita have this kid.
Right about then, I saw Elliot Scar at the edge of the plaza. Just like Rita to send a clean-up crew. “How about a cup of coffee?” I said. I grabbed Donnie by the wrist and started walking. “My treat.”
“That would be amazing,” he said, following.
I led him up the Commerce Boulevard bounceway toward the plaza at 12th and Crater, where the regolith was thickest and com signals weakest, cutting through the fountains at Lex and Hawking. Donnie followed silently.
We smelled the rich aroma wafting from Apollo’s Cafe a block before we arrived. The owners grew their own beans in greenhouse cars on the solar-synchronous railroad and roasted them on-site. It reminded me of how the house would smell every morning as a kid, back on earth.
The cafe was one long, low-ceilinged, rectangular room. Cramped but comfortable, it was dimly lit, furnished with moon-rock tables and chairs. Real paintings made by human hands hung on the walls, depicting nature scenes from earth. Parks, mountains, trees, bridges.
Here at the west end of NS, the hab-zone was capped by a hundred-meter tall, ten-meter thick glass viewport, overlooking the lunar surface from the summit of Mons Malapert. I selected a table with a view.
A strikingly beautiful waitress, e-suit unzipped to her navel, delivered our drinks. Donnie and I sat in companionable silence, each cradling a steaming mug. Savoring the invigorating smell. A swarm of bots swept past, cleaning dust and debris.
“It’s funny,” Donnie said, without a trace of humor. “All I ever wanted was to get away from the place I grew up. Now I just want to go home.”
“Anyone you could contact? Family?”
“No. Pathetic, right? I’m stranded 234,000 miles from home, broke and alone.”
“My parents were ‘roid-miners,” I said, staring out at starless space. “Brought me along to chase their spacer dreams. One day, they landed their spidership on an unstable M-type asteroid, harpooned a pocket of methane gas, and blasted themselves to separate corners of infinity.”
“Oh wow, I’m sorry,” Donnie said.
I shrugged. “Growing up, there were always seedy characters around. Outlaws, pirates, thieves. I was better off by myself.”
“I’m sure your parents weren’t all bad.”
“No, I suppose they weren’t. The summer I turned ten, we stayed in a cabin in the woods. One night, there was a lunar eclipse. The darkness was so deep, I thought the infinite stars would inhale my soul.”
“My parents never took me camping.” Donnie stared out the window, lips pursed.
In the distance, a spidership exploded from a launch crater, trailing a massive plume of dust. It shrank quickly, until after just a few seconds, it was no more than a point of distant light.
“I wish I could take the elevator home. Forget I ever came to the moon,” Donnie said, the words rushing out suddenly like oxygen from a compromised e-suit.
His eyes darted up, meeting mine. He couldn’t quite bring his mouth to beg, but his eyes did the job. His face flushed, red as a hothouse tomato. He was either the greatest actor I’d ever met, or as sincere as he seemed.
I remembered the time I embarrassed Deni by telling his friends he liked to dress up his dolls. Was he still alive, somewhere out there? I rubbed my hands together, wishing I could slip into the bathroom for a hit of eclipse. There was a reason I stayed numb.
Memories are enemies.
I unzipped the hidden pocket in the left wrist of my e-suit and pulled out a folded stack of greenbacks. “How much is the trip home?”
Donnie’s eyes lit up. “Five hundred.” He started to reach for the money, but stopped short. “I promise to pay you back,” he said solemnly.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to. Please. Give me your contact.”
After my parents died, Ruthless Rita made it clear that she expected to be repaid the bond for their spidership. She sold my little brother to the Pleasure Pits of Saturn and offered me a way to work off the balance, helping her “recruit” kids like Donnie to “work” as indentured servants in her lunar harem. It wasn’t something I was proud of, but I didn’t have much of a choice. Or at least, that’s what I’d always told myself. A steady diet of eclipse helped dull any feelings of guilt.
I pretended to sneeze and gave the table a hard smack for good measure, to distract Donnie while I hit his e-suit with a targeted EMP. I couldn’t have him showing up on some other bounty hunter’s ‘splay.
I handed Donnie the money, and he thanked me profusely. I showed him a safe, direct route to the elevator, told him I’d better get back to work, and bid him farewell.
I skipped along the East/West bounceway, imagining the relief Donnie would feel, knowing he was going home. I pictured him back on Earth, with his family. Free of his filthy e-suit, under the bright yellow sun.
I thought about Deni, and the good times we had when we were kids. It brought a smile to my lips, but I couldn’t relax yet. I launched myself like a spidership, grinning fiercely, focused and clear-headed for the first time in forever.
It was time to settle my debt with Rita, once and for all.
END
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