The Credulity Nexus (28 page)

“
I like you. I mean, what's not to like?
Apart from the killer robots and everything. But if you think I'm
going to be your little girl while you play Daddy, you couldn't be
more wrong, Mister.”

She took her
hand away, not roughly, and closed her eyes again. Rik was
open-mouthed with astonishment, then full of indignation. “I was
just trying to be nice,” he said. “I don't see what's so bad about
wanting to show my gratitude.”

“
Yeah, yeah.”

Rik's
indignation boiled into anger, but he kept his mouth shut, turned
away and glowered at the seat in front of him. The trouble was, she
was right. He had been hitting on her, and when he thought about
it, it really did seem like an odd time to pick. But it was a crazy
situation. They'd been thrown together in the middle of all this
madness. They'd fought together. They'd formed a connection. Sure,
his timing was a bit off, and it looked like exactly what she'd
accused him of back at Cordell's place, but what other chance did
he have? When else was he supposed to ask her out?

He sat there
feeling sorry for himself, feeling misunderstood and hurt. His
thoughts prowled like caged animals inside his skull, pausing here
and there to sniff the bones of his life with Maria, or to stare at
the empty places his mother and sister once inhabited. By the time
the rocket engine cut in, his mood had grown dark and brooding. He
was glad of the increased acceleration that pressed him deeper into
his seat. It gave him something to push back against.

-oOo-

“
Is he dead?” Maria asked, goggling at the
lieutenant. Burleigh was lying on his living room floor, no longer
moving.

The woman she
had known as Kirsty Winters snorted. “I wish!”

Kirsty pushed
Maria towards the door. “Come on – we have to get clear of this
place. If I'd known there might be wet work, I'd have brought
something bigger than this damned pea-shooter.” She waved the
little dart gun, then slipped it into her jacket pocket. “He'll
only be out for a couple of hours. Like these guys.”

They passed a
man and a woman in the entrance hall. Maria recognised them as the
police officers who had accompanied Burleigh back to his home. Both
were unconscious.

Kirsty stopped
in the doorway and snapped, “Bring your luggage.” Maria clicked the
remote and her bag followed her out.

“
This is crazy,” Maria said, stumbling from
the house in the treacherous low gravity.

“
Tell me about it,” Kirsty
agreed.

She led Maria
into the street. They were in what looked liked a big trailer park
inside a high-roofed cave; Heinlein's idea of a respectable suburb.
The roof of the cave was almost too dark to make out. The space
between the trailers was lit by painfully bright lights on metal
poles. At various points in the distant cave walls, illuminated
tunnel mouths opened onto ramps and bridges. Maria remembered
documentaries about how Heinlein was built inside a labyrinth of
lava tubes and magma chambers. She had always imagined it would
feel like being buried alive on an alien world, and that's exactly
how it did feel.

A few trailers
down from Burleigh's was one of the ubiquitous robot taxi pods,
waiting for them.

“
Get in.”

Maria looked
around for help, but there was no-one in sight. If she ran now,
would she make it to safety before the woman drew her gun? But the
idea of running was ridiculous. She could barely walk without
falling over.

The pod
carried them beyond the rows of prefabricated dwellings, across the
broad floor of the cave and up a ramp into one of the tunnels. Soon
this opened into a much broader tunnel with huts and ramshackle
buildings on either side. These gave way to smarter buildings, yet
even the best were flimsy things that seemed to be made of dark
grey plasterboard sheets. There were people in the streets now, and
shop-fronts and signage. They took another ramp, down this time,
and then another, deeper into the lunar city.

“
Where are you taking me?”

“
Shut the fuck up.”

Maria studied
her captor. Kirsty seemed to be seething with anger about
something. She had the dart gun in her lap, and Maria was sure the
woman would have shot her by now, if it wasn't for the fact she
would have to carry her to wherever they were going. It was
comforting to know that Kirsty wanted to keep her alive, but not
very much.

They stopped
at a cheap hotel, and Kirsty led them through cramped corridors to
a tiny room with one narrow bed and no chair. It occurred to Maria
that she could switch her cogplus back on and call for help. After
all, it was presumably the people she was running from who had her
now. But the cogplus gave her a ‘no signal’ message when she tried
it.

“
I'm jamming it,” Kirsty said, somehow
aware of the failed attempt. “How stupid do you think I
am?”

“
Oh, I don't know,” Maria snapped back.
“Stupid enough to drug three cops and kidnap someone who's wanted
by every law enforcement agency in the Solar System.”

Kirsty looked
for a moment as if she might hit her. “Empty your pockets,
smartass. Put it all on the bed.”

Maria did as
she was told, but didn't surrender the package. Kirsty looked at
the collection of coins, tissues and breath mints, and shook her
head.

“
Turn around.”

Maria turned
and felt the muzzle of the dart gun pressing into her back. Kirsty
patted her down the right side, then changed hands and patted her
down the left. Her hand stopped at the package.

“
OK, whatever that is, I want it on the bed
too.”

Maria took out
the metal box and placed it carefully on the bed.

“
What is it?” Kirsty asked.

“
I don't know,” Maria told her honestly.
“It's dangerous. A lot of people have died for it.”

“
Get over there.”

Kirsty made
Maria lie face down beside the bed. The room was so small Maria
could still have touched Kirsty with her foot, but that's about all
she could have done before being shot. She strained to watch her
captor, as the older woman gingerly lifted the box and slid back
the catches.

“
It's all right,” Maria said. “It's not
booby-trapped or anything.”

Kirsty ignored
her and lifted the lid millimetre by millimetre, peering intently
into the widening crack before lifting it all the way. She stared
at the contents for a long time and then closed the lid and
fastened it again.

“
What the hell is this?” she demanded,
brandishing the box. “Little bottles with biohazard signs on them?
This is why I've been watching you?”

“
I suppose.”

“
You suppose, do you? Well what do
you
suppose
this
bloody stuff is, then?”

Maria shook
her head. “I don't know, I told you. I don't know. It came in the
mail. I didn't know what to do with it. Then they killed David...”
She trailed off, thinking. “Was it you? Did you kill my
boyfriend?”

Kirsty shook
her head in irritation. “My employers had it done, maybe. How the
hell would I know? I got paid to stick close to you. Now I've got
this.” She waved the box again. “And you.”

Maria started
to get up, thinking it would be all right now, but Kirsty told her
to stay where she was.

“
I need to think this through,” the older
woman said. “Like, this could be poison or germ warfare or
something.” She sounded accusing, as if Maria had set her
up.

Maria wished with all her heart that Rik
was there to sort this out.
And why not?
she thought. If she could get to Rik, he'd have no problem
handling some crazy old woman with a little gun. “Rik would know,”
she said.

“
What? Who?”

“
Rik, my ex-husband. It's something to do
with him. He started all this.”

“
Did he steal it, or what?”

“
I don't know. You'd have to ask
him.”

“
Ask him?”

“
He lives here in Heinlein. I was on my way
to see him. That's why I came here.” Of course, the big policeman
had said Rik wasn't there, but Rik might have slipped past him. “He
was working for someone. It was something to do with that stuff.
He'd probably know someone who'd pay you a lot to get that
back.”

“
I'm already being paid a lot.” Kirsty's
tone was gruff, but Maria thought she heard some uncertainty in
it.

“
No, I mean a
lot
,” Maria said. Rik would probably be furious about
all this, but that was his problem. It was his fault she was in
this mess, and it was his responsibility to get her out of
it.

Kirsty looked
hard at the box again. She seemed to be considering her
options.

“
Oh man, I want one of these.”

The Phenomenon of Man
glided out of the coal-black
sky, balancing on its retros like a giant Frisbee. The trip from
Guadalajara Spaceport to Heinlein had taken less than a day, and
Rik was feeling impressed as he watched the city slide over the
horizon and grow beneath him
.

“
Yeah? Dream on, partner.”

He glanced at
the upload beside him. As usual, he hadn't heard her approach,
although this time he'd seen her dark outline reflected in the
viewscreen.

“
Shouldn't you be strapped in?” he asked,
but he knew she didn't need to be. The stresses of manoeuvring into
a lunar landing were the kind Rivers could shrug off. Rik himself
was in an acceleration couch, the protective webbing securely
holding him in place.

“
Is your girlfriend still in the med
ward?”

Rivers had a
knack if finding the right buttons to press. She'd taken to calling
Fariba Freymann Rik's girlfriend, and every time she said it, Rik
felt the urge to hit her in her plastic teeth. The fact was, he had
begun to realise he liked Freymann a lot. And the more he
acknowledged his feelings, the less he liked the way Freymann kept
pointing out his alleged emotional problems every time he tried to
get close. Somehow, he supposed, Rivers had picked up on this and
was now taunting him with it.

“
She's fine,” he said, keeping his tone
light. “The medic just wanted her to rest because of the
concussion.”

“
So fragile.” Rivers smiled her black
smile.

They watched
the landing manoeuvres in silence for a while.

“
This is your last chance, you
know.”

Rik did not
reply. He knew immediately what she meant. He was surprised he'd
got this far.

“
If we don't turn up the package soon, I
have instructions to...” She sighed.

“
And you think that threatening me will
make me try harder?”

She shook her
head. “I'm just letting you know. I'm not...”

He turned to
look at her, frowning.

She looked
back, suddenly earnest. “I'm not this person. The one you think I
am. You know? I'm a thief. I sneak into places and steal stuff, but
I do it clinically, scientifically. No-one gets hurt except the
insurance companies. I take a pride in it. I'm good. Do you see
what I'm saying?”

Rik didn't
answer.

“
I need this deal with Celestina to work
out. I need this body. I'll do anything to keep it, so I can get
back to my old life. I want to be out of that woman's
clutches.”

“
I don't think it works like that, kid.” He
felt sorry for her, but not much. She'd made her choices, and
they'd all been wrong ones.

A flicker of
irritation crossed her features. “I just wanted to say that, well,
you're OK. All right? I haven't got anything against you. If I ever
have to – you know – it won't be personal.”

“
That's such a comfort. It makes me feel
all warm inside.”

“
Well, fuck you. I was just trying to tell
you something.”

“
Yeah? Well, stuff it. If you ever get the
word from that psycho bitch to come after me, you'd better tell her
to stuff it too. 'Cause, if you tried it, it'd be the last thing
you ever did.”

For a moment,
she stood and snarled at him. For a moment, he thought he could see
hurt in her onyx eyes. Then she turned on her heel and walked
away.

He watched her
go without regret. There wasn't a cold-hearted killer in the whole
system who didn't labour under the delusion that they were good,
decent people inside. He'd put enough of them away in his time not
to let their maudlin self-justifications confuse him any more. What
people did, he had learned, was all that mattered in the end. What
they said was just so much froth on the surface.

Through the
viewscreen he could see low concrete buildings rising around the
ship as it dropped onto its landing pad. On the surface, Heinlein
wasn't much to look at: mostly unpressurised storage bunkers and
equipment sheds. A forest of antennae grew in the regolith all
around – radio masts and dishes, lasers and microwave horns. It all
looked scruffy and ramshackle. Away to the south, the tethers for
Alltheway Station erupted from the ground like spears, aimed at the
distant stars. Nothing moved nearby except a couple of big-wheeled
trucks.

The Moon was
hard and rough. Most of the people who lived there huddled
underground, away from the searing heat and the bitter cold, away
from the radiation that blasted the surface and the merciless
vacuum that reached all the way down from space itself. Rik saw the
cruel, inhuman face of the world he'd arrived at, and it still felt
like he was coming home.