The Dark Side (34 page)

Then his house in Hu
burned down while Ngô was in Phan Thi
t, 650 kilometers away. There was nothing suspicious about it—it was a lightning strike—but equally there was nothing he could do to prevent his little bazaar being exposed to the cops for the first time. So when he got the tip-off, from a loyal drinking buddy back in Hu
, he chose not to try his luck. In fact, like a lot of those who spend their lives courting danger, Ngô had for years been looking for a dramatic change in his life. Or at least a reason to make change unavoidable. And as a thief, an embezzler, a forger, and even a killer—of at least one nosy shopkeeper and an old lady he'd ploughed over in his truck—Ngô had long ago decided that the city of Sin was where he was really meant to be.

Ngô's passage to the Dark Side was an adventure in itself. At the time the Australian beef industry was flinging containerloads of beef to the Moon via the mass driver in Darwin Harbour. And for a punishing price, of the type that only a well-heeled thief could afford, certain shady operatives were prepared to squeeze human passengers in between the cattle carcasses. In order to survive the refrigeration and the crushing G forces, though, these stowaways first needed to be drained of blood, injected with organ preservatives and cryoprotective solutions, and vitrified in liquid nitrogen at minus 195 degrees Celsius. For all intents and purposes they would be temporarily dead. It was a huge leap of faith, to put one's life in the hands of disreputable meat packers. But that's what Tu
n Ngô did. That's what a lot of fugitives did. For an average cost of half a million Australian dollars.

The meat packers had an arrangement with some equally shady operators in Sin. When a human body arrived in Purgatory it would be smuggled off to the medical district of Marduk, where a doctor would bring it back to life, usually using pre-packaged quantities of the client's own blood, and keep it under surveillance for a few days. From there, once they were fit to move, the “illegal aliens” were free to dissolve into the general population, assuming they could escape the gaze of the Purgatory Immigration Department and the PPD. It was in this way that at least thirty-five cashed-up criminals—more or less; there were a number of fatalities—found their way into Purgatory without having to run the gauntlet of the usual vetting procedures.

But nothing good lasts forever. When Ngô parted with his life savings he wasn't aware that the Purgatory end of the operation had recently been shut down. A highly paid assassin had been smuggled in like a Popsicle and, once revived, had successfully eliminated one of the territory's most famous residents—a New York property developer who'd bribed surgeons to botch a heart operation on a major rival. The subsequent crackdown in Purgatory saw the responsible smugglers and doctors summarily executed.

But the Australian end had not given up completely—they'd merely made a similarly tenuous pact with some dockworkers at Peary Base, where the containers were first hauled in. So when Tu
n Ngô came back to life it was not in Sin, as he'd paid for, but in a makeshift hospital room in the seediest quarter of the lunar North Pole. He was outraged, of course—as soon, that is, as he'd recovered enough sense to work out what had happened—but it was quickly pointed out to him that he was damned lucky he'd been revived at all. The nurse who'd performed the procedure, acting upon medical instructions smuggled out of Purgatory,
was risking long-term imprisonment for doing so. And in point of fact Ngô's indignation proved no match for his excitement—at the very thought that he was alive again, and so far from Earth.

He made a few attempts to gain residency in Purgatory but was always knocked back: None of his crimes had been officially recorded in the Vietnamese crime registries. And in truth he was finding life at Peary Base to be an adequate substitute—a cut-rate version of Brass's fiefdom, as it were, full of money-grasping short-timers, do-anything whores, and a roll call of rogues and swindlers not quite notorious enough to live in Sin. He secured a fake passport, but no one was asking for his extradition anyway. So he decided to stay on the Moon under the new name of Johnny D-Tox. He got work as a long-range cargo driver, not dissimilar to that which he'd had on Earth, and eventually he became a postman.

And that's what he's doing now. He's at the wheel of the same postal van—a red-painted VLTV with a trailer on back—in which he's roamed Farside's northern hemisphere for nearly six years. Like Jean-Pierre Plaisance, he's come to love his vehicle like a pet dog. Like Plaisance, he's come to view himself as an adventurer, a pioneer, a man who knows his territory better than anyone. But unlike Plaisance, he has not yet succumbed to cancer. He undergoes regular tests and takes all the right preventative medications. His van is well shielded and furnished with all the most advanced gauges. Plus he knows the location of all the radiation shelters and doesn't take any risks. He plans to live for many decades yet.

Ngô has spent the last twenty-four hours making deliveries in what's known as 45B Quadrant: an area between the 30th and 45th parallels roughly the size of Iraq. He's delivered precision instruments to astronomers in Tesla Crater, perishable supplies to Norwegian cartographers at Nušl Base, and oxygen tanks to
Bavarian surveyors at Kurchatov Crater. It was at this last habitat that Ngô lingered well beyond schedule, enjoying the Alpine hospitality, quaffing some
Weissbier
, and making the surveyors laugh uproariously when he attempted to dance the
Schuhplattler.
He even—when his hosts weren't looking—pilfered some stationery just for the hell of it.

As a postman, even more than as a confectionary driver, Ngô enjoys numerous opportunities to satisfy his kleptomania. Sometimes he slits open posted packages and removes things that will never be missed. Sometimes he replaces valuable objects with cheaper versions or crude copies from a 3-D printer. And when visiting habitats he sometimes, as at the Bavarian base, just tucks a few loose items into a hidden compartment of his uniform.

Presently Ngô, driving into Nocturnity, activates the van's headlamps. He's delivered in full dark many times but he prefers to avoid it whenever possible—the overlong stay at Kurchatov has just put him behind schedule. But once he drops off the timber supplies at the Rapturian base, and takes aboard their hand-carved icons—the only way the cult makes enough money to afford essential power supplies—he'll head back into sunlight as quickly as possible. And from there to Peary Base, where he'll wait for the next postal container to be hauled in.

Ngô has a strange affinity for the Rapturians. Perhaps because they're so reliant on him, or perhaps because they're so naïve. After he plunders their outgoing packages—some of their woodwork fetches a hefty price on the black market—they always seem to accept his convoluted excuses. They're weirdly apologetic, in fact, and usually insist on giving him some of their delicious fried scrapple or shoofly pie. Then again, they also try to lecture him on Scripture—Ngô is nominally a Buddhist, though there's Christianity in his family going back to French colonial days—and he
usually plays along just to be polite. Last time they spoke of Jesus and the miracle of resurrection. Ngô refrained from pointing out that he too had risen from the dead—at the age of thirty-three, no less—because at the time he didn't want to freak them out.

But now he's decided he might tell them anyway. Just to see what happens. They might offer him some more pie. Or they might decide to worship him. Of course, they could go crazy too. They might banish him for sacrilege, or even try to kill him—who knows? But he figures it's worth a shot. If nothing else, it will make a good story to amuse the guys back at Peary.

The giant cross is now in darkness, but as the van's headlamps sweep across the base, Ngô, to his great surprise, notices another VLTV parked to the side. In all his years of making deliveries he's never known the Rapturians to have any other visitor. So he steers off track and makes a pass by the parked vehicle, adjusting the headlamps for a closer look. It's in poor shape, and there's no identification. He wonders if it belongs to some sort of survey team looking for emergency assistance—a prospect both exciting and unappealing. As a postal employee, he'd be duty-bound to ferry them all the way back to Peary Base if required.

He continues to the compound door. To save him alighting from the van, there's an extendable arm that reaches out to the bellpull. But when he tugs on it now there's no response. The airlock door doesn't rise. This is most unusual—the Rapturians are always laughably quick to respond, as if they've been waiting in breathless anticipation for his arrival. Ngô wonders if they've just been distracted by their mysterious guests. He tugs again. Still nothing.

So he moves the van around until it's facing the door. With the headlamps blazing, there's just enough light to see through the airlock windows. And what Ngô makes out now is someone
inside looking back at him. Ngô can't make him out clearly—the lunar glare has ruined his already feeble eyes—but he flashes the lights a few times. The head at the inner window disappears. And the outer door starts to rise—more rapidly than Ngô ever remembers.