The Dark Side (6 page)

Plaisance has presently set out from Shack 12B at Lampland with a full toolbox, a heavy load of photovoltaic cells, half a dozen cold clamps, and a supply of liquid nitrogen. It seems yesterday's solar flare, not unlike the burst of galactic radiation that rewrote his destiny, has done more damage to Farside's fiber-optic-cable grid than anyone predicted. Power in some quadrants is down. The north-south comm line is out of action completely. Reflectometers at Mons Malapert have pinned the probable damage to within 450 kilometers, so Plaisance's job is to isolate the problem further and make the appropriate repairs. He suspects the junction boxes at Pirquet Crater—more exposed and out of date than practically anywhere else on the Moon—and figures he can make it there in four hours, perform a diagnostic, take the appropriate actions, then sidetrack to Shack 13A for replenishment and vehicle recharging.

Plaisance is an exceptional LRV driver. He is equally at home on hard-packed roads, unofficial trails, or—as now—naked lunar surface. He whisks across dust and stones and fragmented rock. He races up and down slopes. He trundles across cracks and craterlets. Sometimes the LRV soars into the air like a dune buggy. Sometimes its wire-mesh wheels churn out rooster tails of dust. Occasionally,
scything down slopes, he changes direction dramatically just as the vehicle seems certain to flip over. In short, he can make the LRV do things that would have less experienced drivers spinning out of control or plunging into craters. He can drive at speeds that would have other people—particularly visitors from Earth, unused to the extreme clarity of vision and absence of air resistance—absolutely terrified. And he loves it. Because it gives him a sense of value. And because it offers a further feeling of redemption.

The sun is currently low and unmoving on the western horizon. The shadows are long and remorselessly black. This makes even the smallest pebble visible but can also conceal dangerous fissures and sometimes even pits. Plaisance knows this territory better than anyone, but even so he has his relevant senses—visual and instinctive—on highest alert.

Then he spots something. One of his special skills, acquired unconsciously over his years on the Moon, is his ability to read the terrain like a native tracker. This used to be child's play: The dust on the lunar surface was predominantly virginal and any disturbance had a good chance of staying that way indefinitely. But since the advent of human colonization the great volume of human and vehicular activity has agitated the surface beyond recognition.

Nevertheless a fresh print will be visible for a long time, even if it's on top of existing wheel and tread tracks. And what Plaisance sees now, with his eagle eyes, are the footprints of a human being. More accurately, the
shoe
prints of a human being. Heading northeast, right there on the lunar regolith, like the tracks of a businessman in wet cement.

Except of course that they can't be from a human being. Nobody walks on the lunar surface in business shoes. So Plaisance brakes. He brings the LRV to an abrupt halt, and gets out for closer inspection.

No doubt about it. Shoes, good ones, of above-average size. Judging by the deep impressions, Plaisance guesses that the wearer weighs about 110 terrestrial or 18 lunar kilograms. Such figures are common on the Moon—microgravity allows people to carry excess poundage with aplomb—but Plaisance knows immediately that these prints belong to a robot. They have to. He's aware too that there used to be a highly secretive robotics lab in Seidel Crater, to the southwest. Once, the legend goes, an experimental android escaped from the lab and was found, a week later, lying facedown in JVC (Jules Verne Crater) with a mouthful of dust. There are other stories about another droid, a combat model, that's still hiding out there somewhere, killing anyone who crosses its path. But no one really believes that, because droids don't kill.

Plaisance decides to follow the tracks anyway. He's not sure how far out of his way this will take him, because it's difficult even for him to judge how fresh the prints are, but he enjoys the idea of pursuing something—a fugitive, as it were. He gets back on the LRV and heads northeast, noticing from the tracks that the droid has the measured, slightly springy gait of someone familiar with lunar gravity but not with surface activity. So clearly it's not programmed to be out here on its own. Plaisance pictures himself catching up to it, containing it, deactivating it if necessary, and bundling it over the back of the LRV like a bagged deer.

He follows the tracks for thirty minutes, drifting farther and farther away from the substation, well aware that he's entering the OWIP penal territory. Officially he's supposed to steer clear of this region, because OWIP has its own well-trained teams. But unofficially he's crossed it many times with no complaints, and even helped out on a few emergency repair jobs, without ever meeting one of the prisoners.

Soon he arrives at the first igloo. The droid's footprints veer
off to its entrance. But when Plaisance gets off the LRV he sees that there are no lights on in the igloo, inside or out. The solar panels seem to have been shattered by micrometeorite strikes and haven't been replaced. And the v-screen, by which it's possible to look inside if you know the right codes, is missing. To Plaisance this signals only one thing: This particular habitat hasn't been occupied for years. The occupant probably passed away and hasn't been replaced. Officially the OWIP program will perish with the last remaining prisoner.

The droid's tracks continue northeast—as if, failing to find anyone home, he moved on. And suddenly Plaisance is struck by a sense of dread, a metallic flavor in his mouth, not unlike that which he experienced when he was zapped by the cosmic flux.

Unconsciously, he increases his speed.

A few kilometers farther on, another igloo appears. And again, the droid's footprints swerve toward the entrance. But this time the exterior lights are blinking. It's an alarm—someone entered or departed without punching in the right codes. In normal circumstances an alert would now be traveling, via cable, to the OWIP base. The OWIP team would be on their way to investigate. But with the comm line down, no alerts are getting through.

Plaisance is all on his own.

He gets off the LRV and surveys the entrance. The airlock doors, all of them, are open. And light is shining inside. Plaisance has no authority to investigate further, but the circumstances are unique. There might be a human being still in there. Perhaps someone who's found refuge from the vacuum and urgently needs assistance. So Plaisance decides, with a strange sense of satisfaction, that he has no choice. He switches on his helmet light, just in case, and heads inside.

He's not far past the airlock when he sees the victim. Plaisance
has seen dead bodies before, many of them, but this is something else entirely.

He only guesses the corpse is male because of the body shape, and because of some of the decorations in the room. The head has been struck so repeatedly that it's just a ball of blood and bone. The body itself is slumped into a chair, arms akimbo, almost as if it's been made up postmortem to appear even more grotesque. There's a wrench on a nearby benchtop with blood and hair still attached to it. A reddened towel is on the floor, as if the killer wiped his hands after the execution. And on the table an empty coffee cup, as if he'd enjoyed a drink before departing.

Plaisance stares at it all for so long that it's a surprise to him when he hears his own accelerated breathing. And feels his heart crashing against his ribs. And his spacesuit clamping around him. So he backs out of the igloo. He emerges as if from a trance. He looks out across the great crater, at the line of shoeprints heading east into the shadows. He still finds it hard to believe that a robot has killed a human being—but how can it be denied?

So is the droid an assassin? A fugitive? Have its control centers been blown by the solar flare?

Whatever the case, Plaisance makes another decision immediately. He will keep tracking the android, regardless of how far it takes him out of his way, and irrespective of how dangerous it becomes to his own life. He will stop the droid, even if it kills him. And he will earn redemption.

If he were able to do so, he would kiss the Saint Christopher medal that hangs around his neck. As it is, he just heads back to the LRV, trembling with determination.

C
HIEF LANCE “JABBA” BUCHANAN
is a hippo. On Earth he'd be one of those people who have to be lifted out of bed with a crane. He might even be dead. But on the Moon he weighs not much more than the average terrestrial ten-year-old. So he can indulge his major passion—eating—without inhibition. And his particular passion now is for Moonballs®—sugar-dusted golf ball–sized spheres of white chocolate filled with coffee syrup. He has a large bowl of them at the side of his desk and he keeps popping them in his mouth like a barfly topping up on beer nuts. Pausing only to balance the dose with a clot-busting tablet or blood-thinning superpill. That's the thing about corrective medication, Justus thinks idly—just as often as it solves the problem it encourages the excess.

“Forensics tells me they delivered a report,” Buchanan says between munches.

“That's correct.”

“What'd it say?”

“They didn't tell you?”

“This is your case, not mine.” Buchanan, who's wearing more braid on his uniform than a Central African despot, offers a wafer-thin smile that's supposed to be reassuring.

Justus shrugs. “A fertilizer bomb,” he says. “Ammonium nitrate mixed with propane. A crude detonator, radio activated.”

“Radio?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That itself is against the law.”

“Apparently so. In any case, it tells us that the killer knew when the victims were in the right place. Exactly the right place—practically on top of the bomb itself. So he was within line of sight. Or he had the victims bugged.”

“So we're talkin' assassination here?”

“Someone knew Professor Decker's general itinerary, that's for sure. But it turns out that itinerary wasn't exactly a secret—it was widely advertised that he was going to be christening that goat farm.”

“You sure it was Decker they were after?”

“Not at all. And I don't make assumptions. But I learned in Homicide that it saves time to start with the most likely possibilities, and work backward from there.”

Buchanan grunts. “Well, you just gotta excuse me for being surprised, that's all—about Decker, I mean.”

“Why?”

“Because he was a sweet guy. Dedicated to his job. To Purgatory. And clean as a coat of paint. Everyone loved him.”

“So I've been told,” says Justus. “But he must've done something wrong in the past, surely? To be here in the first place?”

Buchanan, whose skin is as tight as an overinflated balloon, manages a frown. “What—you don't think this is somethin' to do with his days on Earth, do ya?”

“Well, from what I understand assassins have been sent from Earth before to square up for things done years ago, right?”

“Yeah, but we got systems in place now—that sorta thing never happens anymore.”

“Still . . .”

“And anyway,” Buchanan goes on, “Decker's crime wasn't the sort that makes enemies. Wanna know what he did? Back on Earth?”

“Not really.”

“He fucked a thirteen-year-old student. Hell, half the world is doing that. And the kid wasn't even complainin'—thought Decker was dynamite, in fact. So does that sound to you like the sort of person who'd be sendin' assassins to the Moon? Decades later?”

The way he speaks so dismissively of statutory rape makes Justus wonder what Buchanan's own crime was. But it's all too easy to imagine the man in league with drug smugglers in El Paso. Or beating up hookers in Baton Rouge. Or feeding dead bodies to alligators in the Everglades. So Justus drives the thought from his mind. “Granted,” he says, “it's just one of many possibilities. But I'm new to Purgatory, remember. In fact, it's one of the reasons I seem to be popular here.”

Buchanan mellows a little. “Damn straight,” he says, reaching into his jar. “And everyone says you're doin' a helluva job. Helluva job. Everyone.”

“Good to hear it.”

“I'm just tryin' to help, that's all. I don't wanna be steerin' you in any directions, y'understand?”

“Of course.”

“So what's your theory?” Buchanan flips another Moonball® into his mouth.

“Well, it looks like a professional job, I can say that much. Fertilizer bombs might be crude, but the elements need to be mixed in precise quantities. Very precise quantities. And this bomb was particularly effective.”

“So we're talkin' an explosives expert?”

“Unfortunately. And I'm led to believe there's no end of people in Purgatory who match that profile.”

“'Course. We got a lotta troublemakers here.”

“Former terrorists, in fact.”

“That's right—if they had the right skills, they used to be welcomed here. In the old days.”

“And naturally they might have passed on their skills.”

“Well, this place used to be a haven for scum. You couldn't get citizenship here unless you were escaping a serious jail term—it made sure you wouldn't get cold feet and run home to Mommy.”

Justus thinks that Buchanan, like a lot of those in Purgatory, seems inordinately proud of this fact, sort of like those Australians proud of their convict heritage. Except that in this case the so-called “scum” is well-and-truly alive—and thriving.

“Bottom line is, I've got a huge cast of suspects.”

“You'll get used to it,” Buchanan says. “Any leads from the Goat House, by the way? The dirt rakers who work there?”

“A lot of the processes are automated. Some of the tasks are performed by robots. Security is almost nonexistent. There are no surveillance cameras—I guess I'll get used to that too. The farmhands wear masks and swear they know nothing. There's no unaccounted-for DNA at the scene. On Earth I'm pretty sure I'd have something by now. Here, it might take more time.”