The Last Science Fiction Writer Read online

  “Sure. No problem.” Phil took a moment to ruffle Vlad’s hair, then he stood up and followed Marquand out of the atrium. He heard a vague motion behind him, but when he looked back, Vlad had disappeared into the trees, leaving his ball behind.

  Mariano was waiting for them in the corridor, his rig slung across his shoulder, an annoyed look on his face. “You could have told me where you were going,” he murmured as they joined him. “We had to look all over for you.”

  “Sorry. Just wanted to spend a little more time with the children.” And he couldn’t take a chance on Marquand finding both of them missing. He looked at Marquand. “Vlad’s a great kid. You say he’s your…I mean, he’s cloned from your genes?”

  “Yes, he is.” Marquand seemed to take a certain paternal pride. “And you shouldn’t hesitate to call him my son. I consider him as such.” He paused. “Obviously he likes you, too. It never occurred to me to teach him that game.”

  “Try it some time. He’s pretty good at it.” More than you know, he silently added.

  They’d just stepped aboard the elevator when Phil realized they had missed a step. “Our suits,” he said. “We’re going to need our suits if we’re going to leave.”

  “Not necessary.” Marquand touched the top button. “The rover’s fully pressurized, as is the ramp. Besides, Mr. Mariano’s is ruined. I had to cut it off him in order to treat his injuries.”

  George gave Phil a wary glance, but neither of them said anything. A few seconds later, the doors opened, and Marquand led them into the airlock dome. There were plenty of moonsuit lockers, yet through a window they could see a rover parked just outside, an accordion walkway extended to meet its aft boarding hatch. No reason for them to put on suits.

  “Looks like they sent out the stretch limo,” George remarked, and now Phil saw that the vehicle was a long-range rover: an eight-wheeler segmented into two sections, the kind used for major expeditions. Yet Descartes City was less than a hundred miles away, and this wasn’t the sort of vehicle sent out for a brief sortie.

  “I think they’re short of equipment just now,” Marquand said, then he turned to Phil. “There’s nothing I can do to change your mind? Nothing I can say that will make you reconsider reporting what you’ve seen?”

  “We talked about this last night. We do what we have to do…that simple.”

  “Even if it means putting the children at risk?” Marquand raised an eyebrow. “Or is the public’s right to know more important?”

  “I think the public…” Phil hesitated. “I believe people are smarter than you think they are. If you just tell them the truth and let them make up their own minds, then they generally do the right thing.”

  “I wish I could believe you, but…” Marquand touched a button on the wall, and the ramp hatch irised open. “As you say, you do what you have to do.”

  “We’ll be in touch.” Phil ducked his head and entered the hatch.

  “What was that all about?” George said quietly as they marched down the ramp.

  “Later,” Phil murmured. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  They had been traveling for nearly an hour when Phil felt the rover suddenly hit tough terrain. Until now, the vehicle had been moving along a graded road leading from the edge of Mare Tranquillitatis into the Descartes highlands. George had crossed his arms across his chest and closed his eyes to take a nap, yet Phil had remained awake, and with the first hard bump he looked up from the H.G. Wells novel he’d been reading on his pad.

  Glancing out the window, he saw that the landscape had changed. Small hills, bleached by raw sunlight, rose around them. Another sharp lunge, and he realized that the rover had just gone across a small boulder. Its oversize wire-mesh tires and independent suspension were usually enough to take on rocks and micrometeorite craters, which meant…

  “Huh? Wuz’happenin?’” George woke up, grabbed for a safety strap. “What’s going on?”

  “I think we’ve left the road.” They were in the rear passenger compartment, surrounded by ten empty seats. They’d met the driver only briefly—a dour young man, wearing a scalplock of the kind favored by loonies—before he’d shut the inner hatch leading to the forward tractor. Phil reached up to the com panel above him. “Hello? What’s happening up there?”

  Another bump, then the rover came to an abrupt stop, hard enough to throw them out of their seats. “Oh, for chrissakes…” George stabbed at the button above his seat. “Hey, what’s the deal? Run out of gas or something?”

  No response. Phil got up, walked forward to the hatch. He was about to grab the locklever when he felt a sudden jolt. A second later, the lights went out.

  “Hey! What the…?” George angrily hit the intercom once more. “Yo! Moondog! You got a problem or what?”

  There was a silence that he’d never heard before…or at least not in space. The sort of stillness one takes for granted on Earth, but not out here. Feeling a chill, Phil raised a hand to a ceiling vent. No air was coming out.

  “Oh, God!” George was peering out the window next to his seat. “Oh, man, look…he’s cut us off!”

  “I know.” Phil didn’t need to look outside to know that the tractor had just detached itself from the trailer. When it had done so, it had also severed all service lines leading to the rear half of the rover.

  No power. No air.

  Phil slumped into the nearest seat. In a few moments, the temperature would start to rise. Or maybe it would fall? No…the sun was up, so that meant they were going to sweat awhile. Or at least until the air ran out.

  “Mayday! Mayday!” Lurching on his stick, George had gone to the back of the trailer to open the panel leading to the emergency radio transmitter. “Rover down! Repeat, to all stations, rover down, at…” He looked at Phil. “Where are we, anyway?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” There were suit lockers across the aisle from him. In frustration, he raised a foot and kicked one of them open, and wasn’t at all surprised to discover that it was empty. “Give up. The short-range is disconnected. Probably pulled the plug on the sat dish, too.”

  Marquand was a smart man; he wouldn’t have left anything to chance. Phil gazed out the window again; the tractor had disappeared, but it probably lingered somewhere nearby, perhaps just beyond that range of hills. It would remain there for a few hours, then the driver would return. All he needed to do then was fit their bodies into a couple of moonsuits, then take a trip out to the crash site. Two corpses found near the wreckage of crashed lander, one with a broken leg. Waiting for rescue until their air ran out.

  Just two more reporters to die in a combat zone…

  Phil chuckled, shook his head. “What’s so goddamn funny?” George demanded.

  “Y’know that kid? Vlad, the one I was playing with?” Phil wiped his eyes with his fingers. “I taught him a game. Simon says…”

  “I don’t give a…”

  “No, really. It’s a great game. Especially if he’s got a MINN implant and voice-activated computer access. All you have to do is get him to go eyes-up and repeat everything you say. Simon says, ‘Search for file Carson-slash-urgent.’ Simon says, ‘Open Luna-dot-net.’ Simon says, ‘Open email to editor-at-UMI-dot-com.’ Simon says, attach file Carson-slash-urgent. Simon says, ‘Send…’”

  “You didn’t tell me.” George stared at him from across the compartment, his voice becoming harsh in the thinning air “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have attached my…”

  “Simon says, ‘Stop being such an…’” Phil stopped himself. “Naw, forget it.” The compartment was becoming warm, his head getting thick; all he wanted to do was close his eyes, take a nap. “Shut up and sit down. It’ll be over soon.”

  He laid his head against the seat cushion, gazed up at the distant sliver that represented home. A lousy assignment, but at least he’d filed one last time.

  One day, his children might thank him for this.

  HIGH ROLLER

  We came into Nueva Vegas through the service e
ntrance on the crater’s north side. Our hiding place was a pressurized cell inside a water tank carried by a cargo hauler. We played possum while the vehicle came to a stop and casino security scanned the tank; the water surrounding us blocked the neutrino sweep, and our skinsuits stealthed everything else. The tractor began moving again; we felt it enter the vehicle airlock, then it stopped once more and there was another long wait while the airlock pressurized and electromagnetic scrubbers whisked away the dusty regolith. We rolled forward again; another minute passed, then we came to a halt and I heard JoJo’s voice through my headset:

  “Clear.”

  About time. I’d been flat on my back during the forty-kilometer ride down the Apollo Highway from Port Armstrong, and my arms were beginning to cramp from holding the equipment bag against my chest. I reached up, found the hatch lockwheel, twisted it clockwise and pushed it open, then sat up and squirmed up through the half-meter manhole. Jen was right behind me; I crouched on top of the hauler and took her bag from her, then helped her out of the tank.

  As we’d expected, we were in the garage beneath the crater. Rovers, buses, and various maintenance vehicle were parked all around us. No one in sight; the day-shift workers had long-since clocked out and the night-shift guys had already clocked in. JoJo was the only guy around, and he didn’t count.

  In fact, JoJo wouldn’t count for much of anything until I reactivated him. Once Jen and I pulled our masks out of our bags and put them on, I climbed up to the hauler’s cab, turned a valve to bleed off the air, and unsealed the hatch. He sat behind the yoke, two meters of ceramic polymer, dumb as a moonrock. Had to be that way; if he’d retained his programming during the ride to the casino, it might have been downloaded at the security checkpoint and searched by the local DNAI. So his memory had been scrubbed before we left Port Armstrong, leaving behind only a well-buried instruction to transmit the all-clear once the hauler had arrived and his peripheral sensors didn’t register any body-heat signatures. He’d driven us here without even knowing it.

  The next order of business bringing JoJo back into the game. I opened my bag, pulled out my pad, and linked it to the serial port on his chest. A double-beep from my pad, reciprocated by another double-beep from his chest; lights flashed on his cylindrical head, then his limbs made a spasmodic jerk.

  “Reload complete. All systems operational.” Then his head snapped toward me. “Nice to see you again, Sammy. You’re looking particularly reptilian today.”

  Good. He recognized me even though I was now wearing my disguise. “Welcome back, JoJo,” I said, then stepped aside so he could see Jen. “You know our partner, of course.”

  “Yo, Jen! How’s it going, girl? Found any good cow pies lately?”

  She wasn’t amused. “Say it again, tinhead,” she murmured, “and I’ll download you into a vacuum cleaner.”

  “Everyone, relax.” JoJo was just being funny, sure, but I’d like to find the guy who invented personality subroutines for AIs. “We’ve got a job to do. JoJo, can you modem the casino comp?”

  “Let me work on it.” A moment passed. “Nyet. Too many lock-outs. I’ll need direct interface.”

  I was expecting that. “No problem. We’ll try again once we find a comp.” I jumped down off the tractor; JoJo followed me, his slender limbs whirring softly as he unfolded himself from the cab. I locked the cab, then turned to him. “Gimme an eyes-up of the layout, basement only. Pinpoint our location.”

  “You got it, chief.” An instant later, a holo of Nueva Vegas’s subsurface levels appeared upon the lenses of my mask. Our whereabouts were marked as three luminous points at the outer circle of a concentric maze of corridors, tunnels, rooms, and shafts. Nueva Vegas’s quantum comp lay within a sealed vault at the center of this maze, protected by umpteen levels of defense, both electronic and physical. Ever heard of Fort Knox, the place in Kentucky where the old USA once kept its gold supply back when gold was actually worth something? The DNAI had that degree of protection, and then some. Impossible to penetrate, or so I’d been told.

  But then again, that wasn’t our problem. We were after bigger game.

  I located the nearest service lift that went directly to the crater floor; it was only a few dozen meters away, down a short corridor. “Everyone ready? Got your stuff?” Jen nodded within her mask; JoJo blinked some diodes my way. “Okay, then,” I said, and picked up my bag. “Let’s roll.”

  Nueva Vegas is built within Collins Crater, about thirty kilometers from the Apollo 11 Historical Site. A tour bus that will take you out there, and also to the Surveyor 5 landing site just a few klicks away and the Mare Tranquillitatis Battlefield Memorial a few hundred klicks north near Arago Crater. Most visitors don’t do that, though. Nueva Vegas wasn’t the first lunar casino resort, but most guidebooks consider it to be the best. The table stakes are good, and the payout is excellent; even if you don’t gamble, there’s vices you won’t easily find back on Earth. Not too many places where you can legally purchase a 250-gram bag of Moondog Gold, or hire a double-jointed google—pardon me, a Superior—to be your companion for the evening.

  But it’s still a place for the rich. A cheap room near the crater floor costs 300 lox per sol; for this you get a bed, a passcard for the shower stall down the corridor, five complimentary chips and a discount coupon for the all-you-can-eat buffet. A two-room suite—complete with its own personal bath, private balcony, mini-bar, and free Continental breakfast—will set you back a cool million for a two-week stay. High rollers rate the best accommodations, of course: spacious apartments on the upper levels of the crater rim, with outside windows, catered dining, personal masseurs, an unlimited line of credit, and all the liquor, dope and sex you can take. If you have to ask how much that costs, then you have no business being there.

  We were checking in on the budget plan. No room, no bath, no food. We weren’t planning to stay very long, though. Just a few minutes on the casino floor, and we’d be on our way.

  The lift doors opened and we stepped out into a white-mooncrete corridor with low ceilings and fluorescent lighting. A ’bot carrying a platter of hors d’oeuvres squealed in protest as it swerved to avoid colliding with us. From the other side of a pair of swinging doors, I caught the aroma of cooked food. We’d found the entrance to one of the service kitchens. I noted the direction in which the ’bot was headed, and turned to follow it.

  “Hey! What are you guys doing here?”

  A short, rotund gentleman in a waiter’s tux and powdered wig emerged from a doorway, a magnum of champagne wrapped in a towel in his white-gloved hands. A wine steward, clearly irritated by our presence. “We’ve told you people a thousand times,” he snapped as he bustled up to us. “Entertainers eat in the employee’s cafeteria, just like everyone else.”

  He’d mistaken us for one of the lounge acts. No wonder. I wore a lizard-head mask, and Jen looked like a giant housefly. They didn’t just conceal our faces; the masks also contained eyes-up displays, voice filters, and short-range com gear. We looked weird, sure, but in Nueva Vegas weirdness is the normal order of things. We fit right in.

  “A thousand pardons, sir,” I said. “We just got confused, thought this was…”

  “Is that the wine cellar?” Jen interrupted, her voice an insectile buzz behind her mask. “May we see it, please?”

  The waiter regarded her as if she had just emerged from a bowl of potage Rossini. “You most certainly may not,” he huffed, not noticing that her right hand was within her bag. “Now, if you’ll please…”

  “Oh, but I insist.” Jen’s hand came out of the bag; clasped within it was Pax Astra Royal Navy taser pistol. He barely got a chance to see what it was before Jen jammed it against his throat. “I’d love to see your collection.”

  “R-r-right this way, madam.” The wine steward managed to keep from dropping the bottle of ’77 Sinai Planum as he hastily tapped his password into the keypad, then backed through the door.

  The wine cellar was a small, cool room, dimly-lit,
with hundreds of bottles of expensive wines resting upon faux-oak racks. The waiter sat down in the corner next to the imported Bordeaux, clasped his hand together atop his wig, and wisely remained quiet while Jen and I pulled out our guns—two PARN particle-beam rifles, complete with laser sights—and attached smoke and pepper-gas grenades to our belts. JoJo went to the wall comp; opening a chest port, he pulled out a cable and hardwired himself to it, then went silent for a couple of minutes while lines of type flashed across the comp screen so fast that I couldn’t keep up with them.

  “We’re in,” he said at last, his head swiveling toward me. “Ready to initiate final sequence.”

  “Got it right here, big guy.” I reached into a chest pocket, found the diskette I’d been given. Another fail-safe; if we had been caught while passing through security, the first thing I would have done was push the auto-erase tab. JoJo pushed the diskette into the terminal, and I reached past him to tap an eight-digit code into the miniature keyboard. A green border appeared around the screen.

  “Locked and loaded.” I pulled out the diskette, snapped it between my hands, then tossed it into the corner next to the cowering wine steward. “Thank you, garçon. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “Mind if we take this?” Jen was examining a bottle of cabernet sauvignon she had taken from the wine rack. “Or would you recommend the beerenaulse instead?”

  “Th-th-the cabernet is quite…quite good, m-m-mad-am.” He was barely able to look up at her. “I don’t…I don’t think you’ll be d-d-disappointed.”

  “Hmm…well, if you insist.” Jen gently placed the bottle in her bag, then slung it across her shoulders. I hoped it wouldn’t weigh her down too much. “Ready when you are.”

  “Okey-dokey.” JoJo detached his cable, let it reel itself back into his chest. “I’m going to huff, and I’m going to puff, and I’m going to…”

  “Save it for the civilians.” I raised my rifle to the terminal; one quick squeeze of the trigger, and the panel was fried out. I turned around and aimed my gun at the wine steward. “Okay, here’s the deal. You get to live, so long as you sit here quietly for the next few minutes and don’t make a peep. But if I see you, hear you, even smell you…”