One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy (42 page)

“Lieutenant,” he said. ”What about these two? They’re teenagers— they must be friends of the accused.”

Schmet looked at them and laughed—he recognized Clellen and Bruegel from that day he was called to that miserable school where Hieronymus killed that boy with his eyesight. Total lowlifes. Losers. Failures.

“No, let them go. They’re too dumb to know anything. They’re just a couple of stupid Loopies. That’s what they call them at their school. Loopies. Everyone calls them Loopies. That girl is an insane filthy slut and that boy is just mental.”

Normally, Clellen would have shouted a wall of insults at the detective, but she just stood there staring at his strange, doll-like face. She felt completely different from that moment on, as if the old Clellen had been left behind somewhere. In one second, she was transformed. She listened to his every word, her eyes on his. She clutched the data cube in her hand with a steely determination to quietly stare him down. Indeed, she knew she would have the last word.

Bruegel, on the contrary, could not resist. The entire time the detective was speaking, the big fellow just looked at him with an amused expression, his head slightly cocked to one side, his open mouth chewing potato chips from an open bag he held in one of his hands. ”Excuse me, Detective, but I was wondering about something. You have the most bizarre complexion on your face—you look like a plastic action figure that was coated in wax! If someone were to slice your entire head in half with a machete, I am sure that it would be the same unpleasant material

all the way through—”

“On second thought,” Schmet interrupted, "take the big oafish one in for questioning as well.”

And then he turned to Clellen one more time.

“Looks like you’re all alone now. All your friends are arrested. Now just how do you intend to get back to the other side of the Moon? Maybe you’ll just slut your way back?”

A couple of the other officers laughed at his crude remark, but Clellen only stared straight ahead.

Hieronymus and Slue were handcuffed and placed into the back of the same vehicle as Lieutenant Schmet and Belwin, the rescue robot, who was instructed to drive. The others were transported in separate police cruisers, and Pete was taken away to a prison hospital because of his broken arm.

Most of the journey back to the near side of the Moon was uneventful. All Hieronymus could do was watch the landscape change as they returned to the more familiar sights of remote cities covered in neon lights, crowded highways, and a sky perpetually red.

Clouds of hummingbirds flew in the distance. Some flew parallel with them. Others, farther away, snaked among distant skyscrapers. Their destinations random. Clouds shaped as far-away, colorless dragons, reigning over the lunar sky.

Today is the first day of my exile
, Hieronymus thought.

He looked at Slue, and they smiled at each other. Soon, the police would separate them. They would be sent to different prisons. They would be trained as pilots. Then they would be cast of into the far and sad cosmos. Then they would live short and uneventful lives in the deepest loneliness possible.

“Lieutenant?” Slue asked. “Will we see you at our trial?”

“Trial?” the waxen-faced man replied with a laugh. “What makes you think you are getting a trial?”

“It’s the law. We have the right to a fair trial.”

“You have the right to keep your mouth shut, miss.”

“If I robbed a bank, would I get a trail?”

“You? No.”

“If I was a random guy on the street who did not have lunarcroptic ocular symbolanosis and I robbed a bank, would I then get a trial?”

“Indeed, you would.”

“I see. So it is because I can see the fourth primary color that my rights are somehow altered.”

“Your rights are not altered. You have no rights to begin with. If you can see the fourth primary color, you are no longer classified as a human being, and thus, you have no recourse to use the civil mechanisms of our state.”

“And where in our civil code is this spelled out?”

“It is not. Because you are not a human being, in your case, it is irrelevant what the law says.”

“So it is a question of the state not recognizing us as human beings.”

“It is clear, in fact, that you and your boyfriend here are not human beings.”

“If we are such non-citizens then, what gives you the right to arrest us?”

“I arrest you as I would arrest any public menace. For example, if a diseased dog were running around biting people and spreading rabies, I would have to capture it. Of course, I would not be having the pleasant conversation that we are currently having with such a beast, but still, I think you get the idea.”

“So what happens next?”

“Well, I take you back to the station in Aldrin City, I register you, and then you will be transported to a holding chamber where you will await assignment to internment with a private detention facility.”

“Private? We are not even kept in a state prison?”

“Oh, no. As you are not a human being, you are turned over to one of several corporations that handle creatures such as yourself.”

“Show me the part of the law where this is encoded as something legal.”

“Show me the part of the law where you are encoded as a human being.”

“It is an outrage the way you speak to us.”

“Miss Memling, how did you get a police Omni-Tracker?”

“How did you ever get to become a police officer? You are so clearly unqualified.”

“Well, I must be good at it. After all, I tracked you two down.”

“That didn’t take much,” Hieronymus interjected. "We’re just a couple of kids, but you make us out to be dangerous outlaws, which we are not.”

“In fact, you were an outlaw the moment you were born.”

“Really? You know, one would think you would have better things to do with your time. The crime rate on the Moon is pretty high these days, but here you are wasting your time with us.”

“I’m not wasting my time. Because of you, I’ve discovered the existence of a genuine Obscura Camera Projection Techbolsinator.”

“That thing should be destroyed!” Slue declared.

“That thing is going to be incredibly useful.”

“It is a horror! It’s a morbid, morbid horror! How could someone even construct such a thing!” she continued, completely outraged.

“At one time, there were several of them. They were made during the Regime of Courage. Oops. I’m sorry. So politically incorrect of me. I forgot. You creatures like to call it the Regime of Blindness. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. You see, everyone is so fascinated by the fourth primary color, but nobody knows how to control it. As you may well know, a normal person who sees this color, once they are under the shock of it, and before they can fully recover, become highly susceptible to memory manipulation. That is the real reason people like you are such a menace. And that is why that circular room with its wall made up of thousands of real One Hundred Percent Lunar irises can be such a powerful tool. Anyone who goes in there forgets completely who he is. Before he can recover, you tell him whatever you want, and your suggestion becomes his memory. You can put twenty of the Moon’s greatest scientists in there, and while they are under the shock of that color, you can tell them something as silly as the fat Earth revolves around the Moon, which is made of cheese, and they will come out convinced that this is a solid, indisputable fact.”

“That is barbaric—”

“My darling blue-haired girl, it is an unstoppable fact. Why do you think One Hundred Percent Lunar People are sometimes randomly attacked and their eyes stolen? Sometimes there are those who need to see that color, and they will even resort to murder to obtain it. And sometimes, there are those who need to use that eye color on someone else. Just think of the countless possibilities—the ability to tell another person what their own memories are. Why should this fabulous power only be in the hands of the creatures who are born with it? The Regime of Courage set out to make proper use of this phenomenon—by keeping all of you away from the rest of humanity, then taking your eyes away from yourselves to build several rooms exactly like the one you saw in Joytown 8. These rooms were put to excellent use as far as manipulating the memory of politicians, judges, intellectuals, enemies of the state, whomever they felt needed a bit of reprogramming. I have already arranged for that room to be put under strict lock-up under the Ocular Investigative Division. And whoever owns the key to that place has a lot of power. Oh, did I mention that I’m the one with the key?”

“Something must really be driving you nuts,” Hieronymus told the detective. ”Something terrible happened to you. It’s obvious. Look at your face. Your skin. You are the strangest-looking man I have ever seen. What was it? An accident? You were not born like that, so something awful happened to you and you are carrying this around with you…”

“I think you’ve said enough, young man.”

“I think I touched a nerve.”

Suddenly, a voice broke in that had been unheard of during the entire car ride. It was Belwin.

“Actually, Lieutenant Schmet, I was there.”

“What? You? Mechanical man? What are you talking about?”

“I was there. I’m the one who pulled you out of the fire so many years ago. You must have been about twelve years old. It was that awful accident when the Mega Cruiser crashed on the highway just outside of Tyco. Hundreds of people died. I was brought to the scene, but it was too late to save most of the people on the bus you were traveling with. I was very sorry not to have been able to save the other members of your family. It was beyond tragic. Your mother. Your father. You had seven sisters, all killed in that fire. Happily, you survived, even though you were burned almost beyond recognition, but I can see that the plastic skin they have since coated you in appears to have taken to your body quite well.”

Rescue robots are not known for their tact. Their talents lie in their abilities to walk into fire, discover people, and then rescue them. As polite a conversationalist as he always was, Belwin had no idea what he was saying was, indeed, very upsetting to Lieutenant Schmet.

“If you had a mouth, I would instruct you to shut it. Instead, I am ordering you to cease all comments and drive. As a matter of fact, stop this car. ”

The robot did as he was told. He stopped speaking and the vehicle was brought to an abrupt halt on the side of the highway.

“Just in case you two creatures are wondering, we did not stop because Belwin’s big mouth caused me any amount of grief. That is none of your concern. We stopped because I have a bit of business to take care of. Now if you will just kindly remain in your seats, I will be right back.”

Schmet opened the door and left the vehicle, his strange blond hair blown up and ruffled by the whizzing traffic. Parked just ahead of them was another police cruiser, its blue lanterns silently flashing. He ran ahead of them and stopped at it, engaging in a conversation with someone within.

Slue stared ahead, and her mouth opened, slowly. Her face conveyed nothing but shock.

“Schmet,” she said, sleepily. ”His name is Schmet, isn’t it?”

Hieronymus looked at her.

“Yes. That is his name.”

“He has one brown eye and one blue eye, doesn’t he?”

“He does. But in case you have not noticed, only one of those eyes is real.”

Slue addressed the robot in the front seat.

“Belwin, did you say that Schmet burned himself in that gigantic Mega Cruiser crash outside Tyco? It was many years ago, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And that Schmet lost seven sisters? In the ensuing fire?”

“That is correct.”

“Hieronymus!” Slue gasped, turning to the boy next to her. ”That is a famous fire! And not just because it was a catastrophic accident. In that fire, there was a boy. A boy with seven sisters. A twelve-year-old boy. With a name like Schmet. He was incredibly rare. This boy, he was reported killed—and you are not going to believe this—was one of the very, very few Fifty Percent Lunar Boys! He had one normal eye, and one eye that was colored with the fourth primary color!”

“Indeed,” Belwin cut in. ”He lost his LOS eye in the fire.”

This was an outlandish revelation for Hieronymus.

“A Fifty Percent Lunar Boy! I didn’t even know that was possible!”

“It is. Historically, there have only been a dozen. But doesn’t it make sense? He knows everything we do before we do it.”

“No wonder he hates all One Hundred Percenters. His family was killed by a Mega Cruiser. Guess who pilots Mega Cruisers…”

“Look at him,” Slue said. ”He’s one of us.”

As they watched the man with the false skin and the false eye, they saw he was talking to someone inside the police car parked in front of them. Then he opened the vehicle’s side door, and the person he was conversing with climbed out and accompanied him as he strolled back to the car of Hieronymus and Slue.

It was a girl.

Hieronymus could not believe who it was.

The door swung open. Schmet poked his head into the back compartment where Hieronymus and Slue sat side by side. He had a huge smile on his artificial face. He looked directly at Hieronymus.