The Callisto Gambit (40 page)

He tied a twang cord (better than a belt) around his right arm, tightening it with his teeth. The action made him think of Wetherall. He had to find him, and Molly and Michael.
They must be somewhere around, learning the lay of this strange new land. Maybe Wetherall had already figured out where, in that maze of underground storerooms, they kept the drugs …

He injected himself. The rush seemed to transform his body from tired flesh into a machine made of pure energy. Riding it out, he flexed his legs—

--and kicked someone sleeping on the other side of the bedroom.

The person jack-knifed, threw off their blanket, and shone a flashlight into his eyes.

“Shit. I’m having a flashback,” said the hoarse voice of Alicia Petruzzelli.

Kiyoshi shaded his eyes with one hand while reaching for her flashlight with his other hand. The needle fell out of his arm, onto the floor.

Petruzzelli grabbed it first. “Oh ho. Now you’re bangin’ it like a Marine, space boy.”

“C’mon, Petruzzelli, gimme that, what the hell?”

She made the syringe vanish. That was OK. He had spares. “At least you still remember my name,” she said. She set the flashlight on the floor, pointing up, so it lit her face from below. She smiled, devilishly. The turquoise mop of hair he remembered was gone. Short brown curls framed a thinner, older face. The bags under her eyes looked like rotten plums. “Elfrida!” she yelled. “Jo-ohn! There’s a—” she dropped her voice to a whisper:
“a junkie …”
Shouting again, “A rapist in my bedroom …”

Scuffling noises outside. Mendoza: “She’s just messing with you, Ellie. Don’t react.”

Right on, Mendoza.

Elfrida: “I should have warned him. I just didn’t know what to say ...”

Their movements retreated.

“So you made it through the war alive, Petruzzelli,” Kiyoshi said. “Congrats.”

The shadows swallowed her face. “Define
alive.”

“Breathing. Bitching. Lying here feeling sorry for yourself, while other people carry on like heroes. Eh, I’ve seen it before.”

With energy coursing through his veins, he returned his gear to his rucksack. He had no time or sympathy for her. Plus, she’d called him a rapist. Their one carnal encounter, three years ago, had been 100% consensual. If that was a joke, it wasn’t funny.

He lifted the curtain. Indirect light leaked into the bedroom, revealing piles of handwoven blankets. That explained the smell of goat hair.

Petruzzelli grabbed his ankle. She pulled him back into the bedroom, and for some reason, maybe because her grip was so weak, he let her do it. The curtain fell.

She knelt up and hugged him. “I thought I was invulnerable,” she whispered into his ear. “Maybe that’s the trouble. I survived the war, I survived the Big Breakup, I flew your brother’s ship all the way to Jupiter … I’m really sorry about what happened to him. I liked him a lot and I think maybe he even liked me. It was great flying with him. It was healing me.”

Kiyoshi’s hands clenched on her shoulders. He lowered his head to breathe in the scent of her skin. His hands slipped down to her waist.

“But when the ISA destroyed the
Monster,
it was like .. I dunno. Something just kind of broke inside me.”

She felt bony, like she hadn’t been eating, but she still had that amazing flare to her hips and ass. Without consciously planning it, he cupped her buttocks. He kissed her sweaty neck.

“Ohhh … Kiyoshi. Don’t.”

“Why not?” He gently laid her back on the blankets. Star Force might’ve chopped her up and put her back together, reinforced her skeleton and replaced her heart and lungs, but she was still soft where it counted. He spooned her, grinding against her ass. In the back of his head, he knew he was high, and his judgement wasn’t the best right now, but he felt an incredible tenderness for her. He wanted to help her heal from all that had happened to her. Also, he was as hard as hell. He reached for the drawstring of her trousers.

“I don’t want a pity fuck.”

“How about just a regular fuck?”

“I mean it. Don’t feel sorry for me.”

“I don’t feel sorry for you. You were a hero. I actually stalked you online for a while. You were one of the pilots who crashed that Flattop into Reldresal? That’s hardcore.”

“That’s right,” she whispered, twisting to face him. “And now I’m in jail on Pallas, sleeping all day, eating Elfrida and John’s food, when I remember to. Basically just abusing their generosity.”

She set her palms against his chest and gave a sudden, strong push. In micro-gee, that was enough to throw him across the room. He crashed into the opposite wall. The whole shack creaked.

“I may be a screw-up,” Petruzzelli said, loudly, her voice shaking, “but at least I’m not shooting junk into my arm.”

The curtain flapped open. She crawled out.

Kiyoshi cursed himself for being a sucker. He picked up his rucksack and went out.

Petruzzelli stood in the street outside, talking to Elfrida and Mendoza with angry gesticulations. There was a lot of white noise from the falls, so he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He caught his own name. She glared at him and stomped away.

“Jeez,” Kiyoshi muttered. This was beyond embarrassing. “Did she say I raped her or something? I didn’t. Ha, ha.”

“You didn’t have time,” Mendoza said dryly.

Elfrida pushed her hands through her hair, dislodging her sparkly hair clip. “I should’ve warned you. Sorry.”

“It’s not important.”

“It
is
important. She’s our friend, and she’s hurting, and I don’t know how to help her.”

“All we can do is pray for her,” Mendoza said.

They watched Petruzzelli vanish beyond the reach of the last light pylon. The houses continued into the dark, but the division between brightness and dark was so stark that it felt like being on an asteroid, looking across the terminator.

“What’s over there?” Kiyoshi asked.

“The nightside,” Mendoza said.

Made sense. He
was
on an asteroid, looking across the terminator. But in the whole time he’d been here, the terminator hadn’t moved. Nor had the distant sun moved in the black sky.

“Did they spin this rock
down?”

“No, it’s rotating,” Elfrida said. “But Pallas has an unusual axial tilt. This is information no one in the solar system knows, because I guess it’s top secret.” She rolled her eyes. “But it’s all in the books which you can access in the library. Anyway, we’re near the north pole here. This dome straddles the boundary of a region that gets two
years
of continuous sunlight. So now it’s day here, and night over there, but next year it will be the opposite, and then we’ll all pick up and migrate.” She sounded tired just thinking about it. “Continuous sunlight isn’t good for your body. And they never switch the light pylons off, either. That’s why we made a black-out room to sleep in. I think the Galapajin are considering building a bedroom community—literally, a bedroom community, oooh I’m funny—on the nightside.”

Kiyoshi jigged from foot to foot. “Is anyone over there now?”

Mendoza looked at Elfrida, as if to shush her, and said, “Not really. You can get down to the storage area from over there, too, so sometimes people go that way.” He shrugged.

“And the library,” Elfrida said. “The library’s over there. But don’t get your hopes up. It’s all hard copies.”

That was enough of an excuse for Kiyoshi. “I’m gonna check that out. I’ll catch you when I come back this way.”

★

Of course he wasn’t going to the freaking library. He wanted to catch up with Petruzzelli and apologize to her.

Or at the very least, make contact with some of these people from Storage.

Riding a wave of brittle optimism, he believed there
had
to be a way out of here, if he could only find it.

He walked past the library—it was only a hundred meters beyond the terminator. Spotlights alternated with soaring columns along a grandiose facade. It was the biggest free-standing building he’d ever seen. Statues on the pediment brandished maps, globes, scales, and other symbols of knowledge, wisdom, and justice.

He kicked the steps. Not stone. Just printed composite, like the other houses.

As Sister Terauchi had implied, the library did not seem to be a popular destination. No one was going in and out of the big doors. A few people sat on the steps.

On the other side of the street, weak electric light shone from the usual crude shacks. Probably, by daylight, this half of Pallas Falls would look just like the other half. But darkness lent it a seedy allure.

He heard hoarse, drunken singing. Smelled fried food.

He angled towards the smell.

He genuinely needed to hydrate. Mostly he was just lying to himself. But it did seem possible that a bar would be the best place to find information …

He cast a last, sour glance at the library—and did a double-take.

Molly had just walked out through the big doors with Michael at her side.

Kiyoshi’s heart leapt, but something kept him lurking in the darkness.

Molly carried a book.

As she reached the top of the steps, an alarm yipped. Molly looked around in fright.

Her figure blurred, the colors of her dreadlocks and her coverall smearing.

She reeled back, clasping her shoulder as if she’d been struck. Michael cowered.

Kiyoshi bounded up the library steps. They were both solid, real—a sight for sore eyes. He curved an arm protectively around Molly’s shoulders. “What the hell was that?”

“Hello, you,” she said, smiling up at him.

“Yeah, hello and everything.” He saw the hurt on her face at his brusque greeting. But he didn’t trust himself to give her anything more. Quarter of an hour ago, he’d put the moves on Petruzzelli because he was high and feeling stupid. He still felt stupid. Didn’t want to subject Molly to his poor judgement, so it was best to just play it cool.

He stooped to hug Michael. “Are you OK, little guy?”

Michael’s face glowed with excitement. “I’ve figured it all out! Do you want to hear my theory?”

“In a second. Molly, what just happened? Looked like someone crashed into you.”

She gave him the ghost of a wink. “That’s what it felt like, too. Evidently, you’re not allowed to take books out of this library.”

The book she’d been carrying had vanished. “What book was it?”

“Oh, just some boring fiction thing,” Michael interrupted. “Listen, this is really cool!”

“Mikey, be quiet,” said Wetherall, emerging from behind a column. “You never know who might be listening.”

Kiyoshi traded fist bumps with Wetherall. “Been checking out the local scene?”

“I was going to do that next,” Wetherall said.

“Later,” Molly said. “Let’s go back to the dayside. I like to be able to see what I’m eating and drinking.”

Kiyoshi introduced all three of them to Elfrida and Mendoza. It wasn’t as awkward as he’d feared. Elfrida said, “Oh, you’re the chick who was tending bar at that dive on Callisto,” and Molly said, “You’re the chick the ISA dragged out in handcuffs. I forgot what you looked like for a while; but I remember now. Where’s the other woman who was with you?”

There was a contemplative pause.

“I love that hairclip,” Molly said, smoothly.

They ate potato salad Elfrida had made, sitting out by the lake. Spray got in the communal container, which didn’t make it taste any worse. Kiyoshi didn’t care—he had no appetite. He forced himself to drink more tea.

“Sorry about the lack of seasoning,” Elfrida said. “You can get spices out of storage, too, but I keep using up my tries on olive oil. The pouches are ridiculously tiny. Someone needs to start growing avocadoes.”

“Can I talk about my theory now?” Michael said. “It’s safe here, isn’t it? The waterfall is so noisy that even drones couldn’t hear us, if we whisper. That’s why we’re out here, right?”

“Yes,” Wetherall said. “But let Molly go first.”

“Do
you
know what she was doing in the library, Colin?” Michael said.

“Nope, but I think we’re about to find out.”

“I know you want to hear about the security,” Molly said quietly. They all leaned forward to hear better. Molly said to Elfrida and Mendoza, “You guys have been here for months. How much have you figured out?”

“Pretty much nothing,” Mendoza said in the same low voice. “There have to be drones. If someone breaks the rules, which basically means if they hurt someone else, they get zapped. But zapped can mean anything from shot, to electroshocked, to an arrow, yes an actual medieval
arrow,
through their heart. How do you mount a freaking bow and arrow onto a drone too small to see? Plus, there’s often a delay between breaking the rules and getting zapped. Minutes or hours. Why?” He spread his hands. “Basically, all we’ve got is questions.”

“I can answer them,” Molly said. “There are drones, yeah. We used to call them nanocopters. They fly by taking in air and puffing it out. There are also fixed cameras in the storage areas.” She ate a mouthful of potato salad. “Boy, this is good, Elfrida. So that’s your surveillance. But as you correctly point out, John, drones can’t do much in the way of enforcement. That’s handled by humans. The reason we can’t see them is because they’re invisible.”

Kiyoshi’s jaw sagged, mirroring the expressions of the others.

“The wardens wear hooded coveralls made of a metamaterial that’s invisible to radar
and
visible light.”

Kiyoshi remembered the slithering sounds he’d heard in the corridors. The way Molly had seemed to blur as she stood on the library steps.
Because an invisible person had been rushing towards her.

“Invisibility cloaks suck,” Michael said. “They don’t really work. I had one when I was little. Everyone saw me.”

Molly ruffled his hair. “These ones work. Those guys down at InSec Center get up to some amazing shit. But anyway, the wardens. There are four hundred of them, working three shifts, and they circulate on routes that change daily, so the chances are good that there is one near you at any time …”

They all looked over their shoulders.

“… except here,” Molly said. “Water screws with the invisibilty suits. They get wet, you see them. So anyway, that’s the system. It may sound pretty secure, especially when you figure in the gravity traps and all that, but trust me, there are loopholes. The question is, are we smart enough to exploit them?”