Short fiction complete, p.310
Short Fiction Complete, page 310
But Pancho finds she can’t be disloyal to Dan Randolph. When she reveals to Dan that Humphries wants her to spy on him, Dan laughs and tells her to go right ahead. But he sends Pancho and Amanda to Selene.
SELENE
Pancho had no trouble getting through customs this time. The same inspector went through her bags perfunctorily, not even blinking at the mice in their sealed plastic cage.
But he paid elaborate attention to Amanda. Pancho groused to herself as the inspector carefully went through Amanda’s travel bag, alternately grinning at Mandy and reddening as he saw her lacy underclothes.
He’d strip search her if he could find the slightest excuse, Pancho thought, fuming.
Mandy simply stood on the other side of the table, looking wide-eyed and innocent while she kept up a constant nervous chatter.
“I don’t know why they always go through my bag, Pancho. I really don’t. You’d think that after all these times we’ve come to Selene they would simply let me pass through without all this bother.”
“He went through my bag, too, Mandy,” Pancho replied.
“Yes, but he didn’t paw through your underwear.”
Grinning with gritted teeth, Pancho said, “Yours are a lot purtier than mine.”
The inspector kept his head down as he searched diligently through Amanda’s one piece of luggage, but Pancho could see the back of his neck turn beet red.
“All the other passengers have already gone through,” Amanda noticed. “We re the last ones.”
“The rest of ’em are either up here to start a long-term work contract or they’re tourists. We come and go all the time, so we could be smugglers.”
“Smugglers?” Amanda looked shocked. “Us? Me?”
Pancho reached across the table and tapped the inspector on the shoulder. “Ain’t that right? What’re you looking for—dope or contraband seeds or maybe illegal bottles of air?”
The inspector mumbled something incomprehensible.
At last he finished and pushed the bag back across the table toward Amanda.
“There you go, Ms. Cunningham. Sorry to have delayed you. I’m just doing my job, miss.”
Amanda thanked him politely as she zipped her bag shut and hefted it to her shoulder. Pancho saw that the inspector couldn’t help but stare at Mandy’s expansive chest. Even in a standard-issue flight suit she looked sexy.
Visibly working up his courage, the inspector said, “Um . . . Ms. Cunningham . . . could I take you out to dinner some time while you’re here?” He made a sweaty smile. “To, uh, make up for inconveniencing you and all.”
Mandy smiled sweetly at him. “Why, that would be lovely. Call me, won’t you?”
“I sure will!”
Pancho seethed as the two of them left the customs station and headed for one of the electric carts that carried new arrivals through the tunnel from the spaceport into the underground city. He asked me to dinner when I was alone, but with bimbo boobs here, he never even saw me. I could’ve carried the Eiffel Tower up here and he wouldn’t have noticed.
The message light was blinking on their phone by the time they got to the quarters they were sharing. When Pancho had first come to work for Astro Manufacturing four years earlier, pilots still got private quarters when they worked on the Moon. Not any more. The rumor back at La Guaira was that Randolph was going to rent a dormitory area for the spacecraft pilots and crews.
Why not just fire all of us? Pancho wondered. If Randolph had any real sense, he’d talk the IAA into getting rid of their stupid regulations about keeping human crews aboard the ships.
Yeah, fine, she answered herself. Then what do you do? Get a job as a mission controller? Fat chance!
As soon as they opened the door to their quarters, they saw the phone blinking on the nightstand between their two beds. Amanda dropped her bag on the floor; it landed with a gentle lunar thump as Mandy stretched out on the bed and put the handset to her ear.
With a surprised look on her face, Mandy held the phone out to Pancho. “It’s for you,” she said, as if she didn’t really believe it.
Pancho took the handset and saw on the phone’s tiny console screen that the caller was Martin Humphries. Rather than activate the speaker, Pancho put the handset to her ear.
“Pancho, is that you?” Humphries’ voice said, sounding annoyed. “You’re standing outside the camera view.”
She stepped between the beds and swivelled the phone console. “It’s me,” she said, sitting on the bed opposite the one Mandy lay upon.
“I heard that Randolph sent you up here,” Humphries said. “But I had to learn it from another source. I haven’t heard a peep from you in months.”
With a glance at Mandy, who was watching her with intense curiosity, Pancho replied guardedly, “Well, I’m here now.”
“Who answered the phone? You’re not alone, are you?”
“Nope, I’m here with Mandy Cunningham.”
“She’s an Astro employee too?”
“That’s right.”
Mandy was straining to see Humphries’ face, but Pancho kept the phone turned away from her.
“Well, I’ve got to talk to you. I’ve been paying you for information but so far I’ve gotten nothing from you but a big, fat silence.”
Pancho made a smile. “I’d love to see you, too. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”
Humphries snapped, “All right, get down here right away.”
“You want me to come to dinner?” Pancho replied pleasantly.
“Dinner?” Humphries glanced at his wrist. “All right. In two hours.”
“Tonight?” Pancho cooed. “That’ll be just fine. I’ll see you at nineteen hundred. OK?”
“Seven o’clock,” Humphries said. “Sharp.”
“I’ll be there.”
Pancho hung up the phone and said to Amanda, “I’ll use the shower first, Mandy. I’ve got a dinner date.”
She left Mandy standing by the bed, staring at her with wide-eyed astonishment.
Two weeks later, Amanda and Pancho were exercising in Selene’s big gymnasium complex, working up a fine sheen of perspiration on the weight machines. Through the long window on one side of the room Pancho could see two men strapped into the centrifuge, both of them grimacing as the big machine’s arms swung round and round, faster and faster. She knew one of the men, a maintenance tech out at the tractor garage, a thoroughly nice guy.
The gym was packed with sweating, grunting, grimacing men and women working the treadmills, stationary bikes, and weight machines. The only faces that didn’t look miserable were the kids; they scampered from one machine to another, laughing, sometimes shrieking so loud the adults growled at them.
Every person in Selene, adult or child, citizen or visitor, had to follow a mandatory exercise regimen or be denied transport back to Earth. The low lunar gravity quickly deconditioned muscles to the point where facing Earth’s gravity became physically hazardous. Daily exercise was the only remedy, but it was boring.
Pancho wore a shapeless tee-shirt and faded old shorts to the gym. Amanda dressed as if she were modelling for a fashion photographer: brand-new gym shoes, bright pink fuzzy socks, and a form-fitting leotard that had men tripping over their own feet to gawk at her. Even the women stared openly.
“Who’s your boyfriend?” Amanda asked.
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Pancho replied, grunting as she pulled on the weighted hand grips. A favorite gambit of tourists was to have a picture taken while lifting a barbell loaded with enormous weights. What looked superhuman to Earth-trained eyes was merely ordinary in the one-sixth gravity of the Moon.
“You’ve gone out to dinner twice since we arrived here, and you’re going out again tonight, aren’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, Amanda added, “I have the impression it’s been with the same fellow each night.”
Mandy was sitting at the machine next to Pancho, doing pectoral crunches, her arms outstretched with her hands gripping the ends of two metal bars. Then she brought her hands together in front of her, pulling the weighted “wings” and thereby strengthening her chest muscles.
The rich get richer, Pancho thought.
“So?” Amanda insisted. “Who’s your fellow?”
“It’s strictly business,” Pancho said.
“Really? And what business would that be, dear?”
Pancho suppressed a sudden urge to sock Mandy in her smirking face.
“Lissen,” she said, with some heat, “you go out just about every damned night, don’t you? What’s the matter with me havin’ a date now and then?”
Mandy’s expression softened. “Nothing, Pancho, really. I’m only curious, that’s all. I think it’s fine for you to have an enjoyable social life.”
“Yeah, sure. You’re just wonderin’ who my date could be, ’cause you’ve got all the other men in Selene sewed up for yourself.”
“Pancho, that’s not true!”
“Like hell.”
“I can’t help it if men are attracted to me! I don’t do anything to encourage them.”
Pancho laughed out loud.
“Really I don’t!”
“Mandy, all you have to do is breathe and the men swarm around you like flies on horseshit.”
Amanda’s cheeks flushed at Pancho’s deliberate crudity. But then she smiled knowingly. “Well, it is rather fun to flirt. If men want to take me out to dinner, why not? I just bat my eyes at them and let them tell me how terrific they are.”
“And then you bed down with ’em and everybody’s happy.”
Amanda flared with sudden anger. She started to reply, but stopped before saying a word. For several moments she stared down at her shoetops, then at last said in a lower voice, “Is that what you think?”
“It’s the truth, ain’t it?”
“Really, Pancho, I’m not a slut. I don’t sleep with them, you know.”
“You don’t?”
“Well . . . once in a while. A great while.”
Pancho looked at Amanda, really looked at her, and saw a very beautiful, very young woman trying to make her way in a world where a woman’s physical appearance still categorized her in men’s eyes. Jeez, she thought, Mandy prob’ly has to spend half her life keeping guys’ hands off her. So she just smiles at them and jollies em along and splits before it gets serious. It’s either that or carry a gun, I guess. Or a snake.
“Maybe we could ugly you up,” Pancho muttered.
Amanda smiled ruefully. “That’s what Mr. Randolph said.”
“Huh? Randolph?”
“He told me that if I want to go on the mission with you, I’ll have to stop making myself so attractive to the men that go with us.”
Pancho nodded. “We’ve gotta find you some big, bulky sweatshirts. Or maybe keep you in a spacesuit the whole damn trip.”
The two women laughed together. But after a few moments, Amanda asked again, “So tell me, Pancho, who’s your boyfriend?”
Exasperated, Pancho snapped, “You want to meet him? Come on along tonight.”
“Really? Do you mean it?”
“Sure, why not?” Pancho said. “I bet he’d like to meet you.”
Pancho knew that Humphries would go ballistic over Mandy. Good. The man had been pressuring her to find out more about what Dan Randolph was up to. Humphries had been getting downright nasty about it.
Humphries had snarled at her when they’d had dinner, Pancho’s first night back at Selene. The man had seemed cordial enough when he’d ushered her into that big, formal dining room in the house down at Selene’s lowest level. But once he had started asking Pancho what information she had for him, and she had been forced to reply that she had little to report, his mood swiftly changed.
“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to tell me?” Humphries had snarled.
With a helpless shrug, Pancho had answered, “He’s had us cooped up in La Guaira, studyin’ the fusion system.”
“I’m paying you a small fortune and I’m not getting a damned bit of information from you! Nothing! A big, fat zero!”
It was a pretty dinky fortune, Pancho thought. Still, she had tried to placate the man. “But Mr. Humphries, other than the flight tests with that beat-up ol’ cruise missile, he hasn’t been doin’ anything.”
“He’s been flitting all around the fucking world,” Humphries had snapped, “from Kyoto to New York to Geneva to London. He’s been talking to bankers and development agencies—even to the GEC, and he hates the GEC!”
Pancho had tried to be reasonable. “Look, I’m just a rocket jockey. He says he wants me to test-fly the fusion drive once it’s built but it might be years before that happens.”
“So what does he have you doing in the meantime?” Humphries demanded.
Pancho shrugged. “Nothin’ much. He’s sent me and Mandy here to Selene. His personal orders. We’re supposed to be learnin’ about the asteroids out in the Belt. He’s got an astronomer from the Farside Observatory tutoring us.”
Humphries’ expression grew thoughtful. “Maybe he knows you’re working for me. Maybe he’s just put you on ice for the time being, until he figures out how to get rid of you.”
Pancho didn’t want Humphries to think about the possibility that she had told Randolph everything.
“Wouldn’t it be easier for him just to fire me?” she suggested mildly.
“He’s on his way here right now, you know,” Humphries muttered.
“He is?” Pancho couldn’t hide her surprise.
“You don’t even know where he is?”
“I’m not on the mailing list for his personal itinerary,” Pancho retorted.
“Now you listen to me, lady. I got your name to the top of Astro’s personnel list so that Randolph would take you into this fusion rocket program of his. I’m the one who’s gotten you promoted. I want results! I want to know when Randolph goes to the toilet, I want to know when he inhales and when he exhales.”
“Then get yourself another spy,” Pancho had said, trying to hold on to her swooping temper. “Whatever he’s up to, he hasn’t even been on the same continent with me most of the time. I only saw him that once, at the first flight test in Venezuela. You hired the wrong person, Mr. Humphries. You want somebody who can be his mistress, not a pilot.”
Humphries had glared at her over the dinner table. “You’re probably right,” he had muttered. “Still . . . I want you on the job. It might take a while, but sooner or later he’s going to use you to testfly the fusion drive. That’s when you’ll become valuable to me. I just hired you too soon, that’s all.”
He made a forced little smile. “My mistake, I guess.”
Puffing and sweating at the weight machine, Pancho thought, Yep, it’s time for Humphries to meet Mandy. That might solve all my problems.
She laughed to herself. What a setup! Humphries sends Mandy after Randolph and she doesn’t know that I’ve already told Randolph I’m supposed to be spyin’ on him for the Humper. And Mandy would go for it, too; she’d love to have Randolph in her bed.
And meantime, she thought, I can be spyin’ on Humphries for Randolph! Whatta they call that? I’ll be a double agent. Yeah, that’s it. A double agent. Terrific.
But what if Humphries drops me altogether once he sees Amanda? That’s a possibility. Then you won’t be any kind of an agent; you’ll be out in the cold.
OK, so what? she told herself. So you won’t be getting the extra money from Humphries, came the answer. So you’ll have to maintain Sis on your Astro salary. Yeah, yeah, she argued back. I’ve been doin’ that for years now, I can keep on doin’ it.
Wait a minute, she said to herself. Humphries can’t fire me. If he tried to, he’d be afraid that I’d tell Randolph everything. The Humper has to keep me on his payroll—or get rid of me altogether.
Pancho got off the weight machine and went to the exercise bike. Pedalling furiously, she thought, The trick is not to get fired by both Humphries and Randolph. I don’t want to be left out in the cold. And I don’t Humphries to start thinkin’ he’d be better off if I happened to get myself killed. No sir!
MASTERSON AEROSPACE CORP.
“You can’t see them, Mr. Randolph.”
Dan was startled by Douglas Stavenger’s words.
“I was staring, wasn’t I?” he admitted.
Stavenger smiled patiently. “Most people do, when they first meet me. But the nanomachines are all safely inside me. You can’t get infected by them.”
The two men were sitting in Stavenger’s spacious office, which looked more like a comfortable sitting room than a business center. Wide windows made up two of the room’s walls. No desk, not even a computer screen in sight; only upholstered chairs and a small sofa off to one side of the room, with a few low tables scattered here and there. Dan had to remind himself that the windows were really transparent, not holoviews. They looked out on Selene’s Grand Plaza, the only public greenspace within nearly half a million kilometers.
Douglas Stavenger’s office was not buried deep underground. It was on the fifteenth floor of one of the three office towers that also served as supports for the huge dome that covered the Grand Plaza. Masterson Aerospace Corporation’s offices took up the entire fifteenth floor of the tower.
Spread out beyond those windows was the six-hundred-meter-long Plaza itself, a grassy expanse with paved footpaths winding through it, flowered shrubbery and even small trees here and there. Dan could see people walking along the paths, stopping at the shopping arcades, playing lunar basketball in the big enclosed cage off by the orchestra shell. Kids were doing fantastically convoluted dives from the thirty-meter platform at one end of the Olympic-sized swimming pool, twisting and somersaulting in dreamlike slow motion before they splashed languidly into the water. A pair of tourists soared past the windows on brilliantly-colored plastic wings, flying like birds on their own muscle power in the low lunar gravity.
“It’s a pleasant view, isn’t it?” Stavenger said.
