The Luna Deception (45 page)

“The Dust is bacteria!” Mendoza said. “It doesn’t fall into the category of self-reproducing nanobots!”

“Correct. That’s how they cleverly got around the law,” said Dr. Hasselblatter. “But it’s a distinction without a difference.”

“Nanotech and biology are two names for the same field, once you reach the sub-micron scale,” Lorna snapped. “We manufacture human tissues in laboratories; we grow computer memory in crystalline solutions. You tell me which is biological and which isn’t.”

“But the Dust isn’t self-reproducing!”

“Oh yes, it is, if there’s enough of it. There’s a thing called quorum sensing. In nature, a few hundred or a few thousand bacteria will lie low, so they don’t provoke an immune reaction. But a few million? A few
billion?
Your safety mechanism, I suppose, was simply the fact that you weren’t running enough probes for them to self-organize and start to feed. But then you started losing swarms, and those morons in charge must have just assumed they were gone, and issued new batches of probes. They
weren’t
gone. They were just lying low. Eventually they reached quorum. After that, it would all have happened rather fast.”

“You’re saying everyone’s dead?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. We’ve lost Marius Hills. There’s no one left alive up there.”

A recollection swam into Mendoza’s mind. “The Saudis locked down New Riyadh a few hours ago.”

“Oh, well, then they’ll be all right. Too bad about everyone else.”

A repair bot crawled out from under the bed and started to cut the cuff off Lorna’s leg, using a laser that blazed like a star in the dim room. The smell of burning plastic and singed hair arose. “Careful!” Lorna shouted.

“What are you doing?” Mendoza said.

“Removing the electronic restraint that confines me to this dome. I need to go to the Institute. Gather my team, start shoveling shit.”

“Damage control,” Dr. Hasselblatter said. “He doesn’t want to get blamed for this, too.”

Lorna said to Mendoza, “The problem is, I haven’t got transport at the moment. The pigs confiscated my car. How did you get here?”

“In a Moonhawk,” Mendoza said.

“That’ll work.” Lorna froze. “Where did you come from, anyway?” he asked in a choked voice.

“Mockingbird Village,” Mendoza said.

“Oh. OK. Never heard of the place.”

“You will have soon,” Mendoza said, remembering the smell of putrefaction, the ghostly form of Emmeline Diouf, and her silence.

★

Kiyoshi prowled through Wellsland, looking for pastries.

He went first to Moon Cakes, where he’d bought those choux à la crème, but it had turned into a food aid dispensary. A queue stretched out the door. With most of the greenhouses in ruins, Shackleton City was teetering on the brink of a calorie crisis, on top of everything else.

Yet you could squint and imagine nothing had changed. Wage serfs in Victorian gear straggled into their offices. The artificial sun shone down on elegant townhouses.
Beautiful,
this habitat, that was the thing. All these trees. The sky was said to look just like Earth’s but better. The dome’s proportions deadened sound, so you didn’t get the tin can effect that turned many habitats into noise traps. The quiet made Kiyoshi want to kick off his boots and sprawl in one of these pocket-sized parks, doing nothing.

He turned a corner. The fantasy evaporated. He had walked into an open-air hospital. Medibots and human nurses traipsed between stretchers holding rows of dying patients.

“Hi,” Kiyoshi said to the nearest nurse. “You wouldn’t happen to know where I could buy some donuts? Or croissants would be good.”

She just stared at him. Which was no wonder, really.

Another nurse bustled up. The first one drifted away, leaving him to the newcomer, who was wearing an abaya. “What do you want?” her unseen mouth demanded.

Head-to-toe Islamic gear in a non-Muslim city?

Based on Kiyoshi’s experience, this might be:

a Korean space pirate in disguise

a sexbot

or, less likely,

a pious Muslim woman.

Not ruling anything out, Kiyoshi said, “Salaam aleikum. Donuts? Danishes?”

“Did my father send you to bring me home?”

Sometimes the universe shat on you. And sometimes it shat physical iridium.

“Princess Nadia? I thought you had wings,” Kiyoshi said.

“I had them removed. They were getting in the way. Did Daddy send you to get me?”

“Not exactly,” Kiyoshi said, hoping to assuage the sharp note of fear in her voice.

“Oh.” She sagged. “You look like the kind of person he hires.”

“I do?”

“The dodgy-looking moustache. The black leather. The suspiciously overstuffed rucksack, which probably has your EVA suit in it, as well as a bunch of weapons that would have been confiscated if anyone was doing their job anymore. So I thought he might have sent you to rescue me. Sorry.”

“Well, I’ve never said no to rescuing a princess,” Kiyoshi assured her, with his best Scuzzy the Smuggler smile.

“Not
a princess. A sheikha. Oh, just call me Nadia. I came here with a guy … but he’s dropped off the face of the moon, and …” She glanced over her shoulder. The slit of her niqab cut off her peripheral vision so that she had to turn all the way around, making the movement theatrical. “I’m scared to use my BCI, or anything.”

“Why?” Kiyoshi said. He noticed that the other nurses had clustered together at a distance. They were staring at him and Nadia.

“I’m
scared,”
Nadia said, her voice high.

Kiyoshi took her elbow. “Do you have any stuff?”

“No, no, nothing.”

He started to lead her back the way he’d come, but there were several nurses back there, just standing and staring. Kiyoshi urged Nadia into a side street that ran behind the Museum of Commerce. On each stretcher lay a person in the final throes of radiation sickness. “Help,” Kiyoshi heard a whisper behind him. “Help.”
Oh Christ,
he thought,
why have I got to see this? Why are You making me witness so much of Your suffering? Don’t You know there’s nothing I can do about it?

A woman in Victorian lady’s garb bent over the last patient, seeming to embrace him. Weird times.

Nadia whispered, “That’s Dr. Miller. She was kind to me.”

The doctor straightened up and stared. Kiyoshi nodded to her. When they were past, he looked back. The doctor had bent over her patient again—kissing him, or …

“Hurry up,” he snapped to Nadia. He didn’t know what was going on here, but he knew for damn sure it wasn’t good. “Move!”

Spaceborn, she fairly flew along beside him, jewelled sandals slapping on the cobbles.

Kiyoshi headed for the main drag, reflexively seeking safety in numbers. When they got there, though, few people were about. It was mid-morning; people would be squirrelled away in their offices. If this were a normal day.

He grabbed Nadia’s arm to slow her down as they reached Heinlein Park. This was the biggest open space in Wellsland. As Kiyoshi recalled, there was an airlock on the far side of the park. But ahead of them, people stood beneath the trees. Not talking or vaping or eating or anything. Just standing and staring, and their eyes, yes, their eyes were strange, and although their heads turned to follow Kiyoshi and Nadia, their eyes did not. It was as if, rather, they
smelt
the pair.

“Uh huh, uh huh,” Kiyoshi murmured. “That doctor, did you see her?”

“Yes …”

“She wasn’t a human being. Nor are these people.”

“What? What are they, then?”

“Dunno. Demons.”

Those eyes, as empty as the vacuum.

“How can you tell?” Nadia half-screamed.

“I’m a Catholic. I’m a pretty
bad
Catholic, but where I grew up, the Church was the biggest influence in our lives. I can always tell human beings from—robots; virtual projections; anything else. Demons.”

“Oh,” Nadia said. “That’s why my family invested in D.I.E. My father and uncles think the PLAN is the Enemy: Al-Shaitaan. The Devil.”

“They’re right.”

He dragged her across a lawn, into the thickets of a botanical garden. Jurassic-sized ferns blocked their line of sight. He swung his rucksack off one shoulder and dragged out his extra EVA suit. He’d brought it for Derek Lorna, not for Nadia, but she could have it.

“By the way,” he thought to ask her. “Have you ever heard of a guy called Derek Lorna?”

“Lorna?” She laughed, a bit hysterically. “We came here to kill him.”

“Oookay. Actually;
shit.
Did you succeed?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Like I said, the guy I came with just completely dropped out of touch.”

Then it might be too late. If it wasn’t, Kiyoshi had no time to lose.

A vending machine stood by the path. Kiyoshi’s Chinese-made laser pistol was already in his hand. He shot the vending machine’s fingerprint scanner, scooped blueberry muffins and cinnamon rolls into his rucksack. Never skimp on the details.

Nadia struggled into his spare EVA suit, saying, “Don’t look.”

Kiyoshi gave her the pistol to hold while he changed into his own suit. He was getting his helmet on when she fired into the trees. “Sorry,” she said. “I thought I saw … Oh, help!”

Kiyoshi slapped his helmet seals shut. Through his faceplate, he saw people drifting towards them.
Drifting
was the right word. Their toes hung several centimeters above the ground. The trees and ferns barely stirred as they passed.

He grabbed the pistol from Nadia and shot at the nearest ones. They didn’t even slow down. His pulses seemed to be going straight through them.

“Run.”

She was already running, lithe in the Chinese-red EVA suit he’d bought from someone in Docking Bay 14. He followed her. Bounding high, they crashed through the canopies of the trees. Ahead, a thatched awning marked the airlock.

Kiyoshi’s faceplate turned black. All his filters were set to normal, but he was blind. He collided with a tree. “Nadia!”

“I can’t see!” she screamed.

“Where are you?”

“Here!”

That was no help. “Something’s gunked up our helmets,” he said, sliding to the ground.

“I know!”

Kiyoshi enabled his suit’s infrared filter. The grid showed him Nadia, bright and clear. Of their pursuers, not a sign. Just Nadia, kneeling in a cool field of green.

“Ugh! My helmet seals are all gunked up. I’m taking it off.”

“No! Keep it on!” Kiyoshi bellowed, a second too late.

“Got it!”

The next sound to come from her was a choking noise. Kiyoshi remembered Father Tom at the Hope Center for Nanobiotics, asphyxiating in what had looked like good, clean air. He his scrubbed his gloves over his faceplate—it was like trying to wipe oil off glass. He cleared a smeary gap.

Nadia knelt among the ferns, helmet off, clutching her throat. The people who’d been chasing them stood around her. As if they saw Kiyoshi looking, they turned and stared. Then they stooped to Nadia again.

The gunk crawled over his faceplate again, blinding him. He stumbled to the airlock, using IR to navigate. He collapsed into the chamber. Coughs racked his chest.

“Studd?”

“There’s something on your suit,” Studd said. “Your telemetry’s all screwy.”

“I know.” He stumbled into the vacuum. Suddenly he could see again. The gunk slid down his legs, as if he were getting painted black, in reverse. It spread into a pool on the regolith. In the slanting light of the sun, it looked like he’d grown a new shadow.

“Jesus
Christ.”
He crossed himself. Coughed again.

“OK, it’s gone now,” Studd said.

“I found Princess Nadia,” Kiyoshi said. “But then they ate her.”

“Who did?”

“A bunch of people who weren’t there.”

“It’s got to be those nanoprobes,” Studd said.
“Totally
serves them right for screwing with the laws of nature.”

“Shut the fuck up, punk. I need the
Wakizashi
. Bring it as close as you can get.”

“Um, there isn’t really room to land.”

“So land on top of something. I don’t think it matters anymore.”

xxxvi.

Mendoza stumbled through Derek Lorna’s garden, looking for Dr. Hasselblatter’s kid. The boy’s father was looking for him, too. Overgrown, the garden offered all too many places for a would-be Knight of the Milky Way to hide.

A rosebush hidden in the QuickGrow™ grass snagged Mendoza’s trousers. He stopped to extricate himself. He heard some people hurry past in the street, talking. Coughing.

Derek Lorna had gone into panic mode. But Derek Lorna in panic mode was still smarter than anyone else. He’d explained how the Dust must have reached Shackleton City. “The PLAN attack. It
wasn’t
an attack! It was a Dust drop. If the PLAN had wanted to nuke us outright, they could have. But they had something much nastier in mind … something
arty.
That’s how their sick, Romantic minds work. I’m talking about Teutonic Romanticism, the movement that gave us
The Sorrows of Young Werther,
not to mention Martin Heidegger.
Not
flowers and valentines.”

Mendoza had said, “So the Dust has been here for weeks.”

“Yes. Lying low.”

“So I didn’t personally doom Shackleton City by bringing Dust from Hopetown?”

“No,” Lorna had said. “But you probably
have
doomed Bloomsbury by bringing Dust from Mockingbird Village. Oh fuckety-fuckety-fuck. We have to get out of here
now.
Take this mask.”

It was only a rebreather mask, with a tank of compressed oxygen that went in Mendoza’s shirt pocket. Rebreather sets were intended for use in the event of a loss of pressure. The seal around his mouth and nose was far from secure. Dr. Hasselblatter had one, too, but he had pushed it down around his neck, the better to yell.

“JUNIOR! Come here RIGHT THIS FUCKING SECOND! We’re LEAVING!”

Way to panic the neighbors. Mendoza faced the horrible truth that their survival probably depended on escaping before anyone else knew what was going on. If a stampede happened, someone would steal the Moonhawk. It wouldn’t matter that there wasn’t anywhere to go. Anywhere would be better than here, as long as it was away from the invisible doom spreading through Shackleton City.