Chapter eleven: "…don't push him if you value your life."

Previous Chapter

The next day promised to be busy. The night before, Marjori had called to tell me that she arrived back in the City that evening, which was good news to me. I promised to meet her at her place when she arrived. But first I had to meet with the Higher Authorities who had Taken An Interest In Me.

City Center is not really the center of Sky City, if that makes any sense. It's really just a hub around Skyhook, and the Skyhook is the real center of the City and the world. Most of the trade between Venus and Luna passes through the Skyhook and Anchorage terminus at the other end. Down below, the Hook is surrounded with short term storage and administration offices.

I was supposed to meet with someone from Anchorage itself, but rather than make the hours long trip up the Hook, we were going to use one of the holoconference rooms connected directly to the Skyhook. There are a few such setups on Luna, but they are seldom used; the longest trip on Luna by high speed tube is still less than a tenth of the full Skyhook traverse, so there's less of a need.

I signed in at the main Skyhook entrance gate, and gave them both a thumb and retinal scan; they run a real belt-and-suspenders operation at Skyhook. I was met by a bright young thing of indeterminate sex, at least the way that she/he was dressed, and followed her/him to a gocart where we spent the next few minutes dodging the frenetic traffic in the corridors at the center of the world.

"Here you go, Mr. Honlin," said my androgynous guide. "Conference room number one. I'll be here when you come out."

I thanked her/him and opened the door.

The lights came up as I walked into the room. There was a desk for me to sit at, and three walls looked to be full holorez viewscreens. See the world from your desk, I thought, and I wondered how much a setup like this would cost to a private individual. I wondered if I had ever met anyone that rich. Maybe Grayling. Maybe.

Then the screen in front of me came on, and I was looking at another office, much like the one I was in, with another desk, and another occupant behind the desk. Only the desk looked like it was permanently occupied, with papers strewn all over the top, and various data lines leading off of it into the farther wall.

"Hello, Mr. Honlin," said the man behind the desk. "My name is Grant Landau. Dr. Landau, if titles matter, which they don't. I'd rise and shake your hand, but circumstances do not permit it."

He got up anyway and stood leaning on his desk. I was still checking out the place. The setup was impressive, I'll give it that. The wall was full holorez, and the illusion was nearly perfect. The only discrepancy that I could really notice was when Landau sat down again. Normally you can feel the movement in a room through the floor, but Landau felt like a ghost. He looked a little like one, too; his skin was pallid, and he had dark circles under his eyes. His round face looked a little puffy, as if he'd had a recent weight gain. Stress will do that to some people. They overeat as a compensation.

"So what's on your mind, Dr. Landau," I asked him. "You look like a very busy man and I'd hate to waste your time."

He smiled a thin smile and sighed. "Yes, and I'd hate to waste yours. But however much we'd like to cut to the chase, some chases are a bit harder than others. So you'll have to bear with me a little bit."

He paused, his face a grimace that was an attempt at a smile. "Are you a man of faith, Mr. Honlin?" he asked me.

"I doubt it," I said to him. "I can't think of many things that need faith to make them run, and the rest of it doesn't seem to matter much to me these days. Or did you have a more specific sort of faith in mind?"

He shook his head. "No, I think I'm talking about the most general sort of faith. Faith in faith, even. Faith that somewhere, somehow, there is something or someone that it's proper to believe in."

"I think you've lost me," I told him, hoping that the correct phrase wasn't really lost it.

He shook his head again. "No matter," he said, almost to himself. "Maybe I'll just have to put my faith in you."

"That might be a bad idea," I told him.

"It might be the only idea I've got," he said.

He shook himself, like someone coming awake. "Enough of this," he said, reminding himself that he had something important to tell me, I expect. "I first heard your name eighteen months ago, I daresay that you know in what connection."

I shrugged. "Grayling, no doubt."

"No doubt," he said. "A couple of reports crossed my desk and suddenly, a smuggling ring that was completely unknown to me is broken apart, largely by your efforts, it would seem. That in itself would be impressive enough. But the background checks showed you to be a most unusual man. Very highly connected, good family, with a wide range of very important personages on Luna willing to give you their highest recommendations. As nearly as I can tell, you could have written your own ticket Luna-side, yet you chose to immigrate to Venus and live in what, if I may speak frankly, can only be called 'squalor.'"

"Oh, I think we could come up with some other names for it," I told him.

"Ah, yes," he said. "Then there is the matter of your attitude. I read Mr. Lee's reports on the case, and they are quite confusing. He started out thinking you a total burnout, and by the end of the matter, he'd walk through fire for you. Literally."

"The fire wasn't our idea," I said.

"No, I imagine not," he replied.

He looked closely at me, with one of those attempted mind reading looks that people get sometimes. "Of course I looked at your file," he said. "And you know what I found."

"Yeah," I said. "A lot of people have had that frustration." There is a total blank in my personnel file dating from about ten years back until I came to Venus five years ago. It looks like it's been encrypted, but if you break the code, it's just noise. They wiped the records of that period in my life. Completely. I've sometimes wished they could have done the same for me.

"Then a few months back, your name comes up in another context," he continued. "We have a . . . problem," he said, then paused again. "Which I will shortly explain to you. And that problem is being investigated by a couple of agents from the Guard to the Special Cabinet on Luna. Are you familiar with that agency?" he asked me.

"Every Luna cop knows the Special Guard," I told him, truthfully, if somewhat noncommittally.

"We here at Skyhook know the Guard, as well," he said. "They are the big guns that get called if things look to be getting seriously out of hand. Needless to say, we prefer not to see them very often."

I nodded. That was pretty much the attitude of cops on Luna, too.

"During the years for which your record does not speak, you were in the Guard," he said. It was not a question.

"What gives you that idea?" I asked him, thinking that he was fishing. But he wasn't.

"Does the name Martin Fisk ring any bells?" he asked me.

I said nothing.

"Dr. Fisk treated you for an extended period just before you came to Venus," he said. "I have been in communication with him for the past several months."

"That is a violation of doctor/patient privilege," I said, but without heat. Hell, I'd seen that happen enough times not to harbor any illusions. I was a little surprised, though. I thought that Fisk was too afraid to talk. Too afraid of me and what I represented.

Landau seemed to read my mind on that one, at least. "There are some privileges that go with being a fellow member of the medical community," he said. "He was very reluctant to speak, of course. I also had to threaten him with the Guard a little bit. And some other things, as well. That Dr. Fisk was willing to communicate with me tells you something about the problem we face."

"I'd say it's about time to tell me about it, then," I told him.

He held up his hand. "Soon, soon," he told me. "I'm giving you this background to let you know that I'm going into this with open eyes. Through Dr. Fisk and several other contacts that I have, I have learned something of what actually happened to you during that blank period. I know the sort of things that you are capable of, in other words."

He let that sink in for a bit. I began to wonder just how desperate he was.

"What does the Guard say about this?" I asked him.

"I haven't told them," he said. "Early on, they had some interest in using you because you were already in place, with some experience in areas that they need to investigate. But they decided against it. I think that some of them think that you are too unpredictable. Or they may have other reasons."

I snorted a little on that one. "Yeah, I expect they have a reason or two," I said.

He shrugged. "In any case, I don't entirely trust the agents of the Guard," he said. "I'm sure you understand."

"Yeah, I'm sure I do," I told him.

"You may be interested to know," he told me, "That Dr. Fisk still considers you to be an outstanding individual. He was of the opinion that, if you could be induced to work for us, you were our best hope."

"Now I know you're desperate," I said.

He ignored the jibe. "In truth, I think that Dr. Fisk was a little surprised that you were still alive. He said that you weren't suicidal, but that he thought that you might arrange for a situation that would lead to your demise. A 'death wish,' I've heard it called, although he didn't use that phrase. Dr. Fisk also said that you were as thoroughly immune to pressure or threats or bribery as any human being can be. He told me that the only way that you would work for us is if you decided that you were going to do it. That's it, just a personal decision. Nothing else would work. He told me 'Tell him the truth, lay it out for him, and hope he says yes. And if he says no, that's it, don't push him if you value your life.'"

"Dr. Fisk can be a little melodramatic," I said.

"I thought that too," Landau said. "Until about ten minutes ago. Now that I've seen you, I think he might have you pegged."

I felt myself give a little sigh. "Okay," I told him. "You have my attention, anyway. Maybe it's time to lay it out for me."

So he began to tell his story.

Next Chapter

Chapter ten: "So you kick people in the head just because you get impatient?"

Previous Chapter

Calvin had a meeting to attend, so he left me in his office for the rest of the afternoon, a time I spent on his data access comm, running down background information that I thought might come in handy. I tried running background checks on Harmon Reed and Juliet Carlyle, the two Guards from Luna, but they were under a blackout, and Calvin didn't have enough clearance to get at their files. I tried a couple of access codes that I used to know, but they were long out of date. No surprise there.

When Calvin returned, he had that slightly glazed look of someone who had spent time trying to keep from falling asleep. "Interesting meeting?" I asked, and he gave me a dirty look.

"Budget review," he said. "Most of it was spent going over meal accounts. Somebody had the bright idea that City employees should be reimbursed for meal expenses, provided -- and this is the good part -- provided the meal is eaten during standard lunch hours, and outside of the normal range of City Center operations. Oddly enough, this has resulted in more late morning field work away from City Center. So now someone wants to make the policy apply only to amounts in excess of standard meal rates, with documentation required that there were no cheaper alternatives."

"This took two hours?" I asked, suppressing a grin.

"Oh no," he said. "There were four other items on the agenda. So the meal thing just took an hour and a half."

I shrugged. "Administrators may not know anything about police work," I told him. "But they know food. So they try to stick to what they know."

"Oh, crap," he sighed. "And speaking of food, let's go get some. We're supposed to meet Cheryl soon."

"Anything you say," I told him, and we left.

__________________________________

The restaurant was called The Chalet, I think, but the maitre'd pronounced it The Shallot. Maybe it was a joke. If so, it was a high priced joke; the place was one of the most expensive in the City. We got there a little early and passed the time in the bar.

The Chalet decor was polymonochrome, which was the posh decorating style that year. The rug, tablecloths, and wall hangings were of a new Lunar-import fabric with an electrically controlled tint, so the color of the place slowly shifted during the course of the evening. When we got there, it was a mild pink; by the time Cheryl arrived, it was approaching mauve.

"Hi guys," she said from behind us, just as we were finishing our drinks. We turned, and Calvin got a quick peck of a kiss as she extended her hand toward me. I shook her hand briefly, noting that she gave my palm a slight caress when she removed her grasp.

"Ed," said Calvin. "This is Cheryl Chiba. Cheryl, Ed Honlin."

Calvin's former fiance was wearing a cut-to-the-shoulders black form fitting dress, from which I guessed that she had been to The Chalet before, or at least knew about the shifting color scheme. Anyone wearing colors other than basic black or white would wind up clashing at some point during the evening. I guessed her age at early twenties, a little younger than I would have expected for Calvin, but she made up for it in sheer physical presence. She had the high cheekbones and brown eyes of a Eurasian mix that still showed some ethnic identity, unlike Luna, where the racial groups long ago vanished in a hybrid swarm. She carried herself with the controlled movements of someone who has had some sort of training in that regard, dance or gymnastics, perhaps even one of the martial arts, though I did not recognize any specifics. She was nearly as tall as Calvin, but slender, with the firm look of someone who kept thin by activity rather than anorexia.

All this I took in during the short time we took to get the attention of the maitre 'd, and on our walk to our table. I was not unaware of Cheryl's sizing-me-up glances as well. Calvin, I think, was oblivious.

After we had been seated and the water had been poured, the waiter gave us menus and asked if we wanted something to drink. We answered "no," so he left us to ponder our orders.

"Well, that's the last we'll see of him for a while," Calvin said, and Cheryl smiled.

She turned to me and said, "So, you're the mystery man who saved Calvin's life by kicking people in the head."

Calvin was sipping his water and gave a little strangled sound like he'd almost choked. He reached for a napkin (white, but it picked up the color of the entire room, which was by now nearly a royal purple), and held it in front of his mouth while he slowly turned red.

"I'm not sure about the 'saved his life' part," I told her. "Calvin is pretty good at taking care of himself."

She shrugged her bare shoulders and said, "Perhaps he embellished the tale a little. Still, it sounded like quite a fight."

Calvin had recovered his voice by now. "I told her about the lab raid, and how you took out the guy who was trying to pound my skull in," Calvin said, as if his telling her had violated a confidence.

It was my turn to shrug. "Calvin was wearing a helmet," I told Cheryl. "And the guy who did the pounding wasn't very good at mayhem. I think that Calvin would have handled it with more time. I was just impatient."

"So you kick people in the head just because you get impatient?" she said, still smiling, but the pupils of her eyes had grown larger, turning more of the brown centers of her eyes to black.

"Very rarely," I said.


"How fortunate for our waiter that you are so rarely impatient," she said, and we all laughed at this.

"Besides," said Calvin. "The guy lived."

Through most of dinner Calvin and Cheryl spoke of mutual friends and their past times together with the ease of old friends tempered by the reserve of the formerly passionate. Periodically, Cheryl would steer the conversation over to me, asking me about the way I lived, who I knew in Darkunder, how I went about my life. She confessed, with the attitude of one confiding secrets, that she found Darkunder both fascinating and repellent.

And if those occasional glances that she sent in my direction were speculative, she did not volunteer her speculations.

She left before dessert, kissing Calvin on the cheek and once more touching my hand in a parting gesture that lingered only for the briefest instant. After she was gone, Calvin looked over at me and shrugged helplessly.

"Still a little torched?" I asked him.

"A bit," he admitted. "It will pass, I expect. She's from a wealthy family, old money, I think it's called. Dating a cop was a bit of a rebellion. We're not special here on Venus. It's not like Luna."

"Cops are special everywhere," I told him. "High or low, it's all special. But she's one to cause problems, I think."

"You think right," he said, but he said no more about it and then our coffee came.

Next Chapter

Chapter nine: “"I should have known better than to set you loose”

Previous Chapter

I awoke in the near darkness of the Venus night, the only light coming from the intermittent flashes of distant lightning down below. It was afternoon by the clock, though; it's not unusual for Venus dwellers to sleep late during the first hours of darkness, since we tend to skip sleep during the light days and make up for it in the dark.

I got up and had a four liter shower, then dressed and headed toward the City without bothering to eat. As we checked out the bloon that I was going to use for the trip, Joey commented that I looked better than I had before. A trick of the light, I told him, but in truth I did feel better.

I checked into City Center and, before I went into Police Headquarters, I used a public comm to place a call to Marjori. A child answered the phone, one of Marjori's daughter's children by the sound of it; then Marjori came on line.

"Hello, darling," she said, in a slightly breathless voice. "Are you missing me?"

"Yes," I told her. "You sound out of breath."

"I've been downstairs playing with the youngest boy," she said. "I think I need to get more exercise; I'm out of shape."

"You couldn't prove that by me," I told her.

"Flattery will get you a great deal," she said with a laugh. I do enjoy hearing her laugh.

"So when are you coming back?" I asked.

"Tomorrow or the day after," she said.

"Let me know exactly when," I said. "I may have a favor to ask."

"Oh?" she said. "What sort of favor?" She laughed again, and a slight shiver went up my spine.

"Not that sort," I said. "Well, maybe that sort, too. But the thing I'm thinking of...hmm, actually I'm not really clear on it just yet, though I should be soon. There's a case I'm involved with that could maybe use a woman's touch."

"Going to turn me out on the street are you?" she said teasingly.

"Oh, sure, definitely," I said. Then after a pause, "I do miss you."

"Good," she said. "I like that a lot." Then we said a few more things along those lines and hung up. One of the things about Marjori is that she knows what questions not to ask.

________________________________

Calvin was in his office when I arrived at PDH. "Hi, Ed," he said to me as I came in. "I'm just running those numbers you asked for. Have a seat." I bounced one of his chairs around beside his desk so I could watch the data screen while he worked.

"You're looking better," he told me as he tapped at the keyboard in front of him.

"So I'm told," I replied. "Sleep that knits the raveled sleeve...."

"Finally broke down and took a sleeping pill?" he asked absently.

I hesitated. I rarely take pills because I often get paradoxical reactions, to put it mildly. Also, I have a certain fear of being helpless while I sleep.

"Sort of," I said, noncommittally.

"Here we go," he said as some numbers came onto his screen. "Not many of them, actually. Taylorville gets a fair number of outside calls, but they are usually from standard places, people they do business with, other farming clusters, that sort of thing. I've weeded those out, like you said. So we get...."

"Only four numbers," I said. "What are they?"

"Two from the City, one from the Rim, and one from Darkunder. The City calls are public comm units. The one from the Rim is a private residence. The one in Darkunder is a business listing."

"What's the business?" I asked.

"'Night club,'" he told me. He tapped a few more keys. "Basically it's a brothel." He looked at me. "That's the one, isn't it?" he said. "You're not surprised."

"No," I told him. "Betty Laird, Molly's mother never told anyone what she did for the years surrounding Molly's birth. She had no significant skills and she came home when her looks were beginning to fade. That narrows the field."

I told him about the things that Lewis and I had learned in Taylorville. When I was done, he gave a low, soft whistle.

"Oh, great," he said. "I should have known better than to set you loose on finding next-of-kin for dead girls."

"Meaning that you'd rather I hadn't found any?" I said.

He sighed. "No, I guess I don't mean that. But it complicates things, doesn't it?"

I shrugged. "This is still all hypothetical, you know," I told him. "We don't know for a fact that Molly had a child."

"Yeah, but it makes sense," he said, and I agreed.

"So now what?" he asked me.

"I'm going to hold off on going to this 'night club' for a couple of days," I said. "I want Marjori to accompany me when I go."

"Why?"

"Oh come on," I told him. "Molly probably spent time there as a child, which is why she went back when she was in trouble. We're guessing that they still have her child. Do you think they're going to be thrilled at the idea of turning her over to someone like me?"

He had to laugh at that one. "Point taken," he said.

"How about the gun?" I asked him. "Have you tried to trace it?"

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Let me show you." With that he called up another file, and pointed to a set of names.

"Perfect tie-in," he said to me. "That particular antique was last registered on Luna, to Emerson Grayling, Robert Grayling's grandfather. Passed from father to son to grandson to...."

"Daughter," I finished for him. "Actually, I suspect that it was more complicated than that. But it does make the connection pretty strong. And the DNA typing?"

"That's as near as matters to one hundred percent," he said. "That one is courtroom solid."

"Not on Luna," I said. "On Luna, it's irrelevant."

"Yes," he said. "So I've heard. When are you going to pay a visit to Jesse Grayling to break it to him that he has a blood relative that he didn't know about?"

"I think I'll hold off on that for a while," I said. "I'd like at least to wait until we know for sure that there is such a person—the child, I mean."

"So you're not going to go charging in and rattling the cages to see what slips out through the bars?" he asked. He made it sound like he was joking, but I caught the undertone.

"You know me better than that," I said.

"Do I?" he asked. The joking tone was less apparent now.

"Whatever." I gave it a gesture of dismissal. "There are times to stir things up, and times to let things settle. I already told you, I'd rather that none of the Grayling's know that they're under suspicion."

He nodded, then took a deep breath. "Okay," he said. "Uh, now I have to bring something up."

I felt my eyebrows move. "A piper that wants to be paid?" I asked him.

"Um, maybe," he said. "It sure didn't take them long."

"Who wants to see me?" I asked.

He sighed again. "You don't have to do this if you don't feel like it," he said. "Oh, hell, of all the people to say that to. Anyway, there's a guy by the name of Landau, Grant Landau. He's part of Skyhook Security, not one of the crime units, but public health and safety. In fact, he's head of the epidemiology section. He's sent me a request for a meeting with you."

"When?" I asked.

"Anytime that is convenient, but the sooner the better, he says."

I must have been in a good mood that day. I said, "Well, I'm not doing anything tomorrow."

"Good," he said, with obvious relief. It can get troublesome when the upper levels lean on you.

Then his comm buzzed. He picked up the receiver and said, "Calvin Lee, here." Then the tone of his voice changed substantially. "Oh, hi Cheryl, how are you? No, I was just in a meeting with a someone, Ed Honlin. Yeah, that's the guy. What? Oh." He looked over at me. "Are you busy for dinner?" he asked me. I shook my head. "Yeah," he told the comm. "I'll ask him along. Say about six." Then he hung up.

He looked over at me. "That's Cheryl, my ex-fiance. We still meet for dinner every now and then, and she's going to be downtown tonight. Want to come along?"

"Cheryl is the one who didn't want to marry you because you were a cop, right?" I asked.

He grimaced. "That turned out to be a mixup, I think," he said. "I eventually found out that being a cop was maybe the only thing she really liked about me. No, that's not quite fair. Anyway, we're still 'friends,' I guess. And I'd appreciate your company at dinner."

I was dubious about the entire thing. Three's a crowd even for ex-couples. But I was also a little curious. "Okay," I told him. "But I may decide that I have business elsewhere, even before the main course."

He smiled. "She knows enough about you not to be surprised," he said.

"What have you been telling her?" I asked.

"Nothing not known to dozens of people," he joked, referring to the way my files had been accessed by what seemed to be everyone we'd encountered during the Sheila Mason case. Luna computer records aren't known for their privacy.

"Well, I'm always happy to meet one of my adoring fans," I told him.

Next Chapter

Chapter eight: Like the dreams of alien gods.

Previous Chapter

After William Anderson had left, I told Lewis that we were leaving; there was no way I was going to sleep that clock night, and I figured I might as well take us back to the City. Lewis agreed. I don't think he wanted to stay any longer in Taylorville, either.

I did most of the work setting the airfoils, drag line, all the rest. Lewis realized that I needed the activity and sat over by the side near one of the aft viewports, watching the sky. About the time I had everything set and we were at full drift, he spoke.

"Do you think she was?" he asked me. "Pregnant, I mean."

He hadn't needed to clarify. I'd been thinking the same question.

"Yes," I answered. "It would make sense. I think she'd have spurned the money, otherwise. She was young. Pride."

"And she had the child?"

"She'd never have aborted it, if that's what you mean," I told him.

"You talk like you know a lot about a girl you only met once," he said.

I'd thought about that, too, but I didn't have an answer to it. "I guess so," I said. "It's always possible that I'm wrong. But I'm not uncertain about it. Some people are obvious. Not shallow or transparent, but obvious. You feel like you know them from the first. Maybe it's just a projection on my part."

He said nothing for a long while. "If there is a child," he said finally. "How messy does that make things?"

"Very," I told him. "A direct descendant of Robert Grayling. But not through a legal marriage. On Luna, that's no relationship at all. All children have a legal mother and father at birth, or they aren't allowed to come to term. There are some cuckoos, of course, but legally they are still only related to their parents."

"That's a stern system," Lewis said.

"Luna is a stern place," I told him.

I continued. "On Venus, as I understand it, the laws of the local cluster prevail, the same as for most everything else. Then there is Sky City, which has developed its own legal code. City law is more flexible than Lunar law, and blood relations count, even when not formalized by legal marriage. It pretty much has to work that way, since so many City residents are originally from free clusters, and the City management doesn't want to try imposing a single code on people who didn't grow up under it. If someone dies in the City, no one wants to tell his mother that she isn't legally his mother."

Lewis nodded. "And Grayling?" he asked.

"A lot would depend on where the estate is settled. Grayling owned property on Venus, Skyhook, and Luna. That makes it a hell of a tangle. One of Grayling's cousins, a guy named Jesse Grayling, is trying to untangle the matter right now, I'd say."

"Do you think that this Jesse knows about the child?" Lewis said. "Or even that there might be a child?"

"I hope not," I said. "If I have to get involved in another matter involving the Graylings, I'll need every edge I can get."

______________________________

We got back to the City as the sun was in its final descent toward the forty-eight hours of blackness that are true night. As the cloudtops begin to cool the storms in the clouds below often begin to make their presence felt, a distant growling sound that can be felt in the belly if the mood is right, and if one is prepared to listen to things from the depths.

"The weather service says that a megastorm may be brewing, pardner," Lewis told me as we were pulling in the lines in preparation to go to powered flight. "We haven't had one of those in five or six years now."

"There hasn't been one since I've been on Venus," I told him. "I thought that they were mostly polar events."

"They are," he told me. "But the whole atmosphere gets a bit more turbulent for a while. And the bloons really get a feed after one hits. The dust from below gets a high ride."

"Should I make any preparations?" I asked. Lunar natives such as myself don't really have a handle on weather. It seems too much like magic, or the dreams of alien gods.

"Nah," he said. "Just find a place with full holo and watch the show. It's pretty impressive, so they usually have some crews up there taping it. Some go on tours to the things."

"Isn't that dangerous?" I asked.

"Not so much for a small bloon. The big ones get sheared pretty good, and a megastorm will rip a cluster apart. They don't kill as many as it seems they ought to, though. That's the advantage of riding the winds."

_____________________________________

We docked back at Madame Fumio's after the new clock day had started, just before 5000 hours, 0200 hours by the twenty four hour clock. Lewis had napped in the bloon on our way back; he said good bye and left to collect what remained of a night's sleep. I was still jumpy from the trip and whatever the events of the past few days had stirred up.

So after I let Lewis off, I took the bloon out again and took it down to the drift level under the City, and turned off both the fans and the transponder. That's mildly illegal, but it's never enforced, because most free drifting bloons at that level are unmanned strays, and it's too much trouble to police the area. That far down is pretty warm, too, and the pressure begins to tell. You can only go for a half hour or so at drift level before you have to worry about decompressing when you rise again.

My route puts me at the higher pressure just long enough to get a little dreamy from nitrogen narcosis, but not long enough to cause problems. During the time I'm down, the City above moves forward without me, west to east, so I wind up near the western edge.

At the right moment, I dump my ballast and bubble up, heading for an illegal entry point to the City, an entry point that's pretty much mine alone by now, because it isn't worth much as a smuggler's hole. It's just a zippatched section on a warehouse bloon, but it's my own little bolt hole, a City entry without going through the checkpoints. Once my bloon's snug in its nest, a minor indentation between two much larger bloons, I enter the warehouse, spring the lock on its door, and go prowling in the lowest level of Sky City.

There are certain sections of any city that are known to the people who need them to be the way that they are. This section of Sky City is mostly storage areas, with a few bars and such for the longshoremen and teamsters who lug material out of transport bloons and onto transport vehicles or pneumotube. Some of those bars have rough reputations, and some of the men who frequent them like to prowl. Sometimes they prowl for women of a certain sort; sometimes they prowl for men.

You can find most kinds of people much easier in Darkunder. There is at least one cluster for almost every sort of need down below. The big exception is for those who find the prowling almost as important as the object of the search. Look on it as primal Stocasticism. Look on it as another way of tossing the dice. If you need some free range, you still need to go Cityside.

When I search out the lower levels of the up and up, I'm never quite sure what I'm looking for, and most often, I'm disappointed. That's okay, too. Sometimes even disappointment helps me to sleep. And that's what I was looking for that night, a way to get some sleep.

I walked for a couple of hours that night, finding no one on my usual routes except the prostitutes and the men looking to find them. None of them were what I was looking for, a fact made plain by the way most of them shrank from my gaze when it found them. By 5300 hours, I was beginning to think I was wasting my time.

Then I saw them. They weren't much to look at actually, just five young men, boys really, marching through the corridors as if they owned them. A gang, I guessed, looking for solidarity and a group to give them identity. They were each carrying a short stick, less than a meter long. Call them canes, though none of them was using them to walk.

They walked more or less shoulder to shoulder, taking up the entire width of the corridor. The idea was that anyone who saw them should turn and run away, I expect. Anyone who didn't, well . . .

I decided to find out what happened if someone didn't.

If I'd been a smaller man, I expect that they would have just come at me straight out, sticks swinging or whatever. But I'm sufficiently large to give most people pause, even when they're part of a group that outnumbers me five-to-one. When I didn't stop my ambling walk in the appropriate place, the two of them on either end of the line sped up a bit, to move around me on either side and flank me from the rear. The three of them in front of me spread out to block my progress.

They weren't very good at it. Not good at all. They held their sticks down at their sides, as if by doing so they could gain some element of surprise. The down side of that was that when the one behind me began his swing at my head, I had all the time in the world to react. The strike was telegraphed six ways from Sunday, by the feel of shifting weight through the yielding floor, by the way the eyes of the three punks in front of me followed the motion, by the sound and feel of air displacements from behind. It came from the guy to my right rear, who was right-handed besides, so the trajectory of it was easy to spot, even without seeing it. I pivoted on my left foot, entered his safety zone, and joined his motion before it had even reached the top of its arc. The easiest move at that point was a projection throw that I put too much muscle into -- Sensei Mac would have scowled and snorted. But it got the job done, and lifted the guy off his feet and into the one directly in front of me at about knee level. I heard the pop of cartilage as his knee dislocated, the sound immediately drowned out by his yelp of pain.

Whatever scenarios they had in their heads evaporated with that yelp, and the two still standing in front of me froze. That gave me time to snap out a kick to the other one at my rear. Contempt made me sloppy on that one as well; I put it right into his solar plexus. It's dangerous to kick that high against someone who knows what he's doing, but these were just children, playing at being tough. Welcome to show biz, guys.

The two in front of me came out of their daze and started swinging wildly with their sticks. That was the first flash of danger that I felt, not because they were any good with the things, but because they weren't. You can never tell when someone is going to get lucky with a weapon, long odds though that might be. I dodged back and picked up the stick from the guy behind me who was on the floor gasping for breath and came around at the other two. Deflecting a blow from the one on my right, I jabbed in at the one on my left and caught him in the throat. That was all for him. The punk standing to my right turned and fled. He was followed by the fellow who had struck the first blow. That one had scrambled to his feet after I'd thrown him, and he decided to become the better part of valorous.

None of the others moved from their positions on the floor. They were watching me with fear on their faces, and I liked that part. It was the only satisfying thing that had happened, really. They hadn't been enough to properly feed the demon until then. The one I'd gotten in the throat was making little gurgling noises. I considered whether or not I'd crushed his windpipe, and decided I hadn't used that much force. I might have been wrong about that though, and if so, he'd probably die soon. I didn't care enough to investigate further. I twirled the stick in my hands, to test the balance of it, then resumed my walk, heading back toward my exit hole and my hidden bloon. Not the best of late night entertainment, but not the worst either. The tightness in my chest had eased somewhat, and by the time I got back to my hotel, I was getting drowsy.

I slept a full eight hours after that, and if I dreamed I don't remember of what, or of who, or of when.

Next Chapter

Chapter seven: …with dreams of a much larger, tiny pond.

Previous Chapter

The Andersons lived on the other side of the narrow docking area of Taylorville. As Lewis and I walked along the corridor past where our bloon was docked, we considered the town.

"Snap judgments are odious," Lewis said.

"Agreed."

"Still, this place is a lot less pleasant than I would have thought," he continued.

"Agreed on that as well," I said, thinking of the way that Betty Laird was "welcomed" back with a job of drudgery being her only option.

"Why is that, do you suppose?" he asked.

I shrugged. "Ever read any Twain?" He nodded.

"Well," I continued, "Twain has an essay somewhere about the South, and how utterly ruined it was by trying to mimic a book. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. Chivalry. All the Southern ladies wanted to be British aristocrats, and all the gentlemen wanted to be knights errant. But not just any aristocrats. Fictional aristocrats."

"Life mimics art?" Lewis asked.

"And badly," I said.

"So what do you think these people are mimicking?" he asked me.

I shrugged again. "Some movie, some play, some image of small town life and town meetings. How many times have you seen It's a Wonderful Life?"

"That ancient Christmas monstrosity? I prefer A Christmas Carol, especially the one where Scrooge winds up in the asylum for hearing voices."

"Revisionist," I told him. "These people like their fantasies more pure."

"Ugh," Lewis said.

___________________________

The Andersons lived in the big house on the hill, or the bloon equivalent thereof. Most of the upper level of Taylorville was for farming, but the Andersons had set themselves into a set of bloons that rose higher than even the farming layer. Someone had believed in panoramic views, and possibly the notion of looking down on other people.

And servants who answered the door. And not just any door, but a door that swung open rather than unzipped, a door surrounded by ornamentation that could only be called a 'facade.'

I'm used to the idea of servants; Marjori Low has several of them, all of whom she jokingly calls 'James' though none of them are named that. But Marjori treats them as valued employees and views their services as conveniences, not something that are hers by divine right. And she will answer the door herself if she is nearby.

She does not have her servants dress up in silly costumes like a period piece and them them affect silly accents. The Anderson's butler talked like he'd been forced to learn stage British as a second language.

The man who answered the door looked like someone who takes his daily dose of humiliation as a tonic before breakfast. His face was impassive, with the look of stone that had been slowly etched by dripping water, or something perhaps more vitriolic. Stiffly erect, his posture still managed to convey the look of someone carrying a heavy load. My first feeling was one of sympathy, but I let that die. Worrying about the servant problem in Taylorville was not part of my job description.

"What may I do for you, sirs?" the poor fellow asked, and Lewis and I struggled to keep a straight face.

"We are here to see William Anderson," I answered. "We attempted to call earlier, but no one answered, so we left a message."

From behind him came a woman's voice, also rich with affectation. "Let them in, Morris," the voice said. "This must be those policemen from the City."

"Yes, Madame," poor Morris said, and complied, leading us into a room just off the entrance hallway. Maybe it was the "sitting room." Certainly Mrs. Anderson had been sitting in it, but she rose to greet us.

Mrs. Anderson might have been attractive once, but I couldn't see it now. She was thin and gray with a mouth that looked like she'd just bit into something unexpected, in circumstances where she couldn't just spit it out. It isn't often that I take such an immediate dislike to someone, but Mrs. Anderson was an unusual person. If she employed poor Morris, that was reason enough to form an early opinion perhaps; there was also the matter of the furniture.

The Anderson domicile was loaded with bric-a-brac of the most tasteless sort, inflatable furniture designed and decorated to look, more or less, but mostly less, like the Earth-style furniture that we see in all the old movies and holovids. There was no particular unity to the decorating scheme, ersatz wooden tables were set next to overstuffed chairs, synthetic fur rugs used as wall hangings; a replica Tiffany lamp stood on a faux formica table. My first wild thought was that the people of Taylorville had made a mistake in not letting more drugs into town.

But I recovered. Not as quickly as Lewis, however, who said almost immediately, "Mrs. Anderson, I would imagine?"

His voice had picked up a sudden flavor of refinement, not an accent really, just a certain firmness of phrasing. Lewis can be quite a chameleon.

Lewis introduced us, and shook Mrs. Anderson's hand very briefly. She wore white gloves, I noticed, but even with that protection, she refrained from offering her hand to me. I suppressed the urge to scratch myself indecently to see how she would react.

"Mr. Honlin and I are consulting to Sky City investigators to find possible heirs to Miss Molly Laird," Lewis told her. "She died recently, leaving a modest estate, and the law insists upon trying to find someone to inherit."

I saw Mrs. Anderson perk up briefly at the mention of "inheritance." Do they get that way from being rich, or do they get rich from being that way? No, that is being unfair to other, richer, people. This woman was a small fish in a tiny pond, with dreams of a much larger, tiny pond.

"My son, William, was very briefly involved with the girl, Mr. Lewis," she replied after some consideration. "I doubt that it qualifies as a legal connection. Besides, I do not think that any money that Miss Laird possessed could tempt anyone in the Anderson family."

"Agreed," Lewis told her. "However, we were primarily inquiring about any other family connections that Miss Laird might have had. Perhaps William might know of …"

"William isn't here right now," she snapped. She was lying from the slight reaction of Morris the butler, who had retreated to the entrance hallway again, but it was not worth pursuing. "Once he got over his infatuation, William wished to have nothing to do with the girl. He found her presence to be an embarrassment, as did I. I'm sorry that Miss Laird is dead, but I am not sorry that she is gone, if you can understand the distinction."

Lewis and I both nodded, mainly because we wanted out of there.

"Well," I said to Lewis, trying to look like I was his assistant or some other properly subservient person, "It's getting late, so we should maybe have dinner, spend the night in our bloon, then head back to the City in the morning." I looked at Mrs. Anderson and spoke to her. "We'll be in docking bay six until morning, so if William can think of anything when he comes in, please have him contact us."

Then we let Morris lead us to the door.

_____________________________

"What a repulsive woman," said Lewis when we were far enough away from the Anderson abode.

"No argument from me," I told him. "That was worse than I expected, and I expected it to be unpleasant."

"So now what?" he asked me.

"Well, first, I have to make a call to Calvin Lee," I told him. "Then, like I told Mrs. Anderson, we're going to have dinner and go back to our bloon for the night. I expect that William Anderson will visit us there tonight. Then we'll go home."

"How sure are you about little Willy?" Lewis asked me.

"Reasonably sure," I told him. "He was probably listening in during our visit, but even if he didn't, Morris will tell him."

"Yeah," Lewis said. "Didn't look like Morris liked Mrs. A. very much, did it?"

"I just think she'd better not have him cook for her," I told him. "Food taster would be much safer."

We were at the docking area by this time, and there were several public comm units there. Lewis sat down to watch the haggling, while I placed a call to Calvin.

"Hello, Ed," came Calvin's voice after the briefest connection delay. "What's up?"

"I need you to run a few numbers for me," I told him. "Molly made a couple of calls to a woman named Josie Bush," I gave him Bush's number and the approximate dates of the calls.

"So you want a backtrack?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Give me all the calls placed in the past year, but subtract out any that came in more than, oh, make it five times. With point of origin listings. Also get me the numbers for the Anderson family in this cluster. If you could cross check calls to the Bush number to the Anderson number, that would help."

"Easy enough," he told me. "Priority?"

"Not very," I said. "A few days. Tomorrow. Whatever."

"I'll get on it," he said, and hung up.

I turned to Lewis. "Okay," I told him. "Let's go get something to eat."


______________________________

"Something to eat" turned out to be a small cafeteria that catered to the bloon fishermen. You'd think that people would want something different when they came to town, but most of the fare was standard stuff that can be made in any bloon: textured soy, bloon starch, and the mildly flavored drink that some call "bloon piss."

But they also had chicken, bread, and real vegetables. We were in a farming cluster, so Lewis and I made the most of it. There was even a low alcohol near-beer, and we bought an extra couple of bulbs for taking with us.

Back at the dock, Lewis excused himself briefly and went over to talk to Anne, who was still on duty. I heard her giggle again, and he shook her hand in a most charming way. When he came back, I asked, "She's a little young, don't you think?"

"You have a dirty mind, pardner. It's one of your few virtues. Actually, I just slipped her a few coins and told her to pretend that she doesn't see anybody coming out to our bloon tonight. If little Billy is as scared of mommy as the butler was, I think he might be a little skittish."

"Good idea," I told him.

Back in our bloon, we listened to some news and drank our beer, letting the day close down. The sun was nearly overhead, and most of the cluster would be staying up late, for work, or whatever else needed doing by the light.

"Still think he'll show?" Lewis asked me.

"Yeah," I told him. "But if he doesn't, that will tell us something, too."

"Like what?" he asked me. But I didn't have to answer, because then someone buzzed our comm from the external button.

I opened the flap.

William Anderson was a young man in his early twenties with the look of a golden boy about him, moderately tall, blond, with an unlined face that spoke of decisions deferred and easy choices. He was almost shy as he entered our bloon, but I expect that he lost the shyness when around his friends and cronies. He lost some of it once inside, away from prying eyes.

"Mr. Lewis?" he asked. "Mr. Honlin?" He looked from Lewis to me and back again.

"I'm Lewis," Lewis told him. "It's not really a last name; I've only got the one. This here is Ed Honlin. He's the boss, no matter what you might have heard."

Anderson looked over at me, trying to size me up, which may have been a mistake, since the longer he looked, the less like a good idea this might have seemed. Still, he found his voice quickly enough.

"I understand that you're looking for word about Molly," he said. His voice had a tight quality to it.

I nodded. "You know she's dead, I assume."

He swallowed and nodded. "I'm really sorry about that," he said.

"I expect," I said neutrally. "I only met her once, but she seemed like a fine person. Why did you break up with her?"

He looked around, as if the walls might have ears. Then he looked back at me and said, "You've met my mother." It was halfway between a question and a statement.

I nodded. "Yes, but I haven't done any digging into your family history. Frankly, I'm not much interested in it, except where it has to do with Molly. We're from a long way off, and Taylorville is not a stop on my regular itinerary. Whatever you tell me goes no further than here."

That seemed to lift some of his burden, because he relaxed a bit. "My mother has the money in the family, and she never lets anyone forget it. My dad left ten years ago; when she talks about it, she says it was to run off with some floozy, but everybody knows that he just got sick of her."

He looked over at Lewis, hoping for an extra helping of sympathy, perhaps. "She's not really a bad person, you know? She just thinks that because her money and her standing in the community is the most important thing in her life, that it should be the most important thing in everybody else's life, too. I've tried standing up to her, but, well…" His voice trailed off.

"And one of those times was over Molly," Lewis supplied.

Anderson gave a sick smile. "Yeah," he said. "I really screwed that up. I did love her. A lot. But when Mom started in on me, well, most people think I just caved in. Molly probably did, too. But it wasn't like that. It's just that I started thinking about how much of what I felt for Molly was because she wasn't my mother, if that makes any sense. It didn't seem fair to Molly, to be using her to get back at Mom."

That was as good a rationalization as I'd heard in a long time, the more so because it was probably true. I said, "So did you try to tell Molly that?"

"Yeah," he said dully. "But I don't think I said it very well. She got pretty chilly. Then Mom gave her money to go away."

He looked over at me with his eyes almost to the point of tearing. "Molly told me that I could come away with her if I wanted, that there was enough money to get us to the City, or at least one of the clusters down Under, or out on the Rim. I almost went with her."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because I didn't want to take charity," he said. "I know that sounds strange, but there it is. And it would have been charity, too."

"Why is that?" Lewis asked.

"Because Molly didn't love me any more. I lost her sometime during the arguments with Mom. You know the way that you'll make excuses for those you love? I just felt it when she stopped making excuses for me. When she stopped loving me."

That left us silent. I don't really have much of a comeback when someone just suddenly dumps his guts onto your floor. I looked over at Lewis and found him looking back at me.

"There's another thing, too," William said.

"Yes?" I asked.

"I . . ." he hesitated. "From some things she said when we said goodbye, just before she left. From the way she said some things. Nothing I could put my finger on, but…" His voice trailed off again, but I let the silence grow. Some times you have to let them start up again on their own.

After a few more seconds, he said in a small voice, "I think she may have been pregnant," he said. "I'd have been the father, but I couldn't ask her about it; I didn't feel like I had the right. But she might have been pregnant."

Chapter six: He looked like he had money but it wasn't doing him much good.

Previous Chapter

Inside the Taylorville reception area there was a small clot of bloon fishers, haggling with a buyer over the price of bloon parts. Taylorville had a sign-in protocol for visitors, and we complied. The fellow talking to the fishermen waved us through.

"Down this corridor, then right," Anne told us. "That takes you to Andrew's office. He's the Mayor. Like I said, he's expecting you."

We thanked Anne and made our way toward the Mayor's office. Every bloon cluster has its own physical rhythm, the swing and sway as it adjusts to minor changes in the wind and air. Most of the time you don't notice it; it's all part of the atmosphere, like the smells and sounds. Taylorville felt a little funny to me, at least in its centerpiece, probably because I wasn't used to clusters of that particular size and shape. It made me uneasy.

"They seem to be friendly folks," Lewis said, and I agreed with him. They did seem friendly.

Andrew Ogren was the Mayor of Taylorville. I put him at 170 centimeters and maybe 85 kilograms, a beefy man beginning to go to fat. Square-jawed, red hair, florid complexion, he talked and acted like a man who paid attention to getting elected. Most clusters of any duration are bound together well enough so that election politics gets subsumed in the sort of back room dealing that gives a less voluble appearance. Mr. Ogren was quick to tell us the town's history.

"We're a democracy, Mr. Honlin, Mr. Lewis. Founded on the principles of Athenian democracy. I'm the elected Mayor, but big decisions go down by way of town meeting. Sometimes it can be tough to get a consensus, but that's my job."

Ogren spoke in a voice that always seemed about one note away from turning into a speech. It's not a style that I'm comfortable with, but I can fake polite attention as well as I can fake anything. I was a real cop for a long time.

"About thirty years ago, we had us a real squabble," Ogren continued. "I was just a kid, but it bruised feelings in a way that took years to heal. I never was too clear on how or why it happened, but there was an election that some folks didn't like, and a section of the town voted to secede. It might have had something to do with Walt Taylor losing the election; the Taylors founded the town, and Walt was the last remaining Taylor, so I guess he figured that he should be Mayor until he decided to retire, which other folks felt was taking 'way to long. So Walt and his supporters just up and moved out. They didn't go far, you understand. A trading community depends on being in pretty much the same place from day to day, so the fishermen can find you again. And they didn't want to go too far away from Sky City, since that's where we sell most of our stuff.

"So Walt set up shop maybe a kilometer away from the main Taylorville cluster. For a little while, him and those who joined him tried to call themselves 'Taylorville' but we wouldn't let them get away with it. It was kind of funny, I guess, like two brothers in a snit who won't talk to each other except to pass messages back and forth. Anyway, that went on for a few years, then Walt got sick and died. Naturally everybody was too proud to just call the whole thing off and reunite, so what happened was that a tether line was stretched between the two clusters so we could share power and such like. And it turned out that the central line made a good docking hitch, so it got reinforced, and a walkway was built. Good thing, too, because after the first megastorm hit the pole, the bloons grew like crazy for a while, from all the new dust that was stirred up, and the fisher traffic really picked up."

Maybe I was beginning to look impatient, or maybe Ogren just knew when to wind up a speech. In any event, he shook his head and leaned forward. "So what can I help you boys with?" he asked.

I tried to smile at him. "We called earlier about Molly Laird, I believe," I said to him.

He nodded. "Yes, we only got word of her a few days ago. A tragic case."

"Does she have any family who still live here in Taylorville?" I asked.

"No," he said. "Her mother, that would be Elizabeth Laird, she died about a year ago. Both of Betty's parents, Molly's grandparents are long dead. Betty left home many years ago after they died, in fact. She was a wild one. Went off and had Lord knows what kind of adventures, then came back with a ten year old daughter in tow. They were welcome, of course, but Betty always kept quiet about what she'd done while she was away. She never said who the father was, for instance."

"How did Elizabeth's parents die?"

"I'm not sure on the details," Ogren replied. "I'm good at remembering people, but that was quite a while ago. I think her father died from a bad heart, and her mother died pretty soon thereafter. Just sort of wasted away, as I recall. Lost the will to live, whatever. Might have even taken to drugs or drink. We had a few problems with Betty that way, over the years."

"How so?" I asked.

"We don't care much for drugs or drunkenness here in Taylorville, Mr. Honlin," Ogren said. "That's been made pretty clear by a lot of voters over the years. We're not completely dry, but we'll confiscate and destroy some drugs, and public intoxication earns you a spell in detention."

I nodded. "I see," I told him. I pulled out a photograph of Robert Grayling. "Have you ever seen this man?" I asked.

Ogren made a show of studying the photo, but it was obvious that he'd seen Grayling before. "Yes, I believe I have," he said. "Don't recall his name, though. He might have visited Betty a few times."

I let the matter drop. I'd get more out of friends and associates. "Who can I ask for information about Betty and Molly? Employers, close friends, that sort of thing?"

"Well, Betty worked for Josie Bush, who runs our cleaning services. You'd best start with her. As for Molly, the real people to check with are the Andersons. Molly was engaged to Billy Anderson, but they broke it off just before Molly left. Molly's mother died right around that time, too. I imagine it was all pretty stressful and confusing for such a young woman."

"As opposed to the calm and collected way that we older people accept death and heartbreak?" I asked.

"Hmm," Ogren said. "You may have a point." He sighed. "I'm just upset at Molly's death, Mr. Honlin," he said. "These are my people and I care for them. 'Every man's death diminishes me,' okay, sure, but when my people die, I'm diminished a whole lot more."

I smiled, and it felt real this time. "I know, Mr. Ogren," I said. "I apologize for giving you a hard time. If your secretary could give us directions to..." I looked at Lewis, who was taking notes.

"Josie Bush and the Anderson family," Lewis said.

"Right," I said. "If you or your secretary could give us directions, I'd appreciate it."

"No problem," Ogren said. "If you need anything else, my door is open."

I smiled again. "Thanks," I told him. "That's a big help."

_____________________________


Josie Bush was a small woman who was in her fifties, at least, maybe older, and had the stern face of a school librarian. Her hair was gray, but she must have used a rinse to give in a reddish tinge that came out mildly pink. I expect that there was no one around her who dared tell her that she'd look better in her natural color. The same was probably true of her use of makeup, where she was just on the wrong side of overdoing it.

She had an office quite near to Ogren's, and it had only taken us a couple of minutes to walk over there, but we had to wait a while longer while she finished meeting with one of her employees. After we were ushered into her office, I briefly explained the purpose of our visit.

"I don't think you'll get much from the people here, Mr. Honlin," she told me. "We're mostly a small town, close-knit and close-mouthed. Betty Laird didn't endear herself to the community by running away after her parents died, and she was barely readmitted when she showed up again with a child in tow. A child of unknown parentage, I might add. That didn't sit too well with the folks here."

Her face softened a little. "I liked Betty, though" she said. "She'd gotten out of it, at least for a while, and she never seemed to regret it."

"Do you know where she was during her time away, or what she was doing?" I asked.

"I daresay that she was a prostitute," Josie said. "At least those were the accusations that were made at the meeting to decide whether or not to readmit her, and she never denied them. In the end, it all came down to whether or not we could find a job for her here. I was the only one who offered to take her on, so she came to work for me."

"Very open minded," I said.

She snorted in disgust. "Don't patronize me," she snapped. "I get no points for being a little less close minded than the folks around here. I run the cleaning service, the lowest jobs in town. I'm always short handed. I needed the help, and Betty turned out to be a good worker. Molly, too, for that matter. I just wish she hadn't gotten involved with William Anderson."

"That's Billy Anderson, the boy that she was engaged to?" I asked.

"Hah!" she said. "Engaged? Maybe for a day or two, before his mother found out. An Anderson marrying a cleaning woman? Little Billy must have been feeling pretty rebellious that day. Or maybe he just wanted to get in her pants.

"Molly was a quiet girl, not much like her mother at all," Josie said. "When her mother died she probably slipped her tracks for a little while, and got involved with Billy. He told her the usual lies, and she believed them. Then, when she learned the truth, the whole thing fell apart. The 'engagement' was called off, and the whole thing collapsed into whispers and innuendo. Molly stuck it out for a couple of weeks, then she left."

"Any idea of where she went?" I asked.

"Not really," she said. "Somewhere near the City, I think. She only called a couple of times after she left, just to let me know she was okay."

Josie looked at me and said, "I'm a hard woman, Mr. Honlin, with little in the way of maternal instincts, as nearly as I can tell. But I liked Molly, and I'm very sorry that she is dead. It pleased me when Molly called to let me know that she was all right, and it pains me to think of her dead from some ruffian's knife. I haven't cried for years, but if I were to take it up again, I'd cry for Molly."

"I see," I told her. "I understand how you feel, I think. I only met her once, but I can see how she might have had that effect."

I thought for a moment. "Can you narrow the times when she called down to any specific dates?" I asked.

She thought for a moment. "Only that she called about three weeks after she'd left here, so that would put it at last December. Then she called maybe a month ago, to ask if anyone had been looking for her. No one had, and I thought it an odd question."

"Thanks," I told her. "That's a big help." I showed her Grayling's photograph. "Have you ever seen this man?" I asked.

She examined it. "Graybob," she said. "That's what Betty called him. He visited a few times. He wouldn't sign in, though, so he stayed out on his bloon and Betty and Molly visited him. He was traveling alone, I think, but I never went to his bloon; I only saw him once. He looked like he had money but it wasn't doing him much good."

I nodded. A perceptive woman was Josie Bush. Then Lewis and I said the requisite pleasantries and we left.

Next Chapter

Chapter five: The Atheist in Church

Previous Chapter

Lewis is a dice man, a Stochastacist, an Everite. The Everites believe that our world is one of an infinite number of universes, which are constantly branching away from ours in a flux of quantum events and alternate realities. The implications of this can be mind numbing, but the Everites take it to mean that people can create universes, or at least control the nature of the universes that are created by human action. They do this by rolling dice or using other random activities to guide their choices. I'm not sure of the exact reasoning behind it.

On the other hand, Lewis says that the whole thing might be just a front for running gambling operations. The Everites do own a few dozen floating (literally) casinos.

But that's Lewis. He was born and raised a Stochastacist, and he's had some of the same doubts of faith that other religions are prey to. In fact, he was in one of those periods of doubt when I met him. He'd put the whole thing on the line by following a series of dice rolls that told him to leave his old life, and head for Sky City, float or founder, or whatever. And on his way to the City, I'd dropped in on him, owing to a series of events that I'm still not clear on. I'd wound up in a bloon that was falling due to some sabotage, and I'd managed to use one of the steering bodies to glide over to Lewis' drag line. So Lewis' dice mission probably saved my life. It was all so unlikely that it also reaffirmed his faith, and since that time, I've been his personal totem. He's often said that he'll join me in just about anything I ask him to do, without a dice roll before the fact, because there's nothing that the dice can tell him that's more of a chance than following me.

I still haven't figured Lewis out, actually.

But he said yes to my offer of a short vacation, so the next sunrise found us boarding a sail bloon and pushing off from the hotel cluster. Sunrise is about the brightest that it gets in Darkunder; some direct light edges under the City for a couple of hours in the mornings and at sunset. It's a good time for departures, because there aren't that many bloons up and running then. We made our way to the City's northwestern edge under a combination of power and drag line, then cut our fans and settled in for the slow sail to the cluster where Molly and her mother had lived.

After the first hour of setting our wind panels, lifting trefoil and drag line, there wasn't much to do until we reached our destination. The tack was an easy one, giving us a straightedge to where we wanted to go. So mid-morning by the clock found us with our chores completed. Lewis put on some music from one of the public channels, and I leaned back against one of the pod chairs in the bloon and closed my eyes for a rest.

"How'd you sleep last night, pardner?" Lewis asked me.

"I didn't sleep very much," I admitted. "I was checking some things, packing, you know."

"Nightmares again, huh?" Lewis is so guileless that he can get away with things like that.

"Some," I said. "Pretty bad ones, as a matter of fact."

"Think it has anything to do with the dead girl? Molly?"

"Probably," I said. "I don't know why this one should get to me, though. It's not like I haven't seen plenty of stiffs before. Maybe it's just a coincidence."

"Seen many stiffs lately?" he asked. "I thought you were the quiet type."

"Those are the dangerous ones," I joked. "He always seemed so quiet. How were we to know that he'd go berserk with a plasma drill?"

"Plasma drill?"

"Miners tool," I answered. "Very dangerous. We had to investigate an accident involving one a few years after I joined the Luna City Police Force. Out away from the city in one of the meteor mines. There was some thought that one of the miners had gone psycho. Turned out to be just an accident, though. Not that the twenty guys it cooked were any the less dead."

For some reason, I'll tell Lewis things that I won't tell other people. That was the first time I'd thought about the plasma drill incident in years. When Lewis saved my life, maybe he became my father confessor or something. That would be only fair, given my religious importance to him. Of course, that would imply that I was in need of confession. And absolution.

Lewis hummed along with the Vivaldi for a while, not following up on his questions. He always seems to know when to stop.

"Tell me something," I asked him at last. It occurred to me that my ongoing lack of sleep had produced something very much like intoxication. "Have I looked particularly threatening the past few days? Even more than usual, I mean." I smiled to show that I understood that I'm not Mr. Warm and Fuzzy even at my most mellow.

"Well, you can be a pretty scary guy just ordering a sandwich," he said. "But now that you mention it, I'd have to say that it's been pretty obvious that something has been eating you, and whatever it is, it's got pretty sharp teeth."

"Sensei Mack talked said that I was holding a wild animal that was about ready to slip the leash." I told Lewis of Mack's request.

"That sounds like a case of 'atheist in church,'" Lewis said when I was finished.

"Atheist in church?" I asked. "More wise sayings from the Founder?" Lewis was not above quoting from the writings of the Founder of Stochasticism, who is never referred to by name, mainly because he gave so many names, all of them false. Quite a Trickster was the Founder.

"The very same," Lewis said. "The Founder had a lot of things to say about religion and what place it has in society. 'The Atheist in Church' is one of his best essays. He says, look, there are a whole slew of reasons for having churches. They're a form of social organization, you meet people, get moral instruction helpful for living in society. They can be a store of wealth, a means of education, all that stuff. So even an atheist might wish to join a church, regardless of what his opinion of the theology might be.

"But an atheist makes the theists nervous. He can abide by all the same rules, profess the same moral code, and still the regular churchmen don't like his presence. He's not committed to the group, you see. He doesn't say the password. A secret password can't be something that you can figure out by just being reasonable, it has to be something arbitrary. So religions make their believers do things that just don't make sense. That's what really defines the group, the things they do that don't make sense."

"So what does that have to do with me?" I asked him.

"It's a matter of freedom," he said. "We like to think that freedom is a good thing, but joining society means giving up some freedoms. And society doesn't want it to be a conditional thing. It's not supposed to be a matter of choice. We much prefer to have people who can't rather than won't transgress. Which is the better husband, the man who couldn't beat his wife no matter how he feels, or the man who simply refrains?"

I opened my eyes to see how closely he was watching me when he said that. But he was staring out a view panel at the clouds. "I thought that the whole point of it was moral choices," I said. "You talk as if not having a choice is better."

"'Lead us not into temptation,'" he quoted. "Because we might succumb." He looked over at me and grinned. In my current exhausted state it looked a little like a grimace.

"There are a lot of things in life that we don't know about until they happen to us. It's a lot of potential rather than actual freedom. And the potential may be bogus. We might not be able to do it when push comes to shove. That's part of what dice living is about. To test the limits. But if you do it from the dice, the gods might not get so angry at the freedom. That's a clear thread in most mythology. The gods get very angry when confronted by a free man."

"So do you think that it's just the gods being angry with me?" I asked. I smiled again to show that I thought it was a joke.

His face got a bit more serious though. "That's all metaphor," he said. "'A man's reach must exceed his grasp, else what's a meta for?' The gods are stand-ins for human fate in human society. Stick your head up too far and the body politic will try to shear it off. You make people nervous, pardner. They don't know what motivates you. They don't know what you're capable of, but they're pretty sure you're capable of more than they want to know. If there's the choice of having dinner with someone who hated me and wished me dead -- but couldn't do me harm no matter what -- versus someone who liked me, but could kill me without a thought if he so chose, well, most people would go for the first guy, not the second."

I sat up and looked at him carefully, but he was back to watching the cloud patterns. I looked out at them, but I knew that he saw things in them that I'd never see. And vice versa.

"What about you?" I asked. "You said 'most people,' but you don't say about yourself."

He looked at me and grinned. "Oh, I'd probably go with the first guy also; at least I'd load the dice that way." He paused for a moment. That's the secret of the punchline: timing.

"Present company excepted, of course," he said.



_______________________________

Sometime on the trip, and much to my surprise, I drifted off into a blessed, dreamless sleep. Hours later, Lewis woke me by turning up the volume on the music and switching it on and off. I expect he didn't want to be too close to me when I awoke.

"Hey, pardner," he called to me as I was blinking my eyes to clear them of sleep. "We're getting near to where we're going. Would you care to tell me about this place, or should I look upon the whole thing as a learning experience?"

"Uh, sure," I said as I sat up. Usually I come awake quickly, in full awareness of my surroundings. I wondered if I was coming down with a cold or something.

I pulled up the screen on my rented comm unit and refreshed my memory of what I'd gleaned from the main cluster database in the City.

"It's a light craft and trading cluster, named Taylorville for the founding family." I said. "It took up a position relative to Sky City about fifty years ago. Main export is treated and sewn bloonskin -- and water, of course. Hit a bit of a snag when the water price dropped after Luna captured Comet Alpha, but recovered well enough since then. Population is about fifteen hundred, so it's a sizable cluster. Grows most of its own food. That's all we have in the database, unless I go into the archives."

"So why are we going there?" he asked me. "From what you say, this Molly Laird girl, she left there almost a year ago."

"Yeah, but she was raised there, and her mother was born there. So her people may be here. If she has relatives, they're probably here. Or someone may know where she went. I wanted to get a feel for her background."

He nodded. "Okay, old son," he said. "We'll find out who she was. Seems only fair, actually."

"Yeah," I repeated. "Only fair."

________________________________

Taylorville was a big cluster, with several layers. The top layer was farm, of course, but enough light seeps through a single bloon layer to keep the second layer viable. So the second layer of Taylorville was for living and working space. The cluster was oddly shaped, more like a flattened dumbbell than circular. I wondered why it looked like it did. The middle area that connected the two roundish outer clusters was where we docked.

There were a lot of docking bays. Taylorville did a lot of trading with bloon fishermen, as all farm and craft clusters must, so they had plenty of room for a bloon to park. Lewis was pilot as we made our approach, and he slicked it in so smoothly that we didn't have to use fans, not even at the last moment when we touched the dock grabbers. The velk grabbed our nose and we tossed our line, which was picked up by a dock attendant and wrapped around an anchor hitch.

"Yo!" Lewis called out to the attendant. "We're at Taylorville, right?"

"You bet!" came the reply, somewhat muffled through the bubble mask our greeter wore. I saw that it was a teenaged girl, small and dark, with the sort of energy that brims out of a body at that age. "You traders?"

"Naw," said Lewis. "We're from Sky City. We've got some talk business with your head guy."

"That'd be Andrew," she said as she handed us the counterweights to balance our bloon when we stepped off. "He told us to expect you. You made good time."

"Hey, any time's good when there's a pretty girl at the end of it," Lewis said. The girl giggled in response.

"I'm Anne," she said. She shook Lewis' hand then helped him step down onto the dock.

"This here is Ed," Lewis told her as I followed him down. Anne took my hand in greeting. "Don't let his looks fool you," Lewis told her. "Stands to reason that nobody can be both that mean and that ugly." Anne giggled again.

"I'm pleased to meet you, Anne," I told her.

"Howdy, Ed," she replied. "Lewis tells me good things about you."

"Lewis is a liar," I told her. And she giggled yet again.