Hidden Variables (6 page)

"But it's too late for you, Len." Garry's expression was serious again. "It may be clean now, but it wasn't clean when you started. I know that. We'll be up there, and you'll be in some damned jail down here."

Len Martello leaned back in his chair. He looked tired, ten years older than his forty years, but his eyes were still bright. "I deserve to go to jail, Garry. I can't deny it." He raised his hand to still the other's protest. "Sure, I went into the game with good intentions. But I found out one thing very quickly. You can't work up to your elbows in dirt and expect your hands to stay clean. Not just the tax evasion. I had to get into the drug sales, and the enforcement, and the strong-arm tactics. I wouldn't have lasted a month otherwise. But good ends don't justify means."

He shrugged his thin shoulders, watching the shock spread across Garry Scanlon's face. "I deserve to go to jail, there's no argument on that."

"Maybe." Garry's face was a mixture of emotions. "Maybe you do. I won't judge that. But I know this, Len, if anybody ought to go on the lunar trip, it's not me—it's you." His voice was earnest. "You touched dirt, sure you did. Lots of people back in Washington will be happy to crucify you for it. But I just want to say that I'm sorry about it all. If I could give you my place on a trip up to the Lunar Base, I'd do it—gladly."

"Thanks, Garry." Len's voice was so soft that he was only just audible. "I know how much that means to you. Don't think I don't appreciate it, and the fact that you came here to warn me the way you did.

"But you know"—he grinned, and suddenly there was a trace of the youth of twenty years earlier in his smile—"you don't need to give up anything for me. They'll come and get me in a week, right? Know where I'll be then?" He jerked a thumb upward, toward the unseen orb of the Moon. "If they want me, they'll have to come and get me. I'm betting that I can keep a move ahead of the posse, all the way out. We'll have full mobility over the lunar surface in another four years. You'll have to develop that if you want to catch me. How long will that take?"

He raised his glass. "Come on, drink up and we'll get you out of here before you miss that last shuttle. Know what I feel like? In the old days they'd hang a carrot out in front of a donkey to keep it moving along. That's me. As long as I'm out there, you don't need to worry about the health of the space program—they'll have to keep going and catch me."

"You're right." Garry smiled and picked up his glass. "National pride would never be satisfied to leave you out there. We'll be chasing you."

"A toast then." Len shrugged. "It's not the one we've always wanted, I know, but there's still time for that. It's a few years yet to 1999. I'm betting we'll still drink that one—and we'll drink it where we've always wanted to. For now, let's just drink to the Space Program."

"No." Hesitantly at first, then with increasing resolve, Garry raised his own glass. "This time
I'm
going to propose the toast. The Space Program is fine, but I'll give you something better. Here's to the carrot—and long may it hang out there."

AFTERWORD: THE MAN WHO STOLE THE MOON.

You might think that a writer knows exactly what is in his or her head when a story goes down on paper. I used to think so, but now I'm far less sure of it. Consider this example.

Robert Heinlein's classic "The Man Who Sold The Moon" was obviously much in mind when I wrote this story. No surprise there. I had even gone back and re-read the original just before I began, but so far as I knew I had not played any word games within the story beyond the twist on the title itself.

This story was published. A few months later a reader wrote to tell me that he got a kick out of the way that I had secretly inserted a non-hero figure who was a variation of Heinlein's main character. At that point in his letter I had no idea what he was talking about. I read on.

Look at Henry B. Delso, he said. "Delso" was a very simple anagram of "Delos", and Harry is an informal version of the name Henry. The man Henry B. Delso was therefore none other than Heinlein's
Del(os)
D.
Harri
(man).

I wanted to write back to him and say, no, not at all, I didn't do what you think I did. I never wrote the letter. You see, after I thought for a while longer I realized that I
had
done it. I didn't
know
I'd done it, but that's a different matter entirely.

Some readers may feel that this story is a piece of preaching about the bureaucratic stifling of initiative in our society, and they may assert that I was trying to sugar a warning by wrapping it in fictional form. Some readers would be quite right.

THE DEIMOS PLAGUE

On the highland heights above Chryse City, where the thin, dust-filled winds endlessly scour the salmon-pink vault of the Martian sky, a simple monument faces the setting sun. Forged of plasteel, graven by diamond, it will endure the long change of the Mars seasons, until Man and his kind have become one with the swirling sands. The message it bears is short but poignant, a silent tribute to two great figures of the colonization: IN MEMORIAM, PENELOPE AND POMANDER: MUTE SAVIORS OF OUR WORLD.

Fate is fickle. Although I don't really mind one way or the other, I should be on that monument too. If it hadn't been for me, Penelope and Pomander would never have made it, and the Mars colony might have been wiped out.

My involvement really began back on Earth. A large and powerful group of people thought that I had crossed them in a business deal. They had put in two million credits and come out with nothing, and they wanted the hide of Henry Carver, full or empty. I had to get away—far, and fast.

My run for cover had started in Washington, D.C., after I had been pumped dry of information by a Senate committee investigating my business colleagues. When the questioning was over—despite my pleas for asylum (political, religious, or lunatic; I'd have settled for any)—they turned me out onto the street. With only a handful of credits in my pocket, afraid to go back to my office or apartment, I decided that I had to get to Vandenberg Spaceport, on the West Coast. From there, I hoped, I could somehow catch a ride out.

First priority: I had to change my appearance. My face isn't exactly famous, but it was well known enough to be a real danger. Showing more speed than foresight, I walked straight from the committee hearings into a barbershop. It was the slack time of day, in the middle of the afternoon, and I was pleased to see that I was the only customer. I sat down in the chair farthest from the door, and a short, powerfully built barber with a one-inch forehead eventually put down his racing paper and wandered over to me.

"How'd you like it?" he asked, tucking me in.

I hadn't got that far in my thinking. What would change my appearance to most effect? It didn't seem reasonable to leave it to him and simply ask for a new face.

"All off," I said at last. "All the hair. And the moustache as well," I added as an afterthought.

There was a brief, stunned silence that I felt I had to respond to.

"I'm taking my vows tomorrow. I have to get ready for that."

Now why in hell had I said something so stupid? If I wasn't careful, I'd find myself obliged to describe details of my hypothetical sect. Fortunately, my request had taken the wind out of his sails, at least for the moment. He looked at me in perplexity, shrugged, then picked up the shears and dug in.

Five minutes later, he silently handed me the mirror. From his expression, a shock was on the way—already I was regretting my snap decision. I had a faint hope that I would look stern and strong, like a holovision star playing the part of Genghis Khan. The sort of man that women would be swept off their feet by, and other men would fear and respect. The face that stared back at me from the mirror didn't quite produce that effect. I had never realized before what dark and bushy eyebrows I have. Take those away and the result was like a startled and slightly constipated bullfrog. Even the barber seemed shaken, without the urge to chat that defines the breed.

He recovered his natural sass as he helped me into my coat. "Thank you, sir," he said as I paid and tipped him. "I hope everything works out all right at the convent tomorrow."

I looked at the muscles bulging from his shortsleeved shirt, the thick neck, the wrestling cups lined up along the shelf. His two buddies were cackling away at the other side of the shop.

"I hope you realize that only a real coward would choose to insult a man whom he knows to be bound by vows of nonviolence," I replied.

It took him a few seconds to work it out. Then his eyes popped, and I walked out of the shop with a small sense of victory.

That didn't last very long. I had changed my appearance all right, but for something much too conspicuous. I still had to get to California, and I still had almost no money. As I walked along M Street, turning my face to the side to avoid inspection by passers-by, the shop windows reflected a possible answer. My subconscious had been working well for me in the barber's shop. On a long journey, in a crowded vehicle, where could I usually find an empty seat? Next to a priest—especially one from a more exotic faith. People are afraid they will be trapped into conversion or contribution. The Priests of Asfan, a shaven-headed, mendicant sect who have no possessions and support themselves by begging, were not a large group. Their total number increased to one in the few minutes that it took me to go into a shop and buy a gray shirt, trousers, and smock. Then off I shuffled to the terminal, practicing a pious and downcast look.

Being a beggar-priest isn't too bad. Nobody expects you to pay for anything, and you receive quite amazing confessions and requests for advice and guidance from the people who choose to sit next to you. In some ways I was sorry to reach Vandenberg—for one thing, that was where my pursuers might be looking for me. It wouldn't be unlike them to keep a lookout there, ready to take their pound of flesh.

The brawl and chaos of the big spaceport was reassuring. In that mess of people and machinery it would be difficult for two people to find each other, even if they were both looking hard. I went to the central displays, where the departure dates and destinations of the outgoing ships were listed. The Moon was rather too close for complete security, and the Libration Colonies were just as bad. Mars was what I wanted, but the Earth-Mars orbit positions were very unfavorable and I could see only one ship scheduled: the
Deimos Dancer,
a privately owned cargo ship with a four-man crew. She was sitting in a hundred-minute parking orbit, ready for departure in two days' time. It was a surprise to see a cargo vessel making the passage when the configuration was so bad—it meant a big waste in fuel, and suggested a valuable cargo for which transport costs were no object.

I watched the displays for a while, then picked my man with care from the usual mob you find any day of the week hanging around the shipping boards. Any big port seems to draw the riffraff of the solar system. After ten years of legal practice, I could spot the pickpockets, con men, ticket touts, pimps, pushers, hookers, bagmen, and lollygaggers without even trying. I'd defended more than enough of them in court, back on the East Coast.

The man I chose was little and thin, agile, bright-eyed and big-nosed. A nimmer if ever I saw one. I watched him for a few minutes; then I put my hand on his shoulder at the crucial moment—ten seconds after he had delicately separated a ticket wallet from the pocket of a fat passenger and eeled away into the crowd. He shuddered at my grasp. We came to an agreement in less than two minutes, and he disappeared again while I sat at the entrance to the departure area, watching the bustle, keeping a wary eye open for possible danger from my former colleagues, and holding hostage the wallet and ID tags of my new ally.

He came back at last, shaking his head. "That's absolutely the only one going out to Mars for the next thirty days. The
Deimos Dancer
has a bad reputation. She belongs to Bart Poindexter, and he's a tough man to ship with. The word is out around Vandenberg that this will be a special trip—double pay for danger money, and a light cargo. She'd normally take forty days on the Mars run, and the schedules show her getting there in twenty-three." He looked longingly at his wallet and ID. "Bart Poindexter has his crew together for the trip—he's picked the toughest bunch you'll find at Vandenberg. Just how bad do you need a quick trip out?"

Double pay for danger money. Thirty days before there would be another one. What a choice. "I thought you said he's got his crew already," I replied.

"He has, but he wants an extra man to look after the cargo. No pay, but a free trip—so far he's had no takers. If you have no ticket, and no money to buy one, that might be your best chance. 'Course, there's always ways of getting a ticket." He smiled. "If you know how, I mean. I can see that might not sit easy with you, being religious and all."

Decisiveness is not one of my strong points. I might have been sitting there still, vacillating, but at that moment I fancied I caught sight of a familiar and unwelcome scarred face at the other side of the departure area . . .

I signed on without seeing the ship, the captain, the crew, or the cargo. A quick look at any one of them might have been enough to change my mind. My first glimpse of the
Deimos Dancer
came four hours later, as we floated up to rendezvous with her in parking orbit. She was a Class C freighter, heavy, squat, and blackclad, like an old-fashioned Mexican widow. Someone's botched attempt to add a touch of color by painting the drive nacelles a bright pink hadn't improved matters. She seemed to leer across at us in drunken gaiety as we docked and floated across to the lock. Her inside was no better—ratty fittings and dilapidated quarters—and her spaceworthiness certificate, displayed inside the lock, was a fine tribute to the power of the kickback. This clanging wreck was supposed to take five of us, plus cargo, out to Mars in twenty-three days.

The second blow was Bart Poindexter. Considered as a class, the captains of space freighters are not noted for their wit, charm, and erudition. Poindexter, big and black-bearded, with a pair of fierce blue eyes glaring out of the jungle of hair, did nothing to change the group image. He looked at my shaven head, paler than usual because of spacesickness, and hooted with laughter.