One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy (20 page)

“You know that his eye color is the fourth primary color. You wanted him to show you. You wanted him to take his goggles off…”

“What are you going on about?” Exonarella shouted at the detective, unable to control herself any longer. “What is all this about goggles and eye color?”

He turned his strange, artificial-looking face in her direction. Beads of sweat rolled down his cheeks as he cast a menacing glare at the nervous woman.

“You are very good-looking, but you must really be a pain in the ass to live with,” he growled.

This stirred up the embattled Sedenker, who, despite the abuse he took from his wife, absolutely refused to accept any insults to her from strangers.

“Hey! Who do you think you are, talking to my wife like that? Apologize to her right now!”

The waxy-looking detective shifted one of his eyes to the shouting man from Earth. When he spoke, it was as if the words came from only one side of his mouth. Like half his lips were glued together.

“As I walked to this hotel, I heard your wife shouting from up the block. As I entered the lobby, because of your wife, I thought I was entering a lunatic asylum. As I climbed the stairs to this very room, I was getting an earache just listening to her. She is already, to my mind, a public nuisance. I am a lieutenant in the Sea of Tranquility Police Department. Normally, we arrest public spectacles of high human volume like this.”

“Oh!” screamed Exonarella. “But what about all the thugs and scum and hookers and pimps and scumbags and gangsters just outside this fleabag hotel?”

“Either you let me question your daughter in front of you, or I take her down to the station and question her myself. For your information, she has been exposed to a deadly phenomenon that only happens on the Moon. Earlier this evening, I received a report that there was a boy with lunarcroptic ocular symbolanosis wandering around the amusement park with a girl who appeared to be from Earth. We immediately tried to locate them, but it was too crowded, and because of the massive casino fire earlier this evening, we were very short handed. We were hoping to intervene, to prevent this from happening. If we caught the boy actually doing it, he’d be on his way to the far side of the Moon right now. However, if your daughter is willing to cooperate, we can still locate him, and if we locate him, then we can lock him up.”

Windows Falling On Sparrows suddenly spoke and all heads turned in her direction.

“You are confusing me with someone else. I never met any boy. I was by myself the whole time. I was feeling a little light-headed because of the lightness of the gravity here. I wandered into an alleyway, and I fell down into a pile of greasy car parts. I woke up, I got lost, and then I made it back here. If I appear strange to you, it’s because I am trying to adjust to the gravity. I have never been off the Earth before. The lack of proper gravity here on the Moon is making me feel very ill.”

“I have a statement from the hotel clerk in the lobby. He said that a boy with Schmilliazano-lensed goggles walked with you into the lobby. He was just as filthy looking as you. Others saw the both of you together.”

“Those people are all mistaken. The boy they are thinking of was actually a middle-aged man with glasses. He was a creepy stranger who followed me home. He did not wear goggles. Why are you bothering me about this when you have all those horrifc adults just outside on the street? That man was probably one of them. Maybe he was a client of the many prostitutes who appear to frequent this hotel and the clerk was just thinking up an alibi.”

Detective Schmet realized his fruitless inquisition was going nowhere. But the evidence, in his own mind, was doubtless. He knew.
He knew
when someone had seen that eye color. The effect did not go away easily. She so clearly had the look, but she was not cooperating.

He turned to her parents.

“I believe your daughter is holding back information. Sometimes they do this, people who have been disoriented by fourth primary color exposure. I would wager that she had a lover’s tryst of some sort with this boy and now she is protecting him. It’s a very romantic idea, but she is a fool to think that he is anything but a complete scoundrel. These Lunar boys are like that, you know. They take advantage of girls from Earth. She mistakenly thinks she’s the first girl he ever showed his eyes to, but…” the detective turned and looked at her with the next part of the sentence. “that’s probably what he tells all the Earth girls.”

She stared Lieutenant Schmet directly into his eyes. She kept her face completely still, resolved to ignore whatever stupid little games he played.

Exonarella was petrified into total silence.

“So, Juliet,” smiled Schmet. “Where oh where art thou, Romeo? What is his name? Where does he live? Meet me halfway. Let’s make it into a game. How about a clue. I’ll make you a bet. One clue from you, and I’ll have him in twenty-four hours. That’s how good I am.”

She smiled. Her eyes brightened. Her bottom eyelids came up to meet her top eyelids for a second as she squinted at him.

“You look like a doll, Mister. I’ll bet you are a doll. If you were to slice your head in half, I am sure it would be the same plasticky material through and through.”

Minutes later, Officers Krone and Rondo accompanied the handcuffed Windows Falling On Sparrows down the stairway of the Hotel Venice, through the lobby, and past the clerk and seedy hookers who were gathered. The screams and shouts of Exonarella bellowed out through the entire building and spilled onto the street. The assembled regulars in the lobby heard the violent thumps of furniture crashing and mirrors shattering in her room, followed by a muffled and agonized moaning that obviously belonged to Sedenker. Moments later, Detective Schmet came strutting down the same stairs, a small hand towel covering his fist, a few drops of blood staining the terrycloth fabric. He immediately walked up to the clerk, who was highly distraught to hear the echoing screams of the woman upstairs.

“You,” said Schmet with little fanfare. “Call an ambulance, one with an emergency dentist for the man upstairs married to that unbearable woman. I didn’t hurt him that much, but he will need treatment. The both of them are to remain here in your lovely hotel. I am sending for an officer who will guard their door. They are under house arrest indefinitely.”

“No way!” shouted the clerk, exasperated. “I want that lady out of here! I can’t bear to listen to her Pixiedamned ranting anymore! I’m throwing them out now!”

“You do that and I will have the vice squad here in under four minutes, and you will be held responsible for every prostitute on this street without a health badge, of which I see there are plenty just standing around your family-friendly lobby.”

Moments later, three unusual figures entered the hotel—faceless manikins of shiny metallic silver who walked with an extraordinary grace. Rescue robots. Despite their identical appearance, Lieutenant Schmet recognized one of them.

“Belwin! I am so happy to see you!”

“Lieutenant Schmet,” replied the robot. “It is a pleasure as always to run into you. In fact, I was expecting to see you, as I received a fire rescue request from your own Omni-Tracker signal, but now that we are here, I am a little perplexed, as it is obvious that there is no fire.”

“Indeed, Belwin, you are right that there is no fire. I must have accidently pressed the wrong button when I summoned you away from your local fire unit. I am so foolish sometimes. Oh, silly me.”

“Do not apologize, Lieutenant, these things do happen.”

“Yes, they do, Belwin. But I think you and your two colleagues have not wasted your time. We have another emergency here that is not fire related, but will require the astute talents of rescue robots.”

“We are at your service, Lieutenant.”

“Wonderful. Now, upstairs, there is a couple from Earth. A wounded man with a bloody mouth and a hysterical woman…”

“We heard her from up the street,” Belwin said.

“Indeed. She is having a temper tantrum and her poor husband fell over some furniture. They are under house arrest. They are not to leave that room. I would like your two fellow robots here to attend to them, to administer first aid to the man, and to apply a sedative to the shrew he refers to as his wife. An ambulance will be here soon to treat the husband—he really injured himself, poor clumsy one. Under no circumstances are the medics authorized to transport these people anywhere. They are to remain here under house arrest as necessary witnesses for the Ocular Investigative Division until I order otherwise. Your robot colleagues are instructed to remain here and guard them.”

“Understood, Lieutenant, but you do understand that this is outside our jurisdiction of duty.”

“Belwin, you can check with Captain McChang over at Lunar Fire Command. He owes me some favors. He won’t mind.”

“Then we are at your service.”

“Thank you. Now, Belwin, I have a question for you—just you.”

“Certainly.”

“How skilled are you as a pilot?”

Windows Falling On Sparrows could not imagine what the ugly detective was up to. She watched him exit the hotel with that incredibly beautiful robot who had no face and walked like a dancer. They were taking her somewhere. Could this be the beginning of what Hieronymus had told her? Was it happening now? The event she could not imagine?

She rode in a separate police cruiser from Lieutenant Schmet and his amazing robot. She sat alone in the back while Rondo and Krone sat up front. They both refused to answer her questions as they followed Schmet’s cruiser. Both vehicles had their blue police lights flashing. Their sirens were quiet, save for the occasional
whup whup whup
as they navigated through the heavy traffic around LEM Zone One.

Within minutes, the pair of police vehicles entered a small paved field which was obviously a police facility. In the middle of the field was a ship, a sturgeon-shaped craft which, in appearance, was not unlike a mega cruiser, except that it was infinitely smaller. A spaceship. Large enough to hold about ten passengers.

Rondo and Krone ordered her out of the car, removed her handcuffs, and accompanied her to the waiting ship, a small Flyaround 790. Then, out of nowhere, Lieutenant Schmet appeared, walking side-by-side right next to her.

“Hello, girl,” he said, not even glancing in her direction but focusing on the spaceship in front of them. He shouted out loud enough for the officers to hear.

“Thank you, Krone, Rondo. Belwin and I will take over from here.”

Windows Falling On Sparrows could see the silvery form of Belwin taking his place behind the cockpit windows.

“Lovely ship, isn’t she?” Schmet said with a smile.

“Where are you taking me?” demanded Windows Falling On Sparrows.

“Where do you think?”

She drifted for a moment as Hieronymus’ words came back:

You won’t even be on the Moon by that time. You will be on a Mega Cruiser going back to Earth.

“You’re taking me to Earth, aren’t you…”

“What makes you say that, Earth girl?”

“I just know it.”

“You mean someone told you. Someone who could have seen your forward projection. Going up up up into the sky…”

She did not reply.

“Fret not, my little flower. He’s been captured. He’s already confessed to one of my colleagues.”

Again, she said nothing. But her sudden glance up, the miniscule collision of several of her eyelashes on her lower lid, combined with the upper muscle over her top lip that so sadly moved in such remorse, coupled with her silence, was more than enough to convince Schmet that his little ploy, based on his extremely forward-thinking hunch, was leading him in the right direction.

They boarded. Just the two of them in the cabin. Belwin in the cockpit sat behind a separate door. They were alone, and she had difficulty looking at him. He could not stop looking at her. He was not staring at her in a lecherous way, but he had to admit to himself that there was something so oddly familiar about her, something that tickled the long-extinguished fires of his long frozen heart. He felt oddly at ease with her, as if he had known her before. Same face. A long-ago shadow. Who? Who was it? It was distracting as all bloody Hades. She buckled her seatbelt.

Schmet sat about four seats away from her. He kept his distance.

The engine started, and the spacecraft rumbled and shook just slightly as they left the surface. He had to act soon. She was on the border of trusting him. In ten minutes, she would understand that this was all a setup.

“Do you see our pilot?”

“Yes.”

“He’s a robot.”

“I know that.”

“So you see, then, that it is not true, that silly rumor that only One Hundered Percent Lunar People can fly ships into the depths of space. A robot can do it.”

“So we are flying to Earth?”

“Yes, we are.”

“In this ship?”

“Yes.”

She turned to look out the window and it was amazingly clear. The neon-covered world of LEM Zone One was shifting away beneath a miniaturized collection of crowded avenues and city blocks and casinos and, of course, the thing that caught her eye, the Ferris wheel. Here she was, in a spaceship, not too far from where she had seen his eyes and he had seen her projected future line, and alas, it was coming true. She was fulfilling that incorruptible line he saw only hours ago, the one indicating she was going back to Earth, much sooner than she had intended.