Red Planet Run (2 page)

The place was teeming like an anthill and buzzing like a beehive. Everyone was constantly in motion and incessantly in speech, and I caught bits of half a dozen different conversations as I dodged through the crowd.

“Strasser says the League’s talking strike.”

“Not again? We’re already making more money than God.”

“What’s your price?”

“Four AD’s a kay.”

“Four bucks! You gotta be kidding! I wouldn’t pay four bucks a kay for my own mother! One and a half.”

“—so he told them the moral of the story is, don’t ask if you don’t want to know the answer.”

“Did you believe it?”

“Of course I believe it. I believe any story French Joe tells a bunch of Terran rubberneckers. It’s easier, and it goes without saying that it is one whole hell of a lot safer. Hey, Star, how you doing?”

“Fine, George, good to see you.”

“Court in session?”

“Almost.”

A tall man with a long white beard flowing down the front of a longer, whiter robe strode toward me, parting the crowd like the original Moses parted the Red Sea. “Star Svensdotter.” He raised a massive hand and made the sign of the cross in front of my face.

I hate uninvited blessings; whatever soul I have I prefer to tend to myself. Still, it never hurt to be civil, or so I had been raised by the woman who was presently rectifying her youngest daughter’s sense of timing back on Outpost. “Brother Moses. How are you?”

“I am with God, sister,” he said, sorrowful that he could not say the same for me.

I also hate being called someone’s sister when I’m not. But dignity, always dignity. “Good to see you, Moses,” I lied. “Sorry I can’t stay to chat but I’m late for court.”

“Ah,” he said, a wide, wise, and wholly patronizing smile spreading across his face, “one should leave matters of judgment to God.”

“One would,” I couldn’t help retorting, “if She’d show up in the next five minutes to take my place on the bench.”

He raised his hand and I cringed, but instead of a condemnation of my blasphemy, he turned with a sweep of his white robe and issued forth a proclamation. “I hereby declare this demonstration of the Save the Rocks League, before God and the Ceres office of A World of Your Own, Inc., to be blessed by our Father, the one true God and Protector of all living things.”

Taking dead rocks and making them into live habitats didn’t sound like exploitation to me, but every nut has its own magnetic field, and behind him I saw a dozen protesters assemble, carrying hand-lettered signs sporting various epigrams such as “Save the rocks!” and “Preserve a planetesimal! Shoot a miner!”

Sounded like a plan to me, starting with Brother Moses, who had made his pile out of an iron mine on 16Psyche before turning to God and asteroidal conservation. He was speaking again. “We must preserve the precious relics of our Promethean forefathers against the exploitation and ravishment of the forces of corporate greed.” One force of corporate greed could feel her neck getting hot. We took every precaution in scouting possible future Worlds for anything that might smack of being man-made. Because we hadn’t found anything after the discovery, twelve years before, of what
might
have been a man-made petroleum reservoir, Brother Moses assumed we had and were destroying them so as not to interfere with the World of Your Own production schedule, at the same time destroying evidence of the Prophets of Prometheus, or Those Who Had Gone Before. I’d taped our scouting teams in action, I’d invited Brother Moses to inspect our procedures in person—hell, I’d even told him we’d train one of his own to run the thump truck. He had graciously declined, of course. Seeing is believing, and God forbid—you should pardon the expression—Brother Moses should see something that might change his belief in a stand that was bringing cash donations in from every crackpot in the System from Boise, Idaho to Copernicus Base, Luna. There’s no business like the evangelical business for turning a profit.

I should have made Charlie join up; Brother Moses would be just the man to teach her the art of the deal.

As if he’d read my mind, Brother Moses said, “God forgive you and keep you, Sister Star.” He gave a regal bow and paraded off stage left.

I watched his retreating back, thinking how nice it would be to see an eight-inch knife protruding from between his shoulder blades. I had an active fantasy life.

And then I saw something that truly terrified me: I saw the twins in the procession, both of them parading signs through Piazzi City when they should have been studying the speed at which asparagus sprouted on Outpost. Paddy’s sign read “Honk if you love asteroids”; Sean’s “Clap if you believe in kobolds.” Both pairs of dark blue eyes were narrowed and fixed in concentration on Brother Moses’ back. Neither of them looked the least bit devout.

They must have grabbed a ride on the mail scooter that broke orbit before I left Outpost. I waved. They either didn’t see me or didn’t want to. I started forward, only to be swallowed up in the same crowd that had swallowed them.

“Paddy!” I tried to yell over the increasing roar of the crowd. “Sean!”

They either didn’t hear me or didn’t want to, and disappeared from my view.

“Hey, Star, is court in session?” a miner greeted me.

“Almost,” I said, and with a last, despairing glance I abandoned Brother Moses to his fate. After all, according to him, God was on his side.

The crowd was there partly because it was market day, as the temporary booths around the Hitching Post ten-deep in customers demonstrated. It was also partly Miners’ Court, convened once a month to address all Belt grievances, real and imagined, civil and criminal, presided over by a rotating bench of three magistrates selected once a year by a popular vote of the League of St. Joseph. The only reason I was here was because I’d been unable to con or bribe Simon into taking my place. It was really Perry Austin’s month but she was conveniently downarm, settling yet another dispute between 7683Gypsy and 8102Rom. I only hoped the Gypsies took her for the fillings in her teeth.

I pushed and shoved my way to the O.K. Corral, one of the bigger saloons holding most of the early drinkers. The bartender and owner, a diminutive, plump-breasted, bright-eyed man, waved me over to the bar. “Good morning, Ms. Svensdotter,” he yelled.

“Morning, Birdie,” I yelled back. “Court’s in session.”

“One moment, please.” He disappeared for a second, to reappear with an air horn. The single blaring jolt of sound stunned the crowd into momentary silence, broken by someone yelling, “Here come de judge!” but they dispersed amiably enough. Birdie closed the door behind them, hanging a sign on it which read “Court in session. The Honorable Star Svensdotter presiding. The bar is closed until further notice.”

The two of us working together pushed the stools against one wall. Birdie produced a table and a chair more his size than mine, and stood on the chair to help me into a black robe, a ceremonial garment only recently introduced into the proceedings. The collar was too tight, the hem barely covered my knees, and the sleeves fell a good ten centimeters over my hands. I sat down, wedged my legs beneath the table (the judge used to stand behind the bar, and personally I preferred it but it offended Birdie’s rigid sense of our dignity), and took the gavel Birdie handed me with a ceremonious bow. “Okay, Birdie, call the first case.”

Birdie’s red-cheeked countenance stiffened into what he considered to be a properly bailiffed expression, his usual bobbing gait lengthened into an authoritarian stride, and he stalked to the doors and flung them open. “Hear ye, hear ye! This Miners’ Court is now in session! The Honorable Star Svensdotter presiding!” He consulted a clipboard hanging next to the door. “First case, Kandinsky versus Townsend, assault.”

Two figures pushed through the crowd, to be overtaken by an enormous third clad in the dazzling white jumpsuit and red badge of the Star Guard. “Sorry, Star,” he puffed.

“It’s okay, Joseph, we’re just starting. Birdie, enter Joseph Smith as today’s sergeant-at-arms.”

“It’s James, Star.”

“Oh. Sorry, James.” The trouble with triplets. Identical triplets, all three of whom were members of the Star Guard of exactly the same rank and so wore exactly the same uniform.

“No problem.” James grinned, displaying two adorable dimples in an otherwise perfectly blue-eyed, clear-skinned, square-jawed face, and perched on a stool next to the door.

The two smaller figures behind him now came forward. “Beth.” I rose, with difficulty, and extended a hand from which I had to peel back the sleeve of the robe.

Beth Townsend took it in a warm grip. “How are you, Star?” She was slim and wiry, as so many Belters were. We consumed vast amounts of calories and expended equally vast amounts keeping warm in vacuum, and the result was a lot of muscle and bone and very little fat. She shaved her head, something many do for convenience but a style few look good in afterwards. Beth Townsend had the cheekbones for it; she looked like Bathsheba when David fell for her.

This morning Beth was looking uncharacteristically subdued. “I just want you to know this wasn’t my idea.”

“No? Whose idea was it?”

“Mine. Joel Kandinsky.” I disliked him on sight, a freckle-faced, sandy-haired man with a permanent scowl who exuded self-importance the way a British peer did superiority.

“You’re bringing charges against Beth?” He nodded, and I said, “What for?”

“She assaulted me for no reason, an entirely unprovoked attack that resulted in injuries to my person and caused me extreme mental anguish!” He looked down his nose at me as if he expected me to pass sentence on the spot.

I looked at Beth, who looked resigned. “He stole my p-suit.”

Kandinsky erupted. “I didn’t steal it; I just borrowed it for a while, I—”

“He what?” I stared at Beth, who nodded. I looked back at Kandinsky. “You took her pressure suit?” He nodded. Even more incredulously, I said, “And you admit it?”

“Yes, I took it. I had to get to 2Pallas; I had a deal pending there that—”

I looked back at Beth. “He ask your permission?” She shook her head. “He hurt it?”

She hesitated. “Not much.”

“Not much?” She remained silent, and I said to Kandinsky, “And you have the gall to sue
her
for assault?”

Kandinsky’s face turned the color of old liver and he huffed out an impatient breath. “As I tried to explain—”

I cut across his words. “Mr. Kandinsky, there is no explanation adequate to your offense. You’re on an asteroid, orbiting in space one point eight astronomical units from Terra. There are a hundred thousand other rocks in more or less the same orbit, half of them uncharted, and each and every one with its own eccentric orbit. Every Belter lives with the daily prospect of collision with another asteroid. Our only hope for survival in the event of a decompression event lies with everyone’s pressure suit being exactly and precisely where they left it, and in working order. Archy, when’s the next Volksrocket scheduled to depart?”

“Tomorrow morning at eight.”

“Good; he gets only three free meals off us.” I nodded at James, and he rose from his stool to stand behind Kandinsky. “Kandinsky, you are convicted of pressure suit theft. You are fined whatever valuables are on your person, to go toward any necessary repairs to the suit you stole, with any remainder to go into the judicial fund of the League of St. Joseph. I also sentence you to serve—how much time do I sentence him to, Arch?”

“Twenty-one hours, thirty-six minutes, boss.”

“I sentence you to twenty-one hours, thirty-six minutes in Piazzi City Jail, or until such time as the next Volksrocket departs 1Ceres. Upon your release, you will be issued a blue ticket for HEO Base and escorted to the departure terminal.” I leaned forward. “Mr. Kandinsky, a piece of friendly advice? Don’t miss that rocket.”

“Now wait just a minute! This is no kind of court of law! I demand an attorney! I have my rights! I—”

Again I interrupted him. “Mr. Kandinsky, count yourself lucky that it was Beth’s p-suit you stole. Another Belter would have stuffed you out the nearest airlock, and I would presently be ruling on a case of justifiable homicide.” James hauled Kandinsky out, yelling for his lawyer all the way.

“Thanks, Star.”

We shook hands again. “No problem, Beth. It’s a shame we can’t declare stupidity a capital crime. Next case, Birdie.”

Birdie crossed off Townsend versus Kandinsky and called out the next two names on the sign-up sheet. A partnership in a claim on 9204Hell had suffered what we called a vacuum fracture, the result of too much time alone on a rock too far from home, and the two miners were fighting over who got what. It hadn’t been the richest claim, doubtless one of the problems, and the chief bone of contention appeared to be the speeder. I suggested they sell it and split the proceeds. They demurred. They demurred so loudly and for so long that I suited up, located the speeder in question in the parking lot, punched the starter, and sent it off Ceres on a heading for Alpha Centauri. Back inside I inquired, “You have any other assets requiring judicial disposition?” They decided they hadn’t. “Good. Your partnership is dissolved. Archy, spit out a writ to that effect, four copies, one to the League, one to the Star Guard so they can update their patrol schedule, one for each of the partners.”

“It’s done, boss.”

“Gentlemen, your dissolutions are available in the mayor’s office. I fine each of you one thousand Alliance dollars or its equivalent weight in ore, first for wasting my time, second for making me crawl in and out of my p-suit for the second time in an hour. Birdie, collect the fines and call the next case.”

I was at it the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon, finishing up with a wedding at which the groom recited one poem, the bride another, and I was required to recite a third. Left to myself and knowing the two parties involved, I would have quoted, “Now’s the day and now’s the hour, see the front of battle lour,” but no, they’d written a whole brand-new poem in honor of the sacred occasion. It went like this:

Him:
Two A.U.’s from hearth and home
Here on Ceres, far from Nome.
No more to Maggie’s will I roam
Now that Erma is my owme.