The Callisto Gambit (25 page)

Haddock spoke a single word. “Nanites.” Then he swung into the crawler’s cab.

Petruzzelli strode after him. She caught the door before it could close, and leaned into the cab. “I did not say you could go. I’ve got another question for you.”

“You don’t want me to call security,” Haddock said, in a queerly monotonous voice, sitting very straight. Petruzzelli’s rucksack blocked Elfrida’s view, but her elbow jerked, and Elfrida guessed she was poking her Glock into Haddock’s ribs.

“Go ahead and call them. I’d like to see what kind of plebs work for your crappy little outfit.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Where’s Kiyoshi Yonezawa?”

Haddock twitched. This time it was a twitch of genuine surprise. “Why are you looking for
him?”

“To kick his ass,” Petruzzelli said.

“Well, I can’t help you.
Ow!
He
was
here at one point, but I haven’t seen him in a month. My guess is he’s gone to Valhalla. That’s where the pirates hang out.”

Petruzzelli stepped back, sliding her gun back into her waistband.

Haddock banged the crawler’s door shut. The vehicle jounced away on its six reverse-jointed legs, stepping nimbly over things and people on the ground.

Elfrida noticed for the first time what it was carrying: lots and lots of fake marble sinks and toilets.

“He’s not a freaking construction mogul,” Petruzzelli said in disgust. “He’s just driving the freaking delivery van. And now we’re back to square
freaking
one.”

Elfrida held up a hand. Jun was speaking urgently in her ear. She started back towards the Future Galaxy building. “Stay there, Petruzzelli, I’ll be right back …”

“Like hell,” Petruzzelli said, catching up with her. “What is it?”

Elfrida stopped, on Jun’s instructions, in front of a food stall. The smell of soyburgers wafted over her. She peered around the stall.

Now that she knew more about Future Galaxy Enterprises, Inc., she realized that the ‘software shop’ on the ground floor was actually a showroom for the company’s deluxe underground houses. On the other side of a plate window, well-dressed customers browsed the display screens and donned headsets for immersive walkthroughs.

Outside the door stood a small boy with curly dark hair, dressed in ill-fitting printables.

Petruzzelli jerked. It was like an electric shock had gone through her.

“Michael!”

Mercifully, the ambient noise drowned her cry. The boy gave no sign of having heard. Elfrida grabbed her arm. “Shush! We can’t let him see us!”

“That’s Michael Kharbage. He was my second-in-command on the
Kharbage Collector.
I left him behind when I joined Star Force. I thought he was going to go back to school. His goddamn father told me he’d chased after me, got caught by pirates. He said he was dead. I can’t believe he’s alive. What’s he doing
here?”
Tears welled from Petruzzelli’s eyes. “Let go! I have to talk to him.”

“Petruzzelli, listen to me! He’s our only chance of finding Kiyoshi! If you scare him or—or distract him, he might not tell us where he is.”

Petruzzelli moaned. She pushed the heels of her hands into her eyes to stop the tears. Elfrida had never seen her get this emotional. It was good news that she cared about Michael Kharbage so much. It meant that her terrible experiences in the war hadn’t left her entirely callous.

Elfrida craned around the people waiting in line for soyburgers. She watched the Future Galaxy building with her heart in her mouth.

A shop assistant came out of the showroom, carrying a cooler. Clearly nervous, he pulled Michael Kharbage away from the door. Michael complied sulkily.

Zooming in, Elfrida realized the shop assistant was only a boy. Spaceborn-tall, but not much older than Michael.

“That’s Ye-Jun Park,” Jun said in her ear. “Formerly known as Kelp. He’s the son of Captain Haddock, or rather Min-Jae Park. I guess they’re going by their real names now.”

Michael took the cooler from Kelp and darted off.

Petruzzelli started forward like a dog let off the leash.

“Wait!” Elfrida said. “Jun can see him! We’re going to follow him, OK? Just wait a minute! Give him a head start.”

“Where’s he going?” Petruzzelli demanded.

Elfrida repeated what Jun had told her on their way here. “He visits Future Galaxy Enterprises once a day at about this time. Mid-afternoon, or a bit later. He sometimes brings that cooler back. Sometimes, the other kid just gives him a small bag.”

“Drugs,” Petruzzelli said between her teeth.

“I don’t think you would need a cooler to transport drugs. But whatever’s in it, Jun thinks he may be taking it to Kiyoshi.”

“OK, go,” Jun said in her ear. “He’s heading down to Westhab 5. Same route he takes every day.”

Following the directions Jun transmitted through her earbud, Elfrida led Petruzzelli down and further down. The lower levels of the habitat grew progressively smellier and more crowded. “Scum rises,” Petruzzelli said. “But shit sinks.”

On the official maps of Asgard, Westhab 10 was the bottommost level, buried a kilometer and some beneath the floor of Doh Crater. But in fact, it was not the end of the habitat. Obeying Jun’s urgent instructions, Elfrida broke into a jog and saw Michael disappearing like a rat over a curb. A prefab tunnel opened out of the end wall of the hab. A lazy torrent of wastewater poured out from under the raised floor and vanished into the tunnel. Above it, but still below the level of Westhab 10, crowds moved in both directions along a rickety-looking overpass that led into the tunnel. Michael was among them, heading away.

“The security camera coverage ends here,” Jun said. “You’re our only eyes now.”

“Got it.”

Elfrida and Petruzzelli hurried along the wobbling, echoing overpass, keeping Michael in view. Dead ahead, the river of wastewater foamed into the steel maw of a processing plant. The overpass jinked right, and became the main street of yet another habitat.

Like the Belowsers of Ceres, the inhabitants of Asgard had expanded sideways as well as down. Also like the Belows, this extension would appear to have been built without official sanction, much less prettification. Scattered lamps on the street’s low ceiling resembled streetlights, rather than attempting to look like the sun. Brighter illumination came from flashing LED signs. Waifs in aprons languidly swept debris out of club doorways.

Elfrida would have loved this place when she was twenty. Now she just thought about how unsanitary it was to live next door to a sewer, and how everyone down here must have vitamin D deficiencies. The air was very bad, too. Fans futilely circulated the stale smells of cooking and antifungal spray.

“This is Hel’s Kitchen,” Jun said in her ear.

“For once, something on Callisto is appropriately named.”

“Careful!”

Elfrida had instinctively started hurrying faster, and now they were almost stepping on Michael’s heels. She pulled Petruzzelli back.

Ding … ding …
a bicycle bell sounded behind them. “Sell your wastewater,” a recorded voice intoned. “Ten cents per. Get paid to relieve yourself …” A man cycled slowly past them on a tricycle with a tank on the back. The sign on the front of his trike said
Pay Toilet.
Down here, of course, there were no public toilets, so there were pay toilets, with a twist: whereas on Earth you’d have to pay for the privilege, here human waste was valuable enough for someone to cycle around collecting it.

Elfrida and Petruzzelli shuffled along behind the toilet, breathing through their mouths.

Ahead, Michael walked slowly, as if tired out by his energetic dash through the hab … or reluctant to reach his destination.

He turned into an alley.

Elfrida and Petruzzelli came level with the alley mouth in time to see him vanish into a door.

They peered up a flight of well-lit stairs. Michael was no longer in sight. Elfrida’s heart pounded. She allowed Petruzzelli to climb the stairs ahead of her.

There was only one door at the top.

Petruzzelli pushed through it.

Elfrida followed her … into a bar.

Michael wasn’t there.

Electrofolk played quietly. As it was the middle of the afternoon, local time, there were no drinkers. A tall woman with blue dreadlocks drifted around, wiping tables. She seemed to be dancing to the music—alone, serene, contented. She saluted them with her wadded drywipe. “Take a seat anywhere you like.”

“Where’s that kid gone?” Petruzzelli said. “He just came in here. About this high. Dark hair. Where is he?”

The woman tilted her head on one side. “What kid?”

Elfrida dragged Petruzzelli over to a table. “He has to come back this way,” she whispered. “We’ll just wait.” In truth, there might be another way out, for all she knew. But the fact that the bartender had denied Michael’s existence, when they’d seen him come in here with their own eyes, proved to Elfrida’s mind that the woman was in on it … whatever it was.

Anyway, Elfrida really needed to sit down. Her heart was racing, and her breath came short.

The woman brought them a menu and a pair of oxygen canisters with attached mouthpieces. “The air’s bad down here,” she explained matter-of-factly.

“Jesus,” Petruzzelli said. “I’ll have a margarita.” Elfrida ordered a soda. When the woman brought their drinks, Petruzzelli tasted hers and said loudly, “Well, the drinks are better than the atmosphere, but not by much.”

She seemed to have taken an instant dislike to the bartender. Elfrida had no idea why, unless it was because she envied the bartender’s hair.

“Your hair used to be that color,” she commented.

“Mine was turquoise. Hers is more like aquamarine.”

“It’s nice, though.”

“In my opinion, white girls should never attempt dreadlocks.” Petruzzelli took a pull on her oxygen canister. Then she lowered her voice. “There’s a door behind the bar. I can see it from here.” She cracked her knuckles, eyeing the bartender. “If I distract her, you could check it out.”

“Distract her how, Petruzzelli, by holding a gun to her head?”

Mercifully, at that moment a pair of customers entered the bar, and the opportunity was lost.

The new customers seemed to be regulars. They sat at the bar and talked in low voices with the bartender.

Jun said, “Molly Kent. There isn’t much public information available on her. Callisto native …”

“Jun, I’m wondering—you said Colin Wetherall was also a Callisto native, but how can there be any Callisto natives over twenty? This moon wasn’t settled until 2267.”

“But there was an
orbital
called Callisto,” Jun said. “It orbited Jupiter, not Callisto itself. It was a kind of permanent protest camp, inhabited by all the people who wanted to colonize Callisto, but weren’t allowed to until the UN opened it up for settlement in 2267. So when that happened, all two hundred thousand of them moved in at once. They dismantled the orbital and used its parts to start construction on the spaceports at Asgard and Valhalla.”

“Oh yeah, I remember hearing something about that. That’s where all Jupiter’s micro-moons went.”

The bartender—Molly Kent—came over to their table, followed by one of her customers. “This gentleman says you two were followed here.”

“Followed? Why would anyone have followed us?” Elfrida said. Then she remembered that Petruzzelli had said the same thing back on Westhab 4. “Unless they wanted to mug us,” she said wryly.

“Yeah, could’ve been,” Molly said. “Those are nice glasses.”

“Sarcasm intended?” Elfrida joked nervously.

“Did you see who was following us? What did they look like?” Petruzzelli said.

Molly turned to her customer. He shrugged. “One dark, one not. They were Earthborn, like you.”

“We don’t get many Earthborn people down here. But that’s changing,” Molly acknowledged. “More people are arriving from Earth every day. I’d rather have Earthlings than Belters, anyway.”

Jun said in Elfrida’s ear, “She’s connected with Future Galaxy Enterprises. Not a shareholder, but she’s defended the company on the internet.”

Concentrating on two conversations at once, Elfrida barely noticed the sound of a door opening.

Petruzzelli started upright, knocking their drinks over.

“Michael!” she cried.

Elfrida got to her feet.

Michael stood at the end of the bar, his mouth open in shock.

Petruzzelli blundered towards him. Molly Kent reached for her. Petruzzelli pushed past the bartender and caught Michael in her arms. Elfrida heard tearful fragments of speech: “Missed you so much … thought you were dead … sorry … I’m so sorry …”

Michael struggled. “Let me go!”

Molly and her two customers pulled Petruzzelli off him. Petruzzelli had nanotic skeletal reinforcements. She took a lot of pulling off.

Michael rubbed his thin arms as if Petruzzelli had hurt him. “You left me behind!” he shouted. “You abandoned me to go fight your stupid war. Well, why don’t you just go get killed, because I don’t need you anymore!”

He darted back behind the bar. His light footsteps rattled on stairs.

Petruzzelli started after him, but Molly and the two customers caught her. It took all three of them to hold her down. Chairs and tables toppled.

Elfrida slipped around the melee and ran after Michael.

Upstairs, this time, not down.

Fetid hot air engulfed her as she climbed. It carried a scent like incense, but less pleasant.

Head spinning, she pushed through the door at the top of the stairs. She seemed to have stepped into a dimly lit cubicle farm. The walls of the cubicles were too high for her to see over.
Oh,
she thought in relief,
it’s just an immersion café.

But as she hurried down the aisle, and glanced into cubicles on either side, she did not see gamers plugged into immersion kits. She saw homeless-looking people lying on cots.

This was the cheapest cheap hotel that ever was.

But why were all these people
sleeping,
in the middle of the afternoon? And why did so many of them have IVs plugged into their cubital ports?

Dread dried her throat. She reached the last cubicle and saw Michael sitting on the foot of a cot. Kiyoshi Yonezawa lay on it.