The Callisto Gambit (39 page)

“The most interesting ones, from an anthropological perspective,” Father Tom said. “There are a lot of weird ideologies floating around in here. As I said, they are in dire need of the Gospel.”

“The most pathetically incompetent ones,” Sister Terauchi muttered.

“This
is
a jail,” Father Tom said, “insofar as no one ever gets out. But it’s also an experimental colony. ” He looked up at the blurry sun in the invisible roof, and mockingly shook his fist. “Hello up there!”

“An experiment in what?”

“Whether twenty-third-century human beings can survive without technology.”

Kiyoshi walked with Father Tom between the barley fields to a cairn of stones. “Father, is Jun here?”

“This is the insect house,” Father Tom said. “I’m actually staying with the Irish. I just came to bring some preying mantis larvae I found. They were in a storeroom, cryogenically frozen. Push a button and thaw as many as you need.”

“Father.”

“Yes?”

“Is Jun here?”

Father Tom was on his hands and knees, moving stones. “Ah, you bugger … Kiyoshi, did they catch him, too?”

“Yeah.”

Silence. Out of sight, a pedal-powered pump whirred. Children shouted answers to a quiz.

Kiyoshi sat down on his rucksack. Suddenly exhausted, he rested his forehead on the back of one hand, staring at the flecks of translucent green olivine and clear quartz in the stones of the insect house. He didn’t need Father Tom to tell him Jun was not here. The most advanced information technology he’d seen in the whole complex was the tablet they’d given Asada to write his traffic reports on.

“They might have taken Jun to the research center,” Father Tom said, offering a crumb of hope.

“The research center?”

“Yes, in Emerson Basin.”

Kiyoshi remembered seeing a cluster of facilities from space. “How do I get there?”

“Well, first you find a way past the gravitational attractors, without triggering an emergency shutdown. Alternatively, you could cut a hole in the dome, without a cutter laser, and hopefully without killing us all. Then you’ll have a nice short walk of 300 kilometers to the research center. It shouldn’t be very hard to evade the orbital gun platforms. And of course, no one ever died from going outside without an EVA suit.”

Kiyoshi laced his hands over the back of his neck and cursed.

“It makes me very happy that you’re alive, Kiyoshi,” Father Tom said quietly. “I know it will be a shot in the arm for everyone when the news gets around.”

Bad choice of words, Father,
Kiyoshi thought.

“Surely the Lord brought you here for a reason. Would you join me now in a prayer for divine guidance?”

Kiyoshi rubbed his hands over his face. He stood up and looked around. The cairn stood in the middle of a vegetable patch.
Hakusai
cabbages and carrots formed straight rows. Beyond that rose a modular structure made of tents stuck together—a jury-rigged church. There were people on the roof of the church. Old people sitting outside, gossiping. Children climbing on the insect house. It was just like at home on 11073 Galapagos. People, people everywhere. Nowhere to be alone.

He hooked his rucksack over one shoulder. “Can I take a rain check on that, Father? I’m gonna go … I’m gonna do some asking around.”

Father Tom admirably managed not to say how futile that would be. His face said it for him.

As if it were an afterthought, Kiyoshi added, “Oh, by the way, where would I find the boss?”

The Jesuit’s mouth hardened into a grim line. His dark eyes turned to pebbles.
“He’s
at the research center.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. The fella that picked us up—older fella with a neat little gray beard, looked like he should be selling Italian shoes—“

“Handbags. Legacy.”

“Is that what he’s called? He shook the boss’s hand like they knew each other. I got the impression they were old friends. Abdullah, too. ‘I’m very excited about getting your help with our research,’ he says to the boss, and they go away together, leaving us to rot in here.”

★

Kiyoshi walked towards the falls, between potato patches and shacks made from tent material. The cluster of larger buildings he’d seen from afar climbed over the tight Pallas horizon. A hand-painted sign said:
Welcome to Pallas Falls!

Guess they couldn’t resist that one.

One- and two-storey houses lined a gravel street. The houses were just boxes made from prefab carbon composite panels, with no front walls. People sat in the shadows within, or on crude porches. Some were working at hand looms or other antiquated machines. A lathe; a potter’s wheel; even a forge. Why couldn’t the Asada clan practice their trade here? Duh. Like the ISA would allow them to make
swords.

The sound of falling water drowned out everything else.

Kiyoshi came out on a spray-wetted expanse of rock around a lake the size of a baseball field. The waterfall plunged into it, a rough white curtain, as if that silver thread had frayed at the bottom. Frothy blossoms of splashback towered high in the low gravity, and fell to the surface of the lake, sending ripples towards the shore. People waded in the shallows, filling their jerrycans. Children paddled and splashed each other, goosepimples on their limbs.

It was beautiful, but Kiyoshi didn’t stop to stare. The town, such as it was, straggled away in every direction. He chose a street at random. Weeds grew in the gravel underfoot.

The shacks got smaller and crummier. The next light pylon was out. Only darkness lay ahead.

“Kiyoshi!”

He swung around, and nearly bumped into Elfrida Goto.

Her arms—open to hug him—sank to her sides when she saw his face. But her smile didn’t fade. “Sorry. I know I shouldn’t be happy to see anyone here, but wow!”

“Wow, yourself.” He admired her outfit. It was a sack, but it was an embroidered and appliquéd sack. A sparkly hair clip held back her dark bob. “Is anyone else here?”

“Did you meet up with your people?”

“Yes, they’re busy plotting to take over the hab.”

Elfrida laughed. “They are, aren’t they? I think it’s great. Nobody can make lemons into lemonade like the Galapajin. The Pashtuns are also doing pretty well, and so are those other, um, Christians. But your people are just kicking ass. Well, come on, if you only just got here you must be exhausted. Come and sit down!”

She led him to one of the crummy little shacks he’d passed without noticing. It had a curtain for a front wall, tucked up.

John Mendoza came out and gave him a one-armed hug—refusing, unlike Elfrida, to take an unspoken ‘no’ for an answer.

“I wish we weren’t here, but I’m glad you’re here, if that makes any sense.” Mendoza rocked back awkwardly. He was balancing on a crutch. His right leg ended at the knee.

“Holy crap, Mendoza. Where did you leave your leg?”

“Somewhere between the L5 Earth-Moon Lagrange point and Mars.”

Mendoza had accompanied Jun on his fateful voyage to Mars. Kiyoshi felt an acute desire to know what Jun had done. What the ISA had arrested him for. But there might be—scratch that, there definitely were listening devices around, so he swallowed his questions.

Mendoza seemed to be conscious of the same risk. He said, “Well, we don’t have coffee. The Pashtuns are expecting to harvest their first crop in a month or so. Then there’ll be a new currency in this jail, you can bet on it. For now, tea? It tastes like ass-flavored socks, but it’s caffeinated. Some supposedly good-for-you thing Ellie found in storage.”

“It’s called yerba mate, and it
is
good for you,” Elfrida squealed.

Kiyoshi laughed. He followed them into their shack. Elfrida swept aside the clutter on the floor. “Sorry it’s such a mess!”

Kiyoshi sat down, crossing his long legs, trying not to knock anything over. He sat on a hair clip like the one Elfrida was wearing. Pliers, wire, the smell of glue … “Did you make this?”

“Yeah.” Elfrida blushed. “I know, making jewellery, right? On
Pallas?
It’s like writing poetry at the south pole, or something. But people seem to like it. I’m using the stones that you can actually find in the big rocks near the perimeter of the dome. This is olivine, that’s tourmaline … we’re walking on semiprecious gemstones!” She waved her hands. She hadn’t lost her child-like sense of wonder. “People are grinding them up for soil substrate! The streets are paved with them.”

Mendoza moved some more clutter. A steel bowl, a heating element, a timer, a battery— “Mendoza, you’re either building a bomb, or a rice cooker.”

“Heh. The latter,” Mendoza said, mouthing:
Unfortunately.
“Before there was the Meal Wizard, there was the humble rice cooker. I got the idea from your people. I’m selling quite a lot of them.”

“For money? Or dope, or tea?”

“Batteries,” Mendoza sighed. He settled himself awkwardly on the floor. “The whole low-tech gimmick—it’s bullshit.
Everything
runs on batteries in here.” He pointed at a flashlight, his rice cooker, the hot plate on which Elfrida was boiling water for tea. “You can get whatever you need out of storage, including fully charged batteries. The people who live downstairs, the Storage clans, they can be pretty unpleasant, but they aren’t allowed to actually hurt you. So it’s just a matter of ignoring them, figuring out the labelling system, finding what you want, and pushing a button. But you only get one try a day. It’s
gamified.
So dumb. Anyway, who wants to waste a whole day going downstairs every time you run out of charge? Hence, freshly charged batteries equal units of value. But that might change. Brian O’Shaughnessy—remember him?—he’s got twenty people using up their tries every day, looking for parts to build a hydroelectric generator.”

“Install a turbine in the lake? Gravity-driven?”

“Yup.
Buuut
my guess is they won’t be allowed to do it.”

Kiyoshi wanted to know more about the security set-up. He tried to think of a way to ask about those blurs in the air, the slithering noises he’d heard downstairs.

Elfrida poured the tea. “Sorry it’s not very hot,” she said. “The atmospheric pressure is lower than Earth normal, so water boils at like ninety degrees Celsuis.”

“It’s fine,” Kiyoshi said. He took a sip. “Actually, it tastes like ass-flavored socks.”

Elfrida and Mendoza laughed too loudly. They were both on edge, that was obvious.

Screw it.
Kiyoshi’s concerns about listening devices fluttered away. He dropped his voice. “Mendoza? You were with Jun when … when it happened.
What
happened?”

Mendoza put his mug down. Distress creased his stoic, honest face. “This is so tough to say.”

“Tell him!” Elfrida said. She glared fearfully at the entrance of the shack. “He has a right to know!”

Mendoza reached out. His callused grip crushed Kiyoshi’s fingers. “Jun told them everything,” he whispered.

“Who? What did he tell
who?”

“The ISA, Star Force, the President of the UN, I don’t even know. We were on our way to Mars. We were stealthed, using the Ghost, but we had Tiangong Erhao. A fifty-kilometer spaceship is a fifty-kilometer spaceship. They picked us up on radar. So it was either defy them or deal with them. The Chinese ships that were with us defied them. They got fragged. Jun decided to deal.”

Mendoza let go of Kiyoshi’s hand. He stared into his tea mug.

“He gave them the specs for the Ghost, explained who he was,
what
he was, what he was planning, everything. I thought he was crazy. He said sometimes you just have to trust people.”

“That sounds like him,” Kiyoshi said.

“Well, it worked: they gave us safe passage to Mars. It was pretty hairy, even so. I lost my leg. There was a fire on the bridge of the
Monster.
But we got there and launched Jun’s cyberweapon. As far as that goes, it was
too
successful. Jun didn’t know about the Martians. No one did, at that point. He didn’t know we would end up freeing millions of them from the PLAN’s control. Anyway. As you might imagine, Jun didn’t want to stick around to answer questions. So we made our getaway in stealth mode.” Mendoza took a breath. “But when we got to Callisto, they were there waiting for us.”

Elfrida broke in. “It’s so unfair! Jun won the freaking war for them, and they
arrested
him for his trouble!”

Kiyoshi said emptily, “I can see it from their point of view. He told them he was an ASI? And then he proved it by blowing a hole in the PLAN? Yeah, they would want to take that out of circulation.”

The research center.
Father Tom had said Jun might be there. It was possible, Kiyoshi guessed.

“I’m sorry,” Mendoza said. “I’m so goddamn sorry. They boarded the
Monster;
I tried to stop them, but there were too many of them …”

Kiyoshi managed a smile. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He put down his mug. “Guys, I really appreciate this. If I could ask another favor, can I borrow your couch? I need to grab some sack time.”

He had to figure out how he was going to get to the research center, and right now shame and rage were clouding his thoughts. He needed a performance boost.

“Absolutely!” Mendoza said. “Well …”

“We don’t actually have a couch,” Elfrida said.

“Your floor, your hammock, whatever.”

They exchanged anxious looks. Kiyoshi felt a stab of irritability. What could be the problem with this simple favor? It wasn’t like he’d asked them to help him rescue Jun from the research center. He was going to do
that
on his own. Somehow.

“Well, OK,” Elfrida said. She beckoned Kiyoshi to another curtain at the back of the shack. “Don’t freak, OK? We’ve got another houseguest. But I think she’s asleep ...”

“I’ll be quiet,” Kiyoshi promised. He slipped through the curtain.

The bedroom smelled of goats. Working by touch, he found his gear in his rucksack. It still amazed him that the ISA had not confiscated eight syringes pre-filled with a solution of water and medical-grade methamphetamine. Well, if your thing was keeping humans like rats, you’d want to observe every sordid quirk of their behavior …
Screw you,
he thought at Oliver Legacy, who’d become the face of the ISA in his mind.
You don’t get to observe THIS.