The Venus Belt (14 page)

“After the funeral? No, I like it better up here in the sunshine. Ni
v
enville, where we’re headed, probably.” More scenery, mostly flat. I’d tra
v
eled all this distance in order to see a pretty fair replica of western Nebraska. “Wish we were going back to Earth together, though.”

She shrugged. “Well, there’s only weight-allowance left aboard that freighter for one skinny human and his stasis-tank. Besides, this is
Ceres
.
Gee, Boss, I’d stay to see the rest of the Belt, too, if—”

“If Olongo weren’t missing?” Sure enough, that was a scarecrow we whizzed by. Any time now, I’d be seeing BurmaShave signs.

“And Clarissa. But Ceres
Central
—I’ve just got to—”

“Forget it, I understand.” It was the chance of her lifetime, after all. They really
mean
Ceres Central, a city unique in the System. This ast
e
roid doesn’t have a hot and juicy core like any self-respecting planet, so they’d carved a metropolis out of its very heart, possibly the biggest, densest hab
i
tation in all of civilization. Besides being an industrial and communications locus (Voltaire Malaise himself broadcasts from down there), there are thousands of miles of busy streets, Hong Kong, New York, Chicago, and L.A. all rolled into one confusing zero-gravity skein, with Pellucidar Ga
r
dens, the biggest, weirdest amusement park in the known universe, at the very hub.

Nivenville, by contrast, is just like any midwestern farm community, parched blue heavens over bright brassy fields that Dorothy and Toto would have gratefully come home to. My hotel,
Le Petit Prince
,
towers a magnificent three stories above a million acres of marijuana, wheat, and fuelcorn. Koko waited while I checked my bags in the little pse
u
do-Victorian lobby, then we marched to one of the elevators—the big one in the middle—and took it down.

Real down
.

Like about three hundred miles. Halfway there it did a flip-flop in its gimbals, and I almost did another one in my pants. They don’t believe in gradual adjustment on the wild frontier. The elevator opened onto a bewi
l
deringly familiar-looking structure. Then I had it—a life-size replica of M. C. Escher’s
Relativity
,
potty plants, arches, and staircases going every whic
h
way, some people walking up the treads, and others down the risers. Up was where you wanted it to be, and down wherever you chose to fasten your tootsies. It was brain-bending just figuring out which rail to grab in panic.

Ever seen the airline terminal in Las Vegas? The Escher architecture was like that, advertising for Pellucidar Gardens, a pale suggestion, accor
d
ing to the holographic posters, of the wonders that awaited you there for just one thin tenth-piece, all on the inside!

I was seeing plenty of wonders already. At every exit, several dozen co
l
or-coded tow cables snaked along briskly, each one headed for a di
f
ferent general destination. Consulting an eyeball-wrenching diagram, Koko and I grabbed the line that promised to take us to the funeral pa
r
lor, and let it drag us from
Relativity
to Absolute Astonishment.

Let me put it this way: at any point along each cavernous boulevard, there’s room for eight different storefronts. That’s compared to
two
in any decent Earth-side community where they’ve paid this month’s gravity bill. In Ceres Central there’s one either side of the “street,” two more built into the “floor” for people who are thinking sideways at the m
o
ment, and the whole mess duplicated all over again on the “cei
l
ing”—that’s “floor” if you happen to be walking on it.

The corridors, a hundred feet or more across, are roughly octagonal in cross section, the smaller corner facets serving as sidewalks, tow-cables sin
g
ing overhead. It’s no trick at all to jump a dozen feet and grab a lift, co
m
pliments of the Ceres Central Merchants Association. The difficu
l
ty’s letting go and landing where you want.

Things
really
get complicated when you arrive at an intersection—so many goddamned street corners you don’t know which way to look. Let’s see, there’s back the way you came, and forth. Then there’s always right and left. And up and down for folks with stronger stomachs—ever see right to the
core
of a planet, even a small one?

In the center of every second passageway, a monorail provides both high-speed public transportation and a road for private vehicles under co
m
puterized direction. Have I left out anything? How about the bridges, up and down the fronts of buildings, connecting one sidewalk to another. I may have missed a few details—tenderfeet never do see all the alligator and buffalo tracks their trusty Indian guides do. And the same guides, lost in a city for the first time, often overlook seemingly obvious items. Little things, like Chicago’s Elevated Railway. It really happened once—look it up.

Nikita’s Funerium was situated in a classy tunnel just off the business district. I let go of the cable, having stickied up my shoesoles, and nearly broke my bloody ankles coming to a stop. According to the directory, we were overdue in the Grove of Grieving, three flights up and hundred yards back from the street. At least the illusion of floors and ceilings was respec
t
ed in this place. My inner ear decided it could go to sleep again.

The corridors were heavily carpeted, thick velvet drapings and a s
a
tin-cushioned ceiling added to the feeling of a housefly’s journey through some Carlsbadian coffin—organ music, stifled sobbing in every doo
r
way—the whole thing dimly lit and anechoic.

Felt like I’d died, myself.

A discreet gold plaque beside the doors announced the Grove of Grie
v
ing. I anchored myself to the carpet and turned the knob and—
wild laughter hit me in the face like a lemon meringue pie
. I slid in hastily, fo
l
lowed by an equally perplexed young female gorilla. Bright lights and cheerful ribbonry fe
s
tooned the walls and ceiling, sounds of merriment and liquid spirits ba
t
tered at my ears. The place was absolutely packed, at least five hundred var
i
ous beings yakked and ate and laughed and drank, dancing on any conv
e
nient surface to a rock band obviously imported from the States.

Leaving Koko to fend for herself, I shouldered my way through the crowd—no mean trick in freefall— recognizing a face or two from the old days. Captain Geoffrey Couper, Lucy’s fellow war-veteran. A co
l
league from the Continental Congress, Sandy Silvers, hanging from the ceiling. Miners, farmers, engineers, I guessed, most of them in smartsuits. At least I was dressed for the occasion.

I finally ran across poor Lucy, strapped into a velvet casket, eyes fo
r
ever closed. But happy in the posthumous thought, no doubt, that all of her friends were having such a swell time. An odd mechanical contraption floa
t
ed beside the bier, conical, about five feet tall, rising to a rounded apex. Well, she’d passed away a week ago. Perhaps some sort of paratronic preservation was required.

I looked down, gently touching Lucy’s hand, glad in a way it had ha
p
pened during one of her young periods. Her skin was beautiful and smooth, she wore a simple Mexican skirt and blouse, hands crossed over her breast holding a fresh yellow cactus rose. Someone had lovingly spread her shining blue-black hair over the satin pillow.

“Poor Lucy...I’m sorry I got here too late. How—” I could hardly speak for the clutch at my throat, the tears blurring my vision. “How could you let this happen to yourself? I promise I’ll find Ed for you...only I’ve
got
to find Clarissa first, and—”

“Hey there, Winnie, boy! How d’ya like this here whing-ding?” The thing beside the coffin stirred, bobbed up and down on its base. “Best be
l
ly-whopping funeral Ceres Central ever saw, even if I hadda arrange it fer m’self!
Whoopee!
”

“ ...
else they’re trying to convey, these mysterious signals beg us to recall our destiny, plead that we resist political adventurism, urge us to marshal our r
e
sources
—
not for the unethical usurpation of the rights of others, but for the conquest of the stars. At least that’s the way it looks
—”

“Oops!” exclaimed the monstrosity, “fergot about m’radio!” It turned away modestly, performing some adjustment with a pair of mechanical arms, then swiveled back to face me. “Thought I’d listen to th’ news. That feller do go on, don’t he?”

Brushing an errant Day-Glo streamer from my face, I ducked a wildly thrown cocktail baggie and strained to hear against the party uproar. In one corner, sprouting from a wall, an impromptu barbershop chorus ga
r
gled in obscene counterpoint to the band—at the very least, “House of the Rising Sun” seemed in dubious taste, considering the occasion. Cheerful plastic ribbons and sparkling confetti drifted on the ventilation currents. I kept looking back and forth, dismayed, from Lucy, pale and dead before me, to this vulcanized popcorn machine plagiarizing her voice.

“Don’t strip yer gears, Winnie-boy.” It raised a spindly chromed a
p
pendage to pat me on the shoulder. “Whoever kilt me didn’t quite finish th’ job.”

“Lucy?” was about all I could manage, and that in a confused sopr
a
no.

“In th’ ever-lovin’ alloy. That’s th’
flesh
, lyin’ over there.” It fussed pr
o
prietarily with the frilly skirting around the coffin, fluffed the pillow up and smoothed a pleat in Lucy’s skirt. “Sure it’s a shock, son.
I
was all set to wake up dead,
m’self!
”

“Lucy?” I clutched the coffin-edge, trying not to let the air cond
i
tioning waft me away. At an inch or so per second squared, I couldn’t even execute a decent faint.

Appraisingly, the machine drifted back a foot or two. “Lemme look at ya, boy! So y’finally gave up that antique wheelie-gun. An’ there’s th’ Rezin y’took offa Tricky Dick Milhous. Yeah, it’s
me,
Winnie, same ol’ lady helped Clarissa carve machine-gun-droppings outa yer carcass th’ day y’came t’Laporte. Y’got plastic where yer shoulderblade oughta be, an’ a teensie little mole, right on yer—”

“
Stop!
” The telltales on my forearms danced with confused embarras
s
ment. “I don’t know how, but you’re Lucy, all right.” But what else was she? An inverted rubber ice cream cone with a blunted end, covered in smartsuit material broken only by a pair of articulated manipul
a
tors—and a weapon slung absurdly from an outsized plastic gunbelt circumscribing her consi
d
erable girth. I should have recognized it right away: her Gabbet Fairfax .50.

“Glad y’came t’yer senses.” She flicked a sparkle of confetti from the rose in Lucy’s hands. Lucy’s
other
hands. “Listen, let’s get outa here an’ talk. Funerals always did depress me.” Amidst cheerful waves and inebriated farewells, we took our leave, the other mourners seemingly determined to ca
r
ry on, guest-of-honor or not, until some nonexistent dawn.

Koko’s questioning grimaces went unanswered as we grabbed a tow rope outside and rode it deeper into the underground city. Somehow, watching people strolling on the ceiling wasn’t half as disturbing as seeing them walking on the walls. From my perspective, half the monorails were running upside-down, and shrubbery was springing from the sidewalks in any old direction. As if the cavernous boulevards weren’t lighted brightly enough by storefronts, the angled sidewalks were fluorescent, and the rails and cables glowed with some internal energy. Lucy wasn’t content to let the color-coded ski tow drag her along, but locked a manipulator loosely around it, firing up electrostatic impellers in her base, to zip ahead of us, then bounce up and down impatiently at corners until we caught up.

We proceeded thus, deep into the core of the planet.

She finally stopped before a glaring animated sign across a chasm from the fabled Pellucidar Gardens. Huge holos advertised the thrills available: a roller-coaster roaring along a giant Mobius strip; people diving into a lake-size sphere of water suspended in the center of the ce
n
termost cavern. One ride was ominously labeled ‘”Decompre
s
sion”—some funny thing to joke about, three hundred million miles into space. Koko gazed with o
b
vious yearning at the System’s most famous playground, then followed us relu
c
tantly into the restaurant, Mr. Meep’s Cloud Nine. Mr. Meep was another of the many ex-Laporters I knew who’d emigrated to the asteroids. Another chimpanzee, probably a relative, conducted us to a slimmer, many-jeweled cable, which snatched us dizzily upward several levels from the entrance to a well-upholstered niche along one wall. I pulled myself into a seat, fa
s
tening the lapbelt. Koko did the same. Lucy simply hung beside the table and clamped a manipulator on its edge.