Sharon Lee - Steve Miller - Low Port

VIP免费
2024-12-20 0 0 510.52KB 168 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
Table of Contents
Introduction - Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
Voyeur - Eric Witchey
Digger Don't Take No Requests - John Teehan
The Gate Between Hope and Glory - Holly Phillips
Riis Run - eluki bes shahar
Bidding the Walrus - Lawrence M. Schoen
The Gift - Laura J. Underwood
The Dock to Heaven - L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
Find a Pin - Ru Emerson
Sailing to the Temple - Alan Smale
The Pilgrim Trade - Mark W. Tiedemann
More to Glory - Patrice Sarath
Gonna Boogie with Granny Time - Sharon Lee
Angel's Kitchen - Chris Szego
Lair of the Lesbian Love Goddess - Edward McKeown
Contraband - Nathan Archer
Spinacre's War - Lee Martindale
Bottom of the Food Chain - Jody Lynn Nye
Zappa for Bardog - Joe Murphy
The Times She Went Away - Paul E. Martens
Scream Angel - Douglas Smith
Meet the Authors
Introduction
What you have in your hands is a tangible example of the classic science fiction question "What if?"
That question is usually seen as the start for a single story, but it came to us over dinner as we
discussed a Liaden Universe® project in which Solcintra's Low Port was mentioned (and which
eventually became the story "Phoenix" in the SRM Publisher chapbook Loose Cannon).
"What if?" we asked, we could interest Stephe Pagel, our long-time publisher at Meisha Merlin in
an anthology that dealt with the people of Low Port. Not our Low Port necessarily, but the prototypical
Low Port that must exist across universes... That of course would mean dealing with strange heroes, odd
protagonists, not with the usual iconic heroes of our genre-swashbuckling swordsman, square-jawed
astronaut, magic-flinging wizard or witch, world-saving physicist-but with the other people you might
expect to find in a world, the people who lived with the results of the swashed buckles, the new satellite,
the saved world.
Stephe had already shown a willingness to try new things in his collaborative editing of the Bending
the Landscape anthologies with Nicola Griffith, and certainly Lee Martindale's Such A Pretty Face
anthology for Meisha Merlin showed more evidence of the same.
The idea stayed at the dinner table a few days as we finished projects in hand and planned our next
series of novels; it peeked out from under the napkins and around the salt cellar, and over the course of a
month or so it burst forth three or four times along with the daily minutiae of a writing household-"have
we got enough toner to print three copies of that thing?" "Oops, the inkjet is low on color," "Ach-are we
out of dollar stamps, again?" and many ceteras.
The idea mutated from dealing with the average people of the world to dealing with the fringes-the
down-and-outers, the people who lived really on the edge, the people who lived over the edge-and took
on more of the port aspect. As it mutated the idea became more tangible. It swooped across the dinner
table, it interfered with us while we were reading magazines, and it insisted that it be written down on the
long "Talk To Stephe Pagel" list we keep on the table beside the to-do list.
A few nights after we put the idea on our list, Stephe Pagel called to check up on some
arrangements for an upcoming convention and we put him on the speaker phone so we could gang-up on
him-oops, so we could both talk to him at the same time-and eventually got to the bottom of the list and
whispered back and forth (quietly, we thought) about actually asking him about Low Port.
"All night, all right-I hear you guys conspiring over there. What's going on now?"
Discovered, we mentioned the idea, hurriedly.
"Did you say anthology? Antho? I dunno, guys, I mean, anthologies are just such a hard sell..."
There was a pause then, and he said, "Can you run the idea by me again?"
Which we did, in two-part harmony, pointing out that so many stories these days seemed to be
about the grand schemes, the rich and famous, the...
"OK, hold up. Why don't you give me something in writing? I mean a lot of people can talk a good
anthology-and I'm not sure I'm in the market for an anthology right now-but if you can put together a
proposal I can at least see if there's something there that we can work with..."
In the way of such things, the proposal took longer to write than we expected. We'd never done a
print anthology before, so we researched how others did it, we compared our notes with what people
sent to us, we refined the language, and then we shipped it off. In the way of such things, it took longer
for the publisher to look at the proposal than we'd expected and then longer to get an answer.
In fact, we'd been thinking about the project for over a year-and we'd just about given up on
anything happening-when were asked to be panelists (along with Stephe Pagel and Lee Martindale and
several others) at ConQuest 32 in Kansas City on the subject of editing. Stephe, with his publisher's hat
on, was explaining the kind of determination and focus it took to put an anthology together, the difficulties
in selling anthologies to readers, the necessity of having a good, clear concept. Then he spoke of how
pleased he'd been to work with Lee Martindale on Such A Pretty Face, and how he was looking
forward to working with Sharon and Steve on Low Port, which proposal he'd just accepted.
Wait a minute! That's us. Could've knocked us over with a feather.
So now, several years later, you're seeing Low Port as envisioned by writers you know and
writers you will know, brought to you as science fiction, as fantasy, as magic realism, as noir of this or
that kind, as comedy and tragedy, as original visions come to life by writers eager to take the
challenge-"What if there was a Low Port?"
We hope you'll be as amazed, and as moved, by the diversity of answers to that question as we
were. Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
October 2002
Unity, Maine
VOYEUR
Eric M. Witchey
André's palm warmed. His subsistence credit adjustment had arrived.
He closed his fingers around the status bead embedded in his hand. Squeezing the hard lump in his
fist like it might keep the money from leaking out, he sucked in the rank air of his quarters and held the
breath. He glanced at the dingy white shelves of his empty galley. A starving roach skittered across a
shelf and fell into the yellowed sink.
Silently, he prayed the status bead glowed green. He swore if it did he would never again pay the
dwarf, never again go into the world's darkest places to stare through the tiny window.
He opened his palm.
In the center of his grimy lifeline, the dirty bead glowed dim green. He exhaled his relief. The
adjustment had raised his credit rating enough to buy food. The thought made his belly heave and growl
as though it were angry over three days of emptiness.
André's quarters were at the fringes of the world, the dark warrens where outsiders lived out slow
deaths away from the eyes of productive insiders. The fringes were the last places. Stale air came there
only after the rest of the world had breathed it. Sickening yellow water trickled from the faucets, its last
stop on the way to recycling. Whores, addicts, and outsiders all eventually found their way to the fringes
to hide from debts, from their own shame, and from the judging eyes of the productive. In the end, they
too went to the recyclers, or they rotted, forgotten, wrapped in their paper blankets inside tiny, stained
steel quarters until another tortured soul cleared away their remains and moved in.
André hated himself for living there, for having fallen so far that he could go three days without
food. But the same poverty that starved him made the dwarf turn him away. He hadn't sat in the rickety
chair at the tiny window for two days.
If he could stay away from the window for two days, he could stay away for three. If three, then
four. He'd be an insider again, a productive citizen.
He rummaged through the louse infested rags covering his floor until he found a tattered shirt and a
pair of pants that mostly covered. He put them on and used collected lengths of twine to tie down the
loose folds around his emaciated frame. He left his quarters determined to own and eat a fifty gram tofu
ration. A shining white block of extra firm would be his sacrament of salvation.
Barefoot, he plodded along the curving corridors of the fringe until he came to the straight, bright
halls where insiders lived. At the first inside hallway, he stopped. A few people, clean and brightly
dressed, busy with meaningful lives, paused in their strides to stare. One woman, pale skinned and dark
haired, gasped and covered her mouth and nose.
He had once reacted to outsiders that way, afraid of stench and disease. He reached out to touch
her, to calm her.
She ran.
"Bitch," he said, but there was no venom in the word. He would eat. If he ate, things would
change. As an insider, he could touch a woman and she might touch him back.
The straight hallway before him was the shortest path to food. The distribution center was a five
minute walk along that hall then across Alpha Park. André had once been a groundskeeper in Alpha
Park. He knew that direct sunlight and open spaces scared people, so that way lay fewer judging eyes
and faces. Of course, that was also the way to the blackberry patches that hid the hatch to the tunnels,
the entrance to the dark labyrinth that hid the albino dwarf and the perverse little windows that had stolen
André's soul.
The hallway angling off to his left joined Main, the grand corridor that ran the length of the world
and passed between the boundaries of Alpha Park and Beta Park. Main would let him stay among
insiders and far from the secret tunnels, the twisted little man, and the window.
Faster is better, he thought. The more judging eyes he saw, the more he would want to hide from
them. The more time he had to think, the more likely he would fall to the dark call. The freshest air was in
the parks. The sun would feel good on his wasted face. He would walk fast and be past the bushes
without so much as a glance.
When the corridor spilled him out onto the green lawns of Alpha Park, he paused and looked up.
The yellow ball of fire hung in the sky midway between him and the distant greenery of Park Epsilon on
the opposite wall of the world. Sweat beaded on his forehead and trickled into his eye. The sting made
him wince.
A breeze carried the scent of berry blossoms. He looked across the park's groomed lawn. Maybe
a hundred meters away, the berry bushes, a bright clump of green covered in pink white blossoms,
guarded his dark secret. Long, thorny tentacles stretched up toward the sun. The new groundskeeper
had neglected their trimming. They seemed to sway, to beckon. The hole in his world called to him
through the bushes.
He looked away. To burn the darkness from his mind, he stared directly into the sun.
He no longer wondered how many people knew where the tunnel entrance was. When he had
found it, he thought it a great secret. Exploring the labyrinth was an adventure that broke the boredom of
his life. He had thought others would want to go with him. They did not. Now he knew it was something
unimportant that the world had chosen to forget. He cursed his discovery for separating him from the rest
of mankind, for turning him into an outsider.
The sun was too bright. He closed his eyes against it. The image of a woman appeared on the
backs of his lids. His wife. He brought her here once, he confessed to her and showed her the hatch
beneath the bushes. She left him.
The bright image cooled and faded. Her name was...
It didn't matter. It was a small thing long forgotten. It was like the memories of taking joy in his
hands clasping cool pruning shears or pressing into sun warmed soil. Her name was no more or less than
any paled memory of his life before the window. She was the tiny echo of lost feelings.
Hunger grinding at his belly was now and real. He opened his eyes. He looked past the calling
bushes. He locked his eyes on the far entrance to the hallways leading to food. He managed a step. He
managed another.
Then he was under the bushes, fighting the thorns and pulling up the hatch. Then he was in the
darkness, slipping along low tunnels he wished were not familiar. Down a tunnel, hand on the left wall.
Down another, hand on the right. Down a ladder, another tunnel, another ladder. Every heartbeat took
him further from food and salvation.
He decided to turn back ten times. Twenty. Thirty. Finally, under muted red light, he watched his
hand unfold before the scarred face of the albino dwarf guarding the tiny rooms, the ancient chairs, and
the windows. The light made the dwarf's skin pink. It made his pink eyes seem empty and ancient. André
knew the little man had grown old taking the money of lost souls like him.
The dwarf passed his extractor over André's palm. The status bead cooled and dimmed. André
found his viewing room, settled in the warped spindle chair, reached behind him, and closed the door.
Absolute darkness and the stink of urine and sweat engulfed André.
He didn't care. Only the moment when the metal blind slid away from the window was important.
His heart beat faster, anticipating the obscene bliss that would wipe away his hunger and shame.
It was obscene. It was the worst of addictions, a sickness that would kill him. He had tried a
thousand times, and he couldn't stop himself. That tiny, round window was his reason to live. He couldn't
remember when the worn wood of the spindly chair had become more comfortable than the sofa in his
living room or when the vision beyond the glass had become more exciting than his wife.
He touched the cold wall and found the metal blind and the circular window frame. He cupped his
bony hands around the steel frame. He knew he wouldn't see faster because he was closer. He knew
there was no light in the room to reflect the old chair and his bony frame. Still, he pressed his forehead to
his cupped hands.
Even squinting in the darkness waiting for the window to open, he told himself he could get up, turn
away, and walk back inside. He could still go back where men and women lived lives that mattered. The
tofu ration was lost, but he didn't have to be an outsider.
Deliberately, he put his hands on his knees as though to stand.
"Stand," he said to the darkness. "Stand like a man. Go back inside."
The hand trick never worked.
He found his hands back at the little window trying to shield out distractions that came more from
the darkness within than from the darkness surrounding him.
The metal blind slid away.
André pressed his face to the glass, trying to fill himself with the sight beyond, trying to pour himself
out between his hands into the infinite space between a billion stars.
"Stars," the dwarf chanted when they first met. "Galaxies, nebulae, the secrets of the universe can
be yours if you have eyes that can see."
The dwarf had told the truth.
André stared into the mind of God. His mortal thoughts streamed outward into sublime forever. A
chill of blissful awe shook his frail body. Infinity flooded his mind and washed away the guilt and shame of
looking outward.
DIGGER DON'T TAKE NO REQUESTS
John Teehan
Four years, 8 months, 23 days
So I'm flatpicking up a bit of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown", enjoying the hell out of it, and finish
with a trademark Doc Watson run. Got lots of people gathered around me by the observation deck;
touries, techies, goonies and moonies on their way back and forth between here and the Concourse.
Good crowd, and there be a couple of touriefems giving me a friendly eye. It's while I'm considering the
possibilities that I click on this one nervous little moonunit in a sloppy jumpsuit hanging around the edge of
the crowd. I can spell the trouble with this unit.
S-p-a-z-n-i-k.
I do a little patter about the Old Man on the Moon and how I met him my first week Up Here and
how he taught me this next song which is nothing more than an old whaling song with some of the words
changed. One grinning tourie recognizes the tune and whispers something to his ladyfriend. I send them a
wink before the end of the song to let them in on the joke and figure the guy'll drop an extra dollie or two
in the tin for making him look clever in front of his lady.
Never hurts to let the paying public feel good about themselves. Hell, it's the very soul of busking.
Okay, the money is the heart of it, and the fun is in playing, but the soul is in the way people gather
around and just gig.
I pick through and finish up another song to a scatter of applause, little kids jumping high over their
parents heads to see me-enjoying the hell out of the lighter gravity-when I catch a cough from a
uniformed loonie goon by the passageway entrance. They don't mind me playing, but the crowd's getting
kind of dense and it's time to move along.
I give a little bow to thank and amuse whilst passing the tin around. Not bad. Some loonie dollies
and some meal tickets, and a button. Ha! I love kids. Where'd they find a button Up Here?
The crowd disperses (as do the touriefems, alas) and up comes my nervous little spaznik in the
sloppy suit.
"You Digger?" he asks. He looks something Asian. About a meter and a half tall and stick thin. He
blinks at me through a tangled mass of black hair and seems a little unsteady.
I count up my takings and divide it among many pockets. "Be me. Who you?"
Like some newbie, he sticks his hand out, "Kimochi Stan."
Shaking hands is a Down There thing to do. It's nothing personal-you touch friends, even some
acquaintances of good reputation, but you never know when some newbie with the sniffles slips by the
Quarrines. Still, the kid looks like he could use a friend so I take his hand and pump it all gregarious like.
"Cool sobriquet," I tell him, "something like 'feels good' in Jappongo, right?"
He looks embarrassed. Most of us who end up bumming around the Concourse pick up these little
nicknames. Sometimes they're given, like Ice Cream Lou's or Amazing Gracie's or we make them up
ourselves. Instant notoriety. No crime. Kimochi must be American or Canadian born though. Japan
doesn't fool around with travel visas to the moon; and my new pal Stan doesn't seem to be weighed
down with an accent.
I tune up the guitar by touch, muffling the homemade strings with my fingers. "So what's up, 'Feel
Good'?"
"I want to go home," he says like his heart is about to freeze up and shatter. Poor kid shivers
before me. Lunar fidgets we call it. Like homesickness, but a hundred times worse. Maybe the good
feelings he came up here with pffted out into vacuum. Hope he don't bawl on me. Tears ain't good for
business not unless you're playing real skinned knee bluegrass. I wonder how long it took before Feel
Good's fidgets started settling in. Sometimes takes a month. Sometimes they start as soon as the shuttle
docks. Poor little breast fed babies.
"Shouldn't be a problem," I tell him. I stow my guitar into its carrybag and lean it against a wall.
"You got a return chit. Sooner or later they gotta send you back."
"No, I want to go home now. I can't take it here anymore," he stammers and twitches like a
jumping bean. "Tattooed Lydia said you could help me out."
Lydia, oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia? Lydia the tattooed lady? Nice girl-looks like a living
picture book. Real friendly too, if you get my drift. And she sends a lot of business my way.
The orb of Earth had long since ceased to be a gollygee sight, but the observation deck was still
milling with eager-eyed touries. I look around for goons-both kinds-the loonie goons with the uniform
stripes on their arms, and cheesehead goons, the muscle for Concourse queens like Amazing Gracie. The
loonie goon from before is gone, and no other two legged security in sight. Plenty of cameras in a public
place like this, but cameras don't bother me. Brahe City Security isn't who I'm concerned about.
"Maybe. Maybe not," I tell him. "How good is your chit?"
He reaches under his shirt and pulls out a gray plastic tag on a thin chain. Along the underside is a
magnetic strip. "It's got two and a half months left. I need to go home tomorrow."
Survived two whole weeks Up Here, eh?
"Cool your jets, buddy guy," I say. "You think you're booking a jump to Las Vegas? Best I can do
is a berth to Mexico City in a week." That much is almost true. Let's see what else he's got. With only so
many spots available on transports going Up and Down, even charity has its bounds. And it's not like he
can just walk up to Lunar Authority and say "take me home." They got iron sphincter schedules with
every seat going up or down booked well in advance of some poor moonunit with the fidgets. You can
buy whatever kind of visa chits you want Down There but to book an early passage downside, you need
an expiring chit saying you've used up your prepaid welcome. No Travelers Aid around here. Not yet
anyway.
The best Kimochi Stan can do if he wants to bug out is either fake an illness-which will land him in
the Quarrines for a spell-or do something to get tossed into Facilities for an undetermined amount of time
until Lunar Authority decides they might have some cargo space available. Doing crimes got you put in
jail Up Here, but once you got sent Down There you spent even more time in jail. The only smart way to
get back to Earth before your time is to get hold of an expiring chit and grab the seat assignment before
the shuttle takes off. Most touries know this. It's the moonunits who think they can just wing it without a
plan. "I can't make it another week," says Stan, all distressed and the like-more warui by the second.
Total spaznik. He pulls a handful of meal tickets from his pocket. "I have three week's of meals.
Genuine!''
They better be. Getting caught with phony meal tickets gets you nothing but bread and water with
the loonie goons until they kick you home for more of the same. I sling my guitar bag over my shoulder.
"Follow."
I set a loping pace, wide leaping, low gravity strides, but-you know-controlled and graceful, and
take a public tunnel leading away from the Concourse and crowds. I don't think anyone is following us,
but there's no sense letting Amazing Gracie or her crew spot me taking a spaznik to a hideyhole. At the
end of the tunnel I jump up a level and pull an unscrewed access panel from the wall. I motion Kimochi
inside and pull the panel closed behind us.
Boxes of control switches, circuits, and pressure gauges line the walls and insulated pipes
crisscross the ceiling. Things get more cramped in these rabbit holes, so instead of the arcing strides that
pass for walking up here, you have to sort of pull yourself along, single file, bracing your hands against the
walls while keeping your head low.
Even in enclosed quarters, there's no sense in giving Kimochi Stan enough time to gig on the path
to my hideyhole. In the techtunnels, there are no conveniently placed glowstrips to show touries the way
to the food court or gift shops. The walls and circuit boxes aren't numbered and coded in any sequential
order, but if you know how to look at them-and I do-they make spiffy-skiffy landmarks. Two years ago
I did some sly work for this one claustrophobic techie and got the lay of the land. Learned a lot about the
ins and outs of just about every rabbit hole in Brahe City.
We take so many twists and turns, paths that double back, and others that look like dead-enders
unless you squeeze past another loose panel, I figure I've got Stan lost enough where if he tries to branch
out on his own, he'd be dead lost. Not that I want him to, mind you, but I didn't get by for four years Up
Here by being the fool. If any of Gracie's crew grabs him and beats my hideyhole loc out of him, I'll be all
done. Busted flat. Game over and sent downside.
I weave through the maze for another fifteen minutes, until I'm abso-smoothly sure I have Kimochi
thoroughly scroggled. Judging from the bitty whimpers, he's just about there. I quit the runaround and cut
across a little courtyard where eight tunnels all join together. I pick the leftmost one on the far wall and
head toward my hideyhole. Well, one of the several I got scattered hither and yon.
We reach the end of the last tunnel where I switch on a battery lamp taped to the wall. I can't
really call it home; but it's a place to sleep and sometimes just hole up. A sleeping bag sits on the floor
and some boxes for clothes and incidentals lean against a wall. It's as cozy as it's going to get, a lost little
place that only me and probably Security knows about. But like I said, this is just one of several, and
Security can't be sure which one I'd be using and when.
Not that they care much.
I swivel toward Stan and point, "About face," I tell him. He's looking worse and worser. Real
fidgety. The Concourse is a nice big open space, like a mall, but even then it can feel real small to a lot of
earthworms. The rabbit holes, by comparison, are as tiny as wombs-or coffins-depending on how you
look at things. My pal Stan is not in a good state of being, but he doesn't question me. He just nods and
turns away until I say otherwise.
I put my guitar down and pull a box away from the wall. A single strand of hair sticks out from
between two panels right where I left it. I push on a corner of a panel then pry it off. Inside, sitting on a
plasteen pump control housing, is a chip scanner I once fished out of recycling and fixed. I grab it,
replace the panel, and push the box back.
"Give me your chit," I say, standing up.
Stan turns back around, pulls the chain over his head and hands me the chit. He looks around at
my little refuge-pure envy on his face. Brother, this didn't come easy. It took a long time before I had
enough tricks to stake out a safe hideyhole in the belly of the base. Learned from those who came before
me, but none of whom lasted so long. As for Stan, he probably curls himself up in some communal
corner each night, hoping not to be robbed by another spaz. He doesn't look the sort to have the dollies
for a comfort room. I run his tag through a slot in the scanner and check the length of time remaining in his
pre-paid stay. Not exactly eight weeks, but close enough not to make a big stink about it,
I hold up his chit. "With this and your meal slips, I'll trade you a berth to O'Hare in three days."
What happens next is totally my fault.
Stan launches himself at me and shoves me up against the wall. If he had taken more time to brace
himself before his lunge, he might have had more luck. As it was, I've lived on the moon for nearly five
years and I know how to move my body. Stan has only been here a couple weeks and moves as clumsy
as a toddlerbabe.
Of course it don't pay much to be overconfident. I twist and tumble him to the floor, which at
one-sixth gee doesn't hurt him much. Of course I forget how weirdly desperate these spazniks can be.
Stan kicks up his legs and tangles them with mine in a clumsy sort of judo then pulls me down with him.
He rolls atop of me and sneaks in a good clip, hitting my jaw, making my teeth click and thankful
that my tongue isn't between them. Again, this guy forgets just where he is. It doesn't take Samson to
throw a guy off your chest around here. I shove him away and scramble back before he can grabble at
me again.
He gets up and tries for another launch, but this time I'm ready for him. Poor spaz. I crouch on the
floor and wait for him to move. Stan braces himself against the wall, then launches himself at me. I
bounce to the right and rebound behind him where I grab him by the collar and yank him back. His head
smacks against the wall. Whammo!
That's all it takes.
I didn't even slam him very hard-him being a potential customer and all-but that doesn't stop old
Kimochi Stan from breaking down into bawls. I let him go and he crumples to the floor, hugging his
knees to his chest and boohooing.
I could give him a good kick right there, and probably should. But I don't. I remember my first
couple of months Up Here. It can get edgy. "Want to tell me what that was all about?" I ask.
Stan just sits there for a minute, then lifts his head and winces. "I thought you might be holding out
on me and had a return chit that left today," he says.
I look at him, not really surprised. "That desperate?"
He nods glumly.
I sigh. just a dumb spazzing cheesehead who slipped through the psyches. "A smart loonie doesn't
keep his chits all in the same place. Maybe you should stay up here longer to learn how things is done,
dig?" "No..." he moans.
I grab my scanner which got dropped in the scuffle. It looks no worse for wear-at least this isn't
Earth gravity. I toss Stan his chit back. He looks at me all worried-like. He should be. After a stunt like
that I should leave him in the deepest, darkest, most remote tunnel in the Belly. I'm sorely tempted, but
even an idiot like this might have gotten savik enough to let someone else know where he was going. And
if he doesn't reappear, living and breathing, sometime soon, word would get out that dealing with Digger
gets you a stone-cold corpse. Bad hoodoo.
"Look, Stan. No hard feelings, but don't try that shit again. Listen to older brother instead.
Tomorrow, you meet me in the Concourse by Ice Cream Lou's Rent-a-Room with your chit, your meal
tickets, and two fully charged batteries. I'll give you a chit for O'Hare leaving the next day. If you can't
find the dollie for some batteries, then it's Mexico City in a week. Until Lou's, I don't want to see your
face. Got me?"
He nods and curls himself up tighter. If the kid behaved himself maybe I'd have gotten him to
O'Hare without the batteries, but I hate getting jumped-fidgeting spaznik or not.
"You're not going to go lunar on me again."
He nods again and mumbles something. I can't hear him but he sounds properly contrite.
"Good. Now get up."
I grab him by the collar and push and pull him along with me. I take a different route back to the
Concourse and exit from a different panel than the one we entered. I make him repeat back the deal we
struck, then send him on his way. He's still choking tears and he looks a mess. I hope anyone who sees
him will be able to figure out the story for themselves.
After I send Stan stumbling on his way I recede back into the tunnels and go around the
Concourse to another hideyhole some fars aways. This one has the treasure trove hidden inside the pump
housing and I check my supply of extra chits and dump my takings from the day. I got a good amount
squirreled away Up Here in hideyholes spread across Brahe City. Nest eggs. There be rumors
percolating about that Project Burroughs is going civvie Real Soon Now. Visa rules are gonna be tough,
tougher, toughest for Mars, but money talks. I still got a ways to go to raise the funds, but without real
credentials up here, I'm stuck playing the hallways for change.
Consider, brothers and sisters, there's no work to be had up here; not unless you wrangle a
contract before you blast off-and those are tough to get. The United Nations Space Agreement
guarantees anyone the right to travel to the moon, but they don't encourage immigration. Aside from the
visa chits, there are meal tickets to use in the food court and loonie currency for incidentals and souvenirs
from the tourie shops. Lodging costs extra too, from cheap comfort rooms to posh suites with private
observation ports overlooking the dusty, dry lunar surface.
Other than to work for one of the UN tourie businesses, or in one of the research labs at the other
end of the station, there's not much left to do. You're given some passes to a few historic sites like the
Eagle landing site or the Artemis wreckage, but after that you have to pay. Fine for a tourie on a week's
holiday. Sucks for the rest of us, but we make do.
Most of the units who come up are your average touries. Here for a week to two, then gone back
to the bosom of Mama Earth. Then there are the techheads and service folk and such who hang on from
six to eighteen months then go home. Finally there are the squatters, like me. Not destitute or slovenly or
anything. We're more like moon groupies who come up for the atmosphere (ha!), but many of whom also
come away with disillusions.
But not me.
I love the moon. I love it Up Here and Out There. But I know it's not for everyone. You see, the
trick is to find a niche and hang on tight.
Take Amazing Gracie (please!) who owns a big slice of the black market. Then there's Ice Cream
Lou who provides the playspace for the boys and girls who turn exotic sixth-G tricks for bright-eyed
touries. Tattooed Lydia sells one-of-a-kind skin souvenirs-each one unique and guaranteed not to fade
away for at least five years. There are others. Lots of others. Opportunity is where you find it.
Those who can't hack it Up Here trade us their chits for ones that will send them home early. As
for yours truly, I do what I can to ease their burden-be it a song, a story, or a good trade-all the while
working on my own grand plan.
I stop outside the food court and look to see if I can't add yet a few more dollies to my stash and
maybe some meal tickets to sell later. I play and I sing and I do my thing while staying out of the way of
the loonie goons. I'm no beggar. I work for a living thank you very much.
You try singing in a public place. I dare you.
Four years, 8 months, 24 days
"Howdy Gracie,'' I say. Lordie, but she's a big woman!
"Digger," she smiles nice and outer-space cold-like. Gracie and two of her goons-the Beach Boys,
big, blond, and musclely-grab me on the Concourse and 'escort' me down a service tunnel. Fuck.
"Word's out you picked up another two months. Food too."
I give her my best grin. Poor Gracie. She's never going to outlast me Up Here. "Maybe ... then
again ... maybe."
"He should have been mine. I wouldn't have ripped him off like some dusty scavengers I know."
Gracie looks pissed.
"How now?" I ask with all the innocence of a newbie. "He's getting an early trip downside-just like
he wants. And I get another couple of months of air and some extra slop."
"Plus two of my batteries," Gracie adds. She cracks her knuckles.
Uh oh. "Don't know nothing about that."
"Fool me, fool?" she says. Damn, she's seriously pissed. "That spaznik was near to breaking so
you held out for something extra. Got him itching, so he jumps Seraphim Sally when she's coming out of
the toilets and snags two of my batteries out of her bag."
I shrug, totally unsurprised now, but I didn't tell him to go and do something like that. "Why cry to
me? You know who he is. Finger him."
"Oh yeah, like Security is going to help me grab back batteries I stole from them to begin with.
Cheesehead. The spaznik's gone underbelly and you were the last person to talk to him."
Underbelly, has he? Hope he don't get lost. Spazniks come in two flavors. Some manage to secure
an early homecoming, then party off-what little few dollies they have as noisily as possible. You'd be
surprised how many times they change their minds about leaving, but by then it's too late-the loonie goons
always seem to know.
Then there are ones like Kimochi who will never be described as 'people-persons' and go into
hiding as soon as they get their return ticket for fear of getting robbed by folken as desperate as them.
Chances are, ole Kimochi Stan won't show his face again until boarding time-if he doesn't get himself
fatally lost.
"I didn't tell him to steal anything," I tell her.
"Dammit, Digger," Gracie bounces me against the wall then grabs me by the shoulders, lifts me off
the floor, and pins me. "I want those batteries back or they're going to find you stinking up the ventilation
shafts." Her goons grin real nasty-like.
Man, I so hate people trying to whale on me. Maybe I can wriggle free, but not with the Beach
Boys right behind her. Nor with Amazing Gracie outweighing me by a max factor. And let's not forget her
amazing army. She sucks about half the longhaul transients up here into joining her racket, and a good
chunk of the other half are at least on retainer. No place to run to, Digger. No place to hide.
"Deal?" I offer. What the hell. Beats becoming a smear on the wall.
"It better include two batteries, dustmite," she says, "and while we're at it, shake your pockets
loose." Off to the left I see three more of her bully boys, Huey, Dewey, and Frank (where do they come
up with these names?) turning the corner. Anytime she wants, she can pulp me even without her bruisers
tagging along. Gracie has a very 'hands on' personality, but the goons make for serviceable camouflage
against the cameras. Oh, this is not good. Security won't waste their energy for a simple rough-up.
Maybe if Gracie kills me, that'll put a dent in her long-term plans-but I'll be long past caring. With goons
covering her back, no one sees nothing.
Calmly, calmly, I push my hands inside Gracie's elbows and she grudgingly lowers me back to the
floor. Where am I going to go?
"Look, batteries are long gone," I say. "Traded those an hour after Kimochi uploaded them to me.
And you know how things work, they change hands a double-dozen times by now. Hell, someone in
your network probably has them." That's not entirely true. One is sitting in a hideyhole, but I'm not about
to tell her that and be forced to take her there.
"That doesn't mean you're getting off," she says. Her goons are crowding behind her now.
Covering us up real nice now. Crap-squared.
I reach down my shirt and pull out a tag. Unlike all the plain gray ones, this one has a gold-colored
strip running down the back. I watch her eyes as I take it out. Oh good Gracie; I have you now.
"Seven months left," I say.
She loosens her grip on me and doesn't even notice I shrug the rest of the way out. Her jaw goes
something slack as she stares at the chit. "That's not real," she says. Her goonies are just as gawking.
"Sure 'nuff 'tis."
"No tourie gets a year-long visa. You gotta be pro to get one of those. It's a phony."
I smile, "This spaz was a university fellow who blew his funds at Lucky Dick's. I tripped over him
the first week he got here and he was already on the road to ruin. He must have blown more than money
at Dickie's because he was a bloody mess when I found him. An act of mercy got him to the infirmary
and he somehow, accidently, must have swapped this chit for a monther that was almost up."
"Fuck, Digger. Why not wait until he was dead before you robbed him?"
"Professionalism." I turn the chit over and let her see the hologrammed logo next to the strip. "You
got a reader? Good for seven more months."
She jerks her head and a tall blond beach guy with a reader slung around his neck comes around. I
put my hand around the chain and lean forward to let her run it through the reader. They machine beeps
cheerily.
Gracie frowns. She's suspicious, sure as spit, but that don't matter. It's real, and I got her hooked.
"Why you giving it up?" she asks.
Shrug. "Got more chits. Figure I give you this and you call your goons off, plus I get a couple of
free rides."
"Your ass."
"My ass is purty, thank you. You take chit, free and clear, and you and your goonies don't hassle
me for seven months."
"And if we just take it from you?"
I yank the chain back, pop the chit in my mouth and set my teeth against it. She knows I can ruin
the codes on the strip if I start grinding my teeth together, but if she gives her word, she'd has to keep it.
That's how she got to be Amazing Gracie-mean and ugly as she is. If it got out that her word was as
good as a holed spacesuit, she'd be without her army and probably downside within a week. That's just
how things work. Nobody likes a dishonest crook.
Grace spits on the floor and nods to the other goon. Spit flies funny at sixth-G, in case you didn't
know.The other blond guy comes forward and pulls the chit off over my head, "Seven months, dustmite,
then you're dead," he says.
I smile all pretty-like. Gracie sends her goons back and then smiles back at me. Not a pretty
smile-she don't have many of those left for anyone. She growls through her teeth, and leaves.
Easy, Digger.
I relax and lean back against the wall. My own freaking fault. My best chit. Granted, I got more,
but still-that was my best chit. When Kimochi gave me the batteries, I knew he must have done
摘要：

TableofContentsIntroduction-SharonLeeandSteveMillerVoyeur-EricWitcheyDiggerDon'tTakeNoRequests-JohnTeehanTheGateBetweenHopeandGlory-HollyPhillipsRiisRun-elukibesshaharBiddingtheWalrus-LawrenceM.SchoenTheGift-LauraJ.UnderwoodTheDocktoHeaven-L.E.Modesitt,Jr.FindaPin-RuEmersonSailingtotheTemple-AlanSma...

展开>> 收起<<
Sharon Lee - Steve Miller - Low Port.pdf

共168页,预览34页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：168 页 大小：510.52KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-20

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 168
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注