Beneath Ceaseless Skies #139 Read online

  She offered a finely tuned half-shrug. “Things change. We were presented with an unexpected opportunity.”

  The Kid leaned back a bit. “We?”

  “Who might this troublemaker be?” A tall man of early middle years stepped into place beside Sweetwater. He was near a match for the Kid in height and build. All done up in a finely tailored suit. Silken blond hair flowed loose to his shoulders, and he wore a waxed moustache and goatee.

  He gripped Sweetwater’s elbow as if he owned her; she winced and jerked away. He paid no heed to that as he examined the Kid, for all the world as if he suspected my friend might be a Texas cockroach.

  “Who is this man?” he asked.

  “George Clayton Moore,” Sweetwater said. “An acquaintance from the time I lived here. George, this is Alexander Tanner. Alex is my husband.”

  The Kid didn’t even hesitate. I had to give him marks for that. He said, “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Tanner.”

  Tanner ignored the offered handshake. “Mr. Moore, I advise you not to cause a scene. We do not require your services.”

  The Kid’s hand almost became a fist. Almost. He withdrew it before that happened. “I don’t recall saying I was available,” he said. “At least not to you.”

  I had seen Tanner’s grin before on wolves. “Nonetheless, you have had my answer.”

  I rested my hand on the big-bore, double-barreled derringer I kept tucked in a leather-lined vest pocket. “I’m right beside you, Kid,” I murmured, at his side.

  Tanner glanced at me. “Here, Elijah,” he called.

  “Trouble, Alex?” The voice of the man who moved up behind Tanner reminded me of the rumble of a New York City subway train. The fellow stood all of seven feet and looked strong enough to break a horse in half. I had been in a fight or two, knew how to work the gun, my fists and feet. Even so, I changed my mind about a scuffle.

  When I fight, I like think I have a chance to win.

  “No trouble,” Tanner said, his eyes still on the Kid. “Just setting a rascal in his place.”

  The Kid shrugged and stepped aside. “If that’s the way you want to run the string.”

  “There’s no need—” Sweetwater began.

  Tanner pushed on her elbow; interrupting. “We’ll be moving on now.”

  She pushed back, then saw me watching and hid her frown. She dipped her chin in acknowledgement and swept by like an Oriental princess right off the stage of a British operetta. The two men followed. I felt the heat of the big man’s passing; caught his thick scent. Bay Rum, laced with something else. Gun oil, maybe.

  Tanner handed the woman up into a floater carriage, then he followed. As the big man climbed in, the floater tilted—with a nasty hiss—then settled level, its dinner-plate-sized Goodkind disks pressed almost to the regolith. The crowd parted to give the operator room. He headed east, toward the main dome.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  No response. The Kid stood rigid, watching the floater disappear. He spun his hat in his hands as if it were a valve on a pressure line. One way and the other, round and round.

  “Kid?”

  “She’s an old friend,” he rasped.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Later. Right now I need a drink.”

  “All right,” I allowed. “I wouldn’t mind a drink myself.”

  * * *

  Faraday’s Saloon stood near the dome-six pressure gate, so regulars wouldn’t have too far to go. Most of them were miners, who liked to throw back a pint or two after work, to wash the taste of talc out of their throats.

  We sat at the bar, not talking, just sipping whiskey. Up on a little stage near the door, a gaggle of the joint’s good-time girls sang ragtime as Tommy Faraday pounded out the tunes on an old Cable-Nelson upright.

  Shift-one miners crowded around most of the tables. They had brought their work along with them. A thin film of greenish-white powder lay upon their clothing and made their faces shine. The sweet scent of talcum almost hid the stink of wet sawdust, fried onions, and stale beer.

  The Kid toyed with his drink, pushing the half-empty glass of Bushmill’s along the polished bar top. In the Moon’s gravity, it slid from his left hand as if it were on ice. Then he scooped it up and finished the whiskey in one swallow.

  “Had about enough?” I asked.

  The Kid fished a Morgan dollar from his vest. It spun and wobbled when it hit the bar.

  “Two more, Ike,” he called to the barkeep.

  He turned to me and grinned. His teeth glowed in the cold light of the Tesla excited-gas tubes Tommy favored.

  “That’s enough to keep me going,” he said. “How about you, Jack?”

  “I’m not finished with the last one yet.”

  “Well, hell. You’re not keeping up.”

  “Tell me about the woman.”

  He looked at me owl-eyed, pretending, I expect, that he was drunker than he really was. “What woman?”

  “No more baloney, Kid. Tell me about Sweetwater.”

  “You don’t want to hear about her.”

  “Yes, I do. If I was a cat, I’d be close to dead.”

  The Kid laughed. “I like you, Jack. I swear, first time we met I liked you, even if you ain’t much more than a child.”

  “I’m twenty-nine years old.”

  Ike delivered the Kid’s whiskeys. The Kid knocked back the first one straight off. “Don’t matter,” he said. “I can talk to you because we’re friends. We’re friends, ain’t we?”

  “We are.”

  “All right. You ever been in love?”

  “I have,” I said.

  “Ever been married?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How long?”

  “Four years.” I didn’t say I had liked Bessie well enough, but never really loved her. I suspect she hadn’t loved me, either.

  I took another sip of whiskey. “She lives in California now, with our two daughters.”

  “At least you had a chance. I never did.”

  “Tell me.”

  He drained half the second glass before he said another word. “I met Sweetwater right after her family’d come to Tycho City. I was twenty-four; she was nineteen. We fell in love.”

  He took a sip of whiskey. “Imagine; me in love. She was smart. Funny. A mind of her own. Stood up to me, stood up to her banker daddy, too. She wanted an education, Jack. Always had some book around. She read Mark Twain. Thoreau. A German gent named Engels.”

  “The Condition of the Working Class?”

  That’s the one.” He chuckled. “I remember she said once Goodkind should be arrested for how he treated the working class.”

  “Why did she leave?”

  “Her daddy never liked me. Not a lick. He pulled a scam on me. On me. Made me look like nothing but a two-bit flim-flam man. Somehow he convinced her all I wanted was his money.”

  “Did you try to tell her the truth?”

  “She wouldn’t hear a word from me. Took a shuttle back to Earth and didn’t even say goodbye. That was twenty years ago, and I ain’t heard a word from her since.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He finished off the second glass. “Me, too. Figured I was shut with her, but it ain’t so.”

  When he faced me, he fought to hold back tears. “Damn it, Jack, I still love her. What am I to do?”

  I had to say I didn’t know. I hadn’t had much better luck myself.

  * * *

  Next morning came too early.

  When I got to The Columbiananewsroom, a broadsheet lay spread across my desk. The gaudy piece of work didn’t do a thing but aggravate the headache I had brought with me.

  It touted The Amazing Tanners, a trapeze act, for God’s sake, and showed a color-tinted photograph of Tanner, Elijah, and Sweetwater. The three of them were wearing red-white-and-blue spangled tights. The getup looked best on Sweetwater. I had to wonder where they found enough material to cover Elijah and what kept it from tearing any
time he moved.

  “London!” Borden shouted. “Get your sorry ass in here.”

  Miller Borden, our city editor, maintained a first-name relationship with the entire staff but persisted in addressing me by my family name. Who knows why some men get resentful? I swear I hardly said an unkind word about the man or his inability to write a decent sentence.

  Be that as it may, I returned his surliness with as much indifference as I could muster. The resulting tension seemed to suit the both of us. I studied the broadsheet for a time; his shouts grew louder and more furious. Finally, I ambled to his office.

  “You find that poster?” he demanded, without preamble.

  “I did. It’s on the gaudy side.”

  “I don’t pay you for art criticism, London. I want twenty inches on the trapeze act for Sunday.”

  “The hell you say.”

  His jowls began to flush. “The hell I do say.”

  “I figured to do a full column on the president, with a couple sidebars. Something with more substance than a circus act.”

  “I’m the goddam editor. I’ll tell you what to write.”

  “And I’m to write about two grown men in spangled tights,” I said.

  “You are. They’re set up at the Palace.”

  “Damn it, Borden, why are you giving it to me?”

  The evil bastard grinned. “I figured you were our expert at working in high places. You rode the police hopper, didn’t you?”

  “That don’t mean—”

  He waved away my protest. “Besides, you’ve been requested. That pretty wife of Tanner’s asked for you. Go on; get out of here. You’re wasting time. I got you the run of the theater today and tomorrow. Take a photographer along.”

  “I know how to work a camera.”

  “Good for you,” he said. “Take a camera monkey, anyway. I want twenty inches and three photographs by Friday midnight, and make damned sure one includes the girl.”

  I made it halfway to my desk before he shouted at my back.

  “Hey, London!”

  “Yeah?” I didn’t look around.

  “That bum you call a friend—”

  “What? You mean the Kid?”

  “Yeah. He landed his sorry ass behind bars again.”

  I cursed myself for abandoning the Kid at Faraday’s. He had been in no shape to be alone. Borden had closed his office door. I ducked into the darkroom. No one was there, so I snatched up a camera bag, and headed for the jail.

  * * *

  Tycho City is laid out beneath a main dome and five lesser ones. The main dome only tapers to the regolith at one end. The other end butts flat against the high east rim of Tycho Crater.

  Professor John Roswell Goodkind had carved out his company headquarters and personal residence there, one thousand feet above the crater floor, and installed a lot of windows. A fine spot, I suppose, to look out across a kingdom.

  The five lesser domes fan out like the outstretched fingers of a hand, each joined to the main dome by a tunnel that can be closed off by two pressure gates. The jail is in dome five, set in among warehouses, repair garages and equipment shops.

  “I’m here to see the Kid,” I told the booking sergeant.

  “He ain’t here,” the sergeant said.

  There was a new Edison acoustical handset on his desk. “Mind if I use that?” I asked.

  “Help yourself.”

  The Pole picked up on the second ring. “Central Division. Lieutenant Rybarczyk speaking.”

  I held the receiver inches from my ear. The Pole shouted, the way most folks did when they first used Edison’s new device, but his normal tone was as loud as anybody else’s shout.

  “Hey, Pole,” I said. “It’s Jack.”

  “Course it is,” he said. “Who else would call me on one of these god-forsaken gadgets but a newshound.”

  “I’m glad to hear your voice, too.”

  “What’cha you want, London? I’m a busy man.”

  The Pole called me by my last name, too, but not because he didn’t care for me. He liked to play the rough-and-tumble game. He was a good man, though, so I let him get away with it.

  “I’m looking for the Kid,” I said. “Somebody told me he’s in jail, but he’s not here.”

  “Planning to spring him?”

  “I thought about it.”

  The Pole laughed; my hand set rattled. “Should’a called me first, saved yourself a trip out there to five.”

  “Oh?”

  “He was here at Central for a spell, something about a dust-up at Faraday’s. Tommy never showed to file charges, though, so we held him ‘til he sobered up and let him go.”

  “When?”

  “Couple hours. Didn’t want to leave. Said he needed time to think.”

  I chuckled. “Thanks, Pole. I know where to look.”

  * * *

  I’d told the Pole I knew where the Kid was, and I found him there, sitting on the wrought-iron bench in Goodkind Square.

  “I’ve been trying to find you, Kid.” I settled next to him.

  He didn’t look at me. “I’ve been right here.”

  “I see.”

  “I been thinking, Jack,” he said.

  “About Sweetwater?”

  “What else?” He took off his hat and brushed at the brim as he spoke. “You ever hear why folks call me the Hallelujah Kid?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “She’s the one who hung it on me. One night, not long after we met, she and I went out to eat. I was dead-set in love with her by then. Couldn’t say no to her. So when she asked to see where working people ate, I took her to Tommy Faraday’s.

  “So we’re halfway through our steaks. I’m telling her how my mama and papa died of the Yellow Fever, when the Pole shows up. Just settles at the table, unannounced and uninvited.”

  “He’s done that to me a time or two.”

  “So you know how he is. He takes over the conversation; tells Sweetwater if he hadn’t kept a thumb on me I would’a been more than a petty grifter, I would’a been a crook and a three-time loser. Then he says, ‘Did George tell you his daddy was a preacher? George was a preacher, too. A preacher boy.’

  “She looked at me and giggled. I remember thinking, God, don’t let this ever end. The Pole said, ‘George was all of six, but he knew his Bible verses and he could talk a mile a minute, so his daddy let him preach. Now and then, he’d come up for air and yell, ‘Can I hear a Hallelujah?’ Folks loved him then; would’a done anything he asked. It’s still that way.’”

  The Kid sighed. “Sweetwater looked at me and clapped her hands. She said, ‘Why you’re a hero of the people, George. Like Robin Hood. We’ll call you the Hallelujah Kid.’”

  “That was twenty years ago,” I said. “She’s married now.”

  “Don’t make one damned bit of difference.”

  I had to ask. “Any chance you could forget her? Move on with your life?”

  He didn’t even try to hide the tears, this time. “No.”

  “Then you best talk to her, see if you can work it out.”

  His shoulders slumped. “I tried after I got out of jail this morning. Tanner’s goon stopped me at the door.”

  “Elijah?”

  “That’s the one. He said he didn’t want to hurt me, ‘less he had to, but I wasn’t welcome. He’ll never let me close to her, let alone give me a chance to say a word.”

  I stood up. “Come on.”

  He sat up straight but didn’t stand. “Where to?”

  “The Palace. I got two days of unrestricted access.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t.”

  I held up the Auto Graflex I had pinched from the darkroom. An extra press medallion hung from the camera’s carry strap. “Now you have a press pass. Borden wants three glossies.”

  “I don’t know how to operate a camera,” he said.

  “A little tyke can do it. We’ll walk slow. On the way, I’ll teach you everything you need.”
/>   * * *

  The Palace Theater was hard to miss. It stood three stories high and took up a city block just off Center Park. Its walls, bricks formed from molten sulfur and regolithic powder, had been dyed dark red. A lighted marquee ran the length of the street face. The Flying Tanners had top billing.

  At the lobby door, a skinny somber-looking gent in a horse soldier’s campaign cap and open-collared shirt blocked our way. He wore an old service pistol in a holster cinched tight on his hip. He had carved holes in the holster belt so it would fit.

  “Here now,” he said. “Who might you two be?”

  I flashed my press badge. “Jack London, The Columbiana.”

  Mr. Campaign Cap made a show of perusing my pass. He poked a thumb at The Kid. “It don’t say nothing about him.”

  The Kid twisted the strap to show his badge.

  “My camera operator,” I said.

  “You need a special operator?”

  “Clarence,” I commanded.

  “This is a tricky brute,” the Kid said. ‘Let me show you—”

  Mr. Campaign Cap waved the Kid away, then squinted up at him. “You been here before?”

  “Naw,” the Kid said.

  “I swear I seen you this morning, when I come to work.”

  “Not me.” The Kid shook his head. “I was home in bed.”

  The fella took another hard look, grunted, and waved us on inside. A second stalwart, an old man this time, sat on a high-backed wooden chair tipped to the wall, reading the morning’s Columbiana. He barely glanced at our passes, just waved us through.

  “Boss says you got run of the place,” he said. “Just don’t disturb rehearsal.”

  The Kid went off in search of his lost love. I slipped into the high-ceilinged auditorium. A net had been stretched the full width and depth of the stage and extended out over the orchestra pit. Mechanics were stringing lines, testing tautness, and trapeze bars dangled a goodly distance off the floor.

  Back-stage, a barbershop quartet worked their way through Hello! Ma Baby. Tanner stood at the edge of the stage, with an older gent I took for the work-crew foreman. The two men were arguing. I slid into a seat beneath the balcony; leaned against the seat in front of me to better hear their heated words.