Beneath Ceaseless Skies #139 Read online

  “...too damned long, I tell you... my rig, not yours... but the lines... my calculations... but... don’t care what you...”

  Someone settled into the seat next to me.

  “Boss told me to watch for you.”

  I could feel the words in my back teeth. Elijah filled the seat and a wall of heat poured off him, so that I wondered if I’d burn my fingers if I touched his chest.

  Instead, I rested my hand on the lump in my vest that was the derringer. It brought me some small comfort.

  “My boss told me I had run of the place,” I said. “Maybe I misheard him.”

  “You being smart with me?” Elijah asked.

  “Wouldn’t even think of it,” I said.

  Then it came to me why Elijah made me nervous. When the sun was overhead, Tycho City could get real warm. No one wore a stitch more clothing than called for by decorum.

  Elijah was layered in wool and linen, every inch of him, except his face. Looking at him made me sweat. That explained the heat. As to the gun-oil smell, I was certain that under all those clothes he wore a Goodkind augment frame.

  I’d seen augment frames in use by Tycho City’s special-crimes bluecoats. If Elijah’s frame was standard, he could run at ten miles an hour all day, lift two or three times his own weight, and squeeze a piece of aged oak into splinters.

  The big man leaned close; loomed over me like a stone wall ready to collapse. I forgot to breathe again.

  “Here’s Elijah’s Rule,” he said. “Remember it. Don’t make no trouble for me, I won’t make no trouble for you.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  “Good.”

  He pushed himself out of the seat. The armrest between us snapped beneath his hand with a dry-stick crack. He lumbered up the aisle and out the double doors.

  The auditorium grew quiet. Only the foreman remained on stage. I made my way to the front and climbed up to him.

  “Howdy,” I said.

  “Who are you?”

  I showed my press pass. “Jack London. The Columbiana.”

  “Sure, I know you. I like your column. You speak up for the little guy.”

  “Thank you.” I tipped my head toward the net. “That’s a solid rig you fellows put up, but aren’t the lines a mite too long?”

  The foreman peered at me. “You know much about trapeze?”

  I shook my head. “Not as much as you.”

  He nodded at my words. “Been doing this sort of thing for thirty years. He says he done the calculations, but so have I. They haven’t even—”

  “Peale!”

  Tanner’s voice thundered from above. The foreman shut up and turned toward the balcony across the back of the auditorium. I spotted Tanner, standing in a crossing aisle, an open door behind him.

  “Yes, sir?” the foreman shouted.

  Tanner beckoned him. “Come up here, will you? I want to talk to you.”

  “But—”

  “I’d like to speak with you now.”

  The foreman hurried off stage left, down a few steps, to the outside aisle. At his touch, a hidden door opened in the side wall beneath the balcony. A service stairwell, I supposed.

  As if a magic trick, an audience door to the balcony opened and Elijah appeared. I swore I could hear the hiss of his augment frame. He and Tanner exchanged whispers, then the foreman appeared. All three stepped through the open door and it closed behind them.

  I was alone in the auditorium. I looked out across the vacant seats; felt the sighs and echoes that fill such empty spaces. I stood for a time, alone. Listening for ghosts, I guess. The scent of Elijah’s Bay Rum and gun oil still hung with me.

  After a bit, I wandered off stage-left and found a staircase cut down into the regolith. I descended into a labyrinth of dressing cubicles and storage rooms, where I wandered near on to thirty minutes, poking happily into places I had never been. On the far side, I came upon another staircase. I climbed back to the stage, and there was Tanner waiting at the top.

  The fellow with the horse soldier’s campaign cap stood at his elbow, grinning as if he knew something I didn’t.

  “He’s the one,” Mr. Campaign Cap said. “And he brought that tall skinny feller in with him.”

  Tanner held up his hand, a folded greenback pinched between his thumb and finger. “You can go now.”

  Mr. Campaign Cap took the money with one hand and laid the other on the pistol hanging at his hip. “Maybe I should stay.”

  “I’ll deal with him,” Tanner said.

  “You’re the boss.” The fellow touched the brim of his cap and wandered off.

  Tanner stepped close. His voice was low, pitched just for me. “Your editor swore you wouldn’t give me any trouble.”

  “Have I?”

  “Elijah was correct. You, sir, have a smart mouth. You are no longer welcome.”

  “I’ll have trouble finishing that write-up you wanted.”

  Tanner offered up that wolf’s grin again. “That’s not my problem. I’ll survive without it, but I doubt that you will. You ought to have thought it out before you brought that tramp in.”

  There was a commotion across the stage and Elijah appeared though the side curtains. He had the Kid and Sweetwater in tow, each clamped in one of his meaty hands. Sweetwater appeared set to pitch a fit; her lips were pressed down tight and her brow was creased. The Kid looked ready to rip Elijah’s head off, or die trying.

  “Look what I caught, Alex,” Elijah growled.

  “Tell him to let us go,” Sweetwater snapped.

  “Do what she says,” Tanner said.

  The big man let go, and both of them wobbled on their feet. The Kid recovered first. He wheeled around, his fist drawn back. Elijah grinned, ready for the blow, but Sweetwater stepped between them. “No, George!” she said. “He’s just looking for a chance to bust you into kindling.”

  The Kid took a step back and tugged his coat and vest into place. “Got no right to treat us this way, Tanner. No right at all.”

  “I’ll treat you any way I like,” Tanner replied. “She’s my wife and you’re a trespasser. You, too, Mr. London.”

  I saw only one safe way out of this. “We’ll leave,” I said.

  Tanner smiled again. “Good.”

  “Sweetwater, I meant what I told you. Every word of it.” The Kid sounded near to breaking.

  “I know you do, George,” she said. “Every word.”

  “Get him out of here,” Tanner snarled.

  Sweetwater stepped close and laid her hand on the Kid’s arm. “You best leave, George.”

  I pulled at the Kid. At first he resisted, still ready to jump into a fight. Then he nodded and came along to the stage door, walking backwards, his eyes on Sweetwater.

  “I’ll come back for you. I swear I will,” he said.

  “Oh, George.” Sweetwater stretched out her arm toward him. I glanced at Tanner, wondering if he’d sneer.

  Instead, he roared, “Elijah, throw them out!”

  The big man crowded us through the stage door and slammed it behind us.

  In the alley, the Kid pulled away from me and squared his shoulders. “I thought you was my friend.”

  “I am. Now let’s get out of here.” I started for the street.

  “No. Let’s go back in there and go toe-to-toe with those two bastards. They’re all but holding her a prisoner and I ain’t about to pocket such a treatment.”

  “Listen to yourself, Kid. Do you really think either one of us can take on Elijah in a straight-on fight?”

  He snatched off his hat and spun it in his hands, then drew a breath and nodded. “All right. I expect that’s so. Let’s go tell the Pole what’s going on.”

  “What is going on?”

  The Kid stopped at the mouth of the alley. “Hell, Jack, you was there. You saw the two of them, the nasty way Tanner treats her.”

  “I did, but she’s his wife and he made his wishes clear to both of us. The Pole, busy as he is right now, will laugh and kick
us out.”

  “Suit yourself. I can’t just do nothing.”

  He pushed the camera at me, swung around, and walked away toward Central station.

  I should have run after him, should have stopped him, but I needed time to catch my breath. I already had my share of problems. First off, I needed to figure out a way to tell my boss there’d be no write-up or photographs. A way that didn’t end with me getting fired.

  * * *

  I decided if I got to Borden before he heard what happened from someone else, he might be reasonable. No luck with that.

  “London!” he bellowed, the instant I stepped through the newsroom door. “Come convince me I ought not toss you out on your ass right now.”

  I hesitated at the door to his office. He sat back in his big leather chair, his fingers tapping on his acoustical receiver, his brows screwed in tight.

  “It’s not bad as it sounds,” I said.

  “The hell, you say,” he snapped. “I just got off the line with Tanner. He made it sound like a proper bollix, blamed it all on you. He threatened to pull his advertising—even worse, to sue.”

  “He won’t do that,” I said.

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “Where else would he advertise?”

  Borden slammed his hand onto the desk. “Damn it, it’s no joke. I’ve had enough of your tomfoolery. You’re a good writer, London, but you don’t think, you just go off half-cocked. I can’t have it. I’m the editor. I run things here.”

  “I was wrong to do what I did.”

  Borden glared at me over the top of his reading glasses, surprised, I suppose, to hear me admit I was guilty.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Borden,” I added. “I won’t do it again.”

  I watched the wheels turn. I swear, he bought that pack of lies. “All right. You got enough to do a column about Tanner’s show?”

  “I could write it in my sleep.”

  I could, too, even if I had to make up most of it. I’d slap something together by Friday night that would satisfy him.

  “All right,” Borden growled. “You got ‘til midnight Friday. If you don’t have it to me by then, look for another job.”

  * * *

  “It’s a simple calculation.” My friend Max Weber scribbled on a sheet of paper as he spoke. “Only three numbers that can change.”

  Max was an engineer at Goodkind’s laboratories. I bought him beers, from time to time, and he provided technical information, from time to time. He never asked any questions.

  We sat in his office, as he ticked off three variables on his fingers. “The length of swing arm—in your case the bar’s support lines; the load mass – that’s the weight of the person hanging on the bar; and force of gravity.”

  “And there’s less gravity here on the Moon.”

  “One-sixth Earth. So if you want someone on the trapeze to swing a certain distance in the same time, every time, the bar’s support lines need to be shorter than on Earth, and their swing points closer together.”

  “What would happen if the lengths were off?”

  Max grinned. “A trapeze act is all about someone being in a certain spot to catch someone. It’s all about timing. If the length’s not right, that wouldn’t happen. Whoever was expecting to be caught would fall. Of course, they’d have a net; but wouldn’t it would be embarrassing, falling on their asses in front of Roosevelt.”

  Walking back to the office, I played that notion over and over in my head. Tanner was a proud man, who wouldn’t want to look the fool. And he had done the calculations, too often to make such a simple error.

  So what was going on?

  * * *

  I woke up to the noise of someone pounding at my door.

  “You in there, Jack?” a man shouted. “If’n I gotta go get a key, I ain’t gonna be happy.”

  I rolled to the edge of the bed and sat up, then stood and headed for the door. “Hold your water. I’m coming.”

  “I swear I’m gonna bust this door in.”

  I grabbed the knob and yanked the door open. “There,” I snapped. “It wasn’t even locked.”

  A bluecoat stood outside, a hopper cop. I knew the man. I had written a column on hoppers six months before and had ridden pinion behind Hogan; even tried my hand at the controls.

  “What is it, Hogan?” I sounded as if something nasty had crawled into my mouth and died. It tasted that way, too.

  “The Pole wants you. Right away.”

  “Are you arresting me?”

  “Naw, but you gotta come. He’s rippin’ at his hair. He says Roosevelt’s supposed to be here inside the hour.”

  I followed him outside to where his hopper sat at the curb. The thing looked like a praying mantis wearing an augment suit. It carried two narrow saddles and rode on six big Goodkind disks. Not much weight and lots of power.

  “Jump on.” Hogan tugged on his helmet and goggles. “Don’t forget the straps.”

  I worked at the safety straps and did it right. When he was satisfied, Hogan swung onto the front saddle and set his hands to the controls. By the time I got my hands wrapped around the panic grips, we were two hundred feet above the regolith and climbing, headed north toward central station.

  * * *

  The Pole spotted me the instant I walked in. The room was filled with officers, elbow-to-elbow, but somehow they got out of his way.

  “Where is he?” he demanded. “Where the hell is that lanky bum?”

  “You mean the Kid?”

  “Damn straight. Nobody’s seen him since yesterday.”

  “Last I saw him was mid-afternoon. He said he was coming to see you.”

  The Pole’s big, homely face was inches from mine. I could smell the sausage he had had for lunch. Heat poured off him, and he wasn’t wearing an augment frame.

  “He never made it,” the Pole said. “Ain’t bad enough we got two hoppers missing and the president close to landing. I got to find the Kid, too.”

  “What’s he done?”

  “It ain’t what he’s done, it’s what he might do. I got three witnesses ready to swear they heard the Kid say he was going to kill Roosevelt. The Secret Service is hot to get their hands on him.”

  A door in the far wall banged open and a fellow in a black suit, who looked to be made of granite, tromped into the room. “Rybarcyzk?” he shouted, even louder than the Pole.

  The Pole pushed me toward the door. “Go find the Kid.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “That gent’s Secret Service. He wants the Kid, but he wants you, too.”

  “And?”

  “You won’t do me a bit of good, handcuffed to a table here. Go find the Kid and bring him in.”

  “All right,” I said, and hustled out the door.

  * * *

  Outside, I found the streets almost deserted. As I stood gawking, wondering if the rapture had come and gone and no one had said a word to me, a couple hurried by. They were dressed as if on their way to a party or a funeral.

  It came to me: everyone was off to see the president.

  The Pole had it right. The bluecoats did have their hands full, and most every copper in Tycho City was already stationed inside dome four.

  I set off west, figuring to worm my way into the dome and work the edges of the crowd, looking for the Kid. I had to hoof it, though; the omnibuses weren’t running. Coming out of Center Park, I crossed a stand of grass that faced the Palace Theater and I heard the crowd begin to cheer.

  I marveled at the volume. For that much noise, I knew safety protocol had been ignored and both pressure doors were open. How else could the coppers manage that big a crowd?

  The noise swelled. High above the domes, A Wells Fargo shuttle appeared. An image of a rippling red, white, and blue American flag adorned the shuttle’s brushed aluminum shell. I’m not what you’d call a naturally patriotic man, but seeing that flag, there on the Moon, made me feel real proud.

  Then I caught movement from the co
rner of my eye. A hopper climbing away from the alley next to the theater. The driver wore a flier’s helmet and bluejacket uniform, but the rider in the pinion saddle wore a bowler and a green plaid suit, and he was tall and lean. “Hey, Kid,” I almost shouted.

  Then I had a second thought.

  Anyone who didn’t know the Kid real well would swear it was him, just from the suit. Even so, you hang around another man, you come to recognize him no matter what he wears. It can be any one of a hundred little things. The way he sits. The way he turns his head. The way he touches at his hair.

  Something about the fellow on the hopper made me wonder if it truly was my friend. Then, when they cleared the roof of the theater, sunlight caught a roll of golden hair tucked beneath the back brim of the bowler.

  Tanner!

  He might be wearing the Kid’s plaid suit, but he hadn’t done a good enough job of hiding that mane of his beneath the Kid’s hat. Still, I couldn’t bring to mind who the other fellow was. It couldn’t be Elijah, dressed in copper’s blue. He was a much bigger man.

  I stepped off the curb and hurried across the empty street. It would be a waste of time to go to Goodkind Square. The only place I figured I’d find answers to the mystery was inside the Palace Theater.

  * * *

  A second hopper sat outside the stage door. A discarded tarp lay nearby. The door had been secured but didn’t have a sturdy lock. I fiddled at it with the hardened-steel picks I always carried, heard the tumblers click into place, and pushed the door aside.

  No one was there, at least not back-stage. From the sound of it, I wondered if there was anyone inside. Even so, I moved with as much stealth as I could manage, creeping across the stage, expecting a spotlight to snap onto me at any moment.

  Only a few work lights were burning, and all I heard was the shuffle of my shoe soles on regolith. The net and Tanner’s rigging still hung in place. The cavernous space beyond the proscenium lay draped in shadow. It felt real empty.

  Then I heard a voice. I closed my eyes and held my breath so long I almost put down roots. At last, the voice came again, from the balcony. It rumbled like a kettle drum.

  Elijah.

  I hurried from the stage, slinking from shadow to shadow on the far wall until my fingers brushed across an inset hinge. Careful inspection found two more hinges and the latch. The crew stairs. I pulled the latch an inch; heard the lock click free. In the empty theater, the sound seemed thunderous, but no one came.