Part 1 (2/2)
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. Andre knew the little man had grown old taking the money of lost souls like him.
The dwarf pa.s.sed his extractor over Andre's palm. The status bead cooled and dimmed. Andre 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 Andre.
He didn't care. Only the moment when the metal blind slid away from the window was important. His heart beat faster, antic.i.p.ating 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 gla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+eld out distractions that came more from the darkness within than from the darkness surrounding him.
The metal blind slid away.
Andre pressed his face to the gla.s.s, trying to fill himself with the sight beyond, trying to pour himself out between his hands into the infinite s.p.a.ce 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.
Andre stared into the mind of G.o.d. 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 h.e.l.l 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. h.e.l.l, 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 h.e.l.l out of the lighter gravity-when I catch a cough from a uniformed loonie goon by the pa.s.sageway 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 pa.s.sing the tin around. Not bad. Some loonie dollies and some meal tickets, and a b.u.t.ton. Ha! I love kids. Where'd they find a b.u.t.ton 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 ma.s.s 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 j.a.ppongo, right?”
He looks embarra.s.sed. Most of us who end up b.u.mming 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. j.a.pan 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, m.u.f.fling 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 s.h.i.+vers 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 bluegra.s.s. 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 pa.s.sage 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.signment 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.
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