[03] Elite: Docking is Difficult (4 page)

‘I don’t know, Misha – it’s a very interesting point you raise.’ The President suddenly leaned forward, and pulled a hopeful expression. ‘Speaking of raising interesting points, and of differences of opinion, did you have that talk with your dad?’

‘Yeah. He’s still pretty committed to the pig trading business.’

There was a long, difficult pause. The President’s face clouded over. ‘That’s a shame,’ he said. ‘That’s a very great shame indeed.’

‘He’s a stubborn old bastard,’ agreed Misha.

‘The truth is,’ said the President, reaching across the table and putting his hand on Misha’s shoulder like a creepy, friendly uncle, ‘I just want the best for all my subjects. Voters. Whatever the technical term is. I don’t like the thought of you missing this golden opportunity.’

Misha nodded. ‘Things do seem to be taking off round here.’

‘Exactly! It’s a bold, bright new future. Just between you and me, there’s talk of finally finishing the municipal centre roof. Who knows, one day we might even be able to switch the giant billboard on. This whole art thing has really turned our fortunes around. Did you hear that we’ve actually had to bring in off-worlders to start doing the jobs people can’t be bothered to do anymore? It’s expensive, but that’s okay, because everyone’s a lot richer now. Well, almost everyone.’ He said that last bit with a pointed look.

Misha glumly typed his order into the booth’s printer. An unappetising tuna melt sprayed onto his plate.

‘We need all the indigenous artists we can get our hands on,’ the President continued. ‘In fact, at the current rate we’ll have to set up factories to deal with the order backlog. Gippsworld is going places! And
you
should be going places too.’

‘I’ll keep working on him, but don’t hold your breath,’ said Misha, taking a resigned bite of his sandwich. ‘It took me five years to convince him that filtering the brainworms out of our water supply wasn’t a “ridiculous bourgeois affectation”.’

Misha finished his food, which the President insisted on paying for, and apologised again. Then he wandered back to where the
Malkovich
was parked, and climbed up into the boxy cockpit. He whistled a melancholy little tune as he waited for the light that would indicate his take-off slot had cleared. It eventually flashed green, and he clicked the ignition. The jets roared beneath him. Even though he was flying what was technically categorised as a barn, the g-force was briefly thrilling. The ship rattled and shook its way upwards, through the clouds and the drizzle, past the stupid billboard, and finally burst out through the top of the miserable troposphere and into the shining blackness of outer space. For a few moments, for the not-quite-twenty minute journey between the spaceport and the nearby
Jim Bergerac
, Misha could pretend that, much like Cliff Ganymede, he was blasting off towards an exciting adventure. Encounters with pirates, assassins and girls wearing impractical space-leotards.

A thick, bubbling, popping sound brought him back to the moment. Misha unstrapped himself, stepped into his magno-boots, and went to check the cargo. He had left a light on in the hold. One of the pigs, having drifted a bit too close to it, had over-photosynthesised. Misha groaned, picked up a vacuum cleaner, and opened the door. Pig bits floated out and lodged in his hair.

I am
, thought Misha with a sigh,
some way off from meeting girls dressed in impractical space-leotards.

Phoebe, excited for the first time in months, waited on the bench outside Detective Sergeant Peterson’s office and jiggled her cybernetic leg. It didn’t seem to be adjusting very well to the
Jim Bergerac
’s flaky pressure changes lately, and she really wanted to fiddle about with the settings, but that would have meant opening the squeaky hatch on her shin and she was already feeling self-conscious enough. On the noticeboard opposite some clever dick had scrawled a crude figure of a stick-woman, readily identifiable because of an explanatory arrow with ‘Phoebe, the Mechanical Lady’ written next to it. The stick-woman was kissing a refrigeration unit, and a speech bubble coming out of her mouth said ‘OH MISTER REFRIGERATOR I WANT TO SEX YOU’. Phoebe’s colleagues did not score highly on their workplace discrimination courses.

Something buzzed, and a plastic receptionist cheerfully informed Phoebe that Sergeant Peterson was free to see her now.

‘Officer Clag! What’s afoot?’ Peterson beamed at her from behind his desk like a benign corpulent bear. That was always his greeting. ‘What’s afoot?’ When she had first heard it, Phoebe assumed Peterson was having a go at her leg, but soon discovered he was simply being arch. The assumption being: things were never afoot in the vicinity of the
Jim Bergerac
.

She tried to sound professional and business-like but couldn’t keep the note of excitement out of her voice. ‘Well, sir,’ she said, marvelling as usual at just how rectangular his blocky, ursine head was, ‘I think something strange is going on. Something
interesting
.’

‘Really?’ Peterson looked understandably doubtful. He stroked his moustache in an unconvinced sort of way.

‘There have been anomalies.’

‘Anomalies?’

‘Anomalies.’ Phoebe fought back a grin. ‘As you know, with the recent unexpected boom in the Gippsworld art market, we’ve been having quite a few more traders turn up in the system.’

‘Yes, haven’t seen the place so busy in years. Exciting times! I was thinking of getting one myself – a sculpture, that is – as a conversation piece for the dining room. Mrs Peterson is terribly keen.’

Phoebe nodded, and tried to keep her boss on track. ‘Well, here’s the interesting bit. I’ve done fifty-nine spot-checks in the past couple of weeks, and in thirty of those, do you know what I found?’ She paused dramatically.

‘Go on.’

‘
Nothing
.’

‘Ah,’ Peterson frowned, seemingly non-plussed.

‘Nothing at all. By which I mean the ships
weren’t carrying the cargo they said they were
. They had “Gippsworld indigenous peoples’ artwork” listed on the manifest, but nothing in the hold.’

‘Oh.’

It wasn’t quite the reaction she’d hoped for. ‘I mean to say, that’s odd, isn’t it?’ she persisted. ‘Especially given that they’d already paid the shipping tax.’

‘Is it a crime, though? Not carrying things? It doesn’t
sound
like much of a crime,’ Peterson looked deep in thought for a moment, and patted his pockets. ‘I’m not carrying anything right now. I often don’t.’

‘Well, no, I suppose when you look at it that way …’ Phoebe floundered and did her best to grab on to why it had all seemed so important ten minutes ago. ‘But it’s puzzling.’

‘And what did the traders say when you asked about this “anomaly”?’

‘Most of them claimed they must have filled out the manifest wrong.’

‘That can happen. I myself am poor at basic admin tasks. Jenkins over in Narcotics is
hopeless.
He has a child called “Herpes” as a direct result of his inability to fill out a form correctly.’

‘I thought, perhaps with some further investigation …’

‘Officer Clag, don’t take this the wrong way,’ Peterson steepled his fingers and smiled in an annoying beatific way, ‘But do you think, that just possibly, you’re clutching at straws? Trying to find some intrigue where there isn’t really any intrigue to be found? I know that you find life a little
quiet
around these parts.’

Phoebe felt her last vestige of enthusiasm slip away, and she slumped against the wall. A ventilation pipe dripped onto her epaulette. ‘I suppose I might be reading too much into the situation.’

Peterson leaned back and exhaled a long, deep breath, which was a sure sign that a speech of some kind was looming.

‘Do you know why there’s so little customs and excise crime in this system?’

Phoebe was about to start listing all the obvious reasons: the lack of passing space traffic, the system not really being on the way to anywhere, the populace’s general lack of imagination, the dearth of any commodities worth smuggling, and so on, but instead she bit her lip and waited for Peterson to impart his wisdom.

‘It’s
love
, that’s the key. We let them know they’re loved,’ he pointed to the poster on the wall which showed a Police Viper shooting a beam of hearts and rainbows at a smiling pirate, who was cradling a Labrador. One of the recent police initiatives had been to give suspected criminals a pet to look after. It was supposed, Phoebe vaguely remembered, to teach them responsibility or something. Most of the dogs were now just wandering around the space station corridors, having gone feral, weeing on the carpets and biting people. ‘It’s not a them-and-us situation,’ Peterson continued. ‘You’ve got to see the good in citizens, even the smugglers and the villains and your basic ne’er-do-wells. Crush them with human kindness.’

Phoebe shrugged. She didn’t buy it, but she’d heard worse philosophies.

‘Your misplaced zeal and desire for Things To Happen doesn’t really chime with our softly, softly approach.’

‘It’s just so
boring,
’ said Phoebe. ‘That’s the trouble.’

‘Have you considered taking up a hobby?’ said Peterson with a sympathetic cock of his head. ‘Hobbies are great. Take me, for example – I’m writing a thriller. It’s a novel, but I think it has real movie potential, because I have a naturally visual brain. Comes from my years of looking at things with a policeman’s eye. Much harder than you’d think, the writing. You have to make everything up. Like, the ship that the hero pilots. What colour is that ship?’

The sergeant paused. Phoebe wasn’t sure if this was an actual question.

‘Green?’ she suggested, helpfully.

‘Could be green. Could be blue. It’s those telling details that bring the prose to life.’

‘Thank you, sir. I’ll try to keep all that in mind,’ said Phoebe.

‘The problem with you, Officer Clag, is you don’t have enough of a life outside your job. I never see you out and about around the station. What is it you
do
with your free time? To relax, I mean?’

I sit on my rented massage couch in my tiny apartment and I eat synthi-noodles and sometimes have borderline psychotic thoughts about the stains in my shirt.

‘I read a lot,’ said Phoebe.

‘Well, you need to let your hair down. There’s an Outsider Art public view on at the Omar Sharif Jazz Lounge tonight. Go along! Meet people! That’s an order. I’m
ordering
you as your superior. I don’t think I can technically do that, but I’m doing it anyway.’

There was no sign of Officer Clag’s Police Viper as Misha pulled into the
Jim Bergerac
, which at least meant she didn’t see him prang the side of the docking bay again. As he resignedly watched the soundless shower of sparks and waited for the automatic fine to pop up on his screen, he could already hear Misha Senior’s looming admonishment.
‘Why are you so poor at the docking? By which I mean both the real docking, and also the
metaphorical
docking. The metaphorical docking is with
women
. If threshing machine accident had not left your mother with no tear ducts I know she would sob in grave.’

Misha loitered around the bay for a while, hoping Phoebe would turn up, pretending to do some last minute checks on the livestock. He fiddled with the flight console. He read through his tax documentation a few times. After an hour with no sign of her, he gave up. Another bust, which meant that in the past six months his interactions with Phoebe Clag had amounted to:

He grabbed a show-pig and floated across the docking bay towards the lift.

The lift was unpleasant, both because the sensation of steadily increasing gravity as it sped from the weightless hub of the station to the outer wheel made Misha nauseous, and because the built-in biometric advertising yapped embarrassingly all the way.

‘Why not try the new salad bar on level two?’ suggested a shimmering poster, sensing that Misha was carrying a few pounds more than was ideal for his height.

‘All you can eat chicken buckets!’ suggested another, sensing the exact same thing.

‘Singles night at Club Moroder,’ suggested a third, using a quick blast of micro-spectroscopy that failed to find any indication of recent sexual intercourse.

The lift stopped and Vitali, another Gippsworldian, got on. He was wearing a bright white kaftan, carrying a strange pink-faced ferret thing in a basket, and there was what looked like a piece of meat taped to his conical hat. It seemed to Misha that ever since the art boom, fashions had been getting quite hard to keep a handle on.

‘Misha! What’s up? Still trying to shift those pigs?’

‘Hi, Vitali. Yeah, still trying.’ Misha pulled a what-can-you-do? face.

‘Listen, forget about the pigs for a while. Me and some of the other guys have got a public view of our latest pieces going on tonight. You should come along.’

Vitali pressed a flyer into Misha’s hand. ‘I’m hoping some high-rollers might be there. I just sold five sculptures for thirty credits a pop. Apparently my work puts people in mind of the Neo-Bauhaus school.’

‘That’s wonderful,’ said Misha. ‘Who are the Neo-Bauhaus school?’

‘I have no clue!’ said Vitali, grinning. ‘Crazy times!’

The market hall where traders gathered to do their trading was packed, but not with the kind of people who looked like they wanted to buy pigs. Misha found his way over to a spare stall, put out his pile of complimentary pig-shaped branded key rings, and punched in his asking price, which flashed neon on the screen above his head. Looking round, it was apparent he was the only one in the entire room not buying or selling Gippsworld art. Well-heeled types glanced at him pityingly. A beautiful platinum blonde almost tripped up over his show-pig.

‘Sorry,’ said Misha, pulling the pig out of the way.

‘What the hell is
that
?’ said the platinum blonde.

‘It’s a Gippsworld Virtual Pig. Are you interested in substitute pork, by any chance?’

‘Some of it is on my shoe.’

‘You can try a free sample if you like. Guaranteed best on Gippsworld.’

The platinum blonde looked at him as if the distance between them was an infinite number of light-years rather than a few inches, which Misha supposed it might as well be.

‘Bulgakov Trading, outstanding in our field,’ he called half-heartedly after her as she turned away. ‘Field, like fields on a farm.’

The rest of the afternoon crawled by glacially. The only offer Misha had was when a bored-looking teen approached his trading terminal and punched in the momentarily staggering amount of
55378008
credits for the herd. Then the teen cackled and said ‘Boobless’, before walking off whistling. Selling pigs could be pretty demeaning. Misha waited another two hours before packing up. He looked at the flyer Vitali had given him. He could, he decided, use a drink.

‘Mister Misha!’ said the manager of the Omar Sharif Jazz Lounge, smiling in a way that showed off a lot of new radium-capped teeth. ‘So good to see you again.’

‘Hi, Yevgeny,’ said Misha, blanching at the huge throng in front of him.

‘I am afraid we have no chicken buckets today because of the art-show.’

‘No, that’s fine.’

‘I know how much you like your chicken buckets.’

‘Thanks, Yevgeny, really – just here for a drink.’

The Omar Sharif Jazz Lounge, formerly Xanadu’s, formerly The Hole In The Wall, took up an entire service module that had been welded into place over an actual hole in the wall where an asteroid had smacked into the station years before. It didn’t usually attract much of a crowd. But with the art-boom and sudden influx of a Better Class of Person, the management, recognising a business opportunity when they saw one, had changed the carpets and spruced up the décor, and now it hardly stank of congealed chip-fat at all. Music banged, courtesy of Myq-L and the Bimblefunks, a band that a popular Foster System magazine had described as anthropologically interesting and rhythmically confusing. An unsettling, surgery-based video installation beamed across the walls. Vitali was there in the middle of the room, holding forth to an enthralled gaggle of journalists. ‘I suppose, if this work is to be remembered for anything in a hundred years’ time,’ he was saying, ‘then I hope it is for daring to tell
the truth
. Also the hands, which came out well, considering how tricky hands are.’ Misha almost turned straight back the way he’d come, but across the club, past the bewildering hats and the pedestals topped off with lumps of Gippsworld mud, he spotted her.

Phoebe Clag stood in the corner, studying one of the exhibits intently, a frown on her face. Dynamic shampoo was making her hair cycle through a bunch of different colours in the way that had been fashionable a few years before. It seemed as if she wasn’t talking to anybody. A baristabot banged into Misha’s elbow, so he waved his credit ID at it, scooped up a fancy cocktail and some canapés from its little silver platter, and sidled in Phoebe’s direction as quickly as he could without looking like he was walking straight over to her. Once he’d got to within a couple of feet he realised that this was as far as his plan went. He did a sort of half-smile, but his mouth was so dry his lip got stuck to his gum and it came out more like a leering grimace. He stared at the artwork in front of them. According to the little card next to it the title of the piece was
Prometheus, Reclining, Contemplates The Howling Void
. It looked a bit like a crow, or possibly a bat, only with a pumpkin for a head. A minute went by with the two of them just staring at Prometheus. Misha was trying to decide whether ‘It’s a bold interpretation of a difficult subject, don’t you think?’ was a better opening gambit than, ‘It’s true what they say: without art, we have no identity,’ when, with a crunching sound of metal on bone, Phoebe kicked him hard in the shin.