Dead Man on the Moon (25 page)

"How many shuttles operate between Tether Station and Luna?" she asked.

Linus grinned. "Only two. And one of them is currently sitting on the landing pad at the port. We have a fifty-fifty chance that it's the right one."

"Shouldn't we get down there right now?'"

"We? You're a doctor, not a detective."

"You don't think I'm going to sit this out," she said. "Besides, you'll need an assistant, and Noah is working on the Riza case."

"I have other deputies," Linus said, but she could see he was teasing.

"Perhaps I should schedule your physical for tomorrow morning," she said. "You know—the one you're required to take at
my
discretion. I'm thinking a nice long stress test followed by a lower-GI series."

He laughed. "All right, all right. I can certainly use your help. But we can wait until tomorrow. It's been several weeks since the murder—perhaps even six months. Any evidence that's survived this long will survive until tomorrow morning. And I need a break with my best friend."

Karen's heart sped up again. She had to say this, get it out into the open before she burst. "Speaking of friends," she said slowly, "I was thinking ..."

The house lights dimmed, then went out, leaving the audience in darkness. Several people made shushing noises. Karen trailed off.

"You were thinking what?" Linus murmured.

Karen considered blurting it out to him, then tossed the idea aside like a newly removed appendix. "Nothing, love." She patted his hand. "I'll tell you later."

The stage lights came up, illuminating the apron with false sunshine. "Ladies and gentlemen," said a female voice over a loudspeaker, "please give a warm welcome to Luna City's newest entertainer .. . Noah Skyler."

The audience erupted into applause. Two rows down, front and center, a blond woman raised her hands over her head and clapped wildly. Noah loped onto the stage and waved to the audience with a wide, white smile.

"Hello, Luna City!" he boomed. "Home of the smartest crowd in the solar system!"

This comment drew more applause and some cheers.

"I was reading the newsfeeds backstage," he continued when the noise died down. "And I learned something. Luna City has a lower number of lawyers per capita than anywhere on Earth." He paused. "I
told
you we were smart."

Laughter.

He told a few more jokes about the news, then settled back onto the stool and took a sip of water. "I grew up in Wisconsin, a place that has a fascinating history—unless you have to read about it in a high school history class. And we have stories, too. Grandpa told me lots of them, and I'll tell one or two to you." The stage lights dimmed slightly, then abruptly went out. The auditorium was plunged into blackness. The audience remained quiet, but the darkness went on. The exit lights created a thin, dim glow that only served to make the shadow seem deeper. People began to fidget, and the restless sounds of their movements sounded like snakes whispering in the dark.

"I don't think that was part of the show," Linus whispered, and Karen wondered if she could get away with clutching at him in pretend fear. She decided not.

Noah's voice—unmiked—came out of the blackness. "Folks, I think the lawyers didn't appreciate my humor and they got a court order to kill the lights."

Small amount of laughter. Karen awarded him silent points for a nice recovery.

"But since a story takes place in our heads, we can keep on going. I was going to tell you one of my favorite Paul Bunyan stories, but I think the mood has been set for . . . murder."

His voice dropped into a harsh whisper that somehow carried across the entire audience. As Karen sat there in the dark, she became aware that her knee was touching Linus's. She could feel the warmth of his skin through the thin fabric of her trousers. Was he aware of the contact? He wasn't moving away. Her heartbeat quickened just a little. Maybe she should press back, see what he did. Or would that embarrass him?

Noah, meanwhile, slipped into a story about an old woman, recently widowed, whose only companion was a small black dog. The dog sometimes slept on the floor beside the old woman's bed and sometimes on a rug before the fireplace. On nights when she felt lonely or afraid, she could put her hand down to the floor, and the dog would lick it in reassurance. One dark, stormy evening, the woman read a news report of an escaped madman who killed his victims and ate the flesh from their bones. Noah's hoarse description of the howling wind and crashing thunder made Karen shiver. Linus moved his knee away. Karen wasn't sure if she should be disappointed or not.

Frightened, the old woman locked her doors and went to bed. But she couldn't get the news story out of her mind. She tossed and turned as the storm raged outside. At last she dozed off, then jerked awake from a terrible nightmare about a man picking open her back door—scrape, scrape, scrape—and creeping into her bedroom on cold, icy feet. Karen and the rest of the audience sat spellbound. The theater felt chilly

The old woman told herself it had been nothing but a dream, but she was too afraid to get out of bed and check the house. Instead, the old woman slipped a hand out of the
covers toward the place where her little dog slept. His tongue licked her fingers as they always did, and she felt better. Then a stroke of lightning flashed outside the window. In its light, the old woman caught a glimpse of her living room through the open bedroom door. Before the fireplace, curled up on the rug, lay her little black dog. The tongue beside the old woman's bed gave her fingers another long lick.

The lights burst back on. Everyone jumped, including Karen, and several people screamed. A few sprang upward several centimeters and had to drift back down to their seats. Noah was sitting on his stool with a perfectly innocent look on his face. The audience laughed and broke into applause. Noah raised his water glass to them. Karen and Linus clapped their hands with equal amounts of enthusiasm.

The show continued. Noah told other stories, joked some more about what he had read on the newsfeeds, and even sang two songs. The second one was a bawdy one about a blacksmith and the ladies who examined the size of his hammer. The blond woman down in front cheered the loudest after that one. Karen clapped and laughed aloud, amazed at how much she had enjoyed herself.

At last Noah announced he was finished, and the theater rang with applause. Noah was persuaded to give an encore— the Paul Bunyan story he had tried to tell before the lights went out—and the show ended to more applause. Karen noticed Linus slide his monocle over his eye as they rose and edged toward the aisle with the other theatergoers.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Checking the flash reviews," he said. "It never takes long for the bloggers and slaggers to—hmmmm."

"What?" Karen leaned closer, as if she could check the text on Linus's ocular display. "What do they say?"

"They love him." Linus grinned. "The kid's going to be insufferable after this."

"If you think that," Karen told him, "you're the worst judge of character I've ever seen."

"Joke, K. You missed it."

They moved slowly toward the exits, keeping pace with the crowd around them. Karen's arm stole into the crook of Linus's elbow, and he accepted it without comment. They walked like that, exiting the theater and moving up the wide corridor in comfortable silence. Karen enjoyed the warmth and solidity of Linus's arm around her hand. The lights of Tourist Town glittered around them, and the smell of popcorn drifted on the air. Karen looked at Linus's face and saw a faraway, almost dreamy expression. Feeling swelled for him. What had she been so scared of? Now was the perfect time to take their relationship a step forward.

"Where are you, love?" she asked. Her heart beat faster. "You look a million miles out."

"Hmm?" He turned toward her, still looking a bit lost. "I guess I was wishing Robin could have seen Noah's show. She would have loved it."

Karen cocked her head. "Who's Robin?"

"My wife."

Cold water crashed over Karen in an icy wave. The scene around her blurred. Voices of the pedestrians smeared into an unrecognizable mass of noise. Her knees actually went a little weak, and she stumbled. Linus caught her wrist and steadied her.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"You never—I didn't—" She closed her eyes for a second and forced herself to get a grip. Iron will shoved her backbone upright and cleared the pain from her face. "You've never mentioned a ... a wife."

"I don't often talk about her," he admitted slowly. "It's ... painful."

"She doesn't live in Luna City, does she?" Karen's mouth was dry, and she could barely speak. It felt like she was disconnected from her body. She was outside herself, manipulating her voice and legs from a distance like a marionette. A small part of her was amazed that she could still walk beside him.

"She lives on Earth," he said, "with my daughter, Vicky."

That stopped Karen flat. Her legs refused to carry her forward. Linus didn't notice at first, and her hand came free of his elbow before he realized it.

"You have a
daughter?"
Karen's voice rose a notch.

"Yeah."

"Good god, I need a sit-down," she muttered, and made her way to a heavy planter full of rhododendrons. She perched on the edge, feeling the hard concrete beneath her. Linus, his face full of concern, sat beside her.

"What's wrong?" he demanded.

"It's . . . you've shocked me, love," she said. "You never mentioned a wife or a daughter. Not once. You don't even wear a wedding band."

He held up his empty left hand. "Too dangerous in my line of work. Rings get caught on weapons or in tight places. Robin doesn't wear one, either."

"She's a cop, too, is she?"

"No. A Marine."

She waited, but he didn't say anything else. Abruptly she wanted to hit him, crack him a good one across the jaw for deceiving her. She knew it was irrational, that Linus had no reason to tell her about a wife if he didn't want to, but the feeling of betrayal remained.

Her emotions must have invaded her expression because Linus gave her an odd look. "What?"

"If you don't give me more details, love," she said through gritted teeth, "I'm going to pry them out of you with a crowbar or cut them out with a scalpel."

"Oh." He scratched his nose. "What do you want to know?"

Everything,
she snarled silently.
I
want to know the little minx who stole you from me even before I knew I never had a chance.

"Why isn't this . . . why isn't
Robin
up here with you?" Karen asked.

"I was only supposed to be up here for eighteen months, getting my masters," Linus replied. "We decided it would
be difficult to separate for that long, but worth it in the long run. Robin's in the United States Marines, so we were used to going a few months without seeing each other. Then I got . . . sick. When Dr. Piltdown told me my heart valves were permanently damaged and I couldn't go back to Earth, we thought about bringing Robin up here. Except Luna is an independent nation. There's no U.S. military presence here, so she can't exactly transfer—or commute."

"Why doesn't she just quit?" Karen asked, more snidely than she had intended.

"The Marines are her life," Linus said. "Just as police work is mine. And she's in the middle of an eight-year contract. She can't up and leave."

"How did you have a child, then?"

Pain crossed Linus's face, and Karen was suddenly sorry she'd asked. He said, "Robin's visited a few times. Lunar trips are expensive, and it's hard for her to get away. Vicky was conceived up here, just before I got sick. She's eighteen months old now, and I've never held her."

Karen closed her eyes, unable to imagine the pain the situation must cause him. Her anger melted away, but that only made it worse—it was easier to distance herself from someone who had pissed her off. Feeling sorry for him only made him more attractive to her.

"I sometimes use my contacts to access satellite imaging," he said softly. "When Robin and Vicky go outside, I can see them, once in a while. Robin doesn't know. I think it would make her uncomfortable, the idea of me looking down at her from above like some sort of angel voyeur. When her enlistment is up, we'll have to decide what to do. It would kill Robin to leave the Marines, and it would kill me to leave Luna. We've got a couple years before that happens, though. Maybe we'll find a solution."