Moonrise (58 page)

Killifer wanted to tell her he would follow her off the edge of a cliff, but her eyes stopped him. In silence he walked beside her down the busy corridor. He noticed that all the people here dressed in gray, men and women alike; the only difference was that the men wore trousers, while all the women wore tight ankle-length skirts. Well, Killifer thought, they sure can’t run away from you in those hobbles.

He expected her to lead him into her office, or maybe a conference room. Instead he followed her to the end of the hallway, up a narrow flight of stairs, and then through a metal door out onto the building’s roof. The open sunlight made Killifer’s eyes water.

“We can speak freely here, Jack,” she said.

That worried him. Wiping at his eyes, he asked, “Whattaya mean? Is your office bugged?”

Melissa gave him a cool smile. “Jack, the Urban Corps doesn’t believe in private offices, not even for General O’Conner. I thought that we could have our first chat here, without anyone else to bother us.”

“How’d you find me?” Killifer asked.

“We have sources of information.” She walked slowly toward the brick parapet along the roof’s edge. “Isn’t it a beautiful day?”

Following her, Killifer could see that the building was on a hill and the whole city of Boston was laid out before them, beneath the bright cloudless sky. After so many years at Moonbase, the deep clear blue almost hurt. Everything was so dazzling: the green of the trees, the red brick buildings, the glittering glass facades of the soaring downtown high-rises.

Killifer took in a deep breath of real air. It smelled great, with the salt tang coming in off the harbor. He could almost taste it.

“You were born in Boston, weren’t you?” Melissa asked him.

He nodded and pointed. “Winthrop. Out there by the old airport.”

A Clippership took off from the airport, like a toy at this distance, the thunder of its rocket engines nothing more than a muted rumble.

“Do you remember what Chelsea used to be when you were growing up in Winthrop, Jack?”

Killifer grinned sourly. “A dump. We used to make jokes about Chelsea. It was the bottom of the barrel.”

“That’s right,” said Melissa Hart, like a schoolteacher pleased with her student’s answer. “For generations Chelsea was the bottom of the barrel.”

“And now?”

“Now it’s a model community. The Urban Corps has transformed Chelsea. We brought new industry into the community, new businesses. People have jobs now. They have hope. Crime is down. The schools are turning out model citizens.”

“I thought it was the New Morality did that.”

“We’re part of the New Morality. The Urban Corps, the Angels of God, the Disciples of Allah, St. Michael’s Battalion—there are dozens of organizations within the New Morality structure.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We want your help, Jack.”

“Mine? What for?”

“You’ve worked for years at Moonbase. We need to know all about Moonbase, what they’re doing up there, how they operate, what they’re planning.”

“Why?”

Melissa looked disappointed. “Jack, they work with nanomachines at Moonbase, don’t they?”

“They’ve got to,” he said.

“Nanomachines will soon be illegal,” she said. “We’ve got to know how the people at Moonbase will react to the new law.”

Killifer turned away from her and looked out at the city again. It was so shining and lush it almost looked unreal. It all seemed clean and fresh. And quiet. Hardly any noise from street traffic. No boom boxes blasting away. No voices raised.

“What’s in it for me?” he asked, still without looking at her.

If his self-centered questioned bothered her, Melissa Hart gave no hint of it. She immediately answered, “We’ll hire you as a consultant at fifteen hundred a day, with a guarantee of a minimum of one hundred consulting days per year.”

A hundred-fifty thousand per year, Killifer realized.

“That should augment your Masterson Corporation pension very nicely,” she added.

“My pension, yeah.” He wanted to spit.

“It’s a very generous offer, Jack.”

“For how many years?”

Sounding slightly disappointed again, she replied, “Oh Jack, I can’t promise you more than this one year. If everything goes the way we expect it to, Moonbase will be shut down by the end of that time.”

“And then what happens to me?”

“We’ll see,” she said simply. With a glowing smile. But her eyes still radiated pain.

Killifer thought it over briefly. “What the hell,” he said. “Why not?”

“Then you agree?”

“If you’ll come to dinner with me.”

She seemed to think it over with great care. At last Melissa said, “I’d be happy to have dinner with you, Jack. But only dinner.”

“Sure,” he said. “Just dinner.” It was a lie and he knew that she knew it.

The North End of Boston had once been an Italian preserve, but over the decades it had evolved into Little Asia. Vietnamese, Malay, Thai, Indian and a dozen varieties of Chinese now occupied the narrow twisting streets where once a patriot had climbed the Old North Church bell tower to signal Paul Revere.

Over spicy Hunan platters Killifer found himself spinning out his life story to this beautiful black woman with haunted eyes. As if he couldn’t stop himself, he spilled out the bitterness, the rage and frustration of his wasted life.

“But why did you spend all those years in Moonbase,” Melissa asked sweetly, chopsticks held gracefully in her long slim fingers, “when you had such a promising career in nanotechnology?”

“She
did it,” he growled. “Masterson’s widow. Then she married Stavenger. She stuck me in Moonbase.”

“But you could have resigned and come back to Earth, couldn’t you?”

He hadn’t intended to tell her about the nanobugs and Greg Masterson and Paul Stavenger’s murder. He had never
intended to speak of that at all. But by the time dinner was finished and they were walking the crowded, brightly lit streets, he had revealed himself to her almost completely.

“Greg Masterson murdered his step-father?”

There was something in the way she said it that brought Killifer up short. Something in her voice.

“You know Greg Masterson?”

She nodded. In the harsh glare of the street lamp her face looked like frozen stone. “I knew him. Long ago.”

They walked down in painful silence down to the waterfront, where the streets were emptier. And darker.

“My apartment’s up there.” Killifer pointed to an apartment block across the street from the piers.

“You must have a nice view,” Melissa said absently, sounding as if her thoughts were a quarter-million miles away.

“Come on up and see it,” he suggested, taking her by the arm.

She disengaged effortlessly. “No, Jack,” she said. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“Come on,” he wheedled. “Just have a drink with me.”

With a smile that might have been sad, or perhaps pitying, Melissa said, “You don’t understand, Jack. I’m celibate.”

“You’re what?”

“I’ve been celibate since I met General O’Conner, many years ago.”

“Celibate?”

“It’s part of our creed.”

“You mean everybody I saw in your building … ?”

She nodded.

“That’s hard to believe.”

“Believe it, Jack. Celibacy removes one of the great causes of pain in this life.”

“But … but you’re so beautiful! It’s a damned shame. A waste.”

Her eyes flared. “No, it’s not a waste. I know what pain can be caused by the attractions of sex. I was caught in that web, once, years ago. It led to nothing but pain and evil, drugs and self-destruction. I nearly killed myself before General O’Conner found me.”

“General O’Conner.”

“He wasn’t the general then; he hadn’t even founded the Urban Corps yet. But he saved my life. He made me dedicate my life to the New Morality and all that it stands for.”

“And you’ve gotta be celibate?”

“It simplifies your life, Jack. It allows you to concentrate your energies on the things that really matter.”

“Still seems like a damned waste to me,” Killifer grumbled.

“No, Jack. It makes life so much easier. Cleaner. Come back to the office tomorrow, Jack. I want you to join us. We need your help.”

Killifer thought, Maybe this celibate crap is just her excuse. After all, we just met this afternoon. Give it time, she’ll pull her pants down sooner or later.

“Okay,” he said lightly. “See you tomorrow morning.”

“Nine sharp,” said Melissa.

“Right.”

He left her at the street corner and went into his apartment building. She didn’t seem to have the slightest fear of being alone on the dark street.

Jinny Anson stared at her husband. “What do you mean?” she demanded.

“Just what I said,” he replied calmly, his teeth clamped on his favorite briar pipe.

“You’ve got to submit your syllabus to a freakin’ committee?”

His studied composure irritated her. “It’s not as if this is the first time,” he said.

“But this committee’s got nothing to do with the university,” she said.

Her husband shrugged. “It’s a local citizens’ group. They call themselves the Moral Watchdogs or something like that.”

“Moral dipshits,” Anson muttered.

Her husband gave her a disapproving frown. He was obviously afraid his young daughters might hear her language, even though the door to their bedroom was firmly shut and the kids were down in the rec room watching video on their new wall-to-wall Windowall screen.

Quentin Westlake was a sweet, gentle professor of English
literature at the University of Texas. It had taken him ten years to work his way from various outlying campuses in the vast hinterlands of the state to the main campus at Austin. Along the way he had married, fathered two daughters, and divorced when his first wife fell in love with an investment broker from Chicago.

Jinny Anson had met him at a seminar in Lubbock, where she had been invited to participate in a panel discussion of “Literature in the Space Age.” Jinny had been the only panel member who was not an English lit professor and Quentin had been the only one among them who had treated her with kindness.

It was a different kind of romance, with Jinny commuting every few months from Moonbase to Texas, and Quentin trying to convince his two prepubescent daughters that he wouldn’t marry anyone who would turn into a wicked stepmother. When Jinny took her regular annual leave from the directorship of Moonbase the commute became easier: merely from Savannah to Austin. By the time she returned to the Moon they had decided to get married.

Their wedding was at the Alamo, as scheduled, with Quentin’s two daughters serving as bridesmaids and Joanna Stavenger among the guests. Joanna’s best wedding present was to allow Jinny to transfer to the corporation’s manufacturing facility in Houston; she could commute to work now on the high-speed levitrain from Austin. In addition to her regular duties, Jinny was supervising construction of a model water recycling center for the city of Houston, based on the technology perfected at Moonbase. It made for very long days, but at least she was home each night with her husband. Most nights.

For nearly six months now Jinny had lived in his three-bedroom ranch-style house in suburban Austin, getting acclimatized to raising two half-grown daughters and to the intricate jealousies and competitions of a major university’s faculty. She quickly fell in love with the girls; the other faculty wives and women professors—and administrators—she felt she could gladly do without.

Now, as they were undressing for bed, Quentin told her about the new committee that would be reviewing his work. She knew he was concerned about it, despite his easygoing attitude. He wouldn’t have brought up the subject if it didn’t bother him.

“But what right does a self-appointed gaggle of uptight New Morality people have to pass judgment on your syllabus?” Jinny asked, aggrieved.

Quentin smiled wearily and rubbed the forefinger of his right hand against its thumb. “Money talks, sweetheart. Some of those committee members are among the biggest contributors to the university.”

“It’s an invasion of academic freedom!” Jinny snarled.

“Sure it is,” he agreed amiably. “But what can I do about it? The Jews don’t like
The Merchant of Venice,
the Africans don’t like
Othello.
The Baptists say
Hamlet
is smutty and the feminists complain about
Macbeth,
for lord’s sake! What can I do?”

That stopped her. What
could
they do about it if the university administration and the faculty leaders permitted it? Probably a lot of New Morality members among them, she realized.

“You know the old Chinese advice about getting raped,” Quentin said softly, as he took off his trousers.

“You shouldn’t relax,” she said, from her side of the bed. “And you sure as hell shouldn’t enjoy it.”

Naked, he flopped onto the bed. “Ah, love, let us be true to one another, for this world has neither certitude nor peace nor help for pain,” he misquoted slightly.

Jinny sat on the bed beside him. “This world,” she replied.

“Operation Bootstrap?” Greg echoed, from behind his desk. “Are you joking?”

“No,” said Doug. “It’s not a joke.”

The two of them were alone in Greg’s office: Doug in his usual spot on the couch by the door, Greg sitting upright behind his desk.

With a shake of his head, Greg said to his brother, “When
Mom told me about it I thought perhaps it was some kind of prank you and Brudnoy had cooked up.”

“Greg, it’s something we have to do,” Doug said earnestly.

“Really?”

“Sooner or later.”

“It won’t be sooner.”

For all the urgency in his words, Doug looked calm and relaxed, almost insolently at ease, Greg thought. His young half-brother slouched back on the couch all the way across the office. He expects me to get up from my desk and go over to him, Greg told himself. No way.

I’m the director of Moonbase. I called him here into my office; he’s not going to make me jump through his hoops.

“Look, Doug, I asked you to come here without Mom so we could talk over this crazy idea of yours—”