Unstable Prototypes (13 page)

"There, that's the place," Garotte said.

From high orbit it looked like a tall, grubby
barnacle surrounded by a glass snowflake on the sandy brown surface
of the planet. The living area was completely covered in black
solar blankets, flexible solar collectors that came in sheets and
were supposed to be a cheap, temporary alternative to the more
traditional solar panels. Like most temporary things, they had a
tendency to become permanent once it became clear that upgrading
was too expensive. A vast complex of transparent chambers connected
to the dorms housed vast patches of green. Unlike the network of
greenhouses, which were spread to cover as much surface as
possible, the dorms themselves were almost precariously tall and
skinny. Though this made excellent use of the structural leeway
that low gravity planets with zero wind provided architects, it did
raise the question of just how much good the solar sheeting was
doing. Lex glanced at the planetary map.

"Clearlow Agricultural Dormitory?" Lex said
curiously, "You hide out on a farm?"

"I keep a
room
on a farm. Considering
the nature of their produce, they are disinclined to contact the
authorities, so it works quite well when I'm likely to have been
pursued."

"What do they grow?"

"On the books? Cannabis," Garotte replied as
they drew closer.

"That's not illegal to grow."

"That's true. Isn't evolving legislation
grand? What
is
illegal is the species of mushroom that
they've got growing at the base of each plant. I forget the
botanical name, but they use them to make Green Devil."

"I don't know what that is."

"Well, aren't
we
the veritable
boyscout? Green Devil is a remarkably intense hallucinogen.
Illegal... well, pretty much everywhere. I'm told the THC in the
marijuana gives the mushrooms an extra kick."

"Okay, so you're bunking with a drug cartel?
Isn't that still a bad idea? I mean, they won't call the cops
themselves, but people might call the cops on
them."

"If they do, they will find my room
refreshingly free of drug paraphernalia. Landing pad six, please,"
Garotte said.

Lex maneuvered the ship to a bay with a faded
six painted on the door. After a moment, the door shuddered open,
one half of it visibly grinding as it retracted in a way that did
not bolster the pilot's confidence. He took the ship in and landed
it on a pad that looked to be in worse repair than the doors. Most
landing pads had a degree of heat damage from unskilled pilots
using a bit too much thrust on departure. This one seemed to have
two neat holes burned into the edge of the main platform. The door
rattled shut behind him and vents began to pump in atmosphere.

"I gotta say. Considering the fact that the
only thing keeping the place from explosively decompressing is
these airlocks, you'd think they'd take better care of them," Lex
said, nervously watching the external pressure slowly creep up to
the appropriate level.

"It would appear that the narcotics industry
reinvests an insubstantial portion of profits into infrastructure,"
Ma remarked.

"Sound business planning is not a hallmark of
the profession," Garotte said, "At least, not until they get picked
up by one of the better crime families."

Lex snapped Garotte a look.

"That didn't happen here, right?" he stated
urgently, "And if it did, we won't be collaborating with these
people, will we?"

"Clearly not. Why the sudden concern?"

"My girlfriend won't put up with me working
with the mob."

"But she feels differently about war
criminals?"

"Probably. She's weird like that."

"External pressure equalized," said a voice
recording.

"Thanks Ma," Lex said.

"That was not me, that was your ship's
control system. We share certain voice files."

"Oh... Uh... Right," Lex remarked, popping
the cockpit.

The trio climbed out of the ship and dropped
down lightly onto the control pad.

"Please tell me they have artificial
gravity," Lex said, unsteadily making his way along the poorly lit
catwalk to the door.

"I'm afraid not, my boy. What's the
problem?"

"I can handle zero-gravity, and I can handle
full gravity, but this low-g stuff screws with my stomach."

"Well, you'll get used to it before too long.
They say it is good for your joints."

Garotte swiped his thumb on a keypad at the
door, and it labored open with a whine of machinery. The hallway
inside was every bit as cramped as the shafts in the space station
had been, but in a different way. It was interesting that the
building was dubbed a dormitory, because it reminded Lex of his own
residence hall back in college. That is, if it had been constructed
in half an hour by the army corps of engineers. Most of the
structure was visible, modular aluminum beams fitted together with
thin sheets strung between them. Half of the support struts were
bent or missing, leaving the walls to bow outward worryingly. Seams
were all sealed with strips of an adhesive that Lex dearly hoped
wasn't the run of the mill duct tape that it appeared to be. There
was no official paint job, but the residents had helpfully supplied
their own in the form of the complex and stylized wall murals of
the modern age, graffiti. The designs probably served a useful
purpose, labeling territories or proclaiming who 'hearts' who
'foreva', but for Lex it seemed that they were either illegible, in
a foreign language, or both. Here and there a strip of lights
provided the sickly blue-white illumination indicative of cheap
LEDs. What few locals lingered in the hallways didn't seem like the
friendly type. There was a healthy mix of races, but they all
dressed like grease-stained mechanics, dark blue coveralls a
favorite, and they all watched the newcomers as they made their way
past door after door. Another thing that they all had in common was
the baggy way that the coveralls hung off of them. It wasn't that
the clothes were oversized, it was that the limbs underneath were
undersized, shriveled and spidery.

"I can't help but notice you're drawing less
attention with your prison duds than I am with my jeans and
t-shirt," Lex whispered to Garotte.

"Yes, state-issued attire isn't a rare sight
in this establishment," Garotte agreed.

A scrabbling sound drew Lex's attention in
time to see Ma go sprawling onto her belly. She'd been less than
graceful since getting out of the ship.

"Something wrong, Ma?"

"I hadn't anticipated a low-gravity
destination. The funk's muscle memory and balance are improperly
adapted to it, and I did not include an adaptive locomotion module
in my command subset," she said in his earpiece, getting unsteadily
to her feet.

"If I can get the hang of it, you can."

Another few steps very nearly sent her
tumbling forward.

"Current evidence would appear to
counter-indicate that supposition."

"Let me give you a hand," he said, plucking
her up and catching up with Garotte.

Another swipe of the orange-clad gentleman's
thumb unlocked a door leading to a room that continued the hastily
deployed motif. It was about the size of a prison cell, and crammed
with enough equipment to make it difficult to move around. There
was a folding chair, the flimsy kind kept on hand by auditoriums
for the occasional assembly or ceremony. A bunk bed was bolted to
the wall on the left, and a small flatscreen was attached to the
one opposite. Most of the rest of the floor and wall space was
occupied by stacks of crates, cases, and boxes. A small and
antiquated computer system was clustered on the floor under the
screen. Unlike most systems these days, even large ones, this
computer wasn't in the typical "large interactive display" form
factor. It was a small box, about the size of a lunchbox, hooked up
with a precarious network of wires to the display and data network.
Another wire led off to what looked like a datapad, but likely was
little more than an input tablet.

"I apologize if the air is a bit stale. I
haven't been here in five years," he said, waving off the musty
odor found within.

"Five years?" Lex said, shutting the door and
lowering his voice, "Judging from the general criminal element, I'm
surprised your stuff is still here."

"The lock on the door is a bit above the
skills of this particular set, and natural selection has weeded out
any would-be burglars who think that cutting holes in the walls of
a pressurized living area is a good idea," Garotte explained.

"Even so, I was beginning to think some of
those guys were going to try to rough us up."

"These fellows have been living in ten
percent gravity for years. Ma could probably toss them around at
this point. Attacking either one of
us
would be akin to
attacking a grizzly bear, and projectile weapons are wisely forgone
due to the aforementioned flimsy sheet of aluminum between them and
explosive decompression."

"Yeah, they looked pretty scrawny. Why aren't
they taking anti-atrophy meds?"

"Depending on the length of the labor
contracts and the type of work, it is usually cheaper to let them
wither down while they're here, then pay for the rehabilitation
when their tour is up."

"That is seriously screwed up."

"And yet the bean counter who proposed the
policy probably got a bonus. Such is the wonderful world of
corporate finance. Human decency has no column on the spreadsheet.
Try to make yourself comfortable while I get the systems
running."

"Actually, I don't suppose there is a
bathroom around here, or better yet, a shower."

"Down the hall. Unless you brought something
to wear on your feet, though, I suggest you avoid the shower. That
is, of course, unless you were interested in contracting some
exciting new fungal infections."

Lex dug out a change of clothes and waved a
pair of flip-flops.

"I went to college. I know all about
community showers," he said.

"Mmm. Watch yourself regardless. This place
has more in common with a prison than the ambiance. The mere fact
that you could snap him in half like a twig might not be enough to
discourage some of the more amorous residents."

"Uh..." Lex hesitated.

"Would you like me to accompany you? If I
understand the concerns correctly, an appropriate idiom would be
that you need someone to watch your a-" Ma began to offer.

"Yes," he replied quickly.

"One moment," she remarked.

The light on her neck flickered madly for a
moment, prompting the screen of the slidepad on her harness to flip
to a directory that quickly filled with files.

"The information I have that is relevant to
the identification of Karter's captors is stored in the indicated
directory. Please take the slidepad and begin your analysis when
your system boot and configuration is complete," Ma stated, leaning
down and offering up the device.

Garotte took the device without a word. He
then poked through one of the crates until he unearthed a few
wrinkled but clean towels and handed one to Lex. The pilot made the
long walk down the hall, past various shady and suspicious
characters, with a house pet under one arm and a bundle of clothes
under the other. He opened the door to the bathroom, trying to
conjure the worst possible hygienic disaster area he could conceive
so that the actual bathroom could only be an improvement. His
imagination, it turns out, fell pretty far short of what the
enterprising residents of Clearlow Agricultural were capable of
producing. The light clicked on, prompting various creatures to
scatter toward the dark corners of the room. Roaches are bad
enough, but this planet was completely devoid of life prior to
colonization. That meant that these pests had essentially been
imported.

"Ma. You know how I said this plan was a good
one?"

"Yes, Lex," she replied in his ear.

"I've changed my mind."

"In light of recent events, your attitude
shift is not an unexpected one."

After briefly considering going a fourth or
fifth consecutive day in the same pair of underwear, he decided
that the shower was the lesser of two evils. He hesitantly pulled
open the door to a shower stall, then released a shaky sigh. It was
almost immaculate, a self-cleaning model that mercifully still
worked. All that remained now was determining how this particular
piece of hygiene apparatus worked. It was a nontrivial puzzle,
thanks to the quirks that lower than average gravity tended to lend
to things we take for granted. As a rule of thumb, the less gravity
there was, the more complicated things became. In zero-g, fluid
needs to be moved around entirely with pumps and fans. Here on
deGrasse, there was
some
gravity to work with, but not
enough to make things easy or pleasant.

For one thing, water couldn't just fall out
of the shower head, because by the time it reached the body it
would barely have accelerated at all. While minimally sufficient
for cleanliness purposes, it turned out to be a very unsatisfying
experience for the user. Thus, it needed to be propelled with a
decent amount of pressure, except it couldn't do that either. The
reduced weight of the average user would make it very easy for even
a moderate volume of water to blast them around the stall as though
it was a fire hose. Not only that, but without a good strong tug
from gravity, water going down the drain tended to be downright
sluggish. The best compromise that the engineers were able to come
up with was a stall with a hand held shower head and numerous hand
grips to handle any pressure related mishaps, as well as a floor
grating with a "drainage assistance motor" that sounded alarmingly
similar to a garbage disposal. Lex fiddled with the various
settings until it became clear that the range of temperatures ran
from "frigid" to "slightly less frigid" and the toiletry dispenser
contained some sort of all-purpose body wash that looked and
smelled like something used to disinfect crime scenes. He then
began to strip down for the fastest shower he could possibly
manage. After pulling his shirt off, he realized Ma was staring at
him.