“Yeah. Ther~se Lorenz, the Sweet Jane. You want the numbers? What? Yeah, sure we’re pirates. I’m Captain fuck- ing Hook already. . Look, Jack, lemme give you the numbers, you can check it out. . . . I said already. I gotta passenger. Request permission, et Goddamn cetera. . . . Marly Something, speaks French in her sleep .” Many’s lids flickered, opened Rez was webbed in front of her, each small muscle of her back precisely defined. “Hey,” Rez said, twisting around in the web, “I’m sorry. I raised `em for you, but they sound pretty flaky. You religious?” “No,” Marly said, baffled. Rez made a face. “Well, I hope you can make sense out of this shit, then.” She shrugged out of the web and executed a tight backward somersault that brought her within centimeters of Marly’s face An optic ribbon trailed from her hand to the console, and for the first time Marly saw the delicate sky-blue socket set flush with the skin of the girl~s wrist. She popped a speaker-bead into Marly’s right ear and adjusted the trans- parent microphone tube that curved down from it. “You have no right to disturb us here,” a man’s voice said. “Our work is the work of God, and we alone have seen His true face!” “Hello? Hello, can you hear me? My name is Marly Krushkhova and I have urgent business with you. Or with someone at these coordinates. My business concerns a series of boxes, collages. The maker of these boxes may be in terrible danger! I must see him!” “Danger?” The man coughed. “God alone decides man’s fate! We are entirely without fear. But neither are we fools…” “Please, listen to me. I was hired by Josef Virek to locate the maker of the boxes. But now I have come to warn you. Virek knows you are here, and his agents will follow me Rez was staring at her hard. “You must let me in! I can tell you more . “Virek?” There was a long, static-filled pause. “Josef Virek?” “Yes.” Marly said. “That one You’ve seen his picture all your life, the one with the king of England . . . Please, please . “Give me your pilot,” the voice said, and the bluster and hysteria were gone, replaced with something Marly liked even less.
“It’s a spare,” Rez said, snapping the mirrored helmet from the red suit. “I can afford it, you paid me enough. “No,” Marly protested, “really, you needn’t She shook her head, Rez was undoing the fastenings at the spacesuit’s waist. “You don’t go into a thing like that without a suit,” she said. “You don’t know what they got for atmosphere. You don’t even know they got atmosphere! And any kinda bacte- ria, spores . . What’s the matter?” Lowering the silver helmet. “I’m claustrophobic!” “Oh Rez stared at her. “I heard of that . . . It means you’re scared to be inside things?” She looked genuinely curious. “Small things, yes.” “Like Sweet Jane?” “Yes, but She glanced at the cramped cabin, fight- ing her panic. “I can stand this, but not the helmet.” She shuddered. “Well,” Rez said, “tell you what. We get you into the suit, but we leave the helmet off. I’ll teach you how to fasten it. Deal? Otherwise, you don’t leave my ship . .” Her mouth was straight and firm. “Yes,” Marly said, “yes
“Here’s the drill,” Rez said. “We’re lock to lock. This hatch opens, you get in, I close it. Then I open the other side. Then you’re in whatever passes for atmosphere, in there. You sure you don’t want the helmet on?” “No,” Marly said, looking down at the helmet she grasped in the suit’s red gauntlets. at her pale reflection in the mir- rored faceplate Rez made a little clicking sound with her tongue. “Your life. If you want to get back, have them put a message through JAL Term for the Sweet Jane.” Marly kicked off clumsily and spun forward into the lock, no larger than an upright coffin. The red suit’s breastplate clicked hard against the outer hatch, and she heard the inner one hiss shut behind her. A light came on, beside her head, and she thought of the lights in refrigerators. “Good-bye, Ther~se.” Nothing happened. She was alone with the beating of her heart. Then the Sweet Jane’s outer hatch slid open. A slight pressure differential was enough to tumble her out into a darkness that smelled old and sadly human, a smell like a long-abandoned locker room. There was a thickness, an un- clean dampness to the air, and, still tumbling, she saw Sweet Jane’s hatch slide shut behind her. A beam of light stabbed past her, wavered, swung, and found her spinning. “Lights,” someone bawled hoarsely. “lights for our guest! Jones!” It was the voice she’d heard through the ear-bead. It rang strangely, in the iron vastness of this place, this hollow she fell through, and then there was a grating sound and a distant ring of harsh blue flared up, showing her the far curve of a wall or hull of steel and welded lunar rock. The surface was lined and pitted with precisely carved channels and de- pressions, where equipment of some kind had once been fitted. Scabrous clumps of brown expansion foam still ad- hered in some of the deeper cuts, and others were lost in dead black shadow ..” You’d better get a line on her, Jones, before she cracks her head . Something struck the shoulder of her suit with a damp smack, and she turned her head to see a pink gob of bright plastic trailing a finc pink line, which jerked taut as she watched, flipping her around. The derelict cathedral space filled with the laboring whine of an engine, and, quite slowly, they reeled her in “It took you long enough,” the voice said. “I wondered who would be first, and now it’s Virek . .. Mammon . . And then they had her, spinning her around. She almost lost the helmet: it was drifting away, but one of them batted it back into her hands. Her purse, with her boots and jacket folded inside, executed its own arc, on its shoulder strap, and bumped the side of her head. “Who are you?” she asked. “Ludgate!” the old man roared. “Wigan Ludgate, as you well know. Who else did he send you to deceive?” His seamed, blotched face was cleanshaven, but his gray, un- trimmed hair floated free, seaweed on a tide of stale air. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not here to deceive you. I no longer work for Virek . . . I came here because . . I mean, I’m not at all sure why I came here, to begin with, but on my way I learned that the artist who makes the boxes is in danger. Because there~s something else, something Virek thinks he has, something Virek thinks will free him from his cancers Her words ran down to silence, in the face of the almost palpable craziness that radiated from Wigan Ludgate, and she saw that he wore the cracked plastic carapace of an old work suit, with cheap metal crucifixes epoxied like a necklace around the tarnished steel helmet ring. His face was very close. She could smell his decaying teeth. “The boxes!” Little balls of spittle curled off his lips, obeying the elegant laws of Newtonian physics. “You whore! They’re of the hand of God!” “Easy there, Lud,” said a second voice, `~youre scam’ the lady Easy, lady, `cause old Lud, he hasn’t got too many visitors. Gets him quite worked up, y’see, but he’s basically a harmless old bugger She turned her head and met the relaxed gaze of a pair of wide blue eyes in a very young face. “I’m Jones,” he said, “I live here, too . . Wigan Ludgate threw back his head and howled, and the sound rang wild against the walls of steel and stone.