The Luna Deception Read online

  “Does this tie in with what we were talking about earlier?” he said.

  “It sure does. I didn’t mention it before, but now I feel like I can trust you.”

  No, Mendoza thought, you feel like you have to tell me the truth or I’ll walk away. But he was willing to listen, and he inclined his head affirmatively.

  “My friend Doug Wright feels the same way we do. And he’s willing to contribute the resources of Mercury to fight the PLAN. If we win the election.”

  “Wait, what about the Phase 5 ramp?” Mendoza said. “The resources of Mercury are earmarked for that.”

  Lorna shook his head. “I know you’re an UNVRP guy. But what’s more important: maybe successfully terraforming Venus, many years from now … or fighting the PLAN, today?”

  “Well, when you put it like that …”

  “Right? So, now do you understand why I asked you to help out with the election? Angie’s our girl. She has to win. And that means Dr. Hasselblatter has to lose.”

  “I understand,” Mendoza said, and fell silent.

  “Are you worrying about your girlfriend?”

  Mendoza nodded.

  “I won’t lie to you. After Angie wins, and Doug raises the flag, there might be some posturing to and fro. Star Force has a garrison in orbit around Mercury, and who knows, they might even see fit to lob a missile or two. I’m convinced the UN will let Mercury go without a real fight. They won’t have any choice … but it might be a wee bit hairy for a while.”

  That sounded worse than hairy. Mendoza had to find some way to get in touch with Elfrida and beg her to leave Mercury right now.

  “But there’s this,” Lorna said. “The sooner Dr. Hasselblatter drops out of the race, the sooner he’ll leave Mercury. And I guess he’ll take your girlfriend with him.”

  “Not her,” Mendoza said. “If there’s trouble, she’ll be like a moth to the flame. She’s the kind of person who helps people.”

  “So, we need to make sure there isn’t any trouble.”

  Still Mendoza hesitated. Lorna was asking him to betray UNVRP. He’d be helping Lorna and his friends to take UNVRP over from the inside, and deliver Mercury to the wingnuts at Wrightstuff, Inc. He’d be wrecking his own career.

  But.

  Was his career really so all-fired important?

  Lorna had answered the question of what was missing from his life.

  Revenge.

  “Can I think about it?” he said.

  In the dim light, Lorna looked frustrated. “Fine, fine, but think fast.”

  ★

  PINOY56: Hey, I just wondered if you have a minute.

  Mendoza was accessing All-We-Know-About-Mars/secret.cloud from his BCI while he rode the Victoria Line. A big no-no. But he couldn’t wait until he got home. He had to know if he could trust Derek Lorna or not.

  FRAGGER1: Sure, what’s up? BTW that was some great survey data you posted a while back. Any more where that came from?

  PINOY56: No, sorry. I just wanted to ask

  FRAGGER1: From the Hope Center for Nanobiotics, right?

  Crap, Mendoza thought. How’d he know? Well, it wouldn’t be that hard to work out. Mendoza realized all over again what a risk he’d taken, posting that stuff. And how right Father Lynch had been to tell him to quit these forums. Something else to feel guilty about. As he typed, another chat bubble from Fragger1 popped up.

  FRAGGER1: Maybe they aren’t doing any more surveys.

  PINOY56: Yeah, but Mars is moving into opposition to Earth, so you’d think that now is the best time. But maybe they had budget issues.

  FRAGGER1: HAH! It’s the HOPE Center for Nanobiotics. They’re the second-richest family on Luna. They don’t have BUDGET ISSUES.

  PINOY56: OK, that actually ties into

  FRAGGER1: Technical issues, maybe.

  PINOY56: what I wanted to ask you. You know your manifesto about taking the fight to the enemy?

  FRAGGER1: YEEEEAAHH! Frag em!

  PINOY56: Guess that’s why your name is Fragger. But let’s get technical for a minute. If you were going to implement your dream campaign, what would you need?

  FRAGGER1: A lot of money.

  PINOY56: Obviously, but what about resources? You talked about a new-tech fleet of fighter-bombers. Could you build that with just the resources we have here on Luna?

  FRAGGER1: Oh, you’re on Luna, too? Nice to meet you.

  PINOY56: Dude, you already knew that from the latency. He never could tell about Fragger1: was the poster a smart guy playing dumb, or a dumb guy who occasionally said smart things?

  Fragger1’s next bubble tilted Mendoza’s opinion towards smarter-than-he-wants-us-to-think.

  FRAGGER1: About the resources, the answer is no. First off you need steel. Lots of high-quality steel. We don’t have that here, and we couldn’t procure it without raising red flags. Remember this all has to happen under the radar, because our DEAR LEADERS in the UN get panicky at the thought of people taking their survival into their own hands instead of relying on Star FARCE. So even if you had all the necessary resources, you couldn’t manufacture the ships on Luna. I’m not even sure it would be possible, regardless. We don’t have the heavy industrial capacity anymore. It’s all gone out to the Belt and Midway, where you can legally automate instead of having to hire expensive spaceborn labor.

  PINOY56: What about Hope Space Industries?

  FRAGGER1: Dude, that’s a design house. They outsource all their manufacturing to their partners on Mercury.

  PINOY56: Mercury?

  FRAGGER1: Sure. There’s a reason they call Mercury the factory of the solar system. Actually, if you wanted to build my fleet, that would be the place to do it. They’ve got the shipyards, the supply chain, everything.

  PINOY56: That’s really interesting. Thanks, Fragger1.

  FRAGGER1: No problem … Hey. Looks like you just logged out.

  Mendoza had left the forum. He had found out what he needed to know. The plan Lorna had sketched out was not only feasible, it was obvious to anyone who had thought deeply about the issues involved. He emailed Lorna, as the funicular climbed the dark side of Malapert Mountain: ~I’ll do it. Will start tonight.

  Back in All-We-Know-About-Mars/secret.cloud—a barebones sim hosted on a private server in Luna orbit, where anonymous avatars stood around a bulletin board collaged with newspaper clippings—a new chat bubble appeared over the head of Fragger1, visible to no one, any longer, except himself.

  FRAGGER1: It’s uncool to leave without saying goodbye, Pinoy56 … a.k.a. John Mendoza.

  ★

  Once he started, Mendoza got sucked into the new project. He decided to create a full-blown sim that Dr. Hasselblatter could use as a campaign freebie. He worked through the night, went to the office, and kept working, fueled by coffee and trail mix.

  He had found his original inspiration in the works of an early futurist, Kim Stanley Robinson, but his own creativity swiftly took over.

  In the future—Mendoza proposed—a city would run on rails around the equator of Mercury, staying just ahead of the lethal sunrise. The city would boast a rollercoaster, a quidditch arena, a public swimming pool, and several parks. He added scenery along the route, in the form of landscape art and opportunities for corporate sponsorship (“Your Logo @ Here”). He extrapolated the outlines of a future Mercurian economy based on tourism. He added a sheen of sociological proof using statistical modelling. You could explore the whole thing in 3D. It was mapped to the actual geology of Mercury.

  He also added a few easter eggs. It was a risk, but Elfrida was on his mind, and he wanted to give her a little wink. So he created some jizo statues, like the ones at temples in old Japan. Elfrida was half-Japanese; maybe she’d be interested enough to take a closer look. And if she did, she’d see his name carved on the bases of the statues, very small.

  His signature would also serve as a back-door into the sim, if he needed to make any tweaks in future.

  Finally, he faked u
p some authentic-looking datasets to give the impression that all this was based on voter feedback. The people of Mercury want MOAR ART. The whole thing was superficially plausible, and sublimely ridiculous.

  It took him forty-eight hours, including two all-nighters. Cross-eyed with exhaustion, he sent it to Lorna on Saturday morning, and went to sleep.

  ★

  A ping from Lorna woke him an hour later.

  “You, my friend, are a genius. I freaking love it.”

  The relief was shaming. “Hope Dr. Hasselblatter loves it, too,” Mendoza mumbled.

  “Oh, he will, if his consultants tell him to. Now we just sit back and wait for the solar system to bust a gut laughing.” Lorna sounded gleeful at the prospect. “Abdullah-dallah won’t win the UNVRP directorship, but he’ll be in the running for Faceplant of the Year. These pols!”

  Mendoza stifled a yawn.

  “There are just a couple more things I need you to do. Those voter feedback datasets? The consultants say those are great. A really convincing touch. So if you could send over the polls they’re based on …”

  “There aren’t any polls. I—I faked them.”

  Lorna let out a surprised bark of laughter. “Naughty, naughty! But don’t sweat it. Just fake the polls, too.”

  Mendoza recalled a UN statute he had recently looked up—the one that forbade ‘interference with the process of a poll, survey, census, or election, or fraudulent misrepresentation of the results of the same’—and the penalty for violating it: a minimum sentence of five years. He rolled on his back and stared at the stiffened fabric of the ceiling. Usually when he was home, he had his iEars on. Now he could hear his neighbors arguing. It was like living in a cardboard box.

  “Is there a problem?” Lorna said. “You don’t have to do the polls, of course. Just describe your random sampling method and put together some graphs of the results.”

  “OK.”

  “When you’re done with that, come out to my place. You’re off today, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then come for dinner. Bring the polls in physical format. In fact, we’d probably better not use use email from now on.”

  So even Lorna thought it wise to take precautions at this point. Mendoza could guess why he’d mentioned email specifically. Voice calls, like meatspace conversations, could only be captured by the local surveillance systems. Email, on the other hand, might get routed through servers off Luna, which meant it could be read by anyone, such as the UN’s widely-feared Information Security Agency (ISA).

  Mendoza stretched out his legs. His toes touched the far wall of his apartment. He pushed, testing the give of the fabric, feeling trapped.

  v.

  “Look at that!” Lorna exclaimed, pointing up at the sky.

  Mendoza’s sleep-deprived reactions were slow. He saw nothing except the black lunar night.

  “An intercept! That was absolutely an intercept.” Lorna blasted to his personal feed, which Mendoza had running in his HUD: “The Precision Orbital Risk Management System network just saved us from another meteorite.” He added to Mendoza, “It only takes one strike, you know. If the impactor was big enough, it would be like dropping a nuke on one of these domes. You wouldn’t even survive long enough to die of anoxia.”

  Mendoza shuddered.

  “Anyway, it’s good to know the PORMSnet is up there, protecting us. Helps me sleep better at night.”

  They wandered on along the cobbled path of the stone garden. Anonymous figures strolled past, sleek in second-skin EVA suits, or otherworldly in Victorian ruffles. Hats shaded polarized faceplates. Lorna wore a candycane-striped suit with joke antennae bobbling on his helmet. Mendoza felt conspicuous: the SHARESUIT / FREE SIZE stencil on his chest branded him an interloper in this exclusive setting.

  The rich sought privacy outside, too.

  But the “Back Garden” of Bloomsbury bore no resemblance to the rubbish dump outside Cherry-Garrard, where he had practiced shooting with Fr. Lynch. Ye-olde style lanterns marked paths between rock formations and sculptures. Aztec idols, a full-size copy of the Sphinx, a replica of the grand colonnade of Palmyra, lots of Rodin ... Mendoza would have liked to take the audio tour, but he needed to focus on Lorna’s conversation, so he just had the garden’s soundtrack playing in the background. Sounds of whistling wind and crunching pebbles alternated with snatches of flute music. Mendoza caught a phrase from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

  They came to a waterfall that oozed blackly down the rocks into a pond. “Liquid methane,” Lorna said. “They have to turn it off when the sun rises, or it would gasify.”

  “Wow.”

  They sat down on a stone bench overlooking the pond.

  “So as I was saying, Dr. Hasselblatter ate your stuff up like candy. They used your graphics as-is. That’s how good they were. Unveiled them this afternoon, and so far, the silence is deafening.”

  “That’s great.” Was it?

  “A few Earth-based feeds have already started to mock him,” Lorna said confidently. “Won’t be long until the NEO feeds pile on. I’m telling you, there is an insatiable appetite out there for things to ridicule, revile, and belittle.”

  “Then I guess our next step is to boost Angelica Lin’s campaign. As Hasselblatter fades out of the race, Lin will need to take up the space he vacates.”

  “It won’t be a fade, so much as a crash,” Lorna cackled. “You got any ideas that might work for Angie’s campaign? She has a publicist, but the chick isn’t coming up with much.”

  The surface of the liquid methane pond stirred. A string of robot ducks paddled out from under an overhang. Droplets of methane rolled down their metal plumage. There was a mother duck and five fluffy ducklings.

  “Aw, there they are,” Lorna said. “C’mere!” But everyone else around the pool was also signalling the ducks. They paddled over to a trio of women in bustled spacesuits, who threw crumbs of ice to them. Stray ice chips floated on the methane. “There are koi in the pond, too,” Lorna said. “They run on the liquid methane. It’s fuel, after all. You were saying?”

  “I think we need to acknowledge the daily realities of life on Mercury … speak to the needs of the colonists. The Wrightstuff, Inc. colonists can’t vote, since they officially don’t exist. But UNVRP has thousands of people on Mercury, and they’ll vote.” Mendoza reflected that all those UNVRP loyalists were going to get a shock when they found themselves living in the United States of America, version 2.0. He just had to trust that it would be a better life for them in the long run. “Angelica Lin needs to offer them realistic, believable solutions for their issues.”

  “Realistic? Believable?” Lorna scoffed. “Boring. People want to be inspired. Angie needs a vision.”

  Mendoza’s mind was blank. All he could see was a city the size of a mountain trundling around Mercury’s equator, gliders swooping through the hot twilight like birds.

  “Let me brainstorm,” he said.

  “Do that. I’m relying on you, Mendoza. Let’s go back to my place and grab a bite while you think about it.”

  ★

  Mendoza woke in the dark. He reached up, couldn’t touch the ceiling of his apartment. Waking up fully, he remembered that he was at Derek Lorna’s house.

  Their discussion had stretched late into the evening. The trains ran all night, but it was a two-hour slog back to Nightingale Village, so Lorna had invited him to stay over.

  10:18 blinked in the corner of his eye. God! How could he have slept so long? He was going to be late for work. He pushed off from the bed and hustled into his clothes.

  His movements tripped automatic sensors that opened the curtains, admitting the most realistic daylight Mendoza had seen since he left Earth. The window overlooked a grove of bamboo.

  He ventured out of the room. Despite his determination not to be awed, he knew he was trespassing in a world above his pay grade. A maidbot vacuumed the oriental rug in the hall. The furniture, the skirting boards, and the banisters of
the stairs were all made of wood polished to an antique sheen. A framed chunk of concrete on the landing brought Mendoza up short. It looked like a Banksy. It was a Banksy.

  A suit of armor stood in the downstairs hall, complete with sword. Mendoza nodded to it. He felt stiff and rusty, too. He tracked Lorna by the sound of his voice to a room at the end of the hall.

  Morning light flooded through open bay windows. Out in the garden, a bot watered plants. Lorna sprawled in a dressing-gown on the patio, yelling at someone about software evaluation methodology. He raised his eyebrows at Mendoza and pointed indoors.

  Assuming he was being dismissed, Mendoza went back in. He glanced at the brag wall over the fireplace. (A fireplace.) Where most people would have had vids of themselves, Lorna had oil paintings. There he was receiving a decoration from the unofficial king of Luna, Faisal al-Saud. There he (or a lookalike phavatar) was dancing with the idolbot Marilyn Mauss. There he was conducting, or pretending to conduct, the Luna Philharmonic … That one offended Mendoza, and he was about to turn away when another familiar face caught his eye. In a smaller picture, Lorna stood grinning with his arm around the stooped shoulders of Dr. Ulysses Seth.

  Dr. Ulysses Seth.

  The acting director of UNVRP Mercury, whom Lorna dismissed as a has-been with nutzoid ideas.

  Funny, in this picture they looked like friends.

  “Not hungry?”

  Mendoza whipped guiltily around.

  Lorna indicated a sideboard where breakfast was laid out. Mendoza hadn’t realized he was expected to partake. There was enough food for half a dozen.

  “I have to go,” he demurred. “I overslept.” He took a piece of toast and buttered it, because it made him crazy to think of all this real food going into the recycling.

  “Oh, relax,” Lorna said. “Have you seen the garden? Grab a cup of coffee and I’ll show you around.”

  Mendoza requested an espresso from the robot barista squatting on the sideboard. Balancing the cup on one palm, he followed Lorna out through the bay windows.

  Rustic lawn furniture dotted the patio. Overhead, the high-spec sky of the Bloomsbury dome radiated the pearly light of a summer morning. The air smelt newly washed, no doubt thanks to gardener bots watering the greenery overnight. Half of the garden was taken up by the bamboo grove Mendoza had seen from his window. They walked in among the rustling stems. Springy, sweet-smelling moss cushioned their footsteps.