Ch. 1: Pickup: Pt. 1 Thursday Nov 18, 2117

Boris Levsky was an unimpressive specimen. 

In other times, he would have been considered an ancient, his life ebbing, ripe for discard. In the new age, he was one of a cohort still needed to do the work of society. That was because, on Earth, many women had declined to bring children into their world. 

With fewer young people, they needed the older ones, still able. For want of younger folks, they even sent them to the Moon.

In his early seventies, Boris retained the status of a mature man. The term ‘old’ was reserved to the doddering and the decrepit. He was not yet that. Still, he did not look well. His skin was grey with fatigue. His reddened eyes were unfocused. He nervously rubbed at his scalp, irritating the skin under stubs of unshaven white hair to flush. He leaned unsteadily against the thin railing behind him. He looked exhausted, hardly able to stand. 

They had chained him up against that moon-dark wall to await exile. He had been battered by a week with little sleep, constant pressure, and mortal fear for those dear to him. He had been forced to kill. All that, concentrated in a brief span of time, had finally upended him.

Those eyes were open, but they did not see. Instead, they looked inward to a softened world that offered makeshift sanctuary. His shuttered mind’s depleted defenses rekindled youth in him, instilling childish visions and childish fears. 

It was recess in his schoolyard. His captors became children playing alongside him, menacing one another in phony mortal combat. He imagined himself a powerful raptor, growling to alarm his tormentors. 

His protective use of that linkage was not original thought. Even though their own Impact was fading into history, deep wounds heal slowly. People were keenly aware of the fine knife edge separating their fate from that of the Dinosaurs, the last top predators. They had suffered extinction in their Impact.

After a few moments of confusion, he was finally able to conjure his lizard protector, but it lacked comforting definition. He struggled to clothe it, to lend it substance. 

How would it have looked standing there instead of him? What kind of clothes would it have worn? Would they have been of leather? Would its hat mimic the ridge on its crested head? Would it lisp when it spoke its reptile tongue? Would it have its own Moon lenses in its black, bird’s eyes? For it would be a civilized dinosaur. A creature more capable than him, certainly, better able to deal with his troubles. 

All that was triggered when Matt Morrison aggressively affixed his chains.

Matt was gloating, a sneer twisting his broad, sullen face:

"This is what you deserve, snitch. For what you did. We weren’t hurting anybody. No call for the nuke, jerk. Finally, you're history, you old fart."

Boris, locked in his fantasy, could only manage an indecipherable grunt in reaction.

The padlock was grotesquely big, barely fitting through the links of the absurdly heavy chain that completed the set. That, on a planet that had no need for locks. He was the first prisoner they had ever had, unless one counted occasional drunks confined for a few hours on the weekend. None of them were chained.

The heavy links seemed built to restrain his imaginary raptor, a creature who would have dwarfed him. That being would have been powerful enough to have required such restraints. One who might be standing there if its species had lived through that day sixty-six million years previous. The day that had erased its kind and promoted our species in replacement. That process drove humans to the Moon instead of them.

Ours could easily have been another world. One where the first of those two impactor strikes, that one that destroyed them, had never happened. A minute change in its path would have caused their species killer to miss the Earth entirely. The second Impact, that came so close to exterminating humanity, just decades previous, would have come to them instead. Intelligent, they could have journeyed there, instead of Homo 'sapiens'.

Man’s mammalian ancestors would have remained underfoot, mouse-sized, and mouse-smart. The Human species would never have been. After enduring untold millions of years at the bottom of the food chain, our tiny forebears would have died unnoticed in the extinction that followed the Impact. They would have been just more exposed wild animals eradicated with their fellows. That would have left the dinosaurs to struggle for survival, as Humans were struggling. An insignificant change in an endless universe, yet it was all to Earth's existing inhabitants.

His mind didn’t need to hold to that bizarre fantasy for long. His interior perspective had had enough time to clear, and its shield dissolved. Of course, both strikes did happen. One to them, and one to us. The dinosaurs were gone, and we were there. They did not survive. 

Mankind had, just barely. The Dinosaurs had lost their world. We had hung on to ours, just fingertip tight. They had not been lucky. We had been just lucky enough. Humans were the ones who stood on the Moon. Temporary winners in a cosmic crapshoot where beings were and still remain the dice. There was no way to ignore that.

Humanity’s homestead on the Moon was certainly unlikely. Who would have freely chosen to live there? Yet the threat of repetition of the Impact effectively precluded choice. Proximity and resources drew them. Fear for the survival of mankind kept them. Growing love of their barren home bound them.

Cyra’s eons-old dark asteroid promised to supply their needs, but its offerings, too, were mixed. Cyra’s discovery had set the previous week’s events in motion, and it had cost her. 

Of course, the whole scene that confronted Boris was theatrical overkill. It fit the fancy, though. They could have as effectively confined him with a bow-tied doily. But the chain made a statement. He was a threat.

Matt had probably volunteered for the assignment to chain Boris. Matt was still pissed at Boris. He did have a reason for his venomous overture. As legal officer on a busy Saturday night a few years previous, the old man had sucker-punched him in front of his buddies. That was at a party that grew too loud and strayed too far. Boris was too busy that night to get to the peace part of peace officer. It would have been better to sit down with him and explain it, after. Boris never got around to it.

So, the sore remained open. Matt was decked by a codger, in public, and never quite got over it. That shadow smile played over his face. It revealed that he was pleased with the idea of humiliation in return, although it didn’t really touch his prisoner. He was bemused at the time, and soon he would be far beyond Matt's resentment.

Because then, he was the creature at bay.

He was later sure his father would have found a way to keep his head down and do the job without attracting too much attention, and he then felt that paternal example should have informed him, but it didn’t take. He had banked on celebrity to ensure safety for his friends and associates. So much for that.

His father would have known better. He was the sometime manager of a prominent hotel in his hometown with an equally prominent watering hole favored by entertainers, news reporters, and their malodorous hangers on. Some small celebrity would have been easy for him. 

Some of his less thoughtful associates took it and shriveled in its glare. He stayed low and lived a quiet, and mostly happy life, and his family were kept sheltered. Boris wished that he had heard his father’s voice to remind him yet again. His father could have told him what to do. Unhappily, he let the echo of his father’s memory, and his sage advice, fade over the twenty odd years since his death.

Boris had depended on his own judgement and made others do the same. He wondered whether he could have done it differently. It was really a pointless question. He hadn’t figured it out then, and it was open whether he ever would.

The chain had him shackled to one of the lockers, wound about his waist to leave his hands free. Chained like a dangerous animal, but preferable to arm and leg irons. Displayed in darkened hues on the wall behind him was some Moonscape, perhaps the one on the other side of the hab wall, unnecessarily reminding him that there was no place to escape to.

After all, he was a killer, and the label did fit. He had taken life, in defiance, technically, of established authority. He was an extremely dangerous geezer with gimpy knees.

On the other side of the room, a Plaser in her hand, stood his embarrassed and tearful friend Gloria, leaning against a virtual palm tree in a dazzling virtual jungle, outlined in a harsh light amped to hurt the eyes. He had to look away, and that was intended also. She was the Constable, and she was assigned to guard him along with the ‘deputies’ who so recently helped him kill Rudy. Seven of them, all armed.

And somehow, they had thought to get a uniform jumper on her, so she looked like a proper policewoman and matched the guys in the posse.

He was out of the same bed as her twenty minutes previous. They had cut his sweats’ waistband. That left him standing there trying to hold up his pants with the one hand, stuffing the cut ends under the chain. His personals, in a dirty yellow plastic carryall, were suspended by the other one. A ridiculous figure, at best. A little at odds with the threatening theme they had set with the padlock.

Gloria was then subdued, watchful, and reticent. 

Even though she was nominally in charge, she didn't speak. She was silent and remained pensive. He hoped she was already rationalizing her separation from him. They were going to be disconnected by an unbridgeable distance for the rest of their lives. He was being exiled, and unless his captors relented, there was no return. A clean break was better.

Of course, they sent her to pick him up. As he slept, the familiar spicy sweet perfume came off her body and he reached for her unconsciously. Awakening, he became aware of her presence, and the logic of it fell into place. She could never have gotten past the recognition circuit on the door unless someone had enabled her. They still had those locks, and he had never disabled his. A relic from a previous life preserved because he remained as formlessly anxious as all his fellows.

It was obvious that she was there for something significant. She had never before entered his apartment without consent. So, he just rolled over and held her against him for a while. He didn't even express the deep satisfaction he felt just to be holding her. He didn’t have the nerve to ask her exactly what was in store. He was fearful of what she would have to answer. No need to make her feel the betrayer. He would find out soon enough. 

 His feelings for her hadn’t changed and he let his body tell the truth of it. It said that he was grateful for their time together, fond of her, and thankful for the intimacy and grace she had given. It didn’t even enter his mind to blame her for being an instrument of whatever change awaited him. He had passed that stage in life. Someone had to do it, and who better than her, who was softened by some affection?

Gloria never had told him different than that she cared for him too. Both had enjoyed happy, loving marriages. Neither of them would have disclosed that theirs was a tepid, second-time affair, reminding them more of what they had lost than what they had, with none of that magical connection. The understanding, built from a lifetime of knowledge and sharing, the union of souls, was not there. But what little there was, was so much better than nothing.

He had only known two women intimately in his life and you could not describe him as a great lover or at all knowledgeable in the ways of women. Yet the range of his affection was offset by its intensity. He had never regretted not having wider experience. Love, under a microscope, has as much complexity in its detail as does the whole wide world in its perspective. There is a universe inside each one of us. He had always preferred to know more about less rather than less about more. And he had been fortunate enough to know women who thought the same.

Gloria, his second love, had a remarkable likeness to his first wife that he never dared mention to her. No fem can appreciate being valued by a lover because of her similarity to another. Although not sharing any overt physical similarities with his wife Esther, who was small and dark, where she was tall and fair, there was one telling singularity. They were both quiet people, liking conversation and books, though both were more outgoing than him. They both enjoyed sitting in company with another, and he valued that. But how could you tell that to a fem? That, it was the intimate, silent times, that were treasured? I like you because you are boring? Yet, it was not that to him.

He didn’t take that resemblance as a reminder or replacement for Esther, but he was grateful that those two women, so different in most ways, could be so alike valuation of that one quality he prized so highly. He marveled how lucky he was to come upon two such sweet women. It reflected the variability and the continuity of life. That bond of humanity was one of life’s greatest comforts to him.

Even though he knew that his pages recounting the week’s events would be read, at least, by those close to him, he didn’t think his children, or Gloria, for that matter, would be embarrassed by them. He didn’t think their estimation of him would be diminished by knowing that his loves were passionate as well as mundane. Isn’t the ability to love the true measure of humanity? When someone truly loves, he or she wants to share the full scope of that person’s being. That is how people come to know others. There can be no shame in it.

When they had laid at rest for a few minutes, they rose and washed, and she motioned him with the yellow bag she had brought to help him to choose the few things he could take. The mere act told him precisely what was to happen to him. He was going away. Certainly not back to Earth with its dangers and its instant notoriety. So, in the other direction, then – Mars.

When she talked, notwithstanding their recent intimacy, she didn’t go out of her way to be kind. He knew he deserved no better on parting. It is the emotional betrayal that stings, and he had stung her.

"Well, lover, you are an exile now, and I’m not so sure I am all in mourning. I won’t need to fight a dead fem. Marion called me, just before she died, after that last soup tête-à-tête you had with her. She was all rhapsodic about the look, the connection. You and I know it. That poor girl didn’t.

“Never had it in her poor deprived life, so maybe you did some good sharing it with her, even if ever so briefly. I don’t know, but it was Earth-shaking to her. She was - giggly.

“You and I weren’t any Romeo and Juliet, but I thought we were exclusive. That thing with Marion was supposed to be playacting. Changed, didn’t it? You just can’t leave well enough alone in anything. If you had gone along, and done what you were told, most of this wouldn’t have happened.” Then a pause. The expression on her face softened.

“No, that isn’t fair. We all wanted to do something for Cyra. That’s not your fault.”

And then she added “Entirely. Asshole.” With a straight face, no smile to soften it. An uncompromising goodbye.

He knew he was wrong to say it. He did, though. Honest to the fault, he was. He said: “How could I ignore it? How many times does it happen for two people? Just one other time, in my life.”

In retrospect, he regretted anew the cruelty of telling her that explicitly. She knew already, why did he drill it in? He judged he was still not mature enough, even at his age, to overlook a rebuke, however justified. To tell her that she didn’t measure up to his ideal of true love, when he should have known it mattered to her at least a little. He could have held his tongue. But how often, he reflected, did he think to do that? He had been raised to be cruel in order to be kind. He had been trained to tell the unvarnished truth. As if people wanted to know the truth.

Then, without another word, she waited for him to bag his stuff, wearing a look he couldn’t quite decipher, that he sensed was mixed anger and regret. And fairly considered, it should have been, too. He had upset her life as much as his, without any prior consultation. And insulted her into the bargain. He deserved no better.

When he had finished, she took him to the departure room to wait for the shuttle. It was a long walk, longer than it had ever been before. The last one. He went quietly. He could not refuse her, but they armed her anyway, later, to set the scene.

By that time, the vid of Rudy’s hopeless standoff was all over the nets on Earth and he had gone from failed detective to conquering, killer, sheriff in one step. He was a hero!

He waited for the shuttle to take him up to the Rockship for Mars with his 18 kilograms of stuff. His clothes, a few old real books, some toiletries, and, strangely, his father’s tefillin, the Jewish ceremonial prayer boxes that he never used, were among them. He couldn’t leave them behind because they were freighted with history, that still stung with loss and yet seduced with pleasant memories. He brought Ben’s old yarmulke, its worn cloth peeking out behind the stars, burdened as well. 

And, not the least, the two scraps of canvas he had had imprinted with his favorites among Esther’s paintings. They were the sea eggs, the one with the red house on her shoulders, and that hawkish self-portrait, along with the framee telescoping stretchers to hang them. Yes, those were personals always with him. The pics of his beloveds and all the rest of Esther’s stuff were on the cloud store accessed by his ever-present fon, but he couldn’t see them then. 

They had cut his COMM, although the op system still worked. It’s disorienting to group beings to be unconnected, and it unsettled him to look at the display panel. Its emptiness, a precipice of its own, made him feel dizzy and almost sick to his stomach.

Every person has that fon tat always. Like eyes and ears. His forearm felt bare without the flickering messages crawling across the panel. So rarely was this done that they probably didn’t realize that the COMM cut alone would have been enough to subdue him.

In the previous week, events had set the capstone to his losses. Marion had followed Ben and just earlier, Milton. He had alienated Gloria. That was his fault, he knew. And Fin, his last friend, was hunkering in his own dungeon. His was a leaving without parting, and it made him overwhelmingly sad. He already had lost his first family when he came to the Moon. That was his choice, as well. When he had lost a second, he was overwhelmed.

Behind him, the displayscreen still showed a lunar night in black and white. Fused stone regolith pavers led off into a regolith field that faded into a regolith blackness. LED status beams punctuated the residual darkness. Its contrast, set against the aggressive jungle scene on the other wall, split the room and unsettled the senses to produce a residue of anxiety.

The Lunar backdrop set the mood. Yet it told him that another scenario had been created. It was still daytime there for almost another two weeks. They had a talented vid director on that job.

Gloria would follow her instructions. They watched. There was no point even thinking of causing trouble then. Even if he were minded to, there was no way to make any, restrained as he was.

He looked at the guys he had with him when they tried to arrest Rudy, again with their Plasers and KO collars. They were not there to deter violence. Just having taken part in a demonstration of the futility of resistance to weapons, he was unlikely to try to battle seven armed people. Was he going to fight them off and grab a surfacesuit to scoot off over some lunar hill? To where? They were there to dress the scene, just like the padlocks and chains.

They were banishing him from the austere world that was his home; from the people he loved, the place he had lived, and the things he loved to do. He would never see their new city Rubin built.

They had chosen to let him live. Easy to kill him, and finish it, but maybe, they just concluded that too many deaths close together would make them look -overzealous. 

Of course, their killer was dead. There would be no embarrassing confessions from him. And Boris guessed his laughable efforts as investigator gave their actions a gloss of legality. It might be a bit awkward if the investigator died.

And too, when the LSA was making so much money, the UN might be thinking it would not be undesirable if they had an excuse to revoke their license. They could take it all for themselves because order was ‘breaking down’ under the Authority. He didn’t think their counterparts in the Lunar enterprise, the shareholders of the LSA, the largest companies on Earth, would want that. 

And maybe his name, all over the nets as the famous investigator, the champion of public order, did lend him a little extra bit of insurance.

Whatever the reason, he remained alive, even though his knowledge remained dangerous, and his mere existence exasperating. He would not be free to reveal it where he was going. Lucky for him too, it was not exclusive knowledge. Zeinab knew, and they couldn’t do without her. And Fin, and Gloria. A lot of useful people to kill. They made it inconvenient, and impractical.

So maybe it was just that there was no more immediate benefit from violence. They had what they wanted. He wouldn’t be able to talk, and Zeinab wouldn’t want to. And the others, well, they were tied to him. Moreover, their Boris problem would be simultaneously displaced twenty-something light minutes from Earth. He would be isolated in a separate, cached networld, and under surveillance. Much different than 1.5 seconds and almost immediate access to the nets. He couldn’t make more trouble.

And he was going willingly because he had come to comprehend his sin. He had been careless with at least one life and he was just lucky that the others he put at risk were still alive. He had known that serious and ruthless people were at work. Unintended consequences certainly, but not unforeseeable.

He knew that people would eventually discover the truth about him. And he was enough of a coward not to be eager to be there when they did. He was content to be bundled away. He had lost a lot less than some others. Yet he couldn't see how he could have acted much different. He couldn’t have just ignored Cyra, denying her ghost even the poor reckoning he could offer. And he couldn’t have done anything effective without the skills of his friends.

Even so, he wished that he could have found a way to use them without risking them. Unhappily, he had felt the power. At his age and experience, dangerously naïve. He should have husbanded his friends - events had warned him from the beginning that there was danger. It was weakness, the more seductive because he thought it was strength. He was the one who created the provocation to kill Marion.

It all kept playing in his head, sweeping through the previous week over and over. Scene after scene he could not stop. Like an excruciating vid that can’t be turned off, repeating continuously, ending in death and destruction.

By some strange mental process, he remembered every detail, rare for him. It was like it was happening again, each time it played. Considering the events, it was an unpleasant experience. Even his random thoughts, in all their aberrant irrelevance, returned in lockstep with the searing trials of the week.

Those last days had wrung him out. His mind was still disordered. So much had happened. He was just so tired; all he wanted to do was rest. He couldn’t, though. His mind wouldn’t stop. So right then, it was OK to remain inert, and let others decide what to do with his life while that story pounded through his head. 

He had woken up, just one week and a day previous, and he had gone to breakfast and work as usual. Not a care in his world. After his shift, he went over to the shuttle room to wait for the new people to come in – a favorite pastime of his, and a defensible function of his part time job as legal officer.

Of course, they didn’t have docks there. They were just not big enough to justify a spaceport or a terminal. They did have a spare and utilitarian reception room on the ground level next to the shuttle landing pad. It had a wall-size displayscreen fed by images from one of the low powered orbital scopes that follow the inbound and outbound ships. They gave an astounding view. But you can see that from anywhere, even over the nets on Earth, if you want.

What you can’t see is the poverty of wider experience that makes the novelty inherent in an arrival area into air for the soul. It doesn’t matter how expansive and luxurious the big tin can is. Living in one, seeing the same people in the same rooms for years on end, primes a person for new faces. And so, the arrival of a ship with new people is important. To some, anyway.

Looking around, he could see that most people had resisted the impulse to gawk because there were only a few waiting, and from the expectant looks on their faces, those few others were there with a specific purpose, either to meet one of the two passengers coming off, or to receive some eagerly awaited freight that was shortly to be downloaded.

There are usually a few, though, who sidle into reception to eyeball the scene when the Rockships come or go. They sit, trying to look only casually interested, splayed at random on one of the black metal tube seats, outlined against the harsh scenes on the displayscreens behind them like abandoned children waiting for parents who may never come. The chairs were arranged in two rows in illogical overabundance. When would twenty-four people come to watch cargo come in with the very occasional immigrant? 

Some are inclined to gossip and curiosity, and come to watch. Not that day. Maybe because it was mostly cargo considering that they were in a consolidation phase with colonists. Not everyone was so relentlessly curious as that man Boris.

Nevertheless, there are usually, at least, replacements, and even temporary research assignments. It poses a physically challenging placement with partial gravity and no CRISPR enhancement for temps. They are people who come and leave along with the freight. Also, occasionally, celebrity tourists. They are objects of curiosity in a small community.

The Rockships they travel in are like no spaceships that have preceded them. No chemical burners, they use the elements of nature to make their way, and the power of the sun to expel those elements at a speed that has enabled safe and reliable transportation between planets. That power is no less propulsive, but it is more predictably controllable. You can even buy a flight insurance policy on the trip if you want to – mostly a publicity stunt, of course. A stunt, though, supported by some insurance companies somewhere as practical merchandise that won’t bankrupt them. No one has ever before been able to buy one of those for the explosive firecrackers chemical rockets are.

No need to go on to describe it and its functions in detail, because if you are at all interested, you have already looked it up, and if you haven’t, well, you aren’t.

For those who aren’t, the critical point is that, because of the power of the plasma engines they use, the Rockships can afford to haul the necessary mass to protect their occupants from solar wind and cosmic rays with effectively thick shielding of the special polyconcrete that gives them their name. They can still accelerate to the one gee that approximates normal gravity, even though they rarely do. People can get to the Moon in ten hours (even faster if they want, but they don’t need to rush). They can get to Mars in ten days in reasonable comfort, anytime, notwithstanding min and max distances between the two planets, making scheduled interplanetary travel practical for the first time. Of course, on the way back, they start slower for the comfort of passengers who might be returning from low gee. It’s tough to cope with full gravity after being in partial gravity for a while. And way easier to adapt to the gravity change in measured steps.

The Rockship needs to accelerate to the midpoint of its journey and then flip to decelerate for the last half of the trip. The ship’s length (just about a kilometer) protects its passengers from the intense local radiation the reactor generates. It’s slow rotation, though, to present the other end and yet avoid tearing itself apart. This despite the great strength of its pure lunar-refined iron frame (– one of the Moon’s most valuable products). The passengers are supposed to secure themselves during the flip. Yet an hour, while unpleasant, does not present the immobilizing health risk that prolonged weightlessness has been proven to be. The Rockship is not why we are in space, but it is the reason that we were able to get so many people there healthy and in one piece.

So, Boris was watching for the ship to come in. This time he had arrived early and watched the landing of the shuttle that comes in using eye-defying magnetism to slow down – no rockets needed. The way they decelerate without pyrotechnics seems magical.

The shuttle landed and he saw two people emerged from the main hatch. Coming in through that shielded tunnel of the access tube can feel like a rebirth to some immigrants. It can symbolize the beginning of a new life. But it was obviously not an interest for the pair who appeared. They were not concerned with that. They cycled through the air lock. That’s needed even though the access tube is pressurized. It’s hard vacuum out there. After they stripped their transit suits you could see they were a man and a fem, both agitated. The guy was dressed in company exec uniform, gray with the twin ellipse, and the fem was in science garb, blue with the ellipse. No celeb richies that trip. They come to see the sights at eye-popping cost.

When she had shucked the suit, you could see she was tall, with pale porcelain skin, tightly stretched over prominent cheekbones, with substance, like all colonists have. They get CRISPR tweaking for micrograv tolerance, disease resistance, and all the rest. She was as close to slim as a powerful, muscular, body could be. She moved a bit awkwardly as if she were not quite used to her new physique; not quite sure how much room it needed to move or how to get it there. Her skull was reddened with recent shaving (for hygiene), and she unconsciously ran her hand over it as soon as she got out of her suit. Her kind of beauty was persisting into maturity. She looked much like she must have always, and remained a striking fem. But there was a problem with that too. She had no pride in it. Her bearing was defensive, and her gaze was averted, off-center.

She frowned as she talked to the man, a Filipino, around thirty, extraordinarily handsome, his strong wide face formed in solid regular features matched by a short, square, stocky body. Prominent black eyebrows hooded watchful black eyes. He had an athlete’s body, blessed with extraordinary physical gifts – balanced, competent, and capable. His shaven skull was smooth and regular.

The reaction of the young man was striking. In mid phrase from the fem, he just turned away, shutting her off, not responding at all to her conversation, walking away after having twisted off the helmet of his transfer suit in one fluid motion – a difficult feat even for a spacer used to it by long practice.

She had followed him and had walked over to the suit rack where he had headed, and she had removed and stored her helmet, then stripping her suit. She was walking away from the rack. She took a step, and slipped backwards, caroming off the suit rack, cushioned by the suits. Even though he was standing right beside her, and finished unsuiting, the man did not even look to help when she announced her fall with a gasp. She fell, unceremoniously, in the light gravity, with plenty of time to cushion her fall with her hands. She got up with a surprised look on her face as the man walked away from her, and then her expression turned to an ironic smile. 

Falling is common on the Moon. The first steps of the Earthborn are frequently slips to falls. It’s mass versus weight and it takes getting used to. At one-sixth gravity you just don’t have the same frictional forces underfoot. So, many newcomers fall, but just off the ship they have bones still at full strength and no harm is done except to pride.

Later, when osteoporosis is a factor, it’s more serious. They supply soft, rubbery, shoes to all residents and the floor is also a non-slip rubberized material – yet the leading cause of injury there is still broken bones from falls. Electrical regeneration stimulation is standard therapy, effective but unwelcome since it hurts to take it.

The young man, however, seemed immediately to adapt to the change in gravity and didn’t miss a step. He looked entirely at home and comfortable at once. Alicia, the administrator’s prickly assistant, had come in while Boris was mostly diverted by the action. She stood apart in surly silence uninterested in the commotion and waited inert to pluck him away and spirit him off as soon as he was free. No check-in and registration for him.

After the brief fuss was over, and the fem had righted herself. Boris walked over to her. She may have seen him watching her from across the room. She was otherwise engaged and not many people were there to attract attention except for one staff person to secure the entry.

As he approached her, she started talking to no-one in particular, vocalizing thoughts he could hardly believe he was hearing, a direct feed from her consciousness - fragmented and almost mechanical, consonants punching the air in front of her, words cascading out, empty hands clenched. Her fingertips were squeezed bloodless. There was a red welt on her neck.

The real marks, though, were on the inside. They were wounds too raw, too rank, for easy exposure to a stranger. They were opened then, but they were fit only for an AutoPsych to see. Yet agony will out.

“The ship was automated, so the Captain disappeared and was probably just watching vids in the control room while the autopilot flew the ship on. He certainly wasn’t around when I needed him.

“Only two of us and, nominally we were each assigned a suite, but it’s hard to stay out of the common room with the view on the big screen, so both of us were in there.

“I was excited to be going to the Moon. Some protected space where I didn’t need to be scared all the time. He was charming, talkative, and I thought he was harmless. He was going to the Moon too.

“Everyone is vetted for it. He’s a hunk, and he is at least thirty years younger than me. It didn’t occur to me that I could get into trouble. I still like men despite it all. It was nice to have a young man come on to me, gently, I thought. No risk. We were in public.

“It's nice at first… then…. I'm a private person. I never did anything… I didn’t suggest anything to encourage him. Never any relationship with unknown men… that’s the rule. Maybe he thought I was trying to be nice. I was trying to be pleasant, to avoid his attentions. I don’t know... I know I’m still attractive. Sometimes it’s mildly enjoyable, but it brings the wrong people with the wrong eyes for the wrong reasons… I can’t help the way I look. Mostly I hate it and I wish they would just leave me alone.

“He moved close to me; way too close for me to mistake it… On an empty ship… He tried to make conversation. He was charming and trying to be funny, and his eyes focused only on me… Like I was the center of the universe… Powerful stuff! It mesmerized me. Then he started the hand gestures… They led to taps and casual touches… All the while he was telling me he was coming to the Moon on an important job.

“You know, when something like that happens, you always think you’re overreacting. You want to think it’s nothing, yet you know what it is. Men who don’t want don’t do that.

“He waited for the flip maneuver in mid-journey when they reverse the engine. When we were in free fall, he made his move. He just leaned over and pulled me to him by my neck. He squeezed just a little. I was panicked. I bit his lip and pushed back. He put his other hand down to my crotch. He started rubbing hard, so it hurt, no expression on his face. He just looked at me, hard-eyed; I was an insect, and he was waiting to see what I would do.

“I was trying to convince him that I didn’t want to do it because I was feeling ill from the freefall. I was hoping he would be repulsed if I looked like I might upchuck. But he didn’t buy it.

“And all the while he is holding my neck. Not so hard as to choke, hard enough to suggest what would happen if I resisted. He seemed to be enjoying my discomfort. I think he would have gone on in different circumstances without hesitation. But then, with me repeatedly telling him that there was surveillance video being taken, and pushing hard, he gave up.

“He pretended that I had encouraged him and let me push him away. After all, I was an old hag and who would believe me that I had rebuffed handsome young him?”

And then with a ferocious twist to her voice, in an even harsher tone: “That one!”

Boris did not know immediately what to say. Was she even talking to him?

She answered that question by diffusing her focus on him. Her voice softened and her hands relaxed and she settled her wide blue eyes (yes, blue) on his face, not on his eyes. She started talking - not dumping data. 

“I am Marion Kobayashi, and I am the new IT manager.” She smiled at him entirely without embarrassment, except for the hand that again touched her skull, rubbing it nervously where there was a red mark already, and asked - “and who, pray, are you?”

Finding his tongue at last, he said “Sorry about the reception. We are usually a bit more welcoming.”

Apologetically, he went on: “I’m Boris Levsky, Legal Officer, and sometime x-ray diffraction tech. I’m sorry you had such a tough time. I think you should report your complaint. They’ll probably send him back on the same ship.

“We can start an investigation now if you want, and we have some rape kits in the Constable's station.” This last, pointlessly, just to say something partly responsive, because she had just told him there was no penetration.

And then he plunged further on, gamely trying to give some consolation.

“I have to tell you that this is our first criminal investigation – aside from the odd drunken fight and some pointless vandalism.” He did tell her that. He was embarrassed and flustered. It certainly wasn’t a considered gambit to calm her. He just wanted to keep talking, and it was the first halfway relevant thing he could think of.

Sensing his unease, she replied: “Well, imagine! I guess I must have shocked you. Your face is all pink. At least, it looks like I staged my mental blowout in front of the right person. It was like someone else was saying it. Strange… The sheriff.” Then she gave him an amused, critical look.

“No point in that. I just told you I didn’t let him do anything. My reaction is my problem. It’s all ancient history for me.” The last phrase had a bitter, acid turn to it. She wasn’t pleased with her reaction.

He didn’t at all mind that she considered his appearance amusing. Factoring in the word waterfall she had just dumped down her own personal sluiceway, she needed a little bit of comic relief, even if it was grade school stuff.

Certainly, he embodied the joke, such as it was. He was tall, reedy, and sheep-faced, with big ears, nose, and lips, looking much more like a schoolteacher than a sheriff. There was a gaping disparity between him and an avenging angel. He was not unhappy to grant her a laugh at his expense. It seemed to help her, and it didn’t bother him. He knew how he looked.

That seemed to bring a change of tone. “Sheriff, I was supposed to meet someone from the administrator’s office here, and you now seem to be the only remotely official person left. Is it you?”

Ill at ease with her revelations and feeling somehow responsible for the events she had just described, he stiffened up in the way he couldn’t avoid in disturbing situations, talking in stilted language with over punctuated pauses. He could only manage what must have sounded like unsympathetic condescension - something very like:

“The Director’s assistant has come and gone, and I am just here in idle curiosity. I will be glad to take you over to administration to find out what suite assignment has been made for you and help you get settled. And I’m not the sheriff. We don’t have one. However, I am the closest we have to that.

“You can take out your moon contacts now. Your eyes will gradually readjust, and you will find the Moonspecs irritating. The low gravity will soon promote distortion of your eyeballs to match the prescription in your intra-ocular lenses. And don’t mind the feeling of having a bad cold that will gradually develop over the next few hours. Your body sends more fluid to your head than is necessary. They will issue you pseudo-histamines that will partly convince your body that it already has enough liquid up there. Then you will only feel like you’re getting a cold all the time. You will get used to it. They will start you slow. It seems to give some people bad headaches, but there is not much to choose from because you get those if you don’t take the pills too. You will habituate to them too when they decide how much you can take. Fun and games, huh?”

He knew he was running on inappropriately. They had certainly told her all that stuff already. At this rate, she was liable to turn around and leave on the next shuttle. And they obviously needed her, or she wouldn’t be there. 

Then, partially recovering and still trying to say something useful: “Are you tired? Do you want some tea or coffee? The trip is not punishingly long. It is stressful, though, and more so for you, obviously.”

She sounded relieved and simply responded: 

“No refreshments, but thanks for the offer of guidance. I just want to get to my suite and lie down. I can’t really make a complaint against the guy because even though he scared me, he did stop when I asked. You know, I was once as normal a girl as is. I had a positive relationship with my father. We loved each other and even lunched together as adults; I had male friends. I didn’t fear men, until it happened to me. Damaged people, like me, are always waiting to be anxious, and sometimes it’s because of our history, and not just the situation. So, leave it. Unfortunately, I know how to cope.”

Boris: “Okay, you decide. Just keep it in mind. I could say something to him. No criticism intended. My experience is that a lot of fems take the blame for what they didn’t do. And like you said, what you look like is not your fault. You are not responsible for the actions of others.

“I’m not totally convinced that anybody is ultimately responsible for his own actions. That doesn’t matter. If I don’t say something to him, he may assume that he can get away with it and other fems may pay for what they don’t do. There may be background and corroboration for this. Maybe he commed something or spoke to a handler or has a history. There may be a lot behind it. So, think about it. I may be able to do a lot to add context and build a case even though you think it is a simple thing. People will listen to you – this is a community here and you’re now a part of it.”

Her reply was in a corrosive tone that admitted no argument. “No, I don’t want to start out that way. I said that I have been coping with stuff like this for a long time, and I can handle it. Besides, he told me he was a temp. It will all blow over and he will go back to Earth and it will be done.”

What could he say? “Okay, okay. They can leave your baggage here for the time being. The auto cargo handlers will take the rest from ship’s storage and put it in the holding area over there – both radiation protected and general category stuff.”

Trying to comfort her in his clumsy way, he dared to reach out to her shoulder to guide her gently to the air lock exit. In reaction she twisted her body away from that touch, and instinctively contorted her face like his hand was burning her.

He was caught. What could he do but withdraw his hand and awkwardly point at the door?

Then her demeanor abruptly changed, and she showed the perspective and sympathy that she was to display over and over. It was doubly sad that she knew exactly how she was screwed up. She actually apologized to him, and her eyes started to tear over, “I know you’re just trying to be kind. I just can’t bear it. That’s one of the worst things about it. When something happens to bring it up again, I cut myself off. I just can’t help it.”

He didn’t know what to say, so he kept silent. Not the time for it anyway.

He led her away from the racks, across the grey and black room with its discordant extravaganza jungle on one wall and monotone Moon nightscape on the other. They went through the airlock, him showing her the routine for sealing as he did, comforted by its inane familiarity. “You get used to it. And now I don’t think I would feel comfortable leaving a room without it. Its prescribed procedure. Vacuum kills fast.”

Being a bit embarrassed with the administration’s failure to meet her and flustered by her revelations followed by her energetic rejection of his offers to help, he continued a little more heartily than he usually did - “I don’t know why they just didn’t pick you up with the other guy and take you to the office, but, if you will allow me, I would be glad to fill in and get you settled.”

She responded, again with an amused smile, back to normal. “They must consider me quite a catch. Thanks.”

The reception room lock let out into the elevator lobby which descended to the Commons floor. On the other side of the door were two elevators. A large hydraulic freight elevator and, on the right, a much smaller passenger elevator that was cable driven. They used it when they could because it was much faster. It had just taken the earlier passengers down, so it took a few moments to come up when he signaled it. He just waited awkwardly with Marion and when it came, they entered for the short ride down, the elevator door closing noisily behind them.

When they got to the bottom, the door opened, screeching in its tracks, and again closed loudly after them. He thought some anonymous environmental designer engineered it to make that loud noise because it reflected off every firm surface of the Commons, giving the impression that you were entering an exceptionally large space. Since they had very few of such spaces on the Moon, he guessed it was meant to remind them that, even though they were inside a box, it was an enormous box.

So, they both walked, she treading carefully, into the side of the Commons near the far end from the offices, and he, tentatively, leading her across the room in the direction of the pegpoles, scaling up to the opposite side mezzanine containing its offices, all the while explaining the purpose of the room and soliciting admiration of one of the few big rooms they had.

“Of course, it’s not nearly so big as the sealed lava tube we use for soaring. It's at the Rubin town site being built right now. In a few years we will live in our own private world with real outdoor scenery.”

The Commons is high – three stories, and long – 200 meters with a vaulted roof simulating a skylight and a huge cathedral window, filigreed cutouts feigning panes, with another view on the displayscreen behind the lattice. It was showing a forest on Earth and the trees were waving in the wind. The radiant heat of the displayscreen simulated the sun through the trees. It was moderately convincing.

To get to the second-floor offices, they had to go up. In low gravity, you don’t need stairs. The pegpoles save a lot of space. Boris walked over and just started up, expecting Marion to follow. She did. No hesitation. She wasn’t afraid of heights. She measured her fears.