Gunslinger Moon Read online

  Once the criminal was dead, the citizens present welcomed it back as a citizen — for all citizens of PHTF worlds are considered acceptable only if they accept the Truth of We, and are right-thinking creatures. And the right-thinking dead are honored, while the wrong-thinking living are not.

  “Do you have questions?” the owner asked.

  The four of us look at each other, exchanging fearful glances. The other three shook their heads.

  I repress a shiver and say, “I have one.”

  The helmeted head nods. “Ask.”

  “How are we to know what may be touched?”

  The owner says, “You may — you must — touch everything in this suite. Nothing is too small, too unimportant, or too strange for your consideration. The man who inhabited these quarters may have had terrible secrets, may have been other than as he presented himself, or he may have been exactly the man all of Settled Space believed him to be.

  “That doesn’t matter.

  “What matters is that he may have left clues to his thinking in this room. Neither I nor anyone else who has seen his diagram can understand what it means. And I have presented it to every surviving member of my crew, to my officers, to associates of mine in places far from here, and to the best minds in the City of Furies. No one can unravel its import.”

  One of the others says, “Perhaps it was a joke. It looks like it could have been a joke.”

  “It does,” the owner agrees. “Unless you knew the man. He was working toward the solution to the most important problem in our society — not to just freeing existing slaves, but to devise a way to protect the individual rights of all people by preventing the creation of new slaves. He was searching for a way to create Free Space and make sure that its freedom is lasting. I personally offered him passage to the City of Furies and assistance in earning citizenship in exchange for helping me solve this problem for which we both desired the answer.

  “At dinner, during a discussion he was having with friends, something fell into place for him, and he suddenly knew the solution.

  “He drew the diagram, he got ready to explain what it meant, and he was murdered.”

  The four of us look at each other. The man to my right asks, “If he was murdered for figuring out this answer, might we not be as well?”

  The silence that follows freezes me in place. He’s asked the wrong question. I know it the second I hear it, and have my fear confirmed in the instant that the owner’s head turns slowly toward him.

  To the air, the owner says, “Samix, escort T748H-BN Rabon to his unit. His assistance is no longer needed.”

  One of the guards standing by the door nods and steps forward. The owner turns to Rabon and says, “When Settled Space is safe, you can come out of the box again.”

  I suppress my shudder. The owner looks at each of us in turn. When his gaze lands on me, I swallow fear and say, “I’d like to see a recording of that conversation.”

  He says, “One exists. It was from an illegal source, and you may not speak of what you see to anyone ever. If you watch it, when you become crew you will be Veridicated each time you return to the ship, and your failure to keep this secret will be one of the things for which you will be tested. If you fail in this test, you will be abandoned wherever you are with nothing but your name and the clothes you wear, to make your way through the universe as best you can.”

  “I still want to see it,” I say.

  “You each agree?”

  The other two nod. “Veridication requirements were explained during Off-ship Conduct Training,” the man on my left says.

  I see the faint flicker of a smile inside the helmet.

  “Then you three are left to find the truth. It may be anywhere in these quarters, in any form. Whatever bits of Bashtyk Nokyd’s discovery exist in here will almost certainly be in pieces. From the form of his notes, they are unlikely to be recognizable as solutions — you are going to have to distill some of the sense of his meaning from what you find to create a path to the truth.”

  “How long do we have?”

  “You have as long as you have, but it is more important that you be thorough than that you be quick. We need the right answer, not the fastest one you can find. The Pact Worlds Alliance is rabidly expansionist — it constantly needs to drag productive worlds under its rule to pay the debts of its core worlds — and because it bleeds its conquests dry so quickly, changing them into yet more debtor worlds, it cannot escape the expanding rot at its center, or solve the problems the rot causes.

  “So you have until you can find and connect Bashtyk Nokyd’s secrets to the meaning of the diagram, or until you exhaust all options and surrender, or until pirates hired by the Pact Worlds Alliance to destroy us come through the origami point to where we’re docked and succeed.”

  “I would have led with that last one,” I say, and immediately wish I hadn’t.

  The owner laughs, though — an unnerving rasp that ends in a strangled cough. “Work,” he says. “As if your lives depend on it. Because they do.”

  Chapter Four

  Jex

  Once the owner leaves, we make our brief introductions. I introduce myself as Jex. My two remaining colleagues are Tarn and Hirrin.

  Not much to tell for any of us. We’ve all been on PHTF worlds, we’ve all been through the hell that those worlds breed. Like me, they’ve been sentenced to death. Hirrin was exiled to his settlement’s Needle, required to serve the incoming ships until he died of cold or starvation, and was a direct rescue. He was put into cold storage voluntarily because there was no other space for him. Tarn is, like me, a Death Circus purchase.

  We discover that each of us was given a second birth, real parents, siblings, education, training, discipline.

  We try to figure out if we knew each other in the Neighborhood, but can’t find any connections in our pasts.

  What we have in common is that when we reached the age of legality, all three of us chose the path to becoming Longview crew.

  Sitting and talking with them, I discover something my parents never told me when Hirrin says, “After I made my career choice and started training, my folks said they were proud of me. That they remained in stasis rather than go to the City because the path they had chosen was to become second parents to the broken people who came aboard the Longview. That they chose parent duty so they would know better what to do with real children when they could have them. And that they could change their path choice at any time, just like we can.”

  I didn’t know that. It had never occurred to me to ask how I came to have a second birth.

  I remember my first life, the girl I loved, the child we made, their deaths, and I was afraid that if I told anyone what I remembered, they would take the memories away.

  I’d lost my child and his mother — and I could not even blame her for betraying us all. The same unending suffering that had made me rebellious had broken her will.

  I had loved them both. I could not bear the thought of forgetting them.

  I was certain my second life was not entirely real — but just as I didn’t want to lose my memories, I did not want to risk hurting the people who loved me and cared for me, so I did not ask any questions that might take them away. I wanted my second parents and my sibs to be real.

  I am grateful to discover that they were, if not in the way I’d imagined.

  Hirrin, Tarn, and I decide to categorize the contents of the dead philosopher’s quarters. There is his writing — dozens of bound real-paper manuscripts marked Journals, each with a date on the front, each logged into his Journal record. There is his reading material. And finally there is what we can only describe as “random assorted stuff.” Com log, viewscreen log, entertainment holos, a couple of Senso games, tools with which the philosopher was carving a chain made of wood that rests on one of the shelves.

  The writing looks like the best bet for answers, the reading like the second best bet, and the “other stuff” as “probably not much good, but we
have to go through it.”

  Hirrin says, “We’re more likely to recognize patterns and connections if each of us takes one whole group.”

  Tarn and I both nod. It makes sense.

  And all three of us almost trip over each other trying to claim Bashtyk Nokyd’s writing.

  I sigh, and say, “Sticks, Stones, Bones?”

  You know…

  Sticks hit stones,

  Stones break bones,

  Bones scatter sticks.

  It was how kids decided things in the Neighborhood.

  “Winner gets the writing,” Tarn says.

  We count three, show our hands, and Hirrin has sticks, and both Tarn and I have stones.

  So Hirrin gets the philosopher’s notebooks.

  A second run gives the books to Tarn, and leaves me with the remainders, which look less likely to yield results.

  I try not to take it too hard. Last pick and what’s left over are what I have to win my chance to earn a place on the crew. But even if I have the dregs, I’m still in this, not back in storage. I’m going to use my chance, not waste it.

  “We should work our way through his belongings from what he used most recently back to what he hasn’t used on record,” I say. “If this diagram was something he just thought up while he was sitting at dinner with those people, the idea that caused it would probably have some connection to something new he wrote or read or did.”

  Hirrin says, “Good plan.” Tarn nods.

  I have three logs to go through: Com log, viewscreen log, Senso log. Hirrin and Tarn each have only one.

  But a sort is a sort. I compile the three logs into one, and sort by “last opened.”

  The most recent activity in my log is an inbound communication. I listen to a man invite the philosopher to dinner, and hear the philosopher happily accept.

  Knowing how the dinner turned out makes me queasy. Simply spending a few hours in the company of people who admired his work led to his death.

  The next most recent thing was a room access, where someone had brought him dinner.

  And right before that he’d been playing a Senso game.

  I have no idea what a Senso game is, really. They weren’t part of either my first life or my second one.

  But the Senso has a unit you step into.

  I step.

  I’m surrounded by a warm, friendly female voice. “Welcome, Unnamed Player. You are not the previous player. What game would you like to play?”

  I check the name of the game he last played, and say, “Old Earth Cowboys Versus the Bug-Eyed Monsters of Mars.”

  “Would you like to create a character, return to the most recent save, earlier saves, a replay, or a play-together. You must create a new character to join a play-together.”

  “Most recent save,” I say.

  And just like that, I am sitting on the back of an enormous, terrifying animal in the bleakest, hottest, driest, most unforgiving terrain I can imagine.

  The animal immediately senses that I know nothing of what I am supposed to do with it. It makes a loud, angry-sounding noise, stands up on its hind legs, and throws me to the ground.

  Which hurts. Knocks the wind out of me, sends lances of pain into my elbows, my neck, my lower back, my ass.

  Not actually my ass, I realize as I stare at my hands. Not my ass, not my hands. These hands are big, tanned, all scarred up, with dirty fingernails and callused palms.

  As soon as I can breathe, I yell after the running monster, hoping that “Stop! Stop!” might have some effect, but it races away from me at an impossible, terrifying speed.

  So when the worst of the pain has turned dull, I stand up. I’m stunned at how much that hurt.

  I’m wearing worn boots with pointy toes and heavy cloth pants covered with animal-skin guards. A hat with a huge brim keeps most of the sun out of my eyes.

  I look around. The air is hot and dusty. The wind blows dirt into my eyes and mouth.

  I turn slowly. As far as I can see, the sky is the white-blue of heat. Flat horizons shimmer into nothingness in all four directions, and the few green things that grow up from the ground look like weapons — they are a dull green, covered in spikes, with arms that twist out and up. I can imagine moving too close to one and getting myself killed.

  “What do I do now?” I mutter.

  “Would you like to see the previous player’s open missions?” a disembodied voice asks.

  I jump a little. There is nothing to tell me I am in a game, and the solid and painful nature of my fall has made me forget.

  “Yes,” I say.

  And words appear in the air in front of me.

  Available Missions

  Visit Lucy Sweetcheeks

  Locate the Missing Helterz Family

  Obtain the Map to the Blue River Gold Strike

  Track Down the Dorsey Gang

  Parley with the Bug-Eyed Monsters

  Game Options

  Start New Character

  Replay Last Save

  Select Other Replay

  Play-Together

  Save and Quit

  Most Recent Trophies and Accomplishments

  GOLD TROPHY: You Saved Miss Lizzie and the Young’uns!

  SILVER TROPHY: You Got A Level Ten Faster Horse

  GOLD TROPHY: You Got The Biggest Gun

  * * *

  I stare at two of the trophies in front of me.

  Faster Horse.

  Biggest Gun.

  And know that, painful though it is, I’m not working the dregs of our mission after all. Sweating, melting, in pain, and standing in the middle of what is the biggest patch of mean nothingness I have ever seen, I am nonetheless onto something important, if I can just figure out what it is.

  Chapter Five

  Hunter Studly

  I say, “I need to quit,” and the game voice says, “You have quit without saving.”

  I can see the Senso unit again, and when I turn, I can see my two teammates.

  I step out of the game. Hirrin and Tarn are both reading. Neither of them looks like he’s been thrown to the ground by a fleeing monster. Feeling envious of their easier paths, I use the head, get a look at my face in the mirror, discover that I look older than I did when I left my second parents to start training. I have scars. A lot of them.

  Mementos from my first life.

  I get a quick meal from the reconsta machine.

  “Find anything?” Tarn asks.

  I shrug. “Maybe a possibility of something,” I say. “Nothing to call him back for.”

  “Me, either.”

  Hirrin doesn’t look up. He’s going through a bound book with paper pages, and he’s holding a scanner over the lines to translate the writing into readable characters, and muttering under his breath.

  Tarn grins at me. “The old man wrote on physical pages in bound books. With ink sticks. Made each word by hand. Even the scanner is struggling with his writing. Hirrin may have the best chance of finding the secrets to the diagram, but I don’t envy the path he has to follow to do it.”

  Neither do I. But I say, “I had a monster throw me to the ground and then run off without me,” I said. “I’m someplace hot, ugly, lonely, with no food and no water, and I don’t have anything good to say about Bashtyk Nokyd right now either.”

  Tarn looks at his reader, looks back at me, and says, “Hard to imagine I’m the lucky one.” He grins again and returns to reading and highlighting notes.

  I step back into the Senso unit.

  The warm, friendly female voice greets me. “Welcome back, Unnamed Player. What game would you like to play?”

  “Old Earth Cowboys Versus the Bug-Eyed Monsters of Mars,” I say.

  “Would you like to create a character, return to the most recent save, earlier saves, a replay, or a play-together. You must create a new character to join a play-together.”

  I start to go back into the replay, but I realize that I don’t understand the game, and if I’m to understand the impo
rtance of the bigger gun or the better horse or whatever other discoveries the old man made while playing, I first need to understand the game.

  I say, “Game voice?”

  “My name is Retha,” the voice says. “I’m the Fantronix Games AI.”

  “Retha. Thank you. Can you answer questions about games, gameplay, and options?”

  “Of course. I’ve now turned on guidance mode.”

  I consider my wording.

  “I have a task I must complete in the shortest time possible. I must play through the game Old Earth Cowboys Versus the Bug-Eyed Monsters of Mars —”

  “The game’s aficionados call it Cowboys Versus BEMs,” she said. “Using the shorter name will save you time.”

  She’s saving me time already. Oh, goody. I continue, “— and I need to understand discoveries the previous player made while he was playing the game. These discoveries helped him figure out a new way to help slaves find their freedom. Can you suggest a path I can take that will get me where I need to go?”

  “Yes,” Retha said. “Create a new character, play the introductory mission, and then request a Play-Together Game. When you’re ready, I’ll create the match you need.”

  “Thank you, Retha. I’ll do that.”

  “Entering Character Creation Mode now.”

  And I’m in a dusty, run-down room looking at myself in a cracked mirror. Floorboards creak beneath my feet. The air is hot and dry. I can see what I am in the mirror — a gray, vaguely human-shaped blob with no face, no hair, no… anything.

  Above the mirror, words appear.

  Select Your Gender

  Male

  Female

  Unique

  I start to select Male, but on a whim choose Female.

  And I’m staring at my naked self. Well, sort of. I’m staring at my naked breasts.

  I touch them, and they’re real. Sensitive. I poke around elsewhere, and think, This is what I’m doing today.