Will Save the Galaxy for Food

  Alternatively, there was always Cantrabargid, or one of the other primitive extrasolar worlds I’d saved. But the problem with living somewhere that knows you as a war hero is that that’s kind of what you have to continue being. I’d be safe from my current enemy list among the Zuvirons, but not so much from their endless plying tournaments . . .

  My thoughts stopped with a jarring clang when my eye caught the bar running along the top of the terminal screen. “Current User: Jacques ­McKeown,” it read.

  I’d been hearing that bracket’s name so often in the last few days I’d barely noticed it at first, but now it had finally sunk in that this was a context where the name did not belong.

  I glanced at the scanner above the coffee-maker, my guts still on the fence over whether to start churning or not. I passed my chip over it again.

  A second cup plopped into the one that was already there, spraying unpleasant pseudo-coffee. I glanced at the screen again. “New User: Jacques McKeown.”

  I swiped my chip back and forth a few more times, and the same message dutifully flickered across the screen again and again. The hopper vomited a small avalanche of paper cups, scalding my thigh with coffee routinely kept at bacteria-killing temperatures, but I was only half-aware of it. Something in my gut was now decisively going at it with a pneumatic churning device.

  “Excuse me, sir?” said a pretty young barista, uneasily appearing behind me with hands clasped behind back. “You are actually required to drink that coffee. The company signed an agreement with the city’s waste processing . . .”

  She was about college age, with her black hair tied back in a ponytail. I stared at her, momentarily unable to speak, some coherent part of my mind silently praying that she wouldn’t notice the thing she, of course, noticed immediately.

  Her words died in her throat as she looked past me at the computer screen, and the two of us goggled together for a second. “Oh my god,” she said in a dangerously flat tone.

  I noticed a Power Off button on the monitor and none too subtly tried to slap it as I stood and turned around. “Yes, I did make quite a mess, didn’t I. I’ll find a towel immediately.” I made an attempt to leave that she stepped in the way of with no apparent conscious thought.

  “Jacques McKeown?” she squeaked.

  I pantomimed looking behind me, over the wall of the booth, briefly noticing that a few star pilots’ heads were already staring in my direction. “Where? Was he over there?” I said loudly, enunciating as clearly as I could manage. “I’ll go over and have a look for you.”

  “You’re Jacques McKeown! The computer said your name’s Jacques McKeown!”

  I ducked out of sight of the other star pilots. I was definitely hearing some interested muttering from over there. My current approach wasn’t paying off, so I decided to try working with rather than through. “I’d really appreciate it if you kept your voice down about it,” I said, holding my hands out. “It’s like a secret-identity thing, right?”

  She nodded rapidly. Her face had gone very red. “Of course! Of course. Listen, I know this must be annoying, but my friend Kimmy, she’s over there, she is such a huge fan of your books. Could I just quickly bring her over? This will make her completely freak.”

  I made another abortive effort to leave. “Look, I . . . I don’t want to cause a complete freak. I’m not sure how I could live with the guilt.”

  “No no no, it’s fine, I won’t give you away. KIIIM!” She called over to another female employee on the other side of the café, who seemed to be functionally identical to her. “THERE’S SOMEONE HERE YOU WILL JUST FREAK OUT WHEN YOU MEET!”

  “IS IT JACQUES MCKEOWN?!” replied Kim, easily matching the first girl’s volume.

  “ER . . . HE DOESN’T WANT ME TO SAY,” bellowed the first girl.

  I didn’t pay attention to the rest of the exchange, because by then I was speed walking out of the concourse, having slipped away the moment the first girl’s back had turned. The important thing was to not look like I was fleeing for what could very well be my life. I kept my head down, my hands in my jacket pockets, and concentrated on putting distance between me and the food court.

  I was half-certain that an uncouth, pilotesque voice shouted something, but I didn’t dare stop or turn around. Fortunately I was not the kind of star pilot who did business in a cape or a silver jumpsuit; a flight jacket and peaked pilot’s cap could disappear into any spaceport crowd, as long as I serpentined a bit and broke line of sight a few times.

  When I’d reached the central plaza where the old and new concourses met, I hadn’t yet felt an angry hand clamp around my shoulder, so I ducked into the gap between two vending machines and pretended to be checking my phone. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw somebody run into the middle of the circular floor, then falter, glancing around. I could feel sweat gathering hotly about my nose and forehead, until my pursuer made a frustrated noise and kept running in a randomly chosen direction.

  I took stock. I thought back to the strangely elaborate motions Ms. Warden had been making with her tablet while paying me. She must have done something to have my name changed on the chip-ID register. Rather an impish prank for a woman who smiled as comfortably as a camel break danced.

  If I could just get to my ship, I could be out of danger within the hour. Once I was through the trebuchet gate and hooked up with a pirate clan, or on Cantrabargid, I could forget about my current array of problems and concentrate on the inevitable new ones.

  Resuming my head-down, hands-pocketed walk, I made my way through the old concourse, to the bay where the Neverdie was parked. I wasn’t as worried about being spotted—no tourists came through here, and therefore, no star pilots loitered, only ever passing quickly back and forth between their ships and the Quantunnel arrivals area. Nevertheless, I kept to the shadows formed by piled-up crates and landing legs, and the Neverdie was soon in sight.

  I tried to think about what I would do if I were any other pilot with reason to believe that Jacques McKeown was in the spaceport. I’d probably start by punching my open palm a few times. Not too much to worry about. Then what? Without more concrete details I, personally, probably wouldn’t go out of my way to act on it, not if it meant leaving my spot. That running person in the entrance plaza might not even have been after me. I was probably worrying over nothing.

  I fingered my key ring remote, in the vain hope that maybe for once I wouldn’t have to manually pull the airlock door open, but no such luck. The door didn’t budge, although the boarding steps unfolded wonkily from underneath, clattering heavily onto the concrete. Of course, there was one thing that I might consider trying, just to appease my curiosity . . .

  “That your ship, mate?”

  . . . and that would be to check the parking registry, and see if any docked ships were registered to Jacques McKeown. Frozen, with one foot on the first boarding step, I wondered exasperatedly why the chip-ID system had to be integrated with plying everything.

  Behind me was a group of around five or six star pilots, none of whom I recognized; they were all part of the night shift crew. As one, they stepped out from the shadow of the ship next to mine, watching me with varying degrees of neutrality in their facial expressions.

  “Yeeees,” I said, prolonging the word as my mind raced. I was still holding the door remote, so a denial would have immediately lost me credibility. They hadn’t immediately set upon me, so there was still room for doubt.

  The man who’d spoken was a completely bald, craggy-faced star pilot in a cap and flight jacket virtually identical to mine. He was holding a crowbar, and making a halfhearted effort to keep it concealed behind his leg. “It’s nice,” he said, nodding slowly. “Cost you much?”

  “Er, well, it did when I bought it,” I said, trying to look more bemused than terrified. “About ten years ago.”

  “Ten years ago,” parroted a taller star pilot to the speaker’s left, wearing a red tunic with faded gold trim. Someone else in the throng made a sarcast
ic appreciative-whistling noise.

  “Must be hard to pay upkeep on a ship that old,” said the first speaker. He had his face thrust forward toward me, wearing the kind of confrontational expression that makes you look like you’re trying to dislodge a stubborn toffee from the roof of your mouth. “Got a lot of money coming in, then?”

  I didn’t like the direction things were taking. The situation called for a derailing. I closed my eyes, flicked my imaginary switch, and felt my confident persona flush through my body, right to the tips of my fingers, which ­immediately flew to my face. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry. Is this your space?”

  The spokesman’s brow furrowed, making him lose his confrontational-­toffee aspect. “You what?”

  I allowed myself to look convincingly frightened, which was not difficult. “Look, I don’t want any trouble. Just . . . hear me out. I couldn’t afford to cover bay rental this week, and I had to make a landing, and I saw the empty space and I thought I could just drop in and out before—”

  “Wait, wait,” interrupted the spokesman. “You aren’t the one registered for this bay?”

  Some members of the throng were starting to look reassuringly disappointed, but I couldn’t let it slip, even for a moment. “No,” I said, bemused. “Isn’t that . . . what this is about?”

  “He’s not McKeown,” said the tall bracket.

  If I had let it lie there, turned around, laboriously yanked the airlock door open, and boarded the Neverdie, things would have turned out so very differently. But I was afraid of dropping the innocent, unconnected star pilot act. And I knew that any star pilot, even an innocent and unconnected one, would have been intrigued by the sound of that bracket’s name. “McKeown? Why would you think I was McKeown?”

  The spokesman stopped half concealing the crowbar and started fondling it inoffensively, which was encouraging. “Some doint online has been bragging about how he’s gonna meet Jacques McKeown in person,” he said. “And someone said they saw him in the spaceport tonight, and his name’s on this bay.”

  I looked down at the square region of concrete that the Neverdie occupied. “Serious? Why would he do that? He’d be lynched.”

  Nobody had moved from their spots, but some of them turned and relaxed their shoulders in ways that changed the situation from a confrontation with a mob to a relaxed discussion between friends. “Yeah, that’s what I said,” said the tall pilot, looking pointedly at a small chap off to the side.

  “He was in the café, I swear!” said the small chap. “He was still logged in! And you know what that rich bracket did? He bought, like, six coffees. Just to rub our noses in how much coffee he can buy. Didn’t even drink the plying things. Just spilled them all down his . . . front . . .”

  His sentence slipped away from him as he glanced down at my crotch. One by one, the pilots’ heads tilted downward like a row of switches on an old-fashioned control panel. I followed their gaze and saw a large coffee stain on the front of my jeans, still wet and glistening.

  “Ah,” I began.

  The body language of a mob came back, along with the crowbar. “I told you!” said the small pilot excitedly. “I knew he had to be one of the plying daytime mob!”

  There were any number of logical arguments I could have made. I could have reminded them of what we’d just discussed, that it made absolutely no logical sense for the real Jacques McKeown to use that name in his personal dealings, least of all in a place full of people who fantasized nightly about force-feeding him his own books. I could even have come clean and explained that someone had changed my name on the chip-ID database in aid of a long con at a wealthy Terran’s expense. It was the kind of classic fable that may have appealed to their mindset.

  But show me a man who thinks that reason will work on an angry mob and I’ll show you a man who could be carried away in several standard business-sized envelopes. Instead, I held my hands up in a placatory kind of way and made myself look unconcerned. “Maybe you guys should back off before you do something you regret,” I said. Then I focused my gaze on something behind them and injected just the right amount of satisfied relief into my voice. “Wouldn’t you agree, officer?”

  The pilots collectively spun around. Security at the spaceport was no joke, since they had very little tolerance for anything that might spoil a visitor’s first impressions of Ritsuko City and had to be capable of dealing with people like Angelo. The smallest of the rookie night watchmen looked like he could bench-press a Pestulon desert cow.

  Fortunately for the belligerent pilots, he wasn’t there. And by the time they turned back around, neither was I.

  Chapter 7

  This time, I just ran. Looking innocent was no longer as viable as simply putting distance between me and my colleagues as quickly as possible. There was shouting behind me, but I didn’t dare glance back. I wove between the forest of landing legs and stacks of cargo crates, to use the word wove generously; obstacles slammed my shoulders repeatedly and sent me careening in a vaguely consistent direction like a pinball.

  With every muscle pulsating with pain, I glanced rapidly around, seeking a security guard to hide behind. But in accordance with my current run of luck, the guards that appeared with such reliability every time I was looking for a place to stick my used chewing gum were nowhere to be seen.

  I reached the entrance plaza, neatly hopping the Wrong Way sign without slowing. There were no guards here, either, just some startled visitors waiting for a late-night rickshaw. Why the hell weren’t there guards at the entrance plaza? It was literally the first plying place a terrorist would be.

  Surely they hadn’t been paid off to look the other way for the night. They took pride in being incorruptible, which just meant that their prices were very high, way too high for a group of star pilots with strict budgets for hydrogen fuel.

  I hadn’t stopped at any point while thinking this, but my speed had faltered, and the sound of several pairs of running feet and shouted mathematical terms was getting louder. I put my mind back to sprinting in the direction I was already facing, which happened to be toward one of the sets of glass entrance doors.

  When I had hurled myself toward them and was about six inches from impact, it occurred to me that these doors might have been locked. They did lock some of the doors at night, to reduce the foot traffic they needed to monitor when less staff were around. So the best scenario in that case would be me occupying the same general space as hundreds of shards of broken glass. Or, more likely, bouncing off and falling straight back into the same general space as several fast-moving fists and boots.

  I made what effort I could to slow down in the six inches remaining, but the doors swung open under my forearms, unlocked. Disoriented, I stumbled right out into the street, was narrowly missed by one cyclist and was sent spinning on my heel by another.

  (Very few residents drive cars in Ritsuko City, or in off-world colonies generally. In a bubble city’s enclosed atmosphere, air pollution from vehicle emissions couldn’t be written off as the next generation’s problem.)

  I strung together whatever parts of my conscious mind were still functioning and managed to dodge my way to the far side of the road. Once there, I dropped to my knees in a convenient patch of grass. I didn’t think the other pilots would follow me out into the open. There was no dignity in public scuffling, and we had precious little of that left. I looked behind me anyway.

  Unbe-plying-lievable. They were still there. Not only that, but they’d picked up a few more faces along the way, still spilling out of the spaceport’s main entrance. Most of them were hopping from foot to foot on the roadside, waiting for a break in bicycle traffic.

  Something that looked very much like a beer bottle was hurled toward me and bounced jarringly off the helmet of a random cyclist. I slammed the rough ground with the palms of my hands, just because I wasn’t in quite enough pain yet, and shakily resumed running.

  I realized that, perhaps unconsciously, I was running for the functioning Quantunnel
booth I’d used before, in the middle of the pleasant pedestrian precinct opposite the spaceport. That made sense. I could transport myself to any other location on Luna, literally any of which would be an improvement, as long as I closed the door behind me.

  The booth was in sight now, mercifully unattended, and I put whatever energy I had left into the sprint. Wait, I thought. Keying in a destination would take time. Time that, judging by the sound of distressed grass coming from behind me, I did not have. The Quantunnel booth only represented an upright, solid object into which I would soon be stomped by a hundred angry feet.

  Unless . . .

  Still running, I fumbled with my key ring until I had separated my keys and spaceship remote from a narrow plastic tag, printed with the words U-Stor Storage Solutions. I had no idea if it would even still work, but since my chances weren’t going to get much slimmer, I spun it a few times and flung it toward the booth.

  My aim was dead on. The tag, along with the rest of my key ring, bounced off the large metal plate on the lower part of the booth’s control panel. In that moment, a green light blinked on, registering the ID number encoded in the tag, and the booth connected conveniently to a preset destination.

  I rolled as I reached the booth, neatly recovering my key ring from the ground as I did so, and passed under the shutters as they opened, scraping my back on the two sheets of metal. Then, in two quick, smooth movements, I turned myself around, grabbed the inner shutter, and pulled it down to the ground. An angry fist banged upon the other side as I leaned on the shutter with all my strength, keeping it pinned in place.

  It took me a few moments of panting adrenaline comedown to notice that I was in pitch blackness. Keeping one foot holding the shutter down, I fumbled at the smooth rock walls to either side of me and found the light switch. The ceiling was so low that the lightbulb immediately started warming my shoulder. My amazement that the light battery hadn’t run out was swiftly replaced by my amazement that my card had still been valid.