Will Save the Galaxy for Food

  For some time after quantum tunneling became part of the public sector, innovators in every field of business (with the obvious exception of mine) were finding new uses for it daily. It was the U-Stor Storage company that first came up with the idea of firing small Quantunnel gates below the surface of Luna, carving out five-foot cubes of rock far underground, selling the stone to building suppliers, and renting out the resulting cube-shaped spaces for storage.

  Like virtually everyone else on Ritsuko, I’d rented one. They gave you a plastic tag encoded with the location of your space, and then you could access your possessions from any commercial Quantunnel booth in the universe.

  I was surprised that my tag still worked, because I hadn’t paid the rental fees in months. They’d even stopped sending me threatening email. I’d assumed they’d given up, canceled the tag and auctioned off all my stuff.

  I glanced around the tiny space. Nope, it was all still here: a few cardboard boxes and an ancient bar fridge from my flight school days that my former housemates had insisted I take away. Maybe they hadn’t gotten around to the auction. Or maybe they had simply forgotten about me after I stopped drawing attention to myself with late payments.

  More angry fists were hitting the shutter behind me. Someone made an effort to pull it open, so I stomped it down hard with both heels. My mind raced for a solution. Then it hit me that if all my stuff was still here, then that would include . . .

  Feet still keeping the shutter down, I leaned over and tore the parcel tape from the topmost box, then feverishly opened the flaps. There it was, beside the medal I received for saving the Skurobo people, and cushioned by several crumpled letters from individual Skurobos inviting me to visit (they were a needy bunch): my old blaster pistol.

  I weighed it in my hand, reminiscing. Back when I had spent my days adventuring through the galaxy, it had been a constant, reassuring weight on my hip, like a clingy child in a crowded shopping mall. I’d had to put it in storage when I started spending all my time in the spaceport. Security wasn’t exactly over the moon (ha ha) about putting up with hordes of destitute star pilots; they took an even dimmer view of us exercising the right to open carry.

  And they doubly wouldn’t be big on the illegal modification my gun had. Originally it had had two settings: Stun and Kill. These had proved inadequate against the ridiculously well-armored skin of monsters from particularly rough planets, so I’d found a way to tinker with the built-in limitations. The dial now had a third setting, labeled with the handwritten words “Solve All Immediate Problems.”

  The important thing was that there was still charge in the ammunition cell. Not much, but enough to change the dynamic of the situation. Those pilots out there had come straight from the spaceport’s secure area, and therefore wouldn’t have been carrying any guns.

  I checked that all the blaster’s parts were in order and held it close to my face as I crouched and prepared to open the latch. All was silence out there, but I doubted my lynch mob had given up. They must have seen me use the U-Stor tag, so they knew I had no other way out and were almost certainly lying in wait. I didn’t have the charge to shoot all of them, but ideally, I wouldn’t fire it at all. I’d just step out, make it clear who did and who didn’t have a gun, and we’d all discuss things like sensible people.

  I puffed out my cheeks and tightened my grip on the gun. Open shutter. Step out. Wave gun. Talk sensibly. Easy.

  I closed my eyes, opened the shutter, took a step forward, and then my face bounced painfully off a solid wall of moon rock.

  Okay. This? This was smart. The interior of U-Stor Storage spaces didn’t have control panels, so users couldn’t do something incredibly stupid, like deactivate the tunnel while inside the space and become trapped forever in a ready-made tomb hundreds of feet below the lunar surface. But there were ways that a spiteful person could deactivate it from the outside, thanks to a design flaw now removed from the newest booths. Quite a hellish way to die—and an effective revenge. I wondered which one of them had thought of it.

  I bit my lip as hard as I could to stop myself from going immediately into jumping-up-and-down hysterics, which in this space would probably have resulted in brain damage. I sat down heavily on the nearest box and was only half-aware of the hard-earned awards for heroism from a hundred different cultures being squashed, snapped, and broken.

  In sitting down, I felt my phone pressing against my hip. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d charged it, but to my relief, there was a good 10 percent of battery life. So I wasn’t going to die. Or at least, not here, alone and forgotten, entombed with a hundred broken treasures of no worth to anyone but myself. Shame; it would’ve been a fitting end.

  Quantum tunneling had left its pernicious influence on the telecommunications industry as well, so I could now call anyone in the universe. Except my parents, or any other stubborn elderly bracket who just could not be persuaded to upgrade to a QT-supported phone.

  The next matter was thinking of someone to call who would not be waiting for me on the other side of the shutter with a baseball bat. That meant I couldn’t call any star pilots. I couldn’t be sure that any of my fellows would completely dismiss the idea that I was Jacques McKeown.

  And that was when I started worrying again, because my phone pretty much only held contact numbers for star pilots. None of my old friends among people I’d saved on extrasolar planets were sophisticated enough to have phones, let alone Quantunnel booths. That’s why someone like me could impress them with nothing but an aging ship and a modified blaster pistol.

  I started frantically scrolling down my contacts list. Pilot. Pilot. Pilot. Dead. Pilot. In prison. Pilot. Pilot. Gone native. Frobisher.

  There was a thought. Frobisher was more of a friend than most, and no longer a pilot. What’s more, hadn’t I told him that I was being asked to impersonate someone, before anyone had even started throwing names like Jacques McKeown about? I called his number, mindful that, were I not planning to flee the Solar System, he would never let me hear the end of this.

  No answer. Of course, it was quite late, and as one of my few sensible friends, Frobisher would be asleep, not out looking for clients, drinking, or getting locked in storage units. I called again, in the hope that maybe the last ring had woken him up and he needed further prompting. Nothing.

  I checked my phone’s charge. Six percent left. Did I really want to use it all up putting all my eggs in this basket? I could have left a voicemail, but it hardly seemed like a solution, since I would suffocate to death before he heard it.

  I kept scrolling. I was reaching the end of the alphabet and starting to sweat, when I saw an entry that had been highlighted, to indicate that it was newly added. It simply said “Warden.”

  Not only did she know full well that I was not really Jacques McKeown, but this entire situation was directly her fault. It would practically be her duty to rescue me. The problem, though, was that this would go against my original plan, which was to get the trac away from the entire Henderson situation.

  I tapped my phone against my knee, thinking. Perhaps succumbing to death was the way to go after all. It’s not like I hadn’t lived a full life—the box of objects currently disintegrating beneath my arse attested to that. Maybe it was time to lie down and let this brave new Quantunneling universe go on without my burden.

  Doints to that. Thirty-seven is not the right sort of age for embracing euthanasia. There were still hours before I had to report to Henderson; I’d just get rescued by Warden, then excuse myself and pick the right moment to attempt legging it again. I called her number.

  “Warden,” came her impatient voice, after four rings.

  “Hello—”

  “Please spare me the chatter. State your reason for contacting me.”

  I only hesitated for a moment. “A bunch of star pilots chased me into a U-Stor booth and shut off the tunnel. I am currently trapped underground and I need rescuing.”

  “Why did they do this?”
br />   “Because they think I’m Jacques McKeown.” The words triggered something in my head. “And why did you change my name to Jacques McKeown, you crazy div?”

  “Henderson took your wineglass from the restaurant,” she said, keeping her voice as flat as possible. “He intended to fingerprint you to confirm your identity. You are very lucky that I was able to get the change made in time. I have had to exert influence over some people at the ID network’s administrative facility.”

  It was a maddeningly sensible reason, but she could easily have been lying to cover up her psycho-div control-freak head games. “I think you mean that we’re both very lucky,” I pointed out. “Considering what Henderson would do to you if I get found out.”

  “Do not think that that gives you power, Mr. McKeown.”

  This, I decided, was one of those “pick your battles” situations. I dropped the matter. “I’m sending you the access code for my U-Stor space. Can you open it from a Quantunnel booth away from the spaceport and let me out?”

  “How long have you been in there?”

  “What? I dunno. Ten minutes?”

  “But you said you were chased inside, so I assume you had an elevated heart rate for a while. Has that come down to a normal level?”

  I frowned, confused. “Yeah. Er. Physically, I’m fine; I’m just trapped.”

  I could hear paper rustling in the background. “Those U-Stor spaces average about five feet cubed, correct?”

  “Yeah, they’re all pretty standard . . .”

  “And the contents? Besides yourself? How much of the space has been filled?”

  “A third? Maybe? Why the trac are you asking me that?”

  I heard the faint sound of scribbling, and then of a stylus clattering triumphantly onto a datapad. “I’d say, on the low end, that you have around four hours and thirty minutes of oxygen left.”

  “Right, so . . .”

  “In which case, you can expect rescue in four hours and twenty-five minutes.”

  Before replying, I clenched my fists as hard as I could and counted slowly to five. “I would really appreciate it if you could drop the psycho-div revenge one-upmanship for one second. I am asking you to rescue me from a deadly situation that you got me into.”

  “Don’t misunderstand me. My time is very tightly scheduled, and several equally urgent matters currently require my attention.”

  “Like what?!”

  “Firstly, I have to spend the night faking a lengthy correspondence of emails between us, in case Henderson checks into it. Secondly, I am currently only wearing my underwear. You called in the middle of the shoot. And it was extremely difficult to hire a cameraman and a lighting engineer at this time of night.”

  I blinked a few times. “You know, most people would have just recorded it by themselves,” I suggested. “With a phone camera or something.”

  “That attitude, Mr. McKeown, is why I am the personal assistant to the richest and most powerful man in the Solar System, and you are going to be spending the rest of the night trapped in a U-Stor facility.”

  Chapter 8

  The ceiling light was programmed to wink out every few minutes, making the assumption that the user had enough sense to not be inside after the tunnel connection was closed, and I made a conscious decision not to keep turning it back on. It would be wiser not to exert myself, and it decreased the chances of me smashing my head against the ceiling.

  My phone’s battery lasted to about halfway through the first word of my voicemail message to Frobisher. Then the screen died and I was alone, on an uncomfortable box, in pitch blackness and silence, with one solitary psycho-div the only person in the universe aware of my plight.

  With no means of telling the time, paranoia set in. After what, in retrospect, was probably only the first hour, I became convinced that my remaining three and a half hours had been and gone. As even more time passed, I grew more and more certain that Warden was not going to keep her promise and rescue me.

  It was like Frobisher said: if I would do for a last-minute replacement, anyone would. Oh sure, she’d introduced me to the Hendersons as McKeown, but they were Terrans, and Terrans were all self-absorbed trac-heads who couldn’t tell one Lunarian from another. It was all that high gravity they had down there squashing their brains in. She’d probably finished her shoot and gone straight down to the spaceport again to grab the closest vaguely similar bracket in a flight jacket. There was absolutely no shortage.

  Leaving me here. To die. And as the air grew thin and death became a tangible reality, the philosophical attitude I had displayed earlier disappeared in an impotent, childish rage. I didn’t want to die. Not in an inescapable five-foot cube. I wanted to be in my cockpit again, with infinity stretching off in all directions beyond one slim layer of plexiglass.

  Here, now, my frustrated mind seeking desperately for exits that did not exist, I was thinking clearly for the first time in years. If I could have been allowed to live just a little longer, I wouldn’t have gone back to the spaceport, struggling every day to make money because I couldn’t move on from the past. I was going to find a new Golden Age for myself.

  I leapt to my feet, then sat suddenly back down again after nearly braining myself on the ceiling. Ply tourists, ply Mr. Henderson, ply Jacques McKeown, and ply piracy, for that matter—I’d forge my own path. Set out into the Black. Do what I used to do—help people less fortunate than myself. Make a difference. I’d work to make the universe better if I could only have just a little bit more life . . .

  At that point I think I must have been throwing myself around the room, because the next thing I remember is flying toward the shutters, and them rattling open just as I did so. I stumbled and landed on my back, sliding across a tiled floor before coming to rest with my head against what felt like a high-heeled shoe.

  I blinked until my blurred vision had cleared up, and I could see the disapproving face of Ms. Warden, silhouetted against a bright fluorescent ceiling light. She was back in the pantsuit she had worn when we’d first met, unless she had several identical ones, which would not have surprised me in the least.

  “Your first day at work has begun, Mr. McKeown,” she said, looking at me over her omnipresent datapad.

  “Urgh.” I sat up a little too quickly, and it didn’t feel like all of my brain had come for the ride. “I am not ready for this.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Warden primly.

  “You know what, I think I forgot something in there.” I made an attempt to scuttle back through the shutters, but Warden stepped smartly over me and pulled something out of the Quantunnel booth’s console, causing the shutters to slam down. I pawed uselessly at the ridged metal.

  “This way,” she said, trotting along the corridor without looking to see if I was following.

  I took a moment’s pause to lean on the side of the Quantunnel booth and pinch my eyes a few times, then jogged after her to catch up. “Don’t suppose it matters to you that I genuinely thought I was going to die in there?” I said.

  She gave me a cold look. “Then consider yourself inducted into the Henderson organization.”

  I followed her through a set of double doors into a bare corridor painted in beige, with visible pipes and cables running along the walls. More a transition between places than a place in itself, like the behind-the-scenes parts of a cruise liner, or . . .

  “The spaceport,” I slurred aloud. “Tell me this isn’t the spaceport.”

  “Calm yourself,” she sniffed, bobbing along on her high heels. “This is Mr. Henderson’s private spaceport, on the north side of Ritsuko City.”

  “There’s only one private spaceport in Ritsuko City. It’s on top of the Ubatsu building.”

  “And the Ubatsu building is the new headquarters of Henderson Lunar and Extrasolar Enterprises.”

  We passed through a set of double doors into a beautifully decorated connecting hallway, with thick-pile red carpeting, mahogany wood panelling on the walls, and the occasional artw
ork that bore the hallmarks of mass production. The whole place stank of fresh varnish and paint, and some of the stone busts of Roman emperors placed at regular intervals against the walls were still wrapped in transparent plastic.

  A cold dread gripped me as I realized that I was deep in the belly of the beast that was Henderson, and that immediate escape was looking less and less likely. I followed Warden toward a set of heavy airlock doors that I presumed led to some kind of landing bay. “Is . . . Mr. Henderson around?” I probed.

  “No,” she said, with just barely perceptible relief. “He has left it to me to see you and Daniel off. A lot of things currently require his attention. He has made the spontaneous decision to expand into off-world operations.”

  “Take it you don’t approve.”

  She stopped, startled by my statement, and turned. “What? What on earth makes you think that?”

  “I dunno. You just seemed like you didn’t approve. Admittedly I don’t yet know what it looks like when you do approve of something, but I can take an educated guess.”

  She leaned in so close I had to lean back a little. Her face was still neutral, but very red all of a sudden. “I am completely in support of all of Mr. Henderson’s decisions. If your intention is to drive a wedge between me and my employer, then you will not succeed. Are we clear?”

  I glanced behind myself, in case there was some kind of agent provocateur standing there that she was addressing instead of me, then displayed my palms. “Crys-tal?” I said, baffled.

  Scowling, Warden placed her hand against a security scanner. A high-pitched hiss burst out from the hinges of the airlock door, which grew quickly into a roar of wind as the thick steel slowly parted, revealing the docking platform.

  The Ubatsu building was near enough the tallest building in Ritsuko City, which was a very competitive field. The nature of a bubble city ensures that there isn’t much room for expanding outward, but expanding upward is always an option until you reach the legally enforced buffer zone between the city and the glass ceiling. Ubatsu reached as close to that buffer as it dared, and from the rooftop docking bay I felt I could throw a stone straight upward and watch it ping off the plexiglass shield.