He turned, moving toward a gray fingernail in the distance. The moon grew larger and brighter as he approached, and though he didn’t see the spaceship that took Excalibur, he hummed and felt that the sword was close. He saw long-dead seas and the skeletal remains of a rover that had landed on the moon. The flag with its faded stars and proud stripes, which made him think of Arthur 37.
Glass domes stood across the landscape, drawing him in. There were lights and sounds—civilization, even if it looked a bit crude at the edges. The new Arthur was down there waiting, whether he knew it or not. It was time for him to find the greatest hero that ever lived.
Again.
He landed in the chalky dust outside of one of the moon’s many domes. He didn’t see a way in, and the bit of Earth’s atmosphere he’d brought along was all used up. Merlin wheezed the last of his exhausted magic to create a door through the glass, which dissolved the second after he’d walked through it. He got a few wide-eyed stares from people walking past, but they blinked the strangeness away and kept moving.
That told him a great deal. These people weren’t necessarily used to magic, but they were willing to accept it as long as they didn’t have to move their mental furniture around too much. He wondered if this was a side effect of leaving Earth: humans also had to leave behind the certainty that they understood the universe.
He left the spaceport and entered the moon proper, which was like a dusty version of Las Vegas in its heyday, sealed under a glass dome. Bright lights, big city, terrible music. He found himself drawn by the temptations of several diners, all of which claimed to serve the best and truest versions of Earth’s comfort food. Tacos. Cheese fries. Pork buns. But not even the promise of a club sandwich with slightly burnt toast and actual bacon was stronger than the hum of Excalibur. He was getting close, and his excitement hummed to match.
It came to a fever pitch in front of a black-painted building with a sign that rose from the door in black letters. DARK MATTER. When the door opened, people in skimpy outfits stumbled out, releasing the thump of too-loud bass. His Arthur had taken refuge in a nightclub. Was he apprentice to the owner? Being made to wash dishes and sticky floors? Perhaps Arthur had been adopted by someone on the moon. Was Kay—Arthur’s boorish brother—here, too? The cycle did vary things up a bit, just to keep Merlin on his toes.
He walked in and found people of all descriptions huddled at a bar. It was a familiar sight, rows of shiny bottles gleaming down, though nobody seemed to be drinking. They all had tubes up their noses. He noticed a neon sign that declared PREMIUM OXYGEN.
Come to think of it, Merlin wasn’t breathing much better than he had been outside of the glass dome. He thought about trying the wares but had more important matters to attend to. Looking over the dance floor, he hoped to find Arthur and get out as quickly as possible. His eyes met a veritable orgy, people wearing little more than a few atoms stitched together, pressing up against each other in twos, threes, and larger clusters.
In the center of it all, swinging dark hair like a mace, dancing with the fervor of a dying sun, was a teenage girl. Merlin wouldn’t have noticed her, except that she was gyrating near a sword that had been stabbed into the heart of the dance floor. A sword that he would have recognized on any planet. He looked around for a smaller person in her company. Eight to twelve years old was the normal range for a new Arthur. And definitely, always, a boy. Merlin waited as patiently as he could, but no one fitting the description materialized. Arthur couldn’t have gone far. Only he could lift the sword; certainly he would come back.
Merlin took off his glasses, rubbed them against his robe, and shoved them back up his nose. Everything danced into focus—and the girl was staring him down with dark-browed eyes.
Perhaps he should just ask her where Arthur was hiding.
He dance-walked toward the girl. His body felt different than the last time he’d been awake, which made dancing a minefield of new sensations. His limbs were looser, and not in a helpful sort of way. His hips jerked more than he would have liked. For some reason, he kept fist-pumping the air. It felt like stuttering the same word over and over.
Nervous. He was nervous. There was far too much riding on this cycle.
The girl had gone back to twisting her long dark hair in a rope, closing her eyes and murmuring the lyrics to a high-paced, techno abomination. Once he reached her, she turned her back, showing him the sweaty line that ran down her spine. He thought about using magic to get her attention, but he didn’t want to startle her. Besides, he was spent from the act of getting here. He tapped her shoulder.
She flicked her eyes open. “Nope.”
“Beg pardon?” he asked.
“I’m looking for someone to make out with,” she yelled over the heart-grabbing beat. “It isn’t you, pal.”
Merlin stumbled. He didn’t want to make out with her. His hands went up in a kind of surrender, and he backed right into Excalibur.
“Watch it,” she said, sweeping him aside and lofting the sword out of the dance floor.
She.
She lofted the sword.
“Arthur!” he cried, his teenage voice jerking around as much as his teenage hips.
“Still not interested,” the girl called out, her rejection saltier.
Merlin watched her tuck the long blade over her shoulder and inside the back of her shirt. “It really is different this time,” Merlin announced blankly. He held out his arm to her. “Would you mind pinching me? I do believe I’m stuck in a very troubling dream.”
She pinched him—hard—and his nerves forced him onto his tiptoes. “All right, I’m awake!” he shouted. “I’m awake!”
Dark Matter was swollen with music and shadows. The beat raged. The combination of sweat and perfume was intoxicating, and Ari’s body ached from too many days pent up on Error over the last three years.
Ordinarily, sneaking into a seedy club on a wayward moon would have been the highlight of her month, but Ari didn’t have enough credits to get even a minute of 60 percent oxygen, Mercer was infiltrating this colony in droves, and to be plain honest, she was furious with Kay. She might have risked too much on Heritage—and crashed them on Old Earth—but their parents were alive. Alive. And her brother didn’t want to even talk about finding a way to help them.
“It’s impossible,” he’d said. “Case closed.”
The last straw, however, was the squirmy, skinny boy yelling odd things at her.
“You’ve grown breasts!” he shouted, staring at her chest openly. His hair was a floppy, reddish mess, and his robe smacked of a religious affiliation or the worst hangover imaginable. He didn’t even seem worried that she was packing a sword.
“Not cool, friend. Move along.” She shoved past him at the same moment that half a dozen Mercer associates slunk through the doorway. Ari had to hand it to the people who hacked out an existence on this colony; they didn’t bow out of the way of the uniforms or the riot sticks. The associates, on the other hand, glanced around in a strict pattern—searching for Ari.
Did they know what she looked like? Or were they simply profiling for Ketchans? She’d been ducking cameras and keeping her face hidden her whole life, but it was no secret that Mercer had unorthodox ways to track people. When they grabbed the elbow of a brown-skinned, tall girl with dark hair and took a picture of her features to run facial recognition, Ari had to accept that Mercer knew more about her than a rubber knight suit could cover.
She ducked along the shadows of the wall and pointed at the first decent-looking human in sight, a dark-haired, razor-edged fluid by the alleyway exit. The one who had tried hitting on her earlier. “You,” she hollered over the music. “Come with me.”
The fluid pushed off the wall and shoved a triumphant thumbs-up at the person standing next to them. They left the club, entering the alley together, and Ari inhaled the cool, yet too thin, air and dropped the sword point-down in the gravel. She grabbed the pretty fluid and hauled them against the wall, mouth to mouth.
Interesting. They had a piercing on their lip she hadn’t noticed in the club.