Half an hour later, he was only halfway through the drink. The bar was starting to fill up, which meant maybe twenty people in a space that would have taken seventy. Ranchero music played from hidden speakers. The thought of going back to his cousin’s and pretending to be cheerful was only a half a degree worse than continuing to sit in the bar, waiting for his self-pity to fade. He kept trying to think about what he could have said or done differently that would have made any difference. So far the best he’d come up with was Don’t walk out on your wife, which was about the same as saying Be someone else.
His hand terminal buzzed. He pulled it up. A written message tagged from Bobbie Draper.
HEY, ALEX. SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG TO GET BACK TO YOU. THINGS ARE WEIRDLY BUSY. YES, IF YOU’RE IN TOWN, I’D LIKE TO MEET WITH YOU. MAY HAVE A FAVOR TO ASK, IF YOU’RE UP FOR IT. SWING BY ANYTIME.
Her address was in Londres Nova. Alex tapped it, and the screen shifted to a map. He wasn’t far from the express tube. He could be out there by supper. He touched the bar top with his hand terminal, paid for the drink, and stretched. In the corridor, a cart had broken down, and half a dozen maintenance workers were clumped around it. A woman with skin the color of milk walking past did a subtle double take when Alex nodded. Wondering, he guessed, whether he was the pilot for James Holden. He walked on before she could ask the question.
Yeah. It would be good to see Bobbie.
Chapter Seven: Amos
T
he spaceport had been built a kilometer outside Lovell City a century before. Now, it was the geographical heart of Luna’s largest metropolis, though you wouldn’t have been able to tell that from space. Luna boasted very few actual domes. The constant rain of micro-meteors turned a dome into a randomly firing atmosphere ejection port. So as the shuttle descended, the only visible signs of the city were the occasional surface access points and the spaceport itself. The docks weren’t the originals, but they were still damned old. The decking had all been white once. Gray pathways marked where years of boots and carts had worn down tracks. The union office looked down over the long hall through pockmarked windows, and the air had the gunpowder stink of lunar dust.
The extortion boys showed up at the disembarking area in force to stare Amos down as he left the ship. He smiled and waved and kept Rico, Jianguo, and Wendy close to him until they were out of the long flight terminal.
“Hermano,” Rico said, shaking hands with Amos. “Where you headed to now?”
“Down the well,” Amos said. “You fellas take care of that little girl, right? And good luck with the new jobs.”
Jianguo hugged Wendy close. “We will. Xie xie usted ha hecho.”
Rico and Jianguo stared at him like they expected something else, but Amos had nothing left to say so he turned and walked away toward the terminal for planetary drops. The waiting area was housed in a large false dome designed to impress the tourists. The whole thing was underground, but the massive chamber was covered floor to ceiling with ultra-high-definition video screens showing the outside view. The hills and craters of the lunar surface stretched off in all directions, but it was the blue-and-green half-circle hanging in the sky that drew the most attention. It was beautiful at this distance. The cities nothing but firefly twinkles on the dark side. Where the sun struck the Earth, almost nothing man had made was visible from the lunar orbit. The planet looked clean, unspoiled.
It was a pretty lie.
Seemed like a fact of the universe that the closer you got to anything, the worse it looked. Take the most beautiful person in the solar system, zoom in on them at the right magnification and they were an apocalyptic cratered landscape crawling with horrors. That’s what the Earth was. A shining jewel from space, up close a blasted landscape covered with mites living by devouring the dying.
“One ticket to New York,” he said to the automated kiosk.