This is the second chapter of a metaphoric novel.  Literary agents take note.

Chapter Two

Dusk crept onto the Mariposa with agonizing slowness. Black, jagged shadows from distant mountain peaks advanced just inches each hour over rocks and sand. The penumbra took a full Earth day to cover the crater. No bright reds or azure purple accompanied the solar disk as it inched towards the horizon. The sky remained inky and the landscape black and gray and white below the one colored object in the heavens, the blue green Earth, which hung motionless in the same location halfway to the zenith that it had occupied for eons.

At the crater’s center two silver colored, bulky figures in spacesuits stood near a tricar, a low slung buggy with balloon tires and solar-panels on the roof. They bent towards each other, a thin, coiled privacy cable connecting their helmets. Next to them was the crimson sphere.

“I hate having to make direct contact to talk. If you’re in a crowd and want a private conversation with someone, there’s no choice.. But no one else is here to listen to us,” Feinstein said. Even in the spacesuit, he looked. shorter than McPherson.

“We’ll have to put up with the inconvenience for now. Wxcom’s spies might be listening to us. I'd bet If he knew we were in the crater, he’d send his cops to bring us in,” Tommy said.

“But this is a legal walk.”

“It sure is. Wxcom tried to block it, but my lawyers sealed his airlock. Searching for crystals is a legitimate reason to stroll outside the dome and with you, a lunar resident, with me he couldn’t claim I was ignoring safety regulations. He has no legal way to stop us. Still, if he knew we are here, he might ignore details like legality.”

Murray touched the red ball. “I’m surprised he left our marker here. Do you think he forgot about it?”

“I don’t know what Andy intends, but I don’t think he would forget something this obvious. I think he’s setting us up.”

Murray snorted. “Will I have a job when this is over?”

“You sure will, if not with Kansas City County, then a better one with me.”

“Tommy, you and I have been friends for years. I can’t take a job from you. A favor like that would ruin our friendship.”

“Nonsense. You’d be doing me the favor by joining me. The few times you were willing to work for my company, you did a wonderful job.”

“I took those projects because, well, because you needed help and I felt I owed you for what had happened in the past. I don’t want to be indebted to you again.”

“You wouldn’t be. If I cost you one job, the least I can do is give you another. That way we’d be even.”

Feinstein shook his head. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Enough talk. We need to measure the distance to the rock pile. Is the wire attached to the ball?”

“I’ll do it,” Tommy said. He pulled the privacy cable loose and jumped in the low gravity to the back of the tricar where a self-coiling wire-measure lay between a large black cylinder and other equipment. He grabbed the wire, jumped with it back to the sphere and bent over to clip the fine strand to the base of the red globe. The two men then climbed into the tricar.

Tommy started the engine. A burst of static filled their headphones as the buggy accelerated and bounced over the airless plain to the boulders near the crater’s edge. Murray leaned over to reconnect the communication cable. “Don’t drive so fast. You’re shaking my teeth loose.”

“Oh, you’ll survive. Besides, you did the same to me back on Venus. You do remember that exploration, don’t you?”

“As if you’ll ever let me forget it.”

Tommy chuckled. The two sped over the bleak crater floor without speaking until at last Murray spoke. “What can’t you figure out about Wxcom?”

“For one thing, he’s lying to me. He said he wasn’t sleeping with Sylvia.”

Tommy couldn’t see his friend’s tolerant grin inside the spacesuit, but he heard it in Murray’s voice. “How do you know he was lying? And why do you care?”

“Never mind why I care,” McPherson said quickly. “I know he was lying from comments Sylvia made.”

“Didn’t you once have an arrangement with her?”

“Yeah, a three month contract.”

“And she was the one who didn’t want to renew, right?”

They pulled up right next to the mound of massive boulders at the edge of the crater. “Okay, here are the rocks. How much of the wire have we uncoiled?” McPherson asked.

“Let me see.” Feinstein reached the wire over to the edge of the nearest boulder, took an illuminated magnifying glass from his utility belt and then studied the wire. “Red, blue, green, blue, red. No wait, is that purple? No, it’s red. And then blue again – five point six five one six kilometers. Fifteen thousand, six hundred and fifty-one and a half feet to the crater center, just like the satellite photos said. These damn markings are impossible to read. I wish we could use a laser ruler like we had in the military. You just aim and the instrument gives you the distance.”

Tommy snickered. “You mean like the rulers you had when you were a spy.”

Feinstein looked away from the wire and stared through his space helmet at his friend. “Yeah, when I was a spy.” He sounded disgusted.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to raise unpleasant memories. Yes, it would be nice to have a laser ruler, but we can’t because we might take apart such a ruler and use the components to build a machine with artificial intelligence. The AI czars would never allow it,” Tommy said.

“We couldn’t take it apart. The rulers have a self-destruct mechanism if they’re opened.”

“I was being sarcastic, damn it.”

“Yeah, I know.” Feinstein sounded weary. “You could have gotten one if you had tried.”

“I’ve already extended myself too much,” Tommy said. “The last thing we need is for another bureaucrat in addition to Wxcom checking up on us.” He turned the tricar around and drove them back to the crater’s center.

“You didn’t answer my last question,” Murray said.

“What question?” McPherson sounded genuinely puzzled.

“The question of who didn’t want to continue the contract between you and Sylvia.”

“Oh, that question. Yes, it was she who didn’t want to renew. Power, how many years ago was that?”

“You never told me why she canceled it,” Feinstein said laconically.

“Well, you knew that she and I met on Earth a couple of weeks after you and I left, or rather had been thrown off, Venus.”

Murray chuckled. “Of course I remember that.”

“We dated for a while and then signed a contract. Just for three months, which seemed like a good idea at first – you know, avoid premature commitment.” He paused. “I’ve never experienced anything like those months. It wasn’t just the sex, though that was out of the solar system. There was more. I can’t describe it except to say there was love and passion and fun and intellectual stimulation -- everything I’ve ever wanted in a woman but never dreamed could exist all together in the same person. When the contract expired, I assumed we’d renew, but she said she had never intended to make it permanent, that she had been impressed with what I had done on Venus and wanted to get to know me. That was all.”

“Three months is long enough for that.”

“Ah Murray, we weren’t just getting to know each other. If love means anything, that’s what I felt. But she was adamant about leaving. She returned to the moon and I went back to Venus.”

“And became rich to an obscene extent. Instead of laughing when you talked about using Venusian storms for energy, I should have listened and gone back to Venus with you,” Feinstein said.

“I wrote her, but she almost never wrote back. I didn’t see her again until last month, when I was hauled in front of Wxcom and saw, surprise surprise, that she was his secretary.” He stopped the vehicle close to the red ball.

“You must be nervous. In the forty years I’ve known you, you’ve never spoken about your own feelings as much as you did just now.”

“And why is she a secretary, even to someone powerful like Andrew Wxcom? With her brains and drive she should be a corporate VP, or maybe hold some political office on her own.”

Murray shrugged. “People are unpredictable.”

“Well, here is the center marker again,” Tommy reached back to the rear bed of the buggy, grabbed an EMF scanning gun and plugged it into the computer cylinder.

“Tommy, I cannot believe you have a legitimate reason to have that scanner. Who gets you the permits?”

“The scanner itself doesn’t need a lot of computing power. It’s just an electromagnetic field transceiver, though the sensors are a lot more sophisticated than most. The real trick was getting a computer powerful enough to extract the pictures from the raw data. Let’s just say my suppliers don’t worry a lot about permits.” Tommy disconnected the privacy cable, climbed out of the buggy and aimed the scanner at a downward angle, sweeping the area around the sphere while Murray watched the images on a monitor in the car.

“This is the spot we want, Tom. The ground looks solid but the scan shows a circle just beneath the lunar dust. It’s as regular as a circle drawn with a compass and looks like it’s filled with tons of crushed rock,” Murray said. With the privacy cable out, the suit had reverted to radio transmission. Murray must have forgotten about eavesdroppers. Tommy glowered at him, even though the other man couldn’t see his face inside the suit.

“There is something interesting in that circle. It’s just two feet under ground. Keep the gun pointed a little to the west while I see what it is.” Murray snatched a pointed pole from the back of the car, jumped out and with one smooth motion plunged the instrument down into the ground in front of McPherson. He probed with the stick for about a minute, then pulled upwards, bending the pole back and forth, straining to remove it. After a few minutes he yanked it free, scattering pebbles and almost losing his balance as the pole came loose. The pointed end of the stick had opened up into teeth that enclosed a six-inch, glistening gemstone. Feinstein turned it back and forth, mesmerized by the subtle shift of colors in the lunar sunlight. “Here’s another crystal for your collection,” he said, handing it to his friend.

Tommy jabbed the privacy cable back into the other man’s helmet. “Be more careful, will you? We don’t want visitors.”

“Oh. Well, I doubt Wxcom can hear us anyway.”

“We hope.”

“Besides, by the time his goons got here, we’d have finished the job anyway.”

“Maybe. At any rate, you should keep the crystal. After all, you found it. It’ll make up for the loss of your job if Wxcom fires you.”

“It sure will, but the law says we should split anything we find. Why don’t you buy me out? Even half the value of this beauty will make up for my job if I lose it.”

“Done. Are you surprised to find a crystal, in particular a massive one, so close to the surface?”

“Yes, come to think of it. Crystals are never less than five feet under the surface. The bigger ones are at least seven or eight.”

“Almost like the rock here has been dug up and overturned, elevating what had been deep in the ground,” Tommy said.

“Yeah, this is the place we’re looking for. Let’s finish up and get the hell out.” Murray’s voice shook.

Tommy, taking each step with deliberation, walked away from the marker, pointing the EMF scanner forward as he went. Murray, watching the computer, followed in the tricar. “Here it is,” Murray said after a few steps. Tommy felt a chill, even inside the insulated suit. “This is where the rocks and pebbles end and the tunnel begins.”

“How deep is it?”

“It’s just three feet down.” Tommy aimed the gun further ahead, along the line of the tunnel. “It slopes downward at an angle of about five degrees, a perfectly straight line, just as the overhead scans showed. Are you sure we want to do this?” Murray asked.

McPherson took a deep breath and looked at his friend. “Can we afford not to?”

“I don’t know which is worse. Let’s get it over with.”

From the back of the tricar, Tommy picked up a coil of two-inch thick hose with a rigid point at one end and a computer plug at the other. He twisted the plug into a socket on the black cylinder, uncoiled the hose and carried the other end to the spot over the tunnel. Then he pushed the pointed end into the ground, returned to the computer and typed some commands. The snake like contraption burrowed first into the sandy surface layer and then into the pebbles while both men watched intently.

Murray said, “Don’t tell me that doesn’t have logic deciding circuits.”

“Of course it has, but the probe is used for mining and is therefore essential on Venus. Even so, license for it is without exception confind to the military.”

“Military control. Right! That way the technology won’t fall into the hands of people who can’t misuse it.”

Tommy laughed. “For a former military man, you’re pretty cynical.”

“That’s because I’ve seen what they do.” Murray looked first at the cable burrowing into the ground and then at the readouts on the computer screen. “Tommy, that is one hell of a sophisticated machine. Your EMF scanner is bad enough but this snake of yours could land you in jail. And maybe me with you.”

“You’re being too dramatic. It isn’t that bad.”

“How did you get it?”

“Don’t ask.”

Murray stared at the probe. “How long should this take?” His voice quavered.

“Just five or ten minutes.” Tommy looked at his friend. “Are you worried?”

“Aren’t you? This place can give anyone the willies. What if something is in fact down there?”

“Of course there’s something down there. That’s why we came. Are you afraid we’ll awaken it?” Murray didn’t answer. Tommy chuckled without humor. “The monster will be aroused and come lumbering out to destroy us and all humanity.”

“Don’t make fun of me, Tommy. Who knows what your probe will do.”

Thomas frowned. “The probe won’t awaken it. It’s like a camera, passively receiving light on the film’s surface.”

“Yeah, but doesn’t this camera use some type of flash?”

“For some shots, yes, an ultra brief laser burst, less than a nanosecond and at extremely low power. There’s no way such a short flicker can rouse the machine. Besides, even if this beast is still functional and even if it does wake up, look how deep it’s buried. How could it burrow out of ten feet of solid rock?”

“The tunnel is just three feet deep at this spot, and this one must be able to get out or the others wouldn’t have left it here. Tommy, that’s a ridiculous argument. What are you thinking?”

“Okay. You’re right again. That was a stupid thing to say. But even so, the robot is at least 150 years old and its technology is just as old. Even if it did awaken, we’d be ready for it. Weaponry is a lot more advanced today, even with the restrictions put on research. I have a few recent developments in the tricar, brought in from Venus under Wxcom’s nose for just this purpose.”

“That’s fine, but we can’t afford to underestimate this thing.”

“I know.” He hesitated. “You said I was nervous. To be honest, I’m terrified. I know what can happen if we haven’t planned well enough. I guess I’m trying to reassure myself by giving you platitudes,” Tommy said.

“If you’re not sure this is safe, maybe we shouldn’t do it now.”

“Nothing would be different later. This is the most sensitive equipment in the five planets. I’ve been planning this expedition ever since you told me about the tunnels. To tell the truth, I was surprised at how much gear I was able to get. For once red tape was not tied in impossible knots. If what we have in this tricar can’t get us the information we need without rousing what’s in that tunnel, then nothing can. We go now or we don’t go at all.”

“Well, we can’t ignore it so I guess I shouldn’t worry,” Murray said. “It won’t do any good anyway. How close are you to the tunnel?”

Tommy put his hands on the hose. “Almost through. Check the screen.” Murray hurried back to the tricar and stared at the computer. Tommy felt a faint click in the hose. “Got it,” he said.

“That’s it,” Murray said simultaneously.

“Let’s look at the pictures.”

“Shit, no. Let’s get out of here,” Murray said, hurrying into the tricar. “For crying out loud, let’s go.”

Tommy pulled the probe from the lunar soil, stowed it in the tricar and climbed in next to his friend. The car lurched forward as Murray, shoulders hunched over the steering handles, pushed the accelerator to the floor. McPherson said, “Don’t forget to put the probe on the next shuttle off Luna. I don’t want Wxcom to find it,” but Murray didn’t answer or even look at him as he sped the car back to the relative safety of the dome.

*

Tommy’s apartment, palatial by lunar standards, consisted of four rooms – living room, bedroom, office, and kitchen-dining room. A sturdy dark green burnished metaplastic desk and chairs on a polished grey moonstone tile floor furnished the office. On the desk sat a two foot wide computer screen, an extravagant luxury, but otherwise unremarkable. The black casing for the CPU next to the desk was over a meter and a half tall, indicating a computer with at least 4 megabytes random access memory. That was remarkable. In fact, for civilians it was illegal.

Most remarkable were the images that cycled onto the computer monitor. The first showed a tunnel receding into the distance where a bright, tiny object stood out. The second displayed a close up - a shiny, ant shaped robot with two tubular extrusions (“arms?” Tommy wondered) projecting from the middle section (“thorax?”) and a somewhat humanoid head, all perched on a spherical base. Superimposed geometric shapes and vague blobs of color and light within the ant made up the other shots.

Just two hours ago Murray and Tommy had been deploying contraband equipment in the Mariposa. Now they sat in front of the monitor, analyzing the pictures from their jaunt. Murray, who was five years older than Tommy, had a receding hairline, a thin, somewhat sallow face and studious dark brown eyes.

Tommy adjusted the screen, at times enhancing one image or brightening another while Murray fidgeted. The door opened. Sylvia walked in. “Hi Murray,” she said and then turned to Tommy. “Hi lover” she said with warmth. He ignored her. She wore a short, multicolored robe in every way unlike her white business garb, and had made up her face with care and artistry. He didn’t notice. She walked over to him, and started massaging his shoulders. He didn’t react. “What’s that?” she asked, indicating the screen.

Tommy darkened the monitor. “You don’t want to see it.”

“That was the implac, wasn’t it? So there was one in the tunnel after all. Great Power help us all. Yes, I do want to see it.”

“I thought it scared you.”

“It petrifies me, but let me see it anyway.”

“How come you’re not working today?”

She rubbed the top of his head. “After last night? Give a girl a break. You didn’t give me much chance to sleep.”

“Guys, I’m not interested in your private lives,” Murray said, and Sylvia laughed. Tommy didn’t laugh. Sylvia was right that last evening he had been charged to an extreme, maybe in anticipation of the morning’s expedition. Nevertheless, there was something phony, not only about that evening, but also this scene right now and the entire romance. Two and a half weeks ago he had seduced her with unexpected ease, or so he had thought. Then, three days later, she had moved into his apartment. He had been delighted to see her even though her innumerable questions, in particular the ones about the Mariposa crater, had put him off. Now he wondered who had seduced who and why.

“Have you told Andrew Wxcom anything about the crater expedition this morning?” he asked.

“Oh, come on, honey,” she said, kissing the side of his neck. “Andy would have had half of the lunar guard out to stop you if he had known what you were doing.”

“That’s true, but I would expect such a loyal secretary as you to tell him anyway.”

She laughed again, hands still rubbing his shoulders. “I’m off duty now, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Murray spoke up. “Andy knows. Count on it. And he’ll be furious.”

Tommy turned towards him. “Not that it matters, but how will he know?”

“With his security network and his nosiness he would have to be an idiot not to know.”

“He’s no idiot,” Tommy said.

“Tommy, let’s see the pictures,” Sylvia asked again.

“Why worry your pretty head with those pictures. I know they’ll upset you.”

Sylvia lifted her eyebrows. “It’s sweet of you to worry about me, honey, but I can figure out for myself what I want to see. Please, show me what you found in the tunnel.” She started to massage his neck again, but her voice had a firm undercurrent, one he was not used to hearing from her.

“I don’t want you involved. You could get hurt.”

Murray chuckled. “I think she can take care of herself.”

Sylvia glanced down at the computer tower. “How much RAM does this computer of yours hold, anyway?”

Tommy’s voice was sour. “Four megabytes. It’s more expensive than it should be, both in money and influence, and wasn’t easy to come by,”

“There’s no question you have both. But now, by my knowing you have this computer, I’m already involved. Just seeing this overpowered instrument makes me an accomplice. The laws on this are strict. Advanced computer technology is not allowed in the hands of anyone who is not able to misuse it.”

Tommy shook his head, surprised to hear the same phrase twice in one day. “I didn’t realize you were so cynical.”

She sighed. “Can’t you understand that I want to become involved? This is important. I don’t want you to protect me. You’re so sexist, sometimes I think you should have stayed on Venus.”

“All right already, I’ll show you.” He sighed and started the cycle of images. “This first one is a long shot of the tunnel. You can see the implac at the other end.” He clicked the mouse. “This close-up shows more detail.”

“That doesn’t look like the gruesome monsters in the history books. It looks more like some sort of bug,” Murray said.

“It does. I have no idea why the different appearance.” He touched the mouse. Rectangles and squares appeared superimposed on the robot. “This was a low voltage shot, designed to pick up details of its surface structure. The shapes may be hatches, but I don’t know why there are so many of them.” Another picture appeared. “This is a phase laser scan.” He pointed with the mouse. “This may be a pump.” A new picture flashed on the screen.

“What are those?” she asked.

The mouse pointed to cylinders with tapered ends at the bottom of the machine. “I think these are bombs.” He pointed again, this time to a rectangular structure. “This looks a little like a battery, which is strange because implacs are supposed to have nuclear power. I don’t recognize the other objects.” A different image, a multicolored cloud, appeared in the same spot. “My guess is that this is the energy supply in the batteries. They look almost discharged.”

“You don’t know?”

He shook his head in a gesture of sadness. “I sure don’t.”

Sylvia stopped her massage and stared at the screen. Tommy pointed the mouse once more, this time to a faint red mesh in the lower section of the machine. “I think that’s the brain.”

Murray asked, “Can you tell if it is working?”

Tommy’s face hardened with determination. “I don’t know. I have these pretty pictures but only the vaguest ideas of what they mean.”

“What do you plan to do?”

His eyes sparkled. “The main library in Kansas City on Earth has a copy of almost every book or file in the five worlds. It’ll have the information I need to understand these images. Murray, you and I will just have go there.”

*

Deep in its tunnel the machine blinked.

No organic in the vicinity would have seen the blink, but it happened nonetheless. A reflex – that is, a circuit unconnected to the self-awareness module – caused the transparent shield over the optic sensors to rotate through a cleaning apparatus, thus wiping off accumulated dusk. In the airless tunnel little dust had accumulated even over the past 150 years. Still the mechanism functioned. Because the eye shield was already clean the blinking reflex had to be considered inefficient. It was a trivial example of inefficiency, perhaps a vestige of the machine’s remote origin as a human creation. But, inefficient or not, the machine blinked.

It blinked because Thomas McPherson had underestimated the sensitivity of its receptors. His laser flash, though weak and brief by human standards, was bright enough to awaken the implac immediately.

Power from its scant reserves activated a status evaluation routine as the implac checked its condition after the long hibernation. The first datum transmitted to its conscious awareness (or, in human terms, the first thing it realized) was that it had slept too long. A timing mechanism that should have awakened it fifty years ago had not functioned because of a power failure.

Next it checked that failure. Its batteries were almost dead. The innovative energy scavengers on this robot could extract heat even from ice cold rocks, and thus maintain a full charge for centuries if needed. Electromagnetic pulses told the machine of the rubble on the lunar surface above, rubble which, by blocking the little solar warmth that should have seeped through, had left those rocks too cold even for its scavengers. The robot had just been able to maintain basic circuit integrity.

The cause of this energy crisis shortage was obvious – an ancient avalanche. What to do about the problem was not obvious.

The third step, checking its brain circuits, was the most important and the most time consuming. The Implac had without exaggeration terabytes in circuitry and more in memory storage. Each circuit and each memory address was in triplicate, providing three separate “neural” pathways for the same “thought” or memory. In the vast majority of the circuits, 95.2 percent to be exact, all three pathways were the same. That meant those circuits were without question intact. In 2.9 percent one of the three pathways was aberrant. Those circuits had suffered some but not irrevocable deterioration, so the machine could reroute the third pathway to match the first two. In just 1.9 percent of circuits were all three patterns different. There was no way for the machine to know what its original programming had been in those circuits, or even to know how important they were so it just destroyed those segments. But to lose only 1.9% of circuits in 150 years showed how well the robot had been made. The average organic sentient lost a much greater percentage of his brain cells in just one decade. The machine decided it could without danger ignore those lost circuits.

Its final task was to review its other modules. All else appeared functional, but without energy it was immobile, defenseless and helpless. Though it had enough power to think and to talk for a while, it couldn’t maneuver and of course it couldn’t fight until it had recharged those vital batteries.

But it had other abilities.

*

“Damn it to hell, you had no right whatsoever to go out into the Mariposa,” Andrew Wxcom’s face was drawn and red with rage. Tommy affected boredom and didn’t even look at the other man. His gaze strayed to the paintings on the walls, in particular, a representation of sunflowers with yellow paint so bright the blooms looked alive. Gobs of the pigment used by the ancient artist stuck out from the surface of the canvas.

“Look at me, damn it. Don’t pretend you’re interested in that damned painting,” Wxcom said.

Tommy recognized “that damned painting.” In college he had read about it and the crazy artist (hadn’t he cut off his ear?) who had painted it about 900 years ago. Without a doubt the painting had been destroyed in the Great War. This, then, must be a reproduction, a copy, and not the genuine article. Nothing about Wxcom’s room was genuine, including Wxcom himself.

Tommy turned slowly towards the older man. “Don’t act outraged, Andy. This moonwalk was perfectly legal. I went through all the requisite red tape, followed all the rules, and even found a crystal.”

Andrew stared at the younger man, who, ignoring the magistrate’s frustration, turned back to the painting. After a few seconds Andrew’s shoulders crumpled and his head fell forward. “Tommy, please, I know you were looking for an implac in that mining tunnel. Tell me, I just want to know, I promise I won’t take any action against you and you can record that promise if you want. But please, I have to know, did you find one? Is there an implac in that tunnel?” To Tommy’s disgust, the older man was whining.

“The only way I could know for certain would be to go into the tunnel itself and look. You know I didn’t do that,” he said in a soft voice.

“But you were searching for one,” Wxcom pleaded.

Tommy pursed his lips. He had as much as admitted his search the last time he had talked to Wxcom, so it was pointless to deny it now. “Yes.”

“Did you find it?” His voice quavered, betraying terror a child could hear.

“No, I didn’t.” Damn it, he hated to tell outright lies, but Wxcom looked like he was about to snap.

Wxcom’s whole body sagged. “Thank God. I knew you had shipped special equipment for the search.” Double damn. What had happened to Olsen’s control of security? “I guessed it was ultra sensitive EMF detectors.”

Tommy smiled in a bland manner. “You guessed right.”

“And you’re sure there’s no implac there.”

“No, I’m not sure, Andy. I saw most of the tunnel but the section covered by rubble was too deep for my scans. I don’t think there is an implac there. For sure I didn’t see one, but no promises.” Lying again, but what else could he do?

“Blessed Power. Blessed Power. I was so terrified you would manage to dig up one of the monsters that I had a ten meg nuclear activated just in case.”

“A ten megaton nuclear bomb?” Tommy’s stomach contracted.

“Yeah, I didn’t want to take any chances on the thing getting loose. God almighty.”

“You have the authority to activate a ten megaton nuclear?”

Andy looked embarrassed. “Yes. As I said, I work for a para governmental agency that gives me a lot of latitude.”

“But the Mariposa crater is too close to the city. A nuclear bomb that size would crack the dome. Almost a hundred thousand people live here. They’d all die.” Tommy fought to steady his voice.

“Better than killing everyone on all the worlds. I have a shuttle ready. I’d get out. Don’t look at me that way, McPherson. I know you have a phobia about radiation but I’d have to escape so I could tell Earth what had happened.”

Wide eyed, Tommy muttered, “My phobia isn’t the problem.”

Wxcom didn’t hear him. “It doesn’t matter. You didn’t find anything so I don’t have to send any bombs. Now, one more thing,” Andrew tried to look stern, “have you been sleeping with my secretary?”

The incongruity of the question almost made Tommy laugh. “Of course. She moved in with me a couple of weeks ago. It’s no secret. Does that bother you also?”

“I really think it’s time for you to leave.”

“I agree.” Tommy stood up.

“I don’t mean my office. It’s time for you to leave Luna,” Wxcom snapped. For a moment, his eyes went vacant and he stared into space, evidently using the mindlink. “Sylvia will get you a ticket on the next shuttle back to Earth. Be on it.” He pounded the antique wood desk. “I don’t care what your goddamned lawyers say, I want you off the moon now, not in two weeks, and I don’t want you ever to come back. Now get out.”

Tommy, incredulous, turned and left the office without a word. He walked into the anteroom where Sylvia was sitting at her desk and said, “He’s deporting me from the moon.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” she said. “He doesn’t have that authority. He can deport you only for the rest of your probation, one more week. After that, you can walk right back into this dome, and he won’t be able to say a word. Even if you came back before then, he wouldn’t be able to do more than harass you for a few days.”

“Are you sure?”

“Lover, for a smart man you are sometimes naive. Unlike Venus, the moon is a democracy. People here ignore what officials tell them as a matter of course. And in most cases, public opinion backs them up, especially for someone like the Hero of Venus.” She smirked.

Tommy, looking sheepish, grinned. “I guess you’re right.” He looked around. “Well, since I can return later, let’s celebrate. Isn’t it time for you to go to lunch?”

She checked her chronometer. “Pretty soon.”

“Let’s go to the Surface Club again.”

She laughed. “Might as well. I don’t know when I’ll be able to go there on my own.”

“I’ll meet you in a few minutes.”

*

The decor at the Surface Club was consistent. The managers varied occasional menu items, but the feeling of luxury never wavered. The waiter had once again reserved Tommy’s favorite seat and had encouraged Sylvia to enjoy the latest special – fresh salad.

“This is ridiculous. My salary for a week is less than the price of a meal here even without such extravagances.”

“Right. You should feel obligated. That way when I ask you to come back to Earth with me you won’t refuse.”

She sipped the wine, avoiding his eyes. “Well, to tell the truth, I will refuse.”

His face fell. “You will? Why?”

“I like my job and my life here. I don’t want to leave it.”

“I can give you a job. I always need competent people.”

“No. I wouldn’t feel comfortable working for someone I’m sleeping with.”

Which must be different from sleeping with someone you’re working for, Tommy thought. “But I thought ... We were getting along so well together.”

“Yes, it was nice, but it was just temporary. We had no contract. I was your personal meat for a while and you were mine.”

He winced at the vulgarism. “You mean it was just a meat thing, just a lot of thrashing around.”

She reached out and touched his hand. “No, I shouldn’t have said that. It was more than a meat thing. I like you and I liked being with you again. We hadn’t seen each other for decades. But it wasn’t intended as a permanent arrangement. If you weren’t going back to Earth now, I would have moved out soon anyway.”

The waiter brought the platters, each with a small steak, reconstituted mashed yams and green beans, and a salad with crisp lettuce, purple cabbage and plump cherry tomatoes. The meat smelled of barbecue sauce. Sylvia attacked it with gusto.

“So I guess you’ll be going back to Andrew?”

“I work with him. And what I do after hours is none of your business, Tommy. I refuse to answer that question you keep hinting at.”

“He’s crazy. Do you know that?”

She smiled with irony while piercing the genuine lettuce onto a fork. “Tommy. Are you jealous?”

“Of course not. What kind of savage do you think I am.”

Sylvia stared at her food, avoiding McPherson’s gaze as the corners of her mouth twitched upward. “Just asking,” she said.

“I was born on Earth, not Venus. Besides, even Venus has changed since Stohl’s day.”

“Yes, but you were born in a, ah, tradition rich area. You were raised in a culture so old you qualify as an ethnic.”

He frowned. “My family left Ireland when I was nine. I’m not a hick, Sylvia.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” she said in such a quiet voice he could barely hear the words.

“By the way, were you listening to the conversation between me and Andy in his office this morning?”

She put the fork down. “Of course not. That wouldn’t be ethical.”

Tommy, though unsure what Sylvia’s ethics were, leaned towards her, his voice low. “He has a ten meg nuclear aimed at the Mariposa. If he knew what I found, he’d use it without a second thought. But his own personal shuttle is fueled and ready to launch. That is why I say he is crazy.”

That froze her. She sat open mouthed. “But that would kill thousands of people, maybe everyone in New Kansas.”

“Yes. But he would do it because he’s terrified of implacs. Also, if you want to talk about jealousy, his is out of control. Your moving into my apartment seems like the main reason he is sending me to Earth. .”

“That’s bizarre. Andy isn’t like that. Are you sure that was the reason?”

“I’m sure about the nuclear. It is bizarre. He was acting crazy, almost in tears. How does someone like him get so much power?”

“I can’t tell you anything about him, Tommy. You know that. And you also know I haven’t told him about the implac.” She shuddered. “Are you sure that thing is dormant?”

“You saw the scans yourself. It doesn’t have any power.”

“You think that’s what the scans mean, but you don’t know. All the stories describe the robots as sinister and scheming, so you can’t jump to conclusions about the scans.”

“This one can scheme all it wants. Without energy, it’s helpless.”

“But Tommy, that thing, whatever it is, you showed me might not be a battery. Or maybe there is a second power source you can’t see. No one knows how the robots built themselves. You don’t know what reserve storage it has.”

McPherson drummed his fingers on the table. “In point of fact, there is information about how they built themselves. I need that information.”

Sylvia shook her head. “Andy wouldn’t risk blowing up the city. That’s not possible. Did he plan to take me with him on his shuttle?”

At bottom, everyone thinks about themselves, Tommy mused.

Sylvia resumed her meal, picking at her food, earlier gusto gone. “Now I see why you wanted to keep those pictures of the tunnel secret. You suspected Andy might react like that, didn’t you?”

Tommy answered with a wan smile. “Not to that extreme.”

“Cosmic Power, I’m glad I didn’t tell him. I thought he’d bury the implac under paperwork or something nonsensical like that. But a ten meg nuclear? Maybe you’re right. Maybe he is crazy. But if you can’t tell people in authority, what will you do? Will you go above Andy’s head? I don’t even know who his superior is.”

McPherson snorted. “I can always tell Robert Anderson.”

“Very funny. I was thinking of your talking to a real person.”

He shook his head. “At this point I can’t think of anyone to share this with who would help and not make matters worse. It would be better to learn more about Implacs. Without knowing it, Andy has done me a favor by sending me to Earth. The main library, with all its files, including everything humanity knows about implacs, is on Earth. I thought I’d have to convince him to let me go before my probation was up, but he was too cooperative for that.” McPherson chuckled.

“But most information on implacs is classified.”

He shrugged. “I’ll break through the security codes. Then I’ll learn what I need to know to disarm the beast. The implac, not Andrew,” he quipped.

Sylvia laughed more than would be expected for McPherson’s little joke. Tommy looked offended. “What’s so funny?”

“No one but Tommy McPherson, the Hero of Venus, could contemplate breaking main library security codes and disarming implacs with such nonchalance. If anyone can do it, I guess you can.”

“The security codes won’t be a big problem. My security officer, Phil Olsen, has a brilliant sense of the devious. His code-keys will make it easy.”

“Lack of confidence is not one of your problems.”

His face brightened. “Then you’ll have to come back to Earth with me to keep me from getting too optimistic.”

She looked up. “No. I’m sorry. I like you and, believe me, I do like all this luxury but I don’t want to live with you indefinitely.” They ate their exotic meal in silence. “Besides, if you’re right about Andy being crazy, I can’t leave him alone.”

“What’s the matter? Are you afraid the poor dear will hurt himself?”

“Will you please stop that jealousy?” she said, and glowered. “You’re as bad as he is, always picturing us in bed. If he’s crazy I’m not worried about him. I’m worried about his bomb and the people in New Kansas City”

Why not write Zvi the Fiddler and let him know how much you liked this story?

Short stories by Zvi include "Manners" (say please, even to your computer,  "The Tax Bell" , (best read in April), "The Saxaphone" (played by someone unexpected), "Worry" (would that it could be cured so easily), "The Ad Agency" (which is worse -- ads or their regulation?), "Kids" (they can drive you crazy), "Seasons Greetings" (a new approach to the December dilemma), "Penitant"  (a flawed but basically decent man who worships a psychopath), and "Jumper" (about a longing we on Earth will never know).

Revised 11/03