The Venus Belt Read online

  Bonaventura was sitting in an enormous crater surrounded by a mountainous wall. “Gunter’s Landing,” my apprentice chattered brightly, “ten miles across, a duplicate of Port Piazzi, way down south.”

  “Right,” I answered, zipping up my smartsuit to the collar, “where they have the Leaning Tower. Convenient, having craters right where they’re needed.”

  “Boss, they just kicked the whole planet around until this pair of craters were the poles. And I’m going to remember that Leaning Tower remark.”

  The crater walls described the limits of the airless port; their outer slopes served as anchors for the plastic that surrounded the rest of the asteroid. Actually, I’d heard the details before. Lucy had been a project engineer, picking up a dose of radiation in the process.

  My bags were on the floor beside my feet. I slid my hood up over my face and sealed it. There was a freighter to catch, departing in forty-one hours. In the meantime, I’d have a modest and preoccupied look around Ceres, and pay my last respects to Lucy. Halfway through the voyage here, her Telecom on Bulfinch 4137 had finally been answered—by a uniformed stranger.

  “This is Win Bear. Is Mrs. Kropotkin in?”

  His smartsuit was adjusted to a friendly paramilitary appearance favored by firemen and park rangers. “I’m, er, Warden Trayle, of Rothbard’s Registry Patrol. Mrs. Kropotkin was one of our clients—you any relation?”

  “Uh...brother-in-law.” Well, it was almost true. “And what do you mean ‘was’?” There was Lucy’s favorite chair, shipped all the way from Earth, a pair of kittens perched up on the back, batting at each other. Above what surely must have been a purely decorative mantelpiece, a bust of Lysander Spooner—Lucy’s favorite Confederate President—a pair of her own reading glasses perched on his nose.

  “Well, sir, I arrived this afternoon on routine patrol. She didn’t answer the ‘com, but her flivver was still here. I scouted around, then queried my dispatcher. He said she’d been gunned down Ceres-side. I should secure the property and check the autofeeder for the cats until we figured out what more to do. I was just attending to that, when you—”

  “Gunned down?” The idea was appalling. Lucy was nearly as sharp with a shooting iron as Captain Forsyth. “By who—whom?”

  “Dunno—wanna talk with my chief? I’ll give you his combo.”

  The cranky little man with a checkered smartsuit and illusory bow tie confirmed it: Lucy had been struck from behind in a Ceres Central public corridor, by a high-velocity projectile through the heart—the first murder in the city in over ten years. Funeral arrangements were such-and-such, apologies, condolences, and Warden Trayle was three hours behind schedule, the bum.

  Now, Koko and I took our final elevator ride down to the crater floor, the Bonaventura teetering an incredible two miles over our heads. With several hundred other passengers, we hopped a surface vehicle across the starlit, sunny port, winding in and out among at least another hundred slumbering behemoths, none nearly so magnificent as the giant liner.

  The shuttle, a buslike affair, headed for the mountains, and the longest tunnel I’ve ever been through. By the time its massive multiple doors had opened before us and closed behind us a dozen times, the sky was a beautiful bright blue again, with fleecy clouds and green growing things all around, all around.

  “Will you be staying in Ceres Central, Boss?” Koko watched the scenery flash by. It didn’t occur to me until later to wonder how a hoverbus had operated in the hard vacuum of Gunter’s Landing.

  “After the funeral? No, I like it better up here in the sunshine. Nivenville, where we’re headed, probably.” More scenery, mostly flat. I’d traveled all this distance in order to see a pretty fair replica of western Nebraska. “Wish we were going back to Earth together, though.”

  She shrugged. “Well, there’s only weight-allowance left aboard that freighter for one skinny human and his stasis-tank. Besides, this is Ceres. Gee, Boss, I’d stay to see the rest of the Belt, too, if—”

  “If Olongo weren’t missing?” Sure enough, that was a scarecrow we whizzed by. Any time now, I’d be seeing BurmaShave signs.

  “And Clarissa. But Ceres Central—I’ve just got to—”

  “Forget it, I understand.” It was the chance of her lifetime, after all. They really mean Ceres Central, a city unique in the System. This asteroid doesn’t have a hot and juicy core like any self-respecting planet, so they’d carved a metropolis out of its very heart, possibly the biggest, densest habitation in all of civilization. Besides being an industrial and communications locus (Voltaire Malaise himself broadcasts from down there), there are thousands of miles of busy streets, Hong Kong, New York, Chicago, and L.A. all rolled into one confusing zero-gravity skein, with Pellucidar Gardens, the biggest, weirdest amusement park in the known universe, at the very hub.

  Nivenville, by contrast, is just like any midwestern farm community, parched blue heavens over bright brassy fields that Dorothy and Toto would have gratefully come home to. My hotel, Le Petit Prince, towers a magnificent three stories above a million acres of marijuana, wheat, and fuelcorn. Koko waited while I checked my bags in the little pseudo-Victorian lobby, then we marched to one of the elevators—the big one in the middle—and took it down.

  Real down.

  Like about three hundred miles. Halfway there it did a flip-flop in its gimbals, and I almost did another one in my pants. They don’t believe in gradual adjustment on the wild frontier. The elevator opened onto a bewilderingly familiar-looking structure. Then I had it—a life-size replica of M. C. Escher’s Relativity, potty plants, arches, and staircases going every whichway, some people walking up the treads, and others down the risers. Up was where you wanted it to be, and down wherever you chose to fasten your tootsies. It was brain-bending just figuring out which rail to grab in panic.

  Ever seen the airline terminal in Las Vegas? The Escher architecture was like that, advertising for Pellucidar Gardens, a pale suggestion, according to the holographic posters, of the wonders that awaited you there for just one thin tenth-piece, all on the inside!

  I was seeing plenty of wonders already. At every exit, several dozen color-coded tow cables snaked along briskly, each one headed for a different general destination. Consulting an eyeball-wrenching diagram, Koko and I grabbed the line that promised to take us to the funeral parlor, and let it drag us from Relativity to Absolute Astonishment.

  Let me put it this way: at any point along each cavernous boulevard, there’s room for eight different storefronts. That’s compared to two in any decent Earth-side community where they’ve paid this month’s gravity bill. In Ceres Central there’s one either side of the “street,” two more built into the “floor” for people who are thinking sideways at the moment, and the whole mess duplicated all over again on the “ceiling”—that’s “floor” if you happen to be walking on it.

  The corridors, a hundred feet or more across, are roughly octagonal in cross section, the smaller corner facets serving as sidewalks, tow-cables singing overhead. It’s no trick at all to jump a dozen feet and grab a lift, compliments of the Ceres Central Merchants Association. The difficulty’s letting go and landing where you want.

  Things really get complicated when you arrive at an intersection—so many goddamned street corners you don’t know which way to look. Let’s see, there’s back the way you came, and forth. Then there’s always right and left. And up and down for folks with stronger stomachs—ever see right to the core of a planet, even a small one?

  In the center of every second passageway, a monorail provides both high-speed public transportation and a road for private vehicles under computerized direction. Have I left out anything? How about the bridges, up and down the fronts of buildings, connecting one sidewalk to another. I may have missed a few details—tenderfeet never do see all the alligator and buffalo tracks their trusty Indian guides do. And the same guides, lost in a city for the first time, often overlook seemingly obvious items. Little things, like Chicago’s Elevate
d Railway. It really happened once—look it up.

  Nikita’s Funerium was situated in a classy tunnel just off the business district. I let go of the cable, having stickied up my shoesoles, and nearly broke my bloody ankles coming to a stop. According to the directory, we were overdue in the Grove of Grieving, three flights up and hundred yards back from the street. At least the illusion of floors and ceilings was respected in this place. My inner ear decided it could go to sleep again.

  The corridors were heavily carpeted, thick velvet drapings and a satin-cushioned ceiling added to the feeling of a housefly’s journey through some Carlsbadian coffin—organ music, stifled sobbing in every doorway—the whole thing dimly lit and anechoic.

  Felt like I’d died, myself.

  A discreet gold plaque beside the doors announced the Grove of Grieving. I anchored myself to the carpet and turned the knob and—wild laughter hit me in the face like a lemon meringue pie. I slid in hastily, followed by an equally perplexed young female gorilla. Bright lights and cheerful ribbonry festooned the walls and ceiling, sounds of merriment and liquid spirits battered at my ears. The place was absolutely packed, at least five hundred various beings yakked and ate and laughed and drank, dancing on any convenient surface to a rock band obviously imported from the States.

  Leaving Koko to fend for herself, I shouldered my way through the crowd—no mean trick in freefall— recognizing a face or two from the old days. Captain Geoffrey Couper, Lucy’s fellow war-veteran. A colleague from the Continental Congress, Sandy Silvers, hanging from the ceiling. Miners, farmers, engineers, I guessed, most of them in smartsuits. At least I was dressed for the occasion.

  I finally ran across poor Lucy, strapped into a velvet casket, eyes forever closed. But happy in the posthumous thought, no doubt, that all of her friends were having such a swell time. An odd mechanical contraption floated beside the bier, conical, about five feet tall, rising to a rounded apex. Well, she’d passed away a week ago. Perhaps some sort of paratronic preservation was required.

  I looked down, gently touching Lucy’s hand, glad in a way it had happened during one of her young periods. Her skin was beautiful and smooth, she wore a simple Mexican skirt and blouse, hands crossed over her breast holding a fresh yellow cactus rose. Someone had lovingly spread her shining blue-black hair over the satin pillow.

  “Poor Lucy...I’m sorry I got here too late. How—” I could hardly speak for the clutch at my throat, the tears blurring my vision. “How could you let this happen to yourself? I promise I’ll find Ed for you...only I’ve got to find Clarissa first, and—”

  “Hey there, Winnie, boy! How d’ya like this here whing-ding?” The thing beside the coffin stirred, bobbed up and down on its base. “Best belly-whopping funeral Ceres Central ever saw, even if I hadda arrange it fer m’self! Whoopee!”

  7: Take a Trog to Lunch

  “ ...else they’re trying to convey, these mysterious signals beg us to recall our destiny, plead that we resist political adventurism, urge us to marshal our resources—not for the unethical usurpation of the rights of others, but for the conquest of the stars. At least that’s the way it looks—”

  “Oops!” exclaimed the monstrosity, “fergot about m’radio!” It turned away modestly, performing some adjustment with a pair of mechanical arms, then swiveled back to face me. “Thought I’d listen to th’ news. That feller do go on, don’t he?”

  Brushing an errant Day-Glo streamer from my face, I ducked a wildly thrown cocktail baggie and strained to hear against the party uproar. In one corner, sprouting from a wall, an impromptu barbershop chorus gargled in obscene counterpoint to the band—at the very least, “House of the Rising Sun” seemed in dubious taste, considering the occasion. Cheerful plastic ribbons and sparkling confetti drifted on the ventilation currents. I kept looking back and forth, dismayed, from Lucy, pale and dead before me, to this vulcanized popcorn machine plagiarizing her voice.

  “Don’t strip yer gears, Winnie-boy.” It raised a spindly chromed appendage to pat me on the shoulder. “Whoever kilt me didn’t quite finish th’ job.”

  “Lucy?” was about all I could manage, and that in a confused soprano.

  “In th’ ever-lovin’ alloy. That’s th’ flesh, lyin’ over there.” It fussed proprietarily with the frilly skirting around the coffin, fluffed the pillow up and smoothed a pleat in Lucy’s skirt. “Sure it’s a shock, son. I was all set to wake up dead, m’self!”

  “Lucy?” I clutched the coffin-edge, trying not to let the air conditioning waft me away. At an inch or so per second squared, I couldn’t even execute a decent faint.

  Appraisingly, the machine drifted back a foot or two. “Lemme look at ya, boy! So y’finally gave up that antique wheelie-gun. An’ there’s th’ Rezin y’took offa Tricky Dick Milhous. Yeah, it’s me, Winnie, same ol’ lady helped Clarissa carve machine-gun-droppings outa yer carcass th’ day y’came t’Laporte. Y’got plastic where yer shoulderblade oughta be, an’ a teensie little mole, right on yer—”

  “Stop!” The telltales on my forearms danced with confused embarrassment. “I don’t know how, but you’re Lucy, all right.” But what else was she? An inverted rubber ice cream cone with a blunted end, covered in smartsuit material broken only by a pair of articulated manipulators—and a weapon slung absurdly from an outsized plastic gunbelt circumscribing her considerable girth. I should have recognized it right away: her Gabbet Fairfax .50.

  “Glad y’came t’yer senses.” She flicked a sparkle of confetti from the rose in Lucy’s hands. Lucy’s other hands. “Listen, let’s get outa here an’ talk. Funerals always did depress me.” Amidst cheerful waves and inebriated farewells, we took our leave, the other mourners seemingly determined to carry on, guest-of-honor or not, until some nonexistent dawn.

  Koko’s questioning grimaces went unanswered as we grabbed a tow rope outside and rode it deeper into the underground city. Somehow, watching people strolling on the ceiling wasn’t half as disturbing as seeing them walking on the walls. From my perspective, half the monorails were running upside-down, and shrubbery was springing from the sidewalks in any old direction. As if the cavernous boulevards weren’t lighted brightly enough by storefronts, the angled sidewalks were fluorescent, and the rails and cables glowed with some internal energy. Lucy wasn’t content to let the color-coded ski tow drag her along, but locked a manipulator loosely around it, firing up electrostatic impellers in her base, to zip ahead of us, then bounce up and down impatiently at corners until we caught up.

  We proceeded thus, deep into the core of the planet.

  She finally stopped before a glaring animated sign across a chasm from the fabled Pellucidar Gardens. Huge holos advertised the thrills available: a roller-coaster roaring along a giant Mobius strip; people diving into a lake-size sphere of water suspended in the center of the centermost cavern. One ride was ominously labeled ‘”Decompression”—some funny thing to joke about, three hundred million miles into space. Koko gazed with obvious yearning at the System’s most famous playground, then followed us reluctantly into the restaurant, Mr. Meep’s Cloud Nine. Mr. Meep was another of the many ex-Laporters I knew who’d emigrated to the asteroids. Another chimpanzee, probably a relative, conducted us to a slimmer, many-jeweled cable, which snatched us dizzily upward several levels from the entrance to a well-upholstered niche along one wall. I pulled myself into a seat, fastening the lapbelt. Koko did the same. Lucy simply hung beside the table and clamped a manipulator on its edge.

  “Well,” I said, looking around, “old Meep seems to have done pretty well for himself.” The place was a fantasy, a hundred dusky caves and exotic grottoes overlooking a lushly jungled, many-layered floor. The central cavern was filled with drifting artificial clouds, each topped with a table for two, candles twinkling in the twilight like so many fireflies.

  A chuckle burbled up from somewhere inside Lucy’s fuselage. “He oughta. Half the population here usta be his customers back home. Here’s th’ waiter.” That worthy helicopter
ed up beneath a propellor-beanie fastened by a chin strap. He performed a theatrical loop, then a hammerhead stall, fell off on his right shoulder, and swooped to a halt, hovering beside the table and sculling with his hands and feet. He activated our menu and made notes on a ‘com pad in his hand.

  I asked for lamb chops with mint jelly and a large baggie of milk. Koko ordered a salad and a small hamburger. Lucy—hell, I’d been half expecting her to plug into the wall for a recharge. She surprised me by ordering a small container of beef broth, then produced a stack of datachips.

  “Lessee now, steak—rare—French fries, milk shake, spinach...spinach? How’d that get in there?” She tossed the offending chip over her shoulder. “Guess that’ll hold me. Mind if I go ahead?”

  I watched this performance, trying to keep my eyes from bugging out of my head. “Datachips, Lucy? Where’s the nourishment in that?”

  “Fer th’ soul, Winnie. Ever heara sensory deprivation? Goin’ through th’ motions helps t’keep me sane—sane as I ever was, anyway. Th’ broth is all th’ real fuel I need, that’n nuclear fusion. Guess you’d like t’know what this is all about, hunh?” A chimpanzee in angel’s clothing swooped by with a flaming sword—someone was having shish kebab tonight.

  “It might help keep me sane. It isn’t every day you see your friends reincarnated as robots.”

  “Watch yer language! This’s hard’nough t’take ‘thout wisecracks.” She paused, fiddling idly with the salt and pepper gun as it drifted on its lanyard from the center of the table. “There I was, just startin’ t’enjoy bein’ young agin. If I ever got aholda the crab louse who— Anyway, I was out, doin’ a little shoppin’ not a block from here, when all of a sudden, Pow! Next thing I knew, they were gettin’ set t’cremate m’pretty little bod. Well, I gave them a piece of my—”