Fiction River: Moonscapes by Fiction River Read Free Book Online Page B

ripe for terraforming, to use the Old Earth word. Unfortunately, another hundred years later the Unity Worlds war with the Dulnari had destroyed Vanga Seven as well. After the war, the moneyed people of the moon decided to construct floating cities like Trenton instead of rebuilding below. To me, it seemed a little like building on a battlefield without burying the bodies.
    “Nobody lives down there anymore but the savages,” Strawn said, as if reading my thoughts. “People who can’t afford to get out. And that’s apparently where my daughter’s little toy has gone. The red blinking light is its last known location. Something must have shorted its homing beacon. Otherwise your job would be a lot easier.”
    “How did it get down there?”
    Strawn shrugged. “Maybe it boarded a sanitation vehicle. I don’t know. He’s a Paqil 5000. Very intelligent.”
    “Why do you think he ran off?”
    “Good question. I’ve heard that the Paqils are designed to respond to their owner’s attention. My daughter Alexa just turned four. She used to spend a lot of time with Bear. That’s what she calls him. Bear. Very simple, I know, but she named him when she was two.” He chuckled, again without any sign of the emotion that usually accompanied it. “Anyway, she’s been doing a lot of other things lately. Virtuoracing. Laser dancing. Not spending nearly as much time with him. It’s my guess that Bear sometimes runs away because he’s lonely.”
    “He’s done this more than once?”
    “Yes, but he’s never left Trenton before. Screen off.” The tulips returned, and he turned to face me. “That’s why I need you, Dexter. I’ve heard that you’re a man who doesn’t mind going to dangerous places. They say, well, they say you were once ...”
    “In the Calfan Mafia?” I finished for him.
    “Yes.”
    “It’s an interesting rumor.”
    “You’re saying it’s false?”
    I smiled. “I’m saying that if it was true, it isn’t now. I work for myself.”
    “Yes. Well. I’m curious how you made such a transition.”
    “It’s natural to be curious.”
    “Hmm. Well, a man in my line of work has learned to be guarded, too, which is part of the reason you’re here. I’m afraid that my face alone might incite a riot down in Old Vanga Seven, as some of the Unity Worlds policies I’m associated with have not exactly been ... popular.”
    “Why not just buy another toy?”
    “My daughter would know the difference, believe me. Will you do it? I will pay you ten times what I’ve already paid you.”
    It was a lot of money, and I could have certainly used it. But I decided long ago to never again work for someone I despised. And I was already despising Jachin Strawn.
    Before I could answer, though, a little girl with blond hair walked into the room. She had pale, freckled skin and big green eyes, and her yellow cotton dress swished when she walked. She was cute, not beautiful but cute, just as little girls who have never been bioshaped were supposed to look. She reminded me of Linna, my own daughter, who had been about the same age when she died.
    “This is Alexa,” Strawn said.
    My mouth felt dry. She held a piece of paper, which she handed to me. On it was a crude drawing of a brown teddy bear with blue eyes. At the bottom, in bold brown lettering, she had scrawled BEAR.
    “I draws you a picture,” she said, “to helps you find him.”
     
    ***
     
    It took me nearly three days of scouring the smog-blanketed cities of Old Vanga Seven, wandering among the crumbled buildings and the tent towns that rimmed the bomb craters, bribing my way past drugged-up gang members and what remained of the local mafia, until somebody said they’d seen the toy hiding in the basement of a burned out apartment building. That led me to an old toothless man living on the first floor who said, yeah, he’d seen the toy, but he’d sold it. After jogging his memory with a fair amount of pure vernilon—a drug that was like money down