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1.12
22 November

St. Joseph of Cupertino Monastery

South Polar Mineral Territories

Lunar Surface


Raimy partially woke up a few times, and struggled each time to orient himself. In the dim light and low gravity, it was hard to make sense of where he was. The sensation was oddly soothing, though, like being in the womb, so he felt no particular need to figure it out, but simply closed his eyes again. In between he slept deeply, and though he wouldn’t remember his dreams in the morning, they were of a bland, calm nature, with few fantastical elements. However, when he actually woke up in the morning—roused by the sounds of activity in the hallway outside his room—his rested mind knew right away where he was.

He lay in bed for a few minutes, reluctant to start his day. Finally he got up, peed, washed his hands, and picked at his hair with his fingers because he’d forgotten to bring a comb. He did at least have a toothbrush, though he hadn’t rinsed it off the whole time he was in zero gravity, and without toothpaste it was kind of nasty. Still, better than nothing. Being in space was a lot like backpacking; you just didn’t bring a lot with you.

Space underwear was designed to be worn for a week at a time, so he simply pulled on his beige Antilympus uniform, including the slippers, and was magically ready to go.

Breakfast was less elaborate than dinner, and consisted mainly of orange drink and an oatmeal-like paste topped with oily pats of margarine. But it was good and hearty, and felt like it would easily hold him through lunch, at least. Once everyone had eaten, insulated sippy mugs were passed out, filled with a substance worryingly known as “brown tea.” Wasn’t tea supposed to be brown?

“To carry around with you while you work,” said Brother Hamblin, whose first name Raimy had learned was Hilario.

Raimy, who really just wanted a cup of coffee, couldn’t help asking, “What’s in it?”, with more suspicion and less gratitude than was strictly polite.

“Toasted chicory, wheatgrass, and dandelion root, home grown,” Hilario said, his accent full of smooth, rich tones. “Caffeine from the drug printer, sucrose and milkfat from the CHON synthesizer. Un poco marsh thistle to broaden the sweetness, and a bit of mustard green to give it some bitterness. Kurtis and I have been refining this recipe for months, so please don’t hurt our feelings.”

“Can I get it without cream and sugar?”

Hilario clucked his disapproval. “This isn’t a Starbucks. Just try it.”

Dutifully, Raimy sipped from the spout of the mug, and found it actually not too bad.

“It tastes . . .”

“Like hot chocolate?” Hilario suggested.

“Hmm. Not . . . well, maybe.”

It didn’t taste like any hot chocolate Raimy had ever drunk, and it didn’t particularly taste like tea, either. It certainly didn’t taste like coffee. But it wasn’t bad, and he could see himself actually drinking it, maybe more than once, if it was what they had here.

“The infrastructure to grow and process coffee or even tea is quite beyond us here,” Michael said, as if in apology.

“What is your honest opinion? It’s helpful to have outside perspectives,” Hilario said.

“I like this,” Raimy reassured them both. “Thank you. I’m grateful for the caffeine, actually.”

“They drink it at Shackleton now, too,” Michael said, “and perhaps the people of Mars, when they finally make landfall, can save themselves some trouble by following our lead. Right, Katla?”

“Um, sure,” Katla answered, with careful neutrality. The monks had hauled all the dirty dishes off to the kitchen, and so she was helping fold away one of the two big dining tables, to convert this room back into a chapel.

Raimy and Bridget were the only ones still seated. Taking the hint, Raimy extricated himself from the table’s built-in bench, and stood up. “I’d like to inspect that backpack now,” he said to Michael.

“Right,” Michael said. “Let’s do it. Can we give you a tour of the grounds first, though? Consider it part of your investigation.”

In point of fact, Raimy had a search warrant of sorts—a letter from the Vatican, authorizing him to access any portion of the monastery and its grounds. He also, for what it was worth, had a similar letter from the office of Sir Lawrence Edgar Killian, granting similar access to Shackleton Lunar Industrial Station. But Michael probably knew that.

Raimy said, “Sure. I assume Etsub had the run of this place?”

Michael simultaneously nodded and shrugged. “Yes. Please understand, privacy means a great deal in monastic life, even in Benedictine guest houses like this one, so a typical monastery is dominated by cloistered spaces. But in an envelope this small, it doesn’t make sense to restrict the movement of our students. And Etsub was a sponge, interested in everything. He wasn’t just here to learn horticulture.”

“I understand. And you’re right, I do want to retrace his steps. Do you mind if I record?”

“In principle I do mind, yes. But our students have been broadcasting unauthorized video the whole time they’ve been here, and I haven’t the heart to ask them to stop, because their goals are the same as ours: to normalize life in space. And in any case, I understand this is a crime scene, and you need admissible evidence. Your need clearly supersedes our own.”

Something in Michael’s manner caught Raimy’s attention. It was understandable that as prior of the monastery, Michael necessarily had a public face he needed to show, that was different from the private face he would use when members of the general public were not around. That much was obvious. But Raimy sensed there might also be at least one secret face lurking inside Michael somewhere, and that bothered him.

“Okay, then. I’m switching on.”

Michael stood and spread his arms. “Well, then, let’s get to it. I think you’re familiar with this room already?”

Indeed, Raimy had been almost nowhere else, besides his quarters. The chapel/refectory was pretty small for a church, though slightly oversized as a dining hall for sixteen people. For a habitat module, though, it seemed quite roomy indeed, especially in comparison to the spaces onboard a nuclear submarine. It was nearly as long as a school bus, and nearly twice as wide. It had four exit hatchways: one leading into the main airlock assembly, one to the kitchen, one to the dormitories, and one leading off into a module Raimy had never seen.

Raimy said, “Why don’t you describe it to me anyway?”

“As you wish. That lovely tortured Jesus up there is a medieval relic, extremely valuable. The cabinet below that is our tabernacle, where we store consecrated hosts, and in between is our teleconferencing screen, which is linked with a SpaceNet portal that lets us talk to Earth, and of course other locations on the Moon. How technical would you like me to get?”

“I don’t know. How technical can it be?”

“Well, the protocol is SSL over TCP/SP, if that helps. The chapel’s base module is a Harvest Moon ‘high vault.’ It’s the same size as the dormitory modules, which are called ‘rack vaults,’ but it’s basically hollow inside, with the standard wiring and plumbing configured basically as pass-throughs. The only services are blowers, electrostatic precipitators, and lighting; everything else is capped off. All the furnishings—the pews, the monitor, the crucifix, et cetera, are anchored to pawn-shaped protrusions called ‘nubbins.’ Here’s one right here, with nothing attached. Is that technical enough?”

“Sure,” Raimy said. Such details were unlikely to matter for his work, but you never knew.

Michael continued: “There were only three modules in place when we first landed here; helping HMI connect this one up was our first labor. Since that time, we’ve added fourteen additional modules, the most recent one just a few months ago. We’ve been construction workers first and foremost. It’s been a strange adjustment, truthfully, to merely inhabit the place, with no immediate plans for expansion. We have seven monks still on Earth, awaiting transport, but if and when they finally get here, we can squeeze them into existing spaces, without expanding. Time will tell, but this may be it. The structure, as you see it, may stand here for decades. Or longer.”

By convention, the main airlock was “west” of the chapel, whereas the kitchen was “north.” Raimy didn’t know whether this reflected actual compass points, or even whether compass points made any sense this close to the south pole, where every direction was “north,” but anyway Michael led him into the kitchen, which was a smaller module, roughly the size of a short bus.

Raimy had looked through the hatch into this room, but had never actually stepped through into it. Brother Kurtis (also known as “Durm”) was already in here, cheerfully washing the breakfast dishes in two large sinks.

“Kitchen,” Michael said. He then started pointing out the various appliances: “Blender. Mixer. CHON printer. Stovetop. Combo oven. That’s a microwave, radiant, and convection oven with variable internal pressure all in one. Expensive.”

“It saves a lot of space,” Kurtis offered without turning around.

“Yes, it does,” Michael agreed. “These pipes up here are for the fire suppression system, these down here are water, and these are the return drains. Also a drain in the floor, here. They all lead to the recycler in the life-support module. There’s an identical kitchen over at Shackleton, and the boys and girls over at Shoemaker Lunar Antenna Park have ordered the next one off the HMI production line. Until it rolls, they’re basically eating granola bars, as Giancarlo and Purcell and I did, when we first landed here. Malinkin Base is only two people, with no galley aspirations that I know of. They have a microwave.”

Hilario Hamblin walked in behind them, whereupon Michael grabbed him by the neck and actually gave him a noogie. Not hard, but still unexpected. “Hilario here, whom you’ve met, is our chief cook and programmer. Durm just likes washing things.”

“There’s dignity in labor,” Kurtis Durm called out, making a rude gesture, again without turning around.

“If that’s true,” Michael said, clapping him on the back, “then we must all be very dignified indeed.” Then, to Raimy, “Through there is the laundry. Same size utility module as the kitchen, with a small double hatch leading into the airlock. You may recall stuffing your contaminated underwear in there.”

“Yep,” Raimy agreed, poking his head into the module to see. There was no one in there, and the lights were off, but there was a little round porthole window through which a dim light filtered. Two washer-dryers, two folding tables, two drying racks, with an aisle running down the center. For a laundry room, it seemed pretty spacious.

“Cramped, I know,” Michael said.

“Eh? You should try living on a submarine.”

“Unlikely, at this point,” Michael said with a laugh.

They proceeded east, back through the kitchen and into an empty classroom. Since the two of them were alone for the moment, Raimy asked, in his best investigator voice, “You have secrets, don’t you?”

Michael paused, and looked at Raimy. He seemed to consider his answer for several seconds, weighing each word carefully. Finally he said, “In the sense of absolved sins I would rather not discuss, yes. You’re clever to notice. Or perhaps you simply ask that question of everyone.”

“I don’t,” Raimy said.

“Well, then you are indeed a clever man. Will you turn your camera off?”

“I’d rather not.”

Uncomfortably, Michael said, “This is an interrogation, then? Very well. I have a past, yes, from before my vows. It isn’t germane to your investigation.”

“No?”

“No. My sins involve extramarital sex, if that helps you understand. Very few of the religious have lived completely celibate lives, myself included.”

And Raimy did understand that, yes. He felt there was probably more to it—Michael was gay or a fetishist or something—but unless Raimy could link it to Etsub in some way, it really wasn’t his business to press any further.

“Thank you for your candor,” he said. “I don’t mean to offend.”

“On the contrary,” Michael said. “I appreciate your thoroughness.” Then, more pointedly, he added: “And discretion.”

They proceeded east again, into what seemed to be a library. There were only about twenty actual books on the shelves, but there were also a pair of surprisingly large desktop computers, and a couple of empty writing desks. Another porthole, looking out onto some kind of trusswork. Michael said, “A great deal of monastic work is cerebral or academic. We don’t carry rollups or smartyglasses, so many is the day one or two of us are holed up in here, finding answers to big questions and small. Outside, by the way, if you look out here, is our tower magnet, which deflects charged particles and delays the day we all drop dead of cancer.”

The library had two exits, one of which led south into the dormitory where Raimy’s quarters were located.

“East dormitory,” Michael said. “The west dorm is over there. The two rack vaults are identical outer shells, but yours—the east dorm—is a slightly later model, with plumbing relocated in order to raise the ceilings. In the older module, we regularly bump our heads, and since it’s buried here in the middle of the complex, with other modules all around it, we’re unlikely to ever have it replaced, even if the Holy See coughs up the cash. It’s one of those live-and-learn scenarios that are, in fact, our whole reason for being here.”

To which Raimy said, “I appreciate you putting me in the newer module.”

“Naturally, and you’re welcome. You’re also in a VIP cell, which is slightly larger and has only a single bed. The rest of us, students included, are stacked into bunks.” His eyes twinkled with sudden mirth. “Please know that a normal monastery would not have en suite bathrooms in each cell, but that’s how Harvest Moon designed the modules. So in this one particular, we’re more comfortable than we would be on Earth, where monastery bathrooms can be surprisingly gross. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but with enough brothers wiping their asses in the same two stalls . . . well, you get the idea.”

Michael pointed east and west along the corridor formed by the two dormitory modules. Each had six dwellings, or “cells,” and four exits marking the points of the compass. In a touch that was either ironic, artistic, or homesick, someone had painted stone archways over the hatches into each room and module.

“We call this hallway ‘the cloisters,” Michael said. “It leads that way into the chapel, as you see, and this way into the east airlock, which”—he opened the hatch—“also serves as our balneary, which is a schmancy medieval word for bathing room.”

Raimy had never been in here. It looked a bit like the main airlock, except that the gowning area was fully open into the showers, and there was a large metal bathtub where the racks and lockers should be.

“We don’t use this lock for ingress and egress, so it’s dust-free. At the Marriott Stars and Esley Shade Station, each apartment actually has its own shower, but HMI doesn’t love us quite that much. So it’s rub-a-dub-dub, eleven monks and one tub, and whoa, that sounded inappropriate. Nothing untoward ever happens here, I can assure, or there’d be Hell and His Holy to pay. Anyway, we usually just shower, because we tend to be quite busy and a bath smacks ever so faintly of sloth. Anyway, if you find your armpits stinking, put a sock on the door handle and scrub away. These showers are not on a timer, and the water is all recycled. No Navy showers here; take as long as you like.”

Raimy smiled. A Navy shower was a minute-long spray to get yourself wet, then a minute to soap up, and then a final minute to rinse off. Two minutes if you really needed it. Not one person in the history of the universe had ever found that sufficient, and one of the great pleasures of shore leave was taking a real goddamn shower, or “Hollywood shower,” as the sailors sometimes called it.

“All the pleasures of home,” Raimy said. “Really, this place is a lot nicer than a submarine. It’s roomy, it’s two-dimensional, you’ve got some windows . . .  I don’t know that I’d want to spend my whole life . . .” He paused, then said, “Sorry, that was rude.”

“Not at all,” Michael assured him. “I’m guessing you wouldn’t want to spend your life celibate, either. We all have different callings. I’m curious, though, why you do want to spend your life at Antilympus.”

Raimy thought about that for a few seconds, and finally answered, “Mars is a different kind of place. I mean, for one thing, Antilympus Township looks like a luxury resort or a shopping mall compared to this place. It’s a lot more accommodating. But also, when you look out the windows, you see wind and clouds. Frost forming on the top of the soil. The way the light plays off the mountains, it’s just . . .”

“You’ve seen it,” Michael said, getting it. “You’ve looked out through the eyes of the robots there.”

“Yes,” Raimy agreed. “Every chance I get. Have you?”

“Oh, indeed. It’s every bit as beautiful as you say, and I expect in future times, Lunar architecture will take its cues at least in part from your township. But Mars is also far away. To go there is, in large sense, to cut ties with history and start completely over with that clean slate people are always talking about. I get the appeal. I do.

“But that’s the exact opposite of our mission here at Saint Joe. If I had my choice between Mars and Moon, believe me, I’d be right where I am. We’re close to the Earth here—almost still a part of it—and we’re here with hands outstretched to lift people into the future. Not just by ones and twos, but as many as rockets can carry. As fast as Harvest Moon can build the dwellings. We’re figuring out how to live here, and I tell you, Antilympus has a greater chance of succeeding, the more it learns from our example. That’s exactly why your people came here, why Etsub Beyene came here, and I hope to God and Jesus his death doesn’t discourage anyone else from coming. It’s expensive to get here, I know, but I tell you truthfully, it’s more expensive not to. If you speak to Danny Beseman, I hope you’ll extend him our invitation. The Holy See has already done so of course, but you’re one of Beseman’s own people, and now that you’ve been here, perhaps your word will carry farther than Pope Dave’s.”

Raimy thought about that. Michael’s earnestness was touching and infectious, but the truth was, Raimy had been here less than a day, and had learned fuck-all. And he wasn’t exactly on Beseman’s buddy list, so it wasn’t clear he’d have any influence at all. And yet, it did make sense: next to the trillions of dollars it would take to land the colonists at Antilympus, what difference would it make if a few dozen trips to the Moon were tacked on?

“I’ll talk to him, if he’ll listen,” Raimy promised.

Suddenly back in tour guide mode, Michael said, “This hatch leads to the east greenhouse. We keep it closed to seal in the humidity, but”—he opened the hatch and stepped through—“this is where our most pressing work takes place: growing what we need to feed ourselves.”

The light inside the greenhouse was grow-light pink, and the air (humid, yes) was alive with noise. Brothers Ferris and “Bear” were in here, along with all three of the Antilympus candidates. They were just getting started with their day, not really engrossed in anything yet, but there was an energy about them that reminded Raimy of exactly why he’d wanted to come to outer space. Everything mattered. Every touch, every movement—no matter how routine—was exciting.

“These roots are getting too much phosphorus,” Ferris was saying, in an accent Raimy felt he could definitively nail down as Brazilian. “This prevents other nutrients getting absorbed properly. See this yellowing around the edge of the leaves? That’s how you can tell.”

“A lot of things cause yellow leaves,” Anming Shui protested.

“Not quite like this,” Ferris said. “It’s a real distinctive pattern of curling and drying.”

“So what can you do about it?” Bridget Tobin asked. “The sewage being what it is.”

“We add water and crushed regolith to the drip until the problem goes away,” Ferris said. “Light, air, water, sewage, regolith. Once you’ve used up all the starter materials you brought with you, that’s all you’re going to have. Here, we can bring some soil components up from Earth, or make use of waste materials we can easily replace, like cloth. On Mars, you’re not going to have that luxury. You want to really grow something, it’s all about balance. You know all that; I’m just telling you what danger signs to watch out for. Now, if you are getting too much iron, the leaves will bronze and stipple, which is easy to do here, and probably on Mars, too.”

The module was full of hydroponic racks and tanks, with all kinds of different plants growing in them. The sound of blowers—never absent anywhere in the monastery—was particularly loud in here, and the glare of pink and blue LEDs was an assault on the senses.

“We filter iron out of the water,” said Bear. Raimy didn’t think that was his actual name, but it was what people seemed to call him.

“Let’s keep going,” Michael said into Raimy’s ear.

They shuffled down the aisle, stepping around people and over cable runners slotted across the floor. Michael opened another hatch on the west side of the module, and stepped through into a space that was equally pink and blue, but quieter. Raimy followed him through and then closed the hatch behind him.

“Sorry,” Michael said. “Force-growing vegetables takes a lot of energy, and a lot of material flow. We’re trying to maximize throughput, and it’s actually pretty amazing how far we’ve been able to push that. It is fatiguingly loud, though. The lights and blowers are never silent. A few hours in that module will have you begging for death. I honestly don’t know how Bear and Fox stand up to it.”

“Why is it so much quieter in here?” Raimy asked.

The west greenhouse was much like the east one, except that the plants were smaller and more widely spaced, and the troughs were full of dirt instead of liquid. Standing at a workbench was a brother whose name Raimy didn’t know. He was patiently weighing little plastic cups full of powder, in a laboratory scale with glass doors that opened and closed.

“This,” Michael answered, “is the epicenter of our most meaningful task: creating new life with zero terrestrial input. Those tanks are filled with moonwater, fresh from the ice fields of Faustini Crater. Milled regolith fills the planters, along with the ground-up remains of previous generations of plants. It’s quieter in here because these plants will die if you speak a harsh word to them. The lighting is on a twelve-hour cycle. Air and water circulation are on a low setting, and any handling of the plants is exceedingly gentle. The idea here is not to grow things fast, but to find those things that will grow at all, and breed them for the characteristics we want. We’ve found ten different food plants that will grow sustainably through multiple generations, and I’m hoping these shallots over here will be the eleventh. They take a lot of water and a lot of babying, but we’ve gotten enough nitrogen into the soil now that this latest generation might just pull through. It’s patient work, but it’s going to echo forward for generations to come.”

“You sound prideful,” Raimy told him. It was a dick thing to say, and he wasn’t sure why he did it. He would sometimes needle a potential suspect to try and get some reaction, and this sounded a lot like that, but Michael wasn’t much of a suspect. Raimy was becoming impatient—that much was clear.

Michael, though, simply spread his hands and shrugged. “I am prideful, and I hope it don’t cometh before a fall, but it’s why we’re here, and I won’t apologize for taking pleasure in it. Etsub, by the way, spent most of his time here when he wasn’t in class. They all did. Force-growing rutabagas is less glamorous, so I’m having to make double sure they get an earful of it before they leave. There’ll be a room like this at Antilympus, mark my words, and it will feed the future. But the present needs to be fed as well, and the present is a hungry bastard that doesn’t like CHON.”

“I didn’t mean to disparage your work,” Raimy said.

“And I don’t mean to disparage yours,” Michael replied. “I mustn’t forget that I, too, am a player in this tragedy, and it’s your job to watch my every move, through predator’s eyes.”

Raimy scoffed. “If I thought you had a motive, we’d be having a very different conversation.”

“No doubt. And yet, I’ve been rude. Let’s complete this tour with an eye toward the . . . evidence you seek.”

“That would be great, yes.”

Michael then led him west, into a room that looked like a cross between an operating room, a dentist’s office, and a grocery-store pharmacy. The space was dominated by a med tube, which was pretty standard for medical offices these days. You climbed inside the tube, and it would do anything from routine examinations and bloodwork to invasive microsurgical procedures. The list of things a tube could do was getting longer every year, though it was still dwarfed by the list of things it couldn’t. Hence the dentist chair, which looked like it was capable of stretching out fully flat, and of tilting in various directions. Behind both things were rows of lockers, and shelves full of quaint-looking pill bottles. Again, the whole thing was quite surprisingly roomy compared to a submarine sickbay. There was even a little writing desk, where Brother Hughart sat, pecking at the keyboard of a laptop computer.

“Infirmary,” Michael said, pointing at various things. “Standard medicosurgical tube. Examination table. Surgical lockers. Drug printer. Drug inventory. This is where we brought Etsub, after it was a hundred percent clear he was actually dead.”

“Not before?” Raimy asked. But he could see, it would be difficult to wrestle a General Spacesuit Heavy Rebreather in here. To wrestle someone out of a Heavy Rebreather and up onto that table, or into the tube.

“There was more room in the chapel,” Michael said, “and it was closer to the airlock. If there was any hope at all, it was to lay him down and shock him with his suit’s own defibrillator.”

“Okay,” Raimy said, looking around. “That makes sense. Why, uh . . .  There are a lot of pill bottles in here. 3D printed?”

“The drug printer is hoora slow,” Hughart said looking over his shoulder at Raimy. His accent was Scottish. “I like to stock up on the basics, and there are a lot of basics.”

“Ah. And you did the postmortem examination? In here?”

“Yes and yes,” Hughart said, “and I can confidently say he died of vacuum asphyxiation. Burst capillaries everywhere. Dried blood in the lungs. It was quick, and probably rather painless, like being anaesthetized, although I can’t say it was a pleasant experience. I’d guess he was conscious for about twenty seconds, and technically alive for a couple of minutes after that. By the time Andrei cuddy-backed him to the airlock, irreversible brain damage would have begun. Michael was right; there was no realistic way we could have saved him, without dire risk to other personnel. But we did try.”

“How did that make you feel?” Raimy asked. It was as more a personal question than a detective one, although it might have some meaning if Callen Hughart were a serious suspect at this point.

Hughart grimaced. He was a young man, still in his early thirties, and his close-cut brown hair made him seem even younger. Though his demeanor was professional, he seemed genuinely pained. “Sir, I’d never lost a patient before. As an intern I did a rotation at an emergency department in Hull, but I wasn’t directly responsible for outcomes. Other than that, I haven’t exactly been on the front lines. I’m a foot doctor, and there are people who’ll say you don’t become a podiatrist and a tube monitor if your grades are worth a damn. Those people are correct. It came as a shock, I’ll tell you. My hands still shake when I think about it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Raimy said. Then: “What do you think happened?”

Hughart looked him in the eye and said, “All signs point to a rapid decompression. That’s what I think. Etsub didn’t have any enemies here, and I kind of doubt he had any at all. I think this was an accident. He was out there alone, totally against protocol, and I think he just . . . did some stupid thing to his suit that we don’t know about.”

“Like what?”

“Lord, I wish I knew. We all use that exact same model of spacesuit, and I don’t want to postmortem any more like that. Maybe he fell. I don’t know.”

“All right,” Raimy said. “This is helpful. I may come back to you with more questions, as I fill in the missing information.”

“Happy to help,” Hughart said.

“Shall we move on?” Michael asked.

Raimy nodded. “Let’s.”

They moved west again, through a hatchway that led into a sort of machine shop, with workbenches piled high with equipment, parts bins, and pressurized gas bottles. One of the monks was here, wearing safety glasses and using a drill press to put holes in the corners of a stack of metal rectangles.

“Workshop,” Michael said. “That’s Brother Purcell at the drill press, or ‘Puke’ as he likes to be called.”

“He says I like to be called that,” Purcell mumbled, without visible annoyance. Raimy’s ear for accents was getting quite a workout today, but he was pretty sure Purcell was Spanish. Like actually from Spain, and with a faint lisp to show for it.

“That’s a lathe,” Michael said, still pointing. “That’s the chemical synthesizer, where your soap and toothpaste come from. Four-headed 3D printer. Arc welder. Anvil. Band saw. Table saw. That’s the open space where Puke would someday like to have an induction forge and pneumatic hammer, which I don’t think His Holiness would allow. I’m not sure I’d allow it myself. Perhaps, someday, an outbuilding for that kind of loud, dangerous crap. It would help offset the high cost of ordering forged parts from Earth, or begging Harvest Moon for a custom fabrication. But that’s a someday problem, not a today one. Over here is our radio, because this is also the radio room, where I first came after receiving Andrei’s Mayday, and where I stand every time a spaceship lands.”

“Hmm. You heard the Mayday call from all the way in the dormitory?”

“It’s not that far,” Michael said, “and this place is quiet at night. But in fact, any traffic on the emergency channel rings a chime in every module, and traffic on the private channel rings a chime on my wristwatch, and on Giancarlo’s.”

“I see. So, after the first distress call, how long did it take you to get here?”

“Not long. Less than a minute, I’d say.”

“Hmm.”

After politely waiting a few seconds, Michael said, “That hatchway in the floor leads down to the bunker, where we hide in case of a major solar flare.”

“Oh, wow. Has that happened?”

“Twice,” said Brother Purcell.

“This was one of the three original modules,” Michael said, “where Geo and Puke and I lived when we first arrived here.”

“Tight fit,” Raimy observed, “if the bunker’s the same size as the workshop.”

“It is,” Michael said. “Jackhammered into the bedrock and totally buried. But it’s empty, and that makes a huge difference. All this stuff, this equipment and whatnot, eats up about half the volume of the module. We’ve so far resisted the temptation to use the bunker for overflow storage, so there’s still room enough for everyone to lie down. Would you like to see it?”

Raimy would have said yes, sure, except that Brother Purcell was standing on the hatch, which had a flattened, sunken handle that fit flush with the floor. Raimy didn’t want to disturb things unnecessarily, so instead he asked, “Did Etsub ever go down there?”

To which Michael answered, “Not to my knowledge. There’s really nothing down there. Still, perhaps you shouldn’t take my word for it. Puke, can you step aside for a minute?”

“All right,” Purcell said. He stood aside and then grabbed the hatch’s handle with his fingers. He lifted, rotated, then lifted again. The hatch looked heavy, but of course it wasn’t in Lunar gravity, so he lifted it open with apparent ease. A ladder led straight down into darkness, until Michael flipped a switch somewhere, and the space down there lit up.

Concerned that this was taking too long, Raimy just knelt down and stuck his head through the hatch. There was, indeed, nothing down there except some foil packets of emergency rations, along with a little sink and toilet. It didn’t look like a particularly comfortable spot to hang out for the hours or days it might take for a flare to subside, but okay. Bomb shelter, basically. The ceiling was a mess of uncovered pipes and wires.

“All right,” he said, floating back up onto his feet. “Where next?”

“Life support,” Michael said, pointing south through an open hatchway.

“Close that hatch on your way out,” Purcell said. “In fact, close them all; I’m going to be welding in a few minutes.”

“Very well.”

There were hatches on the north and east sides of the module, which Michael dutifully closed, before leading Raimy into the life-support module and closing that hatch as well.

“If these are closed,” he said, “don’t shortcut through the workshop without knocking. That arc welder can damage your retinas, even from a distance.”

“I’m familiar,” Raimy assured him.

The inside of the life-support module looked very much like something you’d see on a submarine: big water tanks and compressed-gas tanks, heaters and blowers and pipes and electrical transformers, all connected by color-coded conduits leading straight into the bulkheads. A single touch panel on one wall seemed to function as a nerve center for the whole shebang.

Michael spread his hands. “Self-explanatory, I trust?” Unspoken: you’re a submariner and an astronaut, and you know what plumbing and ventilation systems look like.

“Yes. Thank you. How many people can this support?”

Michael answered, “It’s not so much the number of people as the number of hab modules, and both answers depend on how much water and electricity people plan on using. At our current usage, we could approximately double the size of this place, and the population, without adding another life-support module. But of course, the other brake on expansion is simple geometry. Right now the place is pretty neatly laid out, but any expansion would be more difficult.” He pointed to a blank, rounded-rectangular plate on the east bulkhead, clearly designed to be removable so that a hatch could be installed. “If we build out in that direction, we’re blocking visibility to the airlock, which is a safety issue. But if we go south”—he pointed at another hatch blank—“we turn this module into a thoroughfare, which is also potentially unsafe. Or we expand through the library, or the observatory, either of which would hinder the monastery as a place of quiet contemplation. And we can’t build too close to the tower magnet, so really, to expand, we’re going to have to move the east airlock. Even one more module will be a big project, tying up time and equipment from Harvest Moon. Which means His Holiness is going to have to cough up some gold. It will happen, I think, but not soon.”

Next, they entered a module reminiscent of the workshop, except that instead of machine tools, it was full of microscopes and spectrometers, autoclaves and test-tube centrifuges. It looked a lot like the El Paso County Crime Lab, at the sheriff’s station in Colorado Springs. On a big table, underneath a white cotton sheet, was something bulky and vaguely humanoid.

“Lab?” Raimy asked, unnecessarily.

“Indeed,” Michael said. “Where I spend about a third of my waking life, along with Zachary Duppler. And if your patience is at an end, we can conclude the tour right here, as that’s Etsub’s spacesuit under that sheet. We can commence your inspection of it at any time, including this very moment. However, three paces to the east is a final module—our observatory—which I do think you should see, if only because Etsub himself spent time there, looking at Mars through an optical telescope.”

Raimy really needed get to work, yes, on the actual evidence. He’d never had a case that pulled his attention in so many different directions! Even at the DA’s office, he’d been good at investigating and interviewing people and building a case, in part because he simply didn’t think about anything else.

He was, unfortunately, pretty sloppy at a lot of the other lawyer stuff. He spent too little time writing and practicing lines to recite in the courtroom, and he sort of fell apart—gripped by something akin to stage fright—whenever things wandered too far from the remarks he did prepare. But as a cop, he didn’t need to think about anything else, beyond the investigation itself. When he spoke in court, he didn’t have to make up the questions. Just answer them, with detailed descriptions of the evidence he’d so obsessively and painstakingly collected.

And yet, he was in outer goddamn space, in an actual planetary base that bore at least a passing functional resemblance to parts of Antilympus Township. Raimy might never see Antilympus with his own two eyes, but he actually was here on the Moon, right now, and so there was another strong part of him that couldn’t think about anything other than that. So, with a little flicker of self-doubt, what he said to Michael was, “Okay. Show me.”

The observatory turned out to be somewhat anticlimactic, though: a module much like the workshop or laboratory, but dominated by two desks, each with a beefy, liquid-cooled desktop computer of the sort that could do serious number crunching. Ovid and Giancarlo were in here, seated at the two workstations and peering at their respective monitors, neither of which showed a dramatic spacescape, or even any images at all. Ovid appeared to be writing code, while Giancarlo was deeply engrossed in a stack of numbers.

“Where are the telescopes?” Raimy asked.

“On the ground over there,” Michael said, waving vaguely south. “Three of them, observing three different spectral bands.” Raimy must have looked disappointed, because he added, “I suppose it doesn’t look like much, but this was the first crewed observatory outside of Earth orbit. Which is a big deal, right? One might argue that it’s less relevant, now that the Shoemaker Lunar Antenna Park is just over the hill, with three astronomers of its own, but one would be rude and wrong to say it. We’re a stable platform with no atmosphere, and these two fellows are making discoveries almost every week. SLAP’s claim to usefulness is that they’re behind a hill, technically in the Moon’s radio shadow and out of view of a noisy Earth. But the dream of putting that facility truly on the far side was shelved, in favor of the convenience of putting it within walking distance of Moonbase Larry, and so the height of the hill limits the size of the antennae to about six meters. Which is not much, by the standards of radio astronomy. And they don’t have any optical telescopes, so the two of us are complementary, and close enough together that we might almost be considered a single observatory.”

Raimy noticed Bridget Tobin standing in the northern hatchway, leading (Raimy thought) from the quieter of the two greenhouses.

“Hi,” she said.

“Fine morning,” Michael said back.

She asked, “Are you going to start soon with the spacesuit?”

“In a minute,” Raimy said.

“Mind if I watch?”

“I do,” Raimy said, as gently as he could manage. “You’re a suspect in a possible homicide.”

“As are we all,” Michael said. There was an uncomfortable pause, which Michael filled by saying, “Like it or not, you’re going to need three sets of hands to make this work, and Bridget has long, thin fingers which I think will be useful. Also, I assume you’ll be recording the whole time, so any monkey business on her part, or mine, or anyone’s, will give itself away rather quickly. Unless you strenuously object, Raimy, I suggest you let her help.”

Raimy really wanted to strenuously object. Wasn’t the crime scene already contaminated enough? Did he really have to let the suspects themselves assist with the physical evidence? But of course the answer was yes, he did. He might be standing next to a murderer right this very moment, and still he would have to ask for help. And if he got it wrong, then one of the first hundred people on Mars could be that very murderer, and there might be call for a detective at Antilympus after all.

“Fine,” he said, unhappily.


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Framed