The Tourist Read online

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  “It is a simple prescription. Avoid the darkness.

  It is a simple prescription, but you will not follow it.”

  The company pounder jostled down a long tunnel in the bowels of the rock. Its eight legs drummed a steady rhythm that Chocky felt in his bones. When the tunnel curved, and the pounder changed direction, the bodies inside it kept moving. Thing called momentum. Chocky didn’t know how many there were. The pounder could hold two tons of ore; instead it was full of people. Those on the outside of the huddle slammed up against riveted walls, caked with frost from their breathing, so cold that skin stuck to it and got pulled off in strips when yanked away. The ones who touched the walls fought their way inward desperately, biting and clawing and kicking toward the warm center of the huddle. Those nearer the center clawed back. Chocky fought savagely, thinking he could feel himself dying but never really sure. His numb parts were hatched by cuts, marked all over by sores and bruises.

  Chocky couldn’t die. Not while the virgin needed him. He was her servant, and he felt for her a ravenous, insatiable need.

  The pounder was never meant to hold living, breathing creatures. The company liked to improvise. Chocky felt a curve in the tunnel, a change in the rhythm of its claw steps, and he braced himself for another round. Fear and lust and fury, a turning heat between his ears. His breaths were shallow, his heartbeat was slow. No sight, no vision. He lived in a darkness so total that he had forgotten the word for it. No need to distinguish between dark and not-dark. There was only the ashen touch of skin-on-skin, the sounds of bodies, moving and breathing and farting. Murmured threats, sexual moans, bawdy anecdotes intermingled. On top of that, distant rhythms: the churning servos of the pounder; the machines of the company grinding the rock’s mineral flesh to slurry; the rhythms of distant sounders feeding it all back, turning it into song. He barely felt it, but it was enough.

  Chocky’s left side began to burn. So close to the edge, he needed the warmth of the center. He sidled inward, looking for crevices in between flesh. Skin like stretchy fabric. Bite into it and it comes apart.

  Chocky tongued his sharpened teeth.

  * * *

  The tourist’s first days on the rock were worse than jet lag, worse than planet lag. It was not a place with a time difference, where days were longer or shorter. It was a place with no days at all. The last stop, the outpost farthest from the sun, a lifeless rock with no name but a long and unpronounceable string of digits. The sun was only one star among many, barely brighter than the rest.

  “Please understand. This outpost was meant to be run by a skeleton crew. Two thousand miles of tunnels, a hundred thousand autonomous mining systems, radiation levels that can be fatal after a week of exposure. Those were the conditions that the company prepared for, and that was challenging enough.”

  The company representative felt pressured to answer for an ore hauler full of dead Squatters. The tourist let her speak, stunned by her corporate ambivalence in response to so many deaths, but afraid to say a word in response for fear that their request to go underground, into the tunnels, would be declined.

  The tourist had to remember not to call the Squatters “moles.”

  “The original design called for a crew of no more than fifteen, working yearly shifts. Due to acts of violence against company employees and equipment, we now have a full crew and an additional ten-person security detail. So long as the Squatter population continues to disrupt mining operations and to endanger company employees, we are forced to take action with what we have available.”

  The asteroid’s surface was a crust of water, ice, and gray rock, never-ending twilight under a too-bright tapestry of stars. No sky, no clouds, no swirls of dust. There was barely enough gravity to keep a body from floating away if it jumped, just enough to pull it back after a journey of slow, drifting hours.

  “If the Squatters continue to sabotage our operations, if they do so much damage that the operation is no longer profitable, then the company will be forced to close it down. Where will that leave the Squatters? They can’t take over. They don’t have implants. They’re ignorant, violent, cruel. We may then be allowed to evict them, at last. But until then they are, technically, legally, autonomous. They are not our responsibility until they do enough damage that we are forced to take action.”

  The rock was an island nation of exiles on the dark edge of space. A population of stowaways settled on the rock in the early days of the outpost’s construction, before the first company overseers arrived. They lived in the tunnels themselves, surviving lethal radiation by crude but effective genetic modification. They cultivated water and oxygen from deposits of ice. They siphoned food from the stores left for company operatives.

  When the operatives arrived, they found themselves severely understocked, and they lived on minimal rations for the two years before the next shipment arrived.

  “This terrible accident with the pounder, for example. No employee was involved. Strictly autonomous. You won’t believe me, but I’ll tell you anyway. Whatever happened in there, they did it to each other.”

  The surface installation was lead-plated. The Squatters lived underground, unprotected.

  “Do you know what they call the other colonies? Prison planets. That’s what they say. They think that they’re the ones who are free.”

  The tourist brought their own suit, specially designed. No lights. The moles hated lights.

  “They don’t want law or order. Even responsibility. It’s a cultural thing. Really.”

  The suit had heavy radiation shielding, 3D imaging mapped by infrared depth-mapping, a power supply that would last for weeks. Non-lethal defense systems, an array of protective countermeasures. Multiple redundant sensory feed backups. It could walk the tourist back to the surface by itself if anything were to happen underground.

  “I know that this sounds callous and insensitive. I know that I can’t convince you to stay on the surface. You’ve been given permission to conduct research, and I won’t try to dissuade you. But please, be careful down there.”

  The tourist left as soon as possible, and went down. They saw their first mole in the elevator, the last place where there would be light. Its age and sex were indistinguishable. Folds of skin hung loose and floated, bobbing along with subtle vibrations, drifting as if suspended in liquid. It was pale, very pale. The tourist stared at it from behind the opaque globe of the suit’s visor. It did not react. Although blindness was not congenital, the tourist wondered if it could see at all, if the use of its eyes had been lost to atrophy.

  * * *

  Chocky flung his way along the Promenade one great thrust of his arms at a time. He encountered other unseen Squatters
sharing rungs on the long ladder. Passing in pure darkness, they heard, smelled, and felt each other. They muttered chants and obscenities. Their bodies collided and bounced away, never accidently. Hands grasped at Chocky’s face, pockets, genitals. He struck with arms and elbows and they struck back at him before parting, sometimes with metal stubs and short blades. The cuts and bruises marred and softened his already ravaged skin.

  The violence was a ritual, the most common and mundane social interaction of any crossing of the Promenade, any trip along a high-traffic ladder. He traveled as far as he could, as fast as he could.

  The rock could be traversed by hand in a week.

  The virgin would be dead within days.

  Chocky could not bear the thought of losing her. If she died then he would die.

  There were elevators and pounders that could make the trip in a day’s time, but company security kept them locked down. Chocky knew of shortcuts and rail riders run by Squatters, but they ran on barter. Chocky had nothing to barter.

  Exhausted and sick with worry, Chocky stopped and found a tube bar. The stink of sex and fighting and sickness. Gentle hands found him in the dark and he let them explore. Their kindness was gratis. He floated into a corner and made himself small, wondering if he would give up his body for a stupor, and what else might be asked of him if he were to sell himself to get to the other side of the rock. He wept, silent and ashamed.

  He heard the soft whine of servos and a singing, synthesized babble translated from the language of some other place. A tourist. The first that he had seen in the tunnels in some time.

  Chocky followed the sound of it as it moved. In the gritty surface of the wall he could feel its heaving motion. Loud and clumsy, bumping against everything, clearly unaccustomed to low gravity. A breathing apparatus served the suit’s occupant with deep, high-oxygen breaths. Inside the suit he imagined an animal formed entirely out of lungs. He set off from the wall and drifted, then kicked toward the suit. He sidled up next to it, heard it say, “If you don’t mind…”

  The words made Chocky laugh. Then he pushed closer and bumped his shoulder against a firm metallic carapace.

  “Excuse me,” said the tourist. Sickly polite.

  “Oh,” said Chocky. “My apology,” he said, in dimly remembered prison language. “Welcome stranger.”

  The tourist turned to face Chocky and spoke in rapid dialect, untranslated. Chocky reached out to touch the tourist’s lips, to silence it. His fingers bounced against the visor and were numbed by a mild shock. Chocky pulled his hand away and the tourist recoiled. The tourist continued to speak rapidly, words that Chocky didn’t understand.

  “I don’t speak so well,” Chocky said. “Use translator.”

  The tourist obliged and rattled off a flurry of apologies. “I am so so sorry,” the tourist said. “This suit, it has protective modules. And I thought that you could speak.”

  “Only a little. It is no problem. Didn’t hurt.”

  “I know only a few words of mole language.” Chocky winced at the word. “It is a difficult way of communicating,” the tourist continued, “with idiosyncrasies unique to low pressures, low oxygen. Truly unique.”

  “Yes, yes.” Chocky sucked on his finger, tasted dirt. Felt nothing in the nub.

  The tourist stopped talking and Chocky heard its servos hum.

  Chocky saw a ghost. The sight of it made him gasp. A cloudy phantom shape moved in the air, turned and tilted toward him. No, not a ghost, but a faint glow from the tourist’s bulbous head. Not a light, not so painful as light, but an emanation from the visor that left long red trails in his vision.

  “I am sorry, again, so sorry,” said the tourist, and Chocky realized that it could see him, truly see him, perhaps by the dim glow, and that it had seen the face he made at the sound of the slur. “I did not mean to cause offense. The, umm, translator must have misinterpreted.”

  Chocky smiled for the tourist, felt for a dispenser and tapped it with a knuckle. A thin tube wormed into his grasp and he slipped it into the corner of his mouth. A sour tang tickled his gums. “No harm,” he said. “None at all.” He heard the tourist fidget, looking for words. The luminous blur of the visor floated in the dark. “What are you looking for in these tunnels, spaceman?”

  “I am here for research.” The tourist paused, waiting for a response that never came. “For my PhD thesis. My subject is Squatter culture. Your culture. How it may be shaped by your unique environmental and physiological conditions.”

  “Yes. Physiological.” Chocky stretched his face into a wider grin. “Squatters? You mean us moles?”

  The tourist squirmed and mulled over a response. The shape of its visor was plainly visible to Chocky by then. His weak eyes tracked it easily. In the corner of that shape he soon saw another, a blob of pale white that moved across the curved surface as the tourist shifted.

  Living in darkness, Chocky’s appearance meant nothing to him. Yet he found himself leaning closer, cocking his head, staring at his own reflection—his own face—which he had not seen in—

  “The Squatters, yes. There have been no first-hand accounts, only simulations. Even my professors know next to nothing. Tell me: Do you know Squatter music? The sounders?”

  “You want to know about sounders?”

  “My focus is on extraterrestrial ethnomusicology.”

  Chocky laughed and slapped the dispenser. “Funny words,” he said. Prison language. Another tube found his fingers and he brought it to his lips. “You are very smart, spaceman.” He sipped fermented worm pulp from the tube. He didn’t feel the burn of alcohol. Just the effects. “Sounders. I know all about them. Pay for my tab, yes? Let Chocky show you around.”

  Servos whined. Metallic clack. Fingers touching, maybe, the bounce of the head. Something called a nod. “Thank you, Chocky,” the tourist said. Then it laughed. Coins jingled in the dark. “An economy of physical currency,” it said. “Remarkable.”

  “Here, spaceman. Put your hand here.”

  Chocky’s fingers brushed the elastic thread of a map net. He felt it hum. Far from the Promenade, or any avenue, Chocky traced their route by knotted markers and vibrations in a dense web of synthetic coil. He motioned for the tourist and struck a taut length of cord.

  “There. Feel it?”

  Chocky knew when the tourist grabbed hold because they gripped too hard. The pressure of their digits muted the sensation.

  “The rope? Yes, I feel it.”

  “No you slag, not the rope. Pulses. You can feel it here, in the cord. It’s strong. Means we’re going the right way. Understand?”

  The tourist twitched. Their grip on the rope loosened, tightened, loosened again. The vibrations that Chocky could read like signposts stilled and returned each time.

  “You feel it?” the tourist asked. “Sound in the rope?”

  “What, you can’t?”

  “Vibrations. I see.”

  Chocky laughed and kicked away, following the knots and turns of the netting. Following them he aligned his course through a three-dimensional maze.

  He told the tourist about the early days, Squatting in the empty mine. How he got there, what he did. Some of what he said was true.

  They heard someone scream in the dark. The tourist stopped. Chocky did not. After a moment, the tourist continued.

  “Did you hear that?” the tourist asked.

  “I did.”

  “Do they need help?”

  “No. Just tell me if you see anything, yeah? Keep behind me or beside me, all times. Don’t go looking at anyone with that glass face of yours. If someone comes at you don’t get nervous.”

  The tourist laughed, for once. The sound was loud and gasping. “For what I paid for this suit I almost hope that they try. You are sure that they are okay? The one who screamed?”

  Chocky did not answer.

  “How old are you, Chocky?”

  Chocky shrugged and spat. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Forgive me. But—are y
ou a man or a woman?”

  “What’s it smell like in that suit of yours?”

  “Smell?” Pause. “Doesn’t smell like anything.”

  “But you got a weak nose, like your fingers I bet.”

  Then Chocky heard the tourist gasp. It tried to stop moving by grabbing on to the netting. Its momentum sent powerful tremors through the lines that sent Chocky spinning out. He gripped the netting with his fingers and toes until the motion stilled.

  “What did you do that for?”

  “Do you see that?”

  “I don’t see anything,” Chocky hissed.

  “Yes. Of course. But there’s something—hello?” The tourist’s voice raised an octave, increased in volume.

  Chocky heard it, then. Shuffling, groaning, the rip and tear of clothing. He grimaced. “Leave them be. Their business. Not ours.”

  “What are they doing? There is blood. They’re covered in it.”

  “Then they’re almost finished. Whatever it is. Don’t get in the way.”

  “I should do something.”

  “You should mind your own business.”

  “We should alert someone.”

  “There’s nobody to alert. Come. We’re almost there.”

  Chocky launched himself forward through the netting. He felt no disturbances in the lines. Behind him the tourist quietly said, “They stopped.” And then he waited for the tourist to catch up to him.

  * * *

  Anywhere in the colony, Chocky felt vibrations. It was carried through the rock, barely audible as sound. The timbre of minerals and hollows, oscillations of mining machinery. The loops of the sounders above it all.

  The vibrations in the tethers of the web grew stronger. Dense, pulsing patterns built up and multiplied. Harmonies and polyrhythms.

  “We should go back,” the tourist said.

  “Don’t be dense. We’re here. You feel that?”

  The tourist was quiet for a moment, then said, “Yes. Yes, I do.” A hint of excitement, perhaps, in its synthesized voice.