“Oh, the drug business has been stopped? I hadn’t noticed.”
The man is an unrepentant sinner, Mordecai said to himself.
Leaning his hairy forearms on his desktop, Goodbar added, “You’re trying to censor songwriters, which would never hold up in the courts and you know it. We still have a few rights remaining, Reverend.”
Icily, Mordecai replied, “And the godfearing people of this nation have the right to boycott the kinds of unmitigated trash that you and your kind spew into the ears of impressionable young people!”
Goodbar spread his hands in a gesture that Mordecai found distinctly and repulsively Semitic. “Look,” said the producer, “you know and I know that this isn’t about religion or morality. You just don’t want the kids to hear anything that challenges their authority figures. You don’t want anything that doesn’t toe your line.”
“We will not tolerate any challenges to the Word of the Lord.”
“Bloody nonsense,” Goodbar said amiably.
Mordecai flinched.
“So go ahead and boycott,” Goodbar said. “See how much good it does you. The kids’ll just want to hear the songs even more once they know the Holy Disciples is against them. It’ll be good publicity for me.”
“You think so? We’ll see.” Mordecai rose to his feet. Goodbar remained seated behind his desk.
The minister went to the office door, hesitated, then turned back toward the producer.
“You’re either on God’s side or you’re doing the work of the devil,” Mordecai warned.
“You can go to hell,” Goodbar said cheerfully.
“No,” Mordecai retorted. “Hell is where you’re heading. And soon.”
Rafael Goodbar—whose birth name was Raymond Herschfield—was shot to death at a Dog Dirt concert three months later. His killer surrendered easily to the police, smilingly explaining that he was doing God’s work.
Tithonium Chasma: Excursion Team
Hasdrubal and Rosenberg were arguing again as they drove in the springy-wheeled camper along the floor of the Tithonium valley.
“I say she’s a lesbian,” Hasdrubal insisted.
“So what if she is? Shirley’s a virgin, I’m rather certain, but she’s as heterosexual as you or I.”
Hasdrubal looked down at his partner, sitting in the cockpit seat beside him. The seat’s pseudoleather padding was worn smooth, cracked in places, he noticed. Rosenberg was driving, both hands gripping the little steering wheel, his eyes focused on the bumpy, rock-strewn landscape before them. Rugged red cliffs towered over them on their left.
“She’s always hanging out with other women,” Hasdrubal said, ticking points off on his long, slim fingers. “Far’s I know she hasn’t come on to any of the guys—”
“You mean she hasn’t come on to you.”
Raising a third finger, “And when a guy gets near her she runs in the other direction.”
Rosenberg broke into a grin. “Aha! She ran away from you. Can’t blame her, actually: you must have frightened her.”
“Me?”
“You can appear rather fearsome, you know. Like some Watusi warrior in coveralls.”
“Bullshit,” Hasdrubal grumbled.
Still smiling, Rosenberg murmured, “When at a loss for le mot juste, lapse into profanity.”
“Double bullshit,” Hasdrubal said. He slid out of the right-hand seat and got to his feet like a jointed ladder unfolding, stooping to keep his head clear of the bulbous glassteel canopy that curved above. He used both hands to steady himself against the folded-up bunks as the camper swayed and jounced over the rough ground.
“Extraordinary,” Rosenberg muttered as the biologist headed back toward the lavatory. Shirley’s no lesbian, he told himself. At least she didn’t indicate it on her personnel file. The personnel files were strictly confidential, of course, but any member of the exploration team who had even a limited knowledge of computer hacking could sneak a peek at them. Rosenberg ran a hand through his tightly curled thatch of strawberry hair. Perhaps Shirley’s clever enough to know that the files aren’t actually all that secure, he thought. Perhaps she put herself down as hetero because she doesn’t want anyone to know her true orientation.
The camper rocked sharply as it trundled across a shallow crater.
“Hey, watch it!” Hasdrubal’s voice boomed from the lavatory. Rosenberg quickly put his free hand back on the steering wheel. Hasdrubal came back past the bunks and bent over Rosenberg’s scat. “You need a break?” he asked.
Glancing at the digital clock on the control panel, Rosenberg said, “In another fifteen minutes.”
“We’ll be there by then.”
“Right. We can stop and have a bite of lunch before we go outside.”
“Good enough,” Hasdrubal muttered, sliding back into the right-hand seat. “Just try to avoid the major potholes, will ya?”
Rosenberg frowned at his partner.
Ground truth, Hasdrubal said to himself. That’s why Chang’s sent us out this time, to determine if the deep radar imagery from the satellites has really spotted the outlines of another buried ancient village. The sensors can provide us with all sorts of data, but until somebody digs up hard, palpable evidence, the kind you can hold in your hand, the sensor data is suspect. It’s not enough, never enough. You need ground truth before you can actually believe it.
Well, it’s okay with me. Gives me an excuse to dig up soil samples from another spot. Might find some bugs if we bore down deeper than the damned superoxide layer covering the surface.
He tapped the map display on the control panel. “Coming up on the coordinates.”
“So I see,” said Rosenberg. “Why don’t we set up camp by that large boulder there, at two o’clock.”
Hasdrubal glanced at the house-sized boulder, then looked down at the map display again. “Okay. That’s damn near spang on top of the village.”
“If it’s actually there.”
“It’s there,” Hasdrubal said firmly. “The big job is to prove it.”
“Rather.” Rosenberg braked the camper slowly to a full stop. “But let’s have a spot of lunch first.”
Two hours later the two of them stood panting with exertion beside the probe they had set up where the radar imagery indicated the village’s gridwork pattern of streets was laid out thirty-some meters below the valley floor. Their nanosuits were spattered with red dust up to their knees; their gloves and forearms were also coated with rust.
The probe stood vertically, one end stuck into the ground, the other pointing skyward, a flimsy-looking quartet of slanting legs supporting it. Rosenberg thought it looked like a minimalist’s model of the Eiffel Tower. A thick power cable ran back to the external outlets on the curving side of the camper.
“How deep is it now?” Hasdrubal asked, straightening up from his kneeling position. Placing both hands on his hips, he arched backward slightly, trying to ease the strain on his spine.
Rosenberg read from the meter on the probe’s cluster of instruments. “Seventeen meters. We still have quite a ways to go.”
“Ready to pop the laser again?”
“One tick.” Rosenberg ran a gloved finger down the indicator lights on the miniaturized box of the instrument panel. “All right. The laser’s recharged and primed to go.”
Stepping back from the probe, Hasdrubal said, “Okay, hit it.”
A puff of gritty, grayish gas spurted out of the hole and wafted away slowly in the calm air.
“Down another two meters,” said Rosenberg.
“Good. But we’re not going to be deep enough before the sun sets.”
“No. We’ll finish tomorrow.”
“Why don’t we knock off now,” Hasdrubal said. It was more I ban a suggestion. “My back’s killing me.”