Ah, well. It created a lot of jobs in the system's number-one industry: tourism. I'll confess I've played in them when at liberty from more rewarding projects.
No one gave me a glance as I found my way to the freight elevator that took me down into the bowels of Pacifica and deposited me at the employees' train station, which in turn dumped me at the spaceport fifteen minutes later. Even on the train car I drew no curious stares as I dripped Hawaiian water onto the red seats and black carpet. Plutonians are a mind-your-own-business crowd, one of the best things about them.
One more train ride and I was at the freight terminal at the most remote point of the spaceport. If I'd come there two weeks before, I could have avoided a great deal of trouble, and Isambard Comfort could have missed a monumental headache.
I hadn't come here for one big reason. It scared me to death. Now the alternative was worse, so I marched resolutely up to the express counter of Pillock and Burke Interplanet Carriers and inquired as to the cost of mailing myself to Uranus.
I didn't put it in just those words, of course.
"What's in it?" the clerk asked, with a big yawn, looking without interest at the Pantech, sitting there seeming as new as the day it was built, having shaken off all signs of its recent adventure like a duck's back sheds water.
"Personal effects," I said. "Tools of my trade." I knew that would get me a discount, under the Interplanetary Artists' Convention.
"Anythin' t'd'clare?"
"No contraband. There's a Bichon Frise inside."
"A what?"
"A dog. Here's his license. I'll need Oh-two and H-two-Oh feeds, and a two-twenty power connection." I didn't really need the power, since the Pantech has its own internal source, but it was illegal to ship that power plant without having it inspected and certified, and why bother them with all that red tape? Better to pay for the power hookup and not raise any questions.
Such as the one he now asked.
"What about food? The dog gonna need food?"
"He has his own." He looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "He doesn't eat much," I explained. "It's a small dog." I could feel myself getting too elaborate. My father always said to keep your lies simple, and never answer a question you're not asked. But he kept looking, so I shoved the license closer to him and let the P$20 bill peek out from under it. His eyes shifted, and he picked up the license and shoved it into a machine. The bill was gone. He handed the license back to me with a new stamp on it. I really hated to do this, since anyone who knew about Toby might be able to trace me through him, but I had no choice.
He took a yellow form from a stack and started filling it in with a pencil. It was almost Dickensian, and a blatant waste of time since he had a voice-capable computer at his elbow, but Pluto, like most planets, had some archaic and fiercely protected labor laws. Reading upside down, I saw him fill in the spot for breed of dog as Bitching Freeze.
Finally he slapped a shipping tag on the side of the Pantech, and I watched it trundle away on a conveyor belt into unknown depths. Now I was in a big hurry.
There was a convenience store at the train station. I filled a grocery bag full of granola bars, jerky, honey, corn syrup, and as many other items of concentrated fat, sugar, and carbohydrates as I could carry. Then I set off in search of the sort of merchant you can always find hanging around a spaceport. The sort who doesn't display his wares on shelves, or hang out a sign.
She wasn't too hard to find. Most drugs are legal on Pluto, and even the ones they try to control are readily available if you know where to look—as has always been the case. I was directed to a back booth of a coffee shop on one of the lower levels. I sipped a hot chocolate while we haggled about price, then she left and I sat looking out a big picture window overlooking the freight-sorting yard. Millions of crates and parcels slid down ramps and along conveyors until they fetched up at the doors that would soon open and disgorge their loads onto shuttle trucks.
The pusher returned with a small plastic envelope, and told me the quickest way to the yard.
This place was probably more dangerous than Pearl. The mechanized mayhem of the Vegas was predictable, most of it was smart, and programmed to be on the lookout for fragile humans getting in the way. Not so in the freight yard. If you didn't stay on your toes something might roll up behind you and crush you like a bug under silent wheels. I moved quickly, following the homer beacon in my pocket, and soon I was standing where the Pantechnicon had come to rest, midway down a line of larger crates.
I was about to activate it when a movement in the corner of my eye made me stop and duck down. I looked up cautiously... and let out a deep breath. Two lines over a man was on his hands and knees, crawling under the metal frame of a conveyor. This was all right with me; cops never crawl, and they never look furtive. Neither do yard bulls. They can sneak just fine, but they do it with entirely different body language.
In fact... I thought I knew this guy.
I gave a low whistle, three notes known to hoboes throughout the system, and he looked up at me and grinned.
"Sparks," he said, in a husky voice.
"Lou? Is that the uke man?"
"You don't believe me, I'll play you a tune."
Ukulele Lou was a legend in his own time. He was rumored to have some sort of brain damage, which made his conversations a little hard to follow, and he was crazy as a mudlark. But his memory for music was amazing. He claimed to know words and music to fifteen thousand songs, and I'd never doubted him. He was wearing a battered pressure suit. His precious ukulele was in his hand.
I swear, the helmet faceplate had a crack in it. It made me sweat just to think about it. Lou and some of the other 'bos always traveled this way, and without the comforts of top-of-the-line luggage.
"Where you bound?" I asked him.
"Where else? Uranus." He pronounced it your-anus.
Where else, indeed? I'm largely ignorant of these things, but my understanding was that due to orbital dynamics, nearly all the outer planet commerce for the last decade, and for a few decades to come, was the triangle of Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune, then back to Pluto, in that order. It had to do with the relative positions of the planets. Pluto had for some years been at the lowest point in its orbit, which meant it was closer to the sun than Neptune. Uranus was about sixty degrees ahead, and Neptune clear around the sun from Uranus. No orbit in the outer planets that gets you there in a reasonable time is a truly economical orbit, but going against the direction of planetary motion is the least economical orbit of all. It's like stepping off a moving train. Before you go anywhere else, you first have to kill your own motion.
"What about you?" Lou asked.
"Uranus," I confirmed. I pronounced it Urine-us. Was there ever an orb so inelegantly named? Nobody's ever agreed on how to say it, and both ways stink.
"The Bard's World?" he asked, with a cackle.
"Where else?"
"Can't get them stars outta your eyes, is that it? Gonna stand at the corner of Columbia and Paramount and gawk at the names in the pavement? Buy a map to the stars' condos? See how your feet fit in Henry Collyer's footsteps?"
I ignored the ribbing and saluted him. "Good luck, Lou," I said.
"Break a leg," he urged. Then he pried up a corner of a three-story packing crate and squeezed himself inside. I could hear him working, faintly, as I activated the shelter on the Pantech.