Artemis: A Novel Read online

  Still, their well-maintained air shelter and regular fire drills had saved a lot of lives. Factories can be rebuilt. People can’t. It was a win.

  —

  That evening, I hit my favorite watering hole: Hartnell’s Pub.

  I sat in my usual seat—second from the end of the bar. The first seat used to be Dale’s, but those days were over.

  Hartnell’s was a hole in the wall. No music. No dance floor. Just a bar and a few uneven tables. The only concession to ambience was noise-absorption foam on the walls. Billy knew what his customers valued: alcohol and silence. The vibe was completely asexual. No one hit on people at Hartnell’s. If you were looking to score, you went to a nightclub in Aldrin. Hartnell’s was for drinking. And you could get any drink you wanted, as long as it was beer.

  I loved the place. Partially because Billy was a pleasant bartender, but mainly because it was the closest bar to my coffin.

  “Evenin’, luv,” said Billy. “Heard there was a fire today. Heard you went in.”

  “Queensland Glass,” I said. “I’m short so I got volunteered. The factory’s totaled but we got everyone out all right.”

  “Right, well the first one’s on me, then.” He poured a glass of my favorite reconstituted German beer. Tourists say it tastes like shit but it’s the only beer I’ve ever known and it works for me. Someday I’ll buy an intact German beer to see what I’m missing. He set it in front of me. “Thanks for your service, luv.”

  “Hey, I won’t say no.” I grabbed the free beer and took a swig. Nice and cold. “Thanks!”

  Billy nodded in acknowledgment and went to the other end of the bar to serve another customer.

  I brought up a web browser on my Gizmo and searched for “ZAFO.” It was a conjugation of the Spanish verb zafar, meaning “to release.” Somehow I doubted Mr. Jin from Hong Kong brought something with a Spanish name. Besides, “ZAFO” was in all-caps. Probably an acronym. But for what?

  Whatever it was, I couldn’t find any mention of it online. That meant it was a secret. Now I really wanted to know what it was. Turns out I’m a nosy little shit. But right at that moment, I didn’t have anything else to go on, so I mentally set it aside.

  I had this bad habit of checking my bank account every day, as if compulsively looking at it would make it grow. But the banking software wasn’t interested in my dreams. It gave me the dismal news:

  ACCOUNT BALANCE: 11,916ğ

  My entire net worth was about 2.5 percent of my goal of 416,922 slugs. That’s what I wanted. That’s what I needed. Nothing was more important.

  If I could just get into the damned EVA Guild, I’d pull down serious income from then on. Tours are big money. Eight customers per tour at 1,500ğ each. That’s 12,000ğ per tour. Well, 10,800ğ after I pay the guild their 10 percent.

  I could only give two tours a week—a limitation enforced by the guild. They’re cautious about their members’ radiation exposure.

  I’d be making over 85,000ğ a month. And that’s just from tours. I’d also try to get a job as a probe wrangler. They’re the EVA masters who bring the probes to the freight airlock and unload them. Then I’d have access to shipments before Nakoshi inspected them. I could sneak contraband in right then or set it aside for later recovery with a sneaky midnight EVA. Whatever worked best. Point is, I could cut Nakoshi out entirely.

  I’d keep living like a pauper until I’d saved up the money I needed. Accounting for living expenses, I could probably get it done in six months. Maybe five.

  As it was, on my porter’s salary with smuggling on the side, it would take approximately forever.

  Goddamn, I wish I’d passed that fucking test.

  Once I’d taken care of the 416,922ğ, I’d still be making a bunch of money. I could afford a nice place. My shithole coffin only cost eight thousand a month, but I couldn’t even stand up in it. And I wanted my own bathroom. That doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is. I realized that around the hundredth time I had to walk down a public hallway in my nightie to take a midnight piss.

  For fifty thousand a month—well within what I’d be earning—I could get a condo in Bean Bubble. A nice one with a living room, bedroom, bathroom, and its own shower. No more communal anything. I could even get a place with a cook nook. Not a kitchen—that’d be stupidly expensive. They have to be in their own fire containment rooms. But a cook-nook burner was allowed to get up to 80 degrees Celsius and could have a 500-watt microwave.

  I shook my head. Someday, maybe.

  I guess my pained expression was visible even from the far end of the bar. Billy walked over. “Oi, Jazz. Why so glum?”

  “Money,” I said. “Never enough money.”

  “I hear ya, luv.” He leaned in. “So…remember when I contracted your services for some pure ethanol?”

  “Sure,” I said. In a concession to basic human nature, Artemis allows liquor even though it’s flammable. But they draw the line at pure ethanol, which is incredibly flammable. I smuggled it in the usual way and only charged Billy a 20 percent markup. That’s my friends-and-family rate.

  He looked left and right. A couple of regulars minded their own business. Other than that we were alone. “I want to show you somefin’…”

  He reached under the bar and pulled up a bottle of brown liquid. He poured some into a shot glass. “Here. ’Ave a sip.”

  I could smell the alcohol from a meter away. “What is it?”

  “Bowmore single-malt scotch. Aged fifteen years. Give it a try, on the ’ouse.”

  I’m never one to turn down a free drink. I took a sip.

  I spat it out in disgust. It tasted like Satan’s flaming asshole!

  “Huh,” he said. “No good?”

  I coughed and wiped my mouth. “That is not scotch.”

  He looked at the bottle with a frown. “Huh. I had a bloke on Earth boil the liquids off then send me the extract. I reconstituted it with water and effanol. Should be exactly the same.”

  “Well, it’s not,” I rasped.

  “Scotch is an acquired taste….”

  “Billy, I’ve swallowed better-tasting stuff that came out of people.”

  “Bugger.” He put the bottle away. “I’ll keep working on it.”

  I gulped beer to wash the taste away.

  My Gizmo beeped at me. A message from Trond:

  “Free tonight? Can you drop by my place?”

  Meh. I was just starting my evening beers.

  “It’s late. Can it wait?”

  “Best if handled tonight.”

  “I’m just sitting down to dinner…”

  “You can drink dinner later. This is worth your time, I promise.”

  Smartass.

  “Looks like I have to cash out,” I told Billy.

  “Pull the other one!” he said. “You’ve only had one pint!”

  “Duty calls.” I handed him my Gizmo.

  He took it to the register. “One pint. Lowest tab I ever rung you for.”

  “I won’t make a habit of it.”

  He waved my Gizmo over the register then handed it back to me. The transaction was done (I’d long ago set up my account to accept Hartnell’s as a “no-verify” point of purchase). I slid the Gizmo into my pocket and headed out. The other patrons didn’t say goodbye or even acknowledge me. God, I love Hartnell’s.

  —

  Irina opened the door and frowned at me like I’d just pissed in her borscht. As usual, she wouldn’t let me pass without stating my business.

  “Hi, I’m Jazz Bashara,” I said. “We’ve met over a hundred times. I’m here to see Trond at his invitation.”

  She led me through to the dining-hall entrance. The smell of delicious food hung in the air. Something meaty, I thought. Roast beef? A rare delicacy when the nearest cow is 400,000 kilometers away.

  I peeked in to see Trond sip liquor from a tumbler. He wore his usual bathrobe and chatted with someone across the table. I couldn’t see who.

  His daughter Lene sat nex
t to him. She watched her father talk with rapt fascination. Most sixteen-year-olds hate their parents. I was a huge pain in the ass to my dad at that age (nowadays I’m just a general disappointment). But Lene looked up to Trond like he put the Earth in the sky.

  She spotted me then waved excitedly. “Jazz! Hi!”

  Trond gestured me in. “Jazz! Come in, come in. Have you met the administrator?”

  I walked in and—holy shit! Administrator Ngugi was there. She was just…there! Hanging out at the table.

  Fidelis Ngugi is, simply put, the reason Artemis exists. When she was Kenya’s minister of finance, she created the country’s entire space industry from scratch. Kenya had one—and only one—natural resource to offer space companies: the equator. Spacecraft launched from the equator could take full advantage of Earth’s rotation to save fuel. But Ngugi realized they could offer something more: policy. Western nations drowned commercial space companies in red tape. Ngugi said, “Fuck that. How about we don’t?”

  I’m paraphrasing here.

  God only knows how she convinced fifty corporations from thirty-four countries to dump billions of dollars into creating KSC, but she did it. And she made sure Kenya enacted special tax breaks and laws just for the new megacorporation.

  What’s that, you say? Favoring a single company with special laws isn’t fair? Tell that to the East India Tea Company. This is global economics, not kindergarten.

  And wouldn’t you know it, when KSC had to pick someone to run Artemis for them, they picked…Fidelis Ngugi! That’s how shit gets done. She pulled money out of nowhere, created a huge industry in her formerly third-world country, and landed herself a job as ruler of the moon. She had run Artemis for over twenty years.

  “Bwuh—” I said eloquently. “Shaa…”

  “I know, right?!” said Lene.

  Ngugi’s traditional dhuku headscarf counterpointed her modern, Western-style dress. She stood politely, walked toward me, and said, “Hello, dear.” Her Swahili-accented English rolled so smoothly off her tongue I wanted to adopt her as my grandma right then and there.

  “J-Jasmine,” I stammered. “I’m Jasmine Bashara.”

  “I know,” she said.

  What?

  She smiled. “We have met before. I hired your father to install an emergency air shelter in my home. He brought you along. That was back when the administrator’s quarters were in Armstrong Bubble.”

  “Wow…I don’t remember that at all.”

  “You were very young. Such an adorable little child, hanging on her father’s every word. How is Ammar these days?”

  I blinked a couple of times. “Uh…Dad’s fine. Thanks. I don’t see him much. He’s got his shop and I’ve got my work.”

  “He is a good man, your father,” she said. “An honest businessman and a hard worker. One of the best welders in town, as well. It’s too bad you had a falling-out.”

  “Wait, how did you know we—”

  “Lene, it’s been lovely to see you again. You’re so grown-up now!”

  “Thanks, Administrator!” Lene beamed.

  “And Trond, thank you for a delicious meal,” she said.

  “Any time, Administrator.” Trond stood up. I couldn’t believe he was in his bathrobe! He had dinner with the most important person on the moon and he wore his bathrobe! Then he shook Ngugi’s hand like they were equals or something. “Thanks for coming by!”

  Irina showed up and led Ngugi away. Was there a hint of admiration on the grumpy old Russian’s face? I guess even Irina had her limits. You can’t hate everyone.

  “Holy shit, dude,” I said to Trond.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Trond turned to his daughter. “All right, pumpkin, time for you to skedaddle. Jazz and I have business to discuss.”

  She groaned the way only teenage girls can. “You always send me away when things get interesting.”

  “Don’t be in such a hurry. You’ll be a cutthroat business asshole soon enough.”

  “Just like my dad.” She smiled. She reached to the floor and picked up her crutches. They were the kind that gripped the upper arm. She got them both into position with ease and brought herself vertical. Her legs hung free. She kissed Trond on the cheek, then walked out on the crutches without her feet touching the ground.

  The car accident that killed her mother had paralyzed Lene for life. Trond had money coming out his ass, but nothing could buy back his daughter’s ability to walk. Or could it? On Earth, Lene was confined to a wheelchair, but on the moon, she could easily move around on crutches.

  So he hired VPs to manage most of his companies and relocated to Artemis. And just like that, Lene Landvik could walk again.

  “Bye, Jazz!” she said on her way out.

  “Bye, kiddo.”

  Trond swirled his drink. “Have a seat.”

  The dining table was huge, so I picked a chair a couple of spaces away from Trond. “What’s in the glass?”

  “Scotch. Want some?”

  “Maybe a taste,” I said.

  He slid the glass across to me. I took a sip.

  “Ohhh yeahhh…” I said. “That’s better.”

  “Didn’t know you were a scotch gal,” he said.

  “Not normally. But I had an awful approximation of it earlier today, so I needed a reminder of what it’s supposed to be like.” I offered the tumbler back.

  “Keep it.” He went to the liquor credenza, poured a second glass, and returned to his seat.

  “So why was the administrator here?” I asked.

  He put his feet up on the table and leaned back in his chair. “I’m hoping to buy Sanchez Aluminum and I wanted her blessing. She’s fine with it.”

  “Why would you want an aluminum company?”

  “Because I like building businesses.” He preened theatrically. “It’s my thing.”

  “But aluminum? I mean…isn’t that sort of blah? I get the impression it’s struggling as an industry.”

  “It is,” said Trond. “Not like the old days, when aluminum was king—each bubble required forty thousand tons of aluminum to build. But now the population has plateaued and we’re not making new bubbles anymore. Frankly, they would have gone out of business long ago if it weren’t for their aluminum monopropellant fuel production. And even that barely turns a profit.”

  “Seems like you missed the gravy train. Why get in now?”

  “I think I can make it hugely profitable again.”

  “How?”

  “None of your business.”

  I held up my hands. “Sheesh. Touchy. Fine, you want to make aluminum. Why not start your own company?”

  He snorted. “If only it were that easy. It’s impossible to compete with Sanchez. Literally impossible. What do you know about aluminum production?”

  “Pretty much nothing,” I said. I settled back in my chair. Trond seemed chatty tonight. Best to let him get it out of his system. And hey, as long as he talked I got good booze.

  “First, they collect anorthite ore. That’s easy. All they have to do is pick up the right rocks. They have automated harvesters running day and night. Then they smelt the ore with a chemical and electrolysis process that takes a shitload of electricity. And I do mean a shitload. Sanchez Aluminum uses eighty percent of the city reactors’ output.”

  “Eighty percent?” I’d never thought about it before, but two 27-megawatt nuclear reactors was a bit much for a city of two thousand people.

  “Yeah, but the interesting part is how they pay for it.”

  He pulled a rock from his pocket. Wasn’t much to look at—just a gray, jagged lump like all the other lunar rocks I’d ever seen. He tossed it toward me. “Here. Have some anorthite.”

  “Yay, a rock.” I plucked it out of the air as it approached. “Thanks.”

  “It’s made of aluminum, oxygen, silicon, and calcium. Smelting separates it into those base elements. They sell the aluminum—that’s the whole point. And they sell the silicon to glassmakers and the calcium to elect
ricians for next to nothing—mainly to get rid of it. But there is one by-product that’s incredibly useful: oxygen.”

  “Yeah, and that’s what we breathe. I know.”

  “Yeah, but did you know Sanchez gets free power in exchange for that oxygen?”

  He had me there. “Really?”

  “Yup. It’s a contract that goes back to the early days of Artemis. Sanchez makes our air, so Artemis gives Sanchez as much power as they want—completely free of charge.”

  “They don’t have to pay an electric bill? Ever?”

  “As long as they keep making oxygen for the city, that’s right. And power is the most expensive part of smelting. There’s just no way I can compete. It’s not fair.”

  “Oh, poor billionaire,” I said. “Maybe you should have some moors installed so you can pine on them.”

  “Yeah, yeah, rich people are evil blah, blah, blah.”

  I emptied my glass. “Thanks for the scotch. Why am I here?”

  He cocked his head and looked at me. Was he carefully choosing his words? Trond never did that.

  “I hear you failed your EVA exam.”

  I groaned. “Does everyone in town know about that? Do you all meet up and talk about me when I’m not around or something?”

  “It’s a small town, Jazz. I keep my ear to the ground.”

  I slid my glass over to him. “If we’re going to talk about my failures, I’ll want another scotch.”

  He passed me his full glass. “I want to hire you. And I want to pay you a lot.”

  I perked up. “Well, okay then. Why didn’t you open with that? What do you need smuggled in? Something big?”

  He leaned forward. “It’s not smuggling. It’s an entirely different enterprise. I don’t know if it’s even in your comfort zone. You’ve always been honest—at least with me. Do I have your word that this will stay between us? Even if you turn down the job?”

  “Of course.” One thing I picked up from Dad: Always keep your bargains. He worked within the law and I didn’t, but the principle was the same. People will trust a reliable criminal more readily than a shady businessman.

  “That power-for-oxygen deal is the only thing standing between me and the aluminum industry. If Sanchez stops supplying oxygen, they’ll be in breach of contract. Then I’ll step in and offer to take it over. Same deal: free oxygen for free power.”