Robert Sawyer - Red Planet Blues

“I should put a bullet through you right now,” she said. “You’ve already broken into my place once before, and now you’re here again.”

“I’d advise against it,” said Juan calmly from behind her. “In fact, if I may be so bold, I suggest that you drop the gun.” I doubt Juan had heard any of our previous conversation from outside. His tone, although excited, didn’t contain the rage that I knew would be in it if he were aware of what had happened to Diana.

Lakshmi had nerves of steel, I’ll give her that. “I don’t know who you are,” she said, still facing me, “but you can’t shoot me fast enough to prevent me from firing at Lomax first.”

Juan was new to this sort of thing. Of course, he should have shot her without announcing his presence—what I get for bringing an amateur along. And I doubted he had it in him to fire at Lakshmi—under normal circumstances, that is.

“Nobody needs to die here,” I said. You get good at calculating other people’s lines of sight in my game. We were all pretty much in a row: Juan in the room with the missing window, Lakshmi in the open doorway to that room, me facing them both, and behind me, not yet really visible to Juan, Diana’s dead body, seated on the couch.

I went on: “I mean, nobody else has to die here.” I was speaking to Lakshmi but looking beyond her at Juan. “Diana was a good woman, Lakshmi. You had no right to kill her.”

That did it. Juan’s normally calm face twisted in rage. Just as he pulled the trigger, I dove for the floor—there was a good chance that the bullet would go right through Lakshmi, after all, and it could have gone on to take me out, as well. The moment she was hit, Lakshmi squeezed her own trigger, but I was already out of her line of fire, and the projectile sailed past where I’d been and lodged in the green couch next to Diana. Juan’s bullet didn’t make it all the way through Lakshmi’s body—which was a good thing; poor Juan wasn’t made of particularly stern stuff, and he’d have been tortured if one of his slugs had gone into Diana even though she was already dead.

Lakshmi, though, was still alive. Juan’s aim was lousy; he’d merely hit the writer in the shoulder. Still, she was discombobulated enough that I was able to spring up from the floor, retrieve my gun, and then wrest hers from her. I then knocked her down and stood over her, my pistol aimed right between her breasts.

Juan rushed over to Diana, in some desperate hope that she was only injured and not dead. I heard him making small sounds.

Lakshmi looked like she was falling into shock from the gunshot wound. If I was going to get any additional information out of her, it would have to come soon. “Stick with me, sweetheart.”

But she didn’t. Her eyes fluttered up into her skull.

I didn’t want to plug Lakshmi if it wasn’t necessary, not because she didn’t deserve it but because it would result in too much of a hassle with the cops—not to mention the administrators of the writer-in-residence program. She could have been faking being in shock, but the ever-widening pool of blood behind her suggested she wasn’t. I shoved Lakshmi’s little gun into my waistband, then looked for something to tie her up with. I supposed I could use my belt, but I’d spent enough of this case running around naked; I didn’t want to end up in a big chase with my jeans around my ankles.

Juan was still on bended knee in front of Diana, as if he couldn’t believe she were dead. “Cover Lakshmi,” I said to him. He seemed a bit shocky himself, but he nodded, rose, and lifted his weapon. I saw he wasn’t really pointing it at Lakshmi, but about a half meter from her; amateurs like Juan always found it hard to pull the trigger again after they’d seen up close the sort of damage a bullet could do.

I stepped into the other room and found a white terry-cloth bathrobe hanging in the closet. I pulled the sash out of the loops, brought it to the living room, and used it to bind Lakshmi’s wrists. The cloth soaked up blood from the surrounding puddle, the red stark against the white fabric.

Then, as it often does, fate took a hand. The doorbell sounded. A portion of the living-room wall changed to the view from the front-door camera. Standing on the stoop was none other than Sergeant Huxley of New Klondike’s Finest.

Imotioned for Juan to follow me, and we hustled into the back room of Shopatsky House. The doorbell sounded again as we climbed through the missing window. My first thought had been that the cops had pieced together Lakshmi’s involvement in all this, but then it occurred to me that Huxley was perhaps simply following up on the buggy joyride; Juan’s vehicle was still sitting on the fern-covered lawn.

I didn’t have time for the cops right now. Yes, Lakshmi needed medical attention, but even Hux would have the good sense to walk around the house when no one answered, and he’d doubtless find the hole where the window had been and go in to investigate.

Juan and I made our way along the edge of the dome, the alloquartz cool to the touch. I knew the clear wall next to me was curved, but from here it seemed completely flat. Juan kept saying, in a shaky voice, “My poor Diana.”

We had gone a hundred meters or so counterclockwise along the edge of the dome. Outside, on our right, we could see rocks casting shadows beneath the yellow-brown sky. In the distance, a couple of Mars buggies were going along at low speed.

To our left now was a warehouse, with cracked walls and a couple of boarded-up windows. Rent tended to be cheap out on the rim, despite it being the only place where you could get uninterrupted views of the vast Martian plain—people preferred to live near the center, if they could afford it, so that they could see something human instead of the vast unchanging monotony of the world that had crushed their dreams. “Let’s go,” I said, gesturing for Juan to pick up the pace. We headed down one wall of the warehouse and exited out onto the radial street.

A horn sounded—not as loud as the one on Juan’s buggy, but still jarring; we’d come out onto the road in front of a tram. “Come on!” I said.

We ran the short distance to the tram stop, passing a few other people as we did so: a dour middle-aged male prospector dragging a wagon that had nothing in it but mining tools; a teenage girl who glared belligerently at me, but then thought better of starting anything; and a thirty-something woman who was dressed like a banker or a lawyer—encounters with either of which usually spelled trouble for me.

We got on the tram. There were five other biologicals onboard and one transfer. The biologicals were staring at little screens; the transfer was looking off into space—or, more precisely, I suspect, was watching a movie or something that only she could see. It was generally better not to sit on the filthy tram seats. Juan knew that, but he was so shaken he plunked himself down. We were soon passing the Windermere Medical Clinic.

I managed to get Juan, who was still mostly out of it, to change trams at the appropriate point, and when that tram reached the stop closest to the shipyard, I tapped him on the shoulder. He got up, and we headed over. But Juan was still shaky, and he looked nauseous. “Take a few minutes,” I said. “There’s a kybo over there.” I pointed to the outhouse past Bertha’s shack. “Join me when you’re ready.”

He nodded and headed over to the small structure. I hustled over to the descent stage and clambered back aboard the cylindrical vessel.

“Can I be of assistance?” Mudge asked as soon as I was inside.