’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Twelve ― White Moon

¿Hasta cuándo, oh simples, amarán la simpleza, Y los burladores se deleitarán en hacer burla, Y los necios aborrecerán el conocimiento?

— Proverbios 1:22

How long, O simpletons, will you love being simple-minded, and you tricksters delight in trickery, and you fools hate the truth?

— Proverbs 1:22

Thick draws the dark,
And spark by spark,
The frost-fires kindle, and soon
Over that sea of frozen foam
Floats the white moon.

—Walter de la Mare
Winter

Luz Nevrith sat very still, her face in repose, as a woman from Chief Big Horses’ security team, pressed into service as a make-up artist for an Earth-based video production team, patiently waited for the studio crew on the other end of a high-def ansible link to approve of the make-up job she’d just finished. Luz was an “extra” in their first Quicksilver romance vid, although the principals were all doing their acting in front of a green screen back on Earth. They’d explained that her shots would be “dropped in,” on the studio shots … or was it theirs that would be “dropped in” on hers? No matter, the point was to show a romantic picture of life on Quicksilver. It was the first time Luz had ever seen a live picture from Earth, even though she was just looking at an effects stage somewhere north of the San Francisco urbopolis, so the whole process was fascinating.

“Excellent job, Flora!” The film’s director was speaking to them now, Sinclair, she thought he’d said. He was very handsome, a big man, she could tell, even sitting down in a folding chair as he was just then, with a rugged jaw and dark eyes and hair. His hair was slightly wavy, one lock drooping over one eye, just begging to be smoothed up above his broad forehead.

“Luz, could you run through the projected action on camera now?”

“Of course.” She was all business now. “Do you want any particular timing? Should I begin and end my lines on a particular mark?”

“If it’s not too much trouble, we’d like you to walk from under the shade of the large trees behind you, as gracefully as possible, over to that bush at the edge of the field, turn to face the camera, place your hand on one of the fruits as if to pick it, it doesn’t matter which one — do they come off the branches, or whatever they are, easily? — and then say your line. Does that sound doable?”

“Of course!”

“On my mark, then … Slate!”

She stood and vamped over to a position under the triffid trees — conscious of the cameras but not visibly aware of them — paused for a moment, glanced over her shoulder with one eyebrow arched inquisitively, focused on an invisible man just within reach in front of her, and then moved to a nearby triffid bush and spun around to face the camera squarely, letting the fruit drop into one hand, gracefully held out slightly behind her, not even looking back as she whirled. Her look was smoldering, impossibly alluring, and her sultry voice was as sweet and slow as honey when she spoke to her imaginary suitor, “Are you sure you wouldn’t want … just a taste, Richard? I’ve saved my best for you … only for you, my darling ….” Then she dropped her gaze slightly and turned away to show her profile, eyes downcast, but with her head held high and proud, and then she sighed deeply, allowing her bosom to heave just a little.

There was a long silence before the director said, “Cut! That was superb, Luz. Are you sure you’ve never been on the stage? You seem to be a pro at this.”

Luz smiled with an easy friendliness. “Not once, but I’ve seen vids before, and I know how people talk. Just tell me what you need, and I’m your girl.”

“You’re a natural, Luz. If it’s ok with you, I’d like to expand your lines and increase your onscreen time, since you can add a lot of live interaction with items on-planet — just as you did here — that will help to establish our physical presence on the scene. Plus, I can use you for live interviews and publicity, because one of the points of the show is to generate interest in the colonies, and if you’ll forgive me for saying so, our male demographic is bound to take an interest, and we might do an advertising tie-in for you as well. I think you’ll not only be the ex-girlfriend, but you’ll find yourself developing a real friendship with the female lead, the woman who … stole your lover from you. We already have the rôle written, and had originally planned for it to be played by an actress on this end, but this seems like a really lucky break, so I’ll send a copy of tomorrow’s script out there too. Memorize it by this time tomorrow. Of course, we’ll pay Equity rates for a larger rôle, so we’ll update your contract on this end and send an e-certified copy back for your certified signature. Do you have representation? If so, we can run it by your agency, and of course I’m obliged to advise you to retain an agent to handle your career on this end. It will make everything much simpler. Is that okay with you?”

“Of course, Mr. Sinclair. It will be no problem at all. Could you contact someone on my behalf?”

“Of course I will. I have a personal friend whose rates are very fair, and I promise you he’ll do a good job for you. I’ll send him your takes from today’s shoot so he can look them over. I’ll bet you long odds that he gets you a better deal than I’m offering right now.” He grinned to show that he wasn’t unhappy about the idea. “We have an eighteen episode deal with our sponsors, so you’re probably looking at fifty thousand credits an episode, since you’ll be a principal, but not a lead. I’m not exactly sure what that is in your e-credits, but my friend, Edward Schiff, of the Schiff and Klein Agency, will find out by tomorrow, I’m sure, and then hold my feet to the fire.” He grinned again, then glanced around the set from his end. “Flora? And whoever we have handling cameras and lights, if you all have time to handle the jobs you did today, the production company would like to hire you full time, although you’ll have to join your respective guilds and unions. Whoever we have handling details on the ground there will handle the paperwork and explain scale. Great job, all of you!”

“We’ll all be looking forward to hearing from your end, then,” Luz said, smiling. “I’ll keep my comm turned on. It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Sinclair.”

“Call me Ishmael.” He grinned again. “It’s not a joke. That’s really my first name, and I get a kick out of it now.”

“I understand. It must have been fun growing up with it.”

“It had its moments, but I got over them. I like it now, because hardly anyone ever forgets me.”

She laughed. “Somehow, I doubt that anyone would forget you, even if they’d named you ‘Wilbur.’ I’ll see you tomorrow, then, Ishmael. Or should I have my people call your people?”

“Until my friend Ed tells me not to, we can talk all we want. I run an informal set, and I treat my actors right. See you tomorrow, Luz, and say hi to Mr Luz.”

“I’ll do that, Ishmael. See you then.” She turned to where her husband stood watching from behind the cameras, lights, and production paraphernalia. “Hey, Dan, Ishmael says ‘Hi!’ ”

Dan grinned at her. “I heard. Should I be jealous?” He walked forward to stand near her, smiling. “You have hidden depths, my dear.”

“Darn! You’ve managed to discover our guilty secret, Dan. Ishmael and I are running away together, as soon as he arrives on the next airship from Earth, about thirty years from now. Of course, by that time, I’ll be an old lady with seven kids, not to mention a few grand-kids, so you have to admire his gumption, taking on a family like that at his age.”

“Well, you let me know when he arrives so I can help you pack. If he turns out to be really nice, though, I may take pity on him and take you back.” He gave a her a short kiss that turned into a long one.

“Hey, you two! Save it for the show!” Ishmael was still on screen, although he’d turned away for a bit. “It’s extremely kind of you to be such a gentleman about this, Dan. The least I can do is tell you that I don’t mind if you stay married until I arrive, noblesse oblige.”

“Very kind of you, I’m sure, and I accept your offer. Is that all right with you, dear?” He turned to Luz.

She pouted very prettily. “Well,” she said thoughtfully, “now that I think of it, perhaps I’ll keep you both! I’ve often thought that women should have two husbands, an older man for his money, not to mention conversational skills, and a young one to go out on the town with and dance. This is going to turn out very nicely for me.”

Ishmael laughed and said, “I’ll brush up on my dancing skills, then. See you both tomorrow.”

“Hi honey, I’m home.” Luz walked into their small home. The climate was so mild, they spent most of their time outside anyway, especially now that she was spending so much time on camera, so they’d made no effort to change it except to move a desk in, over in a corner of the former sala, now turned part-time office. She was co-host on a sort of local travel/nature show now, Natural Quicksilver, in which she wandered around the area showing off the sights and providing eye candy, while Dan, her co-host for the show, provided the science stuff, explaining the local ecology and demonstrating how what was essentially one species could fulfil so many environmental niches. It was a sweet gig, because they were both being paid tons of money, by colony standards, to have Dan do pretty much the same job on-camera that the government was paying him to do off-camera, so he was busy, but enjoyed both jobs. He’d gotten rather fit, though, and looked a lot more athletic than he’d been in years. She still had her rôle on what had stayed Quicksilver Memories, since the first episode had been so popular that they’d simply kept the name of the first episode through the entire series so far, but she was showing now, so they’d written her pregnancy into the script, which generated a complex interaction between the leading man, the female lead on Earth, and Luz — called Sabrina for the show — in which jealousies and complications abounded. Their ‘numbers’ were very high, Ishmael had said, so her agent had negotiated a substantial raise in her per-episode payments, and her name appeared above the credits now.

“Hi sweetie! How was work?” Dan was at the desk catching up on his research and reports, since his days were rather busy, unless they were shooting night scenes, in which case everything had to be shifted around.

“It went well. I spent an hour or two making vids to be spliced into ‘personalised’ notes to my fans, explaining how busy we were out here in the Quicksilver colony, but how wonderfully-rewarding our lives were in paradise.”

“It’s the truth though, isn’t it?” He pushed himself back from the desk and rose to greet her, careful now of how he touched her, as if she were much more fragile than she felt.

She smiled and gave him a proper hug, knowing well how healthy and strong she was. “I suppose it is, all in all.” She grinned again and wriggled a bit against him. “Do you suppose it’s too early for a little nap?” She looked up at him and smiled, although there wasn’t that much difference in their heights.

“Is it safe? I mean ….” He leaned back a bit to glance down to her belly.

She looked at him in a way he’d find difficult to describe, but he was transfixed by it as she led him unprotesting from the room, trailing slightly behind her as she held his hand in hers. Over her shoulder she said, “I’ll tell you when to stop.”

She had quite a following now, so much so that they’d had to install a dedicated ansible link at the Research Center, because the show had expanded into several different series for different demographics, including now a children’s show that she hosted on her own, a men’s adventure storyline in which Dan, who had turned out to be a fairly decent actor, battled smugglers (and other villains) who were trying to run the (imaginary) blockade around the planet to exploit the locals by forcing them to slave away on drug plantations.

The freedom-loving locals always won eventually, of course, despite corrupt officials and an alien (again, a total fabrication supplied digitally by the studio) cartel who coveted the planets of the Terran Federation, a confabulated government — complete with its own Senators, electoral system, laws, and a “Space Patrol” — that ruled the United Worlds. It was all very complicated, because they tied in with their (imaginary) counterpart agencies on other planets, all of which had their own series, so they spent a lot of time coördinating the shows over more dedicated ansible links. They’d had to install another three hectares of solar arrays to handle the required power, and another storage tank under the Research Center.

It wasn’t hard, since Quicksilver supplied most of the raw materials to Earth in any case, so Senator Ortíz had the first stage of his long-term plan — the development of colonial industries other than extraction and materials production, right on schedule. Their biggest problem was a severe shortage of labor, despite several airships with large numbers of colonists — including more scientists, skilled technicians, engineers, and architects — already in the long thirty-year transport lanes from Earth to Quicksilver.

On the other hand, they had a lot of farmers with time on their hands, since the crops pretty much took care of themselves, so the former peones took up a lot of the slack as builders and students, learning whatever skills the small towns all across the planet needed as they grew. It was the best of times, period.

It was the worst of times, all their leads were stale, and Jack Webster was reduced to sifting through the files and evidence lockers again, and then again, looking for something, anything, that might generate a fresh line of inquiry, something they could follow to wherever the Burladors had managed to hide themselves.

On the other hand, they knew a lot about the “spirochaetes” now. They shared little, if anything, with Earth-based versions of the bacteria, except for the form, so they were calling it “pseudo-spirochaetes,” and it was a strange fish. The motile tail had turned out to be an organic superconductor which was revolutionizing every electronic industry on Earth, since all you needed to grow the stuff was a vat of almost any organic liquid — sewage mixed with water worked just fine — and out came mile after mile of ultra-fine superconducting fiber — once you’d snipped off the bacterial head, which contained all the useless DNA and the chemical “motor” that moved the bacterium around by “spinning” the tail — all set to be spun into what was, for the manufacturers, pure gold — room-temperature superconducting wire for new communicators, super-computers, power stations, talking self-powered alarm clocks, and everything else the science boys could dream up.

Far from searching for a cure, the damned thing was practically a protected species now, and research into ways to destroy it was forbidden by law, since the authorities were afraid that any organic “poison” or antagonist might escape into the wild and kill the goose that had laid the golden egg.

It still gave Jack the creeps, though, knowing that the blasted worms were wriggling around inside him, doing God knows what, despite the scientist’s blithe assertions about their innocuous nature.

He hurled the latest report to the wall, without any satisfaction, because it didn’t shatter into a thousand pieces in an explosion of sound and brilliant light. It just slid down the wall and lay there, not even flat, but nicely displayed as if the information inside was crying for his attention, which it wasn’t.

He kept coming back to the dog, though, and had gone back down to Senator Ortízes hacienda twice now, had had to admire the puppies, which he’d had to admit were very cute, had had to diplomatically decline to take one home, explaining both times that his apartment was very small, and then held one after the other in his lap while a vet took blood samples and cheek swabs from each. Two of them had peed in his lap the first time, only one the last, and he’d had to smile as if he’d thought they were cute. The Senator’s wife had laughed and laughed and laughed. It was the worst experience of his life.

It was beautiful here. She gazed out from her vantage point near old Jackson Hole, in the foothills of the Grand Tetons, looking up toward the range itself, but surrounded by the open meadows and woods of the wilderness preserve. She sat for a while in the warm sun, thinking about home, and feeling fine. There were villas and gated enclaves for the wealthy not fifty miles from here, but over the horizon from where she sat, although she could feel them lurking there, handy if she needed them — or their communications networks — but not today.

Today was a kind of vacation, a working holiday, and she intended to enjoy it to the best of her ability, so she took great pains to select the perfect spot … here, just here, where she could listen to the breeze, smell the trees and grasses, hear the little creek, rippling water in the near distance, feel the insects around her, going about their own busy lives.

This, this was perfect. She lay back upon the grassy knoll, looked up at the sky, then closed her eyes and sank slowly into the ground, her senses expanding ever outward, into infinity.

Copyright © 1993, 2010, 2011 by Jeffrey M. Mahr

All rights reserved.

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

Copyright © 2011 Levanah