Carbide Tipped Pens Part 32

She swipes the screen before he can read the time.

"That wasn't your alarm. It was mine, I set it early, we have at least an hour before work," she lies.

"Ah." He strokes her hair and looks into her eyes. He caresses the plug-in at the base of her neck. He kisses her.

His kisses.

She falls into them as into deep water.

He entwines his fingers between her own. She feels something hard, cold, pressing up over her thumb.

She looks. It's his ring, his Monty ring with his name engraved onto it. It fits her thumb perfectly.

She catches her breath. Removes her own ring, Jewel engraved in ornate lettering around the Cap insignia, and places it on his smallest finger.

His kisses grow harder, deeper, insistent.

"I have more care to stay than will to go," he murmurs against her neck.

Downtime over, the lights automatically begin to brighten.

"More light and light. More dark and dark our woes ... Ah..." How does he do it, know every thrum and longing of her body?

The walls are thick, there is no one there, their cries are loud and long.

If Jewel and Rudo were listening to anything outside themselves, they would hear the echo: reverberating, repeating, holding their cries and moans and murmurings, sending them out, out in waves, rippling through the saline slush and water and ice. How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night, like softest music to attending ears! All Europa trembles gently with their love.

The sounds of their physical l.u.s.t, breathing and voices and their bodies in motion, becomes a song the whole moon sings.

Yup. They're just that good.

Jewel doesn't show up on s.h.i.+ft the next day.

Paris pulls up a screen. She's not online and hasn't been for about eight hours.

Beyond suspicious.

He strides down the hall to her room, bangs on the door.

No answer.

He goes to the technician room. The others are already plugged in, Velcro-strapped to their seats to ensure stability, their miners out. Montys are working too, the army of them out across the crater. No, one is missing.

Rudo.

Paris sits, folds his arms over his chest, and waits.

Even when he's not plugged in, now, he hears a song. The others hear it too, he can tell, even as they stare into their screens with deep concentration as their miners work, they are all beating a hand or twitching a foot in time.

It's the song Larry played last night at the bar. The pre-last-call song. He played it loud, because Prince made a rare appearance and told him to crank it. It made the ice walls of the subsurface establishment ring. Maybe, somehow, it got into the ice and the slush. Filled the whole ocean. Filled Paris's brain, the control room, the whole base, the entire moon reverberating with some s.h.i.+tty top forty hit.

And something else, something underneath it. Something like old recordings he's heard of whale song. Soaring cries, moans, and almost something like words.

If he didn't know better Paris would say it sounds like the moon is making love to itself.

Both Cap and Monty yields are down a bit that day. Several of the miners are late for their s.h.i.+fts, and seem distracted once they get there. And all the technicians, both sides, complain of sonic interference in their communications implants. Songs, and even sounds like ... well, they're pretty X-rated, let's just say that. Montys accuse Caps of sabotage; Caps accuse Montys of hangovers. Everyone's a bit off; everyone's cranky.

Must be something in the water.

That night at the bar, all h.e.l.l breaks loose.

Jewel isn't there, and neither is Rudo-but everyone else is.

Very, very suspicious, if Paris is any judge.

Larry seems pleased about something and buys a round for everybody. "To peace between factions," he toasts. Very strange indeed. And the Montys are getting rowdy. Paris senses Tybalt beginning to swell; the possibility of a fight always excites him.

Little muscular Mercury lines up five shots and does them all.

Paris nods to Tybalt. "Methinks we'd better drink up and get home. The mad blood is stirring."

"Home?" Tybalt responds. "Not until I can't see straight."

"Mad, mad blood," Paris repeats.

Tybalt shrugs.

Paris overhears Ben, in a mirror action, trying to get that Monty idiot Mercury out of the bar. Ben's all right. If he wasn't a Monty he'd probably be a friend.

But Mercury will have none of it.

"I go nowhere, you moody b.i.t.c.h. Larry!"

And Mercury orders a round for the Montys.

"Come on, Merc," Paris hears Ben pleading.

"You trying to start a fight?"

"You know better."

Mercury points an unsteady finger at his friend. "You're always trying to start fights."

"Me?"

"You'd fight a man for cracking nuts, because you have hazel eyes. You'd fight a man for coughing, because he woke up a dog in the street. Your head is as full of fighting as this moon is full of salty slush, and yet you'd lecture me on fighting?"

"All right, all right."

A song comes over the mix, a new one, a hit. Ba.n.a.l. A song about love. It seems loud, too loud. The walls ring with it.

Mercury raises his voice. "Tybalt! Pretty man!"

Tybalt glances with seeming laziness down the bar, waves his hand, and turns back to Paris. "Buzz buzz, is someone talking?"

"Blow me," Mercury slurs.

"Indeed," Tybalt says, "so you have asked before. And I have offered, and been spurned."

"Hey, hey, hey," Paris says. There's no mistaking the glint in Tybalt's eye.

"Now, now, now," Ben admonishes.

But Tybalt and Mercury begin the long strut down the bar. Paris looks for Larry but he's nowhere to be seen.

And that f.u.c.king song, why is it so loud?

One step, two, three, and the two bantams have closed.

"My hands around your neck again," Tybalt grinds out through clenched teeth.

"And mine on yours," says Mercury, looking up at his taller a.s.sailant, but in a surprise move he knees Tybalt in the groin.

All the air goes out Tyb's lungs, and his face turns white as paper, but he doesn't let go of Merc's neck.

People are yelling, pumping the air with their fists.

Rudo choses this moment to come in.

He sees the two men grappling, takes in the yelling crowd. He lopes down the bar. Three soaring skips and he's at the fight.

"Be at peace!"

"f.u.c.k off, Monty," Tyb spits out between his teeth.

"You will kill each other," and indeed, Mercury's face is purple.

But that doesn't stop Merc from saying, "Rudo, I got this."

And Mercury wraps his hands around Tyb's throat.

"Let go, I beg you," Rudo pleads.

They aren't letting go. The noise in the bar increases, amplifies, yelling and hooting. It echoes in the icy walls, the floor, throughout the base. The song is loud enough to deafen, now. To Paris it seems the whole moon is reverberating with brawling love, with loving hate.

Cracks appear. A piece of the ceiling falls.

Larry comes running in from the back freezer, bottles in hand. When he sees what is happening, he drops them. They fall, low-g slow onto the granite-hard ice floor. They shatter.

"Peace, for the love of G.o.d, peace!"

Tybalt snaps Mercury's neck.

He springs back.

The song swells.

Mercury falls, bounces gently, comes to rest. His eyes are half-open, his head rests at an angle.

Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth.

Some urine leaks down his leg, steaming in the chilly air.

No one could really say, afterward, what happened.

The bar shook as if seismic forces gripped it.

And then it was like all the sounds of the fight, the snapping of bones, well, it all came cras.h.i.+ng in like an amplification tsunami.

Screams, an alarm, evacuation. Everybody, out.

A lot of hearing damage; that came out later. Some of the miners ended up deaf.

And somehow in the chaos Tybalt, that hothead, he wound up dead.

Broken neck, mirror of Mercury. Not because of the earthquake. No. Someone, a Cap, said they saw Rudo do it. And surveillance cameras showed Rudo embracing Merc's body, then turning to Tybalt, grappling. Then the feed cut out; the seismic activity, perhaps.

Two hours later, the Nurse was full of it. Everyone, Europa to Moon to Earth, knew something had happened.

The mining base is put on lockdown.

The number one hit song skyrockets. Covers and remixes all over the Nurse. Dedications to Tybalt, dedications to Mercury.

And Rudo? He disappears.

Paris watches the footage, over and over. Rudo, embracing Mercury's broken body. Then lunging for Tybalt.

The swelling song. The sounds of shouting, hands on flesh, violent, almost s.e.xual. The cut to the feed.

Over. And. Over.