"Not if you don't want to."
"Why should I want to?"
And it went on like that. Each question spawned a dozen more, and a further dozen sprang from each of those. Bach had figured to get Charlie's six—make that five—questions out of the way quickly, then get to the important things. She soon began to think she'd never answer even the first question.
She was involved in a long and awkward explanation of friendship, going over the ground for the tenth time, when words appeared at the bottom of her screen.
Pur your foot down, they said. She glanced up at the child psychologist. He was nodding, but making quieting gestures with his hands. "But gently," the man whispered.
Right, Bach thought. Put your foot down. And get off on the wrong foot again.
"That's enough of that," Bach said abruptly.
"Why?" asked Charlie.
"Because I'm tired of that. I want to do something else."
"All right," Charlie said. Bach saw Hoeffer waving frantically, just out of camera range.
"Uh... Captain Hoeffer is still here. He'd like to talk to you."
"That's just too bad for him. I don't want to talk to him."
Good for you, Bach thought. But Hoeffer was still waving.
"Why not? He's not so bad." Bach felt ill, but avoided showing it.
"He lied to me. He said you'd gone away."
"Well, he's in charge here, so—"
"I'm warning you," Charlie said, and waited a dramatic moment, shaking her finger at the screen.
"You put that poo-poo-head back on, and I won't come in ever again."
Bach looked helplessly at Hoeffer, who at last nodded.
"I want to talk about dogs," Charlie announced.
So that's what they did for the next hour. Bach was thankful she had studied up on the subject when the dead puppy first appeared. Even so, there was no doubt as to who was the authority. Charlie knew everything there was to know about dogs. And of all the experts Hoeffer had called in, not one could tell Bach anything about the goddamn animals. She wrote a note and handed it to Steiner, who went off to find a zoologist.
Finally Bach was able to steer the conversation around to Charlie's parents.
"My father is dead," Charlie admitted.
"I'm sorry," Bach said. "When did he die?"
"Oh, a long time ago. He was a spaceship pilot, and one day he went off in his spaceship and never came back." For a moment she looked far away. Then she shrugged. "I was real young."
Fantasy, the psychologist wrote at the bottom of her screen, but Bach had already figured that out.
Since Charlie had to have been born many years after the Charlie Station Plague, her father could not have flown any spaceships.
"What about your mother?"
Charlie was silent for a long time, and Bach began to wonder if she was losing contact with her. At last, she looked up.
"You want to talk to my mother?"
"I'd like that very much."
"Okay. But that's all for today. I've got work to do. You've already put me way behind."
"Just bring your mother here, and I'll talk to her, and you can do your work."
"No. I can't do that. But I'll take you to her. Then I'll work, and I'll talk to you tomorrow."
Bach started to protest that tomorrow was not soon enough, but Charlie was not listening. The camera was picked up, and the picture bounced around as she carried it with her. All Bach could see was a very unsteady upside-down view of the corridor.
"She's going into Room 350," said Steiner. "She's been in there twice, and she stayed a while both times."
Bach said nothing. The camera jerked wildly for a moment, then steadied.
"This is my mother," Charlie said. "Mother, this is my friend, Anna-Louise."
The Mozartplatz had not existed when Bach was a child. Construction on it had begun when she was five, and the first phase was finished when she was fifteen. Tenants had begun moving in soon after that. During each succeeding year new sectors had been opened, and though a structure as large as the Mozartplatz would never be finished—two major sectors were currently under renovation—it had been essentially completed six years ago.
It was a virtual copy of the Soleri-class arcology atriums that had spouted like mushrooms on the Earth in the last four decades, with the exception that on Earth you built up, and on Luna you went down.
First dig a trench fifteen miles long and two miles deep. Vary the width of the trench, but never let it get narrower than one mile, nor broader than five. In some places make the base of the trench wider than the top, so the walls of rock loom outward. Now put a roof over it, fill it with air, and start boring tunnels into the sides. Turn those tunnels into apartments and shops and everything else humans need in a city. You end up with dizzying vistas, endless terraces that reach higher than the eye can see, a madness of light and motion and spaces too wide to echo.
Do all that, and you still wouldn't have the Mozartplatz. To approach that ridiculous level of grandeur there were still a lot of details to attend to. Build four mile-high skyscrapers to use as table legs to support the mid-air golf course. Crisscross the open space with bridges having no visible means of support, and encrusted with shops and homes that cling like barnacles. Suspend apartment buildings from silver balloons that rise half the day and descend the other half, reachable only by glider. Put in a fountain with more water than Niagara, and a ski slope on a huge spiral ramp. Dig a ten-mile lake in the middle, with a bustling port at each end for the luxury ships that ply back and forth, attach runways to balconies so residents can fly to their front door, stud the interior with zeppelin ports and railway stations and hanging gardens... and you still don't have Mozartplatz, but you're getting closer.
The upper, older parts of New Dresden, the parts she had grown up in, were spartan and claustrophobic. Long before her time Lunarians had begun to build larger when they could afford it.
The newer, lower parts of the city were studded with downscale versions of the Mozartplatz, open spaces half a mile wide and maybe fifty levels deep. This was just a logical extension.
She felt she ought to dislike it because it was so overdone, so fantastically huge, such a waste of space... and, oddly, so standardized. It was a taste of the culture of old Earth, where Paris looked just like Tokyo. She had been to the new Beethovenplatz at Clavius, and it looked just like this place. Six more arco-malls were being built in other Lunar cities.
And Bach liked it. She couldn't help herself. One day she'd like to live here.
She left her tube capsule in the bustling central station, went to a terminal and queried the location of the Great Northern. It was docked at the southern port, five miles away.
It was claimed that any form of non-animal transportation humans had ever used was available in the Mozartplatz. Bach didn't doubt it. She had tried most of them. But when she had a little time, as she did today, she liked to walk. She didn't have time to walk five miles, but compromised by walking to the trolley station a mile away.
Starting out on a brick walkway, she moved to cool marble, then over a glass bridge with lights flashing down inside. This took her to a boardwalk, then down to a beach where machines made fourfoot breakers, each carrying a new load of surfers. The sand was fine and hot between her toes.
Mozartplatz was a sensual delight for the feet. Few Lunarians ever wore shoes, and they could walk all day through old New Dresden and feel nothing but different types of carpeting and composition flooring.
The one thing Bach didn't like about the place was the weather. She thought it was needless, preposterous, and inconvenient. It began to rain and, as usual, caught her off guard. She hurried to a shelter where, for a tenthMark, she rented an umbrella, but it was too late for her paper uniform. As she stood in front of a blower, drying off, she wadded it up and threw it away, then hurried to catch the trolley, nude but for her creaking leather equipment belt and police cap. Even this stripped down, she was more dressed than a quarter of the people around her.