A different nurse breezed into his cubicle and shoved a data tablet onto his lap. “Press your right thumb on the square at the bottom,” she said.
Bracknell looked up at her. She was young, with frizzy red hair, rather pretty.
“What’s this?” he asked, almost growling.
“Standard permission form for a full-spectrum body scan. We need your thumbprint.”
I don’t want a scan, Bracknell said to himself, and I don’t want to give them a thumbprint; they could compare it with Alexios’s real print.
He handed the tablet back to the nurse. “No.”
She looked stunned. “Whattaya mean, no? You’ve got to do it or we can’t do the scan on you.”
“I don’t want a scan. Not yet.”
“You’ve got to have a body scan,” the nurse said, somewhere between confused and angry at his refusal. “It says so in your chart.”
“Not now,” Bracknell said. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“They can make you take a scan, whether you want to or not.”
“The hell they can!” Bracknell snapped. The nurse flinched back half a step. “I’m not some criminal or lunatic. I’m a free citizen and I won’t be coerced into doing something I don’t want to do.”
She stared at him, bewildered. “But it’s for your own good.”
“I’ll decide what’s good for me, thank you.” And Bracknell felt a surge of satisfaction well up in him. He hadn’t asserted himself for years, he realized. I used to be an important man, he told himself. I gave orders and people hopped to follow them. I’m not some convict or pervert. I didn’t kill all those people. Yamagata did.
The redheaded nurse was fidgeting uncertainly by his bed, shifting the tablet from one hand to the other.
“Listen,” Bracknell said, more gently, “I’ve been through a lot. I’m not up to getting poked and prodded—”
“The scan is completely nonintrusive,” the nurse said hopefully.
“Okay, tell you what. Find me a pair of shoes and let me walk around a bit, stretch my legs. Then tomorrow morning I’ll sign for the scan. Okay?”
She seemed relieved, but doubtful. “I’ll hafta ask my supervisor.”
“Do that. But first, get some shoes for me.”
Less than half an hour later Mance Bracknell walked out of Selene Hospital’s busy lobby, wearing his old gray coveralls and a crinkled pair of hospital-issue paper shoes. No one tried to stop him. No one even noticed him. There was only one guard in the lobby, and when Bracknell brazenly waved at him the guard gave him a halfhearted wave in return. He wasn’t in hospital-issue clothes; as far as the guard was concerned, Bracknell was a visitor leaving the hospital. Or maybe one of the maintenance crew going home.
Most of Selene was underground, and the hospital was two levels down. Bracknell’s first move was to call up a map on the information screen across the corridor from the hospital’s entrance. He found the transportation center, up in the Main Plaza, and headed for it.
I’m free! he marveled as he strode along the spacious corridor, passing people walking the other way. Not a thing in my pockets and the hospital authorities might call Selene’s security people to search for me, but for the moment I’m free to go where I want to.
The place he wanted to go to was Hell Crater.
He located a powered stairway and rode it up to Selene’s Main Plaza, built on the surface of the great crater Alphonsus. Its concrete dome projected out from the ringwall mountains and onto the crater floor. Bracknell saw that the Plaza was green with grass and shrubbery; there were even trees planted along the winding walkways. An Olympic-sized swimming pool. A bandshell and stage for performances. Shops and little bistros where people sat and chatted and sipped drinks. Music and laughter floated through the air. Tourists flitted overhead, flying on their own muscle power with colorful rented plastic wings. Bracknell smelled flowers and the aroma of sizzling food.
It’s marvelous, he thought as he headed for the transportation center. This is what they cut me off from: real life, real people enjoying themselves. Freedom. Then he realized that he had neither cash nor credit. How can I get to Hell Crater? Freedom doesn’t mean much when you are penniless.
As he approached the transportation center, an eager-looking young man in a splashy sports shirt and a sparkling smile fell in step beside him. “Going to Hell?” he asked brightly.
Bracknell looked him over. Blond crew cut, smile plastered in place, perfect teeth. A glad-handing salesman, he realized.
“I’m thinking about it,” Bracknell said.
“Don’t miss Sam Gunn’s Inferno Casino,” said the smiling young man. “It’s got the best action.”
“Action?” Bracknell played naive.
“Roulette, blackjack, low-grav craps tables, championship karate competition.” The smile grew even wider. “Beautiful women and free champagne. Dirty minds in clean bodies. What more could you ask for?”
Bracknell looked up at the transportation center’s huge display of departures and arrivals.
The young pitchman gripped his arm. “Don’t worry about that! There’s an Inferno Special leaving in fifteen minutes. Direct to the casino! You’ll be there in less than two hours and they’ll even serve you a meal in transit!”
“The fare must be—”
“It’s free!” the blond proclaimed. “And your first hundred dollars’ worth of chips is on the house!”
“Really?”
“As long as you buy a thousand dollars’ worth. That’s a ten percent discount, right off the bat.”
Bracknell allowed himself to be chivvied into a cable car painted with lurid red flames across its silver body. Fourteen other men and women were already sitting inside, most of them middle-aged and looking impatient.
As he took the empty seat up front, by the forward window, one of the dowdyish women called out, “When are we leaving? We’ve been waiting here almost an hour!”
The blond gave her the full wattage of his smile. “I’m supposed to fill up the bus before I let it go, but since you’ve been so patient, I’ll send you off just as soon as I get one more passenger.”
It took another quarter hour, but at last the car was sealed up. It rode on an overhead cable to the massive airlock built into the side of the Main Plaza’s dome. Within minutes they were climbing across Alphonsus’s worn old ringwall mountains and then down onto the plain of Mare Nubium. The cable car rocked slightly as it whizzed twenty meters above the bleak, pockmarked regolith. It smelled old and used; too many bodies have been riding in this bucket for too long, Bracknell thought. But he smiled to himself as the car raced along and the overhead speakers gave an automated lecture about the scenic wonders they were rushing past.
There was no pilot or crew in the cable car; everything was automated. The free meal consisted of a thin sandwich and a bottle of “genuine lunar water” obtained from the vending machine at the rear of the car. Bracknell chewed contentedly and watched the Straight Wall flash by.
True to the blond pitchman’s word, the cable car went directly inside the Inferno Casino. The other passengers hurried out, eager to spend their money. Bracknell left the car last, looking for the nearest exit from the casino. It wasn’t easy to find; all he could see was an ocean of people lapping up against islands of gaming tables, looking either frenzied or grim as they gambled away their money. Raucous music poured from overhead speakers, drowning out any laughter or conversation. No exits in sight; the casino management wanted their customers to stay at the gaming tables or restaurants. There were plenty of sexy young women sauntering around, too, many in spray-paint costumes, but none of them gave Bracknell more than a cursory glance: in his gray coveralls he looked more like a maintenance man than a high roller.