The violence was a ritual, the most common and mundane social interaction of any crossing of the Promenade, any trip along a high-traffic ladder. He traveled as far as he could, as fast as he could.
The rock could be traversed by hand in a week.
The virgin would be dead within days.
Chocky could not bear the thought of losing her. If she died then he would die.
There were elevators and pounders that could make the trip in a day’s time, but company security kept them locked down. Chocky knew of shortcuts and rail riders run by Squatters, but they ran on barter. Chocky had nothing to barter.
Exhausted and sick with worry, Chocky stopped and found a tube bar. The stink of sex and fighting and sickness. Gentle hands found him in the dark and he let them explore. Their kindness was gratis. He floated into a corner and made himself small, wondering if he would give up his body for a stupor, and what else might be asked of him if he were to sell himself to get to the other side of the rock. He wept, silent and ashamed.
He heard the soft whine of servos and a singing, synthesized babble translated from the language of some other place. A tourist. The first that he had seen in the tunnels in some time.
Chocky followed the sound of it as it moved. In the gritty surface of the wall he could feel its heaving motion. Loud and clumsy, bumping against everything, clearly unaccustomed to low gravity. A breathing apparatus served the suit’s occupant with deep, high-oxygen breaths. Inside the suit he imagined an animal formed entirely out of lungs. He set off from the wall and drifted, then kicked toward the suit. He sidled up next to it, heard it say, “If you don’t mind…”
The words made Chocky laugh. Then he pushed closer and bumped his shoulder against a firm metallic carapace.
“Excuse me,” said the tourist. Sickly polite.
“Oh,” said Chocky. “My apology,” he said, in dimly remembered prison language. “Welcome stranger.”
The tourist turned to face Chocky and spoke in rapid dialect, untranslated. Chocky reached out to touch the tourist’s lips, to silence it. His fingers bounced against the visor and were numbed by a mild shock. Chocky pulled his hand away and the tourist recoiled. The tourist continued to speak rapidly, words that Chocky didn’t understand.
“I don’t speak so well,” Chocky said. “Use translator.”
The tourist obliged and rattled off a flurry of apologies. “I am so so sorry,” the tourist said. “This suit, it has protective modules. And I thought that you could speak.”
“Only a little. It is no problem. Didn’t hurt.”
“I know only a few words of mole language.” Chocky winced at the word. “It is a difficult way of communicating,” the tourist continued, “with idiosyncrasies unique to low pressures, low oxygen. Truly unique.”
“Yes, yes.” Chocky sucked on his finger, tasted dirt. Felt nothing in the nub.
The tourist stopped talking and Chocky heard its servos hum.
Chocky saw a ghost. The sight of it made him gasp. A cloudy phantom shape moved in the air, turned and tilted toward him. No, not a ghost, but a faint glow from the tourist’s bulbous head. Not a light, not so painful as light, but an emanation from the visor that left long red trails in his vision.
“I am sorry, again, so sorry,” said the tourist, and Chocky realized that it could see him, truly see him, perhaps by the dim glow, and that it had seen the face he made at the sound of the slur. “I did not mean to cause offense. The, umm, translator must have misinterpreted.”
Chocky smiled for the tourist, felt for a dispenser and tapped it with a knuckle. A thin tube wormed into his grasp and he slipped it into the corner of his mouth. A sour tang tickled his gums. “No harm,” he said. “None at all.” He heard the tourist fidget, looking for words. The luminous blur of the visor floated in the dark. “What are you looking for in these tunnels, spaceman?”
“I am here for research.” The tourist paused, waiting for a response that never came. “For my PhD thesis. My subject is Squatter culture. Your culture. How it may be shaped by your unique environmental and physiological conditions.”
“Yes. Physiological.” Chocky stretched his face into a wider grin. “Squatters? You mean us moles?”
The tourist squirmed and mulled over a response. The shape of its visor was plainly visible to Chocky by then. His weak eyes tracked it easily. In the corner of that shape he soon saw another, a blob of pale white that moved across the curved surface as the tourist shifted.
Living in darkness, Chocky’s appearance meant nothing to him. Yet he found himself leaning closer, cocking his head, staring at his own reflection—his own face—which he had not seen in—
“The Squatters, yes. There have been no first-hand accounts, only simulations. Even my professors know next to nothing. Tell me: Do you know Squatter music? The sounders?”
“You want to know about sounders?”
“My focus is on extraterrestrial ethnomusicology.”
Chocky laughed and slapped the dispenser. “Funny words,” he said. Prison language. Another tube found his fingers and he brought it to his lips. “You are very smart, spaceman.” He sipped fermented worm pulp from the tube. He didn’t feel the burn of alcohol. Just the effects. “Sounders. I know all about them. Pay for my tab, yes? Let Chocky show you around.”
Servos whined. Metallic clack. Fingers touching, maybe, the bounce of the head. Something called a nod. “Thank you, Chocky,” the tourist said. Then it laughed. Coins jingled in the dark. “An economy of physical currency,” it said. “Remarkable.”
“Here, spaceman. Put your hand here.”
Chocky’s fingers brushed the elastic thread of a map net. He felt it hum. Far from the Promenade, or any avenue, Chocky traced their route by knotted markers and vibrations in a dense web of synthetic coil. He motioned for the tourist and struck a taut length of cord.
“There. Feel it?”
Chocky knew when the tourist grabbed hold because they gripped too hard. The pressure of their digits muted the sensation.
“The rope? Yes, I feel it.”
“No you slag, not the rope. Pulses. You can feel it here, in the cord. It’s strong. Means we’re going the right way. Understand?”
The tourist twitched. Their grip on the rope loosened, tightened, loosened again. The vibrations that Chocky could read like signposts stilled and returned each time.
“You feel it?” the tourist asked. “Sound in the rope?”
“What, you can’t?”
“Vibrations. I see.”
Chocky laughed and kicked away, following the knots and turns of the netting. Following them he aligned his course through a three-dimensional maze.
He told the tourist about the early days, Squatting in the empty mine. How he got there, what he did. Some of what he said was true.
They heard someone scream in the dark. The tourist stopped. Chocky did not. After a moment, the tourist continued.
“Did you hear that?” the tourist asked.
“I did.”
“Do they need help?”
“No. Just tell me if you see anything, yeah? Keep behind me or beside me, all times. Don’t go looking at anyone with that glass face of yours. If someone comes at you don’t get nervous.”
The tourist laughed, for once. The sound was loud and gasping. “For what I paid for this suit I almost hope that they try. You are sure that they are okay? The one who screamed?”
Chocky did not answer.
“How old are you, Chocky?”
Chocky shrugged and spat. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Forgive me. But—are you a man or a woman?”
“What’s it smell like in that suit of yours?”
“Smell?” Pause. “Doesn’t smell like anything.”
“But you got a weak nose, like your fingers I bet.”
Then Chocky heard the tourist gasp. It tried to stop moving by grabbing on to the netting. Its momentum sent powerful tremors through the lines that sent Chocky spinning out. He gripped the netting with his fingers and toes until the motion stilled.