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East of the sun, west of Europe: A short story

Here’s another short story.

But most of all, just enjoy the story.

East of the sun, west of Europa
by Ashok Banker

Europa was beautiful when he arrived. Almost too beautiful for murder.

He docked at the ring at magic hour. That time just before sunset when the moon’s flawless icebound surface glowed with a transcendent luminescence, suffusing ground-glass camera lenses with a quality of illumination that made even the most ordinary face look special. It was perfect timing, but then again, he had timed it perfectly, just like he did everything else. It was the way he was.

He waited in the cruiser while the security bots did their job, perfoming a meticulous nano-scan. He wasn’t worried about them finding anything: he’d left all his weaponry back on the ship, safely parked in orbit on the far side of Jupiter. This cruiser he’d hired from the Maruti-Ford agency on the moonbase, deliberately picking their cheapest model. It hadn’t been a comfortable ride out, and he’d had at least one really bad moment struggling to maneuver past a meteorite when his lasers had failed. It was a jalopy, but that’s what his cover story demanded.

The murder itself he would commit the old-fashioned way, with whatever lay at hand. A knife. A curtain cord. A blunt statuette. He had done old rich women before, they were easy meat. It was gaining access to them privately that was the difficult part for most common murderers. But there was nothing common about him.

The monitor flickered on abruptly. Bot Bevis-XO, chief of security, informed him that he had been cleared for disembarking. He had only to step on the platform and it would transport him to Mrs Garbarini’s residence. He thanked the bot and asked for a few minutes to get his things together.

He went through the micro-shower, as much to freshen up for the meeting as to conform to security procedure. Skin tingling from the sterile gas, he selected a suit that was neither too modern nor too conservative. His cover was supposed to be a good but not great feature Lenser, more concerned about his work than his appearance. The virror returned a clean, sharp tri-dee image of a man in his late Forties, handsome in a rugged, world-weary fashion. The corners of his eyes and mouth tugged downwards in a universal look of infinite sadness. A man who had known disappointments, who kept his counsel. The sort who still listened to ancient late 20th century music in space trucker bars on moonbases: stuff like country western and jazz.

A name came to him from his own recesses of memory: Chet Baker. He had done his share of bar-parking, elbow-bending, juke-feeding and the name itself conjured up memories of trumpet solos backed by mournful strings, Gershwin heartbreakers, breathy vocals. It had spoken to something deep within his own nature, an overwhelming sense of the sadness of Being, and he had taken the effort to look up the artist. A stereotypical 20th century life: a brilliant career blemished by a stubbornly self-destructive heroin habit, decades spent drifting from disaster to disaster until a merciful end in Amsterdam, 1988. Definitely not a role model. But the music. Ah, the music. Cool jazz.

The soft light was pleasing, even romantic as he rode the platform. Jupiter loomed in the sky, dominating the view. During his research run-up, he had pondered the question: Why would anyone want to live way out here on a floating ring of metal in perpetual orbit? It must cost a fortune just to own her own orbit path, a little slice of space swinging around Europa, itself in orbit around Jupiter.

Then he looked away from Jupiter and the other moons visible in the sky, away from Europa itself, toward his destination, and his breath caught in his throat.

Suddenly, he knew why.

It was heartstopping. Beautiful beyond words.

The estate was a masterpiece of mock-Indian nouveau style design. Romanic columns and Grecian arches mixed incongruously with Moghul domes and spires, and Rajasthani pink marble and sandstone. Oddly enough, the whole added up to a breathtaking vista. Suspended in apparent mid-air-the struttings were ingeniously slender and visual-coordinated with the backdrop of star-studded space, virtually invisible-he had to admit it made an imposing sight. He could see why a rich recluse might want to stay here. He had seen nothing on the four other human-occupied moons-Ganymede, Titan, Triton and Europa that came even close to this aesthetic achievement.

The platform slowed to a halt before the towering facade. Too late, he realized he should have clicked a few shots of the approach. After all, he was supposed to be on assignment for Lunar Home & Lifestyle. He unclipped his camera and began to shoot as he walked toward the vaulting facade. Entering, he felt the atmosphere grow richer, more humid, and heard the sounds of birds and the gentle voice of water talking to stone.

A domestic bot hovered before the arched entrance, waiting to guide him. An artificial waterfall plunged thirty metres down a marble slope, forming a shimmering curtain above a Himalayan recreation. He glimpsed real marine life in the artificial pond and in the shadows of the undergrowth he thought he saw a massive antlered beast between two pine trees. A moose? No. A Himalyan stag. It must be at least seven feet high at the shoulder, he thought, with a proud head of antlers rising another half-dozen feet. A magnificent beast that he had never seen before in the flesh, even though his people came originally from Uttarkashi, India, at the foothills of the Himalayas.

He had been breathing in processed air through a SecondSkinTM cling mask. Now he realized there was no need for the mask. He touched the tiny release beneath his left earlobe and it retracted. He hated the damn things anyway-face condoms. The air he breathed in through his own nostrils was fresh, wonderfully redolent with natural scents and aromas-the smell of sweet water, green grass, flowers, an underlying pungent animal odour that was stimulating rather than offensive. It beat Europa’s thin, tenuous atmosphere anyday. It was alive, living air. Rich with the smell of life.

The bot lead him through an enormous foyer, past fountains, statuary and fossil specimens from a variety of Indian historical and pre-historical periods. Marine fossils from the hills of Madhya Pradesh, once a sea-bed in the millennia before the continents broke apart and reformed.

A fossilized sub-marine plant specimen from Europa caught his eye. He paused to take a closer look, lined face creasing in the hint of a smile as he caught the delicious irony of this ancient relic from the long-lost continent that gave this lunar world its name. He thought that Galileo and Marius, who had discovered the moon in 1610 would have appreciated the touch. Very classy.

This was a smart old woman. Rich and with a sense of irony. He hadn’t met too many of those: none in fact. He decided then that he would make her die quickly, with as little pain as possible.

The bot left him alone in an enormous room. The tapestried walls were lined with precious art and sculpture, mostly from Earth but some colonial work too. The marble floors, polished mahagony doors and high vaulting ceiling, showcases lined with objets d’art and antiquated pulp-paper books created the sense of a museum. But one entire wall was transparent, looking out onto a lawn of immaculately maintained Korean grass framing a large circular swimming pool. A startling touch of modernity that somehow blended seamlessly with the rest of the decor. Baroque Pastiche, he decided at last. And all obviously personal choices. So she had a sense of style too.

He clicked some frames, preparing himself now for the task ahead. He could be done with it and out of here in less than one Earth-hour. If only everything wasn’t quite so stunningly beautiful.

“I see you’ve started work already, Mr Prem.”

The voice was crisp, feminine. No trace of any accent, except the whiff of an Earth upbringing. And yes, a very faint hint of her Indian origins.

He turned, a smile on his lips, ready to begin his act.

And was struck speechless.

The woman before him was much younger than she was supposed to be: Definitely not a century-plus. And beautifully maintained. He had seen enough collagen beauties to know that her looks were natural, not the result of alteration surgery and expensive healthcare maintenance.

She looked and moved like she was thirty and still in her first prime. But after thinking a moment, he realized that a well-maintained forty-plus was more likely.

Her clothes complemented her youthfulness: a rich gold-embroidered Indian churidhar kurta suit with a sharply cut vee-neck that was definitely not an old woman’s attire. Neither was the glimpse of ample cleavage and the full, rounded Indian figure.

This couldn’t be the woman he’d researched and studied before taking on the assignment. And yet, it was. He saw now that she had carefully manipulated all her PR imagery to create the illusion of the ancient, noble hag.

But that wasn’t what had left him speechless.

It was the fact that he recognized her. Without the digital manipulation she had wrought on her images, there was no doubt at all. He knew this woman.

She smiled, brushing a lock of hair off her forehead with a gold-bangled hand.

“Surprised, Prem? Were you expecting someone else?”

He glanced around, pulse racing as he took up and rejected several options in quick succession. The house was bot-secured, virtually a maximum security grid. All she had to do was give the command and he would be meat.

His contingency plans hadn’t taken such a possibility into account. He had anticipated a possible need for quick exit, but not this. Not a set-up, a trap, an ambush. Which was what it was.

She walked over to the sprawling maharajah diwan and seated herself gracefully, adjusting her brocaded dupatta around her shoulders. She indicated a couch.

“Why don’t you sit down? You look like you need to catch your breath.”

He hesitated another moment, then gave up and went over. Sat down. Unable to take his eyes off her. If there was any doubt in his mind that he was mistaken, the look in her eyes and the tone of her voice dispelled it completely.

She knew who he was, what he had done to her. Everything.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s me, Arushi. And can I call you Alok? It won’t be for long, after all. We both know this is going to be a very short conversation.”

He managed to find his voice at last.

“My name is Prem. I’m here from Lunar Home & Lifestyle. My editor spoke to you, Mrs Garbarini, and fixed up this Lensing and interview.”

She grinned. “Still have the balls to try and whistle your way out of a tight corner. Haven’t changed much in twenty two years, have you?”

“I think you’re mistaking me for someone else.”

She laughed. “Drop it, will you. It’s me, Arushi, remember? Your wife! Although how you managed to keep fooling the law all these years foxes the hell out of me. I mean, how the in the world do you kill fourteen women-it was fourteen, wasn’t it?-in twenty years and not leave a trace behind?”

He was silent. There was no point in continuing the charade. But he needed to know what she intended before he revealed anything.

She seemed to sense his misgivings.

“I’m not recording any of this,” she said. “I over-rode security and shut down all surveillance of this chamber before I came in. Whatever we say or do hear is for our consumption only.”

She leaned forward. He caught a whiff of a tantalizing, musky odour. Bio-scent. How many women used that these days? None that he knew. It was considered too old-fashioned, too lunar. He liked it very much. It was arousing.

“If you want to kill me,” she said quietly. “Now’s the perfect time.”

She waited for his response. When he didn’t reply, she nodded and smoothed out her kurta, examining her hands for a moment. Her voice was harsher when she resumed, more direct, almost bitter.

“I couldn’t believe those last three were your work. I could understand the slow seduction, the carefully engineered romantic liaisions. Gaining the woman’s trust over months, even a year or so in one case. Then starting the gradual transfer of assets. The previous ten you murdered only when there was no choice left at last.

You had to do it. They knew too much by then. But I could see there was genuine care, you actually did give a damn about them. Or so I thought.”

He chose his words carefully: “You were watching me? All this time?”

She shook her head. “No, of course not. It took me seven or eight years just to get over losing you. Your apparent death. It devastated me. You-.”

She started to say something else, then stopped. She looked away for a moment, at the window overlooking the swimming pool. The light outside was fading slowly, the Europa night approaching with the swiftness of all lunar nights.

She looked back after a moment. Her eyes were dry. But he could sense her pain with the deep empathy that had made him so powerfully attractive to women.

She went on. “It was only recently, four or five years ago, that I found you. I was researching my new fiction. It was premised, coincidentally, on a psycho-epidemic of suicides among rich, single women. Call it subliminal wish-fufilment, if you still hold to that outdated Freudian crap. Anyway, the search results showed up several cases of women whose lives were cut short. But not by suicide. Murder was what linked them all. And after I did a lot more searching, I found there was another link. A man.”

For some reason he craved a cigarette. Although he had never been addicted to tobacco. “And what made you think that man might be me?”

She shrugged. “So many things, too many to tell. For one, you see, I had assumed a secret life of my own. Created the fictional persona of Babs Garbarini, the ageing doyen of interglobal romance suspense fiction. And quite successfully, I might add.”

He nodded. “You’re an interglobal star. Your fictions are everywhere, in every format.” He hesitated. “I’ve even read a couple. They were interesting. And you’ve maintained the facade brilliantly. Of course, now I understand why you never give any interviews or allow visitors. And why you live in this isolated place.”

“Thank you, if that’s intended to be a compliment. So as you can see, I knew something about secret lives too. Add plain old intuition to it. And I figured out that the man killing those women was the same bastard who had seduced me and then made me suffer the most traumatic experience of my life.”

He flinched at the word, and at the casual, almost unemotional way she tossed it at him. Like a knife thrown over her shoulder, without aiming.

“But how did you recognize me?” He gestured at his face. “If you were able to track me, you also know that this is a different physical body from the one I had originally.”

She smiled bitterly. “Did you think I’d be fooled by something as simple as that meat-disguise? Your physical appearance may be different–although, not that different, the norm for attractive males hasn’t really changed that much in two decs. But the way I recognized you was by your neural-net signature, Alok. There were traces of you all over those 14 victims–comm records, security records, etc.

Even the profilers knew that all those murders were committed by either one man or several men with the same neural-net signature. The only problem was, knowing it couldn’t help them find you. I, on the other hand, had the ability to attract you like a bee to a nectar-drunk flower. All I had to do was set up a bait that you couldn’t resist, and you would come calling.”

She pointed at him. “And here you are, you bastard. All dressed up to kill me. Again.”

He spoke quickly, sincerely.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Arushi,” he said. “You’ve got to know that. I loved you.”

“Loved me? You son of a bitch! You destroyed me!” Her eyes blazed at him.

He tried to explain the unexplainable.. “I had no choice. I had already killed two before you. If I stayed put, sooner or later, the law would have found me. My entire survival depends on staying on the move. On constantly changing identities.”

He leaned forward, wanting her to understand. “I use geneering. To change my DNA. It’s a very rare and difficult process, possibly only with a very few individuals. One in 6.4 million, to be exact. That’s how I achieve a total identity changeover. Even the law enforcement wouldn’t be able to prove right now that I’m not Prem Sardesai, Freelance Lenser on assignment for Lunar Home & Lifestyle zine.”

He spread his hands, indicating himself. “Of course, I have to download my complete mnemonics and upload it again each time the geneering is done. That’s how I retain my memories and identity through each makeover. It’s very expensive, but then again, I have money to spare.”

She nodded slowly, as if a piece had fallen into place. “That explains how you keep getting away with it. But it doesn’t change the fact that you betrayed me and left me out on Luna to die.”

“No,” he almost yelled. “I planned the accident very carefully. The skimmer was programmed to explode at a precise moment and in a precisely defined manner. That’s why you were only thrown out of your seat while I was trapped in the wreckage.”

He paused and added: “I had cloned myself several years ago, just in case of such a contingency. I used one of my clones, stowing it in the skimmer’s freezer. Between the time that you were thrown out and the skimmer exploded, I had just enough time to put the body in the driver’s seat and escape on a scooterbot I’d kept standing by. The law found the dental and DNA types matched and didn’t realize the body was ten years younger. There wasn’t enough left for them to get suspicious.”

She stood up, pointing an accusing finger. “You left me out there on the moon to die! It was just a miracle that those picnickers happened to come by when they did, almost eight hours later. My oxygen was almost gone, I was an emotional wreck! I’ve never been able to live on a lunar surface since then, Luna or any other. That’s why even now, I live in orbit here.”

He remained seated, keeping his voice calm and measured, offering rationality in response to her sudden show of emotion. “But you survived. Who do you think sent the distress call that brought those picnickers in your direction? I had planned everything, Arushi. Down to the last detail. Besides, if I’d wanted to kill you, I would have simply made sure that you were driving the skimmer, not me. It would have been easy.”

To emphasize the point, he added slowly: “Just like the thirteen others. Two before and eleven after you. If you’ve done your research thoroughly, you’ll know that with you was the only time I ‘killed’ myself. It was the only way I could think of. And of course, I never took a rupee from your account. If you need any other proof, that’s it. I never took the money, Arushi. Not that there was much of it. I left because I had no other choice.”

She stared at him for a long moment, as if weighing his words, trying to fight through her warring emotions and determine if he was telling the truth. She walked away several steps, and he thought she was leaving, it was over, she hadn’t believed a word he’d said.

But then she stopped, her back still to him. “Back on Luna,” she said. “Before the accident. We were working overtime, saving and scrounging every rupee, and looking for a good spot to build our dream house.” She paused, her voice trembling as she continued: “And all the time, you were plotting ways to leave me?”

He got up then and walked to her. Stopping two metres away so as not to alarm her. “I would have left you either way, Arushi. At least the way I chose left us both with some good memories. If I’d stayed around and the law had caught up with me as they would have in time, then you would have lost not just a husband, but your respectability, your family, your security, everything. And every memory would have been a bitter one.”

She turned to him. And the look of betrayal on her face wrenched his heart.

“I was pregnant, Alok. With our daughter. I found out when they were examining me after the accident.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. There were no words to explain that away.

She went on. “I wanted to keep her, but she died before coming to term. Some complication to do with the oxygen starvation I suffered on Luna.”

She sighed, crossing her arms across her chest. “So in the end, you did murder me out there on the moon after all. A precious part of me died with you. And hope died with Europa.”

“Europa,” he said softly, his tongue caressing the word.

“Yes,” she replied. “That was what we had decided to name her, remember? Because-.”

“Because we had seen that fiction, Last Night On Europa, and the Jupiter colony had just announced they were confident of atmospherizing it within five years, and we dreamed of building a house just as beautiful over there someday.”

He corrected himself. “Over here. Right here. On Europa.” He shook his head, amazed. “And that’s just what you did, isn’t it, Arushi? You built the most beautiful godalmighty home right here in view of Europa, just as we’d dreamed. And it really is a beautiful home.” He grinned wryly: “That’s why Lunar Home & Lifestyle wants to feature it on the cover!”

She didn’t smile at his feeble attempt at humour. But she spread her hands, indicating the room, the house, the entire estate. “And what’s the use of it all, without someone to share it with?”

“Why didn’t you marry again? You could have had any man in the solar system. Look at you, even today. You’re beautiful.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t want any man. I was still in love with you, Alok.”

He felt a catch in his throat.

She went on. “And you know how it is for an Indian woman. One life, one love. Perhaps in my next life, I’ll marry another man. But in this lifetime…” She shook her head. “And not after the way it ended. Even today, with you standing right before me, I still feel like a widow. Whoever said grief doesn’t last was wrong. It’s a permanent affliction of the human heart. Let it in once, and it stays forever.”

He was silent then. The light outside the window had faded to a deep purplish dusk.

The water in the swimming pool gleamed inkyblack-mauve, flecked with the golden reflections of stars.

“So what now?” he asked at last. “Why did you set up this meeting? You did set it up, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “I knew you would take the bait. Whatever you knew of Babs Garbini fit your victim profile perfectly. I was betting you would try to appeal to her maternal instincts, the son she never had and all that crap.”

He didn’t correct her. But she sensed something in his silence and glanced at him.
“Or perhaps you were just going to do a straight old-fashioned hit and run?” she suggested. Her tone conveyed her disgust at the thought.

“What do you want, Arushi?” he asked. “Why did you arrange to have us come face to face again?”

She walked to the window, silhouetted against the sunset that wasn’t a sunset at all, merely the dwindling reflection of sunlight on Jupiter as Europa turned away from its mother planet. Illusion against illusion.

“I don’t really know,” she said. “At first, I had revenge in mind. To call you here, confront you, and then have you arrested. I wanted you to suffer as much as I did all these years. Once I knew it was you out there, killing all those women, I couldn’t just let you go on. Romancing other women. Killing them.”

“So why don’t you do it now,” he said. “Call the law. I’m on your estate, surrounded by the best security money can buy. I’m unarmed. I’d never be able to escape. You have me just where you wanted me. Do it.”

She turned again. And this time, he saw tears at last in her eyes.

“Is that what you want?” she asked. “To be arrested and sentenced to imprisonment on an asteroid for life? Or to have your life terminated and your body organs harvested at a bio farm?”

“I’m tired,” he said. “I’ve done too much killing. Betrayed too many women’s trust. You were right about that, you know. I did care about each and every one of them. That was why I started the hit and run killing these last two years. Because I couldn’t go through with the whole charade of romancing, seduction, building up a relationship only to destroy it in the end. I wanted out. This was to be my last job, can you believe that? No, you probably won’t believe that now. But it’s true. This was my last job. I was going to quit after this.”

“And do what?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Spend my money, I guess. I have accumulated a lot, you know. A very large fortune.”

He walked over to a sculpture and touched the base. “Enough to build a dream house on Europa.”

He looked up at her. Their eyes met. And for a moment, the years melted away, and they were just Arushi and Alok once again, young lovers, husband and wife, their entire lives ahead of them, every day an adventure, every year an unmapped planet waiting to be explored, a whole galaxy of possibilities still available, waiting.
And then he picked up the sculpture and raised it over his head. She flinched, covering herself instinctively.

But he didn’t throw it at her. He threw it at the showcase. The one with the antique books in it.

The brass sculpture shattered the silicon-glass front of the showcase. Falling to the ground, it cracked the marble floor, a network of spidery veins rippling out instantly. The sound was shockingly loud in the hushed silence of the estate. A fraction of a second passed during which he could hear the blood roaring in his head. And see the 23-year old Arushi being thrown from the skimmer into the Lunar dust, crying out in terror. It was his name she had cried then and it was his name she called now, instinctively: “Alok!” As she crouched half-behind the diwan, eyes wide with shock and fear.

Somewhere in the recesses of the palatial mansion, he heard the alarms sounding. It was done. The bots would be here in seconds.

“Crisis over-ride,” he said softly. “You can shut off every system. But the moment more than a certain natural amount of energy is released, security switches on again. It’s a failsafe.”

She realized that what he’d done had been a premeditated act, not an impulsive burst of anger. She rose from behind the diwan, visibly shaken.

“But I don’t understand,” she said, staring at the shattered showcase then at him. “Why did you-?”

Before she could finish, the first bots arrived, skimming silently across the polished floor. They were armed and issuing warning commands even as they came. Ordering him not to attempt any violence against any human present. Or else.

He was ready. He grabbed a shard of glass from the shattered showcase and leaped toward her.

“I’ll kill her!” he yelled at the bots. “Give me all the money, or I’ll kill her right now!”

He heard Arushi gasp audibly. Whatever she may have expected him to do next, this was not part of it.

“Alok?” he heard her say again, confused.

He looked at her, keeping the jagged dagger of glass poised strategically for visual effect, but careful not to let it get too close to her. He saw there was confusion in her eyes as she looked at his hand clutching the glass shard. But no fear. That pleased him somehow. The fact that she understood he never really meant to harm her.

It was important that she understood that.

He swung the shard around in a melodramatic gesture. Screaming at the top of his voice like a maniac in a trashy fiction. One of Babs Garbini’s fictions perhaps.

Three bots fired a single pulse apiece, striking him in the head and the heart and the legs. At least two of the shots should have been instantly fatal, but as he fell, brain screaming with the agony of multiple laser entries, he heard her cry out:
“No!”

He lay on the marble floor, steam oozing from lacerated entry wounds. The marble was icy cold on his face.

Then he felt her bend down beside him, screaming a counter-order to the bots. No further lasers cut through him.

The bots hummed and clicked furiously to one another but kept their distance.

He felt her hand touch his shoulders, turning him over gently but quickly. Desperately.

He looked up at her face, his vision blurring.

“Alok, why? We could have made a new start together! We could have had a few months before they caught up with you. Maybe even a year or two! Why did you do it?”

He strained to get the words out. “You deserve better.”

He wanted to say more. To add “You were too good for me. Always would be. That’s why I didn’t stay the first time. And that’s why I can’t stay now.”

But his body was shutting down. Like an old Chet Baker trumpet solo winding down to the end, not pumping it up like Duke or Bird or the other guys did. Simply winding down note by note, beat by beat, pulling down the shutters nice and slow. Cool jazz, they called it. And the intense heat-scarring of the lasers felt like extreme cold to his screaming nerves. The things that come to mind when the world ends. ‘She was too good for me,’ Chet sang in a smoky blues bar somewhere on Triton, and he sipped a beer and thought about a woman he had truly loved and the life they could have had together had things been different.

She leaned over him, cradling his head in her arms, pressing his face against her breasts. Crying openly now. The dam released.

He imagined that he smiled one last time. Not realizing that it was more of a twitch and a grimace. And felt something digging into his back. The Lenser. His cover story.

For some foolish reason, it struck him that he never had taken an image of the house with Europa in the background. He had wanted to take that picture. It had looked so beautiful as he approached the estate.

Like a dream house imagined by a young Earth couple, foolishly, hopelessly in love. The future rising above them like Jupiter on a clear night. Magnificent, breath-taking, stunning. Like her face at sunset on Luna.

And then the light faded completely and he knew it was too late to take the picture now. Magic hour was over.

(c) Ashok Banker 2005. All rights reserved.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 19th, 2005 at 9:32 am. It is filed under Ashok. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.