The Luna Deception by Felix R. Savage Page B

sleek in second-skin EVA suits, or otherworldly in Victorian ruffles. Hats shaded polarized faceplates. Lorna wore a candycane-striped suit with joke antennae bobbling on his helmet. Mendoza felt conspicuous: the SHARESUIT / FREE SIZE stencil on his chest branded him an interloper in this exclusive setting.
    The rich sought privacy outside, too.
    But the “Back Garden” of Bloomsbury bore no resemblance to the rubbish dump outside Cherry-Garrard, where he had practiced shooting with Fr. Lynch. Ye-olde style lanterns marked paths between rock formations and sculptures. Aztec idols, a full-size copy of the Sphinx, a replica of the grand colonnade of Palmyra, lots of Rodin ... Mendoza would have liked to take the audio tour, but he needed to focus on Lorna’s conversation, so he just had the garden’s soundtrack playing in the background. Sounds of whistling wind and crunching pebbles alternated with snatches of flute music. Mendoza caught a phrase from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.
    They came to a waterfall that oozed blackly down the rocks into a pond. “Liquid methane,” Lorna said. “They have to turn it off when the sun rises, or it would gasify.”
    “Wow.”
    They sat down on a stone bench overlooking the pond.
    “So as I was saying, Dr. Hasselblatter ate your stuff up like candy. They used your graphics as-is. That’s how good they were. Unveiled them this afternoon, and so far, the silence is deafening.”
    “That’s great.” Was it?
    “A few Earth-based feeds have already started to mock him,” Lorna said confidently. “Won’t be long until the NEO feeds pile on. I’m telling you, there is an insatiable appetite out there for things to ridicule, revile, and belittle.”
    “Then I guess our next step is to boost Angelica Lin’s campaign. As Hasselblatter fades out of the race, Lin will need to take up the space he vacates.”
    “It won’t be a fade, so much as a crash,” Lorna cackled. “You got any ideas that might work for Angie’s campaign? She has a publicist, but the chick isn’t coming up with much.”
    The surface of the liquid methane pond stirred. A string of robot ducks paddled out from under an overhang. Droplets of methane rolled down their metal plumage. There was a mother duck and five fluffy ducklings.
    “Aw, there they are,” Lorna said. “C’mere!” But everyone else around the pool was also signalling the ducks. They paddled over to a trio of women in bustled spacesuits, who threw crumbs of ice to them. Stray ice chips floated on the methane. “There are koi in the pond, too,” Lorna said. “They run on the liquid methane. It’s fuel, after all. You were saying?”
    “I think we need to acknowledge the daily realities of life on Mercury … speak to the needs of the colonists. The Wrightstuff, Inc. colonists can’t vote, since they officially don’t exist. But UNVRP has thousands of people on Mercury, and they’ll vote.” Mendoza reflected that all those UNVRP loyalists were going to get a shock when they found themselves living in the United States of America, version 2.0. He just had to trust that it would be a better life for them in the long run. “Angelica Lin needs to offer them realistic, believable solutions for their issues.”
    “Realistic? Believable?” Lorna scoffed. “Boring. People want to be inspired. Angie needs a vision.”
    Mendoza’s mind was blank. All he could see was a city the size of a mountain trundling around Mercury’s equator, gliders swooping through the hot twilight like birds.
    “Let me brainstorm,” he said.
    “Do that. I’m relying on you, Mendoza. Let’s go back to my place and grab a bite while you think about it.”
    ★
    Mendoza woke in the dark. He reached up, couldn’t touch the ceiling of his apartment. Waking up fully, he remembered that he was at Derek Lorna’s house.
    Their discussion had stretched late into the evening. The trains ran all night, but it was a two-hour slog back to Nightingale Village, so