A light blinked on Toad’s dashboard, indicating that the compartments in the Vox’s undercarriage had been violated. Hopping up with sudden inspiration, Toad snatched up a bottle of Jack Daniel’s that he had been saving for his own consumption and opened the cab door. Instantly, a dozen spear guns and spring-rifles were leveled on his chest. He paid them no heed, waving about the bottle and proclaiming the “wine” as the best on Luna. Opening the bottle and sliding the nozzle into his liquid-entry portal, the elder filled his water bladder with whiskey and sucked on the straw inside his helmet. Toad was very thankful that the bottles had been depressurized so they would not explode on the journey, otherwise the elder might have gotten hosed down with booze. After a short bout of coughing, which had Toad’s few remaining hairs standing on end in anxiety, the elder proclaimed the whiskey to be excellent wine.
“But I thought that the color of proper wine was the red of blood,” he questioned.
“Yes,” said Toad glibly. “But I didn’t know of your requirements when I brought this. This is, ah, amber wine. I will most certainly bring the red variety on my next trip.”
“Next trip?” questioned the leader while handing around the bottle for tasting. “But you’re suit is to be ruptured and you are to be dropped into the recycling pits to freshen up the organics.”
“Naturally, but think: if I don’t leave and return, then I will not be able to bring you more wine.”
“Why should you return?” asked the elder suspiciously.
“Ah, and this brings us to another essential element of trade. You must now provide me with some goods that I may transport back to New Lancaster so I might procure more wine.”
After some very light bartering, Toad gracelessly accepted a load of mushrooms caps the size of platters and a generous bag of colorful dried lichens.
“Don’t you grow anything else?” he asked, trying to keep the amazement from his voice.
“Very little,” the elder admitted. “The problem is the lack of proper radiation. We have a few caverns that are lighted with lenses from the surface, but the council frowns on these as they might be found from above. Besides, we have no seeds to plant other things.”
“But you have large, pressurized caverns?”
“Yes, we have ranches that run for miles,” said the elder, a bit of pride swelling in him. The whiskey had brought a slight color into his naturally pallid face.
“Very well,” said Toad, his mind no longer working on the problem of getting away from the outlaws, but now churning busily on the preferred subject of profit. “Next time I will bring more than wine, I will bring seeds for things that can’t be grown anywhere else on Luna. That way your crops will have great value.”
The elder frowned and made a gesture of confusion. “How can we grow anything better than the bases?”
“Because you are outside of their laws, my friend,” said Toad, smiling. Already he could see the huge profits in luna-grown tobacco and other commodities. Fresh vegetables need no longer come exclusively from Earth, as the company monopoly contracts kept it now. Toad ended up spending the next lunar day in the caverns hidden beneath the Teeth and in the walls of the crater. On the long drive home the following day, his eyes were glinting with the light of fantastic profits. He would keep his trade secret as long as possible. He dreamed of the day that people would start to call him Mr. Croft again, daring never to utter the word Toad in his presence. He could even see good reasons for staying on Luna now. His luck had finally turned around, just like he knew it would.
Behind him, dropped in the lunar dust and forgotten, were several hundred losing lottery tickets.
The Rollers
Devon walked through the unlit streets, stumbling on debris and muttering to himself. He shoved his grime- coated hands deeper into the pockets of his ancient trench coat and hunched his shoulders against the biting cold of the wind. He found his grandfather’s gold-plated pocket watch in his left pocket and fingered it gingerly.
“Five friggin’ more bottles of zinc tablets!” he complained out loud to the cold skies. Remembering where he was, he shushed himself, touching a knobby finger to his blistered and brown lips.
“Shhh!” he admonished, waving the finger from side to side in front of his face. “Rollers gonna get me!”
His muttered complaints continued, but they were quieter. It was going to cost him, it was going to come dear. Five bottles would run him at least three hundred new-bucks, and he wasn’t even sure if there was that much in his account. A hundred new-bucks could buy a man a large bottle of wine-strong wine-with maybe enough left over for a can of malt liquor and a loaf of bread. Devon’s tongue slicked up with saliva just thinking about it.
It was all those damned pods it kept having. If it would just settle down and quit laying pods, maybe it would have time to do its own friggin’ shopping. Sometimes he regretted having helped the alien out of its capsule and hiding it in the abandoned buildings he called home. Now it had him and all his friends running errands for it, and the demands had been getting worse lately.
“Might as well have a friggin’ job!” he said aloud, then shushed himself again.
The lights from the supermarket were just ahead now. The red and yellow special-offer holos were faded and curling, the dingy cinderblock walls were in need of a paint job. The place was an antique, one of the last of its kind in the area. No one with a computer needed to leave their homes to shop, not these days.
“Like Old Red always say,” Devon told the fireplugs and the shot-out dayglow streetlamps, “‘We can’t all live like the friggin’ Jetsons! ’” His joke sent him off into a wheezing gale of laughter that ended with a coughing fit and then more shushing.
Somewhere under his low-brimmed, tattered hat his blue eyes twinkled in the filth, and his cheeks crinkled up in a way that had reminded children of that outlaw Santa Claus, twenty-five years earlier.
As he stumbled up onto the curb over the clogged storm drain, he felt relief. He had almost made it to the antiquated electric-eye doors. Then he halted, stiffening like a hare that smells a redneck with a hot-barreled rifle.
A figure slouched against the wall next to the doors, almost invisible due to the blinding effect of the glaring sulfur tube lights inside the store. The only thing that had tipped Devon off was the orange glow of a stimstik that hung from invisible lips.
Reflexively, Devon shoved his hand back into his left coat pocket and clutched at his grandfather’s watch, holding it tight in his greasy fingers. The cool metal disk felt good against his palm, like a big old-fashioned coin. He knew that protection was in his hand, but he didn’t want to call on it without real need. After a moment’s further hesitation, he continued to approach the store, knowing that the Roller would be even more likely to move if he turned back into the darker streets, showing weakness.
The figure slipped away from the wall and swaggered toward him. Devon, mumbling a bit, kept his eyes down and shuffled on, his old papery-thin heart pounding. Again he considered calling on his friends right away, but restrained himself. It had been made very clear that help should only be summoned in the most dire need. Otherwise, there would be dire consequences.
But then the circumstances became considerably worse as the first Roller stood directly in his path, hands on hips, grinning around his smoky stimstik. Devon sensed another Roller coming up behind him. The blood rushed in his ears and then his chest and stomach hardened up together, hurting.
“What’s an old drunk like you doin’ at the market, ay?” asked the Roller behind the stimstik.
“You boys go home to your mamas now, before you get hurt,” Devon said, his voice rattling. “I was in the Shale Wars, you know.”
This broke up the Rollers into rough laughter. Suddenly, heavy hands fell on Devon’s shoulders. His vision was filled with a hot flaring stimstik tip as the first Roller knocked Devon’s hat from his head and shoved his face up close.
“You been coding in some money, haven’t you? Maybe your old bag sister from New Miami or someplace coded you some money ‘cause she felt sorry for your sorry old skin, am I right? And now you’re steering in for a drink, aren’t you?”
“Let’s steer him right into our office,” rumbled the Roller behind Devon, holding him. Devon kicked for their knees and tried to break their bone-crushing grips, but he was too old, too weak.
He got a glimpse of the second Roller during the struggle. The haggard, sunken eyes and slack cheeks made him suspect that the man was a user, and the raised sores like a dozen wasp stings that rubbed against his neck
