"You're doing everything you can, Victor."
"No I'm not. I'm not doing anything. I'm a prisoner in a recovery hospital. You're the one doing all the work. You're the one going to the press."
"And mostly getting ignored."
"Yes, but at least you're engaged. At least you're doing something. I've done nada."
"You've done plenty. You crossed the solar system in a tiny cargo rocket and nearly killed yourself in the process. You let yourself waste away to nothing to get here. You left your family and loved ones. You brought us critical evidence. I say that counts for something."
"I mean I'm not doing anything now. If no one pays attention, if no one takes us seriously, what I've done doesn't matter."
"Which is why we're going to the Lunar Trade Department and getting you released. You're healthy enough to walk now. Your strength is back. The adjudicator for your case has agreed to see you early. If we play this right, she'll throw out the charges against you, and you'll be a free man. Then you can help me. We have a few good leads, and if you're with me, if we can get you in front of the right audience, maybe we can get to someone with real authority."
"Who's the person we're seeing? What are our chances?" asked Victor.
"Her name's Mungwai. She's the department's chief adjudicator. I tried to get someone else, but she reviewed your file and insisted on seeing us both."
"Why did you want someone else?"
"Mungwai is a hard-liner. She's from West Africa. Don't speak unless she asks you a direct question, and keep your answers brief and factual. She's not a prosecutor, but she ought to be. She despises rule breakers."
"Wonderful," said Victor.
Three minutes later they reached the LTD, and Imala quickly led Victor through security and up a floor to Customs. They waited another ten minutes in the lobby before a young receptionist called them back and ushered them into Mungwai's office.
Mungwai was tall and slender with her hair braided tightly to her head in narrow rows. She stood at her desk, feet anchored to the floor, tapping her way through a series of holoscreens hovering at eye level. She didn't look up.
"Mr. Victor Delgado," she said. "You sure know how to make an entrance. In your first five minutes on Luna, yo
u managed to commit one count of entering Luna airspace without a license, one count of improper flight entry, one count of failing to provide entry authorizations, one count of interrupting a government-restricted radio frequency, and one count of trespassing." She made a hand movement above the holofield, and all the windows of data vanished. Victor was still wearing the cotton scrubs the recovery hospital had supplied him, and when Mungwai looked him up and down disapprovingly, Victor felt self-conscious.
"The 'improper flight entry' is the most serious charge," Mungwai continued, "since failure to comply with Luna traffic controllers poses a safety risk to other vessels on approach and the fine upstanding citizens of Luna. People around here get quite upset when you drop ships on their heads."
"It wasn't a ship," said Victor. "At least not a passenger ship. It was a quickship, a cargo rocket, a lugger. As soon as I approached Luna, your lunar guidance system took over. It was on autopilot when it entered the warehouse. That's why the trespassing charge strikes me as unjust. I couldn't have stopped the ship if I had wanted to."
"Yes, but you piloted the quickship to Luna," said Mungwai. "You brought it here. That makes you responsible."
"It would have come here anyway," said Victor. "That's what luggers are programmed to do. They carry cylinders of mined minerals from the Kuiper Belt and Asteroid Belt on preprogrammed flight paths." Victor had actually changed the flight parameters by hacking the ship's system, but he wasn't about to point out that fact now. "The quickship would have acted exactly the same once it reached Luna airspace with or without me on board. The only difference is that I was the cargo instead of cylinders. Surely you wouldn't have arrested cylinders for trespassing."
Mungwai raised an eyebrow, and Victor sensed he had gone too far.
"What I mean," he said, keeping his voice calm, "is that I could make a very good case that I was not the pilot of the quickship. Which, it stands to reason, would render the charges dismissible."
"I'll determine the validity of the charges, Mr. Delgado. That's what the taxpaying citizens of Luna pay me for." She waved her hand through the holospace again, and windows of data appeared in front of her. "You disrupted a restricted radio frequency. Are you going to argue that the quickship made you do that as well?"
"That was clearly my own doing," said Victor, "but I had no idea the frequency was restricted. I was being buried in a warehouse by damaged quickships. I was desperate for help. Every frequency I had tried before was silent."
"Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it, Mr. Delgado. This isn't the Kuiper Belt, where it's every man for himself and laws be damned. This is Luna. We maintain order. We're civilized."
Victor felt his face getting hot. "With all due respect, ma'am, free miners are not lawless barbarians. I'd argue that our society is far more civilized than Luna."
Imala cleared her throat, but Victor pretended not to have heard.
Mungwai looked amused. "Is that so?"
"In the Kuiper Belt if someone needs help, you help them," said Victor. "If their ship needs repairs, if they're low on supplies, if their lives are threatened, you rush to their aid and do whatever you can to keep them alive. And once you've helped them, they don't humiliate you or arrest you or threaten you with lengthy prison terms. They thank you. I find that more civilized than what I've experienced here."
"You have been given the finest medical attention at no cost to you, Mr. Delgado," said Mungwai. "Muscle-and bone-building medications. Rigorous physical therapy. Room and board. Your criticism of that treatment strikes me as incredibly ungrateful."