The Golden Globe

"Hi, Uncle Ed. Can I come in?"

There was a very long pause.

"I never see anyone. No one ever sees me. Ever."

"Uncle Ed, I really need someone to talk to."

A shorter pause.

"Yes, I suppose you would. He killed my sister, you know."

"What's that?"

"Your father. John. He killed our sister. Your Aunt Sarah."

"I don't believe you."

"You stand there covered in his wounds, and you don't believe me. Oh, he killed her, all right. I have no proof, but I know. What are you doing, ru

"I guess so. I need to get off Luna for a while."

"And you'd like my help."

"You're the only family I have."

"Oh, don't appeal to family with me, dear boy. I've often thought of writing a script about our father, your grandfather, who you had the great good luck never to have met. But it would be too horrible. No, the very idea of family where our clan is concerned is an obscenity. You should know that as well as anyone. But, of course, you still love him, don't you?" Uncle Ed sighed, a strangely blubbery sound.

"I will see you after all, Ke

Sparky didn't, but said he did. Anything to get through the i

The door buzzed and he pushed through. Immediately he was blasted by a wall of heat and humidity. Sweat popped out on him, and in his already slightly feverish state he came near to passing out.

But leaning against the nearest wall for a moment restored his equilibrium. The room stopped spi

He was in a wide, dim corridor that reminded him of a museum. At intervals along each wall were recessed areas, like dioramas. He'd seen the same sort of thing at the King City Zoo, housing various small amphibians and reptiles in climate controlled, glass-fronted boxes. But these cases had no glass. They ranged in size from about a cubic meter to huge, walk-in environments. For that was what they were, and growing in them were the most fantastical, colorful shapes. They were mushroom gardens.

Back on Earth, fungi had come in a thousand shapes and colors. Presumably they still grew there. Many of the growths in the corridor had come from the Luna Genetic Library, and were direct descendants. Others had been modified, or had adapted to the low-gravity Lunar environment. Sparky was pretty sure no earthly toadstools had stood ten feet high. As to colors, he couldn't say, but these came in every possible shade and combination, from a luminescent violet to a pulsing red, in polka dots, stripes, waves, and overwhelming explosions, like spatter paintings. Some mushrooms were tall and spindly, others thick and squat. There were yellow shelf fungi Sparky could have used as stepping stones to scale the walls, and there were tiny orange and blue and maroon puffs like spilled M Ms.

The small boxes held single species. The big ones were jungles, riots of competitors growing alone or parasitically.

The light was very dim, but swelled as he moved along and faded behind him, giving him enough light to see by. He supposed these things grew better in the dark.

It was a living art gallery, but it was also a farm. He came upon a man in a white coat and chef's hat cutting slices from a green-capped giant and putting them into a basket. He was a plump fellow, and smiled and nodded to Sparky as he passed. He popped a piece of bright orange mushroom into his mouth and turned back to his work.

Sparky turned a corner in the semidarkness and entered a brightly lit area that had to be the kitchen, but not one like he'd ever seen. Alcoves opened off each side of another broad corridor, each alcove containing two or three people in chef's whites. There were preparation tables and ovens and all the rest of the equipment of the culinary arts—and art this most definitely was. He saw a whole suckling pig come out of an oven, apple in its mouth, and be removed to a wheeled table for garnishing and decorating. One alcove seemed entirely devoted to cakes. Great, towering, multicolored baroque masterpieces dripping with marzipan, festooned with fanciful figures and flowers. Some were being worked on, others had already been transferred to a wheeled table.

All the alcoves centered around the tables. Sparky realized what it reminded him of. It was like a scene from an old movie set in a big-city hospital emergency room, with gowned doctors and nurses working intently on patients stretched out on... what was the word? Gurneys.

There was another old movie image, too. A big mortuary, cosmeticians carefully preparing their compliant clients. Sparky didn't know why that image sprang to mind, but it did.

The place certainly didn't smell like a hospital or morgue. He passed a saucier, sizzling a brown, thick liquid in a skillet. It was a heavenly smell. He realized he'd had nothing to eat that day. The image of Amish corn muffins came into his mind and he wondered if he would ever have another.

Finished gurneys were being wheeled through an arched doorway and into the banquet room. Three very long tables were covered with white cloth and being set with the culinary creations. Again, something was out of whack. The whole huge room contained not a single chair. Sparky saw plates the size of garbage can lids, but no silver. Instead of glassware there were punch bowls filled with wine and fruit juices, and small robot devices with rotary pumps which dipped plastic tails into the drink and then delivered it by means of prehensile necks to... who? The standing diners? Diners who had no hands? Sparky couldn't picture the patrons of this feast.

Wondering how much farther he had to go, he passed from the banquet room into a dark, dank, sweltering place he at first could not fathom at all.

A ceiling arched high overhead, almost out of sight. Before him was a twenty-foot surface of government-green ceramic tiles, stretching to his right and his left. Beyond that was a placid surface of water, no more than an inch below the ledge he stood on. It was a swimming pool, and quite a large one. He'd never seen one designed quite like this, though.

In a moment he realized it had been converted from an old tank that had probably once been a part of the vast and complex sewage treatment system of King City. It was a big cylinder lying on its side. The water would be as deep as the ceiling was high, and there would be no shallow end. There was no smell beyond a faint whiff of chlorine, and no sound but the intermittent drip of water condensing on the ceiling and falling back into the pool. No diving board, no poolside chairs, no lifeguards, though the place was big enough they'd need motorboats to get to a drowner quickly. No people.

Were they growing something in here? Fish for the banquet tables behind him? Kelp? He went to the edge and leaned over. A faint emerald shimmer from near the bottom revealed nothing at first, then he saw vague shapes undulating slowly between him and the light. It was like looking down into an atomic-reactor core, the surface glass smooth, the depths crystalline. The occasional mutant five-ton sardine swimming by...

Slow, greasy swells distorted the surface and Sparky straightened and squinted into the darkness. A tubular shape was moving slowly toward him, just beneath the surface. Part of its back broke through and rolled slightly. Could it be some sort of whale? Nothing in Luna was more illegal than to produce anything resembling earthly cetaceans. A hippopotamus, more likely.