The Stolen Future Box Set

by Brian K. Lowe

Attacked by Night

  At the very moment the door had slid open, I had gathered my legs underneath me in preparation for a leap—I knew that whoever was on the other side could not mean me well—so when Porky lunged at me, I pushed myself away from the side of the ship as hard as I could.

  The rope on which I was suspended was not long, but I swung out far enough that he missed me on his first try. I quickly blinked away the spot in front of my eyes, and when he stabbed at me again I caught his arm at the wrist.

  Porky leaned out of the hatch, straining to reach me with the knife in his right hand while he held on to the hatch with his left. I was stronger, but I was also hanging in a harness by no more than a stout rope, with no leverage. He could not press downward, and I could not climb up. Had he merely wanted to catch me, he could have left me hanging, called for aid, and seen me tossed overboard, but he was in this for the thrill. He would see me dead by his own hand.

  But it was not to be. In a moment I saw the brutally simple—and brutally necessary—solution to my problem: I stopped pushing on his arm, and without letting loose my grip, I pushed myself once more into space. It was not far, but it was enough to unbalance Porky. He tumbled out of the hatch, and I let go.

  I hear his scream to this day.

  Fortunately, I was alone in this macabre honor; no one else marked Porky’s death. Clambering back into the ship, I stowed the gear I had used and made all haste to return to decks I knew better. I decided to remain in the Hold through my rowing shift, using the time to fabricate a plausible story. My situation was uncertain. My duties here might outweigh my rowing responsibilities; at least, I could say that was how I understood them, and although it might earn me a lash or two, I doubted Maire would let it go any further. On the other hand, if I were to appear on deck now, any chance remark might bring my guilt to my face and that would be the end of me.

  When at long last my shift-mates did come back, I found myself doubly fortunate: Not only did my status evidently grant me a certain grace in fulfilling more common duties—at least as far as Garm would admit in front of the others—but upon my failure to return at the proper time, Timash had concocted a story to cover my absence, a story which so closely resembled that which I had fabricated myself as to render any dissimilar details insignificant.

  I filled him in on the conversation I had overheard as soon as I was confident we were safe. I omitted any mention of Porky. Best if Timash were as surprised as the rest when he came up missing.

  “Do you think we’d better warn Marella—I mean, Maire?” Timash had not spoken to her since her transmogrification, and so found it harder to reconcile than I.

  “No, it wouldn’t do any good. She already knows that there is a plot against her—what she does not know is who, and I can’t shed any light there. The only people she can trust are you, me, and Harros, and she doesn’t know us very well, either.”

  Timash took on a guilty look. “Oh, I forgot! I saw Harros a while ago. He was walking around the afterdeck. He’s got some plasm bandages on his head, but he looks all right.”

  I sighed. “Thank God. I was worried about him.” I paused to consider. “We can presume that Maire will tell him about the plot, and that he’ll help look after her. No one will suspect an invalid of being a bodyguard.”

  “How much of a bodyguard can he be? He’s not armed. He looks like he can barely walk.”

  “You’re right. But this battle won’t be won through force of arms—at least not ours, since we don’t have any. We have to think our way through. The assassins know that Maire knows about them, but they don’t know that we do, too.”

  Our conference was abruptly cut short by a ruckus against the far wall. One of the rowers was attempting to bully another into giving up his rags. The victim huddled in a corner to shelter himself from his tormentor’s kicks while holding desperately onto what remained of his thin clothing. This was exactly why Maire allowed me to lord it over my fellows. I told Timash to stay put while I took care of the matter.

  I had intended only to seize the bully by the scruff of his neck and push him on his way, but even as I reached him he hauled back and delivered his victim a vicious kick. The huddled wretch whimpered in pain but would not give up his tattered prize. His tormentor angrily grabbed for it again. I grabbed him first and spun him about.

  He was a Thoran, as were all the rowers save Timash and me; I did not know him. I did not care to know him. At that moment, he represented to me all the strong—the Nuum, the Vulsteen, the Dark Lady’s crew—who had wreaked their will upon the weak—Thorans, rowers, and me—since I arrived in this godforsaken century. When he saw me his eyes went wide and his wet lips began to blubber in fear. He wanted desperately to form the words that might save him from his just fate, but I never gave him the chance.

  Slowly and methodically, I beat him. For Hana, I beat him. For Porky, I beat him. And for that nameless little mass of rags, I beat him even more. The rest of them watched, not the way they had watched me fight Skull, with bated anticipation, but with the horrified fascination of a man witnessing a landslide burying a distant village.

  I was very careful not to kill him. That was outside the bounds. I backhanded him as often as I used my fists, so that the blows that did not land with brute force enough to fell him nonetheless blasted him with my contempt. In the end it was not nearly the beating I had intended to administer when first I clapped hands on him. It had been transformed from my own just vengeance into a horrific form of theater. When I was done, in what was probably only a few minutes, I let him lie in his own blood. No one approached him, either to help or to harm. The look in my eye assured that no one would.

  “That,” I said evenly, pointing to the corner where his former victim still cowered, “will never happen again.”

  The unfortunate I had rescued covered his eyes and cowered when I approached. It may have been an act—I had seen him watching me through his rags—but it suited me. If he was an actor, I was the director.

  “Who are you, old man?” I asked.

  He uncovered himself before he spoke, perhaps as a sign of rude respect.

  “Wince, sir.” Then he bowed his head again as though expecting new blows. I recognized him, now that I saw his face. Wince had been the man Timash had interrogated the other day when we awoke to find our clothes stolen. He was one of the periphery of men who, although sentenced as rowers, were completely unfit for the job. As far as I could tell, even Garm was content to leave them be, devolving their rowing duties onto someone else.

  “Buck up, Wince,” I said as I might have to a newly-arrived private a million years ago. “Nobody’s going to bother you now. Neither you nor anyone else.”

  Wince muttered something that might have been thanks, or a blessing, or just indigestion. I left it at that. Both he and his attacker had played their roles. I was finished with them, but later I noticed that Wince and several of the other “borderline” cases had moved their sleeping spots rather closer to my own.

  As I walked back to where Timash waited—even he had not dared interfere with my lawgiving—I heard angry, low voices across the room where Skull and a few of his hangers-on still congregated. One of them was remonstrating with him, but I could not tell what they were saying. Skull put an end to the argument with a few violent words and an emphatic gesture. He looked at me, and I met his gaze, but he said nothing and turned back to his fellows.

  Astonishingly, it was the next morning before anyone seemed to realize for sure that Porky was not on the Dark Lady. Even then it seemed not to create the storm I had feared, due evidently to Porky’s lack of universal regard among the crew. Rumors of card games he had won too easily not only explained this feeling but also contributed heavily to the most popular theories as to why he was no longer with us. In any case, his disappearance had been noticed so far after the fact that no one would think to link to it any unexplained absence of mine.

  I grew more bold in my explorations of the ship. As long as I sta
yed off the deck and out of the control areas, no one objected. I do not know if this was due to my slightly elevated status or just because none of the rowers had ever bothered to leave the Hold before, but I welcomed the opportunity to familiarize myself with my surroundings. If ever again arose the necessity to trespass on forbidden ground, I wanted to know my way about.

  Nowhere, however, did I find a trace of the Library or a clue as to its whereabouts. I had to conclude that it was in someone’s possession, probably the captain’s. Why I had not been summarily seized I did not know, unless it were due to my rapidly-fading Nuum disguise. Time, immersion, dirt, and hazardous travel had all scourged my formerly red hair; it was quickly reverting to its natural yellow, and my beard was growing out as well. I was plainly not a redhead, as I had pretended, but since none marked upon it and there was nothing I could do to prevent it, I shrugged and let Nature take her course.

  When I was not seeking the Library, rowing, or sleeping, Timash and I were concocting and discarding plans to aid the captain in the event of another attempt on her life—assuming that we were in any position to help her. Harros I had seen walking the deck with her on occasion. He waved, but we never spoke and if he was destined to take his place on the oar benches, it was not made known to me.

  “I would’ve thought that if they were going to do something, they’d’ve done it by now,” Timash whispered to me one night as the rest of the men were scattered about wrapped in their blankets. Some moaned in their sleep; it was a sound you either became used to or you persuaded the poor devil to be quiet. It reminded me of the trenches, but at least here I was dry. “The way you described that conversation you overheard—” he lowered his voice even further— “I thought they were getting ready to move.”

  “I think they were,” I hissed. “Perhaps Porky’s death put them off their plan.”

  “You think he was one of them?”

  I could feel the heat of his gaze in the dark. I cursed myself for a fool, forgetting that I had not told him what I knew of Porky’s last moments. Even now there might be some advantage to his ignorance.

  “It makes sense,” I said next to his ear. “It’s too big a coincidence otherwise.”

  There was a silence, and then: “You know, if I was planning something, I’d be watching us—I mean you and me. We came on board with Maire. There’s no telling what she might have told us. For all they know we could’ve smuggled guns on board.”

  I thought that unlikely, since Harros and I had been unconscious, but he had a point. Could the plotters afford to ignore us? And if not, what would they be doing?

  Nearby a man coughed in his sleep. Suddenly the dark was filled with menacing phantoms, assassins hunting our blood while their comrades played Macbeth on the night-cloaked upper decks. Placing a finger over Timash’s lips, I quietly led him outside to the corridor.

  “The only way to watch us in the Hold would be to have one of the men spy on us,” I explained. “Out here, since you and I talk mostly with spoken words instead of telepathy, they won’t be able to eavesdrop.”

  “But who would they use? Skull?”

  I shook my head impatiently. “No, not Skull. He wouldn’t be malleable; he’d want something in return. Besides, Skull is never near me. They would need someone who could stay nearby but never be noticed. Someone inconspicuous, on the periphery.”

  The light dawned in my friend’s eyes. “Someone on the periphery?”

  As I ducked back inside the Hold, my quarry tried to hunker down and feign sleep, but his mental activity gave him away. It stood out among the real sleepers’ like the beam from a lighthouse. I clamped one hand over his mouth and dragged him outside, pinning him against a bulkhead.

  “Who are they?”

  Wince’s gaze jumped back and forth between Timash’s face and my own. Neither seemed to offer the solace he sought. His thin tongue rubbed his papery lips.

  “They’ll kill me! They’ll throw me over the side like they did Porky!”

  “They killed Porky?” Timash demanded.

  Wince nodded rapidly. “They musta! He was in it with ‘em…”

  Confusion to the enemy, I thought. “Listen to me, Wince. If they catch you, they’ll toss you overboard. But what do you think the gang inside would do if I told them you were a spy?”

  Even in the dim light I could see his face pale. We towered over him.

  “You can’t! That—that’s your job…you gotta protect us! The captain said so!” He was trembling, almost crying.

  I laughed softly. “The captain’s the one they’re planning to kill, Wince… Do you think she’s going to care what happens to you?” I stole a meaningful glance toward the door to the Hold. “If I go back in there, the boys are going to throw you off the ship—one piece at a time.”

  Timash bared his teeth. That was enough.

  “All right! They’re gonna do it tonight! Midnight! Just don’t tell ‘em I told you!”

  “Who?”

  “Durrn! Durrn and Garm and some of the others! Maybe six, eight at most. Please don’t tell ‘em I told you.”

  I ignored the little traitor. Turning to Timash, I said:

  “Stay here with him to make sure he doesn’t leave. I’ve go to warn Maire and Harros. If they see she’s on guard, they’ll abort the plan and we can figure out what to do before they try again.”

  Knowing Timash, he would have argued if I gave him the time, so I did not. The fastest way reach Maire’s cabin was not the way Garm had taken me, but across the deck. I climbed the nearest ladder so fast in the scant light of the ship’s lamps it was a wonder I didn’t dash my brains out on the ceiling.

  Even that seemed bright in comparison to the deck, where the stars and moon were blanked out by a thick layer of upper-level clouds. The lamps here were few and far between, but since I had never walked the deck at night before I did not know if it was because they were designed that way, or if the assassins—mutineers, really—had turned them off. I made what haste I could in the dark, relying on my ears and my mind to detect any lookouts left to deal with unwitting witnesses.

  I was at the foot of the stairs leading to the afterdeck when I heard a faint sound behind me. I froze, but it was not repeated. I put my foot on the step—and was suddenly struck from behind!

  Some inner sense warned me at the last instant, and I ducked, taking an otherwise fatal blow on my shoulder. Blindly I rushed my opponent, but he sidestepped, tripping me up. Off-balance, I whirled and my spine slammed into the railing. My head snapped backward and encountered nothing—the force field had been turned off! Nothing but the railing kept me from following Porky those last five thousand feet to the ground.

  Before I could clear my head, two hands grabbed me by the throat, cutting off my air and bending me back over the edge.

  “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, but that damned ape of yours would never leave you alone! Farewell, Charles!”

  The fingers tightened around my windpipe—the fingers of a man who knew my real name—and who spoke English!

  Chapter 39

  Mutiny

  I knew that whispered voice—through the blood roaring in my ears, I knew it, but its low hiss disguised it and the onrushing darkness of death threatened to crash down on me in a wave so high that no other thought could be entertained but to focus on the glimmering, flickering candlelight that was my own mortality.

  With desperate strength I struck back, but my foeman was no spindly Vulsteen or strength-deprived Nuum, but a creature with arms as powerful as those of any rower on this ship and fingers that choked away my air and my life. Low on my throat, they triggered my gag reflex over and over, what oxygen had been trapped inside me bursting against my blocked windpipe like an insane case of hiccups. I was convulsing with each aborted breath; the blackness of the night actually brightening as purple and blue inexorably filled my eyes with visions of asphyxiation. Still I beat fruitlessly against his body and arms, but with each passing second my blows wer
e fading…

  And then he was gone.

  For long moments, retching and gasping, I could do nothing, and still the roaring in ears would not stop—but that was not what I heard. Gulping down the last remnants of my bile with all the precious air I could swallow, I looked up in time to see to see a snarling Timash charging—

  —Harros!

  His own lips drew back in feral anger as he climbed to his feet, braced against the wall of the aft compartments. His eyes glistened in the intermittent moonlight like a cat’s. He sidestepped Timash’s rush quicker than I had ever seen him move. Timash slammed into the wall and bounced back, stunned. Following up the advantage, Harros’ hand flashed out in a chopping motion, and my anthropoid friend dropped to the deck.

  My attacker stepped around the prone body at his feet almost with a dancer’s delicacy. “That was easier than I thought. If I’d known he was that fragile, Charles, I would have killed you a long time ago.”

  Nothing about him reflected the man I remembered. Before he had loomed, almost too big a man for his own body, bulling his way along by sheer size. Now he radiated a cold confidence that made him appear more compact and sure. Every move was measured. I knew he had been sent to kill me before he said another word.

  He wasn’t a Nuum—and he wasn’t Thoran. He was like me. He was from Earth.

  Even with his face wreathed in shadow, I could see the curved white line of his teeth.

  “Very good, Charles. How satisfying to know that all that time they put into making me up didn’t go to waste.” He would not let my questions reach my tongue. “Oh, yes, they made me up all right. After you sent the last of the time cops running back to the 23rd century with their tails between their legs, the department knew they had someone extraordinary on their hands. They spent fifty years getting me right—six generations of clones cultivated to create the best assassin who ever lived. Me.”

  “Someone will hear the noise and come to investigate,” I blurted. It wasn’t what I had intended to say. That seemed to confuse him.