Bodyguard

by William C. Dietz

  A voice called, “Frank Stanton and Mary Tomari,” in loud stentorian tones, and the couple in front of us, a somewhat portly sultan accompanied by a willowy dancing girl, stepped out into the ballroom. The music segued, and the sultan stood with arms crossed while his more athletic companion treated the crowd to a passable belly dance. The applause was light but sustained. Then, long before I was ready, it was our turn. The voice announced our names: “Max Smith and Linda Gibson.”

  Linda, her fingertips resting on my arm, looked up and smiled. I took three steps forward, pulled the sword, and used it like a cane. Joy, already on her feet, curtseyed at the same exact moment that Linda did. No small trick while standing on someone’s shoulder. The two of them, dressed exactly alike, earned a roar of approval. We were already in motion when the next names were called.

  I heaved a giant sigh of relief when we reached the other side of the ballroom, checked to make sure no one was looking, and wiped my forehead with a sleeve. “Thank god it’s over.”

  Linda fluttered her eyelashes and looked over the top of her fan.

  “Over, my lord? Whatever do you mean? The dancing has yet to begin!”

  A rock fell into the bottom of my stomach. Assuming that I’d known how to dance once, the knowledge had been obliterated along with the rest of my memories. Sweat trickled down my temples.

  The next two hours were pure torture. I stepped on Linda’s toes at least five times, tripped on my sword, and dumped Joy on the floor. Nor did the humiliation end there. I danced Linda into a collision with another couple, spilled wine on her boss’s dress, and delivered five seconds’ worth of mathematical gibberish to the ship’s captain.

  But, just when I was about to declare the evening a total loss, a miracle occurred. The winners were announced, and we copped third place, right behind the juggling Rinaldo sisters, and the barbershop androids. Linda was thrilled, and hurried to collect our prize, a rather handsome chunk of plastic. It seemed that all my sins were forgiven. So, borne along on high spirits, and fueled by alcohol, we dropped Joy at my stateroom and headed for Linda’s.

  Even a pirate wouldn’t go into the details of what happened next, but suffice it to say that it took Linda less time to get out of the gown than it took to get into it, and I did what I could to assist. And while I would have been happy to join her in the buff, she liked the pirate costume, and insisted that I continue to wear most of it, minus the hat and the unwieldy sword.

  I enjoyed the next hour or so, and got the distinct impression that Linda did too. She had wonderful breasts, and I liked the way they moved when she handed me a drink. “I had a wonderful time, Max. Thank you.”

  I took a sip and smiled. “No, it is I who should thank you. Especially your feet…which paid a high price indeed.”

  She laughed, but it was a halfhearted laugh, as if her mind was on something else. Something that made her sad. I took another sip and felt my head swim. I tried to move and found that I couldn’t. Something, a drug of some kind, held me in a paralytic grip. I could see, hear, and to some extent think, though the process was slow and somewhat ponderous. I tried to speak but croaked instead. Linda nodded understandingly.

  “I’m sorry, Max, I really am, but we lack the means to erase whatever Dr. Casad stored in your brain without destroying the rest of you as well. Yes, our operatives had a long and somewhat unpleasant conversation with Curt. We learned all sorts of things, including the fact that while Trans-Solar doesn’t know what the good doctor stashed in your gray matter, they know it’s worth billions, and would sacrifice anything to get their hands on it. But there’s enough techno-evil in the world already without creating more. Think about it, Max; think about the things they did to your brain, the Urboplex where you used to live, the condition of our home planet. It has to stop.”

  I struggled against the chemical bonds. My limbs twitched ineffectually. I felt drool slide down my chin.

  Linda shook her head sadly. A tear rolled down her cheek. “I wish there was some way to help you, some way to restore what they took, but there isn’t. And by the way, no one told me to make love to you. I wanted to.”

  It was a nice compliment, the nicest I’d had in some time, but didn’t make up for the plan to murder me. Linda left me to drool, donned a robe, made a com call, and went about restoring the few items of clothing that I’d been allowed to remove. She had foresight, you had to grant her that. The skin-tight breeches offered the most difficult challenge, but by dint of such tugging, swearing, and lifting Linda got them on.

  The door announced visitors, and she ordered it open. My old friend Nigel Trask entered and stood over the bed. Philip Bey, the guy I had met aboard Staros-3, was right behind him. Both wore nondescript costumes. No wonder Linda wanted to party with someone more colorful. I ordered my limbs to move, and they twitched spasmodically. Trask shook his head sympathetically.

  “Sorry, Mr. Maxon…nothing personal. If only you had agreed to work with instead of against us. But it’s too late for that, I’m afraid. Philip, give me a hand.”

  Philip pitched in, and between them they managed to get me into a slump-shouldered standing position. I’m heavy, so it was no small task to drag me across the cabin to the hatch. Linda spoke, and it disappeared. I wanted to see her face, to see if she cared, but my head refused to turn.

  I thought they were crazy at first, dragging me out in the hall like that, but I was wrong. Passengers, most of whom were still in costume, and about three sheets to the wind, roamed the corridors in groups, and found the sight of a drunken pirate most amusing. Which is why the greenies were able to drag me through a lounge while the rabble laughed, and yelled things like “Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum.”

  The crowd thinned as we made our way down a series of little-used passageways. I hoped for a crew person. Someone who would question our presence and demand an explanation. The corridors were empty. Or so I assumed, since my view was restricted to beige carpet, followed by high-gloss decking, followed by unadorned steel.

  Coping as they do with zero-gee conditions, spacers have a tendency to print directional signs on every available surface, including the deck. The Regis company was no exception. The words “EMERGENCY LOCK,” and an arrow pointed toward the right, disappeared under my toes as they dragged me around the corner. A lock! They planned to eject me from a lock! I could imagine the investigation and perfunctory report. “…And so, with no evidence to suggest foul play, and no history of mental instability, we conclude that passenger Smith was inebriated, wandered into the lock, and cycled himself into the void…” A tragic but understandable mistake.

  Both men were panting by now, tired from lugging my dead weight a quarter-mile or so, and eager to be rid of their burden. “There is it,” Trask said, “at the end of the corridor. Come on.”

  Philip renewed his grip around my waist and helped drag me towards my death. I imagined what it would be like to hear the hatch close, to feel the vibration as the pumps started, to gulp air in a desperate attempt to prolong life, to know it was hopeless, to feel my lungs start to burst, to see the outer hatch start to open, and to catch a glimpse of the stars before the vacuum sucked me out. I screamed, but nothing came.

  That’s when three sets of boots appeared in front of me and I heard Sasha say, “I think you took a wrong turn, gentlemen. The lounge is thataway.”

  18

  “By protecting the proprietary nature of Project Freedom, and regulating access to it, Protech will earn excellent returns for its share owners while changing the course of human history.”

  From Draft 16.2 of an unpublished Protech press release

  The kid saved my life, there’s no doubt about that, even if her motivations were a bit clouded. The moment they were confronted by Sasha and two members of the Solar Queen’s security force, Trask and Bey pretended they were drunk and requested directions for the bar. No one believed them, least of all me, but it offered the security people a way to avoid conflict with the greenies, assuming t
hey knew who the players were, and I was betting that they did. The security types made a big production out of escorting us to our respective staterooms and admonishing us to stay sober.

  Yeah, like it or not, Sasha and her stubborn ways had saved me from a one-way trip through the lock. And that being the case, I knew it was simply a matter of time before the greenies or someone else tried it again. So, given the fact that the security people remained carefully neutral, I reversed my earlier decision and moved in with Sasha. It was a tight fit but a good deal safer than living alone.

  Though afraid to launch a frontal assault, Linda tried to tease me out of the cabin with seductive voice-mail messages, Trask made futile attempts to bug our quarters, and the Regis folks monitored everything we did.

  We, on the other hand, sent Joy on reconnaissance missions through the air ducts, watched entertainment videos, and ate elaborate meals obtained from room service. And, since it was difficult to eat without talking to each other, I allowed myself to be friendly.

  Sasha seemed to welcome that, and, with the big secret out of the bag, let her guard down. She wore her eyepatch, a Regis Line T-shirt, and a pair of shorts. The food sat on the bed between us. She told me about her childhood, and it sounded depressing as hell.

  “…So, even though I received training in the martial arts, I didn’t know why until Marsha called me into her office, and told me about the mission.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You call her Marsha?”

  Sasha smiled. “Everyone else calls her Dr. Casad.”

  I shook my head in amazement. “Go on.”

  “Well, she told me how a man had been captured during the war and used as a storage module for valuable research. Research it would take years to duplicate, and she needed to complete an important project. The mission was to find and bring the man back, but to do so in a manner that left him unaware of his significance, and fooled the competition.” She smiled wryly. “I’m zero for three.”

  I ignored the joke. “So, what did you say?”

  Sasha allowed her eye to drift down towards the bed and brought it up again. “I didn’t say what I should have said. I didn’t say that it was wrong, I didn’t say that I was horrified, I didn’t say no. I said ‘yes, ma’am,’ and did as I was told.”

  There was a moment of silence. Tears trickled down Sasha’s cheeks. Something broke inside me, and tears trickled down my cheeks too. I wiped them away. “So what will you do? When we reach Europa Station?”

  Her eye wandered away. “I honestly don’t know. What Marsha did was wrong, but she’s my mother, and this project means a lot to her.”

  I nodded. It was an honest answer, and a step in the right direction.

  Thanks to Joy, and the time she spent camped in the air ducts over Linda Gibson’s stateroom, we knew about the plan to abduct me well before the ship docked at Europa Station.

  Europa, the smallest of Jupiter’s four largest moons, was little more than an ice ball, its light-colored surface crosshatched with reddish fracture lines where water had erupted from the ocean below and frozen in place. Not especially hospitable until compared with Jupiter herself, playground for anticyclones large enough to swallow planets, and an atmosphere composed of ninety-five per cent hydrogen and helium.

  It was no wonder, then, that Protech had established its base on a satellite rather than on the planet itself, and selected the one that not only had an abundance of water, but, thanks to Jupiter’s tidal action, a partially molten mantle that provided the scientists with a ready-made source of geothermal energy.

  Since the station had been founded, financial necessity had forced Protech to lease some of the ever-growing habitat to other corporations, but they were still in charge, and kept the rest of the corpies on a short leash.

  Which made it all the more amazing that the greenies had hatched a plan to grab me right out from under Protech’s nose. A plan that involved snatching me as the passengers disembarked, and either killing or holding me prisoner, they couldn’t decide which. Bey, bless his ecological heart, was for letting me live, while Linda favored the death penalty and Trask vacillated back and forth.

  I opposed both plans, needless to say, and Sasha’s too, since it amounted to giving myself over to her mother. So, unbeknownst to my teenaged companion, I had a plan of my own, flawed as always, but better than nothing.

  Everyone watched the approach on the ship’s entertainment system, and we were no exception. The bed doubled as an acceleration couch, and we strapped ourselves in place.

  The moon was little more than a cue ball at first but quickly grew larger. It didn’t take long for the ship to fire powerful repulsors and come to terms with the satellite’s rather anemic gravity.

  Viewed from space, Europa Station was an intricate maze of solar arrays, antenna farms, observatories, storage tanks, catwalks, and other installations too arcane to identify with a single glance. But the single most noticeable feature was the fact that the entire complex rested on platforms like those that dot the California coast. Only larger.

  I was struck by the look of anticipation on Sasha’s face. What seemed strange and alien to me was the place where she’d been born, spent her childhood, and been trained…as what? An extension of her mother’s will?

  One of the ship’s officers provided a rather nasal explanation of what we were seeing. Sasha replaced his narration with one of her own. There was genuine enthusiasm in her voice as she told me about the columns that held Europa Station aloft, how they extended down through ice and semiliquid slush to the top of a seamount hundreds of feet below, and functioned as gigantic shock absorbers in case of a moonquake or other geological disturbance.

  I found myself watching her face rather than the screen, entranced by the energy I saw there, and impressed by the amount of scientific knowledge she had accumulated. Knowledge natural to someone of her background, yet hidden until now. From me? Or from a mother so strong, so domineering, that any sign of talent similar to her own was interpreted as a threat? My head started to hurt, and I let it go.

  The ship swung out and away from the station, melted ice with the heat from its repellors, and vectored through a cloud of its own making. A sign appeared and disappeared as vapor drifted past the external vid cams. “WELCOME TO EUROPA STATION—HOME TO THE PROTECH CORPORATION.”

  I felt a hand grab my stomach and squeeze. Here it was, the place where I would learn what they had stored in my head or die trying. I was scared, but eager too, wanting the whole thing to end.

  The ship lost altitude, hovered for a moment, and dropped towards frost-covered metal. Other ships shared the deck, including freighters, couriers, and some strangely configured research vessels, but the Queen dwarfed them all, and cast her shadow across most of the landing platform and a substantial amount of sulphur-stained ice. Our landing jacks touched steel, and the hull creaked as it accepted the unaccustomed weight. We had arrived. A tone sounded, and the captain came on the PA system.

  “On behalf of Regis Lines, and the Protech Corporation, it’s my pleasure to welcome you to Europa Station. I would like to thank those departing our vessel, and wish them a productive visit or happy homecoming, whichever the case may be. As for the rest of our passengers, this is but the halfway point in what I hope is the best vacation you’ve ever had. The ground crew is hard at work connecting pressurized tubeways to our locks, and the moment they’re done, you’ll be free to leave the ship. Please consult a host or hostess for more information regarding…”

  I ordered the screen to black, touched my harness release, and swung my feet over the side of the bed. Sasha hit her release a second time. “Hey, Max, this thing’s jammed.”

  I stepped over to the storage locker, ordered it open, and grabbed the bag I had packed six hours earlier. “Really? That’s too bad. I’ll tell maintenance to take a look.”

  Sasha swore, tried to free herself, and gave up. Her first reaction was anger. “You did this!”

  I looked in the mirror, poli
shed my skull plate with a hand towel, and straightened my collar. “No, I asked Joy to do it.”

  Always happy to hear the sound of her name, Joy climbed my pants leg and claimed her place on my shoulder. She was cheerful as always. “Sorry Sasha, but he’s the boss. I had to obey.”

  Sasha strained against the harness, hit the release five or six times, and fell back against the pillow. Her expression changed to one of concern. “What will you do?”

  “Find your mother, ask her what she stored in my head, and decide what to do with it.”

  The kid shook her head in amazement. “You’re nuts. Absolutely nuts. You know that?”

  I nodded agreeably. “So I’ve been told, although most people are less charitable and say I’m stupid.”

  She gave me one of those looks, the kind that turn me gooey inside, and said, “Take care of yourself.”

  I said I would and let myself out. There was lots of traffic, most of which was headed towards the C Deck lock. It was tempting to join the flow and let it carry me along, but I wasn’t that stupid. Assuming the greenies still planned to grab me, and I had no reason to doubt it, the lock was the logical place to do it. No, the crew’s lock, which was located one level down on D Deck, would be a safer bet.

  I fought the current like a long-extinct salmon fighting its way upstream and made my way to one of the more utilitarian lift tubes frequented by the crew. And, given the fact that beyond the occasional tryst, passengers had no reason to visit crew quarters, there was nothing to prevent me from doing so. I wound up on a platform with a couple of stewards. They pretended I wasn’t there. No small task where I’m concerned.