Empery

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  “Would you come with me, please,” he said in as authoritative a tone as he could muster.

  As though he had no will left with which to resist, Langston allowed himself to be steered down the corridor to an unoccupied comfort station. When they were inside, Hawkins locked the door behind them, then gestured toward the single chair.

  “Sit down, please,” he said.

  Moving slowly, Langston complied. Hawkins hopped up and sat on the edge of the sink facing him. “You’re Merritt Thackery,” he said, leaning forward.

  Langston closed his eyes and his features seemed to sag.

  “You are, aren’t you?”

  Eyes still closed, Langston nodded. “I didn’t know that I was being watched, even here, until today,” he said in a half whisper.

  “You are. Not by me. By that man who caught you on B-deck. Colonel Ramiz, from the Defense Branch.” Langston—Thackery—opened his eyes but still avoided looking at Hawkins. “I had hoped I had left all that behind me,” was his tired answer.

  “Why are you here? Did you come all this way just to see Munin?”

  Thackery said nothing.“What, do you think I’m working for Richardson?” Hawkins prodded. “I despise the man.” Still Thackery was silent, staring at the floor.

  Hawkins frowned and rubbed his face with one long-fingered hand. “See, I keep trying to figure out why you came here, why a little backwater colony like Cheia. Somehow I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Munin is here too. And I keep trying to figure out what Colonel Ramiz was worried about. The answers keep coming out the same.”

  At that moment the first boarding call for the Cheia shuttle sounded through the comfort station’s speaker. “My flight—“Thackery said, starting to rise out of his chair.

  “Sit down. We have fifteen minutes, at least,” Hawkins said sharply. When Thackery meekly acceded, Hawkins continued. “You know, I know a lot about these ships. Not just what I say during the tours. I’ve read most everything the curators can dig up. But there’s one thing I’m not sure about, something you can answer. What if there’d been a disaster that left only one crew member alive—some kind of contamination, maybe? Would he have been stranded? Can one man handle a survey ship?”

  Thackery shuddered violently and folded his hands in front of his mouth.

  “It must bother you, all these strangers trampling through your ship,” Hawkins said softly. “Peering into the room where you and Dr. Koi slept—listening to the ghosts on the bridge and thinking that’s the way it was—”

  “What do you want from me?” Thackery cried.

  Hawkins flashed a quick, sympathetic smile. “I don’t want anything from you. I want to give something to you. I want to tell you that if Captain Ramiz is right—if you came here to try to take Munin—that I’ll help.”

  Thackery raised his eyes to meet Hawkins’s and stared unbelievingly into them.

  “I don’t think you could manage it on your own,” Hawkins said. “Not with Ramiz watching. Not without someone to tell you where to find the cutout box the curators installed to disable the controls during tours. But we could do it together, if that’s what you want. I can handle Ramiz. I already know how I’ll do it.”

  “Why would you do this?” Thackery asked wonderingly.“Why would you care?”

  Hawkins smiled wryly. “You’re Merritt Thackery. What more reason do I need?” But instead of warming up at the flattery, Thackery’s expression frosted over again. “You wouldn’t have left Earth and come all this way unless it was important,” Hawkins went on anxiously. “And you wouldn’t think of taking Munin unless you had a need that justified it.”

  “And what if my only reasons are selfish ones, if the only needs I care about now are my own?”

  Shaking his head, Hawkins said, “Whatever she means to you, it’s more than she means to us, to the Museum, Munin is yours if you want her—we owe you so much more. Will you take her?”

  For a long moment there was silence, and Thackery would not meet Hawkins’s eyes. “It—it was easier to leave Earth than you might think,” Thackery said at last, slowly, as though the words were painful, as if the very act of self-disclosure required breaking deeply ingrained patterns. “I don’t belong there—I never really have. It’s been a layover, a breathing space between missions. Tycho—Descartes—Munin—Fireside—they were my real homes, the only places that life stood still long enough for me to understand the rules.”

  Thackery raised his head and their eyes met. In Thackery’s blue-gray orbs Hawkins saw pain and vulnerability, a loneliness and weariness that he could not touch. They were eyes that seemed to remember everything they had ever seen in a life spanning half a millennium.

  “Will you take her?” Hawkins repeated. “Will you let me help?“Thackery drew a deep breath and released it as a sigh. “Yes,” he said.

  Hawkins hopped off the sink and onto his feet. “Friday is the last tour of the season,” he said, moving to the door and unlocking it. “Come on the tour again. I’ll hold a seat for you.”

  “As simple as that?”

  “For you—yes.” His hand on the door actuator, Hawkins turned to go, then turned back to Thackery. “If you could just tell me—where will you go that Fireside couldn’t take you?”

  “Out,” Thackery said, his eyes misting. “Out where there are no colonels to watch me. Where there’s no one that wants anything from me. Munin will take me where I can be alone. Where there are no stars in the sky, only galaxies—” Thackery’s voice broke, and he looked away.

  “I’ll—I’ll look for you Friday,” Hawkins said, regretting having asked. “You have about five minutes to catch your shuttle,” he added. Then he slipped out the door quietly, feeling for all the world like an intruder in the other man’s life.

  Friday brought both Thackery and Ramiz back to Viking. The crucial first step was to seat them far enough apart so that Hawkins could draw the line separating the two tour groups for Munin somewhere between them.

  Thackery had the first seat on the aisle, from which position he would be first in line when it was time to cross to Munin. Hawkins filled the seats around him with two families with eight children between them.

  So when Ramiz came to the counter and demanded, “Put me as close to Langston—that one, there—as you can,” Thackery was already insulated.

  “I can get you across the aisle and one seat back,” Hawkins said helpfully.

  “No. Put me on the same side as him.”

  “Row H?”

  “Fine.”

  Hawkins resisted the impulse to smile.

  For the first time in three seasons the tour seemed interminable. You’re turning into a skimmer, Hawkins thought, chiding himself. But he forgave himself his impatience, and even the flubs his inattention created, knowing the reason.

  Finally Munin was in sight. Hawkins waited until Viking was alongside and the transfer tunnel extended before announcing, “The first group will consist of Rows A through G—”

  For a moment Ramiz sat rooted in his chair by surprise. Then, after looking around the cabin as if to see who might try to stop him, he bounced up out of his seat and headed forward. But by then the aisle was full, and he had no choice but to bide his time at the end of the line.

  At the head of the line Thackery’s eyes locked with Hawkins’s, asking a silent question. “Go right on aboard, sir,“Hawkins said. “Follow the blue line and wait at the other end. F-5,” he added in a whisper as Thackery brushed by him.

  Hawkins had unlocked the isolation cabin at the end of the previous day’s tour, and he trusted that Thackery understood he was to wait there. He passed him through without registering a tally on his counter, then turned his attention to the next face in line. “Brought the family out With you, eh?” he said brightly.

  The counter showed twenty-seven when Ramiz rounded the corner from the main aisle to where Hawkins stood by the hatch.

  “Excuse me, sir, but I believe you were seated in row H,“Hawkins sa
id, blocking the corridor. Hawkins and Ramiz were alone, but the fact that there could be an audience on Viking’s bridge—in truth, Hawkins hoped that there was—required carefully chosen words. “Wait your turn, please. I’ll be back for the rest of the group in a few minutes.”

  “You little jerk, he came back for a reason. You don’t know what he could do in there—”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hawkins said innocently. “Now, if you’d just return to your seat—”

  “Get out of my way,” Ramiz snarled, placing one hand on Hawkins’s chest and giving a shove.

  Hawkins staggered back, but he had been prepared for it and kept his balance. His right hand went to his hip, and as Ramiz tried to pass, the hand came up in what must have seemed to Ramiz to be an attempt to ward off any further contact—except that Hawkins’s hand was not empty.

  In three seasons Hawkins had never had cause to use the small aerosol of Sub-Dew that rode unobtrusively on his belt, but he remembered all he needed to about how it worked and what to expect. There was a sharp hissing sound, and a narrowly focused jet of mist caught Ramiz full in the face. Almost between one step and the next, Ramiz slumped sideways against the bulkhead, his rubbery legs buckled, and he slid to the floor.

  His own legs shaky, Hawkins leaned back against the bulkhead and tapped the shipnet. “Bridge, I had a little trouble with one of the passengers. If you could send a steward back to the transfer hatch—”

  “We saw, Jeff,” came the reply. “Are you all right?”

  “Sure. I’m fine.”

  “Then go ahead with your tour. We’ll take care of it.”

  Hawkins waited until the last passenger of the last tour had crossed back to Viking before paging Thackery in F-5. It was an unnecessary step; as though Munin were already his again, Thackery seemed to know the right time, appearing bare seconds later at the far end of the corridor.

  “I don’t have long. I’m supposed to be powering down for the season,” Hawkins said. “The cutout box is under the panel at the gravigation station—nothing complicated, just turn everything off to on. The consumables reprocessor is still about a third full from when the curators moved out. The clothes in your cabin are your size, unless you’ve gained weight—the curators were very thorough. The drive hasn’t been touched since she came in, except cosmetically.”

  “Should I wait, or—”

  Hawkins shook his head. “Just long enough for Viking to get clear. If you don’t leave quickly, you may not get a chance to.”

  “You’re going to catch hell.”

  “For carelessness, maybe. Not for helping. I think I’m covered. Anyway, this isn’t that great a job,” he said without conviction. “I have to go. They’ll be expecting my okay to separate.”

  Thackery nodded and advanced a few steps closer along the corridor as Hawkins stepped into the lock and cycled the outer hatch.

  “I like to think that roaming in Munin, you’ll outlive us all,” Hawkins said as the door smoothly rotated out from the recessed position.

  “I don’t,” Thackery said bluntly. “Outliving people has been my curse.“Feeling foolish again, Hawkins turned away and reached for the lock controls.

  “Jeffrey—”

  Hawkins looked back through the narrowing gap.

  “Thank you,” Thackery said simply.

  The thwwpp of the hatch sealing itself precluded any reply.

  The transfer tunnel returned to its cradle on the side of Viking with a muffled clang that made the floor panels under Hawkins’s feet vibrate.

  “Hawkins to bridge. We’re all buttoned up.”

  “I make us one short on the count.”

  Hawkins looked up at the camera and shook his head. “Must have one in the john. How’s our feisty guest feeling?”

  “Still under. Resting comfortably,” the bridge replied. “All right, Jeff. Find your own seat. We’re about to get moving.”

  The great survey ship came clearly into view to starboard as Viking drifted sideways under the impetus of its station-keeping thrusters, then began a braking maneuver to start her journey back to Equatorial Station. Less than a kilometre separated the two ships when suddenly the stars fore and aft ofMunin seemed to ripple, as though the very substance of space were being shaken by the energies of its drive. The cabin filled with cries of alarm and delight as those with the best view came up out of their chairs, pointing excitedly.

  “What the hell is going on?” demanded Viking’s captain.“Hawk, what’d you do to her?”

  Part of Hawkins longed to answer honestly, to share the pang of jealousy that came with seeing Munin under power, and the deep satisfaction that proceeded from knowing who was on her bridge. But an honest answer could only aggravate whatever difficulties lay ahead.

  “Shit, I didn’t do anything! Looks like we’ve got a runaway,” Hawkins offered lamely, then tabbed the cabin circuit.“Nothing to concern yourself over, folks—just part of the show, a little surprise for the end of the season. Those survey ships sure can move, can’t they? Nothing in the Universe can catch them—”

  Chapter 15

  * * *

  The Far Bank of the Rubicon

  There is simply no way, Sujata thought as she waited for the comtech to establish the link with Earth, to adjust to this insane time-twisting. The journey to Lynx Center was nearly over, and she had still not made peace with the fact that the ship’s chronometers were lying to her. One minute was not one minute at all—it was two hours. While she slept a single night’s sleep, forty days raced by. From noon to noon was four months.

  Contrary to her expectations, her previous transplant experience had helped only until Wesley sailed. After that it counted for nothing. The other times, she had hit the craze and never had to look back. She had been able to say goodbye once and then break cleanly with her past.

  But with Wesley diving down out of the craze every second day for contact with Central, Sujata felt as though she were always saying good-bye, and the check-in had become something to dread. It meant painful reminders of what she had given up. It meant deaths and resignations and retirements, always without warning, gradually replacing the little world she had known with one she did not.

  The hardest defection to take had been Regan Marshall, who resigned at the midway point of Wesley’s voyage. Though he had consulted with her on his replacement, it still left her depending heavily on someone who was a stranger. She was beginning to feel like a helpless spectator, cheated not only of any sense of accomplishment but even of any real feeling of involvement.

  But even that was not as hard as watching Ten Ga’ar complete her metamorphosis from child to woman.

  The first day Ten Ga’ar had stolen a moment of the link-time to say that she forgave Sujata, that she understood, that leaving her behind was the right decision, and that she had learned how to be happy without Sujata. Her words were jarring, and Sujata was taken completely by surprise. In one day of shiptime. Ten Ga’ar had had more chance to work through her sadness, to heal the wound, than Sujata would-have in the course of the entire voyage.

  Still bitter that Ten Ga’ar had been so petty as to cheat her out of a chance to properly say good-bye, Sujata at first rebelled at being forgiven. It had taken her a few days to realize what Ten Ga’ar already knew by the first check-in—that they could not afford to sustain any emotion save a fond remembrance of the intimacy they had once shared. They were out of sync and growing apart, and there was nothing to do but accept it.

  There were missteps, too, on the professional side. More than once in the first week Sujata came back the “next day” with suggestions and solutions for problems that had been either solved or made irrelevant by the months that passed between one afternoon and the next. To make it work, Ten Ga’ar had to learn to offer Sujata a decision to be confirmed rather than a situation to be analyzed, while Sujata had to agree to surrender more of her authority than she had initially thought necessary.

  The sole thr
ead of continuity across all seven weeks of the run was Garrard and Evanik’s report. It had come to be the only part of the dispatch that commanded her attention when the link had been terminated. The duo now headed a team of fifteen researchers, who documented in both objective and subjective detail that the cultural shift Sujata had feared was continuing.

  Both the economy of the system as a whole and the budget of the World Council were increasingly dominated by military expenditures. The time was not far off when the military would directly or indirectly employ the largest fraction of the system’s work force. Questions of planetary security had moved permanently onto the World Council’s agenda.

  Those were the generalities: the specifics were equally disturbing. Eleven years ago the Nines had brought the concept of political parties back to global governance, coming out of the closet to promote Robert Chaisson for a vacancy on the World Council. Though he failed to gain appointment, Chaisson did gain a new platform for his views. As if to answer Chaisson’s charge that the Council was jeopardizing Earth’s security by entrusting its defense to the Service, the next year Tanvier initiated an ambitious and horrendously expensive effort to build ground-based defenses against a Mizari attack—defenses that Sujata’s technical analysts regarded as worthless.

  Three years later the Council authorized a special branch of the Peace Force that was in everything but name an army. The Exotics, as they came to be called, were meant to be the first on the scene if the Mizari attack took the form of an invasion. Their weapons included everything from teleoperated air armor to X-ray bombs and other nucleonics; their strategy embraced such concepts as “cauterization” and “nonstrategic personnel write-off.” The Exotics did not need to recruit—there were ten applicants for every opening.

  But that was no surprise, considering that the three most popular mass entertainments of the decade were jingoistic glories-of-war tales in which courageous men and women turned back the loathsome Mizari hordes. True, all three were independently produced (one with financial support from the Nines), and less inflammatory fare was still coming out of the Council’s edu-entertainment arm, but the fact that they attained net distribution at all was in itself telling.