The Venus Belt

by L. Neil Smith

  Suppose, for example, that you’d stumbled across an ordinary light bulb, made of ordinary glass with a little stem inside supporting a hair-fine tungsten filament and a pood old familiar brass screwbase at the bottom with the usual little button of solder on the end. Would you recognize it right away? Sure you would.

  Unless it was five miles in diameter...

  The last time I’d seen machinery like this, it had been at the cosmic other-end of a closet on the corner of Colfax and York. A Broach. A perfectly ordinary Broach, big enough to pour both sections of Niagara Falls through, with room to spare for the Amazon River, piranhas, crocodiles, headhunters, and all.

  We drifted closer, each wrapped up in stunned amazement. No wonder this thing was making noises detectable half a System away! And there, a tiny, insignificant speck resting on the rock beside some sort of dwelling complex, was a sight I found even more astounding, somehow. A flivver.

  Well, more of a spacegoing bus, really. Lots of room inside for plenty of passengers. And Telecom equipment.

  Even room for the Voice of the Stars himself, Voltaire Malaise.

  At least that’s the way it looked.

  16: Firing-Squad Morning

  Saturday, March 20, 223 A.L.

  Malaise’s network velocipede was locked up tighter than a virgin’s pantyhose. I hung there from its door-handles while Lucy sniffed around for signs of electronic activity on the asteroid. The noises we’d been homing on had gotten intermittent during the last leg of the journey. Now the titanic machinery lay silent and deserted. And so was the conventional ether. I didn’t like that, it implied we were expected. But then I wasn’t liking much of anything these days.

  Unlimbering the Webley, I stickied up my feet and practiced looking like a crater or something equally unobtrusive. The surface dwellings had the hasty appearance of quonset huts, and there weren’t any windows—a minor break, anyway. Overhead, the Broach construction reached up like a cast-iron highway overpass, and underneath it, my imagination populated every shadow with boogie men. Hamiltonian boogie men.

  I signaled Lucy and sticky-footed over to the entrance, wondering how silently it could be cycled. Most of them make noises like a garbage truck in labor, but this, thank Vaselina, goddess of doing things the easy way, was a lot simpler, a single, relatively uncomplicated but well-sealed door, unlocked—for travelers needing emergency shelter—like they used to do in Alaska before the Teamsters and the Feds improved the crime rate. Not an airlock at all, which meant hard-vacuum inside, and that struck me as passing peculiar.

  Inside the corrugated hemicylinder, an eerie bluish twilight lay upon long rows of steel benches and hermetic lockers. Plenty of standing room, and at the other end, another door. The whole damned building was an airlock, capable of handling a construction gang in one big hundred-person gulp.

  We ghosted through as silently as possible—floors and walls conduct sound, too—until Lucy caught her antielectronic frock on a tool rack. Her muffled curses crackled through my suit receiver, but she managed to get disentangled without too much noise, leaving the snarled copper mess behind her. About that time, I tripped over someone’s abandoned lunchbox, and wound up bumping my head on the ceiling. It’s damned hard to tippy-toe around and keep your feet firmly glued to the ground. In a hundredth-gee, anyway.

  The inner door turned out to be a double one, I supposed for times when groups in less than platoon strength wanted to come in and visit the plumbing. Experiencing a few moments of worried claustrophobia, we soon found ourselves in an air- and light-filled corridor. The whole place had the unmistakably portable, temporary aspect of a pipeline construction camp.

  But where the hell were the constructors?

  I unzipped my face and followed my gun, Lucy treading on my heels. Why this joint should be so deserted—

  “Urrk!” I spun around, half-afraid I knew what was bothering Lucy. She was whirling in place like a top, while I cast wildly about for something or somebody to shoot—somebody with a bronze medallion.

  Crunch! For the first time in my detectiveship, I’d gotten blackjacked from behind. Dumb thing to think of. Crunch! It hurt. I turned groggily, waving my gun, and crunch! I took it on the forehead just above the eye, and crunch! I didn’t know where that one landed, but I seemed to be a lot shorter all of a sudden, realized I was on my knees, and crunch! I found myself wishing dimly that they’d do a more professional job, and crunch! I vaguely remember three or four hundred more like that, then throwing up.

  And endless blackness.

  ***

  They were making me watch TV, the bastards. This act with seals, and it must have been 3D like the Telecom, only a whole lot better; the seals kept slapping me in the face with their cold, wet flippers. Or maybe a dead fish.

  Or was I?

  The channel changed, I was watching the news. Pretty boring, except they seemed to be mentioning my name: “Bear, can you hear me now? You idiots, how many times did you hit him? Bear, pay attention! We’ve got the old lady, Bear. Who else did you bring with you? Where’s your ship?”

  So many questions at once.

  I blinked up through the blood dripping down my face. What, oh, what had I ever done to get Voltaire Malaise so angry? Wasn’t I rescuing him? Wasn’t I making nice, interesting news? Wasn’t that the smell of vomit rising from the seat they’d strapped me to?

  Well, they were making me watch TV, after all—probably Lawrence Welk.

  “For Alex’ sake, pour another bag of water over him. And watch it this time—this is a new sweater! Bear! Who else did you bring with you?”

  “George Strong-arm Custer,” I mumbled, marveling how it all seemed to make sense, “and the U.S. Seventh Cavalry, out there hiding in a crater. They’ll be here any minute, just in the nick of time—no, that was at the bugranch. Anyway, you’d better let me and Voltaire go. Give yourself up.”

  This rhetorical extravaganza generated little violet-colored sparks before my eyes, so I decided to relax and enjoy the shower I seemed to be taking. Abruptly things swam into focus and I was looking up at good old Voltaire again. Only he didn’t seem to be in quite as much trouble as I was.

  “Bear, I’m running out of patience with you. I want some answers and I want them now!”

  I spat out what I hoped wasn’t a tooth and waited until I could think a little more clearly. At some far corner of’my vision, I could sense a seedy-looking type leaning on a big gray filing cabinet, swinging something small and black and heavy by a thong around one finger. It’d be a little leather bag, I knew, filled with several ounces of lead shot, its contours matching the dents in my personality. I was going to groan, but I was tuckered out from calling General Custer.

  Malaise broadcast another exasperated expression and addressed the sap-swinger. “Look at the blood on this carpet! Blasted amateurs!”

  I remembered not to shake my head; it wouldn’t do any good, and it would hurt a lot. A second guy, the one who’d been slapping me with a wet towel, stammered back at his boss, but I put a hand up as far as the straps would let me. “ ‘Sokay—it’s my blood, I’ll pay for the drycleaning. Can I have a drink?” I peered at the System’s premier newscaster. “So you’re the one behind all this. No wonder you could never find J.V. Tormount! Mind telling me what ‘all this’ amounts to? You interrupted me in mid-detect.”

  “Get him a drink, Harry. I hate to revert to clichés, Bear, but I’m the one asking questions now. Tell me where your ship is, how you got down here, and how many others there are.”

  I took a deep breath. Somebody’d kicked me in the ribs when I was down, the rat; I couldn’t have fallen that hard in this gravity. I don’t know who loosened the straps, but I took a squeeze of something that warmed nicely, and looked around. An office, stark enough, but not as sparsely furnished as the rest of the place. Judging from the plastiboard boxes scattered here and there, Malaise was either moving in or moving out. I took another sip, not really caring which.

  “Malaise
, you’re gonna kill me, anyway. Do a tired old cop a favor and tie up some loose ends.”

  He plastered a concerned look on his face. “I assure you, I don’t intend to have you killed, not at all.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “We’re simply going to let you die a clean, natural-appearing death.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  He sat back behind his desk and steepled his fingers. “Still, I don’t suppose it’ll hurt to tell you just a bit. Mind you, don’t breathe a word of it, now. But first, who came with you besides the crippled old woman?”

  “What crippled old— Oh, you mean Lucy. Two flivvers,” I improvised, “our Stanley and a Tucker. If I’m not out of here in two hours, they’re coming in—and calling the Rangers.”

  He shook his head. “Try again—you expect the truth from me, don’t you? Anyway, you’ve been here far longer than two hours already.”

  “How time flies when you’re having fun. All right, just the one car. Our friend, a Dr. Scott from Ceres, is hiding out there somewhere, wondering about us by now. We’re the ‘asteroid’ that tumbled by—whenever it was. Check with your skywatch.”

  “I’ll do that.” He signaled to the towel-flapping flunky. “And have them man the lasers again.” To me: “Your doctor, if he exists, is going to need a doctor.”

  Well, at least they’d waste a little of their time and manpower. A small victory, but a meaningless one. “Now how about telling me what you’re up to?”

  Malaise tried getting up and pacing, but it doesn’t work too well in nearly zero gee. He returned to the desk, squirted himself a drink, even squirted another for me. I discovered a split lip I hadn’t noticed before.

  “It was the War, of course, Antarctica, Hawaii, watching thousands die on both sides every day. Realizing how deeply, fundamentally, inherently evil human nature truly is. And stupid, criminally, wastefully stupid: you know, the Confederacy could have turned its victory into a world-wide hegemony, imposed a rational, orderly rule, But would they do that? No! They’d rather go back to their Telecoms and liquor, their suburban split-levels and hoverbuggies, instead of finishing the job they’d started.”

  “Before my time—in the Confederacy, I mean. But it seems to me, the Czar’s the one who started it—he had ideas about a world-wide hegemony, too.”

  “He lost, which proves he wasn’t qualified to rule. I moved out here in 211 A.L., just after the United States were discovered. Things were getting tough for Hamiltonians about then, and I required a little more freedom to act. And allies—are you following this?” He glanced at his watch.

  “Sure. I even have some of it figured out. After you got set up in Ceres, you came out here and built yourself a Broach, determined somehow to contact various unsavory characters in my world.”

  His eyebrows shot straight upward. “You really are a halfway decent detective, you know that? We carried the machinery aboard that network newsbus, and yes, I piloted back to Earth—your Earth—myself. Let me tell you, dodging all those radar defenses was quite a trick. But I settled neatly into the middle of enough primitive orbital trash to hide myself, and gradually got in touch with your Federal Security Police.”

  “SecPol—and they’re not mine, friend. Why didn’t you just use an Interworld Terminal? Wait—let me guess. You didn’t want anybody seeing the famous Voltaire Malaise trafficking with—”

  “Correct, but there was an even better reason: your planet-bound governments took my message from orbit very seriously, particularly when it was translated into one of their own childish codes. My onboard computer cracked it in a day and a half.”

  “Very clever. So for once you really were the Voice from the Stars.”

  “A man who appreciates a joke. In any case, it appears that times are getting difficult for duly constituted authority in your world as well. I realized, as soon as open trade was initiated, your people would choose the selfish, undisciplined, hedonistic path the Confederacy has, so I offered your government—and others—a deal.”

  “Which was?” I laid the whiskey bag against my forehead. I don’t know how he got the ice cubes into it, but they felt good.

  “The obvious: Confederate technology and wealth for their personnel and power. They graciously lowered their radar curtain, and I brought back the first load of SecPol and KGB agents that very trip. Later, we acquired a small fleet of heavy-duty vehicles and began transferring people by the thousands. Can you guess the purpose?”

  I mulled that one, but came up temporarily empty. To keep from looking stupid, I said, “I’m going to get out a cigar and light it—if your thugs didn’t break them again.” The smoke stung, rising past the abrasions on my face. “Tell me how the brain-bores and the missing women fit. Surely you’re not...Oh, no—it’s just too silly!”

  He looked genuinely pained. “What’s too silly?”

  “Building yourself a hidden Hamiltonian colony out here. Good God, man, the frontier is expanding so quickly, your secret wouldn’t last a year! Especially using kidnapped women—for what, breeding stock? Pretty cold-blooded.” Which is what I was trying to be, keeping my mind off Clarissa.

  “Bear, you’re amazing—and so close! But still you’re parsecs away. We’re building starships! Genuine starships! Two hundred thirty of them, on your side of the Broach, where neither culture can detect them, using asteroid materials easily located from the correlating strikes made over here. You’re right about the women, though, nearly a quarter of a million of them, a hundred for every man. We’re going to grow out there, Bear, find hospitable planets, built up as quickly as we can, and then, in a hundred years, sweep back in our billions to bring both Systems under proper leadership! Imagine: an interdimensional, interstellar Empire!”

  I had to hand it to the guy, not the faintest glimmer of fanaticism in either eye. “Neat. Although not very gentlemanly. Did you know, Malaise, that the women you’ve had brain-bored are aware of ft, hating you every tortured second they live?”

  “Irrelevant. They’ll serve their purpose, and their children—girl children exclusively, at least for the first several generations—won’t hate us. We’ll be their gods!”

  “I get it: short life spans for them, immortality for you.” I had one last, wild idea: “I don’t suppose you’d be accepting any new recruits this late, would you?” Maybe I could live long enough to—

  “Hmm.” He frowned. “No, I doubt that would be wise. Another nice try, Bear. You certainly don’t give up.”

  “That’s my next move. When are you and your merry little band of sex fiends taking off—and why can’t you let Lucy and me live through it?” If I’d had more guts, I would have mentioned Clarissa.

  “Well, first of all, because I don’t like you. You’ve cost me personnel and wasted a great deal of my valuable time. Most of all, because I don’t want either Earth expecting us a century from now. I’ll tell you what, though: if you can survive until we leave, and providing someone rescues you, it’s up to you.”

  “That is sporting, Voltaire. What’re you going to do, bury me up to my head and let the ants eat me? Not too many ants out here, I’d guess.”

  “You’ll see, Mr. Bear. Our interview is at an end. Take him down and dispose of him in the usual way. I won’t be seeing you again.”

  “That’s the way it looks, Malaise!“ I snarled but I had to admire their technique. They left my legs fastened together (I must have weighed all of a pound and a half on this rock), tied my hands, and carried me downstairs like a victim of safaricide. My Webley was long gone, of course, as was my Rezin—not that they’d have done me much good. Maybe I was imagining it, but the corners of my little .25 seemed to be gouging my sternum inside the front of my suit. Either they were careless, or what they were about to do was pretty final. With nothing much to lose, I squirmed and fought the best way I could. Even connected once—fatally, I hoped—with my heels, right to the jaw of the sap-wielder trying to carry my feet. He floated away, a basketball-size blood gobbet oozing fr
om his mouth and ear.

  That’s when I found out what I had to lose.

  My consciousness.

  I came to, lying on the floor in a room even more bleak and depressing than before, a bare metal cube maybe twelve feet on a side. There was me, the walls, floor, and ceiling, a slowly-dripping utility sink.

  And a door.

  Carefully being welded shut from the outside.

  17: Durance Vile

  Tuesday, March 23, 223 A.L.

  In the movies, the hero would’ve jumped right up, rushed over to the door, and pounded it indignantly, shouting at the villains, maybe burning his hands a little on the steel where they were welding it.

  Movie heroes don’t get sapped down twice in one day, not for real, and not as inexpertly as I’d been. What I did was lie there on the floor, sort of fading in and out of reality for what my suit said later was a day and a night. At some point I must have zipped up my hood on the theory it might help hold my broken head together. Sometimes, when I was more or less conscious, I’d count the rivets in the ceiling, wondering when I was going to die.

  Soon, I hoped.

  The suit must have done its job, though, because to my annoyance I eventually found myself wondering about a couple of other things. Like where the light was coming from, and ditto for my next meal.

  I sat up sort of gradually and checked the clock display in a lower corner of my vision field, just as if I planned on going somewhere. The light seemed to be oozing from the thickly laid-on paint covering the steel walls, floor, and ceiling. Dark, irregular patches all around the door showed where the welding had scorched it. And “oozing” was just the word—a sickly shade of glow-in-the-dark toy-plastic blue. It might have been better to do my dying in the dark. My stomach growled. I growled right back. Another thing about movie heroes: first thing they want when they come out of a bad guy-induced coma is a drink, whiskey for PG through X, water for the Disneys. I watched the faucet in the galvanized corner sink, drops hanging from it big as golfballs, falling like feathers in a broad, funnel-shaped drain. Hungry as I was, the thought of drinking anything from that basin turned my stomach.