by Janet Morris
You could never tell what people would do under stress. She'd overseen enough busts of contraband runners to know that.
She walked stolidly onward, feeling every footfall against the composite apron jar her spine. A part of her was relieved to have gotten this far. A part of her was afraid she wouldn't get much farther.
After all this, if South didn't let her come aboard, she'd look unbearably foolish.
Her hands were empty, held conspicuously out from her sides. She kept walking. She couldn't possibly present a threatening picture to anyone remotely sane.
But then, she'd seen South's profile. There was some question as to whether he met the standard of sanity as Threshold defined it.
She was less than five feet from the ancient air lock, looking for a button to push to open it from outside, when it gave a great, gusty sigh and ratcheted open.
Now was the last moment at which she could break and run. She thought of Reice and his sharpshooters, watching her every move. She thought of the negotiating team, still on their lunch break. If this didn't work, she'd be in line for a strong reprimand. If she was in any condition to receive one.
She climbed up into the ship and the past surrounded her.
The air lock shut behind her with a clang. She was in a dark closet. She reached out her hands and touched the inner lock. A red light came on. Then it turned green.
She saw a lit arrow and she pushed it.
The inner lock split and drew back, revealing the pilot, just zipping his coveralls.
He held out his hand and she took it. "Joe South," he said.
"Riva Lowe," she said.
South's face was tired and there was a mixture of hope and suspicion on it, but beneath that was an almost puppylike pleasure at seeing another human being who wasn't overtly threatening.
He dropped his gaze and his head. "Welcome aboard. Birdy, shut things up tight again."
He was talking to the ship, she realized. The lock at her back snapped shut. The lights flickered, then came back on. She smelled canned air and South's nervousness.
He rubbed the back of his neck and gestured forward: "Flight deck. I don't suppose there's room for us to talk up there." He indicated the area they were standing in: "Here's no place to sit, either. You want to come back to my bunk?"
"That will be fine," she said, acutely aware that this was the same man she'd seen pacing the interrogation cell in the station house.
"I better go first. Watch your step."
The ship was tiny inside. It must be mostly drives and electronics. She saw racks of equipment that she couldn't really recognize. She saw two antiquated space suits. She heard him say, "Careful, now," and saw that the bulkhead bore the legend Step up.
She did, and followed him down a dimly lit corridor, which veered sharply and ended in a small cabin.
Here was the pillow she'd seen. A bunk/cubbyhole studded with a redundant control system and some sort of physiology support package took up most of the space. There was a shelf with compartments that must be the galley. A door at the rear said HEAD.
"You can sit." He motioned to the bunk. "I'll stand."
Lowe said, "Thank you," and sat primly. Craning her neck, she could see that the bunk had a transparent seal that would come down in certain circumstances to isolate it from the rest of the ship. She searched her historical knowledge but couldn't remember what it might be: an early sleeper for jump, or just a secondary survival system if the main life support went down.
South was watching her. "Different, huh?"
"Different, yes."
"Everything's different . . ." He bit his lip and rubbed his jaw, then leaned against the galley shelf. They were so close she could have reached out and touched his chest.
"I'm sorry," she blurted, "that you've had such a hard time." 'Time' probably wasn't the best choice of words, either. "We'll get this sorted out. That's why I'm here."
"And you've got the rank to do that. It's good to talk to somebody who does. I'm sorry, really I am ... but I couldn't get anybody to listen to me."
"I know. You Relics are a real problem." That sounded awful. "Sit beside me." She patted the bunk.
He shook his head. "Birdy'll get all worked up, the way I'm torqued."
She had no idea what he meant. "We can solve this if you'll come to my office. Let everyone see that you're reasonable."
"I need to stay with my ship. I was out there. It doesn't make any sense to me. I just want to get on with my mission."
"Please, Captain South, believe me, you'll not be welcome on Earth. Earth is very restricted. Earth animals and plants are very precious, now. Only a few people live there, park rangers and behaviorists and ecologists. . . . There's no society there that resembles your old one even as much as Threshold."
"What about the Earth station?"
"Consolidated Space Command is nothing like the service you still feel allegiance toward, Captain. If you'll let me," she took a deep breath, "we'll find a way through all this red tape and get you everything possible in the way of support ..."
"I don't want support. I want to finish my—"
"Mission. Yes, I know."
"I want to do my job. I told that lady from Reintegration or Vet Admin or whatever: I'm retrainable."
"I'm sure you are. Just let me help you. I'll get you a job, one you'll enjoy."
"Flying."
Why was she doing this? "Flying. I promise. With my Customs service. We'll train you. We'll get you through reorientation. Just don't be in such a hurry. There's too much you don't understand."
"Like how come somebody tried to get me to sign discharge papers and then stole them? Like how come I'm getting the boot as if I were some—"
"We know what happened. We'll get you the money that's really coming to you." He wouldn't understand how much more she'd already negotiated for him than he would have gotten without her. "You'll have a kind of pension, or at least a trust fund." If he was working for her, she could help him.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Ah—somebody had to take a hand. We have some delicate problems on Threshold right now, and no one wants you to become another of those. So your case was delegated to me . . . It's too complicated to explain."
"What's going to happen to Birdy?"
"To—"
"Sorry. STARBIRD. You going to put her in some kind of museum? Cause she's still functional. This ship's as good as—"
"Captain South, this ship is an ... antique. No one's going to fly it anywhere. And we don't have those sorts of museums. I imagine she'll be decommissioned and her parts recycled." She was bluffing. She had no idea what ConSpaceCom would do with this old wreck.
"I thought there's no Space Command, really, to decommission her."
"That's ... a fair assumption."
"Then if nobody wants her, can I buy her? With this money you say I've got? Get a pilot's license, after some more training? And do whatever I want that doesn't hurt anybody—" He held both hands palms up to her. "—as long as I don't try to go near Earth?"
Riva Lowe felt like crying. There was a lump in her throat and she tried to clear it. She looked at her hands in her lap, and folded them. The desperation in the pilot's voice was so controlled, so deep, and there was so much loneliness in him.
She should have realized that the primitive AI on this ship was the only friend that Captain Joseph South had in the universe.
Lowe said, "I don't see why something like that can't be arranged. After all, the ship has no weaponry. And you could always park it at one of the spacedock mobile parks and live on it. ... I'll see what I can do."
"You're not just telling me all this? To get me to come with you?"
She looked up at the pilot again and now she saw the coiled energy, the aggression held in abeyance, that she'd seen when he was pacing like a caged animal.
"I am the Director of Threshold Customs, Captain. I'll excuse your question by making allowances for your ignorance. This is an official nego
tiation." She touched the transceiver on her collar. "I'm keeping a record of the terms we settle on."
"So am I," said South, without indicating any recording source. His jaw had a sharp line to it; his mouth was taut at its corners.
"In that case, will you come with me now, to my office, so that we can get started on clearing your ship and yourself for Threshold entry, and helping you claim what's yours?"
"There's somethin' I'm not getting here."
There was something Riva Lowe didn't understand, herself. She couldn't take her eyes off the pilot as he rubbed the back of his neck again and looked at her askance, as if he'd tasted something surprising, but not necessarily sour.
"How about I stay here, and you come back with some documentation that even somebody like me can see proves that you'll be able to do what you say you want to do?"
"I can't work that way. You need to come with me as a sign of good faith."
South crossed his arms and shook his head. "Can't leave Birdy alone. Not if there's one fucking chance in a million that I'll come back and find her disassembled. I haven't even dumped my trip log yet. I gotta do that. Old X-3 was one hell of a flyby."
"X-3?"
"My target solar system. I've got all the data still on board."
"Right. Well, we'll find someone who knows what X-3 converts to in modern terms, and then we'll be able to judge whether the data's been superseded by later exploration. But you will have to come with me."
"I told you I—"
Remson's voice came out of her collar and South jumped.
So did she.
"Director Lowe, I'll guarantee the ship's safety as sacrosanct. He can lock it up. Now will you both please come out of there so that I can leave?"
"Hello, Assistant Secretary Remson," she said to the transceiver, watching South's neck muscles cord and his chest, under folded arms, heave.
"We were just coming. Aren't we, Captain?"
"I guess," said South doubtfully.
When she started to get up, South held out a hand to her. She didn't at first realize what he was doing. But the ancient test pilot was helping her up.
Chivalry was long dead in modern times. Riva Lowe blushed, took the outstretched hand belatedly, and decided that she had no right to be insulted.
The man was from the Stone Age, after all. Well, the Information Age, which was close enough.
The Relic led the way out of the ship, as if she couldn't find the air lock on her own.
In it, he said only, "I'd kind of like you to go out first. If they're going to shoot me, you might as well be clear."
So South knew about the sharpshooters all around, and was trusting her anyway.
Riva Lowe said, "Don't worry. We're civilized. No one's going to shoot you." Not even Reice.
"You're the first person who's bothered to help me, so I'll take your word for it." South's voice was grim and his words were clipped short as he waited for the outer lock to open.
It didn't.
"Come on, Birdy, don't be a mother hen," South said finally from the dark.
The outer lock drew back and she blinked in the light of the floods.
"Take my hand, Captain," Riva Lowe said and stepped down that long way onto the apron.
She could see Reice and his soldiers, and Remson and the negotiation team, waiting for them.
She'd better come up with a plan to justify doing everything for South that she'd promised, and fast. Maybe she could send South out with the scavenger, the next time the old fool insisted on looking at his ball. It would give South some flight time, and pin back the scavenger's wings. If she could find a way to tie the two men together, it would keep both of them out of serious trouble, and nothing terrible would come of it.
So she'd tell Remson, anyhow. You had to have time to look for logical flaws, and none of them had time to do much more than keep the lid on things, lately.
Joe South said, "Lady, I sure hope you were telling me the truth," as they approached the kiosk and Reice's ConSec sharpshooters spread out, guns trained on the Relic pilot who wasn't from so far in the past that he didn't know when he was about to be arrested.
"You can depend on it," she said, and fingered her transceiver, telling Reice to back off and get her car. "I'm taking South to my office. You can follow along with some of your boys if you've got nothing better to do."
Vince Remson waited only long enough to congratulate her, say she should call him later, and shake South's hand.
"I'm Remson. I guaranteed your ship during negotiations. If you need me, here's my card."
South took the card and looked at the big man hurrying away. Then he looked at Reice's sharpshooters, still alert to any false move, and back to Lowe.
"STARBIRD'll be here when I get back? Nobody'll try to stop me?"
Again, she saw the tension ripple over the test pilot.
"Nobody will try to stop you. Welcome to Threshold, Captain South, if a little belatedly."
There was a reasonable chance that, with Remson behind her, she could deliver at least half of what she'd promised to South.
CHAPTER 16
Where You're Standing
Young Dodd was nearly in tears when he scuttled over to Croft's seat on the dais with a piece of hard copy in his hand. The symposium was in full swing, and too many in the packed hall noted Dodd darting out from behind the star-spangled curtains.
When he'd read Remson's tersely declarative message twice, Michael Croft handed it back to Dodd, said "Thank you. No reply," and rubbed his eyes.
Croft could still see the words of Remson's message as if they were printed on the insides of his eyelids: Have both kids in protective custody, your offices. Informing parents officially. Possible contraband/controlled substance violations require investigation. File data available. Type: ROMEO&JULIET to review. Do not, repeat, do not allow parents immunity defense. VR.
Remson was stoked. Dodd was paralyzed with guilt. Rumors of smuggled Olympian life-forms and—worse—sex and drug scandals were running through the conference like dysentery.
Mickey Croft opened his eyes and his audience was still before him. Among the humans were representatives of the bioengineered subraces: the camel-lipped from desert worlds, the lizard-green from swamp planets, the larva-pale tunnel dwellers from mining complexes deep within the crust of spheres too rich to be ignored but too inhospitable to respond to terraforming.
Michael Croft could have been born a sub if his luck had been bad. So could any of the rest of the human elite. Replicating robots and expert systems couldn't take the place of human colonizers, and the subs were genetically tailored to flourish where the standard human template would fail.
They had rights and their rights must be protected, no matter the tendency of mankind to abuse other species. The framers of the UNE Constitution had wisely prepared to protect the rights of all species, and Mickey Croft was dedicated to those principles. But that didn't mean you neglected human rights. Human rights violations were as much a part of Croft's purview as the protection of subhuman and alien rights.
Someday perhaps a species would come along who would treat humanity as it had treated all less aggressive species. If that day came, Croft wanted to be sure that humankind's record was as presentable as possible. If ever humans were faced with a stronger, smarter, more deadly and less beneficent race than itself, who considered humans no better than subhuman or lesser alien forms, mankind had better have a clear conscience.
People must do better among the stars than they'd done on Earth, or one of Croft's descendants would curse him for causing the cycle to repeat. It was cheaper, in the long run, to treat all life-forms fairly and keep their populations high than to begin reparation and repopulation projects. The fate of the Earth and its denizens demonstrated that.
But Croft couldn't seem to instill his zeal for long-range thinking in his fellow UNE members. It might be human to mistreat everyone you could get away with mistreating, to cheat and steal and oppress whene
ver and whomever possible, but it wasn't laudable. Or acceptable.
This conference had been the first major attempt to regularize interstellar rights that had seemed to have the tiniest hope of success.
Now it was about to blow up in Mickey Croft's face, due to a couple of horny teenagers from powerful families.
Croft couldn't keep his mind on the speech of the camel-lipped Epsilonian at the end of the dais. When this session was over, the audience was going to be allowed to ask questions. The answers to those questions would be beamcast to the ends of creation.
Croft found himself praying that Remson really had managed to keep the lid on things.
It was Croft's only hope.
But as he watched, with the Epsilonian's voice lisping in his ears, he saw three people in NAMECorp uniforms escort a tall blond man in a business suit into the conference hall.
Well, somebody had found Cummings, Jr.
Croft wanted to rub his eyes again. But he'd done that once already. He shifted in his seat, ostensibly to look at the Epsilonian speaker. Beyond the woman from Commerce beside him was a lesser Medinan mullah.
The mullah glared at him and made a motion: he drew his leveled hand across his throat.
Oh, good. So the Medinans were simply awaiting their moment.
Between the Epsilonian speaker and the mullah's chance to talk were only two other functionaries. Croft considered recessing the conference unilaterally.
But there were too many professional reporters and diplomats in this handpicked audience. That would never do.
He faced front once more and stared ahead blindly, focusing on the panorama of flags that hung at the back of the hall. He felt as if the fifth-force generators had failed and, weightless, he was drifting toward the ceiling. But there was nothing wrong with the artificial gravity around here.
The Epsilonian ended his speech with an impassioned plea for full human status for his "brother workers in the wastelands of creation. All of us share with the rest of our honored United Nations of Earth brotherhood a common heritage. We should have equal status. We demand equal rights. We will sit in our seats at your table and acquit ourselves as men have always acquitted themselves: as best as humanly possible."
