How Dark the World Becomes

by Frank Chadwick

  “Lots of Humans fart at the dinner table,” I answered. “Doesn’t mean I have to.”

  “Do you mean that in your . . . line of work,” he said with obvious distaste, “you’ve never killed anyone?”

  Marfoglia and Barraki got real interested in their own menus right about then.

  “Yeah, I’ve killed people. It’s not the same thing.”

  “No,” he said sarcastically. “It never is.”

  I should probably mention that my confession that I’d killed someone didn’t elicit much surprise from the two prosecutors, nor was it a damaging admission. Back in those days, the frontier planets were a bit like the old American wild west. Thug, private security specialist, and lawman were job titles, not distinct classes of people. There was a lot of the “It takes one to catch one” philosophy going around, so not only did people not look too closely at the criminal past of security specialists, there was a tacit assumption—even an expectation—that they had been on the wrong side of the law at one time or another, at least for Humans. Varoki were supposed to all be good little boys and girls.

  “Just for the sake of argument,” he said, “how is it different?”

  “You shouldn’t kill people for points,” I answered.

  “Points?” he repeated. “You mean like in a game?”

  I looked up at him.

  “No. Like in an argument. It’s wrong to kill people to make a point. People are more important than points.”

  “But most important points people try to make are about people,” he said.

  “My point exactly,” I answered, and went back to the menu. The chicken katsu was sounding pretty good, but there was this Paleo Special—flame roasted on a spit and guaranteed to have the authentic flavor of prehistoric Terran mastodon. It was soy protein, of course, but it was based on the flavor of some genetically reconstructed meat.

  “That does not even make sense,” he said.

  “Huh?” I asked, my mind still on genetically reconstructed mastodon meat.

  “Capital punishment is not about making a point,” he said.

  “All punishment is about making a point,” I answered. “Don’t do that, or this will happen to you.”

  “Deterrence, yes. But there is retribution, also.”

  “Revenge. Sure. But that’s just a different point, one you make to yourself. You chopped my hand off, but I got even, so there. But since that doesn’t get you back your hand, all you’ve done is make a point.”

  “And I suppose you’ve never killed someone to make a point—or to get even?” he demanded.

  I sat and thought about that for a while, mentally going through the list. After about half a minute he started to look uncomfortable.

  “Well?”

  “I’m thinking,” I answered. I didn’t want to lie.

  “How many people have you killed?” Marfoglia asked quietly, speaking for the first time, her brow wrinkled in concern. I looked at her. Not that it was any of her business . . . well, I guess it was, come to think of it. Her life was pretty much in my hands, so I suppose she had a right to know how bloody those hands were.

  “Eleven that I’m sure of,” I answered, and it was interesting to see four pairs of adult Varoki ears fold up and back in perfect unison, like a ballet.

  “Three of them were in combat, when I was in uniform. As to Mr. Hlontaa’s previous question, the answer is, once. Back in my very brief army career, a sniper shot two of my squadies. We nailed him with a frag missile, and when we went out to collect his weapon, he was still alive. He might have made it, too, but I shot him. That was actually the first person I ever killed—that I know of, anyway. You know, you throw a lot of energy downrange in a firefight, and who the hell knows where it all ends up? But other than that guy—which I am ashamed of to this day—I’ve never killed anyone to make a point, or to get even.”

  Marfoglia had a confused, conflicted look. She was doing the math and realizing that she’d witnessed half of those eight non-military killings. The killings had horrified her, but they’d also saved her life. Hlontaa just looked skeptical.

  “So, I suppose that the other eight, when you were not in uniform, were all self-defense?” he asked, his ears relaxing and unfolding again.

  And that showed how full of shit Hlontaa really was. He only asked about the eight people I’d killed after the military, as if killing three men while in uniform was the most natural thing in the world.

  Most guys in a war survive—even most guys on the losing side make it through in one piece, so anyone can do the math and figure out that most people in uniform don’t actually kill anybody. Now add in the fact that most people who do get killed are killed by big fire-support systems, not AWiGs—Assholes With Guns. Almost everyone I knew who went through an actual shooting war—and I knew some guys who were in special operations and right in the thickest part of the shit—never killed anyone.

  I killed three, and Hlontaa didn’t even know enough to find that unusual or interesting.

  Were the eight others all in self-defense? I shook my head.

  “Nope. Some were, but not all of them.”

  “Really? Well, other than self-defense, or ‘making a point,’ what reason is there to kill someone?” he demanded, and then he got a strange look, almost frightened. “You do not mean you kill for . . . for pleasure, do you?”

  I laughed.

  “No. Other than that first time, I’ve only killed people to stop them from doing things I didn’t want them to do. Mostly, the thing I didn’t want them to do was to kill me, and I guess that counts as self-defense, huh? But there are other things.”

  “For example,” he said.

  “For example, and pertinent to my current employment, I will kill anyone trying to hurt these two kids,” I said, and gestured to Barraki and Tweezaa, “not because the killers are bad people—although I assume they’re probably pretty bad—and not as an object lesson to others, but just to stop them from hurting the kids.”

  Hlontaa looked at me for a while, thinking that over.

  “So, if the government kills a killer, does that not prevent him from killing again?” he asked.

  This was getting to be a stupid argument, and I went back to the menu.

  “Lock ’em up,” I said. “That’ll stop ’em, too. I’d do it myself, but I don’t carry a detention center around with me. So, what do you think, Dr. Scarlet?” I asked Marfoglia, using her cover name. “Chicken katsu or Paleo Special?”

  “I’ve heard the Paleo Special is very interesting,” she said, cool and chic again, her composure having returned.

  Interesting, huh? Okay.

  Chicken katsu it was.

  * * *

  I don’t believe in God, not in any traditional sense—some old guy with a beard sitting in the clouds, looking down on all of us? Yeah, right. I have to say, though, sometimes it’s as if someone is listening, someone with a very twisted sense of humor, or irony, or something, because it seems like whenever you lay out some fundamental element of your life’s philosophy, as soon as you’re sure you’ve got something important figured out about yourself, right away something happens to test it. Test it good and hard. This test was the second thing I remember.

  The morning of the seventh day out, the cabin reader’s message light was on. I keyed the screen and saw there was a recorded incoming message waiting, with an attached video feed. It was addressed to Sam Black, my cover identity.

  The sender was Kolya Markov.

  ELEVEN

  Marfoglia insisted on watching the message. She was right—it concerned her as much as it did me. We took it in my bedroom, and closed the door so neither of the kids would hear whatever it was Kolya had to tell us.

  “Hey, Sasha,” Kolya started with a smile. “Long time no see—now maybe even longer, what with you leaving and all. I just wanted to get this to you before you got to the lighter. Somebody sent me a recording—no idea who. I’m turning it over to the Munies, of course—evidence an
d all. But since it’s about a friend of yours, I though you should know. Terrible thing, just terrible.” He frowned and shook his head in sympathy. “I’m sending a copy along. Give my regards to the blonde.”

  He grinned, winked, and reached forward, and then the screen went blank.

  The recording was appended to the message, but I had to trigger the viewer in order to see it. For several long seconds I just sat there, staring at the blank screen, afraid to play it. Finally, my hands shaking, I keyed the playback.

  It was June.

  A jumpsuited man, his face covered by a mask, sat on the bed in a shabby room somewhere, and June was naked, crumpled at his feet. He reached down, grabbed her hair, and used it to pull her up, so she was looking at the camera. She was badly beaten—one eye swollen shut, nose broken—and spattered with blood. Her hair was tangled, wet with sweat and plastered to her head. She was conscious, but listless, drained, dead-eyed. This wasn’t the start of something, it was the end.

  My hand fluttered by the console, wanting to shut off the playback, as if this were happening as I watched, and I could stop it if I just stopped the vision of it, but I let it play, because I had to. There was no sound on the recording, but I could hear whimpering, and I realized that it was me. Big tough guy. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I shrugged it away.

  The masked man lifted the gauss pistol in his right hand, put it against her temple, and fired, and then fired again and again and again, even though she was dead after the first shot. I sat there, wincing at the savage ruin that every shot caused, shuddering in pain and horror, tears running down my face, powerless to do anything but watch. Then the screen went black, but the vision of her bloody, eyeless death mask remained, burned into my consciousness, is still there right now, crisp and vivid and awful.

  Do you know the worst moment of your life—the absolute lowest, darkest point? I do.

  After a while I looked over to Marfoglia, and she was lying on the floor, gasping for breath. I hadn’t shrugged her away; I’d elbowed her in the solar plexus hard enough to double her over. She’d tried to comfort me, and I’d done this to her. She looked up at me, fear and pain and confusion all mixed up together in her eyes, and I just stared at her. Maybe I should have said something, but what was there to say? Sorry?

  If I had words that could change anything, I’d have used them to bring June back.

  * * *

  For the better part of a day I stayed in my bedroom with the door locked and the lights out. I sat in the chair and didn’t get up from it except to go to the bathroom. I didn’t eat—wasn’t hungry. I probably dozed a bit sitting there, I don’t remember for sure. The one thing I did before withdrawing into that shell was to send a two-word message to Henry.

  You probably figure that all through that day I relived every moment with June, but I don’t think I did. Mostly my mind was blank, empty, black. I just shut down for a while, like a machine that overheated. But you can’t shut down forever. Well . . . you can, but that doesn’t fix anything, either.

  The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

  Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit

  Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

  Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

  Boy, ain’t that the truth?

  When I finally breached containment, Marfoglia and the kids were sitting down to breakfast. They’d probably had all of the meals delivered while I was mourning—if that’s what it was I was doing. They looked up at me, kind of shy and embarrassed.

  “I wasn’t sure if you’d want anything, but I ordered you some breakfast,” Marfoglia said, and looked back down at her own meal.

  “Thanks. I’m hungry.” I sat down and lifted the heavy plastic lid off the plate—hutsul omelet, egg whites only, with soy nuts, and Thai chili sauce on the side. For some reason, it got me all choked up, I guess because it was such an unexpected act of consideration—unexpected and undeserved. I didn’t say anything—wasn’t sure I could without making a fool of myself, so I just started eating.

  “Sasha, we are sorry your friend died,” Barraki said. “Boti-Marr told us, and Tweezaa and I are very sorry.”

  I nodded without looking up at first, but then I looked at them. Their father had been murdered in front of them, horrible people were trying to kill them, and they were sorry for me. They at least deserved to see my face.

  “That means a lot to me, Barraki. And Tweezaa. I mean it.” My voice was hoarse, but I got it out. “Now eat. You probably haven’t been out of the cabin in over a day, have you? We’ll get some exercise today, get out and see people, and see if there’s any part of the shuttle we haven’t explored. Okay?”

  He smiled and nodded, and translated for Tweezaa. She listened to him, but her eyes stayed on me, studying me the whole time, frowning slightly in concentration. When he was finished, she thought for a second or two and then nodded—agreement? Approval? Hard to tell with her, but she went back to her breakfast and ate faster than usual.

  After the meal, while the kids were getting dressed, I started for my own bedroom to shower and change, but Marfoglia stopped me.

  “Do you have to send a message to Mr. Washington?”

  “Henry? I already did, yesterday. Short and to the point.”

  She shook her head and looked down.

  “So now there’ll be more killing,” she said sadly. “And what will it prove? What will it change?”

  It was the sort of pretty little speech—that world-weary, what’s-the-point-in-going-on? bullshit—that always pisses me off.

  “Lady, you don’t know a goddamned thing about me. You want to know what I told Henry? Two words: make peace.”

  She looked at me for a moment, surprised, and then shook here head.

  “But . . . but how can you possibly . . . after he did . . . that?”

  “How can I . . . ? A second ago it was, ‘Oh, when will the violence end?’ Then I tell you, and you say, ‘So soon?’ Make up your fucking mind!”

  I stormed away and pulled my bedroom door shut behind me, before we ended up screaming at each other, which would have been bad for the kids’—the other kids’—morale. I found myself muttering under my breath as I got the shower fired up, and then I shook my head and actually smiled a little.

  My world would never be the same again, but come hell or high water, I could apparently count on Marfoglia to take my mind off my troubles by making me so goddamned mad I wanted to bite steel nails in half.

  But much later that night, after I turned in, I dreamed about an omelet—a hutsul omelet, egg whites only, with soy nuts, and Thai chili sauce on the side.

  What kind of nutcase dreams about an omelet?

  TWELVE

  You could see the K’Pook—the C-lighter we were going to take to Seewauk—off and on for several hours, growing larger in the aft vistaports on the observation deck. You only saw it off and on, because the shuttle had its ass pointed almost right at it and was still making deceleration burns and little course corrections to intersect its orbit around the gas giant.

  The K’Pook’s configuration wasn’t that different from the shuttle, except it was bigger, and instead of conventional thrusters in back, it had the glowing, sparkling, spiderweb tracery of the J-field generator. Other than that, it had its own big wheels for passengers and crew, and then long, angular cargo modules coupled to the central spine fore and aft of the wheel, with a command module out front. A Newton tug hovered nearby, to shift cargo modules back and forth and then to break the K’Pook out of its parking orbit when the time came.

  Our shuttle had four or five cargo modules to add to the C-lighter’s load, and it would take some modules back to Peezgtaan as well. We’d transfer over first in a jolly boat, and then the tug would deal with the cargo transfers while we were getting settled. We’d already gotten our cabin assignments on the K’Pook, and the four of us had pored over her deck plans so we knew where we were going in case we got separated. I’d already picked out
a couple places that looked like low-traffic areas with possible hides, and we had given code names to them—those were our rally points in case something went wrong.

  Security talk still frightened Barraki and Tweezaa, but they were interested in it as well, and having a plan they were part of made it—well, maybe a bit of an adventure. Of course, it was an adventure that had already gotten their father killed right in front of them, so it wasn’t exactly big fun. But it was exciting, that’s for sure, and having an active role to play made them feel less like helpless victims.

  My main concern was that there were passengers already on board the C-lighter, through passengers from someplace else and headed toward Akaampta, like us. The odds of them being—by coincidence—part of whatever outfit was after Barraki and Tweezaa were very long. A more likely danger was that whoever was after us could have gotten a tight-beam message to someone on the C-lighter—passenger or crew—and made a deal of some kind. That was still a long shot, since it meant knowing who to contact and how, but it wasn’t quite as remote.

  My biggest immediate worry was the time from when we got on the little jolly boat that would take us over to the K’Pook to the time we’d be in our new cabins. I’d had to pack the Hawker and LeMatt in our luggage and turn it over to the purser’s staff, and until I got them unpacked over there, I’d feel naked. If I were going to hit us, this was exactly when I’d do it.

  My worries were unfounded, as it turned out, and I wouldn’t even have mentioned all of this except it’s important for you to remember that, even when nothing bad was happening, we were always on edge, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Constant tension can wear you down after a while. That, I suppose, is the edge that a professional has.

  Well, “professional” sounds kind of pretentious, doesn’t it? Let’s say that it’s something you learn from experience, that this is going to go on a long time, and that if you let yourself get lulled into a sense of routine by the constancy of danger, you are asking to get killed. My staying alert, staying constantly attuned to the smallest changes in the environment, would make a real difference later in our journey, and save lives—just not as many as I’d have liked.