Pallas

by L. Neil Smith

  It wasn’t quite so hard this time, because it was the same damaged hand, but it was in almost the same place. After he heard the cartilage grinding on itself inside his nose, the Senator stopped feeling pain. All the older man experienced now was a fury utterly beyond comprehension or containment, a frenzy of outrage which had been building, under pressure, for three-quarters of a century, a destructive ferocity for which something inside him held Emerson responsible, because any likelier, more accurate alternative was unthinkable. His opponent cocked his bloodied, broken fist back for a third and final blow.

  Altman suddenly lashed out at him, seized him by the shirtfront, and, without thinking about it, smashed his forehead down onto the shorter man’s upraised face.

  Emerson grunted and reeled backward, momentarily overcome, glassy-eyed, with blood spouting from his nose. He staggered, but managed to keep his feet as the Senator charged him, arms outspread, teeth gritted. Emerson thrust an arm out as if to fend Altman off, the fingers extended upward. By accident, the heel of his hand caught the older man in the eye and swerved him off course. As he passed, Emerson, somewhat under control again, swiveled like a bullfighter and hit Altman, backfisted, and with all his strength, over the right kidney.

  Altman kept going and fell on his face. But as Emerson lifted a heel to stomp him, the Senator somehow managed to turn over. His hand found his lost cane, which he swung upward, catching Emerson in the solar plexus.

  Emerson collapsed.

  Both men were on the floor now, crawling toward each other through a litter of broken window glass, snarling under their breath, which came in ragged gasps.

  Each man was now reduced to a ferocious, single-minded animal desire to kill the other after a lifetime of mutual hatred. The older of the two had sunk his teeth into the flesh of Emerson’s face, and Emerson’s thumbs were on Altman’s eyes, pressing hard, when Billy, Rosalie, and Nails began pulling them off each other.

  By which time neither of them cared.

  Altman regained awareness in his office, where he’d been left lying on a soiled and threadbare couch, after he and Emerson had pounded each other into unconscious, bleeding pulp before they’d been separated. Feeling more pain than he’d known was possible, he arose and limped to his desk, toppled into the chair behind it which squeaked in protest, took a moment to catch his breath, then reached out with a hand trembling from exhaustion and slid open the upper right-hand drawer.

  Bodily pain wasn’t the only thing he was feeling. In fact, it scarcely counted.

  Yes, there it was, gleaming dully back at him from the dark recesses of the drawer, the very embodiment of evil in two pounds of stainless steel. It had been confiscated, years ago, from one of the peasants and had somehow wound up in his custody.

  Altman picked up the pistol, surprised at its weight and by how naturally and comfortably it fit his hand. There was no hammer to cock, no safety, just a sensuously curved trigger begging to be pulled. Feeling nothing in particular, he swung the muzzle around until it pointed at his face. No need to check if it was loaded. He could see the coppery glitter of a hollow-pointed bullet inside the abbreviated barrel, its hungry serrated lips eager to taste blood.

  He wouldn’t disappoint them. He pressed the muzzle to his temple, felt the cold ring of steel on his flesh, then remembered this wasn’t the way. He might destroy his frontal lobes, leaving a paralyzed vegetable hulk still capable of feeling.

  For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to put the barrel in his mouth. But he could do the next best thing, aim it at—what was it called?—the philtrum, so the bullet would follow the nasal passages to the cerebellum. It would be fast, it would be final. The problem was, it hurt. Emerson had hit him there, and the punished flesh was crushed and swollen. Sharp pain brought tears to his eyes. He put his finger on the trigger and began increasing the pressure, bit by bit until he could feel small parts begin to move inside the gun.

  Suddenly he jerked the pistol away, laid it carefully on the desk, and stared at the words engraved in the silvery slide:

  NGU DEPARTURE

  CALIBER 10 M/M

  MADE ON PALLAS

  Somehow, this changed everything. If he killed himself with one of these damned ubiquitous things, it would mean that Emerson had won. He couldn’t let Emerson win, not again.

  For the first time in three-quarters of a century, it occurred to Altman to wonder why he always lost when he confronted Emerson Ngu. He had his own problems. Earth’s power-hungry politicians, losing their hold on humanity in a way even he could see, yet still embroiled in age-old internecine struggles, had used him as a pawn for decades. The remaining few who supported him in his struggle here had discovered they were in no position to make threats any longer.

  Pallas was a long way off, and governments on Earth hadn’t bothered even copying the Marshall drive, the development of which Emerson had financed, which made a mockery of the rocket-powered UN fleet, now mothballed in orbit, on which he’d counted for so long. Nor could Earth rely on nuclear weapons. Pallas had particle beams meant for mining but capable of neutralizing atomic bombs at astonishing distances. And anyone in the asteroids could devastate the Earth, simply by altering the orbit of some uninhabited rock. When the public had learned of this, Altman’s allies in brinksmanship had been lucky to escape alive.

  It hadn’t done him any good, he realized, knowing that all this industrial machinery, so useful in defending Pallas, had been created merely to enhance the wealth of his lifelong foe. Beaten in a last effort to destroy Emerson by competition, he’d lost it all: wealth, power, all the favors he’d been owed. The end had come when he’d seen most of his belongings auctioned to pay debts no one would help him with any more. He’d used the last of the proceeds to have the pipeline destroyed.

  Until this moment, Altman had always defended a collection of ideas he thought of as enlightened and humane, but which his enemies dismissed as mercantile socialism, living beyond its time in an inappropriate environment. It was an environment to which he’d been involuntarily consigned, from which he’d always believed he would eventually return, vindicated. One thing was certain, he’d never been a “native,” not in the sense Emerson and his family were. Altman saw for the first time that this had always imposed a disadvantage on him.

  And now, if he decided to go on living, he must try to become Pallatian himself. He must learn the ways, as best he could, of this new frontier, become a genuine pioneer, and defeat his enemy on that basis.

  It didn’t occur to him that if he achieved that transformation, there would remain no need to defeat Emerson at all.

  A Good Place to Be From

  I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it by not dying.

  —Woody Allen

  “Damnation!”

  The twittering of the communicator on his desk, coming abruptly as it did, nearly frightened Altman out of whatever wits he had left. He let it go on ringing a long while, determined not to answer, unwilling to talk to anyone about anything tonight.

  Whom had he left to talk to?

  What was there left to talk about?

  But whoever was at the other end outlasted him. Anyone could manage that, these days. After more than a dozen rings, he glanced down at the base of the device, saw a light which indicated it was a video call, and pushed the appropriate button.

  Across the room, the wall-sized screen was gone, auctioned off to pay his debts. The small screen came to life, illuminating his otherwise darkened office. At the bottom of the display, a transitory readout informed him that it was two a.m.

  “What in God’s name do you want?”

  “Grandfather—” It was Rosalie, with an odd expression on her face he couldn’t interpret, even given her normally open nature, even after all these years. The oddly cluttered room behind her image, nearly as dark as his own office, was unfamiliar.

  “Don’t you dare to call me that, young woman!” Which only went to show how things w
ere relative. She was decades younger than he was, it was true. But back home—on Earth, he meant, remembering his resolution—back in the old days of the welfare/warfare states, Rosalie would probably have been collecting Social Security by now.

  He brushed the errant thought aside.

  For a moment, he did see anger in her eyes. “Senator Altman, then—Chief Administrator—whatever the hell you want. I need to see you. I need to talk with you.”

  “You re talking with me now; what is it that you want?” A peculiar chill slithered down his spine and he experienced a premonitory moment—and a surprise at his reaction to it—when he believed he knew what her original facial expression had meant.

  She released an exasperated breath. “I mean I need to see you face to face. Believe me, I don’t like this any better than you do. It wasn’t my choice, it was a promise I made and have to keep. There’s something I need to tell you, something I need to show you, and I can’t do it like this. Please come. Please come now.”

  He nodded cynically. “So you and that bastard husband of yours can ambush me like a—?”

  “You know better than that, Gibson Altman.” She said it flatly, without anger or any other perceptible emotion, and he knew suddenly that it was true, that it had always been true, and that he had always been the one who couldn’t be trusted. He was the villain. He always had been. Was there ever going to be an end to the unpleasant things he had to learn about himself?

  It was because of that unanswered and unanswerable question that he replied, “Very well, I’ll come—against my better judgment. Where should I meet you?”

  For the briefest possible moment she almost appeared grateful. In the unfocused background, he thought he saw the glint of some sort of machinery. “You know the Horatio Singh Research Center, across the street from the main plant building?”

  Again the shocking, premonitory chill and sense of loss. Yes, he told her, he knew the place, one of the many scientific philanthropies she and her husband had endowed. Among other things, he recalled suddenly, it served the sprawling Ngu Departure community as a hospital. It was the same place where, in what now seemed to be another lifetime, all but the first of his great-grandchildren had been born. Aside from the first, he’d never seen or touched one of them.

  “Come directly to the double doors at the front entrance,” she replied, which will be unlocked. I’ll send my flying yoke on automatic to fetch you from the Project.”

  Without another hesitation, he nodded again. “I have my own.” It wasn’t really his; God knew where it had come from. But it was one of a few personal articles, like the gun lying on his desk, that no Pallatian auctioneer, or creditor for that matter, would take from a man. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  He was there in ten, although it cost him untold pain. He’d stiffened up considerably, sitting at his desk during all those agonizing hours of self-evaluation. On his flying yoke he passed over the abandoned front gate of the Project which, along with the decaying Residence, was almost the only visible remnant of what had once been a noble and humanitarian undertaking. The two landmarks were now separated from one another, swallowed by squalid private development. As he flew, he discovered minor injuries, scrapes and bruises, from his fight with Emerson that he hadn’t noticed until now.

  He’d be a long time healing, in more ways than one.

  The Ngu Departure streets somehow seemed darker than they should have been, although they were usually well lit and the requisite number of street lamps seemed to be operating. Either it had rained in the past few hours—he wouldn’t have noticed a raging thunderstorm in the state he’d been in all night—or they’d just been washed. They threw what light there was into elongated, streaky patterns. Pistol in hand, and every nerve on guard, he glided toward the smoked-glass doors of the Horatio Singh Research Center, which had opened at his approach.

  “Why, Senator, I’m astonished. If I’d known you were flying these days, and you hadn’t hung up on me so quickly, I’d have arranged to meet you up on the roof. As it is, I’m afraid we’re going to have to take a more circuitous route.”

  It was Rosalie herself, still beautiful after all these years to old eyes illuminated as much by memory as by present vision, who met him, rather than the automated guide she’d mentioned. What she’d said, of course, was true. Until tonight, he’d avoided using flying yokes unless absolutely necessary, partly, he supposed, because they were Emerson’s invention and a foundation of the man’s obscene fortune. Partly, too, because, every bit as much as the handguns Emerson had manufactured, it was the flying yoke that had destroyed the Project.

  Hastily shoving the gun he’d brought into a pocket of his old-fashioned sportscoat, he muttered some uninformative reply. It seemed unnaturally cold inside the place, and very quiet. It reminded him suddenly of a high-priced funeral home.

  “I decided there was time to come myself,” she added. “There isn’t any hurry any more.”

  Somehow these words failed to surprise him. He thought he knew by now what this was all about. He clambered awkwardly out of his flying yoke, folded it, and left it leaning against a wall near the entrance. Not looking at her, he unfolded his cane and leaned on it wearily. The floors in this place were of native meteoric stone, at least half metallic, highly polished, and recently waxed. It would be just his luck to finish this dreadful day with a broken hip.

  As it was, if this had been Earth, rather than Pallas, and he’d still been alive at his current hundred and nine years of age, he’d have needed a wheelchair, even in his present battered but essentially healthy condition. The corridors were long, and he was very tired. It seemed to him as if he’d always been tired.

  “All right,” he told her, “what is it that you need to show me?”

  “Just follow me, and you’ll see everything.”

  Expecting what he had, he was momentarily confused as they passed the glassed-in enclosure of the center’s emergency medical theater, with its own outside street-level entrance visible across the room. The place was dark and just as unoccupied as the rest of the building seemed, with only the glowing multicolored pilot lights of various kinds of equipment to hint at what it was. He supposed the doctors must be on call, able to get here by flying yoke within a few short minutes, coming down to this level from a separate entrance on the roof.

  After what seemed like forever, following the woman through an endless maze of corridors and passing through a heavy security door, he found himself in a dimly lit, cavernous, high-ceilinged room that looked more like an aircraft hangar than anything to do with scientific or medical matters. The walls were crowded with strange apparatus which, Rosalie told him, was just warming up. It was connected with half a dozen big bathtublike fixtures seemingly festooned with electronic instruments.

  Standing in the midst of all this arcane technological clutter, she presented him with what seemed, at first, to be a non sequitur. “Do you recall the fuss, years ago, when Emerson decided to underwrite construction of a spaceship of advanced design, intended to explore further out in the solar system?”

  “Why, yes.” The Senator shrugged. “That would be the Fifth Force, built at the South Pole and supposedly using some kind of innovative antigravity drive, wouldn’t it?”

  He’d paid the stories some attention because, in those days and, for that matter, until only last night, he’d always carefully collected any information about Emerson’s enterprises which might betray a hint of vulnerability on the younger man’s part. He’d begun with the solar mirror Rosalie, hoping it would ruin Emerson, and it very nearly had. Voluntary contributions still dribbled in, even today, but it would be another quarter of a century before his losses were recouped. This lunatic spaceship venture had appeared promising at first—antigravity was fantasy, not physics—but as far as he knew, nothing had ever come of it.

  “Well,” Rosalie informed him, “we had some spectroscopic evidence a few years ago that got us interested, and now an isotopic study co
nfirms that the Drake-Tealy Objects are from somewhere out there. We’ve still no more of an idea, really, what they are or who made them—any more than we know who built Stonehenge or made the giant drawings on the Nazca plain. But several hundred pioneering youngsters have been selected for the Fifth Force’s first voyage, and she’s leaving Pallas ninety days from now, outbound for the Cometary Halo in deepest trans-Plutonic space.”

  He wondered wildly what this had to do with anything, but what he said was, “A dark, frozen hell, I think, to send hundreds of innocent young people to die in.”

  “That’s what they said about Pallas in the beginning,” Rosalie countered. “And didn’t people used to refer to the choicest portions of real estate in the old United States, where you and Emerson came from, as the Great American Desert?”

  Leaning heavily on his cane, he shook his head impatiently, feeling every minute of his age and beginning to stiffen again from standing in one place. “Rosalie, no one of my years could stand the suspense any more. What’s this all about?”

  For a moment, she went on as if she hadn’t heard him, gazing past him into some nonexistent distance. Her voice was still young, and in this light it almost seemed as if she hadn’t aged over the past twenty-five years. “You know that those young people—and they include my own son and his pregnant fiancée, your great-grandchildren, Senator, and your great-great grandchild—will turn whatever they happen to find out in the Halo into the adventure of a lifetime.”

  He gave her a sour look, probably lost on her in the darkness. “Who was it who said an adventure is something you spend the entire duration of wishing you were home in bed?” At the moment he wished he were at home in bed, although he didn’t think he could stand to be alone no matter how many years he’d spent getting used to it.