Orbitsville Departure o-1

by Bob Shaw

  Mathieu stood up, plunged a hand into his inner pocket and withdrew his gold pen. It was undamaged. He clicked the barrel into the special position, priming it to dispense its magical ink, then paused and frowned down at the sun glittering cylinder. Upheavals were taking place within him; mental landscapes were undergoing cataclysmic change.

  In a single movement he snapped the pen in half and hurled it away from him. He turned so that he was unable to note where the pieces fell and considered what he had just done, half-expecting an onslaught of panic. Instead he felt a sweet emptiness, a total lack of concern.

  "Maybe I am dead," he said aloud, shaking his head in wonderment over the knowledge — so different from the vagrant hopes of the past — that he would never again have to use felicitin. So novel was the state of mind that it took him an appreciable time to interpret it, but he was no longer a user!

  The feeling of certainty persisted even when he reviewed the medical facts. There was a distinct personality profile common to those who became dependent on the drug, and he had never heard of spontaneous remissions or unaided escapes. His entire future had been predicted around the fact that he was hooked on felicitin… (Was "hooked" a sufficiently graphic word? How about skewered? Or impaled?)… and now, suddenly, the drug was irrelevant.

  A sputtering sound from the aircraft's power plant drew Mathieu's attention to the scattered wreckage, and his sense of wonder over his survival returned. The contours of the ground must have exactly matched the ship's line of flight, giving it seconds instead of microseconds in which to shed its kinetic energy, and thereby saving his life. Such events were not unknown in aviation lore — a similar thing had happened to St. Exupery in North Africa — but still he had a distinct sense of the miraculous. A religious man would have been down on his knees giving thanks to God. Mathieu, however, had more earthly concerns, among them the question of how long it would take him to get back to Madison City so that he could proceed with the important business of being alive.

  He was alone in a sea of verdant green which shaded into blue as it reached the vaporous blur of the horizon. This area of what had once been Alabama had been deregistered more than a century earlier and now it looked as though it had never been touched, as though the first boats had yet to come straggling across the Pacific.

  The nearest population centre was probably Madison City itself, hundreds of kilometres to the east, so there was no point in straying from the wreckage of his aircraft. With the gradual emptying of the country's airspace, all the paraphernalia of traffic control had been abandoned in favour of a system using computers in each aircraft. The transport department computer in Madison would have known about the crash as soon as it had happened, and in theory an emergency team should already be on its way to him.

  Deciding that he should get some gentle exercise while waiting to be picked up, Mathieu began walking along the hillside. He had taken only a few paces when his attention was caught by a pulsing speck of ruby light which appeared low above the eastern horizon. It was the beacon of an aircraft which seemed to be heading in his direction.

  He watched the approaching flier for a minute or more before realising it was a rescue ship.

  The discovery was yet another shock in what seemed to be an endless series. He had assumed, in view of his sense of relative well-being, that he had been only lightly stunned in the crash — but the arrival of the recovery craft implied that he had been unconscious for a considerable time, perhaps as much as thirty minutes. In that case, according to his admittedly sketchy medical knowledge, he should have been suffering an intense headache and nausea. He prodded in a gingerly fashion around his skull, almost expecting to find a severe but previously unnoticed wound, and confirmed that he was basically uninjured.

  The thunderous arrival of the high-speed ship cut short his speculations. It swooped down out of the sky, chunky fuselage bristling with cranes and other recovery gear, came to a halt at a height of some fifty metres and made a vertical descent on screaming reaction tubes. Grass blasted outwards from the touchdown point before the engines thed, then a hatch in the ship's belly slid open. Four men, one of them carrying a stretcher, dropped out of it and came running towards Mathieu.

  He gave an oddly self-conscious wave and walked to meet them, repressing the urge to chuckle as he got his first glimpse of their pop-eyed, slack-jawed expressions of pure astonishment.

  The brandy was the first he had tasted in months, and Mathieu found it unusually satisfying. He took sip after sip of the neat liquor, relishing its warmth and flavour while he watched the countryside drift by beneath the rescue ship.

  Even after they had checked him out with handheld body scanners, confirming that he had no internal injuries, the medics had wanted to put him in a bunk for the return trip to Madison. Eventually, however, he had got his way and had been allowed to occupy a passenger seat in lordly isolation at the rear of the cabin. The medics and salvage experts were clustered at the front, and the frequency with which they glanced in his direction was a sign they had not from the shock of finding him in the land of the living.

  Aided by the relaxing effect of the brandy, he amused himself by picturing how they would have taken the news of the second miracle, the private one. Almost a full hour had passed since he regained consciousness on the hillside, but there had been no wavering in his new attitude towards felicitin. He knew he was free of the addiction which had so grotesquely distorted his We, and now anything seemed possible…

  The door to the flight deck slid open and a crewman came aft carrying a radiophone. He handed it to Mathieu, told him that Mayor Bryceland was calling and returned to his station. Bryceland was already speaking when Mathieu raised the instrument to his ear.

  "…only thing that matters is that you are all right, Gerald. That goes without saying. It's a big relief to all of us that you haven't been injured. My God, I mean… When I heard the ship" had been wrecked!"

  "You heard right, Frank," Mathieu said peacefully, having divined the real purpose of the call. "The ship doesn't exist any more."

  "But if you're only bruised…"

  "I was very lucky, Frank — I'm all right, but the ship is metal confetti." Mathieu paused, visualising the consternation on the mayor's puffy features, and decided to turn the screw a little more. "I'm glad things didn't work out the other way round."

  "So am I — that goes without saying. I don’t want to rush things, Gerald, but the insurance department boys have been at me already… Was there a control failure?"

  "No. I fell asleep."

  "Then the autopilot must have failed."

  "I'd switched it off."

  "Oh!" There was another pause and when Bryceland spoke again a noticeable coldness had appeared in his voice. "That wasn't too bright, was it?"

  "It was pretty damn stupid. Suicidal, in fact."

  Bryceland gave an audible sigh. "Gerald, you sound as if you're enjoying this."

  "I am." Mathieu took a sip of brandy. "I'm going into orbit on free booze and laughing my head off over the entire episode."

  "I'm going to assume it's shock that's making you talk this way."

  "Not shock — it's the thought of you having to hoof it like an ordinary mortal for a while. That's making me hysterical, Frank."

  "I see," Bryceland said grimly. "Well, possibly by the time you get back into the office I'll have some news about your employment status that'll calm you down a bit."

  "What makes you think I'll ever go back?" Mathieu broke the connection and set the phone down, aware that he had virtually thrown away his job. He took stock of his feelings and found no regrets. Until a short time ago the prospect of being fired would have terrified him, but now he was quite unmoved. It was, he realised, another consequence of his conversion. He no longer needed the job and all its opportunities for graft because he no longer needed felicitin. But what if, as had happened before, his lack of interest in the drug proved to be only temporary? What if it was all part of some complex re
sponse to the brush with death? One which would fade in a few hours?

  The questions were pertinent, and there was an instant during which his system tried to react with panic, but the moment passed. It was as if the striker on an alarm bell had stirred briefly and then had returned to quiescence. His inner certainty prevailed, and now something new was being added.

  There's nothing to keep me here on Earth, Mathieu thought. And I'm no longer afraid of going to Orbitsville.

  The idea of returning to the place of his birth was strange, perhaps the most disturbing so far in the day’s train of inner changes, and yet it was powerfully seductive. There was a felicitin-type tightness about it. His life on Earth had been a re-enactment in miniature of the planet's own history. It had been a story of waste, failure and futility, one which deserved to be brought to a quick ending.

  And it might be that the journey to Optima Thule would be for him what it had been to the human race in general — a rebirth, a radical change of direction, a turning away from darkness and towards light. The decision was instantaneous.

  Mathieu set his glass aside, no longer interested in its contents. He was going to Orbitsville and wanted his departure to take place without delay, but there were some practical problems. The sensible course would be to patch up his relationship with Mayor Bryceland, resign gracefully with the customary three months' notice, and eventually leave for Orbitsville with a fat severance payment logged into his bank account. But to one in his frame of mind that approach seemed intolerably slow. His new impetuosity told him he had done with Earth and therefore should leave at once, which meant cutting a few corners.

  He leaned back in his chair, staring unseeingly at the drifting landscape below, and analysed the problems facing him. Ships were travelling from Earth to Ultima Thule every day, and with the tourist trade in decline there was no shortage of passenger places, but Mathieu's difficulties lay elsewhere. He had only a small reserve of cash, and walking out on his job was going to deprive him of some benefits and cause long delays with others — all of which meant he would be hard pressed to cover the cost of an unsubsidised ticket. There was an additional complication in the form of Mayor Bryceland, who would not want him to leave before a replacement arrived, and therefore would do everything in his power to block the clearances necessary for travel on a Metagov-owned ship.

  What Mathieu needed was somebody who controlled the physical means of getting to Orbitsville and who also owed him a favour. Years of constantly being on the make had led him to build up a range of useful contacts, many of them of a somewhat irregular nature, but privately owned or chartered starships were something of a rarity. There was somebody, though — it was simply the matter of locating the right file in his memory — and that somebody was…

  Mathieu gave a self-satisfied grunt when a name formed itself in his thoughts almost at once. Rick Renard, the playboy botanist, was reputed to have connections with the legendary Lindstrom family, and for that reason Mathieu had been exceptionally helpful to him. The indulgences had ranged from overlooking a sheaf of import restrictions on a fancy Rollac car to allowing publicly owned warehouses to be used for the temporary storage of botanical samples. And, providentially it seemed, Renard was soon to depart for Orbitsville. I found the way, Mathieu thought, reaching for the radiophone, unable to delay taking immediate and positive action. I’m going home at last.

  Chapter 14

  It was not until his car had struck the curb for the second time that Dallen realised how the sheer mental overload of the past hour had rendered him unfit to drive.

  He braked and pulled in to the side in one of the North Hill's quietest avenues. The car shuddered slightly as he switched off the engine. He located his pipe in a jacket pocket, filled it with strands of yellow and black, abstractedly staring straight ahead as he tamped them down with his finger. It seemed that each time he visited the London place he got his consciousness stretched, but the last occasion had left him with no reserve capacity whatsoever. So many new matters clamoured and competed for his consideration that he was unable to focus properly on any of them.

  Impose some order. he told himself. Find patterns. The task struck him as being impossible, and the most he could do, sitting in the metal-and-glass suntrap of his car, was to pick out certain symmetries.

  Karal London was dead — but Karal London could not be dead, only made discarnate. The success of his fantastic experiment had profound significance for religion and philosophy, and yet as far as emotions were concerned it seemed to have little immediate relevance. Silvia's reaction had shown that. Death continued to be Death, no matter what the cool voice of the intellect proclaimed; and men and women would still mourn its intervention just as they had always done. The racial subconscious would have to assimilate a great deal of mindon science before there dawned the era of the blithe burial or the cheerful cremation, before London was hailed as the man who put the fun into funeral.

  Gerald Mathieu was dead — but Gerald Mathieu could not be dead, only made discarnate. What was the personal significance of that for Dallen? The wash of photons from a single light bulb in London's laboratory had carried the message that Mathieu, too, had entered an afterlife and would exist perhaps for ever as a mindon entity. Did that mean the whole concept of punishment by execution was now invalid? Perhaps the only genuine retribution would have lain in making the punishment fit the crime, in blasting Mathieu's physical brain with a Luddite Special and scattering its mindon counterpart to whatever kind of thin winds that blew through an extra-dimensional ether. And now it was too late even to think about that.

  In any case, the dominating element of revenge had been removed from Dallen's life, and the resultant vacuum had been tilled by new emotions centred on Silvia London. Silvia was going to Orbitsville, and — further symmetry — so was he…

  Feeling the mental convection begin again, the restless whirlwind of thought fragments, he seized on the prospect of leaving for the Big O. That was a concrete fact, one which involved him in practical matters and a host of auxiliary decisions. He could, for instance, go immediately to the City Hall, arrange a transfer to Orbitsville on the next scheduled flight and clear out his desk. A good clear-cut short-term goal. A way to deaden his mind and at the same time delay the moment when he would have to return home and pick up the burden represented by Cona.

  The decision made, Dallen discovered he had forgotten to light his pipe. He dropped it back into his pocket, switched on the car's magnetic engine and drove down the Hill towards the centre of Madison. Bars of tree-shadow and sunlight beat silently on the vehicle in quickening tempo. Traffic was quite sparse at that time of the afternoon and it took him less than ten minutes to reach the City Hall and park near the main entrance.

  He went straight to his office on the second floor and paused when he saw the unfamiliar name plate on the door. It said: M.K.L.BYROM. Dallen had forgotten that his post was being filled by a replacement Grade IV officer who had been flown down from Winnipeg. He tapped the door, walked into the office without waiting for an invitation and was surprised to find Jim Mellor, his senior deputy, who usually worked in the operations centre, seated alone at the big communications console.

  "Carry!" Mellor grinned, hoisting his tall crane-like figure out of the chair, and shook Dallen's hand. "What are you doing here?"

  "I should be asking you that. Promotion?"

  "No chance! I came over to mind the shop for a while."

  "Well, I only came in to notify somebody that Fro quitting this job and transferring back home on the first available ship. Consider yourself notified."

  "I guessed you'd be doing that sooner or later, but you ought to give the word to Ken Byrom."

  "I've no more time for all the red tape. Why can't you pass the good news on on my behalf?"

  "You know, Carry — proper channels. Besides, he wants to have a few words with you."

  "What about?"

  "Ken likes everything done according to directives. He's
all knotted up over the weapon you lost in Cordele — not to mention taking a ship while you were officially on leave."

  "Tell him to…" Dallen stuthed the other man's narrow face. "Did you drop yourself in it by tipping me off about Beaumont?"

  "Me!" Mellor looked indignant. "I never tipped nobody off, not noways nohow."

  "You're one of the people I'm going to miss around here," Dallen said, briefly gripping one of Mellor's stringy biceps. "Now, I'm going to collect a few things from my desk and…"

  "Ken has done all that for you." Mellor opened a closet, took out a large bulging envelope and handed it to Dallen. "I think he wants a permanent assignment in Madison."

  "He's welcome. Why isn't he here, anyway?"

  "Went across to the inner field with a bunch of the others to see Gerald Mathieu."

  "Mathieu?" The tone and content of what he had just heard flicked at Dallen's nerves.

  "Yeah. You know about what happened to him?"

  "I heard."

  "Wildest thing! That's why this place is empty — they all had to have a look for themselves."

  Dallen considered the first meaning that Mellor's words had for him — that a large group of normal people had flocked across town to view a plastic sack full of bloody tissue and bone splinters — and was forced to reject it. The alternative, the incredible alternative, was a chaotic new element in the agitation that already existed in his thoughts. Gerald Mathieu still alive! Still alive. Dallen abruptly felt sick and bruised, like a fighter on the ropes.

  He pretended to check the contents of his envelope. "Lucky escape, was it?"

  "Lucky!" Mellor flung up his arms in protest at the inadequacy of the word. "He went into a hill at one K! The ship was reduced to chaff, but Mathieu walked away from it with nothing worse than bruises. What a guy!"

  "The cockpit must have been in one piece."