Sidney's Comet

by Brian Herbert

  “You got it, buddy.” Javik retrieved the pass, then patted Sidney’s back like an older brother. “You and me on a big mission, Sid! We used to dream this day would come!”

  “What’s the assignment?”

  “Classified for now. Our ship’s the Shamrock Five. It’s a beauty, pal!”

  “You asked for ME? Re-a-ll-y?”

  “Yeah, sure. Listen, Sid, I gotta go. I’ll see ya on Elba!”

  “This is fantastic!” Sidney said, turning the good side of his face up to Javik, with the twisted part concealed beneath a forearm.

  After Javik left, Sidney recalled the nightmare he had suffered that morning. The vision had prophesied correctly that he and Javik would be on the same ship. But those terrible knives . . . Sidney assured himself that this part of the vision would not happen.

  A nice way to spend Sunday evening, General Munoz thought. After dinner I’ll call far a game of Knave Table

  Munoz sat on a pillow at the head of a walnut-grained plastic banquet table with his eyes closed. One tiny hand rested on the burnished gold cross that dangled from his neck. He smiled serenely and listened while his dinner guests took their seats in the candlelit dining room module. On the inside of his eyelids, a video weather transmission revealed Afrikari blanketed by dark AmFed-made clouds. It had been this way since just after Friday’s meeting with the Alafin, thus rendering their telescope useless. The General was pleased.

  He opened his eyes, spread a white lace napkin across his lap. Looking around the table, he smiled and nodded to each of the eight men and four women as they placed napkins on their own laps. These were the hand-picked members of his inner circle, a group whose loyalty was unquestioned. Munoz knew every thought they made in his presence. And they knew his, since each had been given the ultimate gift, an implanted memo transceiver.

  Unknown to anyone at the table, President Ogg watched them intently at that moment from his study, using the palm-held video receiver given him by the Black Box of Democracy. Thought-speak, Ogg thought. The voice said they thought-speak.

  “Good evening.” Munoz said. He raised one hand, causing meckie-arms in front of each plate to pour red wine into crystal goblets. The General glanced for a moment toward a great fireplace along one wall, studied a large gold cross which stretched from the mantle to the ceiling. Along the mantle top were his favorite war trophies, gold and silver mementos inlaid with precious stones. Candlelight flickered and danced on the cross and on the trophies. He considered mentoing the fireplace but decided against it. The evening was warm.

  General Munoz lifted his wine goblet, sloshed wine and peered through the crystal at the drip pattern made by the liquid as it ran down the inside of the goblet. He smelled the bouquet, tasted.

  “Magnificent!” he said, watching the guests as they raised their goblets. He nodded to Dr. Hudson on his immediate right, mento-addressed the gathering: Election programming has been initiated. I selected fifty-seven-point-three-six percent as my portion of the vote.

  Good choice, Hudson mentoed. He pushed his eyeglasses forward to scratch the bridge of his nose.

  Allen and I are going to my country condo tomorrow, Munoz mentoed. An early celebration, you might say!

  “Excellent wine,” a dark-haired woman at the other end of the table said. “A LaTour, I believe?”

  “You are quite correct, Miss Stevens,” Munoz replied.

  Congratulations. General, she mentoed while raising her glass in toast. Soon you will be President of the American Federation of Freeness! “A toast!” she said aloud. “I propose a toast to the General for his hospitality!”

  “Thank you,” Munoz said, raising his glass. And a toast to each of you, he mentoed happily, the future ministers in MY council!

  They drank and laughed and spoke of harmless things for several minutes. Then the center of the table opened up, with its walnut-grained plastic panels sliding down into the surface. An oblong-shaped conveyor track appeared, carrying a variety of dishes which moved slowly around the table. The conveyor stopped and started, following mento-commands given by the diners.

  Colonel Peebles sat to the General’s immediate left. He watched a meckie-arm as it piled honey-basted Peking Goose, Mandarin Pancakes and plum sauce on his plate. The meckie-arm spread plum sauce on Peebles’ pancake with a scallion brush, then dropped bits of goose and scallion on the pancake and rolled it up.

  That will be enough for now, the light-eating Peebles mentoed. The conveyor clicked into motion, stopping at the next diner.

  General Munoz nibbled on a piece of gooseskin, tasting the pungent bite of spices. Suddenly he dropped his gooseskin and stared wide-eyed at a trash can near the fireplace. A piece of paper fluttered in the air over the can!

  “Leave me alone!” Munoz yelled, putting his hands up and recoiling. “Leave me alone!”

  “What’s wrong, General?” Hudson asked.

  “There!” Munoz said, pointing at the trash can. “There!”

  But before Hudson and the others could turn their heads, the piece of paper, had fallen back into the can. “Didn’t anyone see it?” Munoz wailed. Realizing they had not, Munoz buried his face in his hands and felt his pulse thump wildly.

  “What was it, General?” Colonel Peebles asked. He read General Munoz’s thoughts, saw the vision of a piece of paper fluttering over a trash can.

  Picking up the same thought, Hudson asked: “Another fireball?”

  Munoz kept his face buried in his hands. “Get it out!” he yelled. “Get it out!”

  Hudson barked a command, and a servant hurried over to the can, removing it to another room. “We’ll have your disposatubes reconnected, Arturo,” Hudson said.

  Munoz nodded, rested his forehead on the back of one hand and sat there breathing hard. Little droplets of perspiration were visible on his forehead. Don’t any of you think it, Munoz mentoed. I am not mad!

  “Why did you send Javik along?” a distant, teasing voice said, speaking from inside General Munoz’s skull.

  There! Munoz mentoed to the gathering. Did you hear that?

  Hear what, General? they mentoed. We didn’t hear anything.

  The voice returned: ‘This is private conversation, General. We told you to send Malloy alone. But you got Javik involved.”

  “I couldn’t put a cappy on the ship by himself!” Munoz yelled. “We can’t rely on a god-damned cappy!”

  Munoz’s guests sat at the table in shocked silence, afraid to do or think anything.

  “You should have listened, General,” the voice said. “You should have listened!”

  “Blast you!” Munoz bellowed. I’ll do as I damn well please!”

  The voice receded, and Munoz closed his eyes tightly, his face contorted in pain and fury.

  What in the hell is going on? President Ogg thought as he watched these events. The man is mad . . . stark, raving mad!

  Attempting to change the subject, Colonel Peebles mentoed the gathering: I almost wish military action had been necessary, just to see if the Black Box is what it’s cracked up to be!

  Surprised, Hudson looked away from General Munoz. Huh?

  What do you suppose is inside those shiny black walls, Doctor? Peebles mentoed, looking with pale blue eyes across the table at Hudson: A robot army? Or some terrible array of automatic weapons?

  Hudson made idle chatter, then mentoed: Your guess is as good . . . or should I say as bad . . . as mine. We must be careful about undue curiosity, Allen. It could lead to our undoing!

  “I must have this recipe!” exclaimed a pudgy man seated halfway down the table. He wiped his chin with a napkin.

  “Certainly, Brockman,” Munoz replied, straightening as he regained his composure. “Have your chef give mine a call.” You’ll make a fine Bu-Cops Minister, the General mentoed.

  “Thanks, General,” Brockman said with a wink to make it clear he was responding at once to the spoken and to the unspoken. I’d like to investigate the possibility of giving thought-reading
powers to my police detectives, he mentoed. Dr. Hudson tells me the Council Ministers’ transceivers can be tuned to a private wavelength . . . making our thoughts unreadable by subordinates.

  A simple modification, Hudson mentoed. He sipped his wine and sloshed it in his mouth before swallowing it.

  Munoz nodded in affirmation, then mentoed angrily: In two days that fool Ogg will be out of office! He doesn’t know the first damned thing about technology, but loves to use it for his own purposes and take all the credit! Look at the beautiful weather he told Bu-Tech to create just before the election!

  “A toast!” Colonel Peebles exclaimed, lifting his wine goblet. “To President Ogg’s re-election!”

  “Yes!” everyone said, raising their glasses. ‘To President Ogg!”

  “Good man,” Munoz said, drinking his last bit of wine. He touched his cross with one hand and closed his eyes to watch simultaneous cloudbursts dump on Afrikari and on the Union of Atheist States.

  “That lying bastard!” Euripides Ogg raged as he watched the tiny video screen. “The way their eyelids flicker during long silences . . . they’re making conversational gestures without speaking aloud! The Black Box . . .”

  A chill ran down the President’s torso as it occurred to him that someone might be eavesdropping on him at that moment. He fell silent, turned off the video screen and stared at his bookcase.

  I should do something, he thought. But what?

  * * *

  After collecting the homework assignments, Sayer Superior Lin-Ti stacked them neatly and slipped them into his briefcase.

  “During the balance of the week,” he announced to the class. . . . ”you will read Chapters Six through Eight on your own. I have been called away on urgent business. . . . ”

  Chapter Six

  HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE, FOR FURTHER READING AND DISCUSSION

  August 6, 2326: The Last Holy War. “A great little war,” in the words of colorful General William C. (“Bomber Bill”) McKay, Bu-Mil’s seventh minister. On that day, AmFed turbo bombers rained holy bombs on non-Christian enclaves around the world. The Treaty of Rabat followed, in which the planet was divided into three nations—the American Federation of Freeness (encompassing North and South America, India, the Middle East, Europe, Australia and S.E. Asia); Afrikari (all of Africa except Egypt); and the Union of Atheist States (Soviet Union, China and several minor nations).

  Monday, August 28, 2605

  It was the first morning coffee break, Garbage Day minus four. Carla mentoed the galactic pool cue, watched her white cue ball carom off an obstacle post and enter a side pocket. A wallscreen over the table lit up with bright yellow and purple gamma flashes as the cue ball’s matter was consumed by one of the game’s synthetic black holes.

  “Damn!” Carla said. She looked at her opponent, Samantha Petrie. Petrie was plump, perhaps three years Carla’s junior, with saucer-like round eyes and a toothy smile.

  “Too bad,” Petrie said with an I-got-you smile. “That’ll cost you another hundred bucks.”

  Carla nodded with resignation. ‘That’s enough for me,” she announced, reaching into her belt purse. Carla wore a tangerine orange business suit dress, with a ruffled white blouse and a narrow striped tie. A tiny painted orange beauty mark graced her left cheek.

  “Three straight!” Petrie said. “I’ve never beaten you like that!”

  “I beat myself. Too many things on my mind.” Carla passed three crisp new hundred dollar bills to Petrie, then closed her belt purse.

  They moto-shoed across the crowded Presidential Bureau Gameroom to a wallscreen on which President Ogg could be seen delivering a campaign speech. “Do you want to talk about it?” Petrie asked.

  Carla thought for a moment, then: “Might help.”

  They sat on a couch in front of the wallscreen, listening while Ogg harangued about Hoovervilles and unemployment lines in the “bad old days.” People on nearby lounge chairs and couches watched the screen or chatted in low tones. The President concluded by requesting that everyone punch Tele-Charge voting button number one on Tuesday. “A vote for me is a vote for prosperity,” he promised. The screen went dark.

  “Sidney has a terrible handicap,” Carla began sadly. “He’s being sent to a therapy orbiter.”

  “Oh,” Petrie said, her tone sincere. ‘That’s unfortunate.”

  Carla picked nervously at her cuticles. “I tried to visit him yesterday at the detention center, but he refused to see me.”

  “What does he have?”

  “A nerve disorder. I’ve known about it for years, but he was always able to control it . . . until Saturday night. He had an attack at the reunion.”

  “How sad.”

  “I just wanted to give him some code information—a few numbers and names to drop in the right places. You know, to make life a little easier for him up there.” Carla felt tears welling up in her eyes. “I also wanted to say goodbye.”

  “I wish there was something I could do.”

  “I know what you must be thinking,” Carla said, glancing at Petrie. “He should have submitted himself for therapy long ago.

  “I didn’t think any such thing. I know how you feel about him.”

  “Do you? How?”

  “It’s been obvious to me for a long time that one of you had to have a problem . . . loving one another the way you do but never becoming permies.”

  “I suppose I do love Sidney, but f just never . . .” She cleared her throat, wiped tears from her cheeks. The orange beauty mark smeared. Petrie put an arm across Carla’s shoulder.

  Carla chewed at her upper lip. “It’s been terribly difficult. And I hurt him by not going to the reunion.”

  “No one can blame you for that,” Petrie said consolingly. “If that hunk Billie Birdbright had called ME at the last minute, I’d have found a way to go out with him too.”

  “I couldn’t turn Billie down. All the girls want to go out with him. Just think of it, Samantha—He’s Chief of Staff!”

  “You shouldn’t feel ashamed. This may sound cold, but you have every right to be happy. It’s Sidney’s problem, not yours.”

  “I suppose.”

  “How was the date with Billie?”

  “Fine.”

  “You can tell me, Carla. Did you? . . .”

  Carla laughed and pushed her friend away. “You’re a Nosy Nellie!”

  “I hear a lot of good stuff that way!”

  Carla’s face grew sad again and she stared at the darkened wallscreen. “I’ve seen the statistics,” she said. “One institutionalized cappy supports seven-point-three-two-five government employees. But . . . well, I don’t know.” She sighed.

  “Cappy sounds so impersonal, doesn’t it?” Petrie said.

  “He’s much more than a statistic,” Carla said. “Sidney is flesh and blood, a warm, loving human being!”

  “Yes, but maybe this is better for him. You know, being with his own kind. Everything in the American Federation is so perfect. Their kind is better off in a separate area, where people won’t laugh and call them names.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Carla rubbed her temple with the fingers of one hand and thought back over the years she had known Sidney—all the good times and special occasions.

  Will I ever see him again? she wondered.

  From the fifth floor conditioning room in Building C, Javik could see New City Field perhaps a thousand meters to the East. A mid-morning sun seemed to drift in a clear blue sky, casting the profile shadows of rockets and support aircraft across the asphalt of the field.

  Javik smelled the acridity of his own perspiration, looked down at rings of sweat on his grey workout suit. The lung pump to which he was connected throbbed and surged, strengthening and cleansing his body’s breathing system. He removed the mouthpiece, watched a large group of people in the distance who were gathered around an older model passenger rocket. Small guard contingents could be seen posted at other ships on the field, and Javik knew the reas
on: people trying to escape the comet had already stolen a number of small and medium sized rockets.

  Javik looked to one side as he felt the pressure in the room change, saw Colonel Peebles moto-shoe in carrying his military cap in one hand. “Greetings,” Peebles said.

  The tone was sinister to Javik’s ears, and he did not return the salutation.

  “Getting in shape?” Peebles asked. His nose wrinkled. “Smells like it.”

  Javik smiled as he noted the lack of muscle tone on Peebles’s emasculated body. This was Peebles’s second visit of the day, and Javik saw no point in feigning civility. They had nothing to discuss.

  “The General would like me to brief you on certain ship’s functions,” Peebles said, “and on the method of approach you will use in getting close to that streaking ball of fire.”

  “Ha!” Javik said. He lifted a dexterity amplification cube, held it between both palms and went through a series of joint and muscle tone exercises. ‘That’ll be the day, Peebles . . . when I take instructions from you!”

  “This mission is no simple exercise,” Peebles said, glancing around the room irritably.

  “There are message box briefing systems onboard ship, I presume?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll study inflight. You didn’t tape them yourself, did you?”

  “No. Job-Sharing wouldn’t permit such a thing.”

  “Good. I don’t want to listen to your whining voice in space.” Javik smiled as he twisted his torso.

  Peebles took a deep, exasperated breath, turned to leave.

  “I do have one question for you,” Javik said as he continued exercising. “I was grabbing a cup of coffee from the vending machine outside the briefing room . . . right after I talked with you and Munoz.”

  “Oh?”

  “The door was open, and I heard you say something about hoping for the best. What the hell kind of a comment was that?” Javik set the dexterity amplification cube on a bench. “All our technology, and you’re hoping for the best?”