Sidney's Comet

by Brian Herbert

  Garbage Day Countdown: 1 day, 5 hours, 17 minutes

  When Sidney awoke, he felt a dull pain in his ribcage where Mayor Nancy Ogg had kicked him. He touched the bandage at his temple and was pleased to find that the swelling had subsided. Sidney sat up, stretched and looked across the shadowy room at the cockpit hatch. The hatch door remained closed, and in front of that stood the oxy-cart precisely where he had left it.

  His chairback rose automatically seconds later, and as it did the passenger compartment lights brightened. Sidney looked up upon hearing a whir of gears, and watched a tray of food drop slowly from a ceiling-mounted levitator onto his lap. I AM hungry, he thought, studying a synthetic egg on bagel sandwich with interest. He stuck his finger in a bowl of reconstituted tomato soup. It was tepid. Sidney wolfed down the sandwich, gulped the soup. As he set the empty bowl back on the tray, the tray returned to its ceiling compartment.

  Sidney considered ordering more food, but decided instead to roll across the room. After re-securing the oxy-cart to the bulkhead, he mentoed the cockpit door. As it slid open, he heard the sexless voice of the ship’s computer. “Re-charging stop, twenty-three minutes,” the computer reported.

  Re-charging stop! Sidney thought. If it’ s not completely automated, and there are people there, I could be in trouble. . . .

  Sidney flicked a nervous glance at the still motionless Madame Bernet. Don’t see any further movement, he thought, rolling to the instrument panel. Without sitting down, he spoke into the command speakercom, asking, “Can re-charging stop be avoided?”

  “Remaining charge two-point-seven-four times greater than anticipated,” the computer reported. “Unexpected beneficial space currents account for increased efficiency, and . . .”

  “Answer the question,” Sidney said, slipping into the command chair.

  “Answer depends upon variables.”

  “What variables?” Sidney drummed a finger impatiently on the instrument panel.

  “Comet behaving erratically. It has accelerated and changed course in the past twenty-nine hours.”

  “Explain.”

  “Orbital speed of Earth has increased twice, to its present factor of one-point-five-three-seven normal. Cause unknown. Comet matched each change, is in apparent pursuit of Earth.”

  “So we need less E-Cell charge to rendezvous with the comet?”

  “Assuming comet continues at present speed . . . and assuming a rendezvous in deep space is required . . . that is correct.”

  “Returning to my original question, do we have adequate charge onboard?”

  “Answer depends upon variables.”

  “We’ve already been over that!”

  “There are other variables.”

  Sidney sighed. “Be specific,” he said.

  “Comet’s speed and course may change. Space currents are subject to variation. Earth—”

  “Assuming an average condition for all such variables, do we have an adequate E-Cell charge to reach the comet?”

  “This computer does not deal in probabilities. It deals in facts.”

  Sidney slammed the butt of his hand on the instrument panel. “Do not stop for recharging,” he said tersely.

  An hour later, Sidney felt bored. He glanced around the cockpit at the white plastic walls and at the still rigid Madame Bernet. This isn’t what I imagined, he thought sadly. The ship is flying itself!

  He touched the Manual Mode handle, felt a rush of excitement as he considered taking the ship off its semi-automatic Direct Command Mode. Should I do it? he thought.

  He threw the handle down in answer to the question and grasped a gleaming tita-steel-plated control stick at his right side. The stick was cool to his touch. Sidney moved the stick halfway to starboard, and the Shamrock Five banked gracefully to the right.

  This is more like it! he thought, suddenly exhilarated.

  Sidney pressed a black button in the stick, causing the ship’s twin Rolls Royce engines to blast. It’s so simple, he thought, feeling acceleration in the gravitonically normal cabin. Just as Imagined. . . .

  Sidney pushed the stick to port, giving another blast to the rockets. The Shamrock Five responded quickly, and Sidney leaned into the turn, just as he had done so many times in dreams.

  It seemed too good to be true. . . . Sidney at the command of a Space Patrol cruiser, flashing commands to powerful rockets! I’m the only one who can do it! he thought, the only person who can save Earth!

  He reached to his uniform tunic with his left hand to feel the medals he had been awarded for past missions, patted his chest where they should have been. “What the? . . .” he grunted.

  Sidney looked down at his chest, saw only a thin green smock that had been issued to him on Saint Elba. “Oh,” he sighed. “For a moment—”

  “Ha-ha-ha!” Distant laughter echoed through his brain, grew louder quickly. “Ha-ha-ha!”

  “Enjoying yourself, fleshcarrier?” a familiar deep voice asked.

  Sidney felt warm now, embarrassed at the daydream. You’re alone out here! he thought. Get ahold of yourself!

  The cockpit was silent. He looked across the starboard bow at a distant shooting star streaking to his left. The shooting star angled off into the starcloth beyond, then flashed brilliantly, followed by a wisp of white light as it turned toward Sidney.

  Wait a minute! Sidney thought. That’s no shooting star!

  Inadvertently, Sidney pulled the stick back sharply, and the ship’s nose tilted up. He pushed the stick forward to compensate, and the Shamrock Five dropped its nose.

  It’s the Great Comet! he thought. A wave of euphoria passed through his body.

  The comet veered heavenward for an instant, and this time its color and configuration changed so that it was a pale blue iceball trailing six silvery jet-ray tails from its nuclear region. The tails were magnificent plumes of gas which swept across millions of kilometers of space, as delicate and translucent as spun glass against sunlight. The midnight blue backcloth of space gave definition to the comet’s icy nucleus, and it occurred to Sidney that he was witnessing the most beautiful spectacle in all of creation.

  Now the comet swooped back, much as his ship had done moments before, returning to its original course. As the comet swooped, its silvery plumes turned to fiery yellow, while the pale blue nucleus became soft lavender. As Sidney thought about the comet’s complexity, another thought hit him: Did it mimic my ship’s motion?

  Thinking the comet might follow him away from Earth, Sidney mentoed a directional computer button. The ship turned around one hundred twenty degrees. Nudging the speed toggle to decelerate, he watched the Great Comet on a video console screen.

  But the comet remained on course, not flinching an eyelash. Sidney brought the ship around again and resumed acceleration. Then he moved the control stick. First one way, then the other. The comet refused to follow.

  Now Sidney closed his eyes and clasped his hands together in prayer. Please, he thought, recalling his prayer when the Elba House fire was raging, swerve and go in another direction. Please don’t kit Earth!

  He opened his eyes. The comet had not changed course. Sidney repeated the prayer four more times, but nothing happened.

  Elba House was on fire, he thought, trying to sort out events that had become a blur in his mind. And the comet is fire. . . .

  He tugged at his upper lip pensively, then moved his head from side to side. Maybe the comet’s too big, he thought. Too free. . . . Sidney hit a red super accelerator toggle on the console, felt G-forces push him against the chair back.

  The comet grew visibly larger as the distance between it and Sidney narrowed. He saw its nucleus flare bright red. Then the misty tail plumes changed to emerald and gold. It was a spectacular display of raw primordial power, at once terrifying and delicately beautiful.

  I feel . . . strangely compelled . . . to continue this journey, Sidney thought, as if some immense presence is beckoning to me across the heavens. . . .

  Sid
ney heard faint laughter in a distant cavern of his skull. He rubbed his temples with the thumb and two fingers of one hand. Gradually his head cleared, leaving him with a mixture of intense and conflicting emotions.

  The black pearl handled knife lay on Master Edward’s dining module table, and he leaned over the table with both hands on its cool marble edge, staring at the weapon despondently. He felt tired and dispirited. Although it was long past lunchtime of Garbage Day minus one, he had not looked in the mirror at all that day.

  No use looking at my face, he thought, noting deep creases and brown age blotches on his hands. I know what it looks like. He sighed. I am so weary!

  Master Edward straightened, lifted the knife. He pricked the tip of one finger intentionally, watched blood squirt out and drip to the table. The blood seemed impersonal, somehow not his own.

  “Willard!” the simu-life picture screamed from another room. “Willard!”

  “Yes, dear,” Master Edward called back. “Coming, dear.”

  I am going to join her . . . and the Master, he thought. In death.

  He glanced to the doorway at the sound of rolling machinery, saw the remaining tuxedo meckie enter. “You did not call for lunch, Master,” the meckie said. “You are not hungry today?”

  Master Edward did not respond.

  “Can I get you anything, Master?”

  Master Edward stared at the knife, replied: “Serenity.”

  “What did you say, Master?”

  “I want you to kill me.”

  “But no one can kill you, Master. You are the most perfect creation.”

  “I am re-programming you,” Master Edward said, extending the knife to the meckie. “What was said before is not true. I can die. I want to die.”

  “As you wish, Master,” the meckie said in its sophisticated, emotionless voice. Its button lights blinked uncertainly.

  “Take the knife,” Master Edward instructed.

  The tuxedo meckie complied, stood motionless with the knife blade in its mechanical grasp.

  “Kill me,” Master Edward said, extending his arms to each side as he recalled Uncle Rosy’s similar words the day before.

  The meckie rolled forward quickly and slammed the knife handle into Master Edward’s midsection.

  Master Edward grunted and grabbed his stomach. But the injury was limited: his wind had been knocked out. “You tin can fool!” Master Edward gasped. “Turn the knife around!”

  “This way, Master?” the tuxedo meckie asked, grasping the black pearl handle.

  “Yes,” Master Edward said impatiently. “Now hurry, blast you! Hurry!”

  It was Thursday afternoon. Mayor Nancy Ogg had been brought back to Saint Elba three hours earlier.

  She passed a stack of telebeam memos across her desktop to Sergeant Keefer. This was Rountree’s replacement, a man whose appearance very much resembled that of his predecessor tall and muscular, just the sort of man with whom she would like to share a bed. Dr. Hudson had been a brain, and that had attracted her to him physically. It certainly had not been Hudson’s appearance. She thought of her longings to be held by Sergeant Rountree. Now he too was gone. . . .

  The Mayor sighed, recalling the crisis she faced. She lit a lemon tintette and sat back in her chair with an intense expression. She heard the chair squeak, studied the black-uniformed man who stood in front of her desk. “Beams have been arriving all night,” she said.

  Sergeant Keefer flipped through the memos, appeared to be ill at ease.

  “Sit,” Mayor Nancy Ogg commanded.

  Sergeant Keefer took a seat in a lattice glass suspensor chair, continued to flip through the slips of paper. “News travels fast,” he said. “I see the psychotherapeutic community wants video-film and brain scan reports on Mister Malloy. Requests from San Dimitrio, Mariana City . . . every quadrant of the galaxy. . .” He paused upon seeing Mayor Nancy Ogg shake her head from side to side, an unspoken comment that she was not interested in such information.

  “This Malloy; I’ve never seen anything like him,” Mayor Nancy Ogg said, taking a puff on her tintette. She blew bright yellow smoke through her nostrils, peered through the smoke at Sergeant Keefer.

  “Most unusual, Honorable Mayor. Most unusual.”

  “Where did Malloy learn to operate an Akron class cruiser?”

  “We’re checking his dossier file now, Honorable Mayor. We show him as a G.W. seven-five-oh, Presidential Bureau, Central Forms.”

  The Mayor scowled, flipped ashes into an ashtray. “Munoz chose him to command the ship. Why?’

  Sergeant Keefer leaned forward to return the telebeam slips to Mayor Nancy Ogg’s desk, remained on the forward edge of his chair and said, “I don’t know.”

  “Come now, Sergeant. Surely you can think more clearly than that. General Munoz was drugged—or hypnotized!”

  Sergeant Keefer remained leaning forward, looked confused.

  Mayor Nancy Ogg snuffed out her tintette in the ashtray, stared at the wall. “Another problem,” she muttered.

  “What did you say, Honorable Mayor?’

  “Nothing, nothing,” she replied irritably, still staring at the wall. Then, turning to glare at Keefer with angry, smoldering eyes, she announced: “I’m putting the orbiter on immediate Evacuation Alert. Malloy duped Javik and then killed him. Malloy is a saboteur!”

  “He c-couldn’t have p-planted bombs,” Sergeant Keefer stammered. “He looked so harmless. . .”

  “And that would make him the perfect saboteur!” Mayor Nancy Ogg boomed. “Surely, even you can see that, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, of course.” Sergeant Keefer hung his head.

  “Speed up your background investigation,” the Mayor commanded. “I want a full report on this man in one hour!”

  From the couch of her living room module, Carla heard the chimes of a neighbor’s digital cuckoo, counted six chirps. Supper time, she thought, infuriated.

  She wiped tears from her face, took a deep breath and mentoed her telephone to call Samantha Petrie. A tele-cube rose from the phone’s cradle. The cube floated through the air, paused in front of Carla’s mouth.

  “Billie hasn’t called all day,” Carla said, trying to regain her composure.

  “You were going to get some of your permeage license forms filled out today, weren’t your Petrie asked. “Why didn’t you call me earlier?”

  “I took the whole day off,” Carla said, oblivious to the question. “He should have been here this morning.” She sobbed, put her hand over the tele-cube, then released it. “That dirty . . .”

  “Maybe something came up,” Petrie said, trying to reassure her friend.

  “Yeah. About five-ten, blue eyes, a good—”

  “No, I mean at work. Did you try there?”

  “Several times. I tried his home too.”

  “That IS strange.”

  “I don’t know whether to be angry or worried.”

  “Get some sleep, Carla. I’ll see you at work tomorrow. If he’s not there, we’ll call Bu-Cops.”

  Carla hung up the telephone, watched disconsolately as the tele-cube flitted back to its place. She curled up on the couch, and presently great sobs came upon her, reverberating through her body.

  “Damn him!” she cursed as her anger and suspicion took control. “I thought he would change. . . . ” At long last she fell into a troubled slumber, resolving never to speak with Birdbright again.

  Twosayer William stood on the lowest step of the platform which supported Uncle Rosy’s great chair, looking across the chamber at a full assemblage of hooded sayermen. They looked back in the low light with sorrowful eyes, their mouths partly open in shock and turned down at the corners. It Was nearly time to retire for the night, but no one thought of sleep. Rumors of murder and intrigue had been in the air since mid-afternoon.

  “The memory circuits of Uncle Rosy’s tuxedo meckie have been checked,” Twosayer said, raising his voice so that all could hear. “Onesayer died yesterday in an attempt to tak
e our Master’s life.”

  The sayermen gasped.

  Twosayer continued: “This morning, for reasons unknown, Uncle Rosy instructed the meckie to take his own sacred life as well.”

  A whispering and moaning swept over the group. Some sayermen fell to their knees, crying and wailing. Twosayer heard their swellings of despondency: “It cannot be true!” they said. “What are we to do now?” “All is lost!”

  “Peace be upon you, brothers!” Twosayer called out. “Calm yourselves!”

  “Did you see the Master’s body?’ Threesayer asked from the front of the assemblage.

  “I saw His Holiness,” Twosayer replied sadly. “But his features had so aged I could not recognize him.”

  “We wish to see him,” another sayerman called out, ‘To pay our final respects.”

  “I thought it best to send him directly to Astro-Disposal,” Twosayer said, narrowing his eyes and glancing around the chamber. “I expect he is being catapulted now.”

  “That is best,” Foursayer said.

  Then others agreed. “Yes,” they said. “That is .best.”

  “Our Master would not have wanted the sayermen to see him like that,” Twosayer said. “Let us remember him as he was.”

  “Yes,” most of the assemblage agreed. “Let us remember him as he was.”

  “After a suitable period,” Twosayer said, pushing out his chest a bit in pride, “I shall assume the duties of Master.”

  “Do we have time to wait?” a sayerman asked, his voice reflecting panic, “with the garbage comet due to hit tomorrow?”

  “There is no stopping it!” someone said. “A cappy has stolen the space cruiser . . . the comet follows each change in Earth’s orbit!”

  Twosayer did not reply, considered the crisis.

  “Take the holy duty now,” a sayerman in the back urged.

  “We need you now!” another said. “The AmFed people need you now!”

  A murmuring rolled across the chamber, and generally it was agreed that Twosayer should not delay in donning the Master’s robes.

  But then Lastsayer rolled to the front, holding a copy of the Sayer’s Guide high over his head. “It is not so easy!” he announced, yelling to be heard over the multitude.