Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls
Page 31
Wors would know this. Everyone would. His captivity was being broadcast. He knew it. Thousands, perhaps millions were watching to see how the Supreme Leader, their master, bore adversity. They should see no crack in his armor. And Wors, intelligent fellow, would somehow smuggle a pressure suit onto his pallet. Disguised as clothing, perhaps. It would arrive today!
And today, therefore, called for his most iron control of self and countenance. When the pallet was extruded through the energy wall he must unpack it just as usual. He must not betray by so much as the twitch of an eyelid that the suit had arrived. He must cling to the routine, pacing, singing, until the next supply buggy was close enough.
When he thought about it like that, it seemed an impossible task. Those 48 hours would seem as long — longer! — than his entire imprisonment. Not that the Supreme Leader could be jailed for long... .
Even over his untuneful song he could hear it, the whiz and hum of the hoist. In his reverie he must have failed to spot the supply buggy’s approach. Careful, very careful he was not to speed up his pace or skip a word. “O day of God draw nigh in beauty and in power... .“ The watchers should not see the Supreme Leader betray himself. The pallet inched up over the stony edge. With a final whine it flipped downwards and scooted forward through the energy wall. Even then he didn’t react. He finished the last verse of the hymn first. Then he turned, majestically, and knelt to rip the plastic sheathing away.
He fanned away the lingering stench of ammonia. Where would the pressure suit be? Laid flat under the water jugs? Rolled small and crammed in beside the food concentrates? Slowly he unpacked the pallet, missing nothing. This would not surprise his captors. A prisoner learned to savor every tiny new thing. The arrival of supplies was always the highlight of each 48-hour period.
His hands quivered in spite of himself as he lifted out the last packet of crackers. Nothing. Nothing! What could be wrong? Could it be that Wors had failed him? Impossible! Methodically he repacked the pallet again, loading all the supplies back so as to unpack them once more with even greater attention. He could not miss a pressure suit. It would not be possible to compress it small enough, say, to be disguised as crackers. Perhaps in a bread bag, or between the shirts... .
With a terrible shock he realized that he had packed and unpacked his provisions a dozen times or more. The packet of crackers sagged from over-handling, nothing but a bag of crumbs in his shaking hands. He threw it down with an oath and stamped on it.
It was a brief and familiar comfort to feel it explode under his heel. It came to him that he had smashed other cracker bags like this before, other items even.
“My God, how long?“ he groaned aloud. How long had he been going mad here in solitary confinement?
It had been months! For a while he had kept tally of the 48-hour supply cycles — he could see the hatch marks he had pressed with his thumbnail into the plastic of his basin. But it was entirely possible his captors had tricked him, confusing him by changing the interval between supply deliveries. And then the obsessive packing and repacking had further confused his count.
“Wors, you traitor,“ he muttered. “You swine... .“
But wait. Wors was dead. He remembered clearly now, the tingling buzz of the gun in his hand as he had emptied the charge into Wors’s body. And yes! The delicious thrill up his leg from his booted foot, as he had stamped on Wors’s head and crushed the skull in!
All this time he had been singing, singing. Now he heard the grand words rolling out of his mouth: “Awake O sleeper, rise from death!“ He had to laugh. It was guff, the most blatant nonsense, all this watery spirituality. A ruler could have no truck with such stuff. Or could the very hymns be a trap as well? Endlessly repeating praise and worship, was he being subverted by their message? Those holy-boleys from his childhood had yearned to get their hooks into the Supreme Leader of Prospero! How they would blush when they learned the hymns were only a signal to Wors, the signal that he was prepared for the rescue attempt. Except that Wors was dead.
It was all illusion — but an illusion with a purpose. Anything to keep his mental resources hoarded, until rescue came. The army was conquering Prospero again, grinding these insects of rebels into paste. He had to endure only a little longer!
But was Wors dead? If he was, could it be that his victorious troops were also lost? Perhaps there was nobody coming to his rescue. Prospero could be enslaved at this moment, groaning under the tyranny of his enemies. Perhaps he would die here, chained to this rock.
A day would come when no buggy would arrive. When he was forgotten — was he? Was anyone really watching, or was he alone, forgotten? If his people had despaired and gone over to some other leader, they would need him no longer. He could starve. Or the power cells could fail. No maintenance crew, no visitor at all, had ever come here since he was immured. Without power he would freeze and suffocate in the dark.
He had condemned political prisoners here himself in his day, to that very fate. That bastard Senti, for one. The traitor. He hoped Senti had died whimpering, gnawing on the rocks. Or... singing, perhaps? “Glorious things of thee are spoken... .“
New pitfalls seemed to open at his feet, as if he was not safe on a pinnacle but balanced precariously on a verge. The distant doctrines hammered into him in boyhood, boiled together with all these hymns, suddenly chilled him with superstitious dread. He was going to die here. Salvation or damnation opened before him, and he had to choose. He was in Hell, but the path to Heaven lay open to his feet.
God, that train of thought led to madness for certain! Was he flinging himself back into delusion, or was he cunningly marshaling his resources? Time would tell. The truth would out.
No, he knew the truth. Some day he would be gloriously justified. The hymns were in some sense about himself. “All praise to thee for thou, O king divine... .“
Wors must be dead. He had not failed in a killing for many years now. The old woman clutching the rosary — he remembered clearly now giving the order to the Special Guard. “Truncheons, my lads,“ he had said. “No use wasting charges on oldsters and trash.“ They had grinned back at him with simple boyish pleasure and turned avidly to the work.
No, Wors was dead. But there was Toda, and Noben, and Monton, and so many other loyalists and supporters, an invincible host. Why, he was the lord of all he surveyed from this high place. Eternity could overtake him and he would be standing here, unchangeable as trolls are said to be when the sunrise overtakes them.
Enough of this mopery! He rose to his feet. Ten paces each way, and no way to keep count. But his resources were infinite. He raised his voice in song: “A mighty fortress is our God...“
oOo
Brenda W. Clough...
...is a meek, mild-mannered reporter at a major metropolitan publication. She has published seven novels, many short stories, nonfiction, and innumerable book reviews that revolve around death, misery, and grief. She has traveled around the world under the aegis of the US government, and now lives in a cottage at the edge of a forest, surrounded by animals.
Her latest novel, Revise the World, is available at Book View Café . A version of it was a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula awards.
Who Killed Science Fiction
Jennifer Stevenson
“I love this bookstore. You know? I guess I must spend five afternoons a week in here.“
“At least that.“
“It’s dark, it’s quiet, there’s never anybody else in here. I can browse for hours if I want.“
“That you can.“
“What are you doing?“
“Ringing in used books.“
“Oh, hey, any Bark Dangerly in there? I’m looking for —“
“ — Volume ten, Bark Dangerly —“
“ — And The Möbius Machine. I guess I’ve asked before.“
“Only every day, Pushme.“
“Well, I’m a collector. It’s guys like me keep guys like you in business.“
“Mm-hm.
“
“I’ve got every Bark Dangerly in every edition printed. I have the whole set. Every volume except —“
“ — for volume ten. I’m watching for it.“
“You sure it’s not in this box of used books? Maybe somebody brought it in. Didn’t know what it’s worth.“
“If they shop here, they know what it’s worth.“
“Why? Are you telling them?“
“No, you are.“
“Me? Oh. I guess you mean they might overhear me asking for it.“
“It’s possible.“
“I don’t want that moron Pullyu getting it before I do. His collection isn’t complete either. We’ve both been after it —“
“ — for forty years, ever since your mothers threw out your old books.“
“I guess I told you about that. We were in school, so we had no idea what they were up to. We came home from school — it was a half day —“
“Pep rally.“
“Or some stupid thing —“
“ — and they’d thrown out all those old Bark Dangerlys.“
“We never did have volume ten, you know.“
“I know.“
“So if I get mine first, I’m not gonna show him! That’ll teach him to sell all his Batmans without offering me first refusal. I helped him build that collection, you know.“
“Hey, what do you know? A third edition volume six! You already have a couple, though, don’t you?“
“Let me see that!“
“Pullyu doesn’t have a duplicate copy. I’m pretty sure he said so.“
“Gimme!“
“You’ve read it already.“
“Only four hundred times. It’s my favorite! Bark Dangerly —“
“ — and the Spleens of Rigelius. Pretty good condition, too.“
“Let me look at it. I won’t sweat on it, I promise.“
“Why? You already have three copies.“
“Four. I had to buy that last one so Pullyu wouldn’t get it.“
“Well, you’ll have to buy this one because I’m not letting anybody else touch it. It’s losing value just being looked at. See? The cover’s not even in good condition.“
“I’ll buy it.“
“A fifth copy?“
“Sure.“
“It’s worth forty-eight bucks.“
“Sure, sure, gimme.“
“No reading it in the back of the store and then trying to sell it back to me all sweated on.“
“No, no. Here.“
“
“Oh, baby. I love this volume. I’ll just go skim through it in the corner by the reading lamp.“
“You do that. I’ll ring up these books.“
“Oh, did I mention I have three boxes of books in my car?“
“Uh, no. It’s kind of late.“
“That’s okay. You can ring them up tomorrow and tell me what you owe me. I’ve got an Edgar Rice Burroughs mint Mastermind of Mars and some Heinlein juvenile first editions. That ought to offset what I gave you for this volume six nicely.“
“Are you going to read it now?“
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Yes, I was, wasn’t I? I’ll just take it over to the reading lamp.“
“How about you take it home? I think I’ll close early.“
“You can’t do that! What if somebody wants to buy a book?“
oOo
“Did you know Jake Lapiedis only wrote twenty-one of the original thirty volumes?“
“That’s right, Pullyu.“
“And for some reason, volume ten is the only one nobody can find any more. The story is that the paper was defective.“
“Yep.“
“Disintegrated in the warehouse. Piles of mouse nests when they finally got the boxes open.“
“Uh-huh.“
“Lapeidis was mad. He fired his agent over that.“
“I know.“
“Say, you don’t have any leads on a volume ten, do you?“
“Nope. Sorry, Pullyu.“
“I bet that duppus Pushme is still stewing about all those volume fours I bought out from under him at that estate sale. Eight copies! And he didn’t even get one! Hyok-hyok!“
“Mm-hm.“
“Lapeidis was a very moody guy, you know. He never talked to anybody. Just grunted. And he owned about a million old science fiction novels from the twenties and thirties. Never opened ’em. Just kept ’em. Swore he would open a bookstore one day, if he ever got writer’s block.“
“Ugh.“
“Say, would you like some help going through those boxes?“
“Nope.“
“I see Pushme brought in another batch. Dope. He never has anything good to sell. Maybe he’s going broke. Maybe he’s starving to death, eating cat food in that moldy old house of his mother’s, selling off his collection a box at a time. Doesn’t that sound likely?“
“Mm-hm.“
“Maybe he made a mistake and brought in something good. I’ll just toss through these real quick and see —“
“Thanks, but I’ll handle it.“
“He’s so old now he’s probably half blind. Probably wouldn’t even know if he did have a volume ten. Might toss it in the box to bring over here and not even notice.“
“But I would notice.“
“I guess you might.“
“Trust me. Did you notice we have that old prequel to 2010 on the shelf up front? Might want to take a look at it.“
“You know, I’m getting so impatient to see volume ten, I wonder if I’m not going to die before I get my hands on it.“
“Terrible.“
“Exactly. So I’ll tell you something. But it’s a big secret, okay?“
“Sure.“
“I mean, you can’t tell Pushme. The stupid jerk will probably laugh. Not that he’s got a creative bone in his body.“
“Maybe you better not tell me.“
“This is it. But it’s a secret. I’m writing volume ten.“
“You still writing that trilogy?“
“No! I’m writing the missing Lapeidis!“
“You’re kidding.“
“No, I’m not. I’m fed up waiting for a copy to turn up. It’s going to be a little longer than the original, mind you. Probably the real volume ten is only eighty, eighty-two pages. This one will be slightly longer.“
“How much longer?“
“Well, I’m up to the first time paradox and I’m only in chapter three. Two hundred and twenty pages.“
“My God.“
“I know. The sweat! How Lapeidis did it I’ll never know. It’s going to be called the same thing, of course: Bark Dangerly and the Möbius Machine. I like to think I’m writing it in the authentic voice. Plus a couple of improvements of my own.“
“Improvements.“
“Yeah. Like, instead of Ponto, his faithful robot assistant, he’s now got a girl working for him.“
“Imagine that.“
“Yep. And she has big tits, and she can shoot the eye out of an Aldebarani ski-piglet at fifty meters. And she has five PhDs, and her name is Skeeter. Isn’t that cute?“
“Adorable.“
“I see Lara Crofts in the role.“
“Sure.“
“But the kicker is — you’re going to love this, this is why I think I can actually sell it, if I can finish the damn thing.“
“Sell it?“
“You don’t have to sound so skeptical. Yes, sell it. I’m a very creative person, you know. I have lots of ideas. That’s what this is, a literature of ideas. You can’t stuff your head full of ideas all day and all night long without getting a few ideas of your own, you know. It’s why we’re superior to dumb animals and romance readers.“