The Spheres of Heaven tmp-2

by Charles Sheffield

  “That might be true , but it doesn’t make it right . You have a beautiful face and body, but you have a brain , too, a good brain. You’re a person , Liddy. More than just a body, more than just a b-brain. A whole person!” He was stammering in his excitement, and his voice grew louder. “How can you let him treat you like a b-b- bimbo?”

  “And how can you let him order you to keep watch while he sleeps? Don’t you need sleep, too? Does he think you’re a machine, and not a human being? Do you know the only reason I didn’t scream when he said that to you?” Liddy was close to screaming now. “It’s because I wouldn’t feel safe if he was on watch, he’d do something stupid. But I feel safe with you. Indigo and I know we can rely on you to do anything that’s needed. Doesn’t that mean he bought you even more than he bought me?”

  “The arrogant little bastard.” In his anger Bony brushed off her question. “He talks to you like you’re a moron. He makes you share his bed and he forces his body on you. When I think of you screwing with that mouse-brained idiot—”

  “Mind your own business, Bony.” Liddy’s voice turned icy.

  “It is my business.”

  “Oh, is it? Since when? You think now you own me, instead of Friday Indigo? Well, let me tell you, he owns you a lot worse than he owns me. With me, it’s only an hour or two every few days. I can stand that, I was trained for it. Can you say as much? It’s twenty-four hours a day for you, every day, servant and slave. How do you stand it, Bony Rombelle?”

  Any thought of whispering was long gone. Bony was drawing in his breath for another loud exchange when he stopped, frozen. He was facing Liddy, and over her shoulder at one of the ports he saw a faint, pale circle.

  He reached forward and placed his hand over her mouth. He dropped his voice back to a whisper. “Don’t move. Don’t make a noise. There’s a Limbic behind you, right outside the ship.”

  One of the bubble people was floating high above the sea floor, its round head level with the port. Green globe eyes pressed to the thick transparent plastic.

  “I don’t think it can see us.” As Bony placed his mouth next to Liddy’s ear he could smell the faint fragrance of her hair. “There’s just enough glow outside for us to see it, but I doubt it can see much in here. I certainly can’t.”

  He felt her breath on his cheek, and she murmured softly, “It was the noise, all the shouting and screaming. My fault.”

  “No! Mine, I got carried away. When I think of Friday Indigo—”

  “Shh!”

  He felt her hand on his mouth, and her body shaking. Was she shivering? No. She was laughing.

  As she took her hand away he muttered, “Aren’t you frightened?”

  “No. Should I be?”

  “I don’t know. With all this.” He made a gesture toward the outside, which he realized she could not see. “Uncertainty is enough to scare most people.”

  “Are you scared?”

  “I can’t say. This is almost too interesting to let me be frightened at the same time.”

  “Well, Friday Indigo isn’t frightened, either. He’s sure you can handle anything that comes along. Do you want me to have less faith in you than he does?”

  “He’s a fool and you’re not. He thinks if you have enough money, you can buy safety. He thinks you can buy anything. He thinks he owns you, and any time he wants to stick his—”

  Her hand was on his mouth again. “I don’t want to hear what he sticks, and I don’t want to think about where.” He felt rather than saw her move to his side on the padded bench seat. She whispered, “Do we really want to start on Friday Indigo all over again? If we’re going to talk about anybody, shouldn’t it be you and me? But not yet!”

  The pale face was still at the port. They waited, now in silence, for whatever might come next. Bony, with Liddy’s body warm against his, felt willing to wait forever. At last there was a stir outside the port, and the round head with its green bubble eyes sank away out of sight. Liddy said in his ear, “What now?”

  “You sleep. I keep watch.”

  “Would you like to trust me as much as I trust you?”

  “Of course I would.”

  “Right then.” She slid farther along the bench and pulled Bony down so that his head was pillowed on her lap. “Trust me. You did most of the work today, and you’ve looked exhausted for hours. You need sleep more than I do. I keep watch.”

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  “Because you own me, right, and you can order me around just like Friday Indigo does?”

  “Of course not. But if he gets up and finds me asleep in this position, instead of being on watch—”

  “You mean that you don’t own me, but he owns you twenty-four hours a day? Bony, answer me one question. Is anything going to happen before morning?”

  “I don’t think so. I’d be very surprised if it does.”

  “So lie quiet, and go to sleep. Trust me.”

  He ought to sit up and argue, but Liddy was stroking his hair and cheek and he didn’t want that to stop. He decided that he would enjoy a few minutes of relaxation, then switch with her. After that he would watch and she could sleep.

  Bony thought of the Limbics in their circle outside the ship. It was odd, but they seemed less ominous now that he had seem them close up. There was a thought you had to resist. Often the most dangerous things looked the most innocuous. It was still a mystery, though: Why had they come? To destroy, to communicate, from sheer curiosity? Maybe an answer would be provided after the long night watch.

  * * *

  A short time later Liddy moved her position. Bony grunted and opened his eyes.

  Impossibly, the cabin was filled with diffuse sunlight streaming in through the ports. He turned his head to ask Liddy what had happened, and found that a cushion had replaced her lap.

  He sat up. Liddy was over at the other side of the cabin. She heard his movement and turned.

  “Sleep well?”

  “Great. But you were awake all night.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. I lack your sense of dedication. I woke up just a couple of minutes ago when I heard knocking on the hull.”

  “The Limbics?”

  “That seems a reasonable assumption.” Liddy was standing by one of the ports. “I was going to rouse you and Indigo in two more seconds if you hadn’t woken by yourselves. Come look at something.”

  Bony moved to her side, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

  “They must be early risers,” she said. “They were all up and about, and they noticed me as soon as I went to the port. I’d like to know if you have my reaction. What do you think they’re doing?”

  Bony stared out of the port. Down on the seabed the Limbics had moved from their guarding circle. Now they stood in a group. Forty or more bubble arms waved in unison in the quiet water.

  Bony took a deep breath. He waited one more moment to make sure, but there was really no doubt.

  “They’re signaling,” he said. “Those waves of their arms mean, Come outside. We want to meet you. ”

  12: RECRUITING TULLY O’TOOLE

  She knew something she was not willing to admit. Chan, walking the darkened tunnels beneath Mount Ararat at Deb’s side, kept glancing at her profile. A mirthless half-smile was on her lips. He could not see her eyes, hidden within the depths of the black hood, but whenever she turned her head his way her forehead was furrowed and her eyebrows lowered to a frown.

  He wondered what surprises lay within the cloak. It was sure to be packed with hidden pockets and secret sewn-in compartments. Chan had been around Weapons-master Deb Bisson long enough to be ready for anything that popped out from the cloak’s inner recesses. He had seen tiny mutated snakes, smaller than a finger, spring from a cloak pocket on command and kill with a single drop of neurotoxic venom delivered from minute fangs. He had watched a thief, tracked by blue-green borer beetles released from a vial in the cloak and tuned to pheromones at the crime scene, run screaming to Deb and beg for mercy aft
er the patient little insects found him, entered his body cavities as he slept, and slowly began to eat him away from inside. He had seen a monofilament thread, woven into the cloak’s hem, become in Deb’s hands first a defensive weapon that cut a swinging club in two, and then in the same continuing movement an edge so keen that the attacker was decapitated while he still believed that he was bludgeoning his helpless victim.

  Deb had promised a surprise, but it was nothing in the cloak. Something new and extraordinary — and unpleasant — would be needed to astonish Chan. Deb knew that. No mere method of attack or defense would be enough. Even twenty years ago, responding to a joking challenge, she had listed eighty-two different poisons that resided within her cloak and could leave a victim dead, apparently of natural causes.

  The tunnels under Mount Ararat were narrower as they went north. At first, Chan and Deb were able to walk side by side. Then it was one at a time, with Deb in front. Ten minutes later, the hood of her cloak brushed the ceiling and Chan had to crouch in order to avoid banging his head on the unfinished rock of the tunnel roof.

  “Are you sure Tully lives out here?” he said, as the tunnel dwindled another five centimeters in height and width.

  She turned, so that for the first time since they started out her angry brown eyes stared directly into his. “You think maybe you know better?” She moved back against the wall so that he could squeeze past her, and waved a hand along the tunnel. “Go ahead. Be my guest.”

  “No, that’s all right.” Chan wished that he had kept his mouth shut. “I just didn’t expect Tully to be in a place like this. The greatest linguist I ever met—”

  “The greatest anybody ever met. But what need has there been for linguists since the starways closed? The translating machines are enough for talk between humans.”

  “Even so, Tully could have found a better place to live. Why would he choose to be out here?”

  “Thirty seconds more, and you’ll find out. Just around the next corner.”

  The tunnel was no wider than Chan’s shoulders, and he had to bend far forward or go down on his hands and knees. The light came from wan yellow tubes, nailed one every twenty meters or so on the rough-cut walls or ceiling. He swore as the tunnel made a sharp turn and he failed to stoop quite low enough. His head banged on one of the lights.

  “Welcome to Europa, low-rent district,” Deb’s voice said from around the turn. “Are we having fun yet?”

  “This is no worse than parts of the Gallimaufries. The difference is, the Gallimaufries used to be the worst place in the solar system. Earth set the standard for lousy living. But since the quarantine, everywhere is getting more and more like the worst parts of Earth.”

  There was a silence from ahead, then Deb’s cold voice. “You don’t stop pushing, do you? I know we need the quarantine to end. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have walked a single step with you. So get off my back, and be ready to say hello to Tully O’Toole.”

  Chan squeezed his way along to where Deb was standing in front of a door about four feet high. In the gloom beyond it, Chan saw a steep descending stairway.

  “Down there.” Deb pointed. “You, not me.”

  Chan hesitated. He had the feeling that something awful was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. “Are you sure Tully will be there?”

  “If he’s not, I don’t know where he is.”

  The stairs were so steep, the only safe way to go down was to turn and hold the steps above as though descending a ladder. Chan began to go down, counting as he went. By the eighth step, a curious smell hit his nostrils. Suddenly he knew the nature of Deb’s unpleasant surprise. The aroma was quite unmistakable and dreadfully familiar. He paused, wanting to climb back up and run far away.

  He couldn’t do that. For Tully O’Toole’s sake, for old times sake, for Chan’s own sake, he had to learn how bad it was. He continued down. As he reached the bottom he took a deep breath and turned the corner leading into a more brightly lit room.

  They were on the floor, about forty of them lying on thin mattresses. Each facial expression was different, from joyful bliss to dark, haunted agony. Their dress ranged from expensive and new to old, worn-out rags. A few were fat, most were skeletally thin. All had in common a dead gray tone to the skin and lines of tiny purple-black dots on bare arms and legs: the stigmata of Paradox, the milky alkaloid to which everyone in the room was a slave.

  Chan was appalled, but he had seen too many Paradox dens to be shocked by the condition of the occupants. He scanned the rows of mattresses, seeking a familiar face. He had almost given up, ready to tell Deb Bisson back at the top of the stairs that they had made a wasted trip, when a tattered wreck right at his feet raised a hand and croaked, “Mercy me, what do I see? Do my eyes scan Chan the man?”

  It was the singsong delivery of the words more than the voice. Chan stepped forward and sank to his knees. “Tully? Tully the Rhymer?”

  “Less of that than I was. But yes, you have it right. The man you see, that is he.”

  Chan reached out, gripped Tully O’Toole’s outstretched hand, and gently lifted until the other man was sitting upright on the mattress. The hand that gripped Chan’s was all bone, and the fingers felt fleshless. “How are you, Tully?”

  It was an inane question, given O’Toole’s condition, but Tully laughed. “Oh, never too bad and never too sad. I’m not the man I once was, Chan, but who of us is? Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down. Nights get worse as they go on, the darkest hour before the dawn. We’re about halfway.”

  At least Tully knew that it was night. Third-stage Paradox addiction robbed its victims of all sense of time and place. From the look of him, Tully O’Toole was coming off the high point for the night and heading downhill. By morning he would be running a fever and shivering. Before that he had better be safe in bed.

  “Tully, I have something important to tell you. But you’ll have to wait another minute or two before I can say it. Will you wait? I’ll be right back.”

  “Where would I be going? Take your time. I’ll sit tight, if it takes all night.”

  “It won’t. Three minutes, no more.”

  Chan hurried back up the steep stairs. Deb stood at the top, still and silent as a statue in her cowled cloak. She said, “Well, now you’ve seen for yourself. Ready to give up and leave me alone?”

  “Deb, Tully can’t stay here like this. We have to get him away.”

  “Where were you, all these past years? Do you think I haven’t tried? I love Tully. In the old days he was close to me as a brother. I’ve been here a dozen times, and I’ve begged and pleaded with him to take treatment. And got nowhere. He won’t listen. He can’t listen.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that Paradox is hard to break. But there are ways to get through. I’m going back to talk to him.”

  “Oh, sure. You think you’ll succeed where I failed.”

  “I don’t think that. But I know how to try, better than most. Look, Deb, I want to ask a favor.”

  “Whatever it is, no. I don’t owe you a favor — any favor.”

  “It’s not a favor for me. It’s for Tully. If I can persuade him to leave this place, I have to head out at once to look for Chrissie and the Tarbush in the Oort Cloud. I’ll be gone only a few days, but Tully can’t be left on his own. Will you look after him until I come back?”

  “I’d do anything to help Tully. But you don’t know what you’re asking. He’d be with me for a few hours, then he’d want the drug. Unless I chained him down I couldn’t stop him from getting it — and I’m not so sure that would work, either. He’d find a way.”

  “He would if he was here on Mount Ararat. But if we left Europa — if you took him to Ceres—”

  “I see. I take him to Ceres, so you get me to Ceres.” She flung the hood back from her head, and her eyes were blazing. “You bastard. You think you’re being so sneaky, but I read you easy. All you care about is getting a team together for your damned assignment.”

  �
�That’s not true, Deb. I care about Tully. And don’t pretend you don’t care about the stars. You might fool yourself, but you don’t fool me. I’m going back to talk to Tully now. If I can get him to come with me and you’re still here when we come back, fine. I’ll ask you again. And if you won’t give it, I’ll find some other way to help him.”

  Chan turned and stumbled back down the stairs without looking at Deb or waiting to hear her reply. In the smoky room at the bottom, Tully O’Toole lay like a dead man on his mattress.

  “Tully?” Chan spoke softly. “I’m back. Can we talk now?”

  “Sure, sure.” The answer was a weak whisper.

  “Do you think you’ll be able to understand me?”

  “Sure I can, Chan the man. This time of night I’m sharp and bright.” Tully struggled to sit up, and Chan bent and placed his arm around the other man’s back. As he lifted he could feel the separate vertebrae in the spine.

  “I’ll get right to the point. Tully, we have a chance to lift the quarantine. Did you hear me? We can lift the quarantine. We can go to the stars . And I don’t just mean that humans can do it. We can do it, you and me and the old team.”

  “Wha-what?” Tully’s pale blue eyes clouded and his thin features took on a puzzled frown. “I think maybe I’m not hearing right.”

  “You’re hearing right. You’re not imagining. I know, it sounds too good to be true. But listen.”

  Chan spoke slowly and carefully, giving details of his meeting with the Stellar Group, watching Tully’s face. Occasionally the thin man frowned or seemed to drift away, but after a few moments he would nod for Chan to go on. The final proof that he was following everything came when Chan said, “We need you, Tully. None of the translation machines can talk to aliens, they’re programmed for human languages. But you can do it.”

  “I can’t do anything.”

  “You’ll learn. It takes a genuine madman like Tully the Rhymer to talk to aliens. The rest of us wouldn’t know where to start, but we’ll be there to back you up. Me and Tarbush, and Deb and Chrissie, and Dapper Dan and the Bun. Together again.”