Orbitsville Trilogy

by Bob Shaw

  "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 response 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 reenactment 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 comers.

  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've 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 filled 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 auxilliary 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.

  "Garry!" Mellor grinned, hoisting his tall cranelike 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 I'm 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, Garry—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 studied 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."

  "Yeah, the cockpit must have been in one piece, but the rest of the ship … Hey, Garry, you don't have anything against Mathieu, do you?"

  "Of course not. Why do you ask?"

  "Nothing. It was just the way you…"

  "I'll see you around, Jim." Dallen left the office and stood for a moment in the cottony silence of the corridor, trying to reorganise his thoughts. Everything had changed once again. It was a perfect illustration of the intense relationship that binds a hunter to his quarry, forcing him to follow every swing and swerve with greater and greater concentration and fidelity until the pursuit reaches its climax. His life would not be his own again until Mathieu was dead, and that—much though he disliked the idea—meant delaying the return of the Dallen family to Orbitsville.

  The first sensible step in the new situation should be to withdraw his verbal resignation, but he was in no mood to face Mellor again at that moment. Mellor was not a particularly perceptive man, but he had picked up Dallen's resentment over hearing Mathieu spoken with admiration. That had been a lapse on Dallen's part, and it was something he would have to take extra care over if—as was quite possible, given the irrationality of most human beings—Mathieu were to be elevated to the status of local hero because of his amazing luck. It was important for Dallen to show no enmity towards Mathieu, to display no special interest. On the other hand, he should display no special lack of interest either … Or was his thinking becoming too involuted and obsessional?

  Frowning, breathing deeply to ease the growing pressure between his temples, Dallen walked along the corridor towards the elevator which would drop him into the building's main reception area. In the past he would have taken a short cut by way of the north-side emergency stair, but that was a trick he had passed on to Cona, and as a result of it she and Mikel had been … He wrenched his thoughts back into the present as a door opened just ahead of him. Vik Costain, personal assistant to the Mayor, came hurrying through it and almost collided with Dallen.

  "I'm so sorry," Costain exclaimed in his prissy manner. There was a flustered expression on his grey face and his hairless scalp was glistening with perspiration.

  "You should slow down a bit," Dallen said, "or get personal radar."

  "Spare me the witticisms, Garry—this has been the worst afternoon in my thirty years in this place."

  "Frank giving you a hard time?"

  Costain turned his eyes up for a second. "Between him and Beau bloody Brummel…

  "Who?"

  "Young Mathieu. They've been having a radiophone battle for the last hour and I'm right in the middle of it, and there's nobody here to do any goddamn work. I suppose you've heard the latest about Mathieu?"

  Dallen nodded. "Mister Indestructible."

  "Not that," Costain said impatiently. "He has just quit his job without giving notice, and that throws his workload on to Frank and me. Frank is furious."

  "I'll bet he is," Dallen said, again the hunter, feeling the hunter's quickening of the pulse as the trail makes a sudden swing. "What is Gerald planning to do with himself?"

  "Orbitsville. He claims he's getting out immediately on some kind of special flight. Have you ever heard of this Renard character?"

  "Renard?" Dallen felt a sick satisfaction, a furtive and intoxicating glee, which spread through him as he imagined being close to Mathieu for almost a week in the unnatural environment of a starship. So many dangerous complexities, so many traps for the unwary, so many ways in which a man could be overtaken by premature death…

  "As a matter of feet," he said peacefully, "Rick Renard and I are good friends. Oddly enough, I've been thinking of going home with him on the same flight."

  Chapter 15

  Renard's ship detached itself from Polar Band One and began the long climb to the edge of interstellar space.

  Almost half-a-century old, the Hawkshead was a bulk cargo freighter which had been built when Earth's space technology was still high on a crest. It had the classic configuration developed by the historic Starflight company—three equal cylinders joined together in parallel, with the central one projecting ahead by almost half its length. The control deck, living quarters and cargo space were in the central cylinder; the outer pair housing the thermonuclear drivers and flux pumps, plus the warp generators which were only brought into play in the higher speed regimes. Because the huge magnetic fields created by the pumps swirled out symmetrically from the fuselage, ships of the type were popularly
known as flickerwings, though the name was misleading. The fields were vast insubstantial scoops which gathered interstellar matter for use as reaction mass.

  Spatial weather conditions were good as the Hawkshead spiralled outwards from the orbit of Earth. Great billows of energetic particles which had originated in the heart of the galaxy were rolling across the Solar System. These sprays of fast-moving corpuscles—which meant as much to the starship as wind, wave and tide had done to oceanic clippers—provided a rich harvest for the vessel's drivers, enabling it to accelerate at better than 1G.

  In the first century of interstellar travel it had been necessary for a ship to attain a speed of some fifty million metres a second before it entered a paradoxical domain, governed by the laws of the Canadian mathematician Arthur Arthur, where Einsteinian ideas about space and time no longer held sway. Arthurian physics had made it possible for a ship to journey between Earth and Orbitsville in only four months, with almost no relativistic time dilation, but even that kind of mind-defying speed had been insufficient for the needs of the Migration. The solution, born out of experience and computer-enhanced genius, had been the tachyonic mode, described by one orthodox theorist as "crooked accountancy applied to mass-energy transformations", and it had cut the transit time to an average of six days.

  It was a brief time by anybody's standards, and that thought was much on Dallen's mind as he stood in the ship's observation gallery and watched the Earth-Moon system begin to shrink to the semblance of a double star. His move against Gerald Mathieu would have to be made very soon.

  Dallen had been too busy winding up his affairs in Madison to think much about the journey which lay ahead, but in view of the circumstances he had half-expected some of the features of an old-style oceanic cruise. He had visualised Renard sitting at the head of the evening dinner table, with Silvia London nearby, revelling in and taking every conceivable social advantage from his position as benefactor-employer. That notion had been compounded from ignorance of conditions aboard freighters and the assumption that Renard would have despotic control over the ship's daily routine.