Orbitsville Trilogy

by Bob Shaw

  "I've always wanted to be in London," he said under his breath, his eyes taking in the woman's full-bosomed figure, the voluptuous lines of which alerted his sexual instincts in spite of being modestly swathed in a charcoal grey coatdress. His amatory bouts with Christine McGivern were becoming too perfunctory and he had a hankering for something fresh.

  Hepworth leaned closer to him. "What was that?"

  "I think our presence is required, don't you?" Nicklin moved towards Montane and Voorsanger to become part of the little group which welcomed the visitors. Renard introduced the woman as his wife, a fact which in Nicklin's eyes added a certain spice to her appeal.

  "I'm sorry we're late," Renard went on when the formalities had been completed, smiling in the oddly challenging manner which Nicklin had noticed before, even via television, and which rendered the apology meaningless.

  Montane nodded. "The weather…"

  "No, the snow didn't hold me back at all, but when I got here I couldn't resist having a stroll around the outside of your ship," Renard said. "It doesn't look much, does it?"

  "It looks good to me," Nicklin said quickly.

  Renard smiled directly at him. "I doubt if you're qualified to adjudicate."

  "Adjudication runs in my family," Nicklin replied. "Why, I learned to adjudicate at my mother's knee." And I adjudicate that you need a good kick up the balls, you arrogant bastard. He smiled in return as he projected the thought with all the vehemence he could muster, but the only outcome of the telepathic attempt was a flicker of satisfaction in Renard's blue eyes.

  "Why don't we sit down and talk in comfort?" Montane cut in. He gestured towards the cheap table, used mainly for in-office meals, which was the only piece of furniture at all suitable for a conference.

  "Why not?" The amusement in Renard's eyes grew more evident as the chair he had selected emitted a metallic protest when he sat down.

  For one instant Nicklin wished that Montane had not been so miserly over renting office space and equipment. Then it came to him that he was being lured into a personality duel. Renard was a man for whom every meeting had to be a skirmish, and every relationship a contest. I'm not playing that game, he thought, his antagonism towards Renard fading. He glanced at Renard's wife and caught a hint of what seemed to be resignation and embarrassment in her expression. She doesn't think much of it as a spectator sport, either – perhaps she's in the market for a little diversion. He moved quickly to ensure getting a seat next to Silvia at the table.

  "I have another appointment this morning, so let's get on with what we have to do," Renard said to Montane. "I'm ready to give you four million monits for the ship as she sits. Your team can walk out and mine will walk in, and you won't even have to turn off the lights."

  "Rick, I have already told you that the Tara isn't for sale," Montane replied. He was impressively cool, Nicklin thought, for someone who was refusing to become a millionaire.

  "If you're planning to hold on, waiting for the price to go up, you're making a mistake." Renard was equally emotionless. "An interstellar ramjet isn't really suitable for interportal work, so the offer is a generous one."

  "Perhaps, but I'm not interested."

  "It won't be all that long before the first of the new short-range jobs start coming off the line – and when that happens the value of your old tub will drop."

  Montane sighed. "I hate to appear discourteous, Rick, but you're not the only person whose diary is full – so let's not waste each other's time. The Tara is not for sale. All right?"

  "I can only offer you the jam – I can't force you to eat it." Unperturbed, Renard leaned back in his seat, drawing more creaks from it.

  "Now that we've got my dietary preferences out of the way," Montane said drily, "what was the other proposal you had in mind?"

  "How many target stars have you selected?"

  "Eight within a thousand light years."

  "Good prospects?"

  "I'm assured that they are very good." Montane glanced expectantly at Scott Hepworth.

  "Omnirad analyses from the Garamond Institute show that three of them have an eighty per cent probability of yielding an Earth-type planet," Hepworth said in his grandest tones.

  Renard raised his eyebrows, looking unexpectedly boyish in his surprise. "That's better than you would have got back home, isn't it?"

  Nicklin, who had been taking heady draughts of Silvia's perfume, renewed his interest in the conversation as he realised that "back home" meant a different universe. The use of the phrase showed that Renard, hard-headed and materialistic as they come, had accepted the Big Jump hypothesis. Furthermore, he evidently saw the ethereal never-never land of the astrophysicists and cosmologists as a place where it was possible to turn a profit.

  "It's a lot better," Hepworth said. "Worlds for the picking, you might say."

  Renard addressed Montane again. "We can still do a deal. Let me put two or three scientific people on the ship, plus a spare flight crew to bring it back when you have finished with it – and you can still have the four million."

  Corey, this is the proverbial offer you can't refuse, Nicklin thought, and almost winced as he saw Montane's patient smile of rejection.

  "My conscience wouldn't allow me to go along with that," Montane said. "It would mean denying places to some of my own people. You must realise that I'm answerable to God in this matter."

  "All right, I tell you what we'll do," Renard said. "When the ship gets back here I'll lease it out to you for a second round trip. That way you'll be saving two lots of souls."

  Montane's smile became more patient, more condescending. "The Tara will make one flight, and only one flight. There will be no time for another. No second chance."

  "Who told you that?"

  "God."

  "God?" The sheer incredulity in Renard's voice betrayed the first tiny crack in his composure.

  Nicklin turned away in amusement – Renard probably ate hard-nosed business tycoons for breakfast, but he had never dealt with a deranged preacher whose chief adviser was a dead woman in a box. He discovered that Renard's wife was looking directly at him.

  "Could I trouble someone for a hot drink?" she whispered.

  "Coffee?"

  "I could whip up some tea," he replied, also whispering, pleased by the unexpected opportunity to separate her from the others.

  "Tea would be fine."

  "I'll join you in a cup." He flicked a glance towards Montane and Renard as he left his seat. "This could go on a long time."

  "I was beginning to get that impression." She stood up and walked with him to the cupboard at the far end of the office where the meagre refreshment supply was kept. This is good, Nicklin told himself. Things are going well, but Scott was right in what he said. The trick is not to be too direct. Show an interest in the woman as a rounded human being (and this one certainly qualifies on that score). Ask her about her beliefs and hobbies and dreams, and all that stuff…

  As he was spooning tea out of Montane's antique caddy he tilted his head, frowned a little and said, "I think I've seen you on television. Was your name London?"

  "It still is," Silvia replied. "I kept my previous name when I married Rick."

  "I thought I was right."

  "Perhaps you picked up some of the transmissions from Portal 36 on the day when … when everything changed." Something seemed to happen in Silvia's brown eyes as she spoke. It was a swift and fleeting change, the wind brushing the surface of a deep lake, but it was enough to persuade Nicklin that the events at Portal 36 should be left alone.

  "Perhaps," he said, "but I'm thinking more of … Was it called the Anima Mundi Foundation?"

  "Yes!" Silvia's face was animated, suddenly made younger. "Are you interested in Karal London's work?"

  Nicklin spurred his memory and it did not fail him. "On the survival of the personality after physical death? Fascinating subject."

  "It's the most important subject of all. Have you attended any of the Foundation's sem
inars or seen any of the publications?"

  "No – I've been out in the sticks for the last year or so, and I didn't have much chance to…"

  Silvia touched his arm. "But you're familiar with the basics of mindon science?"

  "I never quite got to grips with it," Nicklin said cautiously as he set out two cups.

  "But it's all so beautifully simple!" Silvia continued, still keeping her voice low, but speaking with a fervent rapidity. "The mindon is a class of particle which was postulated a long time ago, but its existence wasn't finally proved until last year. Thanks to Karal's work we now know that mind is a universal property of matter, and that even elementary particles are endowed with it to some degree…"

  Nicklin went on preparing the tea, nodding occasionally and awaiting his chance to divert Silvia on to more personal matters. Having led off with claims he had trouble accepting, she progressed – in tones of utter conviction – to something called "mental space" in which there existed mindon duplicates of human brains.

  He found himself growing bemused under the bombardment of mystical ideas expressed in the jargon of nuclear physics, and still the right conversational opening failed to arrive. What in hell is going wrong with everybody today? he wondered as he filled the two cups. Ami the only person in the whole world who is still anchored in reality?

  "…shows that a personality is a structure of mental entities, existing in mental space, and therefore it survives destruction of the brain even though it required the brain's complex physical organisation in order to develop." Silvia eyed him intently. "You can see that, can't you?"

  Nicklin moved her cup a centimetre closer to her. "Do you take milk?"

  She ignored the tea, her gaze hunting across his face. "I really would like to hear what you think."

  "I think the whole concept is very impressive," he said. His original dreams of hotel bedroom afternoons with Silvia were fading by the minute, and a disagreement at this stage could put paid to them altogether.

  "Impressive." Silvia nodded to show her awareness of the word's ambivalence. "All right – what bothers you most?"

  Amazed by how far the conversation had deviated from the one he had visualised, Nicklin said, "I guess it was all that stuff about how a personality is created. If, as you say, all matter has a mindon component – and all that's needed for a personality to be conjured into existence is physical complexity – then you don't need to bring in any biological–"

  "Jim!" Corey Montane's intrusive voice was thorned with impatience. "Bring your tea to the table, will you?"

  Nicklin put on a rueful expression. "I have to slide over there and do some work – but I'd like to go on with this."

  "I'd like that, too," Silvia said. "We can talk some more after the meeting."

  He smiled, keeping his eyes on hers. "That's not what I meant."

  Her expression remained unchanged for a moment, and he realised she had plunged so deeply into her special realm of metaphysics that she was having genuine difficulty in getting back to the mundane world. But when it came her reaction was unequivocal.

  "You said you had to slide back to your work – so why don't you do that?" She turned away from him to pick up her teacup.

  Nicklin was unwilling to be dismissed so easily. "I was only checking. No harm in checking."

  "Do people like you never get bored with themselves?"

  "I could ask you the same question," he said pleasantly as he moved away to rejoin the group at the table. He found that events had moved quickly during his absence. Renard had apparently shelved the idea of acquiring the Tara, and had assumed the role of broker for every type of component.

  "I understand from Corey," he said, "that you're in the market for a couple of dozen 5M decks."

  "That's about right." Nicklin was careful not to show any enthusiasm. "We're thinking of putting in perhaps another twenty-five."

  "I've got them."

  "What price?"

  "Oh…" Renard closed his eyes for a second, pretending to make a calculation. "Let's say thirty-thousand. Monits, that is – not orbs."

  Nicklin ignored the implication that he was a country boy and unaccustomed to global currency. The price was much less than he had expected from a business shark like Renard, and he began to look around for a catch.

  "What condition are they in?"

  "Unused," Renard said comfortably. "They're pretty old, of course, but unused. Most of them are still in the plastic skins."

  Nicklin saw Montane and Voorsanger exchange congratulatory glances, and his conviction that something was wrong with Renard's offer grew stronger. He went over the figures again in his mind, and suddenly he understood the cat-and-mouse game that Renard was playing. The bastard! he thought with reluctant admiration. He's even more of a shit than I gave him credit for!

  "Well, Rick," Montane said, "on that basis I believe we can go ahead and–"

  "Before you go too far," Nicklin cut in, "ask Mr Renard if thirty-thousand is the unit price."

  Montane frowned at him, then gaped at Renard. "But that would make it … three-quarters of a million for twenty-five old decks!"

  "We're in what's commonly referred to as a sellers' market," Renard said, his lips twitching in amusement.

  Nicklin smiled to let Renard see that he too had enjoyed the bit of fun. "All the same, Rick," he said, "don't you think it's going just a teensy-weensy bit far to try selling old decks for three times the price of new ones?"

  "Their value has escalated. Most of the new decks disappeared when the exterior stockyards vanished, and my associates have bought up any that were left sitting around the land-docks."

  "In that case I'll use older ones," Montane said doggedly, staring down at his desk.

  "We've got most of those, too." Renard slowly shook his head, as though in commiseration. "Interportal trade must be restored as quickly as possible, you see, for the good of society. We have to get those ships out there as soon as we can, even if it means taking short-cuts in the manufacture."

  "In that case," Montane said, rising to his feet, "I'll use the old decks you rejected or missed. I'll dig them out of the ground in scrapyards, if necessary, and I'll glue them together with spit." His voice had developed a kind of magisterial power. "No human agency will stand in the way of the Tara being completed – and I promise you that in the name of God."

  "You'll need all the help He can give you to get flight certification," Renard murmured.

  Montane stared at him in loathing. "Why don't you–? Why don't you–?"

  "Allow me," Nicklin came in, turning to give Renard a contented smile. "Corey is a man of the cloth and that makes it difficult for him to express certain sentiments – but it's my guess that he wants you to fuck off."

  The mocking gleam in Renard's eyes abruptly faded and he turned back to Montane. "You should choose your colleagues with a bit more discretion."

  "My colleague's language has grown increasingly vile ever since I met him," Montane said. "It's something I usually deplore – but not on this occasion."

  "I've wasted too much time here as it is," Renard said, getting up from his seat. He beckoned to Silvia, who had already set her teacup down, and they walked in silence to the exit.

  Nicklin continued gazing wistfully after Silvia until the door had slid shut behind her. "It's the wife I always feel sorry for."

  "I noticed you feeling sorry for her," Hepworth said in jovial reproof. "You were trying it on, weren't you?"

  "That woman deserves something better out of life than Rick Renard."

  Hepworth chuckled. "And obviously you didn't measure up."

  "Do we have to put up with this kind of talk?" Voorsanger said to Montane, his elongated face registering disgust. "It seems to me that things have taken a bad enough turn without our having to listen to smut."

  "Ropp is quite right." Montane directed a sombre stare at Nicklin and Hepworth.

  "I thought we dealt with Mr Renard rather well," Nicklin said. "You in partic
ular, chief. I was quite proud of you at the end." He was still speaking in a flippant manner, and it was only after the words were out that he realised he actually meant them. Montane, crazy or not, had stood up for his principles and beliefs against a rich and powerful opponent.

  "The fact is," Montane replied quietly, "that completing the Tara is going to take a lot longer than we expected – and I have a feeling there may not be enough time."

  CHAPTER 15

  Obtaining a new job had proved much easier than Nicklin had expected.

  Yip & Wrigley was a new company which had been formed to enter the booming market in medium-sized interportal freighters, and – unusually – had decided to locate its manufacturing facility in Beachhead. Traditionally, Orbitsville had relied on Earth for spaceship production. It had only a few yards with manufacturing capability, and they were sited in Dalton, the great industrial conurbation at P12. Beachhead had always been a spaceport, with limited repair and maintenance facilities, and as a consequence had no pool of the kind of expertise Yip & Wrigley needed.

  Tommy Yip, the company's president, had at first been concerned over Nicklin's lack of formal engineering qualifications, and then – as a fellow machine-lover – had been impressed by his practical skills and computer-like ability to carry hundreds of component specifications in his memory. As a consequence, Nicklin had been offered a senior position in engineering management – title and responsibilities yet to be defined – and was expected to take it up as soon as he had disengaged from Corey Montane.

  He had mixed feelings as he entered the portal complex on foot and saw the massive triple hull of the Tara. It was a fresh, breezy morning in early spring and the ship's skin, now immaculate, was gleaming with the coppery lustre which was peculiar to electron-sated metals. The rakish, crimson-and-white shape of the pinnace was in place underneath the nose section, and the Tara gave the impression of being ready to go among the stars.