Space, Inc

by Julie E. Czerneda

  The Creemore’s aluminum paneling felt neither warm nor cold to Peter’s touch—a disturbing lack of temperature. Its appearance, however, was sleek and clean, nearly reflective. Now it displayed Kianga’s diffusely growing shadow.

  “Last-minute assignment, George. We’ve got a VIP in a hurry and the ’Six-Four’s regular crew is on leave, so we’re it,” she informed him.

  Peter knew that other crews were available. Kianga had likely volunteered them for the detail. A VIP assignment meant plenty of Brownie points, maybe even a promotion. For Kianga. There would be no promotion for Peter. The highest rank a Defect could hold on the rails, Peter’s current rank, was Master Porter. It was one of the few prestige positions a non-intellectual Defect could hold, on or off Earth, and so widely held by them that the image of the friendly Defect Porter had become a stereotype. As far as Peter was concerned, however, this was no disadvantage. He prided himself on the status and lifestyle that stereotype afforded him.

  Kianga pointed her PDA-corn low to beam the ’Six-Four’s manifest and train specs to Peter. Peter was relieved to see the engine was an old roller, tried and true, and not one of the new, buggy mag-levs. A six-by-six wheeler, stable and fast. Two sets of three roller trucks on each side of the engine: one set for propulsion, the other for stabilization. The cowcatcher housed another pair of smaller wheel triplets. These wheels retracted along with the rest of the cowcatcher during accel and decel, so as not to destabilize the train.

  Peter continued to scan the data, then stopped abruptly. “The schedule’s too tight. We’ll never make the target workstation in time.”

  “We’re dumping the checkout phase. Our VIP’s got a narrow connection window to Earth,” Kianga confessed, shocking Peter with this breach in protocol. Was she bucking that hard for promotion this early into her career as an engineer? “Not by my choice, George,” continued Kianga. “Orders, legit and by The Book. You best be careful with that VIP.”

  Peter wondered if Kianga’s concern was for him, her VIP passenger, or herself. “I’ll see to my duties, then,” he said, hand-floating into the Creemore.

  The Creemore’s interior was appointed in a retro luxury style that boasted rich wood veneers, ornate gilt trim, chandelier lighting, and velvet curtains. Scarlet Velero-velour couches and loungers replaced conventional bench seating. The thousands of softened microscopic hooks of the Velero-velour allowed customers to adhere more easily to seating surfaces during zero-G train rides. Elegant green carpets featured the muted colors and floral designs of the early Persian styles and incorporated the same Velcro technology.

  The Creemore’s main compartment was unusually luxurious, even for a Pullman. Intricate faux gold inlay and molded carvings wended their way through the veneers, up to the ceiling, men around four elaborate crystal chandeliers— each an inverted crystalline wedding cake.

  Seats had been removed to create the open space necessary to allow the compartment to better resemble a true Victorian parlor. The remaining seats were high-backed and featured highly authentic mahogany finishing. If not for the lingering hint of a PVC smell, many a passenger might have thought it all real.

  A pair of modern lavatory compartments bookended the Creemore’s main passenger section. Peter pulled himself through a small passage around the forward lavatory and into a short plain cubicle that spanned the width of the coach— the porter’s compartment. Through it, a small door opened onto a whitewashed, smooth walled, air lock chamber—its only inhabitant an equally colorless, and rarely used, EMU suit. Another Kevlar-baffled door led out of the air lock to the engine room. In the air lock’s ceiling, an exterior hatch opened onto space for use during extravehicular activity.

  Peter surveyed the porter’s cubicle, beginning with a quick inventory check: a standard assortment of low-G refreshments and comfort paraphernalia, stocked and ready for retrieval behind clear touch panels that posed as compartment walls.

  Next, Peter checked the charge on the sonic vacuum shaver and hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. Shaving a customer was his least favorite task. The smell of scorched fresh shavings recirculating within the confinement of the coach reminded him of life with his father and of the accident that killed him. The same accident had splintered Peter’s young spine back in the Venusian mines.

  Even so, if not for the weakness of his legs, Peter might have ended up a miner, like his father, a less respected position with less prospects for the future. Doors that opened to Venus miners led to a life of hardship, not opportunity.

  Peter floated back into the Creemore’s main passenger compartment, smoothed the lapels of his uniform, and donned his short-lipped flat-topped porter’s cap. He crossed his hands before him, precisely as he had been trained, and waited patiently for the VIP to float through the port.

  The exterior air lock hatch retreats into the Creemore’s ceiling like an engine struggling against a heavy load. Peter gazes up at the widening wound of exposed space and wishes for it to take longer. He wants each moment, each sensation, to stretch to fill what’s left of his lifetime. The cold fluid press of the thermal undergarment, the stale recycled smell of charcoal-scrubbed air, the Aqua-Lung sound of mechanically assisted breath. For a moment, Peter also wishes for a tether, but realizes it would be useless. It would only transmit the force of the train decel to his EMU, tear it apart, and shatter him like a piñata.

  Peter’s helmet is first to rise through the air lock’s mouth, out into space. Night-side off the Venus Orbit, no sun. It is cold inside the EMU, the fluid warmth of the thermal undergarment limited to a chilly thirteen degrees Celsius.

  Peter pulls himself out using the Creemore’s handholds. Gloved hands grasp tightly to retain contact. As long as Peter and the train are attached and at constant velocity, he’s as stable, as safe, as if they were standing still. But once the brakes are applied, the train’s deceleration and his momentum will tear him off into space. If he can stop the train.

  Peter makes his best attempt at a full visual sweep through the helmet’s visor assembly. No Sun, no Earth. No warmth, no familiar comfort of home. The Book is failing Peter now. It never prepared him for this. Never told him how to feel, what to think, only what to do.

  Venus Orbit unfolds before Peter. A massive conglomerate of satellites, barrels, and braces slapped seemingly together like some monstrous Tinkertoy in mid-construction, each section tilting impassively out into the distance.

  Peter pushes forward to the next hold. He hooks a boot around the Creemore’s edge and peers over the side onto a maddening crisscross of track. Paired steel girders, married by emaciated polymer ties, weave their gravity-defying tapestry through the spacecity. All along the rails, clusters of green and red signal lights provide redundant instructions for the engineers and their crews. Those lights call to Peter now, blinking the same blood-red, angry warning: Runaway train.

  The red call LED blinked through the wood veneer over the VIP’s head. On the Velcro carpet, Peter was able to simulate a stepped walk out of his porter’s cubicle and into the passenger compartment. The walk was a Pullman Porter specialty, and in zero G, something of an acquired skill to those who, like Peter, were unable to walk at all in full or even partial G.

  Com systems weren’t open to customers on board Pullmans. Instead, they were encouraged to interact directly with the porters to create a more intimate and personal travel experience. Peter welcomed this as an opportunity rather than an inconvenience.

  “How about a pillow over here, George?” asked the VIP, a handsome man in his late thirties wearing a fashionable high-collared smart-suit. His thin, sandy curls topped a generous forehead and lanternlike hazel eyes that inspired confidence and comfort. He lounged comfortably in a high-back, obviously aware he was the only customer on board. Peter had recognized him earlier as Haniel Elias, one of the new fast-track VPs with the Space-Rail Company. A real Rocket Scientist, as the Boomers called them. Elias specialized in traffic flow optimization and, according to rumor, had a true love f
or railroading that originated with an HO-scale model train set given to him as a child.

  Elias had risen quickly through the ranks, unusually well-liked for management in a company that adhered to an inflexible and feudal hierarchical structure. It was widely recognized that Elias’ next stop on the Company line was likely to be a corner office with a view. The exec to one day rewrite The Book.

  “One pillow, Mr. Elias, sir,” Peter responded, passing a hand across a hidden touch plate in the side of Elias’ lounger. A drawer broke free of the grain and slid out to offer a corpulent bleached cotton pillow nested atop a fluffy aquamarine blanket.

  “I’ll get that, George,” Elias offered, reaching over for the pillow. He moved surprisingly quickly and easily in the zero G.

  “Please, sir, it’s my duty and my pleasure.” Peter stayed Elias’ hand. He snapped the pillow up, flipped it through the air with a flourish, and landed it comfortably behind Elias’ head. The maneuver was Peter’s one guilty deviation from The Book, an innovation on his training that he found entertained most customers. On this occasion, however, and in the presence of a Company VIP, Peter regretted its use immediately.

  “That’s a new one,” said Elias. “I don’t quite recall that trick from The Book.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, I hadn’t intended to—”

  “No, no, don’t apologize, just keep it up. The Book calls for an enjoyable experience, and I quite enjoyed that. Don’t worry so much about The Book, George.”

  “Thank you, sir, I—”

  A high tone and vibration from his PDA-corn interrupted Peter’s relief. It was a priority from Kianga. Peter quickly excused himself from Elias and returned to the privacy of his porter’s cubicle to answer her.

  “How may I be of assistance?” Peter spoke calmly, even though his heart raced. It was the first time he had received such a call from Kianga or any other engineer.

  “We’ve got a serious problem here, George,” Kianga’s speech was short and pressured. “I need you face-to-face on this one.”

  “I’ll come forward, then.”

  “No, I’m coming back.”

  “I’m moving forward.” The com transmits Peter’s heavy breathing to Kianga as well as any speech. He starts to hand-cross the gap between the Creemore and engine roofs.

  “Watch out for the cowcatcher,” Kianga warns unnecessarily. Peter easily spots the cowcatcher retracted on the ’Six-Four’s roof ahead. Too dangerous to climb over, Peter reaches for a handhold down the engine’s side, then pivots his legs over. In zero G, a side is as good as a roof.

  Peter can hear the PLS straining against the moist exertion of his breath—every desperate droplet trapped, extracted, and recycled by the sublimator, eliminated before escape, unable to mount even a fog against his visor.

  Peter negotiates the length of the ’Six-Four’s engine car and corners its flattened nose surface. As untouchable as Kianga’s own.

  “I can see you now; you’re doing fine,” Kianga says in an obvious and futile attempt to find conversation.

  Grooves in the sides of the ’Six-Four’s nose form paths for the cowcatcher armatures and provide Peter with handholds. He pivots off one to spin into position, helmet down, over the track.

  Rail ties whip silently past Peter, paint traveling in flashes of horizontal light down his visor, like a television out of tune. They are Peter’s only hint at true velocity. He reaches under the engine’s belly, careful not to drop into the guillotine-like ties.

  Peter finds nothing until a recess allows his shelled fingers to curl around the locking ring on the brake box access panel. “I’m on the box,” he tells Kianga in a voice strange and distant even to himself. “The external shielding’s gone.”

  “Damn it! We’re running out of track. We’ve got to stop her soon, or she’ll go crashing through the next workstation with or without her brakes.” Kianga’s voice seems to strain desperately to escape Peter’s helmet.

  Peter’s head hovers centimeters over slicing track ties. He examines the brake box access panel—one half meter squared, surrounding the thick central locking ring. Peter rotates the ring counterclockwise in seeming slow motion.

  Locking pins transmit retraction clacks to Peter’s glove and the door slides open. Inside, rows of status LEDs iterate wildly around a thickly shielded cable that snakes through a dense landscape of ICs and magneto-ceramic devices. Peter knows their condition without consulting Kianga: a fused EM circuit, brakes locked open.

  A single button switch glows a failing amber heartbeat from the center of the board. Peter points a gloved finger in its direction.

  “Sir,” Peter croaks hoarsely, “I’m going to degauss the magnetos now …”

  Peter holds what little breath he has left and reaches for the switch.

  “Damned cowcatcher’s fused the brake mags open. We’ve got a runaway,” Kianga’s voice remained even, but cracks blasted into the skin of her forehead.

  “Sir?” Peter had never experienced a runaway outside of simulation before; he found himself hoping Kianga had.

  “I knew we shouldn’t have skipped that checkout,” fumed Kianga. “Damn their orders. I should have held to The Book and told them to stoke their orders down their shafts.”

  Unlike Kianga, the train betrayed no sign of distress and continued to coast happily at its virtually constant velocity.

  “I’ve tried everything in The Book,” she continued. “A control system reboot, cutting power to the mags, even a manual interrupt from inside the floor panels.”

  “What if we cut power to the drive wheels?” suggested Peter.

  “Done, but the impact’s negligible since we’re effectively frictionless in zero G space. Worse, the drive wheels are nonreversible. We’ll need real brakes.”

  Peter understood now. Kianga hadn’t come to him for advice or counsel, she had come in search of a body. She had come for a Brakeman.

  “I’ll have to go out and screw the brakes down, then,” Peter said. The Book offered one solution only, in situations such as this: a manual degauss of the brake mags, a procedure requiring a crew member to engage in an extravehicular activity. A fatal extravehicular activity.

  “I”ve explored every option in The Book,” said Kianga. Peter trusted that she had. The Book was her guide and personal Bible, as much as it was his own. Its rules were not only law, but a way of life.

  “One of us will have to go,” Kianga went on, much to Peter’s surprise. By The Book, rank, capability, and expend-ability determined who would go. That generally meant the porter and clearly pointed to Peter in this case. What’s more, as a Defect, Peter was not only more expendable to the Company, he was more expendable as a human being. It had got Peter his job, and Kianga knew it. Why wasn’t she directly ordering him out on the EVA as she should have, as she normally would have? By The Book.

  Peter’s finger-shell finds the surface of the degausser switch. Just a matter of force now. A little pressure and the switch will activate, the brakes will demagnetize and close, and the train will decelerate to a crushing stop. But Peter won’t. The force of the decel will tear Peter’s grip from the engine and send him into space as it tries to transfer its momentum.

  “Wait!” Kianga’s shout distorts through Peter’s com. “Let me run a diagnostic. Maybe your interference with the brake box did the trick. If she’s green, you can get back inside before I stop her.”

  “We’re running out of track. You said so. If you take the time to—”

  “Shut up! Shut up, George, and obey your orders. I’m running the diagnostic now. Stand by.” Kianga’s tone rises through the words in an uncharacteristic display of emotion and breach of protocol.

  Peter backs off the switch and waits for Kianga’s next transmission. The silence that follows hangs like a dead satellite in orbit. It tells Peter that there is no green light.

  “Peter … “Kianga sighs his name. His real name, for the first time.

  “I understand, sir, thank you
for trying,” Peter says, avoiding similar familiarity, thinking it improper, even cruel.

  Peter braces himself, inverted in position over the train’s nose. One hand holding to life in a cowcatcher groove, the other reaching out to end it.

  Peter pretends he is brave, pretends he wants to do this, that he would do it given the choice. But he knows now that fear works stronger within than does courage or duty. It leaves him with the single bitter consolation that The Book will make a hero of him nevertheless.

  Peter doesn’t see the brake box anymore, doesn’t need to. He knows the feel of the switch through his finger-shell, knows every contour of the brake box’s circuitry as he might know the faces of children he will never father.

  Peter presses down against the switch, for the last time. His finger shakes wildly within the EMU glove’s shell. One last act of rebellion against Peter’s expendable humanity. One last protest against the dispassionate rules of The Book.

  “There are no alternatives, sir. The Book is very clear that I, as Porter, be the one to manually deploy the brakes.” Peter tried to hide the signs of doubt and dread rising rapidly in his voice.

  Kianga’s eyes narrowed, surrounded by the newly formed track lines in her skin. “And the consequences?”

  Peter nodded silently. “If I fail, the train will wreck. We will all be lost.”

  “And if you do succeed, you won’t be coming back.”

  Peter nodded gravely. “I have given my life to The Book. It has brought me purpose and respect.”

  “What good are purpose and respect to a dead man?”

  Kianga was only partly right Purpose and respect were meaningless in death, but to Peter they meant everything in life. Peter would rather eject The Book and all its rules into space than die himself- But if he allowed Kianga to make the sacrifice for him, he’d be busted off the rails in disgrace to live out what remained of his life like another useless Defect. And mat was worse than death.