Space, Inc

by Julie E. Czerneda

  “Scrap The damned Book!” Kianga said in a frustrated rage that frightened Peter.

  “Sir, you are the only one capable of bringing this train to a safe halt once the brakes are down. I am not,” Peter lied. He was capable of stopping the train in an emergency, but he hoped Kianga’s fury would blind her to the fact.

  Kianga fumed silent acceptance. Peter had won a hollow victory.

  Rail ties slice space and time past Peter’s head.

  Peter braces himself, calms his rebellious finger, and presses down. The degausser switch gives silently, then bounces back tentatively.

  Peter imagines the sound of brake drums squealing even through the vacuum of space, imagines inertia and momentum mocking his foolish need to attempt to hold on as they fling him from his perch in sacrifice to space.

  Instead, there is nothing.

  No change.

  Then …

  The train shudders.

  Peter’s fear slaughters time and he holds on, desperate for something to cling to.

  The shudder evolves, amplifies, and Peter wonders how many moments between moments are left him.

  Bars of shadow close overhead, block the engine lights as they descend over Peter.

  Peter’s glove slips, pushed from its groove as he is torn from the engine. Too much force. Too strong. Peter can’t hold on.

  EMU finger-shells lose their grasp, scratch silently, slip away.

  Free.

  Peter gives in to the void, hopes his failing grip has spun him toward Venus instead of space. Hopes he will die swift and hot in its atmosphere, instead of slow and cold in space.

  The shadow bars thicken and extinguish all but the light from Peter’s helmet.

  SILENCE.

  Time stops to pity Peter and demonstrate eternity.

  CLANG.

  Time startles, accelerates, explodes.

  CRASH.

  Peter’s skull attempts to twist through his helmet. Teeth drive into tongue, blood bubbles and sprays onto visor.

  Peter’s back bounces, compresses onto something hard, inflexible.

  Peter’s heart retreats to sanctuary against his spine. His face folds in on itself.

  Tastes of metal, blood, and chipped enamel mix to mortar within his mouth.

  Sight washes away, swallowed in a roaring, ringing, cacophony.

  Somehting has him. Impossibly, something hugs him between train and track in a multiple-G embrace.

  Internal EMU bellows inflate around Peter’s extremities. A G lift, then another, to maintain cruel consciousness.

  Darkness dissipates to bright, burning blooms. Ringing shatters to tinny tintinnabulation.

  Flushes of vision break through bright bruises of light and he sees it. The cowcatcher, cupped over him, cradling him in its unfeeling mechanical arms. Lowered, and locked into place around him, ’catcher wheels oscillate wildly in the tracks. They smack rail, do their best to shake the train apart.

  “Retract!” Peter spits the bloodied word through clenched teeth and first breath.

  “Scrap it, Peter! I’ll keep her true.” Kianga’s voice splinters an octave of doubt through his name.

  The rattling of train grows, shares itself with the rails. Bolts shoot free, panels come loose and shear away.

  Peter wets his undergarment, feels it sting, feels the train, feels Kianga pump the ’catcher arms and wheel assemblies to maintain stability. If she survives, she’ll pay for this crime against The Book. If it works. Then …

  Gs strip off. Vision paints cowcatcher crossbars across Peter’s visor.

  “Don’t—” Peter tries.

  “Cap your stack, and let me do my job,” Kianga snaps.

  Space and time expand between passing rail ties. The train stabilizes, slows.

  Lurching subsides, vibrations calm. Rail ties march to a halt.

  Peter drops off the ’catcher and grabs hold of its grille as the train rolls to a final excruciating stop. Angry orders shout at Kianga over the open com. Peter hears her suck in a long breath of static, then cut out.

  It doesn’t take long for her voice to return. “The destination workstation’s sending an extraction team, so you’ve got twenty to get your caboose back on board before your reserve runs out.” Kianga’s voice distorts over the helmet’s damaged com. “Looks like our VIP’s going to be missing his connector and the Company won’t be missing me.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Peter manages, through the pain.

  “Forget it, George. You saved the train.”

  “But, sir—”

  “But what, George?”

  “What you did. You almost lost the train and everyone on board.”

  “I didn’t, did I?”

  “They’ll still throw The Book at you.”

  “That they will, George.”

  “I don’t understand. You, you broke the rules. You went against The Book.”

  “You know me better man that.”

  “But I’m a Porter, a Defect Porter.”

  “Brown’s Book is for trains, George. You’ve been so caught up in the rules of The Book, you’ve forgotten what they’re for. Defect or whole, there are better books for people, higher rules. Those rules, I never break. Now get inside and see to our passenger.”

  * * *

  Dr. Isaac Szpindel is a Toronto-based author, screenwriter, producer, electrical engineer, and neurologist. His published short stories include “Downcast in Parsec” and “By Its Cover” in Tales from the Wonder Zone: Explorer, Isaac’s screenwriting credits include the Aurora Award-winning Rescue Heroes episode “Underwater Nightmare,” the upcoming episode “Bat’s Life”; and six episodes of the international action adventure series, The Boy, for which he is also head writer and story editor. Other projects include a screenplay for a SF/fantasy feature film commissioned by a company out of France and a television series cocreated for an Emmy Award-winning production house. He is an executive producer of the award-winning short film Hoverboy and is a frequent on-air guest on Canadian talk television.

  CATALOG OF WOE

  by Mindy L. Klasky

  REFERENCE LIBRARIAN: LEVEL 5

  Must have current certification from an accredited university. Minimum 3 years experience in data management and presentation in a major corporate and/or research environment. Must be capable of using Class AA search and sort automatics. Preferred applicant will be a self-starter and well-organized, with excellent communication and teamwork skills. Salaried position with performance bonus.

  Note: this is a deep space posting, of least 2 years’ duration. Government regulations require applicants take the requisite physical and psychological testing for prolonged ship travel, unless such tests were conducted within the past 6 months.

  Send curriculum vitae to Box 5X5Z5Y-00, Intersystems Post Office, New Luna.

  SARAH heard the chimes of the starship’s clock, and she pushed back from her desk, raising the headset that let her speak directly to the master library workcon. She stretched her back and rubbed her fingers along her hairline. Palming her ’con, she saved the most recent data that she had retrieved for the mission’s scientists: melting temperatures for various metals, expressed in visual files.

  “All right, David,” she called to the wildcatter who hunched over a gamecon on the far side of the library. “It’s dinnertime.”

  “Just one more round.”

  “You heard the bell—shut off the ’con. You might want the dregs of what passes for food on this ship, but I’m not going to be late to the mess hall.” Jessup Universal Mining might have promised her a substantial bonus for this salvage mission, but there weren’t enough credits in the sector to make her face the mess hall after the wildcat crew had eaten its fill. Besides, she was looking forward to seeing Bernard. He had not visited her all day.

  “I’ve almost got it! I simulated the alethium mine shaft, and I’m going to take out those eight-legged alien bastards!”

  “David, now!” When the man refused to step bac
k from his ’con, Sarah reached out to the control panel on her own desk. Moving with years of long practice, she flicked an icon. Her panel beeped once in warning, and she confirmed the command.

  “Wait!” David cried, as his ’con went blank.

  “You’ve got another three weeks before Earthfall. You can win your game by then.”

  The wildcatter grumbled and pushed back his chair. He glared at her as he strode out of the library.

  Sarah looked around her domain. It was definitely suffering ill effects from the space voyage. Everything had been new and shiny at the beginning of the mission—gamecons had glistened with the newest controls; bookdisks had lined the shelves in orderly rows.

  Now, ’disks were missing. Holes gaped along the shelves where borrowers had failed to return items. The edges of the tables had been chipped by angry game players. Three different stains spread across the carpeted floor, baleful reminders of the library’s no-drinks policy.

  Sarah had taken to locking the library door in her absence. Any serious researcher who needed information while she was gone could jack into the main computer and pull down data from the net. She must protect her library-cum-entertainment center, keep it safe from the rugged wildcatters who had traveled to Marduran to exploit the alethium mines. For that matter, it took her best librarian strategies to preserve her resources from the government officials who watched over the journey, from the Jessup scientists who calculated the wealth buried beneath Marduran’s surface, to the crew of the starship itself.

  Now, with the mission’s scientific data-gathering completed, Sarah spent more and more time babysitting bored employees. The division of labor was completely unfair. Of course, she knew that the wildcatters had earned their keep on Marduran’s surface, digging trial mine shafts, working with the repulsive eight-legged natives to calculate the most efficient ways to exploit alethium. Wildcatters like David had scarcely had time to eat on the planet’s surface; they had managed only a few hours of sleep each day, between long, grueling sessions in the mines.

  With their work complete, the miners had no idea what to do with themselves. Their brute strength was no longer required. They lazed about the ship like children on school holidays, trying to fill the long, changeless weeks of transport with boisterous contests and endless games.

  Sarah, on the other hand, was now overwhelmed by demands on her time. In addition to stealing precious minutes with Bernard, she needed to meet the scientists’ daily reference demands. Even more importantly, she needed to catalog the resources that Jessup had acquired from the Mardurans. The valuable scrolls must be transmitted into the Universal Catalog by the time the starship returned to port. The catalog records would support Jessup’s claims of salvage and bolster the legal arguments that would be made the instant the ship docked.

  The Mardurans’ scrolls would establish the original Earth colony’s attempts to mine alethium. The records would outline the unexpected demise of those settlers, presenting incontrovertible evidence that Jessup Universal Mining was pursuing a risky, noble goal in attempting to reopen the alethium mines. Jessup deserved to proceed under the financial grace of salvage laws, turning twelve times the profit on any ordinary mine.

  Sarah had three weeks left—twenty-one days—to complete the catalog. As soon as she arrived Earthside, she could claim her bonus of 500,000 universal credits.

  Sighing as she locked the library door behind her, Sarah tried not to think about what she could do with a half million credits. Ten years of pay, free and clear. She would retire, of course. She would catch up on the towering backlog of ’disks that she wanted to hear. She would master the electric harp that she had bought years before. She would learn to cook real meals, combining her own ingredients without the help of food formatter.

  And she would spend time with Bernard. The French scientist was the best thing that had happened on this mission— better even than the promised financial bonus. Bernard Flauvier was smart and accomplished; his sense of humor was brilliantly acerbic. He had overseen the Marduran mission with grave concern, collecting and analyzing data so that he could determine the scope of Jessup’s control over the native aliens.

  Sarah had first met Bernard when he came to the library asking for information on insectoid aliens, for studies that tracked innate human repulsion to such species. She had pulled the data for him, and she had been impressed by the way he had listened to the research results, by the way he had studied carefully, analyzing her findings before asking for follow-up materials.

  She had made a point of delivering those reports directly to his quarters, and he had asked her in to discuss the finer points of collecting research on a starship. One thing had led to another, and….

  Sarah brushed her hair behind her ears. The mission had not been easy for either of them—there was the inherent conflict between her position as a Jessup employee and his role as government investigator. If he decided that the Mardurans were fully protectable under the Protection of Alien Species Act—Class Three on the Voortman Index— the mines would be abandoned, and Jessup would lose billions of credits. Moreover, space travel was threatened by a forecasted shortage of alethium, something the Mardurans had in abundance.

  A Voortman rating of Class Two, though, would permit Jessup to exploit the planet, to pay into a central fund for all Mardurans that were taken in the course of development. Jessup was pressuring Sarah to track down and deliver to Bernard any materials she could find that would convince the government to rate the Mardurans Class Two.

  Any materials, she mused. If only Morton Jessup could see the lengths to which she was willing to go to serve her company. She smiled as she smoothed her tunic. Oh, she would try to convince Bernard. She would use her womanly wiles….

  And then she would collect her 500,000 credits. With that sort of money, she could look forward to a lifetime of days—and nights—with the grave scientist. But only if she also whittled down the mountain of cataloging, the thousands of records that Jessup needed before the ship docked in Earth orbit. It was worth losing a little sleep now, for future rewards.

  Arriving in the mess hall, Sarah collected her compartmentalized tray and waited in line for the slop that passed for dinner. Her appetite fled when she saw the gray gravy and the lumps that were clearly supposed to be meat. “What is this?” she asked the hapless cook.

  “Veal marsala. Without the veal.”

  “Without the marsala,” Sarah muttered. As she had at every dinner on this journey, she vowed to research some edible recipes for the galley crew. She settled for grabbing two extra rolls and a cup of tea.

  Shaking her head, she made her way to the table where the government scientists habitually gathered. Bernard looked up as she approached, and he smiled, gesturing to the seat opposite his own. She sat down quietly, trying not to interrupt Joaquin Rodriguez’s impassioned words. As xenoanthropologist for the mission, the slight scientist was the strongest advocate for rating the Mardurans Class Three.

  “Bernard, have you even read my reports? The Mardurans have language. They create written records. They have a complicated religious system, with hierarchic gods!”

  Bernard’s shoulders lifted into a delicate Gallic shrug. “So do dogs, Joaquin. They understand that one human in the household is supreme and the others are lesser deities.”

  The xenoanthropologist’s face flushed. “You joke now, but you’re ignoring the truth. The Mardurans have religion. They have tools. They have a highly evolved society. How could you even consider rating them a Two?”

  Bernard set down his fork. “First,” he said, holding up one finger, “the Mardurans have only achieved a modified civilization structure, with a pack mentality rather than a true division of labor. Second, they intentionally perpetuate a subsistence level economy, where a single bad season could wipe out the entire so-called community. Third, they rely on brute strength and their eight legs for mining—they have not applied one of the basic tools of physics.”

  “And
fourth,” Joaquin said, “they have no idea of the wealth they’re sitting on, with all that alethium so close to the surface.”

  “We need the alethium, Joaquin.” As Sarah listened, she heard the sorrow in Bernard’s voice. That open emotion was one of the things that had first attracted her to the man. He understood the difficulty of his job. He knew that the future of an entire species rode on the decisions he made.

  “Cities, Bernard!” Joaquin’s voice had become shrill. “Cities and social institutions—childcare and eldercare that surpass anything we’ve ever seen on Earth! They limit their mining, to protect against long-term environmental destruction.” The xenoanthropologist set his palms on the table, as if he were about to push himself to a standing position. “My report will recommend Class Three.”

  Bernard refused to escalate the argument. Instead of trying to outshout the other scientist, Bernard lowered his voice, almost whispering, “You’ll do what you have to do. We all will.”

  “You’re recommending genocide if you put the Mardurans in Class Two.”

  “I understand you believe that. I’ll take your report under advisement.”

  Joaquin slammed his cup down on his tray and stomped from the mess hall. Bernard watched him go before turning to Sarah. “Well, that was nastier than I anticipated.”

  “Have you decided, then? Are you definitely certifying them Class Two?”

  “I don’t have to issue my final opinion until we dock.” He shook his head, and the light caught on the silver streaks in his hair. He managed a rueful smile, and Sarah wished that they were alone in his cabin, that she could raise her fingers to smooth away the lines beside his lips. He seemed to understand that desire as he shook his head and said, “Joaquin is right about one thing, though. There is a tremendous amount of money at stake.”

  A tremendous amount—500,000 credits, Sarah thought, even though she knew that her bonus was a pittance in the overall scheme. She pitched her voice low enough that he had to lean toward her. At least, that was an intimacy they could afford in the gossip-mongering mess hall. “It’s not just money.”