by Victor Koman
“Oh, one thing. Have you been in contact with any alien life?”
Baker looked at the speaker grill. “Well?”
“What?” asked the computer.
“Anything happen to me while I was blacked out those times? Where’s this body been?”
“You have not been contaminated.”
“I’m clean,” he said to the transmitter.
“Then, welcome onboard, tovar Baker.”
The roar is so strong, my body cannot hear me. I levitate inside my head, unhooked from control. My lips spew a Language I can’t hear. I witness my body move, independent of my command. Could Master Snoop finally be in control? This waiting room for Nightsheet is so small. I see my body climb into the shuttle coffin and seal in. My hand ignores the transfer button and guides the ship on thrust, out of the Circus ring. My hands are expert at their craft. The dead man they put inside me-it must be he. You can’t laugh without a mouth, and mine won’t go along. Don’t need a mouth to scream. Death Angel! The Earth rotates around and hangs to my left. You lie only an instant and a death away from me, frozen under the hermetic Sun.
The shuttle headed toward the orbital city.
A huge ball and stick. Like God’s baby rattle it turns. Mad Wizard hunted me in it. This one is different, though. Older. Repair plating. Loose cables. I can’t escape, but I can watch.
Baker maneuvered the tiny shuttle toward the non-rotating central shaft of the habitat. Diffuse white light glowed from an open docking bay. Cutting back to less than a meter per second, he checked alignments on the HUD and decelerated to a decimeter per second. The nose of the craft nudged the impact cushion inside the bay and slowed to rest.
Now what? He powered down the shuttle and switched on the aft camera. On a vid, he watched the bay door close, cutting him off from the stars. He sat still, listening to the air cycling into the chamber. I’m home again. He looked at the stranger’s hands grasping the chair arms at his side.
I’ll never really be home again. He unstrapped while planning his next action.
A hatchway slid open. A score of men bounded into the docking bay. Using bulkheads and struts as kick points and pivots, the troops surrounded the ship, holding themselves securely in place against the walls. They aimed their laser gloves at the airlock. It eased open slowly.
Baker stood with his feet squarely on the shuttle deck as if he possessed his own personal gravity field. Arms folded, he waited. Patience is power, he recited. Calm is courage.
An old man lowered his arm and lightly kicked toward the impact cushion. He wore black overalls, as did the other men. The military insignia on his breast and shoulders, though, did not match those of any of his fellows. Their insignia varied as much as their sizes, ages, shapes, and colors. The old man inclined his head with curt formality.
Baker mimicked the action and, easing his feet from the deck toeholds, moved forward to meet his hosts.
“Welcome onboard Fadeaway,” the old man said. “I am Commander Norman Powell, of the destroyer Scranton. Retired,” he added with a wry smile.
Baker kept his eyes roving about the bay, watching the other men. “Where’s your destroyer?”
Powell maintained his smile. “Destroyed. This is a veteran’s colony, though not by intention. Come along. We’ll do a few scans on you and your ship, and then go to morning mess.” The other men lowered their arms, but kept the business end of their gloves pointed in Baker’s general direction. Powell gestured toward the air lock and waited for Baker to come up beside him. That was when one of the men to Baker’s right raised a pistol and fired. His own body might have reacted in time, but not Virgil’s. Something sharp burned in his thigh. At least all my deaths have been painless. A fast stab and then numb-
I’ve never wanted anything more than to fly. When I soar, there’s no pain or fear-just the sun, stars, and planets, motionless even at my greatest final vees. And when I drop a ship into the atmosphere, ion colors whorl about and the ocean below appears through the glow and I skim it as close as I can, the world suddenly brighter and then I’m over land, valleys wrapping up to cradle me and I skip out of their reach and then I’m free and climbing, Earth at my back and sky ahead-
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that this man is Jord Baker. He’s been babbling on like that for the last hour and we’ve given him everything we’ve got.” The Pharmaceutic increased the voltage to one of the electrodes attached to Baker’s freshly shaven head.
Blue, purple, black, and the thrill of motion is lost in vastness. Now comes the urge to push faster and faster until I can see things move again. Ultimate speed-
Powell punched a few buttons on the console where he sat and looked at the readout. He turned back to the Pharmaceutic to say, “Bio reports no infestation detected. Serologies are negative. Evidence of clonegraft on his left wrist, probably done by a boxdoc.” He slid his hands in his pockets and eased back in his chair. The quarter-gravity of the hospital always made him feel lazy. Still he frowned.
“The photo we pulled from the file matches another pilot named Virgil Kinney. What kind of game is going on here?”
“Does it matter?”
“You bet it matters.” Powell watched Baker twist aimlessly on the operating table, trying to fight the restraining straps and the images electrochemically triggered within him.
“We’ve got a destroyer-sized Valli ship out there with a pilot who thinks he’s a man long dead. Our crew can’t board the ship because its computer says that if we do, it will set off its antimatter bombs-and why the hell does it even have those?-and now I’ve got a neutrino reading from trans-Plutonian orbit indicating something about the size of a full warship accelerating at twelve gees toward the inner planets.”
“Norm, the war’s been over for years.”
I finally found the ultimate speed when I woke up inside somebody’s body after I died; and I died again and then slept and then died and then worked and then slept and they-
“What’s he saying?”
– made me run the tour when I wanted to die and now I find I don’t want to die but rid this sleep that comes and numbs me and makes me act unknowing.
Powell leaned over Baker to observe his unfocused eyes in their random movements. Baker’s lips moved wordlessly for a moment.
Grind me up and stuff me like some nucleic sawdust in this scarecrow skin, then put him in control?
“There’s your answer,” the Pharmaceutic said.
“What answer? No RNA transfer’s ever resulted in shared personality, in one guy taking over the other guy’s body. Not without the brain being wiped first. The electrochemical ordering is way too strong for-”
“It happened. Or seems to have.”
“Are you saying he’ll be no help in getting that computer to let us onboard?”
“What do we need with the ship, Norm? The war’s over, everyone’s moved out. We’re just living in an abandoned home in the slums and nobody’s going to bother us. We’ll die on Fadeaway boring one another with old war stories.”
Powell looked at the Pharmaceutic and nodded. “The war’s over.”
Get even. Switch the locks. Die my own way.
“Shut him off and send him to Recovery. Jord Baker is as good as Virgil Kinney for what we can get out of him.”
The Pharmaceutic flipped toggles and turned dials to zero. A nearly audible buzz dropped in pitch.
“He seemed rational enough when he came on board.”
“We’ll see.”
It’s crazy to try tampering with my mind. I need help. I can’t lose control again. Lose control, you crash.
Crash.
Baker’s head turned to one side and his voice fell silent.
Virgil awoke screaming.
The assistant medic jumped up from the chair leaning up against the wall. It slid to the floor with a sharp slap as the man hit an alert buzzer and bent forward over Virgil, watching. Staring up at the medic, Virgil considered him for a moment, then began to
weep.
Never any escape. I’m forced into hiding and when I find a way out I’m trapped again. Pearhead glares with pitted eyes over ripe cheeks and gibbers to the wall. I break his cipher with a snap of my mind.
“He’s awake, sir.”
“Anything else?”
“Just the scream and the bawling. He’s watching me now.”
“Well,” Powell said, “talk to him.” Powell’s image vanished from the scrim, replaced by that of the Pharmaceutic.
“If he gets violent, give him twenty ccs of Torp Eight.” The Pharmaceutic’s face faded away.
Faces peer from the walls. Master Snoop has caught up with me again. The dead man in me brought me back to them.
“Easy, fella. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“But be afraid of itself.”
“Huh?”
Virgil strained at the belts. “How long will you keep this up?”
“We thought you might hurt yourself otherwise.”
He sighed. “Where am I?”
“In the hospital.”
“Where?”
“On Fadeaway.”
“Which is?”
“Uh-orbiting Earth?” The medic righted his chair and put one foot on it. He offered a cigarette to Virgil.
“No thanks. You haven’t been around hospital patients much, have you?”
“Most people here just up and die. They don’t linger.”
Pump. Suck what info you can before he realizes. “Don’t linger?”
The medic nodded. Tall, probably spaceborn, he towered over Virgil’s bed.
“Yeah, most of us’d rather die fast when we have to. There’s enough of a strain on Fadeaway’s system as it is. Not that there are so many veterans left here, but a lot of equipment was already damaged when we homesteaded this dump and we can’t repair it without material. Which we don’t have any ships to retrieve anyway.” He ground out his half-smoked cigarette on the floor. “Which is why your-” He looked at Virgil, then frowned and said nothing more.
They want Circus. Leave me here with Master Snoop and go off to the Belt for gelt of steel. You have to play this right. Have to get back. Back to Circus. Back to Delia. Get out.
“I’m a prisoner, then?”
The medic punched a couple of buttons on the wall console.
The Pharmaceutic’s face appeared. “What?” he asked.
“Bailey, sir. Patient requests his status.”
The old man nodded. “Straight, straight. I’ll be down in a minute.”
“You’re late.” Virgil slid his right hand away from his left wrist, working it across his chest under the straps.
“Your pulse is just fast,” said the Pharmaceutic, sliding a miniscrim back into his breast pocket. “If we’re done with showing off, we can talk.” He closed the door behind him and glanced at Bailey. The medic nodded and left the room.
“My name’s Derek Vane. Master Pharmaceutic for Fadeaway. Which one are you?”
“Which one?” Virgil blinked his eyes and twisted about to watch Vane.
“I mean, what’s your name?”
“Ben? How’d you got inside?” Ben made flesh. Ben following me, a ship in human vessel, asking the same question.
“I’m not Ben. I’m Derek. Tell me about yourself.”
Have to focus. This is too dangerous to screw up. “I’m Virgil Grissom Kinney. Sorry if I seem a bit disoriented. I’ve been through a lot.” A lot a lot a lot a lot.
“Yes, you’ve been having some blackouts recently.”
He watches me too closely. He must know about the dead man inside me, if he’s with Master Snoop. Won’t hurt to let him know I know, will it? Stupid-you’re his prisoner anyway.
“Yeah,” Virgil said. “It’s the RNA injection I got before leaving Earth. Possibly a sensitivity to some impurity.” He nods- he doesn’t believe a word of it.
“Possibly, possibly.”
This is getting nowhere. “When can I go back to Circus Galacticus?”
Vane kept nodding. “There’s a problem.” He stopped nodding and pulled the miniscrim from his pocket. Handing it to Virgil, he said, “Hit recall two twenty-three forty-seven.” Virgil touched the numbers as told and craned his neck to read what appeared.
“It’s coming at us under fifty gravities acceleration,” Vane said. “It’ll be here in less than forty hours. There’s somebody out there in trans-Pluto orbit who’s pretty damned interested enough in something here-and I’m betting it’s you and Circus. They’re burning a hell of a lot of anti-matter just to get here fast. Why they’re not using a Valli, I can’t figure, if they’re the same people we suspect. Commander Powell thinks we’re in danger. You can see why we can’t let you go just yet.”
Nodding, Virgil strained at the straps across his chest. “I’m not such a threat that you’ve got to keep me tied down, am I?”
“Nobody cares about old soldiers, but most of us have been trained to avoid risks. We’d like to make a few preparations for the possibility of an attack. If you could tell your ship that we’re going to power up our lasers for purely defensive purposes-”
Virgil narrowed his gaze. “I like to avoid risks, too. I’m not going to have you take my ship. If that leaves us at a standoff, that’s just fine.” So hard to figure out strategies. I know now that they won’t kill me. Not if they think I have the code. And they’ll never crack it. I’ll die my own way…
Vane took the miniscrim back and tapped it idly against his fingers. His brown eyes blinked twice. “A stalemate based on fear. Kind of a sad situation.”
“I want to get back to my ship.”
“I’m afraid you’re out of deals there.”
Virgil strained again, the straps holding him taut.
“Then I am a prisoner.”
“There still exists-on scrim, at least-a condition of war between the Triplanetary Co-Prosperity Alliance and the Infernals.”
“You mean the Recidivists and the Autarchists?”
“That’s the Belter’s propaganda.”
Virgil smiled and shook his head. Got to get out. I can’t let them see the slightest-“Hmm.”
Vane looked at the man lying before him and saw his face turn implacable. Virgil seemed a million kilometers away. His thoughts, though, lay nearly one and a half astronomical units away.
“Perhaps we can arrange a pact.” Virgil casually scratched his shaven scalp and relaxed. Show calm, think it through.
“I can listen, but only Commander Powell can make any deals.”
“Bring him in, then.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Vane left and Bailey returned, watching over the prisoner until Powell stormed in and leaned over the bed. He smelled of bacon and coffee.
“We’re fighting a thirty-eight hour deadline, so we’re open to deals. What?”
Virgil looked over the man-graying hair cropped short, gray eyes that must have seen enough of the brutal life of war, and space-damaged skin combined to make Powell look like a weary seaman.
I have to proceed carefully… “Let me access your library and read up on recent history. If it matches what you’ve told me and I find I can trust you, the ship’s yours for a set amount of time to be determined.”
Powell barely hesitated. “Our library only goes up to Twenty-One Fifty-Eight. After that, there’s only the habitat’s log, input by me. It’s all open to you. You must make your decision by twenty-hundred tomorrow or we’ll be forced to seize Circus by force.
Virgil nodded. “Untie me and bring me a scrim.”
Can’t ask for it too soon. Have to wait a few hours.
Virgil avoided requesting astrophysical information and called up the history section. The attendant, Bailey, had raised his bed and freed up his right hand so that he could operate the scrim’s library controls. After several hours of reading, watching and listening, he turned off the scrim and laid his head back.
The recent history of the System made the fall of Rome look
calm and restful. Dante Houdini Brennen in 2116 had not possessed the vantage on the war gained by historians in subsequent decades. The causes of Earth’s degeneration into statism were manifold. The planet’s near trillion inhabitants-previously well-supplied with necessities from the Moon and the Belt habitats-saw extreme danger in the cessation of intrasystem trade. The constant Terran demand for raw materials and goods fabricated in deep space at zero-gee could not be interrupted for the length of time necessary for Earth businesses to begin work in the Belt.
Someone did have the brains to purchase obsolete equipment already in the Belt and crew it. By then, though, someone else had put deep thrust engines on a freighter, armed it with a bevawatt laser and his own private army, and headed for Ceres Beta. Other potential looters followed.
Organization for such an aggressively invasive undertaking resulted in bureaucracy, with all its entrenched interests. The interests gained supporters among the nervous billions. When the supporters began to crush dissenters and neutral alike, a State had-once again-arisen. Mars, far enough from Earth almost to be considered a Belter outpost, remained steadfastly neutral, which meant they were on both sides, selling. Luna, settled by rough-and-tumble frontiersmen, declared solidarity with the Belt. The Earth-Moon war lasted eight years, ending in a bitter, bloody stalemate.
The Belters could not be taken by surprise in this war. When they could detect fusion flares hundreds of millions of kilometers away, they had plenty of time to get ready. After two years in flight, the first Terran assault on the Belt resulted in a thirty-second-long battle. All Earthlings were captured alive from their incapacitated ships and sent to Ceres Beta where the defense agencies offered them a choice: be set free on an asteroid with a complimentary one-hour tank of air, or work to pay their own fares back to Earth.
The Belters saw no further threat and ignored Earth. The home planet’s trillion scrambled to get into space, into the Belt. Factionalism took hold as the world’s great corporations- Grant Enterprises, D’Asaro Spacecraft, General Cosmos, The Food Combine, and Crockett Mining and Exploration-acquired what they could from private investors and from one another. What some could not buy, rent or borrow, they stole. Property disputes large enough to be small scale wars ensued.
