by Victor Koman
“Prepare shuttle two for launching. I’m going to transfer over there and take a look.”
“Jord-we can always clone another-”
“He can’t have her! Brennen can’t-” The name shocked Baker. “Brennen? The madman is Brennen?”
“The other madman, yes.”
“I’m going in.” He loaded the shuttle with laser gloves, rifles, and packets of explosive. From the armory, he removed a small fission cylinder charge and secured it in the back of the shuttle.
“Weren’t you interested,” he asked, “in how Brennen can survive the Valliardi Transfer?”
“Perhaps he achieved a dysfunctional mental state similar to Virgil’s.”
“That’s what I intend to find out before I blow him to bits. Maybe I’ll learn how to handle Kinney. Now let’s move it!” He slithered into a pressure suit, jumped in the cockpit and strapped down to the pilot’s seat. In a few moments, the shuttle drifted away from Circus Galacticus.
“Your velocities are not yet matched, so I shall transfer you to a distance of ten thousand kilometers and you can move in from there.”
“Why don’t I fire my rockets here so I’ll be matched and drifting toward him already when I appear?”
“Fire them twenty-three degrees in from the tangent.”
He did so, brought the craft up to a safe speed, then shut down all systems but those of his own suit and those of the transfer unit. He pushed the button and vanished from space.
Now I meet Kinney face to face, in a way. If I can die just one more time I may be free to die on my own. Just one more fall, one more reach toward the door that never opens-
His breath rattled in his head. His fingers gripped the fore-mounted meteor laser. Far ahead of him, something glinted on and off with insistent regularity. Slowly it grew in apparent size. Baker watched for any sign of defensive action.
At the thousand kilometer mark, he hit the braking rockets, hoping their chemical flare would not be too noticeable. Here goes nothing.
The Bernal sphere revolved on its axis, but held no alignment on the star it orbited. Its solar mirrors and power panels lay in disarray, pointing in all directions. Baker let his shuttle drift slowly closer. At ten kilometers he carefully scanned the habitat for power usage.
Nothing. And it would take at least two minutes to power up a laser even if he had his solar panels aligned. We’d have been hit by now if he were planning to ambush us.
He hit full power and zeroed in on the docking port at the tip of the axial tower that supported the mirror array. From his experience with Fadeaway, he was now familiar with the layout of such habitats. He braked and drifted into the open hatchway. Loading a supply pack with explosives and the fission device, he donned a laser glove and slung a rifle over his shoulder.
All right, Dante, here I come.
He jumped across to the airlock and manually sealed the door behind him. It would not pressurize. He laid a charge against it, opened the outer hatch again, set the fuse and jumped outside. A bloom of metal shards, air, and chunks of shattered plastic blew outward. He waited until the shrapnel expended its momentum ricocheting around inside the airlock, then sped through the opening into an evacuated corridor.
Can’t go voiding every passageway to get around. Dee might be in one of them.
On the next set of pressure doors, he used his hand laser to cut away the forward seals enough to fill the small chamber with atmosphere. The inner set of doors opened easily. He kept his pressure suit on, but switched the respirator off and opened the mask to the outside. The air smelled stale and cloyingly sweet. When he saw why, he sealed the mouthpiece and resumed using internal oxygen.
Dead bodies lay scattered about the corridors, floating in the zero-gee axial section of the long polar tower, sprawled about in the gravity areas. Most of them had died by obvious or likely suicide. Some had killed one another in orgiastic violence.
He climbed inward toward the command center, hand over hand through a narrow tube, leading with his laser glove. He floated before the hatch. Partially ajar, it swung inward under the force of his shoulder. He hung back, waiting, then tossed a detonator from one of the charges inside the room. It exploded with a loud crack.
No reaction. Straight, here I come.
Baker kicked into the control center, raising the rifle as soon as he had cleared the hatchway. Only the seated dead greeted him. He spun around. Nothing but more mummies. Only one seat lay empty, its control panel as dark as the others.
Damn.
Keeping one hand on his rifle, Baker powered up the control station from the emergency batteries. Using what vid links still operated, he checked the tower portion of the habitat. Most of the compartments were open to space. Only the central shaft held atmosphere all the way through to the sphere itself, which appeared to be intact. That it still held an atmosphere surprised Baker more than the strange perspectives caused by the shifting beams of light reflected from the skewed mirror array.
I’ll never find him like this.
He searched the control station and adjoining compartments until he located a functional flying harness. Strapping it on, he rocketed down the axial tube toward the habitat sphere, making his way through hatches and airlocks. He shot through a final opening; the surface dropped away from him in all directions. He was inside the cavernous main enclosure of the habitat.
It was like no place he had ever been before. Larger by far than Fadeaway, Bernal Brennen was a nightmare of brown, dead, blasted farmland and blackened, burnt-out ruins. Light shifted about in crazy, seemingly random fashion. Looking at the arctic circle windows, Baker saw the reflected image of the star Tau Ceti first describe an arc, then jump several degrees, trace an ellipse, then appear here and there until it repeated the sequence.
He aimed the jet pack toward the center of the axis. Still weightless, he noted that the rotational rate of the sphere was slow-it probably imparted only a lunar gravity equivalent at the equator. Shadows and patches of light skipped, bent and skittered over the landscape as in some deathly monochrome kaleidoscope. Everywhere he looked lay white ash, gray land, and blackened buildings. He closed his eyes to the madly shifting light and cut his motor.
Now what, Sky King?
He switched on his outside microphones and turned them up to full amplification. The soft sounds of stillness reached him. Then something rustled. Somewhere, no farther away than the sphere’s radius of eight-tenths of a kilometer, a woman screamed.
Baker turned his head, trying to get a binaural fix. He found the task impossible. He opened his eyes and tried to see.
She screamed again. Baker heard a thick, heavy voice shout, “I find you, remember that! Then you find out. Can’t hide the rest of your life here!”
From his aerial vantage, he saw a white figure stumble across a half-plowed field and dive under a bush. It looked for all the world like a scabrous Delia Trine, naked and filthy. He craned his neck to watch the bush pass under him, but the field suddenly entered a patch of darkness and he lost his bearings.
Time to get a closer look.
He braked until he hung motionless along the axis. The sphere rotated about him in a majestic, dizzying pirouette. Changing his position, he fired the jet pack for one second. The engine kicked him off axis, allowing the rotating winds of Bernal Brennen to influence him. Drifting slowly down from his lofty height, Baker encountered the gentle pressure of moving air that pressed him in a spinward direction. Even so, he still moved across the surface at a fast clip when he reached half a radius altitude. He readied the laser rifle and looked about him as he cut across patches of dark and light. Starshine lanced in at odd angles, occasionally blinding him.
“Hey, you!” the deep voice growled. Baker looked behind and below him to see a hairy, naked man climb out of a ravine shaking his fists. He slowly turned and powered upward and back, gaining altitude until he hovered a few hundred meters above the man. He could not remain weightless and be motionless relative to the sp
here’s inner surface. He maintained power, which gave him the feeling of weight, of hanging from his jet pack.
“Dante!” he bellowed down on his outside speakers. “Jord Baker here. How did you survive the Valliardi Transfer?” A cloak of blackness fell across the area. A square of light passed through it, returning daytime.
“Made me die and die!” the filth-encrusted man shouted. “Punishment from God for not killing Wanderer. He gets dirty death for straying. I found his prize. Stole her from him!”
“I’m taking her back!” Baker answered, firing a blast at the naked man. He yelped and fell down, grasping the bloody hole in his left calf.
Baker tried to become oriented enough to find where Delia’s clone had hidden. The jigsaw starlight flashed back and forth across him, pounding in his head like glowing fists. Then he heard a buzz and a whine that dropped in pitch.
Out of fuel. I really need this crap.
He began falling, slowly, tangentially to the point at which he had been hovering. Since the atmosphere was rotating with the faster rate of the sphere’s inner surface, the breeze again wafted him spinward, urging him toward relative motion with the surface and greater acceleration rates.
He brushed a treetop, shattering the dead branches. It slowed him enough-rather, imparted more of the sphere’s motion to him-that when he hit the dusty square of a dead lawn, he rolled and bounced without much damage. He retrieved his rifle, discarded the depleted flying harness, and sought his bearings. A kilometer spinward and north of the equator, a slender figure jumped from a bush and into a house. He ran toward it, trying to maintain his footing despite the constantly shifting shadows.
He passed a pathway intersection to see Brennen running unsteadily toward him, favoring one leg. He raised his rifle and fired at the other leg. The man screamed and stumbled, pawing at his hip. Dust flew up around him, then darkness enveloped the scene.
“I get you, Hunter!” Brennen cried from the shadows. “I give you dirty death for pain!”
Baker smiled and said, “I’ll give you a clean one.”
Out of breath, his bones aching, the pressure suit at full dilation to evaporate sweat, Baker approached the house. A dry, shriveled body hung from the tree in front of it, a faded note pinned to its rotting jumpsuit. Baker strode past it and kicked open the door.
“It’s all right. Come on out,” he said. “You don’t have to hide. I’m here to help you.” I wonder how much of that she understood. She’s only a clone. How long could he have had her, anyway? Half a year, if he arrived when he said he would. Maybe much longer, if he wanted to case the system first.
Footsteps stamped down the back stairs. He raced into the sudden night to see her disappear down a path. He looked over the small hillock and caught sight of her when a square beam of light arced across the farm.
“Hold it! Stop. I’m not like him!”
She tried climbing a terrace. He bounded after her and seized her by the waist, pulling her down on top of him.
Up close, she looked truly filthy. Dust and scars covered her naked body. Her hair hung in matted clumps. Her breasts were black and blue, as were her wrists and thighs. She tried scratching at him with nails split and broken to the quick.
“Leggo,” she screamed, her voice a high-pitched imitation of the hairy man’s speech. “Gotta runaway.”
“You’re safe and you’re coming back with me. I’ve got someone waiting for you.”
“Not I!” she screamed, looking about her. “I tried hurt You.”
“No you didn’t.”
She pounded against his chest. “Not You,” she said, pointing to her groin. She pointed away from them. “I! I!”
Brennen and she were the only ones alive. “You” and “I” were the only names he needed to use, so she learned those names and he was too crazy to bother correcting her. “You”-he pointed at her-“and I”-he pointed down the pathway toward the figure of the other man, gripping his legs and whimpering.
“Yeah! I. Who?” She nodded at him.
“Jord.”
She tugged at his arm. “Fast, Jord and You. We hide. Hide!”
Baker felt his consciousness slipping away at the sound of the word. He jerked his head back, screaming. “No!”
Her damned voice was all I needed to free myself was a single word and now I’m no longer watching but-
“Delia!” “Who?” Virgil spun around, witnessed the insane display of light and darkness cascading about, and trembled. Carnival! And Death Angel has been through all the rides.
A howl caught his attention. He saw Brennen in the pathway and shouted, “Mad Wizard! You brought me here?”
“No,” the woman said, tugging at his arm. “You take Jord and hide.”
“I’m Virgil,” he said, pointing toward his heart.
“No. I tried”-she made an explicit gesture-“to You.”
“No, you didn’t-” wait, wait. Something that just happened when the dead man was… Right. She’s all screwed up, confused by Master Snoop’s light show.
“Mad Wizard”-he pointed at the man-“I won’t get You. Virgil will protect You now.” He pointed at his chest. “Virgil.”
“Virgil, Jord. We go.” She ran off, her thick, matted hair slapping against her back. She led him toward the equator.
Poor dirty Death Angel. Take you out of Mad Wizard’s house and back to Circus. “This way,” he said, leading her up the curving meridian pathway. “It’s easier.”
“No,” she pleaded. “I live there. I take You there!”
“I is Mad Wizard. Call I Mad Wizard.”
She looked at him, frowned, and said, “I is Mad Wizard. Mad Wizard live there?”
“Yes. But Mad Wizard is hurt-” he pointed back to the path. Brennen had managed to crawl to a utility cart.
“Mad Wizard gone?” She pointed toward the small cart bumping across the cluttered pathway toward another meridian.
“Don’t worry. He’ll have to get out and climb after a bit anyway. And even in low gravity, he’s got two bad legs.” The dead man inside me is good with a rifle. “I can get-Virgil can get You away from Mad Wizard.”
Her eyes brightened and she nodded. “Take You away!”
They ran up the pathway, passing dead men, women, and children. Children die the worst. They have the imagination, but not the means or skill. Most must have just starved to death or been killed. Maybe by Mad Wizard.
He looked across to the neighboring meridian. Brennen had abandoned the cart, but his powerful arms possessed enough strength to propel him at a fast clip up the side of the sphere toward ever-decreasing gravity. Virgil disconnected his rebreather.
“Death Angel, follow me! Mad Wizard wants to get somewhere fast!”
The air stank, dry and stale. The humidifiers and treatment units had broken down years before from disrepair. The woman reeked of unwashed flesh and greasy hair. He ignored the assault of odors, ignored the confusing flashes and beams of misguided light and concentrated on climbing the steepening hill, following the retreating Brennen.
Nearing the north pole, almost weightless, I watch her fall back, Coriolis taking her stomach by the inner ears and twisting. And Mad Wizard speeds up where muscle counts. Death Angel grabs my leg to drag me down but I pull her up with it and we’re through the hatch.
“Where you going, Mad Wizard?” he yelled down the axial tube. “You think I can’t catch you?”
“You got her she’s mine!” the voice called back.
Virgil reached into his pouch and withdrew a stun grenade. Twisting into position as he hurtled down the circular passage, he heaved the activated ball of plastic explosive toward the fleeing man. “You want Death Angel? Take Nightsheet!” Virgil shouted. His own velocity added to that of his throw; the charge sailed past its target in a few seconds and kept going. Brennen watched it whiz past and desperately tumbled to stop his own forward momentum.
Virgil and the clone hit a solid wall of air. Like swallows in a hurricane they stopped, b
lasted backward by the explosion. In an instant, the force had spent itself and Virgil grabbed at a support brace.
“Delia!”
He saw her sprawled farther down the tube, her leg caught in a hatch recess. He clambered toward her.
“Wanderer, Hunter” Brennen’s nearing voice wheezed. Virgil spun around. A ripped, bruised body floated slowly past him, one leg broken and gyrating in bloody circles. Brennen glared at him with eyes demonically red from broken veins. Hoarsely, he asked: “Why you make the Black One cradle me?”
Virgil hovered face to face with the shattered industrialist for a moment. Brennen’s face, seen up close, revealed lines of worry, fear, and-finally-insanity. Virgil felt that if he could have watched that map over time, he might have some clue to his own future.
“Mad Wizard,” Virgil whispered. “You think you can be God just because you can die; I fixed you because you didn’t know your limitations.” Brennen continued to drift back toward the habitat’s main sphere. He raised his voice to reach the receding figure. “Wizard, Nightsheet takes people like you easy. Mad Wizard!” He turned back to the woman above him. “Come on.”
She breathed in shallow whimpers, her eyes closed.
Death Angel hangs by her foot, bent and purple in the hatch. Why is everyone so hurting, Death Angel? Even you.
He pulled her broken foot free and tugged her toward the docking bay. Setting her inside the nearest lock with full pressure, he looked for a space suit for her. When he found one, he cursed. Mad Wizard you went too crazy. Why’d you empty all the air tanks and break the rebreathers? Now I can’t get her through the vacuum. Or-wait.
Virgil remembered something from his past not his own.
The dead man did something once. Breathed his own suit air that lasted him long enough. She breathes so lightly in her marrow slumber.
He stuffed her into the pressure suit and made certain that it shrank down evenly. Sealing her up, he let her float while he connected his headgear, leaving hers open for the moment.
Airlock’s half blown. Must have been the dead man’s work, straight. How to get Mad Wizard away from me for good? Kill him? What if Nightsheet has other plans for him? Then send him to Master Snoop. Go now.
