by John Varley
"No, Ralph, I don't have time tomorrow. Next week, I promise. This thing has come up, but it'll be all over next week, one way or another."
He frowned, but didn't say anything. He didn't have to. The human body, its care and maintenance, was the one subject Ralph knew more about than she did, but even she knew it would be cheaper in the long run to have the work done now.
She felt so lazy he had to help her turn over. Damn, but he was good at this. She had never asked him to do it; he seemed to enjoy it. His strong hands dug into her back and found each sore spot, as if by magic. Presently, it wasn't sore anymore.
"What's this thing that's come up?"
"I... can't tell you about it. Classified, for now."
He didn't protest, nor did he show surprise, though it was the first time Bach's work had taken her into the realm of secrecy.
It was annoying, really. One of Ralph's charms was that he was a good listener. While he wouldn't understand the technical side of anything, he could sometimes offer surprisingly good advice on personal problems. More often, he showed the knack of synthesizing and expressing things Bach had already known, but had not allowed herself to see.
Well, she could tell him part of it.
"There's this satellite," she began. "Tango Charlie. Have you ever heard of it?"
"That's a funny name for a satellite."
"It's what we call it on the tracking logs. It never really had a name—well, it did, a long time ago, but GWA took it over and turned it into a research facility and an Exec's retreat, and they just let it be known as TC-38. They got it in a war with Telecommunion, part of the peace treaty. They got Charlie, the Bubble, a couple other big wheels.
"The thing about Charlie... it's coming down. In about six days, it's going to spread itself all over the Farside. Should be a pretty big bang."
Ralph continued to knead the backs of her legs. It was never a good idea to rush him. He would figure things out in his own way, at his own speed, or he wouldn't figure them out at all.
"Why is it coming down?"
"It's complicated. It's been derelict for a long time. For a while it had the capacity to make course corrections, but it looks like it's run out of reaction mass, or the computer that's supposed to stabilize it isn't working anymore. For a couple of years it hasn't been making corrections."
"Why does it—"
"A Lunar orbit is never stable. There's the Earth tugging on the satellite, the solar wind, mass concentrations of Luna's surface... a dozen things that add up, over time. Charlie's in a very eccentric orbit now. Last time it came within a kilometer of the surface. Next time it's gonna miss us by a gnat's whisker, and the time after that, it hits."
Ralph stopped massaging. When Bach glanced at him, she saw he was alarmed. He had just understood that a very large object was about to hit his home planet, and he didn't like the idea.
"Don't worry," Bach said, "there's a surface installation that might get some damage from the debris, but Charlie won't come within a hundred kilometers of any settlements. We got nothing to worry about on that score."
"Then why don't you just... push it back up... you know, go up there and do..." Whatever it is you do, Bach finished for him. He had no real idea what kept a satellite in orbit in the first place, but knew there were people who handled such matters all the time.
There were other questions he might have asked, as well. Why leave Tango Charlie alone all these years? Why not salvage it? Why allow things to get to this point at all?
All those questions brought her back to classified ground.
She sighed, and turned over.
"I wish we could," she said, sincerely. She noted that the swastika was saluting her, and that seemed like a fine idea, so she let him carry her into the bedroom.
And as he made love to her she kept seeing that incredible tide of Shelties with the painted child in the middle.
After the run, ten laps around the Promenade Deck, Charlie led the pack to the Japanese Garden and let them run free through the tall weeds and vegetable patches. Most of the trees in the Garden were dead. The whole place had once been a formal and carefully tended place of meditation. Four men from Tokyo had been employed full time to take care of it. Now the men were buried under the temple gate, the ponds were covered in green scum, the gracefully arched bridge had collapsed, and the flower beds were choked with dog turds.
Charlie had to spend part of each morning in the flower beds, feeding Mister Shitface. This was a cylindrical structure with a big round hole in its side, an intake for the wheel's recycling system. It ate dog feces, weeds, dead plants, soil, scraps... practically anything Charlie shoveled into it. The cylinder was painted green, like a frog, and had a face painted on it, with big lips outlining the hole.
Charlie sang The Shit-Shoveling Song as she worked.
Tik-Tok had taught her the song, and he used to sing it with her. But a long time ago he had gone deaf in the Japanese Garden. Usually, all Charlie had to do was talk, and Tik-Tok would hear. But there were some places—and more of them every year—where Tik-Tok was deaf.
" '...Raise dat laig,' " Charlie puffed. " 'Lif dat tail, If I gets in trouble will you go my bail?' "
She stopped, and mopped her face with a red bandanna. As usual, there were dogs sitting on the edge of the flowerbed watching Charlie work. Their ears were lifted. They found this endlessly fascinating. Charlie just wished it would be over. But you took the bad with the good. She started shovel-ing again.
" 'I gets weary, O' all dis shovelin'...' "
When she was finished she went back on the Promenade.
"What's next?" she asked.
"Plenty," said Tik-Tok. "The funeral put you behind schedule."
He directed her to the infirmary with the new litter. There they weighed, photographed, X-rayed, and catalogued each puppy. The results were put on file for later registration with the American Kennel Club. It quickly became apparent that Conrad was going to be a cull. He had an overbite. With the others it was too early to tell. She and Tik-Tok would examine them weekly, and their standards were an order of magnitude more stringent than the AKC's. Most of her culls would easily have best of breed in a show, and as for her breeding animals...
"I ought to be able to write Champion on most of these pedigrees."
"You must be patient."
Patient, yeah, she'd heard that before. She took another drink of Scotch. Champion Fuchsia O'Charlie Station, she thought. Now that would really make a breeder's day.
After the puppies, there were two from an earlier litter who were now ready for a final evaluation.
Charlie brought them in, and she and Tik-Tok argued long and hard about points so fine few people would have seen them at all. In the end, they decided both would be sterilized.
Then it was noon feeding. Charlie never enforced discipline here. She let them jump and bark and nip at each other, as long as it didn't get too rowdy. She led them all to the cafeteria (and was tracked by three wall cameras), where the troughs of hard kibble and soft soyaburger were already full.
Today it was chicken-flavored, Charlie's favorite.
Afternoon was training time. Consulting the records Tik-Tok displayed on a screen, she got the younger dogs one at a time and put each of them through thirty minutes of leash work, up and down the Promenade, teaching them Heel, Sit, Stay, Down, Come according to their degree of progress and Tik-Tok's rigorous schedules. The older dogs were taken to the Ring in groups, where they sat obediently in a line as she put them, one by one, through free-heeling paces.
Finally it was evening meals, which she hated. It was all human food.
"Eat your vegetables," Tik-Tok would say. "Clean up your plate. People are starving in New Dresden." It was usually green salads and yucky broccoli and beets and stuff like that. Tonight it was yellow squash, which Charlie liked about as much as a root canal. She gobbled up the hamburger patty and then dawdled over the squash until it was a yellowish mess all over her plate like b
aby shit.
Half of it ended up on the table. Finally Tik-Tok relented and let her get back to her duties, which, in the evening, was grooming. She brushed each dog until the coats shone. Some of the dogs had already settled in for the night, and she had to wake them up.
At last, yawning, she made her way back to her room. She was pretty well plastered by then. Tik- Tok, who was used to it, made allowances and tried to jolly her out of what seemed a very black mood.
"There's nothing wrong!" she shouted at one point, tears streaming from her eyes. Charlie could be an ugly drunk.
She staggered out to the Promenade Deck and lurched from wall to wall, but she never fell down.
Ugly or not, she knew how to hold her liquor. It had been ages since it made her sick.
The elevator was in what had been a commercial zone. The empty shops gaped at her as she punched the button. She took another drink, and the door opened. She got in.
She hated this part. The elevator was rising up through a spoke, toward the hub of the wheel. She got lighter as the car went up. and the trip did funny things to the inner ear. She hung on to the hand rail until the car shuddered to a stop.
Now everything was fine. She was almost weightless up here. Weightlessness was great when you were drunk. When there was no gravity to worry about, your head didn't spin—and if it did, it didn't matter.
This was one part of the wheel where the dogs never went. They could never get used to falling, no matter how long they were kept up here. But Charlie was an expert in falling. When she got the blues she came up here and pressed her face to the huge ballroom window.
People were only a vague memory to Charlie. Her mother didn't count. Though she visited every day, mom was about as lively as V.I. Lenin. Sometimes Charlie wanted to be held so much it hurt.
The dogs were good, they were warm, they licked her, they loved her... but they couldn't hold her.
Tears leaked from her eyes, which was really a bitch in the ballroom, because tears could get huge in here. She wiped them away and looked out the window.
The moon was getting bigger again. She wondered what it meant. Maybe she would ask Tik-Tok.
She made it back as far as the Garden. Inside, the dogs were sleeping in a huddle. She knew she ought to get them back to their rooms, but she was far too drunk for that. And Tik-Tok couldn't do a damn thing about it in here. He couldn't see, and he couldn't hear.
She lay down on the ground, curled up, and was asleep in seconds.
When she started to snore, the three or four dogs who had come over to watch her sleep licked her mouth until she stopped. Then they curled up beside her. Soon they were joined by others, until she slept in the middle of a blanket of dogs.
A crisis team had been assembled in the monitoring room when Bach arrived the next morning.
They seemed to have been selected by Captain Hoeffer, and there were so many of them that there was not enough room for everyone to sit down. Bach led them to a conference room just down the hall, and everyone took seats around the long table. Each seat was equipped with a computer display, and there was a large screen on the wall behind Hoeffer, at the head of the table. Bach took her place on his right, and across from her was Deputy Chief Zeiss, a man with a good reputation in the department. He made Bach very nervous. Hoeffer, on the other hand, seemed to relish his role. Since Zeiss seemed content to be an observer. Bach decided to sit back and speak only if called upon.
Noting that every seat was filled, and that what she assumed were assistants had pulled up chairs behind their principles, Bach wondered if this many people were really required for this project.
Steiner, sitting at Bach's right, leaned over and spoke quietly.
"Pick a time," he said.
"What's that?"
"I said pick a time. We're running an office pool. If you come closest to the time security is broken, you win a hundred Marks."
"Is ten minutes from now spoken for?"
They quieted when Hoeffer stood up to speak.
"Some of you have been working on this problem all night," he said. "Others have been called in to give us your expertise in the matter. I'd like to welcome Deputy Chief Zeiss, representing the Mayor and the Chief of Police. Chief Zeiss, would you like to say a few words?"
Zeiss merely shook his head, which seemed to surprise Hoeffer. Bach knew he would never have passed up an opportunity like that, and probably couldn't understand how anyone else could.
"Very well. We can start with Doctor Blume."
Blume was a sour little man who affected wire-rimmed glasses and a cheap toupee over what must have been a completely bald head. Bach thought it odd that a medical man would wear such clumsy prosthetics, calling attention to problems that were no harder to cure than a hangnail. She idly called up his profile on her screen, and was surprised to learn he had a Nobel Prize.
"The subject is a female caucasoid, almost certainly Earthborn."
On the wall behind Hoeffer and on Bach's screen, tapes of the little girl and her dogs were being run.
"She displays no obvious abnormalities. In several shots she is nude, and clearly has not yet reached puberty. I estimate her age between seven and ten years old. There are small discrepancies in her behavior. Her movements are economical—except when playing. She accomplishes various handeye tasks with a maturity beyond her apparent years." The doctor sat down abruptly.
It put Hoeffer off balance.
"Ah... that's fine, doctor. But, if you recall, I just asked you to tell me how old she is, and if she's healthy."
"She appears to be eight. I said that."
"Yes, but—"
"What do you want from me?" Blume said, suddenly angry. He glared around at many of the assembled experts. "There's something badly wrong with that girl. I say she is eight. Fine! Any fool could see that. I say I can observe no health problems visually. For this, you need a doctor? Bring her to me, give me a few days, and I'll give you six volumes on her health. But videotapes...?" He trailed off, his silence as eloquent as his words.
"Thank you, Doctor Blume," Hoeffer said. "As soon as—"
"I'll tell you one thing, though," Blume said, in a low, dangerous tone. "It is a disgrace to let that child drink liquor like that. The effects in later life will be terrible. I have seen large men in their thirties and forties who could not hold half as much as I saw her drink... in one day!" He glowered at Hoeffer for a moment. "I was sworn to silence. But I want to know who is responsible for this."
Bach realized he didn't know where the girl was. She wondered how many of the others in the room had been filled in, and how many were working only on their own part of the problem.
"It will be explained," Zeiss said, quietly. Blume looked from Zeiss to Hoeffer, and back, then settled into his chair, not mollified but willing to wait.
"Thank you, Doctor Blume," Hoeffer said again. "Next we'll hear from... Ludmilla Rossnikova, representing the GMA Conglomerate."
Terrific, thought Bach. He's brought GMA into it. No doubt he swore Ms. Rossnikova to secrecy, and if he really thought she would fail to mention it to her supervisor then he was even dumber than Bach had thought. She had worked for them once, long ago, and though she was just an employee she had learned something about them. GMA had its roots deep in twentieth-century Japanese industry. When you went to work on the executive level at GMA, you were set up for life. They expected, and received, loyalty that compared favorably with that demanded by the Mafia. Which meant that, by telling Rossnikova his "secret," Hoeffer had insured that three hundred GMA execs knew about it three minutes later. They could be relied on to keep a secret, but only if it benefited GMA.
"The computer on Tango Charlie was a custom-designed array," Rossnikova began. "That was the usual practice in those days, with BioLogic computers. It was designated the same as the station: BioLogic TC-38. It was one of the largest installations of its time.
"At the time of the disaster, when it was clear that everything had failed, the T
C-38 was given its final instructions. Because of the danger, it was instructed to impose an interdiction zone around the station, which you'll find described under the label Interdiction on your screens."
Rossnikova paused while many of those present called up this information.
"To implement the zone, the TC-38 was given command of certain defensive weapons. These included ten bevawatt lasers... and other weapons which I have not been authorized to name or describe, other than to say they are at least as formidable as the lasers."
Hoeffer looked annoyed, and was about to say something, but Zeiss stopped him with a gesture.
Each understood that the lasers were enough in themselves.
"So while it is possible to destroy the station," Rossnikova went on, "there is no chance of boarding it—assuming anyone would even want to try."
Bach thought she could tell from the different expressions around the table which people knew the whole story and which knew only their part of it. A couple of the latter seemed ready to ask a question, but Hoeffer spoke first.
"How about canceling the computer's instructions?" he said. "Have you tried that?"
"That's been tried many times over the last few years, as this crisis got closer. We didn't expect it to work, and it did not. Tango Charlie won't accept a new program."
"Oh my God," Doctor Blume gasped. Bach saw that his normally florid face had paled. "Tango Charlie. She's on Tango Charlie."
"That's right, doctor," said Hoeffer. "And we're trying to figure out how to get her off. Doctor Wilhelm?"
Wilhelm was an older woman with the stocky build of the Earthborn. She rose, and looked down at some notes in her hand.
"Information's under the label Neurotropic Agent X on your machines," she muttered, then looked up at them. "But you needn't bother. That's about as far as we got, naming it. I'll sum up what we know, but you don't need an expert for this: there are no experts on Neuro-X.
"It broke out on August 9, thirty years ago next month. The initial report was five cases, one death.
Symptoms were progressive paralysis, convulsions, loss of motor control, numbness.
"Tango Charlie was immediately quarantined as a standard procedure. An epidemiological team was dispatched from Atlanta, followed by another from New Dresden. All ships which had left Tango Charlie were ordered to return, except for one on its way to Mars and another already in parking orbit around Earth. The one in Earth orbit was forbidden to land.
