Penumbra

by Eric Brown

  He considered what Julia had said. He wondered if he was really looking for some mature version of Ella, the only person he had ever really loved. He found that the hardest thing in the world was to look into himself and attempt to determine the truth, so wrapped up as it was with the deception of self-interest and vanity. The thought that his actions as an adult might have been conditioned by events in his childhood filled him with fear, a terrible sense of not being in control of his motivation, and therefore his destiny.

  He finished his beer and walked back through Mojave to his car. He drove slowly through the shimmering heat of late afternoon, aware of the effects of the alcohol. He arrived at his dome with the grateful sense of having gained refuge.

  Mood-jazz began a gentle syncopation as he entered the lounge. He turned it off. The com-screen came on and the picture divided into small squares, each bearing a frozen face. He wondered why he should have been bombarded by so many calls. As he sat down in his swivel chair, he understood: these people were all friends or business associates of his father. He cycled through the messages of condolence, the dispiriting repetition of inadequate sentiments: ‘Your father was a fine, God-fearing gentleman, Joshua. He’ll be missed by everyone at the Church’; ‘I’m calling to offer my condolences, Mr Bennett . . .’ Others were evidence of a side of his father’s character that he had managed to keep hidden from Bennett: ‘I was saddened to hear of your father’s passing. I worked with him back in ninety-five and I never met a more caring and compassionate man’; ‘Your father helped me out in a time of need back in the fifties, Mr Bennett. I’ve never forgotten him for his kindness.’

  Rather than sit through them all and then reply individually, he set his screen to record, and said: ‘Joshua Bennett . . . Thanks for calling. Sorry I was unable to speak to you personally. You’re welcome to attend my father’s funeral, on the twenty-sixth at three p.m. at the Mojave Grave Gardens. Thank you again.’ He sent the recording as a one-off shot to all the callers, then sat back.

  He hadn’t eaten since early that morning, but he didn’t feel all that hungry. He was about to take a cold beer out on to the veranda when the screen chimed with an incoming call.

  Another of his father’s acquaintances? Or perhaps Julia, calling to initiate a second round of abuse? He pressed the secrecy decal on the touch-pad and the image of a uniformed man in his forties flooded the screen. Belatedly, Bennett recognised Matheson, the flight manager up at Redwood. Only then did he remember his promise to get a report on the accident to Control.

  He accepted the call and sat up.

  ‘Bennett?’ Matheson stared out at him, his expression uncompromising.

  ‘Bennett here. About the report - I know, but I’ve had a few personal matters to sort out down here.’

  ‘Forget the report, Bennett. As of now you’re on indefinite suspension. I want you up here in four days, noon western seaboard time, to face disciplinary charges.’

  The effects of the beer slowed his response. ‘Disciplinary charges? What the hell . . . ?’

  ‘Don’t look so goddamned surprised, Bennett.’ Matheson leaned forward, staring at him. ‘The Viper debacle, remember? The accident? The starship you nearly decommissioned?’

  Bennett shook his head. ‘Hey, hold on there. We weren’t at fault. It was a glitch in the Viper’s sub-routine. The ship rejected Ten Lee’s rewrite and—’

  ‘Listen up, Bennett. Your reaction time was sloppy, no matter what your excuses. Have you any idea how much your incompetence cost Redwood? The bill for the repair of the Viper and the starship? You’re lucky we can’t sue you for it. You’ve no damned excuses.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’ll see you at noon on the twenty-sixth, Bennett. Out.’

  The screen died. The twenty-sixth was the day of his father’s funeral.

  He sat back, angry at the injustice. Suspension without pay, a fine or demotion at best. He wondered if Redwood had enough evidence of incompetence to fire him. But Ten Lee had been running systems checks constantly that flight, and the rejection of her rewrite should not have happened.

  The screen chimed again, this time with an incoming pre-recorded message.

  Bennett pressed accept.

  A chunky, belligerent-faced man with grey curling hair began a fast, rapid-fire delivery. Bennett watched in a daze, catching none of it. The man was sitting behind a desk, a logo on the wall to his right: a stylised letter M shot through with an arrow. Encircling the logo was the legend mackendrick foundation.

  He played the message again from the beginning.

  ‘Mackendrick here, Bennett. I’m a busy man and I can’t waste time chatting one to one, hence this shot. Heard about your little bust up with Redwood - don’t worry about it, pal. You know what those Vipers are - pieces of shit. It was a systems error the Viper should’ve picked up, and we all know that. Look, I won’t waste your time or mine: I’m in LA tomorrow and recruiting. I need good pilots for an upcoming project. Don’t worry about the bastards at Redwood - I’ll sort them out. I’ll be in my offices at the shipyards from noon. See you then, pal.’

  The screen went blank.

  Bennett replayed the message, doing his best to assimilate what Mackendrick was telling him.

  He was being exonerated from blame by a stranger - Mackendrick of the Mackendrick Foundation - told to forget Redwood, and offered a possible job on some ‘future project’.

  He wondered if this was someone’s idea of a joke.

  He reached for the touch-pad and accessed GlobaLink. He typed in ‘Mackendrick Foundation’, and two seconds later the message flashed up on the screen: ‘Three thousand articles re. Mackendrick Foundation. State specific area of interest.’

  He typed ‘Mackendrick Foundation: summary’.

  Seconds later text filled the screen: ‘Mackendrick Foundation, formed 2102. Extra-Expansion exploration company. Primarily concerned with discovery and exploration of new worlds beyond already charted space. [See: worlds discovered.] Fourth largest such company in Expansion. [See: business prospects.] Director: Charles Mackendrick. [See: Mackendrick: biography.]’

  There was more, but Bennett had seen enough for the moment.

  He fetched a beer from the cooler, stepped out on to the veranda, and watched the sun going down over the desert.

  * * * *

  6

  Ezekiel Klien stood before the wraparound screen of the security tower and stared out across the simmering expanse of Calcutta spaceport.

  As the chief of security at the port, and king of his domain, Klien felt invincible. He had been at the port for thirteen years now, thirteen lucky years, working his way up from lowly security officer to his present lofty position.

  His communicator buzzed. ‘The captain of the freighter is in the interrogation room, sir.’

  ‘I told you I wanted his name and the name of his ship, Frazer.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  For the past five years, as chief of security, he had ruled with absolute and unwavering authority. He knew that his team hated him, but this only served to assure him that he was doing his job with clinical efficiency. His orders had to be obeyed to the letter and anyone who showed less than one hundred per cent dedication to Klien and his objectives would find themselves out of work.

  ‘Ah . . .’ Frazer said, ‘he’s Vitaly Kozinsky and his ship is the ...” Klien could almost sense Frazer’s panic as he checked his com-board. ‘The Petrograd.’

  ‘Very good. I’ll be down immediately.’

  He cut the connection and stared through the viewscreen at the squat, toad-like shape of the Russian freighter sitting on the tarmac. The ship had violated Indian airspace, phasing in without warning or clearance and claiming main drive failure. Klien had authorised landing and scrambled his team. In all likelihood the captain’s claim was genuine and the ship was damaged, but Klien was taking no risks.

  He stepped into the elevator and rode to the ground floor. He smiled at his reflection in the polished
steel door. Physically and facially he bore little resemblance to the young man who had left the world of Homefall almost fourteen years ago. He had lived indulgently over the years, dined well and overfed himself with the express purpose of gaining weight and radically changing his appearance. His face was padded with fat and he wore his hair in black, shoulder-length ringlets. He had taken bromides for the past ten years, both to suppress his sexual urges and so allow ultimate concentration on what was important in his life, and to change his appearance further. His team called him the Eunuch. He knew this because he had planted surveillance devices in their changing rooms. There was very little that happened at the port of which Ezekiel Klien was not aware.

  Frazer was waiting for him outside the interrogation room.

  ‘Have you got the crew out of the ship?’

  Frazer nodded. ‘They’re waiting in quarantine, sir.’

  ‘Good. Keep them there until I say so. And get the team aboard the Petrograd. I want the ship stripped and a full report in my terminal in one hour. Also, I want the flight program examined and relayed to me. That will be all.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Frazer saluted, something like fear and hatred in his eyes.

  Klien’s draconian regime had paid dividends over the years. Security at the port was the envy of business organisations and governments. National and even colonial concerns had tried to lure him away from the job, tempting him with talk of fabulous wealth, but he had refused all offers. He had joined the port security staff with one aim in mind, and he did not intend to be distracted from that aim.

  He touched the sensor on the door and stepped into the interrogation room.

  Kozinsky was a big man in scarred radiation silvers. His hair was dishevelled and his face unshaven, and he stank. It was the peculiar body odour of men in a failing ship, the rank stench of fear and unwashed flesh.

  ‘Klien, chief of security.’

  Kozinsky stood quickly and held out a hand. ‘Vitaly Kozinsky, captain of the Petrograd.’

  Klien ignored the hand. ‘Sit down, Captain.’

  Kozinsky nodded, sat down uncomfortably. He was fidgety after too long in space. Klien could tell that he wanted to stand and stride about. Intuition told him that the man was almost certainly genuine, and not the ringleader of some anti-Indian faction out to bomb the port.

  But Klien was not about to trust intuition. He remained standing, maintaining a psychological advantage over the seated spacer, and for the next hour fired a barrage of questions at the bemused Russian.

  Kozinsky was a freelance spacer who would take any in-system job between the planets if the price was right; he was paid well to fly tubs that no other self-respecting spacer would go anywhere near. The Petrograd was an Earth-Mars cargo freighter of the Cosmoflot Line, on the return leg to Kazakhstan from Mars with a hold full of iron ore.

  ‘Why did you choose to come down here, Captain? Surely you could have made it to Kazakhstan?’

  ‘I tried, but there was no way we could have lasted.’

  ‘Auxiliary engine failure?’

  Kozinsky looked up. ‘No - main drive dysfunction.’

  Klien smiled to himself. ‘And you came down on the auxiliaries?’

  The captain nodded. ‘But we had trouble with those, too. I decided to land at the first port.’

  Klien stared at the man, considering. ‘What we’ll do, Captain,’ he said at last, ‘is contact Cosmoflot and arrange payment for repairs to the ship. You’ll be accommodated here in the meantime at your employer’s expense.’

  He nodded briefly and left the room.

  From time to time he liked to take a look around the ships himself, less to check the diligence of his team than to reacquaint himself with the interior of a void-going vessel. He left the tower and walked across the tarmac to the damaged Petrograd. A ramp gave access to a foul-smelling interior. More than just the drive had failed: the air system and ventilation had laboured to keep the atmosphere clean and breathable.

  He made his way to the flight-deck and watched Frazer and the team at work, sensing their unease at his presence. He touched the back of the worn command couch, his gaze moving over the control console. Technology had moved on a lot over the years, since he had piloted the scout ship away from Homefall to Madrigal. He would be unable to pilot these more modern vessels, though he daily dreamed of returning to the planet of his birth, of appropriating a void-ship and heading away from the corruption and filth that was the Expansion.

  He smiled to himself. A man needed his dreams.

  ‘Frazer?’

  The officer turned from examining the ship’s flight program, saluted. ‘Sir.’

  ‘Your findings?’

  ‘The system shows a routine Earth-Mars run, sir. Nothing untoward at all. There was a main drive dysfunction picked up by the on-board computers on initial orbital approach. The main drive shut down and they came in on the auxiliary system.’

  Klien nodded. ‘Contact Cosmoflot for credit rating and have the crew transferred to temporary lodging.’

  Klien left his team and crossed the tarmac to the security tower. Once back in his office he went through the flight programs of the many other ships occupying the holding berths and blast-pads across the port. Shortly after his appointment as chief of security, he had ordered the installation of a computer system that would enable him to check on the flight programs of every ship that used the port; he had also arranged a reciprocal facility with Security at Los Angeles spaceport, so that he could check on their ships too.

  There was always the chance that his home planet had sent another ship after his own. He had to be ready for his fellow colonists in the event of their arrival, either to eliminate the crew should they be from the opposition, or to greet fellow members of the Council of Elders.

  He had been waiting for such a long time now that he had almost given up hope. He had come to accept that he was stranded on Earth, an Earth corrupt beyond his ability to accept or to change.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Klien processed routine security matters and studied Frazer’s report on thePetrograd. The ship was given a clean status and engineers were assigned to make the repairs. He filed a report to the director of the spaceport and considered his meeting with Ali Bhakor that night.

  At four he got through to Bhakor, using the voice-only facility on his com-screen.

  ‘Smith here,’ Klien said. ‘I’m calling to finalise the arrangements.’

  The screen showed Bhakor’s big face, beaded with perspiration in the heat of the day. ‘Why can’t I see you?’ he rapped.

  ‘I’m calling from a public kiosk,’ Klien said. ‘It’s been vandalised.’

  He had only ever met Bhakor once in the flesh, to give him the sample of the drug called slash in the hope that the dealer would want more. Then Klien had been effectively disguised.

  Bhakor said, ‘Have you got the stuff?’

  ‘A kilo of prime grade,’ Klien assured him.

  ‘Ah-cha. Where and when?’

  ‘Tonight at eight. I’ve booked a room in your name at the Hindustan Plaza hotel. I’ll see you then.’

  Bhakor nodded. ‘Ah-cha, Smith. I’ll be there.’

  Klien cut the connection and sat back, exhaling with relief. He realised that his hands were shaking. His mouth was dry. He poured himself a glass of iced water and worked to control his breathing.

  Days like today - and there had been many others in the past - were what made his life on Earth worthwhile - along with opera, of course. This evening, after he had dealt with Bhakor, he would take his box at the National Indian Opera Company and lose himself in the sublimity of Puccini. It would be his reward for making the world a safer place.

  At six thirty he took the elevator down to the suite of rooms he used when he had to work a double shift. He showered and changed, wearing as always on these occasions the black suit he had bought on Madrigal fifteen years ago. It was tailored from sabline, the most expensive and exclusive suiting material in the en
tire Expansion, and looked as stylish now as it had on the day of its purchase. He had worn it at his confrontation with Quineau, all those years ago, and on every special occasion since.

  He unlocked the wall-safe and collected the equipment he would be needing tonight, then left the tower and climbed into his Mercedes two-seater. He drove along the northern sector of the great Calcutta ring road with care and consideration for his fellow road users. That day’s monsoon downpour had been and gone, leaving the roads slick and shimmering. The sun was going down over the distant bay and the lights of the city were coming on. The great ad-screens moved across the dusk sky like aerial cinemas.