The Aftermath gt-16

by Ben Bova

  “I am her owner,” Elverda said.

  “You were her owner, dear lady. Now she’s my property. Mine, and my crew’s.”

  Yuan said, “I’m not sure the courts at Ceres would agree with you.”

  With a laugh, Valker replied, “That’s what makes horse races. And why we have lawyers.”

  “But I don’t want to travel all the way back to Ceres,” Elverda objected.

  Valker said, “Then make me an offer.”

  “An offer?”

  “Right here and now. How much are you willing to pay for the ship?”

  Elverda glanced at Yuan, then said, “But I have no money.”

  “She’s worth at least half a bill,” said Valker.

  “I have no money,” Elverda repeated.

  Valker sighed. “Then I guess we’ll have to go to Ceres.”

  Yuan gripped the edge of the bunk’s mattress, thinking hard. I could accept his decision and go back to Viking with Elverda. Or I could return to my ship and then blast this scavenger into a cloud of hot plasma and retake Hunter for her. I could. It would be easy. But what would the consequences be? You already have to deal with Tamara and probably Humphries. You’re already in deep trouble. How can you reach your proper path in life if you continue to live by violence?

  The artifact had changed Yuan, profoundly altered his outlook on life by showing him a goal, a path, a tao that he yearned deeply to achieve. He thought about consequences now. He looked farther ahead in time than he had ever done before, and realized that until he had seen the artifact he had been merely zigzagging through life, bouncing from one event to the next, jittering like a dust mote being pushed and jostled by the forces around it, with neither control nor care about what happened next. Now he looked ahead, as far into the future as he could. He knew his life would end happily. But how to get to that destiny? That was his problem.

  Valker saw the look on Yuan’s face. He had seen it before and knew what it meant: trouble, big time. The man was determined to help this old lady, and he had a fully armed attack ship at his command.

  “Isn’t there some way…” Elverda began, but her plaintive question died in her throat before she could finish it.

  “What were you using the ship for?” Valker asked. He had seen from the IAA registry that there was no crew listed, only one other person aboard the vessel, somebody named Dorn. A priest, according to the records. But there was no dossier on the man. His history was a complete blank.

  “It’s a personal mission,” said Elverda, suddenly looking uncomfortable.

  “Personal?” Valker’s smile turned doubtful. “You mean you don’t want to talk about it?”

  Elverda seemed to struggle within herself for a few heartbeats. Then she said, “I am assisting Dorn.”

  “The priest.”

  “Yes. His objective is to find the bodies of those who were killed in the wars and left to drift through the Belt.”

  Valker blinked at her. “Salvage dead bodies?”

  “To give them proper funeral rites,” said Elverda. “I know it seems outlandish, but—”

  Leaning back in his big desk chair, Valker said, “Not at all outlandish. I understand salvage. Families must be willing to pay handsomely to have the bodies of their dead returned to them.”

  “It’s not for money,” Elverda said. “We never even thought of that. We simply give them final rites, as they deserve.”

  With a low whistle, Valker steepled his fingers in front of his face, thinking hard. They’re two nutcases, this old woman and her priest. Wandering around the Belt picking up bodies. To give them funeral rites? That’s weird. She could be lying, of course. There could be something else in this.

  “I see,” he said at last. Leaning forward, he placed both his big hands on the desktop. “Okay. You’re involved in something that’s… it’s religious, isn’t it?”

  Elverda nodded slowly.

  “Okay. I won’t stand in your way. You can have your ship.”

  Elverda gasped. “I can?”

  Yuan asked, “For how much?”

  “Nothing. For free. A gift from Captain Valker and his crew.”

  “Do you mean it?” Elverda seemed on the verge of tears.

  “Of course I mean it,” Valker said, getting to his feet and coming around the massive desk. “Hunter is all yours. And maybe you can get your priest to say a prayer for me and my crew. Might do us some good.”

  “Certainly! Of course!” Elverda rose, clasping her hands together in gratitude. “Bless you, Captain Valker.”

  Yuan stood up too, his face showing more suspicion than appreciation.

  Valker walked them from his compartment to the airlock, where Viking and Vogeltod were mated together. Elverda kept thanking him and he acted as if almost embarrassed by her gratitude. As he saw them through the airlock, Valker thought that it would be simple to hand over Hunter to them and then have all three ships go their separate ways. Once he was sure that Yuan’s Viking was safely out of the picture he could always track down Hunter and retake it. Without falling under the guns of Viking. The old woman and the priest were the only crew aboard Hunter. Kill them, Valker said to himself, and then their ship is yours again, free and clear.

  He laughed as Elverda kissed him on both cheeks before leaving Vogeltod.

  * * *

  Tamara was lying on the bunk in her compartment, watching the wall screen. It showed Hunter disengaging from the little salvage vessel. Small puffs of cold gas jets pushed Hunter away from the smaller ship for a quarter of an hour. She listened to the radio chatter between the cyborg, who was apparently piloting Hunter, and Yuan, on Viking’s bridge.

  “We’re ready to light the main engine,” came Dorn’s deep, methodical voice.

  A moment’s pause, then Yuan said, “You’re clear for ignition.”

  Tamara saw a flash of blue-hot ionized gas and Hunter seemed to leap out of her vision, hurtling deeper into the Belt.

  She counted the seconds. It took Yuan only thirty-four of them to get to her compartment’s accordion door and rap on its frame.

  “Come in,” she called.

  He slid the door open and ducked one single step into her quarters. “I thought you’d want to know that we’re heading in now.”

  “To Ceres,” she replied.

  He grinned at her. “No. To Selene. Headquarters. Humphries wants to see us. Both of us.”

  BOOK III

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  Nor blame I Death, because he bare

  The use of virtue out of earth:

  I know transplanted human worth

  Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.

  ORE SHIP SYRACUSE:

  BACKUP COMMAND POD

  The pod was more of a home to Theo than his own quarters. He spent most of his free time in it, watching over Syracuse’s slowly failing systems, nursing the old bucket along day by excruciating day.

  He was well past eighteen now, taller than his mother. His body had filled out some; he was growing into manhood.

  Less than six months remaining, he said to himself as he checked the navigation display. We’re on our way back to Ceres. Will we make it?

  He remembered seeing an old novel about a man who tries to go around the world—Earth, of course—in ninety days. Or was it eighty? The story was set a couple of centuries ago, and at one point the character is sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in a steam-powered ship. But they run out of coal for the steam boiler. So he has the crew cannibalize the ship’s wooden structure, tearing the planks apart until there’s nothing left above water but the ship’s steel skeleton, its boiler, engine and paddle wheel.

  That’s what we’re doing, Theo told himself. Cannibalizing old Syracuse as we limp back to port. It’s a race to see if we can get to Ceres before the old bucket falls apart.

  One hundred and sixty-seven days, he read off the ship’s navigation computer screen. If my calculations are right. If I haven’t messed up somewhere. One hundred and sixty-sev
en days to go.

  Theo had taught himself a fair amount of astronomy over the past three-plus years. With all the ship’s antennas out, he could not receive guidance signals from Ceres or anywhere else. Nor could he probe ahead with radar. It was impossible to determine where the ship was, or even its heading, through the ordinary electronic systems. So Theo learned the stars from the ship’s library and learned to navigate by them. Using the stars, he kept Syracuse on its course back to Ceres.

  He hoped.

  At the moment, his attention was focused on their dwindling water supply. He had strictly rationed the water he, his sister and mother used. Angela had accused him of being a tyrant more than once. But Mother had merely smiled and accepted his estimates of how much water they could afford to use for drinking, for cooking, for bathing.

  The recyclers aren’t perfect, he told his sister time and again. We’re losing water every day.

  And without water for the fusion reactor their electrical power would fail. No electricity meant death: no power for the air recycler, no lights, no heat. They would freeze in the dark. Or suffocate.

  So Theo shut down the sections of the ship they weren’t using. Only this backup command pod and their living quarters received electrical power and breathable air. And the tube-tunnels connecting them. The rest of the ship was dark and airless.

  The water recycler. It was Theo’s daily burden. Every day he climbed clown the tunnel to the equipment bay where the fusion reactor sat side by side with the recyclers and the now dormant main propulsion engine. Every day he nursed the cranky collection of pipes and filters, cleaning its grids tenderly, patching leaks in the connection seals, stealing sections of pipe from other parts of the ship and cannibalizing parts for the recycler’s electrical motors.

  He dreamed at night that he was trapped in the maze of piping, sloshing in water that was spurting from the recycler, going to waste, gushing across the deck and out into empty space. Once he dreamt that the water’s inexorable current carried him outside the ship, too. He woke in a cold sweat, shivering. And berated himself for wasting the water of his perspiration.

  Angela stepped through the hatch of the command pod.

  “Reporting for duty,” she said, with a crisp salute and a challenging grin.

  Theo glanced at the digital clock. “You’re three and a half minutes early, Angie.”

  “Early bird gets the worm,” she said.

  “But who wants worms?”

  They both laughed. Theo got up from the command chair and Angela slid into it lightly. They had all lost weight on their enforced diet, but Angie had slimmed down best of all. She looked fine to Theo, a real beauty now.

  “Any problems?” she asked, her eyes scanning the control board. Most of the telltale lights were dark now; only the systems they absolutely needed for survival were still functioning.

  “Everything’s percolating along,” Theo replied.

  “Mom’s got a problem with the microwave again,” Angie said. “She thinks she can fix it, but you ought to give her a hand.”

  “Gotcha,” said Theo. “After I check the beast.”

  Angie looked up at him. “Trouble again?”

  “No, but if I don’t look in on that glorified clanker every spitting day it springs leaks just to devil me.”

  “Maybe it misses you. Maybe the recycler loves your company.”

  “Sure. And maybe water falls out of the sky. But not here.”

  * * *

  Aboard Vogeltod Valker was facing a grumbling crew.

  “You never shoulda let them go in the first place,” said Nicco. He was a short, swarthy man with a thick mop of curly black hair and the faint trace of a scar running from the corner of his mouth across his cheek.

  Valker’s usual smile faded. If Nicco’s pissed at me, he thought, the rest of ’em must be ready for mutiny.

  Behind him, the others of the crew—all eight of them— nodded and muttered agreement. They had all jammed into the galley for this showdown, leaving Vogeltod cruising on automatic. The compartment felt steamy from the press of their bodies. Valker smelled sweat—and anger.

  “It’s been six goddamn months,” Kirk said, his voice almost breaking with pent-up resentment. “Six months with nothing in our pocket. Nothing!”

  Valker put on his brightest smile for them. “Come on, guys, we’ve had dry spells before—”

  “We had them and their ship in our hands,” Kirk insisted, pounding the palm of one hand with his other fist. “The captain of the Viking, too.”

  “And you let them go!”

  Sitting at the head of the galley’s narrow table, Valker leaned back, seemingly completely at ease.

  “Now look,” he said. “That Viking was an attack ship. Do we want to tangle with a ship that can blow us away like that?” He snapped his fingers.

  Nicco and several of the others shook their heads.

  “Besides,” Valker went on, “it was a Humphries Space Systems ship. Even if we could’ve knocked it off we’d have HSS after us. You want that?”

  “No…” Nicco said hesitantly.

  “But what about the other one?” Kirk demanded. “Hunter? It wasn’t armed. Nobody aboard her but that old woman and the cyborg.”

  “A whole ship, intact.”

  “And you let them go.”

  “That’s what we’re after,” Valker said. “That’s the one we’re looking for.”

  “For six goddamn months.”

  Spreading his arms, Valker said, “It’s been a lean six months, I know. If we’d run across something else we would’ve taken it. You know that. But this region’s been pretty damned empty.”

  “Then we oughtta move to an area where there’s better pickin’s.”

  “You’re right,” Valker said smoothly. “That’s just what I intend to do. I hate to give up on Hunter, though. She could have fetched a pretty penny for us at Ceres.”

  “Six months is long enough.”

  “Too long.”

  “Okay. I hear you,” Valker said to them. “Just give me another few days. If we don’t find Hunter by then, we’ll move to another sector.”

  “Not in a few days,” Kirk said, baring his teeth. “Now.”

  Valker broadened his smile. “You’re not giving the orders on this ship, Kirk. I am.”

  “Well maybe we oughtta change that.”

  Slowly Valker got to his feet. He stood a good six centimeters taller than Kirk. “If you want to—”

  “CONTACT,” boomed the computer’s synthesized voice over the intercom speakers in the galley’s overhead, “CONTACT WITH AN UNIDENTIFIED SHIP.”

  Valker held up a clenched first. “There you are, guys! We’ve found her!”

  CARGO SHIP PLEIADES:

  SOLAR STORM

  Although Victor Zacharias cruised through the Asteroid Belt in silence, emitting no signals that another ship could detect except an occasional microsecond pulse of search radar, he still listened to whatever chatter Pleiades’s antennas could pick up. Sometimes he thought the only thing that kept him from outright madness as he sailed alone through the empty months was the inane entertainment broadcasts from Earth and the Moon.

  He was leaner now, harder. His years of enforced labor on Chrysalis II had toughened not only his outlook but his body as well. His arms were hard ropes of muscle, his midsection flat and firm. The midnight black beard he had grown made him look satisfyingly menacing, he thought. I’ll shave it off when I find Pauline and the kids, he told himself.

  He sat alone in the galley, his soffbooted feet propped up on one of the swivel chairs, and watched an educational vid from Selene. An earnest young scientist was walking the viewer through the new liquid mercury optical telescope at the Farside Observatory. With a pang of memory, Victor saw the original Farside facility that he had helped to design: the ten-kilometer-square spread of dipole antennas that made up the main radio telescope, the old twenty-meter reflector spun from lunar glass, the labs and workshops and dormito
ry facility for the Farside staff.

  But the scientist-narrator was pretty much of a bore, Victor thought, droning on about details of the new telescope. He switched to an entertainment channel from Earth.

  “And what did these Godless scientists bring us?” thundered a florid-faced man in a white suit. “Floods! Drought! Storms that drowned whole cities! Those were the fruits of the secularists who brought on the greenhouse warming and the biowars and all the other horrors of our age! They brought down the wrath of God upon us!”

  The preacher marched back and forth across his stage as he went on, “It was only when the Faithful returned to their God, only when the people of this great nation accepted the Lord as their salvation, that some measure of peace and stability returned to the land.”

  Victor flicked through a dozen more channels before stopping at an erotic film. Two women, three men, clad in nothing but glistening perspiration. I wonder where this is broadcast from? Victor asked himself. Certainly nowhere in the United States, not with the New Morality in control of the media.

  The scene shifted to a dimly lit Asian temple. Four, no five naked women were making love together. Victor leaned back in his galley chair and thought about moving to the bunk in his compartment. But then I might miss something, he rationalized. Suddenly a squad of barbarian warriors burst into the temple. The women squealed daintily as the men cast off their furs and weapons and delved into them.

  “WARNING,” the ship’s intercom blared emotionlessly. “THIS IS A WARNING FROM THE INTERNATIONAL ASTRONAUTICAL AUTHORITY’S SOLAR WATCH. A FORCE-FIVE SOLAR FLARE HAS ERUPTED IN THE LOWER LEFT QUADRANT OF THE CHROMOSPHERE. RADIATION FROM THIS EVENT WILL REACH LETHAL LEVELS FOR ALL UNPROTECTED PERSONS AND EQUIPMENT. FURTHER BULLETINS WILL BE BROADCAST AS THE SOLAR STORM DEVELOPS. TAKE ALL NECESSARY PRECAUTIONS AND STAY TUNED FOR NEW INFORMATION AS IT DEVELOPS.”

  Switching to the IAA’s dedicated information channel, Victor saw that the deadly radiation cloud from the flare would miss Mercury, but envelop Venus and Earth within a few hours.