The Aftermath gt-16

by Ben Bova

  “Nothing illegal with salvage,” Victor agreed. “But when you seize ships that are occupied by their rightful owners, that’s not salvage. It’s piracy. And murder.”

  George frowned.

  “They would have murdered my wife and daughter,” Victor continued. “After raping them.”

  “They did try to kill me,” said Theo. “Dorn and Ms. Apacheta saved my life.”

  “I guess we’ll have to go after ’em, then,” Big George muttered, clearly unhappy.

  “They can’t have gone far,” Victor said. “They’ll have to stop for fuel sooner or later.”

  “We don’t have a military force, y’know,” George grumbled. “Never needed a fookin’ army until that bastard wiped out the old habitat.”

  Dorn slowly rose to his feet. “That bastard was me.”

  George’s eyes went wide. “What?”

  “I was Dorik Harbin. I attacked Chrysalis. I also attacked these people’s ship, Syracuse.”

  “That was another person,” Elverda said quickly. “He’s not the same man.”

  But George got up from his desk chair, seething. “You’re Dorik Harbin?”

  “I was.”

  “You wiped out Chrysalis? Killed more’n a thousand helpless people?”

  “I did.”

  Moving swiftly around the desk, George reached for Dorn. “I’ll break your fookin’ back!”

  Everyone seemed frozen by Big George’s sudden rage. Except Theo, who pushed between George and Dorn and laid both his hands on George’s chest.

  “Leave him alone!” Theo snapped. “He saved my life.”

  George snorted like a dragon. Fire blazed from his eyes. He grabbed Theo by the front of his coveralls, lifted him off his feet with one hand and tossed him onto the desk top with a painful thud.

  “Stop!” Victor shouted, going to his son. “You’ll be just as bad as he was.”

  Dorn remained as unmoved as a rock. George wrapped his big hands around the cyborg’s neck. “You bastard!” he shouted. “You bloody bastard!”

  Elverda pushed herself up from her chair and slapped at George’s beefy arm. “Don’t you dare!” she snapped. “You leave him alone!”

  Big George blinked at her, his expression suddenly changing into a naughty little boy’s, confronted with an angry schoolteacher. His arms dropped to his sides.

  Elverda waved a finger in George’s face. “He’s tried to atone for what he did. He’s a changed man. Don’t you dare hurt him.”

  “Give him a fair trial, at least,” Theo said, getting off the desk, rubbing his bruised hip.

  Dorn was still standing perfectly motionless, unmoved, like a statue, like a man awaiting execution.

  George took a step back, sagged onto the edge of his desk. “Dorik Harbin,” he muttered, his chest heaving.

  “Go ahead and kill me,” Dorn said. “I deserve it.”

  “That’d be just as bad as he was,” Theo repeated.

  “We’ll have a fookin’ trial, all right,” George said darkly. Going back to his chair and thumping heavily into it, he called to his desktop communicator, “Security. Send a squad to my office to take a prisoner into custody.”

  Only then did anyone notice that Elverda had sunk back into her chair, her face gray, gasping for breath.

  * * *

  Elverda opened her eyes. She saw that she was in a hospital cubical. The lights were turned down low; the compartment smelled clean, brand new, as if it had just been opened for her. A faint beeping sound made her turn her head toward the bank of monitoring sensors lining the wall to her left.

  I must have fainted, she realized. The pain was less now. Almost gone. But she could still feel it throbbing deep inside her like a lurking demon.

  She tried to sit up and the bed automatically lifted behind her. She saw a shadowy figure in the compartment’s only chair.

  “Dorn?” she whispered.

  The cyborg stirred out of sleep. His human eye opened; the other one glowed red in the dimly lit chamber.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  Elverda considered the question for a moment. “Not bad,” she said, then added with a sardonic smile, “considering the condition I’m in.”

  “You haven’t lost your sense of humor.” Dorn reached for a remote control wand on the bedside table and the lights came up a little.

  The sullen pain in her chest notched up a bit, and the sensors’ beeping quickened.

  “The doctors say you need to go to Selene for a full rebuilding of your heart,” Dorn told her.

  I’d never survive the trip, Elverda said to herself. Aloud, though, she asked Dorn, “I thought you were under arrest.”

  He nodded. “There are two armed guards outside your door. I go on trial tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Elverda felt a pang of alarm. The monitors beside her bed changed their tone slightly. “How long have I been unconscious?”

  “Not quite thirty-six hours. The rock rats move swiftly. George Ambrose wants the trial held right away.”

  “I’ll speak for your defense.”

  “No need. I don’t want a defense. They have every right to execute me.”

  “No!” she snapped. And the monitors’ beeping pitched still higher. “They may have a right to execute Dorik Harbin, but he’s already dead.”

  Dorn almost smiled. “Not dead enough,” he muttered.

  THE TRIAL

  It took less than forty-eight hours for Big George to arrange for the trial of Dorik Harbin.

  Dorn stood alone in a darkened video studio, bathed in a pool of light. In the shadows armed security guards ringed the cyborg while communications technicians operated a trio of video cameras, all focused on Dorn. The technicians’ monitors showed that every citizen of Chrysalis II could watch the trial by television from their quarters.

  The etched metal of the prosthetic half of his face glinted in the pitiless glare of the overhead lights. From his office, Big George read the charge against Dorik Harbin: one thousand, one hundred seventeen counts of murder.

  “Do you admit that you deliberately killed the inhabitants of the original Chrysalis?” George’s disembodied voice rumbled in the TV studio like an approaching thunderstorm, seething with barely repressed fury.

  “I do,” said Dorn.

  “What d’you have to say in your defense?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing,” Dorn repeated.

  Suddenly there was a hubbub in the darkness beyond the pool of light in which Dorn stood. A door swung open and Elverda Apacheta rolled herself to his side, sitting in a powered wheelchair.

  “I have something to say in the defense of this man,” she announced. Dorn saw that her pallor was still sickly gray; an oxygen tube was hooked to her nostrils; her eyes were rimmed with red.

  Before Dorn could stop her, Elverda struggled to her feet and said, “This is not the same man who attacked your habitat. Dorik Harbin has been dead for many years now. This man, Dorn, has spent those years atoning for the sins of Dorik Harbin.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Big George’s voice spat. “The only question here is whether or not he murdered the people of Chrysalis. He admits that he did it. It’s time to vote on the verdict.”

  Dorn and Elverda saw a screen light up on the wall before them. Numbers flickered, too fast to follow.

  Finally the numbers stopped. Big George’s voice announced, “It’s almost unanimous. The verdict is guilty.”

  “No!” Elverda gasped. Dorn rested his human hand on her frail shoulder.

  “Now for the penalty,” George went on, sounding as implacable as an avalanche. “We’ve never executed anybody before, but if ever a man deserved the death sentence, this is the one. How do you vote—”

  “Wait!” Elverda shouted. Dorn could feel her trembling beneath his hand. “You don’t need to kill him. You can exile him. You’ve done that before: permanent exile for criminals. Exile this man
if you want to, but don’t kill him!”

  “What he’s done deserves more than exile,” Big George’s voice boomed. “He should never have the chance to hurt anybody again. Death!”

  “He’ll never return here,” Elverda promised, shuddering, almost breathless. “Exile him. Don’t stain your hands with his blood.”

  For long moments there was no reply; only profound silence. At last, his voice a low growl, George responded, “All right then, we’ll vote on it. Execution or exile.”

  Dorn slid his arm around Elverda’s bone-thin shoulders to support her as the electronic vote was swiftly tabulated on the wall screen. She slumped against him, her strength almost gone.

  Once the numbers stopped scrolling across the screen, they read sixty-seven percent in favor of exile, thirty-one percent for execution, two percent abstaining.

  At last the voice of Big George Ambrose came through the speakers, like a pronouncement from the heavens:

  “The vote’s been verified. Dorik Harbin is hereby exiled from Chrysalis II for life.”

  George sounded very disappointed.

  The studio lights winked out. Elverda sagged against Dorn, her head lolling back on her shoulders. He grasped her in both his arms.

  “Medic!” Dorn shouted, suddenly frantic. “She’s collapsed!”

  A HIGHER LAW

  The funeral service was brief and attended only by Dorn and the Zacharias family. And the security guards that followed Dorn everywhere. Big George would not willingly place himself in the same section of the habitat as Dorn; the people of Chrysalis II may have voted leniency for Dorik Harbin, but George would not be party to their decision.

  The International Consortium of Universities had offered to send a representative to the solemnities, but Dorn decided not to wait. He went ahead with the funeral the day after Elverda died, her heart too frail to support her any longer, despite the stem cell therapy that had saved her life after her first heart attack. Her final words were to Dorn:

  “It’s time for me to leave you. I’m too tired to go on.” He was kneeling at her bed in the habitat’s small hospital, like a grieving son at his mother’s bedside.

  She stroked the etched metal of his skullcap with her skeletal, bloodless hand. “You must go on without me, Dorn. Can you find the strength to do that?” Her voice was a feather-light whisper.

  He didn’t answer.

  “There’s something that a very brave and wise man said, nearly two centuries ago,” Elverda rasped. “He said, ‘Life persists in the middle of destruction. Therefore there must be a higher law than that of destruction.’ ”

  Dorn muttered, “A higher law.”

  “Gandhi said that. Can you believe it? Can you follow its path?”

  “Is that what you wish?”

  “Yes,” she said, with all of the little strength left in her. “Follow the law of life. You have much to give. You have much to live for.”

  “I wish I thought so.”

  “Do it for me, then. My dying wish. Live! Turn your back on death. Make your life mean something.”

  For long moments he was silent. At last Dorn said, “I’ll try. I promise you—I’ll try.”

  But by then Elverda Apacheta was dead.

  * * *

  Dorn commandeered an equipment pod for her sarcophagus and, with all four of the Zacharias family helping him, placed it in one of the habitat’s airlocks and fired it out into space.

  “She will become an asteroid, circling the Sun just as her Rememberer does.”

  Theo thought he saw tears glimmering in Dorn’s human eye. He heard his mother and sister sobbing softly behind him.

  * * *

  Hours later, feeling utterly wretched, Theo returned to the quarters that the rock rats’ administrative council had granted them: a string of three adjoining living units, with connecting doors between them.

  Bone tired, weary and discouraged, he looked around the spare little compartment. The message from Selene University still flickered on his desktop screen. Where do I go from here? he asked himself. Not to Selene: they’ve made that clear enough. The university doesn’t want me. They turned down my application.

  He heard a snuffling sound from the compartment next door. Putting his ear to the connecting door he listened for a moment. Angle’s crying, he realized.

  Theo tapped on the door and called, “Angie?”

  The sobbing stopped. “Thee?”

  “Are you all right?”

  He slid the door back and saw that her eyes were puffy and red, her cheeks runneled with tears.

  “What’s the matter?” Theo asked, stepping into her compartment.

  “It’s Leif,” she said, and broke into sobs again.

  “Leif? The guy you were seeing…?”

  “Leif Haldeman,” Angela choked out, wiping at her eyes.

  “He was on Chrysalis,” Theo realized. “He was one of the people Dorik Harbin killed.”

  Angela’s red-rimmed eyes widened. “No! He was on a mining ship when the attack happened.”

  “Then he’s alive?”

  “He’s married,” Angela said, struggling to hold back another burst of tears.

  Theo tried not to laugh, not even smile. “Oh,” he said.

  “He’s a father.”

  He put his arm around his sister’s shoulders and held her close. “Don’t worry Angie. There are lots of other guys in the world.”

  “But I loved him!”

  He lifted her chin and smiled down at her. “Come on. Fix your face and come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “To the nearest bar. We can drown our sorrows together.”

  “Our… you’ve got sorrows too?”

  He sighed. “Yep. Selene University doesn’t want me. No scholarship. It’s been too long since I first applied.”

  “But that’s not fair!”

  “No, I guess not. But we’ve lost more than four years, Angie. And there’s nothing we can do about that.”

  * * *

  There was only one restaurant in the habitat, the Shoo-Shoo, owned and operated by an Italian cook and his Japanese wife. Neither Angela nor Theo was in the mood for eating, but the hostess-owner took one look at the two downcast young siblings and presented them with a delicate sushi selection before she brought the wine they ordered.

  Wisely, she sat them at the sushi bar instead of a table. It was mid-afternoon: most of the tables were empty but there were half a dozen customers along the curving bar, chatting amiably with the sushi chefs (both sons of the owners) and one another.

  Angela took an experimental sip of the red wine that Theo had picked at random from the list displayed on the bartop screen.

  “Ugh!” She put the stemmed glass down. “People actually drink this?”

  Theo felt his mouth tingling. “I guess it must be an acquired taste.”

  “Try the sake,” said the young man sitting on Angela’s other side.

  “Or a beer,” suggested the guy sitting on the next stool over. “Straight from the brewery on Vesta.”

  Before long Angela was deep in conversation with the two of them: mining engineers who began explaining how nanomachines took atoms of selected metals out of asteroids and bypassed the old smelting process. Theo watched as he sipped at his wine and realized that Angie would not be lovelorn for long. Men are attracted to her. She’s sort of beautiful, I guess. Not like me.

  On his other side, a few chairs down, a pair of older men were discussing Dorn’s trial.

  “I never saw Big George so worked up,” said one of them. “He wanted that cyborg executed. I thought maybe he’d do it himself.”

  The other shook his head. “Just about everybody in the habitat is a newcomer. They didn’t see the massacre, like George did. It didn’t affect them personally.”

  “I don’t know. I had a brother-in-law on the old Chrysalis. I voted to execute the bastard.”

  Theo was about to tell them what he thought when a lithe, darkhaired young w
oman slid into the chair beside him.

  “This seat isn’t taken, is it?” she asked, in a near-whisper.

  Theo shook his head, immediately forgetting the other men’s conversation. She was really good-looking, he thought, with intriguing flecks of gold in her deep brown eyes. She wore a form-fitting dark zipsuit with insignias of rank on the cuffs and a stylized logo on her left breast. She must be a member of some ship’s crew, Theo guessed.

  “Are you working on a ship?” he asked, knowing it sounded terribly awkward.

  She nodded. “Hyades. Medical officer.”

  “Oh.” Theo had run out of things to say.

  One of the sushi chefs slid a small porcelain bottle of sake to the young woman, and a tiny cup.

  “We make the run out to Jupiter station,” she said as she carefully poured some of the hot sake into the little cup.

  “Jupiter station,” Theo muttered. “I wish I could go there.”

  The young woman sipped at the sake, then said, “They’re looking for people.”

  “Scientists. People with degrees.”

  “Technicians, too. You don’t have to be a scientist.”

  “You still need a degree.”

  She focused those gold-flecked eyes on Theo, as if thinking over a problem. Then, “Their chief recruiter is here on the habitat. He’ll make the trip back with us on Hyades.”

  Theo nodded glumly.

  As if she’d made up her mind about the problem, she said, “I could introduce you to him. He’s looking for technicians.”

  Theo didn’t know what to say.

  “It couldn’t hurt,” coaxed the young woman, with a shy smile.

  “I guess not,” Theo agreed.

  She dug into a hip pocket and pulled out a communicator. “I… don’t know your name.”

  “Oh! I’m Theo Zacharias.” He held out his hand.

  “Zacharias?”

  Theo nodded, wondering if he should spell it out for her.

  She hesitated a moment, then took his hand in her own as she said softly, “Altai. Altai Madagascar.”