Orbitsville o-1

by Bob Shaw

  “I thought you’d be in a hurry, sir.” The driver’s eyes stared knowingly at him from the rear view mirror.

  “Oh?” Garamond controlled a spasm of unreasonable fear — this was not the way his arrest would come about. He eyed the back of the driver’s neck which was ruddy, deeply creased and had a number of long-established blackheads.

  “Yes, sir. All the Starflight commanders are in a hurry to reach the field today. The weather reports aren’t good, I hear.”

  Garamond nodded and tried to look at ease as the vehicle surged forward with a barely perceptible whine from its magnetic engines. “I think I’ll catch the tide,” he said evenly. “At least, I hope so — my family are coming to see me off.”

  The driver’s narrow face showed some surprise. “I thought you were going direct…”

  “A slight change of plan — we’re calling for my wife and son. You remember the address?”

  “Yes, sir. I have it here.”

  “Good. Get there as quickly as you can.” With a casual movement Garamond broke the audio connection between the vehicle’s two compartments and picked up the nearest communicator set. He punched in his home code and held the instrument steady with his knees while he waited for the screen to come to life and show that his call had been accepted. Supposing Aileen and Chris had gone out? The boy had been upset — again Garamond remembered him shaking his fist instead of waving goodbye, expressing in the slight change of gesture all the emotions which racked his small frame — and Aileen could have taken him away for an afternoon of distraction and appeasement. If that were the case…

  “Vance!” Aileen’s face crystallized in miniature between his hands. “I was sure you’d gone. Where are you?”

  “I’m on my way back to the house, be there in ten minutes.”

  “Back here? But…”

  “Something has happened, Aileen. I’m bringing you and Chris with me to the field. Is he there?”

  “He’s out on the patio. But, Vance, you never let us see you off.”

  “I…” Garamond hesitated, and decided it could be better all round if his wife were to be kept in ignorance at this stage. “I’ve changed my mind about some things. Now, get Chris ready to leave the house as soon as I get there.”

  Aileen raised her shoulders uncertainly. “Vance, do you think it’s the best thing for him? I mean you’ve been away from the house for three hours and he’s just begun to get over his first reactions — now you’re going to put him through it all again.”

  “I told you something has come up.” How many pet dogs, Garamond asked himself, did I see around the Presidential suite this afternoon? Five? Six?

  “What has come up?”

  “I’ll explain later.” At what range can a dog scent a corpse? Liz’s brood of pets could be the biggest threat of all. “Please get Chris ready.“

  Aileen shook her head slightly. “I’m sorry, Vance, but I don’t…”

  “Aileen!” Garamond deliberately allowed an edge of panic to show in his voice, using it to penetrate the separate universe of normalcy in which his wife still existed. “I can’t explain it now, but you and Chris must be ready to come to the field with me within the next few minutes. Don’t argue any more, just do what I’m asking.”

  He broke the connection and forced himself to sit back, wondering if he had already said too much for the benefit of any communications snoops who could be monitoring the public band. The car was travelling west on the main Akranes auto-link, surging irregularly as it jockeyed for position in the traffic. It occurred to Garamond that the driver’s performance was not as good as it had been on the way out to Starflight House, perhaps through lack of concentration. On an impulse he reconnected the vehicle’s intercom.

  “…at his home,” the driver was saying. “Expect to reach North Field in about twenty minutes.”

  Garamond cleared his throat. “What are you doing?”

  “Reporting in, sir.”

  “Why?” “Standing orders. All the fleet drivers keep Starflight Centradata informed about their movements.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Sir?”

  “What did you say about my movements?”

  The driver’s shoulders stirred uneasily, causing his Starflight sunburst emblems to blink redly with reflected light. “I just said you decided to pick up your family on the way to North Field.”

  “Don’t make any further reports.”

  “Sir?”

  “As a captain in the Starflight Exploratory Arm I think I can make my way around this part of Iceland without a nursemaid.”

  “I’m sorry, but…”

  “Just drive the car.” Garamond fought to control the unreasoning anger he felt against the man in front. “And go faster.”

  “Yes, sir.” The creases in the driver’s weatherbeaten neck deepened as he hunched over the wheel.

  Garamond made himself sit quietly, with closed eyes, motionless except for a slight rubbing of his palms against his knees which failed completely to remove the perspiration. He tried to visualize what was happening back on the hill. Was the routine of Elizabeth’s court proceeding as on any other afternoon, with the boards and committees and tribunals deliberating in the pillared halls, and the President moving among them, complacently deflecting and vibrating the webstrands of empire with her very presence? Or had someone begun to notice Harald’s absence? And his own? He opened his eyes and gazed sombrely at the unrolling scenery outside the car. The umbra of commercial buildings which extended for several kilometres around Starflight House was giving way to the first of the company-owned residential developments. As an S.E.A. commander, Garamond had been entitled to one of the ‘choice’ locations, which in Starflight usage tended to mean closest to Elizabeth’s elevated palace. At quiet moments on the bridge of his ship Garamond had often thought about how the sheer massiveness of her power had locally deformed the structure of language in exactly the same way as a giant sun was able to twist space around itself so that captive worlds, though believing themselves to be travelling in straight lines, were held in orbit. In the present instance, however, he was satisfied with the physics of Elizabeth’s gravitation because it meant that his home was midway between Starflight House and the North Field, and he was losing the minimum of time in collecting his family.

  Even before the vehicle had halted outside the pyramidical block of apartments, Garamond had the door open and was walking quickly to the elevator. He stepped out of it on the third floor, went to his own door and let himself in. The familiar, homely surroundings seemed to crowd in on him for an instant, creating a new sense of shock over the fact that life as he knew it had ended. For a moment he felt like a ghost, visiting scenes to which he was no longer relevant.

  “What’s the matter, Vance?” Aileen emerged from a bedroom, dressed as always in taut colourful silks. Her plump, brown-skinned face and dark eyes showed concern.

  “I’ll explain later.” He put his arms around her and held her for a second. “Where’s Chris?”

  “Here I am, Daddy!” The boy came running and swarmed up Garamond like a small animal, clinging with all four limbs. “You came back.”

  “Come on, son — we’re going to the field.” Garamond held Chris above his head and shook him, imitating a start-of-vacation gesture, then handed the child to his wife. It had been the second time within the hour that he had picked up a light, childish body. “The car’s waiting for us. You take Chris down to it and I’ll follow in a second.”

  “You still haven’t told me what this is all about.”

  “Later, later!” Garamond decided that if he were stopped before the shuttle got off the ground there might still be a faint chance for Aileen and the boy if she could truthfully swear she had no idea what had been going on. He pushed her out into the corridor, then strode back into the apartment’s general storage area which was hidden by a free-floating screen of varicoloured luminosity. It took him only a few seconds to open the box contain
ing his old target pistol and to fill an ammunition clip.The long-barrelled, saw-handled pistol snagged the material of his uniform as he thrust it out of sight in his jacket. Acutely conscious of the weighty bulge under his left arm, he ran back through the living space. On an impulse he snatched an ornament — a solid gold snail with ruby eyes — from a shelf, and went out into the corridor. Aileen was holding the elevator door open with one hand and trying to control Chris with the other.

  “Let’s go,” Garamond said cheerfully, above the deafening ratchets and escapement of the clock behind his eyes. He closed the elevator door and pressed the ‘DOWN’ button. At ground level Chris darted ahead through the long entrance hall and scrambled into the waiting vehicle. There were few people about, and none that Garamond could identify as neighbours, but he dared not risk running and the act of walking normally brought a cool sheen to his forehead. The driver gave Aileen a grudging salute and held the car door open while she got in. Garamond sat down opposite his wife in the rear of the vehicle and, when it had moved off, manufactured a smile for her.

  She shook her dark head impatiently. “Now will you tell me what’s happening?”

  “You’re coming to see me off, that’s all.” Garamond glanced at Chris, who was kneeling at the rear window, apparently absorbed in the receding view. “Chris should enjoy it.”

  “But you said it was important.”

  “It was important for me to spend a little extra time with you and Chris.”

  Aileen looked baffled. “What did you bring from the apartment?”

  “Nothing.” Garamond moved his left shoulder slightly to conceal the bulge made by the pistol.

  “But I can see it.” She leaned forward, caught his hand and opened his fingers, revealing the gold snail. It was a gift he had bought Aileen on their honeymoon and he realized belatedly that the reason he had snatched it was that the little ornament was the symbolical cornerstone of their home. Aileen’s eyes widened briefly and she turned her head away, making an abrupt withdrawal. Garamond closed his eyes, wondering what his wife’s intuition had told her, wondering how many minutes he had left

  * * *

  At that moment, a minor official on the domestic staff of Starflight House was moving uncertainly through the contrived Italian Renaissance atmosphere of the carved hill. His name was Carlos Pennario and he was holding leads to which were attached two of the President’s favourite spaniels. The doubts which plagued his mind were caused by the curious behaviour of the dogs, coupled with certain facts about his conditions of employment. Both animals, their long ears flapping audibly with excitement, were pulling him towards a section of the shady terrace which ringed the hill just at the executive and Presidential levels. Pennario, who was naturally inquisitive, had never seen the spaniels behave in this way before and he was tempted to give them their heads — but, as a Grade 4 employee, he was not permitted to ascend to the executive levels. In normal circumstances such considerations would not have held him back for long, but only two days earlier he had fallen foul of his immediate boss, a gnome-like Scot called Arthur Kemp, and had been promised demotion next time he put a foot wrong.

  Pennario held on to the snuffling, straining dogs while he gazed towards a group of statues which shone like red gold in the dying sunlight. A tall, hard-looking man in the black uniform of a flickerwing captain had been leaning on the stone balustrade near the statues a little earlier in the afternoon. The moody captain seemed to have departed and there was nobody else visible on the terrace, yet the spaniels were going crazy trying to get up there. It was not a world-shaking mystery, but to Pennario it represented an intriguing diversion from the utter boredom of his job.

  He hesitated, scanning the slopes above, then allowed the spaniels to pull him up the broad shallow steps to the terrace, their feet scrabbling on the smooth stone. Once on the upper level, the dogs headed straight for the base on which the bronze figures stood, then with low whines burrowed into the shrubbery behind.

  Pennario leaned over them, parted the dark green leaves with his free arm, and looked down into the cave-like dimness.

  * * *

  They needed another thirty minutes, Garamond decided. If the discovery of Harald’s body did not take place within that time he and his family would be clear of the atmosphere on one of the S.E.A. shuttles, before the alarm could be broadcast. They would not be out of immediate danger but the ship lying in polar orbit, the Bissendorf, was his own private territory, a small enclave in which the laws of the Elizabethan universe did not hold full sway. Up there she could still destroy him, and eventually would, but it would be more difficult than on Earth where at a word she could mobilize ten thousand men against him.

  “I need to go to the toilet,” Chris announced, turning from the rear window with an apologetic expression on his round face. He pummelled his abdomen as if to punish it for the intervention.

  “You can wait till we reach the field.” Aileen pulled him down on to her knee and enclosed him with smooth brown arms.

  A sense of unreality stole over Garamond as he watched his wife and son. Both were wearing lightweight indoor clothing and, of course, had no other belongings with them. It was incredible, unthinkable that — dressed as they were and so unprepared — they should be snatched from their natural ambience of sunlight and warm breezes, sheltering walls and quiet gardens, and that they should be projected into the deadliness of the space between the stars. The air in the car seemed to thin down abruptly, forcing Garamond to take deep breaths. He gazed at the diorama of buildings and foliage beyond the car windows, trying to think about his movements for the next vital half-hour, but his mind refused to work constructively. His thoughts lapsed into a fugue, a recycling of images and shocked sensory fragments. He watched for the hundredth time as the fatal millimetres of daylight opened between Harald’s silhouette and the uncomprehending metal of the statue. And the boy’s body had been so light. Almost as light as Chris. How could a package contain all the bone and blood and muscle and organs necessary to support life, and yet be so light? So insubstantial that a fall of three or four metres…

  “Look, Dad!” Chris moved within the organic basketwork of his mother’s arms. “There’s the field. Can we go on to your shuttle?”

  “I’ll try to arrange it.” Garamond stared through the wavering blur of the North Field’s perimeter fence, wondering if he would see any signs of unusual activity.

  * * *

  Carlos Pennario allowed the shrubs to spring together again and, for the first time since his youth, he crossed himself.

  He backed away from what he had seen, dragging the frantic dogs with him, and looked around for help. There was nobody in sight. He opened his mouth with the intention of shouting at the top of his voice, of unburdening his dismay on the sleepy air, then several thoughts occurred to him almost at once. Pennario had seen Elizabeth Lindstrom only a few times, and always at a distance, but he had heard many stories told in the night-time quietness of the staff dormitory. He would have given a year’s wages rather than be brought before her with the news that he had allowed one of her spaniels to choke on a chicken bone.

  Now he was almost in the position of having to face Elizabeth in person and describe his part in the finding of her son’s corpse.

  Pennario tried to imagine what the President might do to the bringer of such news before she regained whatever slight measure of self-control she was supposed to have…

  Then there was the matter of his superior, Arthur Kemp. Pennario had no right to be on the terrace in the first place, and to a man like Kemp that one transgression would be suggestive, would be proof, of others. He had no idea what had happened to the dead boy, but he knew the way Kemp’s mind worked. Assuming that Pennario lived long enough to undergo an investigation, Kemp would swear to anything to avoid any association with guilt.

  The realization that he was in mortal danger stimulated Pennario into decisive action. He knelt, gathered the spaniels into his arms and walked quickly
down the steps to the lower levels. Shocked and afraid though he was, his mind retained those qualities which had lifted him successfully from near-starvation in Mexico to one of the few places in the world where there was enough air for a man to breathe. Locked away in his memory was a comprehensive timetable of Kemp’s daily movements in and around Starflight House, and according to that schedule the acidulous little Scot would shortly be making his final inspection tour of the afternoon. The tour usually took him along the circular terrace, past the shrubbery in which Harald’s body was hidden — and how much better it would have been if Domestic Supervisor Kemp had made the fearful discovery.

  Pennario kept slanting downwards across the hill until he had reached the lowest point from which he could still see a sector of the upper terrace and gauge Kemp’s progress along it. He moved into the shade of an ivy-covered loggia, set the dogs on the ground and pretended to be busy adjusting their silver collars. The excited animals fought to get free, but Pennario held them firmly in check.

  It was important to him that they did not make their predictable dash to the terrace until Kemp was in exactly the right place to become involved with their discovery. Pennario glanced at his watch.

  “Any minute now, my little friends,” he whispered. “Any minute now.”

  * * *

  In contrast to what Garamond had feared, the field seemed quieter than usual, its broad expanses of ferrocrete mellowed to the semblance of sand by the fleeting sunlight. Low on the western horizon a complexity of small clouds was assembled like a fabulous army, their helmets and crests glowing with fire, and several vaporous banners reached towards the zenith in deepening pink. As the car drew to a halt outside the S.E.A. complex Garamond shielded his eyes, looked towards his assigned take-off point and saw the squat outline of the waiting shuttle. Its door was open and the boarding steps were in place. The sight filled him with a powerful urge to drive to the shuttle, get Aileen and Chris on board, and blast off towards safety. There were certain pre-flight formalities, however, and take off without observing them could lead to the wrong sort of radio message being beamed up to the Bissendorf ahead of him. He pushed a heavy lock of hair away from his forehead and smiled for the benefit of Aileen and the driver.