by Ben Bova
Pancho smiled at him like a mother. “Lev, they’re miners. Rock rats. Sure, most of ’em have technical degrees, but they’re not scientists like you.”
“I could work out protocols for them,” he mumbled, half to himself. “Safety procedures for them to follow.”
“Maybe you could,” Pancho said vaguely.
He stared down into his soup bowl for several moments, then looked back up at her. “Does this mean I can’t publish my work?”
“Publish?”
“In The Journal of Nanotechnology. It’s published in Selene and I thought I’d meet the editors while I’m there.”
Pancho thought it over for all of a half-second. A scientific journal. Maybe a hundred people in the whole solar system read it. But one of them will bring the news to Humphries, she was sure. Hell, she said to herself, the Hump prob’ly knows about it already. Not much goes on anywhere that he doesn’t know about.
“Sure you can publish it,” she said easily. “No problem.” Levinson broke into a boyish smile. “Oh, that’s okay then. As long as I can publish and get credit for my work, I don’t care what the stupid rock rats do.”
Pancho stared at him, struggling to hide her feelings. Like so many scientists, this kid’s an elitist. She felt enormously relieved.
Dorik Harbin knew all about addiction. He’d started taking narcotics when he was a teenager, still in his native Balkan village. The elders fed a rough form of hashish to the kids when they sent the youths out on missions of ethnic cleansing. As he progressed up the ladder of organized murder and rape, his need for drugs became deeper, more demanding. As a mercenary in the employ of Humphries Space Systems he had been detoxed several times, only to fall back into his habit time and again. Ironically, HSS medics supplied the medications as part of the corporation’s “incentive program.” Their meds were much better, too: designer drugs, tailored for specific needs. Drugs to help you stay awake and alert through long days and weeks of cruising alone through the Belt, seeking ships to destroy. Drugs to enhance your battle prowess, to make you fiercer, angrier, bloodier than any normal human being could be. Most of all, Harbin needed drugs to help him forget, to blot out the images of helpless men and women screaming for mercy as they floated into space from their broken spacecraft to drift in their survival pods or even alone in their spacesuits, drift like flailing, begging, terrified dust motes until at last death quieted their beseeching voices and they wafted through space in eternal silence.
A lesser man would have been driven to madness by the hopelessness of it all. Humphries’s medical specialists took pains to detoxify Harbin’s body, to purge his blood stream of the lingering molecules of narcotics. Then other Humphries specialists fed him new medications, to help him do the killings that the corporation paid him to do. Harbin smiled grimly at the irony and remembered Kayyam’s words:
And much as Wine has play’d the Infidel,
And robb’d me of my Robe of Honor—well,
I often wonder what the Vintners buy
One half so precious as the Goods they sell.
No matter which of the laboratory-designed drugs he took, though, nor how much, they could not erase his dreams, could never blot out the memories that made his sleep an endless torture of punishment. He saw their faces, the faces of all those he had killed over the years, distorted with pain and terror and the sudden realization that their lives were finished, without mercy, without hope of rescue or reprieve or even delay. He heard their screams, every time he slept.
The revenge of the weak against the strong, he told himself. But he dreaded sleep, dreaded the begging, pleading chorus of men and women and babies.
Yes, Harbin knew about addiction. He had allowed himself to become addicted to a woman once, and she had betrayed him. So he had to kill her. He had trusted her, let his guard down and allowed her to reach his innermost soul. He had even dared to dream of a different life, an existence of peace and gentleness, of loving and being loved. And she had betrayed him. When he ripped the lying tongue out of her mouth, she was carrying another man’s baby.
He swore never to repeat that mistake. Never to allow a woman to get that close to him. Never. Women were for pleasure, just as some drugs were. Nothing more.
Yet Leeza intrigued him. She went to bed with Harbin easily enough; she even seemed flattered that the commander of the growing base on Vesta took enough notice of her to bring her to his bed. She was compliant, amiable, and energetic in her lovemaking.
Don’t get involved with her! Harbin warned himself sternly. Yet, as the weeks slipped by in the dull, cramped underground warrens of Vesta, he found himself spending more and more time with her. She could make him forget the past, at least for the duration of a pleasant dinner together. She could make time disappear entirely when they made love. She could even make Harbin laugh.
Still he refused to allow her into his private thoughts. He refused to hope about the future, refused even to think about any future at all except completing this military base on Vesta and following Martin Humphries’s command to hunt down Lars Fuchs and kill him.
But the new orders superseded the old. Grigor told him that Humphries wanted an all-out attack on Astro Corporation ships.
“Forget Fuchs for the moment,” Grigor’s prerecorded message said. “There are bigger plans in the works.”
Harbin knew he was becoming addicted to Leeza when he told her how dissatisfied he was with the new orders.
She lay in bed beside him, her tousled head on his bare shoulder, the only light in the room coming from the glow of starlight from the wallscreen that displayed the camera view of deep space from the surface of Vesta.
“Humphries is preparing to go to war against Astro?” Leeza asked, her voice soft as silk in the starlit darkness.
Knowing he shouldn’t be revealing so much to her, Harbin said merely, “It looks that way.”
“Won’t that be dangerous for you?” It was difficult to shrug with her head on his shoulder. “I get paid for taking risks.”
She was silent for several heartbeats. Then, “You could get paid much more.”
“Oh? How?”
“Yamagata Corporation would equal your salary from HSS,” she said.
“Yamagata?”
With a slight, mischievous giggle, Leeza added, “And you could still be drawing your pay from Humphries, at the same time.”
He turned toward her, brows knitting. “What are you talking about?”
“Yamagata wants to hire you, Dorik.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I work for them.”
“For Yamagata?”
Her voice became almost impish. “I do the job I was hired to do for Humphries and draw my HSS salary for it. I report on what’s happening here to Yamagata, and they pay me the same amount that HSS does. Isn’t that neat?”
“It’s treason,” Harbin snapped.
She raised herself on one elbow. “Treason? To a corporation? Don’t be silly.”
“It’s not right.”
“Loyalty to a corporation is a one-way street, Dorik. Humphries can fire you whenever he chooses to. There’s nothing wrong with feathering your own nest when you have the opportunity.”
“Why is Yamagata so interested in me?”
“They want to know what Humphries is doing. I’m too low in the organization to give them the whole picture. You’re the source they need.”
Harbin leaned back on his pillow, his thoughts spinning.
“You don’t have to do anything against HSS,” Leeza urged. “All Yamagata wants is information.”
For now, Harbin added silently. Then he smiled in the darkness. She’s just like all the others. A traitor. He almost felt relieved that he didn’t have to build an emotional attachment to her.
SEVEN MONTHS LATER
HUMPHRIES MANSION
“How is she?” Martin Humphries asked, his voice tight with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension.
The holograp
hic image of the obstetrician sitting calmly on a chair in front of Humphries’s desk looked relaxed, unruffled.
“It’s going to take another hour or so, Mr. Humphries,” she said. “Perhaps longer. The baby will arrive when he’s good and ready to enter the world.”
Humphries drummed his fingers on the desktop. First the brat is three weeks premature and now he’s taking his time about being born. “There’s nothing to do but wait,” the doctor warned. “Mrs. Humphries is pretty heavily sedated.”
“Sedated?” Humphries was instantly alarmed. “Why? By whose order? I wanted a natural childbirth. I told you—”
“Sir, she was sedated when your people wheeled her in here.”
“That’s impossible!”
The obstetrician shrugged inside her loose-fitting green surgical gown. “I was surprised, too.”
“I’m coming over,” Humphries snapped.
He clicked off the phone connection before the obstetrician could reply and pushed himself up from his desk chair. He had set up the birthing facility for Amanda down the hall from his office. He had no desire to be present during the mess and blood and pain of childbirth, but the obstetrician’s claim that Amanda was heavily sedated alarmed him. She was supposed to be off all the drugs. She promised me, Humphries reminded himself, anger rising inside him. She promised me to stay clean while she was carrying my son.
Humphries raced down the short corridor between his office and the birthing facility.
She’s been doing drugs again, he realized. I’ve had her detoxed three—no, four times, and she went right back onto them, pregnant or not. She doesn’t give a damn about my son, about me. Her and her damned habit. If she’s harmed my son I’ll kill her.
In his frenzy he forgot that Amanda was the only woman he had ever loved. After two earlier wives and no one knew how many other women, he had fallen truly in love with Amanda. But she never loved him. He knew that. She loved that bastard Fuchs, probably still does, he thought. She’s just having this baby to placate me. Fury boiling in him, he swore that if his son wasn’t perfect he’d have it terminated before it left the birthing room.
And her with it, Humphries snarled inwardly.
He banged through the door of the birthing facility, startling the green-gowned nurse sitting in the anteroom, her mask pulled down from her face, calmly reading from a palmcomp screen, a cup of coffee in her other hand.
The woman jumped to her feet, sloshing coffee onto the carpeted floor. “Mr. Humphries!”
He strode past her.
“I wouldn’t go in there, sir. There’s nothing—”
Humphries ignored her and pushed through the door to the birthing room. Amanda lay on the bed, unconscious or asleep, soaked with perspiration, pale as death. Three women in green surgical gowns and masks stood to one side of the bed. Humphries saw that Amanda wore not a trace of makeup. Her china-blue eyes were closed, her lustrous blonde hair matted with sweat. And still she looked so beautiful, so vulnerable, like a golden princess from a fairy tale. His anger melted.
One of the women came up before him, burly, square-shouldered, blocking his view of his wife. “You’re not gowned!” she hissed from behind her mask.
Fuming, Humphries went out to the anteroom and demanded that the nurse out there find him a surgical gown and mask. In less than five minutes he was dressed, with plastic booties over his shoes, a mask, gloves, and a ridiculous cap pulled down over his ears.
He went back into the birthing room. It was ominously quiet. Amanda had not moved. The only sound in the room was the slow clicking of one of the monitors clustered around the head of the bed. Humphries stared at the machines. The clicking seemed to be coming from the heart monitor, counting off Amanda’s heartbeats. It sounded terribly slow.
“Well,” he whispered to the obstetrician, “how is she doing?”
The woman drew in a breath, then replied, “There are some complications.”
“Complications?”
“Her heart. The strain of labor has placed an unusually severe workload on her heart.”
“Her heart?” Humphries snapped. Pointing a finger like a pistol at the cardiologist, he demanded, “What about the auxiliary pump?”
“It’s doing its job,” the cardiologist said firmly. “But there’s a limit to how much workload it can carry.”
“Will she be all right? Will she get through this all right?” The obstetrician looked away from him.
He grabbed her shoulder. “My son. Is he all right?”
She looked back at him, but her eyes wavered. “The baby will be fine, Mr. Humphries. Once we get him out of his mother.”
Humphries suddenly understood. She’s going to die. Amanda’s going to die! The only woman I’ve ever loved in my whole life is going to die giving birth to my son.
His knees gave way. He almost collapsed, but the same burly medic who had pushed him out of the room now grasped his arm in a powerful grip and held him on his feet.
“We’re doing everything we can,” the obstetrician said as the medic walked Humphries through the door and deposited him on a chair in the anteroom. The nurse out there sprang to her feet again.
Humphries slumped down onto the chair, barely hearing the whispered words between the nurse and medic. The nurse put a cup of steaming coffee in his hand. He ostentatiously poured it onto the carpeting. She looked surprised, then backed away and remained standing by the door to the birthing room. Humphries sat there, his thoughts darker and darker with each passing moment.
Fuchs. He’s the cause of all this. This is all his fault. She still loves him. She’s only having this baby to keep me happy, to save his putrid ass. Well, if she dies then all my promises are finished. I’ll find that sonofabitch and kill him. I’ll get Harbin and every ship I’ve got out there in the Belt to hunt him down and kill him. I don’t care if it takes a thousand ships, I’ll see him dead. I’ll have him skinned alive. I’ll have his balls roasted over a slow fire. I’ll—
The squall of a baby’s first cry stopped his litany of rage.
Humphries shot to his feet. The nurse was still standing in front of the door.
Which opened slowly. The obstetrician came out, pulling the mask off her face. She looked tired.
“My son?” Humphries demanded.
“The boy’s fine,” said the woman, unsmiling. “We’ll run him through the usual tests in a day or so, but he appears to be normal. A little scrawny, but that’s not unusual for a preemie.”
Scrawny, Humphries thought. But he’ll be all right. He’ll grow. He’ll be a healthy son.
“Your wife…” the obstetrician murmured.
“Is she all right?”
The doctor shook her head slowly.
“Amanda?”
“I’m afraid she didn’t make it, sir. Her heart stopped and we couldn’t revive her.”
Humphries gaped at the woman. “She’s dead? Amanda’s dead?”
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Humphries,” the obstetrician said, her eyes avoiding his. “We did everything that’s humanly possible.”
“He killed her,” Humphries muttered. “The bastard killed her.”
“It’s not the baby’s fault,” said the obstetrician, looking alarmed.
“He killed her,” Humphries repeated.
HABITAT CHRYSALIS
Pancho dropped everything and flew on a full-g burn to Ceres, completing the trip from Selene in slightly less than thirty hours.
As her torch ship made rendezvous with the orbiting habitat and docked at one of its airlocks, it felt good to Pancho to get back down to one-sixth gravity. Been living in lunar grav so long it feels normal to me, she thought as she strode through the central passageway of the interlinked spacecraft bodies, heading for Big George’s quarters.
When he’d first been elected chief administrator for the rock rats, George had insisted that he would not establish a fancy office nor hire any unnecessary staff personnel. Over the years he had stuck to that promise—in a man
ner of speaking. His office was still in his quarters, but George’s quarters had expanded gradually, steadily, until now they spanned the entire length of one of the spacecraft modules that composed Chrysalis.
“Only one side of the passageway,” George grumbled defensively when Pancho kidded him about it. “And I haven’t hired a single staff member that I didn’t absolutely need.”
George’s “office” was still the sitting room of his quarters. He had no desk, just comfortable furniture scavenged from junked spacecraft. Now he sat in a recliner that had once been a pilot’s chair. Pancho was in a similar seat, sitting sideways, her long legs draped over its armrest.
“Looks to me like you’re buildin’ yourself an empire, George,” Pancho teased. “Maybe only a teeny-weeny one, but still an empire.”
George glowered at her from behind his brick-red beard. “You di’n’t come battin’ out here to twit me about my empire, didja?”
“No,” said Pancho, immediately growing serious. “I surely didn’t.”
“Then what?”
“I gotta see Lars.”
“See ’im? You mean face to face?”
Pancho nodded somberly.
“What for?”
“Amanda,” said Pancho, surprised at how choked up she got. “She’s … she died.”
“Died?” George looked stunned.
“In childbirth.”
“Pig’s arse,” George muttered. “Lars is gonna go fookin’ nuts.”
“Acute anemia?” Humphries echoed, his eyes narrowing. “How can my son have acute anemia?”
The man sitting in front of Humphries’s desk was the chief physician of Selene’s hospital. He was a cardiovascular surgeon, a large, imposing man with strangely small and delicate hands, wearing an impeccably tailored business cardigan of ash gray. His expression was serious but fatherly; he was accustomed to dispensing information and wisdom to distressed, bewildered patients and their families. He knew he had to maintain the upper hand with Humphries. Such a powerful man could be troublesome. None of the hospital’s lower ranking physicians dared to accept the task of breaking this news to Martin Humphries.
