“It’s true,” said Philip. “And you should see it. It’s so beautiful, so pure. There’s no other place like it.” His gaze was focused somewhere beyond Cole, beyond the confines of the cockpit. Off somewhere, thought Cole, playing in a meadow with bunnies and puppies and singing birds. “Buurp,” added Philip.
“Listen, Cole,” said Nora, “it’s pretty obvious you need a place to hide. And there’s no better place than Yrnameer. And I’ll admit it: we can’t get there without you. It may not be a utopia, but at least there’s none of this,” she said distastefully, indicating the adsat that had been keeping pace with them, playing a beer commercial on its giant monitor.
“I love this ad!” said Cole. “Look at the chimp! Ha ha ha!”
Nora wasn’t laughing. Cole stopped.
“What’s your answer, Cole?”
“What’s the cargo?”
She shook her head.
“All right, what’s the fee?” he asked.
“Forty thousand New Dollars.”
Forty thousand NDs! That was twice what he’d ever been paid for a run.
“Forty thousand NDs!” he said. “That’s half what I usually get for a run.”
“It’s all we have,” said Nora. “Forty thousand New Dollars or nothing.”
Cole suppressed his desire to cackle with glee, channeling it into the thoughtful expression of a professional evaluating a complicated internal balance sheet. “Hmm,” he said, to give the performance some weight.
He was half hoping that she would toss in a hint of other unspecified but clearly alluring benefits, like she’d done with Teg.
Farging Teg undoubtedly got that sort of thing all the time—at least that’s what he was always insinuating in that men’s magazine column of his, “Other Benefits with Teg.” Not that Cole would ever take advantage of an offer like that. Ever.
“Would there be any, uh, other benefits?” he ventured hopefully.
She stared at him.
“The knowledge that you’ve contributed to a worthy cause,” she said.
“Oh.”
“So …,” she said.
He sighed. “I can’t believe this place even exists,” he said.
She held up a wee Zum Card.
“Bendspace course calcs,” she said.
He took the drive from her and considered it for a few moments, turning it over in his fingers. He looked up. She was observing him again with her quiet, intense gaze, and to his own surprise he felt a tiny, warm jolt in his tummy. He looked away, then held up the Zum Card. “We’re not gonna get broken with these, right?”
“They’re valid calcs,” she said.
Cole looked at Philip.
“Burrp.”
Cole sighed again. Why not? Because the calcs might be off, and he might end up twisted into some horrid, impossible configuration, his body pretzeled hideously through an unknown number of dimensions, that’s why not. Or he could find himself in an anomaly that would swallow him up, the Big Nothing closing in from all sides. On the other hand, stick around here long enough, and Kenneth would find him.
He inserted the Zum Card into the appropriate slot.
“As soon as the bendbox is charged up we’ll bend.”
Nora smiled, softening just the itsy-bitsiest bit, and Cole felt the little jolt again.
“Can we—urrrp—reconform now?” asked Philip.
“You know, they have stuff for G sickness,” said Cole.
“I’m allergic,” said Philip.
“Even to NoHerl?”
“Bad labor practices.”
“Bad …?”
“They don’t hire any Shung.”
“Shung? The Shung go berserk around machinery. They’d smash everything. No one hires any Shung.”
“Let’s just reconform!” said Philip.
“No. We reconform, we have to slow down, and what we need to do is keep going fast to charge the box.”
“We’re still in the fourth orbital layer,” said Philip. “We’re”—he paused to gulp—”speeding.”
Cole looked at Nora. “Are you two, you know …?” He made a suggestive gesture. “Because you could do a lot better.”
“Uh-huh. Like you, I suppose,” she said.
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I wouldn’t go that far if we were the last two people in existence.”
“Slow us down,” said Philip.
“We can’t slow down.”
“You’re putting all of us—erp—at risk!” said Philip. “Burp!”
“I know what I’m doing! Nothing’s going to happen!”
Which is when the orbital patrolbot materialized outside the cockpit viewing window, a model similar to the one that had reduced Cole’s Peerson 28 to an easy-to-carry gray powder.
“You were twelve pargins over the limit,” announced the patbot over their radio, as it attached itself to the window with an air-lock skirt.
“You see? I told you,” said Philip.
“Everyone just keep your mouths shut,” hissed Cole tensely. “One wrong word and this could take hours, and we don’t have hours.”
The patbot was busily lasing a perfectly circular hole through the cockpit window.
“This is ridiculous. Why do they have to do it this way?” whispered Nora.
“The Payper lobby,” said Cole. “Ssh!”
The patbot finished the hole. A mechanical arm extended into the cockpit through the gap and handed Cole a ticket.
“Three New Dollars,” announced the ticket.
“Thank you, officer,” said Cole.
“You’re welcome!” said the patbot. “I’ll repair your window now.”
The three exchanged surprised glances.
“Is that it?” whispered Nora.
“It can’t be,” said Cole.
The patbot set about repairing the hole. “Sorry for the inconvenience, folks,” it said.
“Not a problem, officer,” said Cole cautiously. He took a closer look at the patbot. It was somewhat pockmarked and battered, like it had had an encounter with a cloud of space debris. Cole turned to Nora and gave her a little thumbs-up.
“I think it’s been damaged. Maybe it’s malfunctioning,” he said.
She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking past his shoulder at the patbot.
“I think you’re right,” she said.
Cole turned back to the patbot. It was now preparing to patch the circular hole with a replacement plate.
A square replacement plate.
Cole once again experienced the turd-quicksand-poisonous-biting-things sensation, this time at a greatly amplified intensity.
“Uh … officer?” said Cole, trying to sound calm. “That’s the wrong patch. It’s the wrong shape.”
“Interfering with an officer of the law is a criminal offense,” the patbot informed him, and continued with its work.
“But you’re using the wrong piece!” said Nora.
“It doesn’t fit!” said Cole.
“It’s wrong!” said Nora.
“It’s a square!” said Philip.
“It’s wrong!” said Nora.
“It doesn’t fit!” repeated Cole, except the patbot was ignoring them and still trying to cover a round hole with a square object whose diagonal width didn’t quite equal the diameter of the circle, and Cole and Nora and Philip began waving their hands and shouting various permutations of “wrong!” and “piece!” and “not fit!” and “no no no!” with increasing volume and panic until Cole shouted, “You’re going to make the cockpit explode!” and Philip said, “Eeeeeeeeuuurrrp!”
Cole began to sweat.
He attacked the control board, switching switches, dialing dials, and butting buttons as fast as he could. Some of the buttons apparently hadn’t gotten the message that he’d turned off the ergonomic auto-adjuster, and he had to chase them around the control board. “Stop it! Stay still!” he shouted at one of the air-lock controls, which was dodging back and forth, evading his stabbing finger.
“Officer! Officer!” Nora said. “I have your badge number! EJ-439! You’d better believe I’m going to file a report!”
“No, don’t tell him that!” said Cole.
Without pausing in its task, the patbot jabbed another arm into the cockpit, depositing a thick sheaf of Payper in Nora’s hands. “Greetings, shareholder,” began the stack of Payper. “This is Form 29-32a, the official document for shareholders and citizens who wish to lodge a complaint regarding the patrol system, consistent with civil codes A9A-1427 and—”
Nora hurled the Payper away. The stack exploded into its component sheets, filling the cockpit with 127 pieces of Payper, all issuing instructions at once.
“… After completing the description on page forty-two (maximum five hundred words) please …” “… this page serves as a reference for the other forms you may need …” “… please have this page notarized to indicate you’ve had the previous page notarized. …”
They swarmed around Cole, blocking his view. He batted and swatted them away, thinking fleetingly that this was an absolutely perfect metaphor for his life, and then he cracked his hand painfully on Teg’s very solid helmet that had been hiding somewhere in the chattering cloud. No, he thought, now it’s the perfect metaphor.
The patbot had positioned the square patch directly in the middle of the circle, no doubt with micromillimeter accuracy. Cole caught a whiff of the characteristic fresh citrus scent as the chemicals mixed and the catalyst welder flared, the edge of the circular hole glowing as the patbot traced its circumference with the device. Cole hoped he’d survive long enough to get the horrible tumors caused by that scent, one of the most powerful carcinogens in existence.
How much time until the patbot disconnected? Twenty seconds? Maybe, if they were lucky. Reroute the power, the flight controls, eject the Zum Card with the course calcs—probably fifteen seconds now—what else? What else? Life-support systems! Teg’s helmet had rebounded off a wall somewhere and was back floating in front of his face. He shoved it away.
“We’ve got to get out of the cockpit and seal it off,” he said to Nora and Philip without taking his eyes off the control panel. “When he disconnects, the vacuum’s going to make the cockpit—”
From behind him he heard the heavy slam of the bulkhead door, and the whir as it sealed itself shut. Clearly Nora and Philip were way ahead of him in terms of getting out of the cockpit and sealing it shut, before the vacuum made it—
“Implode,” Cole finished.
It was evening, the sky shading from cloudless blue to radiant pink to a dark, rich purple.
The eight remaining Bad Men had finally reached the edge of the rocky plains, the forest ahead of them. They were not the sort to appreciate the splendor of the sunset, especially in the mood they were in now: hungry, tired, and thirsty.
Without the compass it took them an extra two days to cross the plains. Along the way they’d lost another member of their party.
He’d been particularly enthusiastic about kicking the dead Taknean, and that enthusiasm had cost him: he had directed his final and hardest kick toward one of the spikier patches on the Taknean’s torso, and one of those spikes had penetrated his thick boot and jabbed him in the toe.
He was feverish and complaining within a few hours. By the next morning they’d all grown so tired of him that they abandoned him near a wash with a thin trickle of water flowing through it, leaving him with some food, a weapon, and a promise to pick him up on the way back.
Even if they had intended to keep their word, it wouldn’t have mattered. Upon their return they would have discovered his gleaming skeleton, the bones picked clean. It wasn’t the fever that had killed him. It was the thousands of tiny beetlelike creatures that had swarmed over him at night.
So now there were eight of them, pitching camp as the light faded. One of them had managed to shoot a fat, furry animal that they’d come across, rooting in the dry dirt for tubers. It stood on its hind legs and stared at them stupidly, not used to predators, until it was struck by a bullet many times too powerful for the job at hand.
They gathered up the pieces they could find and tried unsuccessfully to start a fire. One finally grabbed the Krager stove and sat apart from the others, grumbling and swearing as he repeatedly pumped the plunger and twisted the two knobs and slid the slider thing.
There was a dull, concussive thud, and a small mushroom cloud rose from the spot where he had been sitting. And then there were seven Bad Men.
“Hey! Hey!” Cole pounded on the cockpit door with his fist, knowing they’d never hear him. The Payper swirled about him, still babbling instructions: “Before continuing to page thirteen, please make sure you’ve read and understood …” “… two copies must be made of this sheet, and submitted with …” “… this sheet has been left blank intentionally. This sheet has been left blank intentionally. …”
Cole spotted Teg’s helmet, propelled himself to it, pushed off the ceiling, reached the door again. He pounded on it with the helmet. “Hey! Open up!!”
“Thank you for your cooperation.” It was the patbot. It was about to disconnect the skirt that sealed the robot to the window, and when it did Cole would be sucked out of the hole into space, or the cockpit would implode, or both.
He brought both legs up to the cockpit door and sprang across the cockpit, the Payper dancing in his wake. He hit the viewing window, grabbing onto the edge of the hole to keep himself from bouncing back from his own momentum. The patbot was disconnecting just as Cole moved his hand out of the way and shoved the top side of Teg’s helmet into the aperture.
The vacuum on the other side of the glass yanked the helmet into place like a ten-ton drain plug. But the seal was imperfect—the helmet was designed to fit human heads, not plug precisely circular holes. There was a screeching, hissing whoosh as air jetted violently out into the nothingness through the skinny, half-moon crevices along the sides of the helmet, and then the whoosh was cut off by near-simultaneous fwoomps as the gaps were plugged by sheets of Payper.
But the vacuum was pulling inexorably at the clog, and suddenly, whoosh, the wad on one side gave out and fwoomp was immediately replaced by more Payper, and then the same happened on the other side, whoosh fwoomp! initiating an uneven rhythm of whoosh fwoomp! whoosh fwoomp fwoomp! as physics began winning its battle of attrition with bureaucracy.
Cole pushed off the window and flew back to the cockpit door. Behind him he could hear the whoosh fwoomp and the suddenly muffled voices of sheets of Payper sucked away in midsentence: “If you have questions regarding the mphmmm mmm mmmm …” He could also hear a creaking, cracking noise—the helmet wasn’t going to last much longer.
He held on with both hands as he kicked at the door, then spotted the button for the video peephole. He touched it and it fitzed to life. Nora’s face filled the screen, knitted with concentration, then jerked back as she tried to pull the door open.
“Nora!” Cole shouted. “The pressure! You have to equalize the pressure!” She looked up, startled, then nodded, understanding. He watched her search for something, then adjust a dial out of the camera’s line of sight. Air jetted and hissed through vents in the door, and suddenly it gave.
Cole shouldered his way through the portal and turned to reseal the door just as the helmet caved in and was fired into the void. The sudden vacuum slammed the door shut.
The ship shuddered. Cole looked through the video peephole. He caught a glimpse of the ruined, twisted cockpit, and then the video feed went to gray static, and then to nothing.
Had there been any gravity, the three of them would have collapsed, gasping for breath. Instead they did their gasping suspended in the corridor.
“Well,” said Cole after a longish panting break, “at least things can’t get much worse.”
Then Bacchi stuck his head out of a heretofore hidden storage compartment and said, “What the hell was that?”
It took Cole’s ears several minutes to stop ringing after
Nora fired. The high-velocity bullet missed Bacchi and pinged a rapid staccato as it ricocheted along the corridor and all around them, striking sparks, whining as it zipped past one side of Cole’s head and then the other. With no gravity to pull it to the ground it kept going, gradually converting its kinetic energy into pockmarks on every possible surface, somehow missing them as they cowered in little fetal balls.
The pinging finally slowed, then stopped. The lights in the corridor were flickering, a control panel zziping and zzaping as it shorted out. The bullet, beaten into a grotesque splat, floated at a stately pace down the corridor and came to rest gently between Bacchi’s eyes.
Everyone took a very deep breath and let it out again.
Then Nora brought the gun up once more. “Don’t shoot!” said Bacchi. “Cole, tell her not to shoot!”
Nora kept her gaze focused on Bacchi. “You know him?” she asked Cole.
“He does!” said Bacchi. “We’re friends. Cole, tell her not to shoot!”
Cole thought about the request. On the one hand …
Nora cocked the gun.
“Cole?” said Bacchi.
“Don’t shoot,” said Cole. “I know him.”
Nora lowered the gun. Bacchi exhaled.
“Cole, what are you doing here?” said Bacchi. “Where’s Teg?”
“That’s what /keep asking,” said Philip.
“Is Cole piloting this thing?” said Bacchi. “Oh, great. We’re farged. I don’t farging believe this. Cole? Fargin’ farg farg! I can’t farging—”
“Shoot him,” said Cole.
Nora raised the gun.
“Wait! I’m kidding!” said Bacchi. “Cole, please!”
“Who is this?” Nora said to Cole.
“This is Bacchi. Remember how I said it couldn’t get worse? Now it can’t get worse.”
One of the shorted wires on the control panel spat out a few more sparks, igniting a small fire. The main lights kechunked off, replaced by cold, flat emergency illumination.
The sprinkler system kicked in. A cold mist sprayed into the corridor from countless nozzles.
Nora looked at Philip. “The cargo!” she said.
˙ ˙ ˙
Nora and Philip raced through the ship to the cargo hold, as much as one could race in zero G without cracking one’s skull open after miscalculating a turn. Cole and Bacchi followed, not quite as fast, pulling themselves along with handholds and kicking off walls to change direction.
The Sheriff of Yrnameer Page 6
