by Allan Cole
Sten decided to go over it one more time. Perhaps there was something he'd missed. Sten tapped the console keys and called up the Company's Work Guidelines Manual. He scrolled paragraph after paragraph, looking for an out.
"Clot!" He almost passed it. Sten rolled back up to the paragraph, and read and reread it:
SAFETY LEVY: All migratory workers shall be levied not less than 35 credits nor more than 67 credits each pay cycle, except when performing what the Company deems to be extraordinary labor which increases the chances of accidental injury and/or death, in which case the levy shall be no less than 75 credits and no more than 125 credits each cycle, for which the Company agrees to provide appropriate medical care and/or death benefits not to exceed 750 credits for funeral arrangements and/or. . .
He slammed his fist on the keys and the vid screen did several fast flip-flops, then went blank.
They had you. No matter how you shaved it, every Mig would always be in the hole.
Sten paced back and forth.
The robot finished the mover and dropped out the exit, waiting for the next cigar tube to be on-lined. The completed car whooshed away, into the pneumatic freight tube and away toward the shipping terminal. But there'd been some error. Something or someone didn't have the next pile of seats ready.
Sten yawned as his robot whined at another machine about quotas. The second machine wasn't about to take the blame. They bickered back and forth electronically until, eventually, the ceiling crane slammed a seat consignment down between them. The robot slid into the mover. Sten hoisted a seat to his shoulder and lugged it aboard. He set the chair in position and listened to the robot natter while he moved the seat back and forth.
The robot bent forward, heatgun ready. Sten felt a sudden bout of nausea wash over him. This would be it for the rest of his life, listening to the gray blob preach.
Sten lurched forward. The seat slid into the robot, and the machine yowled as it welded itself to seat and mover frame.
"Help! Help! I'm trapped," it whined. "Notify master control."
Sten blinked. Then hid a grin. "Sure. Right away."
He ambled slowly off the mover to the line control panel, took a deep breath, and punched the TASK COMPLETE button. The doors of the tube slid closed, and the mover slid toward the freight tube. "Notify. . .control. . .help. . .help. . ." And for the first time since he'd been promoted to full worker, Sten felt the satisfaction of a job well done.
CHAPTER SIX
STEN HAD BEEN "sick" for over a week before the Counselor showed up.
Actually, he really had been sick the first day. Scared sick that somebody might have discovered his little game with the robot. It'd be considered outright sabotage, he was sure. If he was lucky, they'd put him under a mind-probe and just burn away any areas that didn't seem to fit the Ideal Worker Profile.
But there probably was something worse. There usually was on Vulcan. Sten wasn't sure what something worse could be. He had heard stories about hellshops, where incorrigibles were sent. But nobody knew anybody who'd actually been sent to such a shop. Maybe the stories were just that—or maybe nobody ever came back from those places. Sten wondered sometimes if he wouldn't rather just be brainburned and turned into a vegetable.
The second day, Sten woke up smiling. He realized that nobody'd ever figure out what had happened to the robot. So he celebrated by staying home again, lounging in bed until two hours past shift-start. Then he dug out a few of the luxury food items his parents had saved and just stared at the nonsnowing wall mural. He knew better than to stick his card in the vid and watch a reel, or to go out to a rec area. That'd make it even easier for the Company to figure out that he was malingering.
The flakes hanging in the air on the mural fascinated Sten. Frozen water, falling from the sky. It didn't seem very sanitary. Sten wondered if there was any way at all that he could get offworld. Even though those snowflakes didn't look very practical, they might be something to see. Anything might be something to see—as long as it was away from the Company and Vulcan.
By the third day, he'd decided he wasn't going to work anymore. Sten didn't know how long he was going to get away with malingering. Or what would happen to him when they caught him. He just sat. Thinking about the snowflakes and what it would be like to walk in them, with no card in his pocket that said where he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to do when he got there. He'd just learned that if he squinched his eyes a bit, the snowflakes would almost move again, when the door buzzer went off.
He didn't move. The door buzzed again. "Sten," the Counselor shouted through the panel, "I know you're there. Let me in. Everything is fine. We'll work it out. Together. Just open the door. Everything is fine."
Sten knew it wasn't. But finally he pulled himself up and walked toward the door. The buzzer sounded again. Then something started fumbling in the Identilock. Sten waited at the door.
Then he hesitated, and moved to one side. The Identilock clicked, and the door slid open. The Counselor stepped inside. His mouth was already open, saying something. Sten leaped, both hands clubbed high above him. The blow caught the Counselor on the side of his head, slamming him into the wall. The Counselor slid down the panel and thumped to the floor. He didn't move. His mouth was still open. Sten began to shake.
But suddenly, he felt calm; he'd eliminated all the possibilities now. He could do only one thing. He stooped over the unconscious Counselor and riffled quickly through his pockets. Sten found and pocketed the man's card. If he used that instead of his own, it might take Control a little longer to track him down. It'd also give him entry into areas forbidden by Sten's Mig card.
Sten turned and looked around the three bare rooms. Whatever happened next, it would be the last time he'd ever see them. Then he ran out the door, heading for the slideway, the spaceport, and some way off Vulcan.
He felt out of place the moment he stepped off the slideway. The people had begun to change. Only a few Migs were visible, conspicuous in their drab coveralls. The rest were richer and flashier: Techs, clerks, administrators, and here and there the sparkle of strange offworld costumes.
Sten hurried over to a clothes-dispensing machine, slid the Counselor's card into the slot and held his breath. Would the alarms go off now? Were Sociopatrolmen already hurrying to the platform?
The machine burped at him and began displaying its choices. Sten punched the first thing in his size that looked male, and a package plopped into a tray. He grabbed it and pushed his way through the crowd into a rest area.
Sten carded his way into the spaceport administration center, trying to look as if he belonged there. He had to do something about the Counselor's card soon. Everywhere he went, he was leaving a trail as wide as a computer printout sheet.
Nearby, an old, fat clerk was banging at a narcobeer dispenser. "Clotting machine. Telling me I don't have the clotting credits to. . ."
Sten ambled up to him, bored but slightly curious. The man was drunk and probably so broke that the central computer was cutting him off.
"It's sunspots," Sten said.
The clerk bleared up at him. "Think so?"
"Sure. Same thing happened to me last off-shift. Here. Try my card. Maybe a different one will unjam it."
The clerk nodded and Sten pushed a button and the man's card slid out. He took it and inserted the Counselor's card. A minute later the clerk was happily on his way, chugging a narcobeer.
Three hours later they grabbed him. The clerk was sitting in his favorite hangout, getting pleasantly potted when what seemed like six regiments of Sociopatrolmen burst in. Before he had time to lower his glass, he was beaten, trussed, and on his way to an interrogation center.
In front, the chief Sociopatrolman peered victoriously at the clerk's ID card. Except, of course, it wasn't his. It was the Counselor's.
Sten could feel it as soon as he entered the spaceport Visitors' Center. Even on the run, there was a sense of—well, what it was exactly, he couldn't tell. But he th
ought it might be freedom.
He moved through the exotic crowd—everything from aliens and diplomats to stocky merchantmen and deep-space sailors. Even the talk was strange: star systems and warp drive, antimatter engines and Imperial intrigue.
Sten edged past a joygirl into a seedy tavern. He elbowed his way through the sailors and found an empty space at the bar. A sailor next to him was griping to a buddy.
"The nerf lieutenant just ignores me. Can you believe that? Me! A projector with fifteen damned years at the clotting sig-board."
His friend shook his head. "They're all the same. Two years in the baby brass academy and they think they know it all."
"So get this," said the first man. "I report blips and he says no reason there should be blips. I tell him there's blips anyway. Few minutes later we hit the meteor swarm. We had junk in our teeth and junk comin' out our drive tubes.
"Pilot pulled us out just in time. Slammed us into an evasion spiral almost took the captain's drawers off."
Sten got his drink—paying with one of his few credit tokens—and moved down the bar. A group of sailors caught his eye. They were huddled around a table, talking quietly and sipping at their drinks instead of knocking them back like the others. They were in fresh clothes, cleanshaven, and had the look of men trying to shake off hangovers in a hurry.
They had the look of men going home.
"Time to hoist 'em," one of them said.
In unison, they finished their drinks and rose. Sten pushed in behind them as they moved through the crowd and out the door.
Sten huddled in the nose section of the shuttle. A panel hid him from the sailors. They lifted off from Vulcan, and moments later Sten could see the freighter through the clear bubble nose as the shuttle floated up toward it.
The deep-space freighter—an enormous multisegmented insect—stretched out for kilometers. A swarm of beetlelike tugs towed still more sections into line and nudged them into place. The drive section of the freighter was squat and ugly with horn projections bristling around the face. As the shuttle neared the face, it grinned open.
Just before it swallowed him, Sten thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
He barely heard the judge as the man droned on, listing Sten's crimes against the Company. Sten was surrounded by Sociopatrolmen. In front of the judge, the Counselor loomed, his head nearly invisible in plastibandages, nodding painfully as the judge made each legal point.
They had found Sten in the shuttle, huddled under some blankets, stolen ship's stores stacked around him. Even as he messaged Vulcan for someone to pick Sten up, the captain kept apologizing. He had heard stories.
"We can't help you," he said. "Vulcan security sends snoopers on every freighter before it clears, looking for people like you."
Sten was silent.
"Listen," the captain went on, "I can't take the chance. If I tried to help and got caught, the Company'd pull my trading papers. And I'd be done. It's not just me. I gotta think of my crew. . ."
Sten came awake as a Sociopatrolman pushed him forward. The judge had finished. It was time for sentencing. What was it going to be? Brainburn? If that was it, Sten hoped he had enough mind left to kill himself.
Then the judge was talking. "You are aware, I hope, of the enormity of your crimes?"
Sten thought about doing the Mig humility. Be damned, he thought. He didn't have anything to lose. He stared back at the judge.
"I see. Counselor, do you have anything of an ameliorative nature to add to these proceedings?"
The Counselor started to say something, and then abruptly shook his head.
"Very well. Karl Sten, since you, at your young age, are capable of providing many years of service to the Company and we do not wish to appear unmerciful, recognizing the possibility of redemption, I will merely reassign you."
For a moment, Sten felt hopeful.
"Your new work assignment will be in the Exotics Section. For an indeterminate period. If—ahem—circumstances warrant, after a suitable length of time I will review your sentence."
The judge nodded, and touched the INPUT button on his justice panel. The Sociopatrolmen led Sten away. He wasn't sure what the judge meant. Or what his sentence was. Except his mind was intact, and he was alive.
He turned at the door, and realized, from the grin on the Counselor's face, he might not be for very long.
BOOK TWO—HELLWORLD
CHAPTER SEVEN
"SIMPLY A MATTER a' entropy. Proves it," the older man said. And lifted his mug.
The younger man beside him, who wore the flash coveralls of a driveship officer, snickered and crashed his boots onto the table. His coveralls bore the nametag of RASCHID, H. E., ENGINEERING OFFICER.
"Wha's so funny?" his senior said belligerently. He looked at the other four deep-space men around the tavern's table. "These is me officers, and they didn't hear me say nothin' funny. Did ya?"
Raschid looked around and grinned widely at the drunkenly chorused "yessirs." Picked up his own mug in both hands and drained it.
"Another round—I'll tell you. I been listening to frizzly old bastards like you talk about how things is runnin' down, and how they're gettin' worse and all that since I first was a steward's pup."
The barmaid—the spaceport dive's biggest and only attraction—slid mugs down the long polished aluminum bar. Raschid blew foam off the top of his mug and swallowed.
"Talkin' to fools," he said, "is thirsty work. Even when they're high-credit driveship captains."
The captain's mate flexed his shoulders—a move that had kept him out of fights in a thousand worlds—and glowered. Raschid laughed again.
"Man gets too old to stump his own pins, he generally finds some punko to do it for him. Tell you what, cap'n. You gimme one good example of how things is goin' to sheol in a handbasket, and maybe, jus' maybe, I'll believe you."
The captain sloshed beer down and wiped the overflow from his already sodden uniform front.
"The way we's treated. Look'a us. We're officers. Contract traders. Billions a' credits rest on our every decision. But look around. We're on Prime World. Heart'a the Empire an' all that clot. But do we get treated wi' the respect due us? Hell no!"
"We's the gears what makes the Empire turn!" one of his officers yelled.
"So, what d'ya expect?"
"Like I said. Respect. Two, three hunnerd years back, we woulda been fawned over when we made planetfall. Ever'body wantin' to know what it was like out there. Women fallin' over us. I tell you. . ."
The captain stood up and pointed one finger, an effect that was ruined by a belch that rattled the walls slightly. "When an empire forgets how to treat its heroes, it's fallin' apart!" He nodded triumphantly, turned to his officers. "That prove it or not?"
Raschid ignored the shouted agreement. "You think it oughta be like the old days? Say, like when there were torchships?"
"You ain't gotta go back that far, but tha's good example. More beer! Back when they was ion ships and men to match 'em."
"Torchships my ass," Raschid sneered. He spat on the floor. "Those torchships. You know how they worked? Computer-run. From lift-off to set down."
The other spacemen at the table looked puzzled. "Wha' 'bout the crews?"
"Yeah. The crews! Lemme tell you what those livees don't get around to showin'. Seems most'a those torchships were a little hot. From nozzle right up to Barrier Thirty-three, which is where the cargo and passengers were.
"After a few years, they started havin' trouble gettin' young heroes as crew after these young heroes found their bones turned green an' ran out their sleeves after two-three trips.
"So you know who these crews were? Dockside rummies that had just 'bout enough brains to dump the drive if it got hot beyond Thirty-three. They'd shove enough cheap synthalk in 'em to keep 'em from opening up the lock to see what was on the other side, punch the TAKEOFF button, and run like hell. Those were your clottin' hero torchships an' their hero ossifers.
The captain looked around at his crew. They waited for a cue.
"How come you know so much—Barrier Thirty-three—on'y way a man could know that he'd have to crew one." The old man's mug slammed down. "That's it! We come over here for a quiet mug or so—sit around, maybe tell some lies. . .but we ain't standing for nobody who's thinkin' we're dumb enough to believe. . ."
"I did," Raschid said flatly.
The man broke off. His mate stood up. "You sayin' you're a thousand years old, chief?"
Raschid shook his head and drained his beer. "Nope. Older."
The captain twitched his head at the mate. . .the mate balled up a fist that should've been subcontracted as a wrecking ball and swung. Raschid's head wasn't there.
He was diving forward, across the table. The top of his head thudded into the captain's third officer, who, with another man, crashed to the floor in a welter of breaking chairs.
Raschid rolled to his feet as the mate turned. He stepped inside the mate's second swing and drove three knife-edged fingers into the inside of the mate's upper arm. The mate doubled up.
Raschid spun as the other two men came off the floor. . .ducking. Not far enough. The captain's mug caromed off the back of his head, and Raschid staggered forward, into the bar.
He snap-bounded up. . .his feet coiled and kicking straight back. The third officer's arm snapped and he went down, moaning. Raschid rolled twice down the bar as the mate launched another drive at him. Grabbed the arm and pulled.
The mate slid forward, collected the end of the beer tap in the forehead, and began a good imitation of petrification.
Raschid swung away from the bar, straight-armed a thrown chair away, and snap-kicked the captain in the side.
He lost interest for a few minutes.
