She did. All the air in her suit would explode outward, while the enormous atmospheric pressure simultaneously imploded the metal casing inward. The mechanical cooling systems would fail instantly. She would be suffocated, broiled, and crushed, all in an instant.
“Turn around. Or I’ll lase you a new asshole.”
She obeyed.
“Here are the rules. You get a half-hour head start. Then I come for you. If you turn north or south, I’ll drill you. Head west. Noonward.”
“Noonward?” She booted up the geodetics. There was nothing in that direction but a couple more wrinkle ridges and, beyond them, tesserae. The tesserae were marked orange on her maps. Orange for unpromising. Prospectors had passed through them before and found nothing. “Why there?”
“Because I told you to. Because we’re going to have a little fun. Because you have no choice. Understand?”
She nodded miserably.
“Go.”
She walked, he followed. It was a nightmare that had somehow found its way into waking life. When Patang looked back, she could see MacArthur striding after her, small in the distance. But never small enough that she had any kind of chance to get away.
He saw her looking and stooped to pick up a boulder. He windmilled his arm and threw.
Even though MacArthur was halfway to the horizon, the boulder smashed to the ground a hundred yards ahead of her and to one side. It didn’t come close to striking her, of course. That wasn’t his intent.
The rock shattered when it hit. It was terrifying how strong that suit was. It filled her with rage to see MacArthur yielding all that power, and her completely helpless. “You goddamned sadist!”
No answer.
He was nuts. There had to be a clause in the contract covering that. Well, then … She set her suit on auto-walk, pulled up the indenture papers, and went looking for it. Options. Hold harmless clauses. Responsibilities of the Subcontractor—there were hundreds of those. Physical care of the Contractor’s equipment.
And there it was. There it was! In the event of medical emergency, as ultimately upheld in a court of physicians … She scrolled up the submenu of qualifying conditions. The list of mental illnesses was long enough and inclusive enough that she was certain MacArthur belonged on it somewhere.
She’d lose all the equity she’d built up, of course. But, if she interpreted the contract correctly, she’d be entitled to a refund of her initial investment.
That, and her life, were good enough for her.
She slid an arm out of harness and reached up into a difficult-to-reach space behind her head. There was a safety there. She unlatched it. Then she called up a virtual keyboard, and typed out the SOS.
So simple. So easy.
DO YOU REALLY WANT TO SEND THIS MESSAGE? YES NO
She hit YES.
For an instant, nothing happened.
MESSAGE NOT SENT
“Shit!” She tried it again. MESSAGE NOT SENT A third time. MESSAGE NOT SENT A fourth. MESSAGE NOT SENT She ran a trouble-shooting program, and then sent the message again. MESSAGE NOT SENT
And again. And again. And again.
MESSAGE NOT SENT
MESSAGE NOT SENT
MESSAGE NOT SENT
Until the suspicion was so strong she had to check.
There was an inspection camera on the back of her suit’s left hand. She held it up so she could examine the side of her helmet.
MacArthur had broken off the uplink antenna.
“You jerk!” She was really angry now. “You shithead! You cretin! You retard! You’re nuts, you know that? Crazy. Totally whack.”
No answer.
The bastard was ignoring her. He probably had his suit on auto-follow. He was probably leaning back in his harness, reading a book or watching an old movie on his visor. MacArthur did that a lot. You’d ask him a question and he wouldn’t answer because he wasn’t there; he was sitting front row center in the theater of his cerebellum. He probably had a tracking algorithm in the navigation system to warn him if she turned to the north or south, or started to get too far ahead of him.
Let’s test that hypothesis.
She’d used the tracking algorithm often enough that she knew its specs by heart. One step sidewards in five would register immediately. One in six would not. All right, then … Let’s see if we can get this rig turned around slowly, subtly, toward the road. She took seven strides forward, and then a half-step to the side.
LASER HAZARD
Patang hastily switched on auto-walk. So that settled that. He was watching her every step. A tracking algorithm would have written that off as a stumble. But then why didn’t he speak? To make her suffer, obviously. He must be bubbling over with things to say. He must hate her almost as much as she did him.
“You son of a bitch! I’m going to get you, MacArthur! I’m going to turn the goddamned tables on you, and when I do—!”
It wasn’t as if she were totally helpless. She had explosives. Hell, her muscle suit could throw a rock with enough energy to smash a hole right through his suit. She could—
Blankness.
* * *
She came to with the suit auto-walking down the far slope of the first wrinkle ridge. There was a buzzing in her ear. Somebody talking. MacArthur, over the short-range radio. “What?” she asked blurrily. “Were you saying something, MacArthur? I didn’t quite catch that.”
“You had a bad thought, didn’t you?” MacArthur said gleefully. “Naughty girl! Papa spank.”
LASER HAZARD
LASER HAZARD
Arrows pointed to either side. She’d been walking straight Noonward, and he’d fired on her anyway.
“Damn it, that’s not fair!”
“Fair! Was it fair, the things you said to me? Talking. All the time talking.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“You did! Those things … the things you said … unforgivable!”
“I was only deviling you, MacArthur,” she said placatingly. It was a word from her childhood; it meant teasing, the kind of teasing a sister inflicted on a brother. “I wouldn’t do it if we weren’t friends.”
MacArthur made a noise he might have thought was laughter. “Believe me, Patang, you and I are not friends.”
The deviling had been innocent enough at the start. She’d only done it to pass the time. At what point had it passed over the edge? She hadn’t always hated MacArthur. Back in Port Ishtar, he’d seemed like a pleasant companion. She’d even thought he was cute.
It hurt to think about Port Ishtar, but she couldn’t help herself. It was like trying not to think about Heaven when you were roasting in Hell.
Okay, so Port Ishtar wasn’t perfect. You ate flavored algae and you slept on a shelf. During the day you wore silk, because it was cheap, and you went everywhere barefoot because shoes cost money. But there were fountains that sprayed water into the air. There was live music in the restaurants, string quartets playing to the big winners, prospectors who had made a strike and were leaking wealth on the way out. If you weren’t too obvious about it, you could stand nearby and listen. Gravity was light, then, and everybody was young, and the future was going to be full of money.
That was then. She was a million years older now.
LASER HAZARD
“Hey!”
“Keep walking, bitch. Keep walking or die.”
This couldn’t be happening.
Hours passed, and more hours, until she completely lost track of the time. They walked. Up out of the valley. Over the mountain. Down into the next valley. Because of the heat, and because the rocks were generally weak, the mountains all had gentle slopes. It was like walking up and then down a very long hill.
The land was grey and the clouds above it murky orange. These were Venus’s true colors. She could have grass-green rocks and a bright blue sky if she wished—her visor would do that—but the one time she’d tried those settings, she’d quickly switched back. The falseness of it was enough to
break your heart.
Better to see the bitter land and grim sky for what they were.
West, they traveled. Noonward. It was like an endless and meaningless dream.
“Hey, Poontang.”
“You know how I feel about that kind of language,” she said wearily.
“How you feel. That’s rich. How do you think I felt, some of the things you said?”
“We can make peace, MacArthur. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“Ever been married, Poontang?”
“You know I haven’t.”
“I have. Married and divorced.” She knew that already. There was very little they didn’t know about each other by now. “Thing is, when a marriage breaks up, there’s always one person comes to grips with it first. Goes through all the heartache and pain, feels the misery, mourns the death of the death of the relationship—and then moves on. The one who’s been cheated on, usually. So the day comes when she walks out of the house and the poor schmuck is just standing there, saying, ‘Wait. Can’t we work this thing out?’ He hasn’t accepted that it’s over.”
“So?”
“So that’s your problem, Poontang. You just haven’t accepted that it’s over yet.”
“What? Our partnership, you mean?”
“No. Your life.”
* * *
A day passed, maybe more. She slept. She awoke, still walking, with MacArthur’s hateful mutter in her ear. There was no way to turn the radio off. It was Company policy. There were layers upon layers of systems and subsystems built into the walkers, all designed to protect Company investment. Sometimes his snoring would wake her up out of a sound sleep. She knew the ugly little grunting noises he made when he jerked off. There were times she’d been so angry that she’d mimicked those sounds right back at him. She regretted that now.
“I had dreams,” MacArthur said. “I had ambitions.”
“I know you did. I did too.”
“Why the hell did you have to come into my life? Why me and not somebody else?”
“I liked you. I thought you were funny.”
“Well, the joke’s on you now.”
Back in Port Ishtar, MacArthur had been a lanky, clean-cut kind of guy. He was tall, and in motion you were always aware of his knees and elbows, always sure he was going to knock something over, though he never did. He had an odd, geeky kind of grace. When she’d diffidently asked him if he wanted to go partners, he’d picked her up and whirled her around in the air and kissed her right on the lips before setting her down again and saying, “Yes.” She’d felt dizzy and happy then, and certain she’d made the right choice.
But MacArthur had been weak. The suit had broken him. All those months simmering in his own emotions, perfectly isolated and yet never alone … He didn’t even look like the same person anymore. You looked at his face and all you saw were anger and those anguished eyes.
LEAVING HIGHLANDS
ENTERING TESSERAE
Patang remembered how magical the tesserae landscape had seemed in the beginning. “Complex ridged terrain,” MacArthur called it, high ridges and deep groves crisscrossing each other in such profusion that the land appeared blocky from orbit, like a jumble of tiles. Crossing such terrain, you had to be constantly alert. Cliffs rose up unexpectedly, butte-high. You turned a twist in a zigzagging valley and the walls fell away and down, down, down. There was nothing remotely like it on Earth. The first time through, she’d shivered in wonder and awe.
Now she thought: Maybe I can use this. These canyons ran in and out of each other. Duck down one and run like hell. Find another and duck down it. Keep on repeating until he’d lost her.
“You honestly think you can lose me, Patang?”
She shrieked involuntarily.
“I can read your mind, Patang. I know you through and through.”
It was true, and it was wrong. People weren’t meant to know each other like this. It was the forced togetherness, the fact you were never for a moment alone with your own thoughts. After a while you’d heard every story your partner had to tell and shared every confidence there was to share. After a while every little thing got on your nerves.
“How about if I admit I was wrong?” she said pleadingly. “I was wrong. I admit it.”
“We were both wrong. So what?”
“I’m willing to cooperate, MacArthur. Look. I’ve stopped so you can catch up and not have to worry about me getting away from you. Doesn’t that convince you we’re on the same side?”
LASER HAZARD
“Oh, feel free to run as fast and as far as you want, Patang. I’m confident I’ll catch up with you in the end.”
All right, then, she thought desperately. If that’s the way you want it, asshole. Tag! You’re it.
She ducked into the shadows of a canyon and ran.
* * *
The canyon twisted and, briefly, she was out of sight. MacArthur couldn’t talk to her, couldn’t hear her. Couldn’t tell which way she went. The silence felt wonderful. It was the first privacy she’d had since she didn’t know when. She only wished she could spare the attention to enjoy it more. But she had to think, and think hard. One canyon wall had slumped downward just ahead, creating a slope her walker could easily handle. Or she could keep on ahead, up the canyon.
Which way should she go?
Upslope.
She set the walker on auto-run.
Meanwhile, she studied the maps. The free satellite downloads were very good. They weren’t good enough. They showed features down to three meters across, but she needed to know the land yard-by-yard. That crack–like little rille—did it split two kilometers ahead, or was there a second rille that didn’t quite meet it? She couldn’t tell. She’d’ve gladly paid for the premium service now, the caviar of info-feed detailed enough to track footprints across a dusty stretch of terrain. But with her uplink disabled, she couldn’t.
Patang ducked into a rille so narrow her muscle suit’s programming would have let her jump it, if she wished. It forked, and she took the right-hand branch. When the walls started closing in on them, she climbed up and out. Then she ran, looking for another rille.
Hours passed.
After a time, all that kept her going was fear. She drew her legs up into the torso of her suit and set it to auto-run. Up this canyon. Over this ridge. Twisting, turning. Scanning the land ahead, looking for options. Two directions she might go. Flip a mental coin. Choose one. Repeat the process. Keep the radio shut down so MacArthur couldn’t use it to track her. Keep moving.
Keep moving.
Keep moving …
* * *
Was it hours that passed, or days? Patang didn’t know. It might have been weeks. In times of crisis, the suit was programmed to keep her alert by artificial stimulation of her brain. It was like an electrical version of amphetamines. But, as with amphetamines, you tended to lose track of things. Things like your sense of time.
So she had no idea how long it took her to realize that it was all no use.
The problem was that the suit was so damned heavy! If she ran fast enough to keep her distance from MacArthur, it left a trace in the regolith obvious enough to be followed at top speed. But if she slowed down enough to place her walker’s feet on bare stone when she could, and leave subtle and easy-to-miss footprints when she couldn’t, he came right up behind her. And try though she might, she couldn’t get far enough ahead of him to dare slow down enough to leave a trace he couldn’t follow.
There was no way she could escape him.
The feeling of futility that came over her then was drab and familiar, like a shabby old coat grown colorless with age that you don’t have the money to replace. Sometime, long ago, she’d crossed that line where hope ceased. She had never actually admitted to herself that she no longer believed they’d ever make that big strike—just one day woken up knowing that she was simply waiting out her contract, stubbornly trying to endure long enough to serve out her term and return to Earth no poorer than
she had set out.
Which was when her deviling had turned nasty, wasn’t it? It was when she had started touching herself and telling MacArthur exactly what she was doing. When she’d started describing in detail all the things she’d never do to him.
It was a way of getting through one more day. It was a way of faking up enough emotion to care. It was a stupid, stupid thing to do.
And this was her punishment.
But she couldn’t give up. She was going to have to … She didn’t finish that thought. If she was going to do this unnamed thing, she had to sort through the ground rules first.
The three rules were: No Violence. Protect Company Equipment. Protect Yourself. They were ranked hierarchically.
Okay, Patang thought. In order to prevent violence, I’m going to have to destroy Company property.
She waited to see if she’d pass out.
Nothing happened.
Good.
She’d come to a long ridge, steep-sided and barren and set her suit to auto-climb. As she climbed, she scanned the slope ahead, empty and rock-strewn under a permanently dazzling cover of sulfuric acid clouds. Halfway up, MacArthur emerged from the zigzagging valley below and waved jauntily.
Patang ignored him. That pile of boulders up ahead was too large. Those to the right were too small. There was a patch of loose regolith that looked promising but … No. In the end, she veered leftward, toward a shallow ledge that sheltered rocks that looked loose enough to be dislodged but not massive enough to do any serious damage to MacArthur’s suit. All she wanted was to sweep him off his feet. He could survive a slide downslope easily enough. But could he hold onto the laser drill while doing so?
Patang didn’t think so.
Okay, then. She took her suit off automatics and climbed clumsily, carefully, toward her destination. She kept her helmet up, pointed toward the top of the ridge, to avoid tipping MacArthur off to her intentions.
Slantwise across the slope, that’s right. Now straight up. She glanced back and saw that she’d pulled MacArthur into her wake. He was directly beneath her. Good. All systems go.
The Very Best of the Best Page 18
