Spaceside

by Michael Mammay

  “That’s a lot of reading.”

  “I stopped at around seven hundred when I found something that held promise.”

  I sat forward on my chair, my cooling coffee forgotten. “Okay. You’ve definitely got my attention.”

  “The paper discussed the nature of advancing medical technology and vaguely mentioned the Phoenix Project as one of a few things with potential. It wasn’t much.”

  “What was his field? The guy who wrote the paper.”

  “Ortho-robotics,” he said.

  It’s a good thing I wasn’t drinking my coffee because I’d have spit it out. It couldn’t be. But the coincidence loomed like an asteroid hurtling at a space station. I couldn’t avoid it.

  “What?” he asked. “What is it? You just went pale.”

  I fumbled for an answer, still reeling. “I lost a foot during the war. I’ve spent a lot of unpleasant time around ortho-robotics departments.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” His face reflected genuine concern. “I didn’t—”

  “You couldn’t know. And it’s a good piece of information that you worked hard to find. When we pair it with other stuff, it might mean something.” I was genuinely happy I had opened up even a little with him. But my newly developed plan to trust him didn’t extend as far as telling him about my history with ortho-robotics on Cappa. I could always let him in on my true suspicion later, if this developed into something real.

  I was lying to myself, of course. I believed it was real the minute I heard it.

  “Okay. But I really didn’t mean to—”

  “Think nothing of it,” I said. “It’s been a long time, and I’m mostly over it.”

  He didn’t believe me, but he nodded and started backing away. People do that when soldiers bring up old war demons. “I’ll check back in with you tomorrow if neither of us finds anything else before then.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. I emptied my coffee in the trash then stood to get a fresh cup. I needed to be doing something. Anything.

  I couldn’t focus, so I called Dr. Baqri to see if she could work me into her schedule, and she told me to come over.

  “You sounded distressed when you called,” she said after I’d settled in.

  “Thanks for seeing me.” I was sitting in my normal spot and stared down at the expensive rug that covered the faux-stone floor.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Coincidences,” I said.

  “You’ve told me before that you don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “I don’t. But that’s the thing.” I thought about it for a moment, and she gave me time. “At what point does that become paranoia? Like if I see every little thing as connected . . . what if I’m overthinking things?”

  “You’ve always been a confident person, right?”

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  “So what’s different, now?”

  “I guess it’s a different world.”

  She gave me a doctor look. “Is the world different, or are you just looking at it differently?”

  “Since I became a civilian?”

  “Sure, that. But more than that, too.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Since I did what I did. So you’re saying since I have regrets about what I did on Cappa, I’ve started to question my thoughts on other things.”

  She smiled. “I didn’t say that.”

  I liked her. Sometimes I wanted her to just tell me the answers, because she had them. But it worked like this, and as much as I didn’t want to go see her, I always ended up in a better place than when I arrived. “So how do I get past it? The self-doubt?”

  “Well you might have to accept that as your new normal. Doubt isn’t a bad thing.”

  “But it’s not me.”

  “Maybe it is you. Or maybe it’s something to work on.”

  I nodded. It clicked with me, what she said. I had to believe in myself. If I saw something, I had to trust it, no matter how it made me feel.

  I got back to my office and sat there through lunch. Despite the calming influence of Dr. Baqri, I couldn’t sit still. It seemed impossible, now, that I’d been sitting in this office every day for the better part of a year doing nothing. It would have been smart to let the whole thing go; the investigation, or even the job. I could make some sort of excuse and get out of it. Javier would pull the plug on it in a hurry if I asked.

  But I didn’t want to.

  Some part of me—a big part—wanted to figure things out. I wanted to take all the coincidences and break them to my will, shape them into an answer. It made me feel somehow more alive. It made me feel relevant again—and in charge of my own fate—for the first time since I left Cappa.

  I still had to run a fine line with Dernier and the legal folks. I’d started to like the man after my initial misgivings, but I had to keep him a little bit in the dark. The minute he thought I’d started in a direction that might bring any kind of negative attention to the company, he’d report it. No connection between him and I would change that.

  In the meantime I headed to the IT floor and found Ganos. Ten minutes later we were outside, headed away from the building.

  “It’s past lunchtime,” she said.

  “I couldn’t take another meal of fries.”

  “It’s going to look weird, us leaving together.”

  “Nah. People will just think you’re having an affair,” I joked.

  “Ew.”

  I clutched my hands to my chest. “Ouch.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, sir. It would be a good deal for you. Younger woman, brilliant, all that. But I’d be the girl sleeping with the old dude.”

  I laughed, and as I did I realized how much I needed it. “We can head back. I didn’t want to talk in the building. Too many VPC eyes. Did you get it?”

  “Sir. Who are you talking to? Of course I got it.” She fished a few pieces of paper out of her pocket, folded over several times. “Dude has a lot of contacts. I didn’t copy them electronically anywhere because that would have—”

  “You don’t have to explain,” I said. “I’ll assume it’s computer magic.”

  “Right. Magic. Magic I don’t want to get caught doing.” She handed me the folded paper square and I took it without looking and shoved it into my jacket pocket.

  “Thanks, Ganos. It’s a big help.” I paused. “Hey, if anybody finds out about this and asks you—”

  “They won’t,” she said. “Not unless you tell them.”

  “But anything you can do, somebody can trace, right?”

  “In theory? Sure. In this case . . . I buried that shit so deep that if they knew what they were looking for exactly—like they knew I did something, when I did it, and what I was trying to do—if they knew that, they’d find it. So sure. There’s a one in a million chance.”

  “Still.”

  “It’s okay—I wouldn’t even get fired for it, sir. It’s not really sensitive information. Hell, if I did get fired, I’d play it off as a prank, say I was messing with the boss. I’d have another job in six hours.”

  “Great,” I said. She’d have another job in six hours. I had to wonder if I’d be able to say the same thing if Javier caught on to what I’d done. He’d wanted to protect his contact, and now I’d potentially taken that out of his hands. Yeah, he’d definitely fire me.

  I resisted opening the paper Ganos had given me while riding transportation. I didn’t know what I expected to find in it, or if what I found would do me any good. Perhaps I’d find a military contact and have no way to do anything with it. Perhaps there wouldn’t be one. I kept my head up more than usual. People glanced at me while pretending that they weren’t, and at least one person whispered the word “scourge,” though not loud enough that I could tell if it was in revulsion or merely pointing me out to her companion. A well-built man with black hair and golden skin stared longer than most, longer than was strictly polite. I didn’t usually seek conflict, but for some reason it pissed me off, so I stared back at hi
m. He kept my gaze for a few seconds without really meeting it, then glanced away as if he’d never seen me . . .

  I froze.

  As he glanced away, his eyes shifted in shape, and for a split second I thought they were Cappan ovals. I started to sweat, cold and clammy, and I looked down at the floor between my feet. The transport lurched to a halt, one stop short of my normal debarkation, but I got up and stumbled to the door. If I had stayed on the transport, I feared I would take root there, unable to function. I had to get away. I walked quickly and didn’t look back until I’d put twenty meters between me and the door. The transport lumbered away and the people who’d gotten off scattered, but the dark-haired man wasn’t among them.

  I took several deep breaths and tried to focus. I put my hand into my jacket pocket and touched the paper, reassuring myself of its presence. I hadn’t seen anything but a trick of the shifting light on a moving vehicle. I had a mission, a purpose, and I couldn’t devolve into another panic attack. I shut off my brain and walked the last half kilometer to my apartment, my hand in my pocket the whole way, holding the list like a talisman.

  Clearing my security system, I glanced at the bottle on the side table but decided against it. I unfolded the sheets of paper, nearly tearing them in my haste. Three pages of handwritten names stared back at me in green ink. Ganos’s letters were blocky and utilitarian but easy to read. I recognized most of the names on page one, because I worked with them. I’d almost reached the bottom of the second page before one jumped out at me.

  Serata.

  Shit.

  Chapter Ten

  General Serata had retired from the military right about the same time I did, for the same reasons, though his happened much more quietly. I had something to do with that, dominating the headlines at the time. Nobody ever came out and said why he stepped down, and as far as I knew, nobody ever asked publicly. I always assumed it was political. Some rumors suggested that he stepped down voluntarily in exchange for them not prosecuting me. He’d never said as much himself, but I didn’t rule it out.

  He landed on his feet. Most generals do. He now had a job as a part-time motivational speaker and also worked as a consultant for high-level military exercises. He got paid a lot of money to work a few days a month. I could relate to that, as VPC paid me well. Not as well as Serata, but I couldn’t complain. Even though he lived on Talca, the same as me, we never visited. His sparse work schedule allowed him to live outside the city, so we didn’t live in close-enough proximity to make it easy. We exchanged communications every few months, and we always talked about getting together but hadn’t made it happen.

  I didn’t blame him. Not about that, at least.

  I’d had plenty of time to think about it—how Cappa ended. A lot of those thoughts ended up with me lying awake, drenched in sweat or vomiting my dinner into the waste disposal. But there had been rational times too, when I examined it more objectively. When I didn’t think about what I’d done but how I’d come to do it.

  The answer was clear: he set me up.

  I suspected it back on Cappa, but when I returned home, I think some part of me tried to find another solution. One that let me still see him as my mentor, but one that ultimately didn’t exist. Serata had needed someone to do the job he couldn’t do himself, and I fit the bill. I don’t think he specifically went looking for a scapegoat. Maybe I’m naïve in that. But Serata is a smart man, and he’d have known the likely outcomes. Perhaps somebody above him needed a scapegoat, too, and they’d used him.

  Yet, despite knowing how he used me, I didn’t hold it against him. He’d had a job to do and he did it. I’d had a job to do and I’d done it too. I had choices, even at the end, and I made them. He didn’t push the button. I’d killed a shitload of Cappans, and as a bonus, it destroyed my marriage and turned me into a pariah. And thinking about it that way—how it affected me—made me feel worse because how dare I think about my one little life in comparison to all those others that I’d ended. But I’d been down the road of thinking about the Cappans and how it affected them, and that always ended in an even darker place for me. I had to avoid it for my own mental health.

  We did the job. I hate the job that we did, and I wish I’d never been put in position to do it. If I could go back in time, I’d have told Serata no that day standing in his office. After all, he hadn’t ordered me to go. He’d asked. Maybe he’d have found somebody else. Maybe if he did, that person would have been smarter than me and found another solution that didn’t end in so much loss of life. Maybe that other mythical person would have been blind and missed the conspiracy, and there would be a bunch fewer dead Cappans and an ongoing genetic experimentation project.

  I could screw myself into the ground dancing around all the what-ifs.

  But I couldn’t go back in time. I’d said yes and I’d gone out there, and I did what I did and that was that. Serata sent me, and he did it with a purpose. But like I said, I didn’t blame him.

  I blamed myself.

  And now I needed to talk to him, and that meant I had to find a way to bridge the gap. I couldn’t call him up and ask him why he was in Javier’s contacts. That wouldn’t get me what I needed. I had to see him in person. I needed to get into a room with him, where I could watch his reactions. Three years ago I wouldn’t have said that. I’d have asked him over the comm and believed his answer. Not anymore. I don’t blame him, but that doesn’t mean I trust him. I think maybe I’m bitter about that, more than anything else with Serata. I missed our relationship. I needed somebody to trust, and it should have been him.

  I opened a message to him on my device—his private account, not his work—and sent him a note.

  Sir, I’m going to be out your way for business tomorrow. Would love to get together if you’ve got time. My schedule is flexible. Drop me a line.

  I kept it open for a moment and reread it a few times. I could have included more, a reason, but that would only make him wonder. This would be enough. I hit send.

  I got a response maybe ten minutes later.

  Carl, good to hear from you, brother. Why don’t you come to the house for dinner? Say around 1830.

  Perfect.

  I approached the door of Serata’s house in what passed for the suburbs. The very rich part of the suburbs, with large houses and manicured landscaping and security gates. I stopped short when Serata opened the door. He’d always been a physically imposing man, and I don’t know why I expected it to be different. I’d prepared for this mentally, seeing him again, but now that he stood in front of me I locked up a little.

  “Carl. You look like shit, brother.”

  I laughed. I don’t know what I expected him to say, but it wasn’t that. Suddenly everything was fine. “I haven’t been sleeping very well. You look like you’re doing okay.”

  “I’m trying to stay fit. It’s hard, though. Getting old sucks.” He paused, not quite long enough for it to get awkward. “Come on in,” he said. “Lizzie is putting dinner together. It will be a few minutes.”

  I handed him a bottle of whiskey. “I brought something.”

  He took it and admired the label. “The good stuff.”

  “Never show up empty-handed. That’s what my mom always said.”

  “Smart woman.” He led the way into a study that looked like it belonged in a holo-vid, all dark wood and rich brown carpet. He opened a cabinet and got out two glasses, poured two fingers into each glass, splashed in a little water, and handed me one. “How are you, Carl?”

  “I’m good,” I answered.

  He shook his head. “No. Really. How are you?”

  I took a sip of my liquor, enjoying the warmth of it in my throat. “About the same. Some days are okay, some days not so much.”

  He nodded. “You seeing anybody?”

  “You mean like a woman? No, I haven’t really felt like it since Sharon left.”

  “I mean professionally,” he said.

  “Ah. Like a shrink. Yeah, I go a couple times a
month. It doesn’t do much. It’s not like there’s a support group for guys who destroyed the lives of millions.”

  “It still helps to talk about it.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said. “You trust them? I mean, I start talking about things, it gets out, people start talking about what I say.”

  He took a sip of his whiskey, then swirled the remainder in his glass. “I think if you find the right one. You have to be careful. Look around if you have to. I worry about you, brother.”

  I nodded slightly and stared at my drink before taking a sip, savoring the flavor. We drank in silence for a moment. He meant what he said; I had no doubt about that. Not just about worrying about me either.

  Brother.

  I felt pressure behind my eyes, a headache building from holding things in. I took another swallow to get it to go away. Sometimes that helped.

  “How about you, sir? How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay. There was a job to do, and I did it. People can question it after the fact, but I made the best decision I could with the information I had at the time.”

  “I’m the one who did it, sir. Really. I know you sent me, but I programmed the targets.”

  “It’s bigger than that, what I did. You . . . your part, that made up a small piece of it. And I’m sorry for that, for what I did to you. But what I did . . . I circumvented the will of the civilian leaders, and while I still think I did the right thing, that’s not okay. I thought I had a better answer, and I implemented it. I did have a better answer. But that’s not really the point.”

  I finished my drink. I hadn’t expected this kind of discussion—really almost a confession—but somehow it made things okay. Not okay for the rest of the galaxy, but between Serata and me, at least.

  “You want to sit?” Serata asked.

  “Sure.” I took a heavy, leather-upholstered chair. Anywhere else I’d have figured it for fake, but I doubted it with Serata.

  He walked over and poured me some more booze, added some to his own half-finished glass and then sat as well. “So what’s going on? Unless you really expect me to believe you showed up out of the blue.”