Embustero- Pale Boundaries

by Scott Cleveland

  “I’m fine. But Dayuki—” his voice caught involuntarily—this was better than he’d hoped! “Dayuki’s in a bad way.”

  “Then you need to bring her back,” Tamara said. “The hospital can treat her more effectively than you can.”

  “You’ll kill her!”

  “That’s not true,” his cousin denied. “I told you once that I don’t wish her any harm. I meant it.”

  “You also said you wouldn’t defy the Old Lady’s orders,” Hal reminded her.

  “I didn’t expect her to be so unreasonable!” Tamara cried. “I know you love Dayuki. And this might not be the time to say it, Hal, but I love you! Crazy as it sounds, I’m willing to let her have you to prove it.”

  The admission stunned him. He couldn’t conceive Tamara Cirilo saying such a thing, even as deception. The concept itself was alien to her, but McKeon and Sergio were there as well. Together the three of them could cook up a whale of a scheme.

  “You aren’t the only one involved,” Hal replied.

  “My father isn’t…himself,” she said. “He’s no longer in the picture. McKeon will do what we tell him to.”

  “Is that so.”

  “It is,” McKeon said. “Your relationship with Dayuki is a Family matter. I don’t have a vested interest one way or another and I wasn’t directly ordered to take any action against her. As far as the Old Lady is concerned I don’t know a thing.”

  “Plausible deniability, Stan?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Suppose I choose not to trust you?”

  “I’ve already activated the anti-aircraft guns,” McKeon informed him. “We’ll try to disable you, but they’re a bit heavy for that. I don’t recommend you rely on their sense of proportion.”

  “I have to think about it,” Hal said quietly.

  “Take as much time as you need,” Tamara told him.

  You can count on that, Hal thought as he cut the connection.

  FOURTEEN

  Nivia: 2710:04:08 Standard

  “Who is she, Hal-san?” Dayuki rasped. “How did she die?”

  “She’s not dead,” Hal replied, straightening up from beside the shuttle’s coldsleep pod. “She’s…” he struggled for the word that best described the process without an undue amount of explanation, “hibernating.”

  “People do not hibernate,” the Minzoku girl informed him.

  “Not without help, that’s true,” he said as he crossed to the bunk where Dayuki lay. In fact, the woman had been clinically dead for over a month. The readings on the pod indicated that the defrosting was proceeding normally, but coldsleep carried a mortality rate of three to five percent in the best of circumstances.

  “You look better today.”

  “If you say it is so,” she conceded, “but I do not feel better.”

  “You should have seen yourself a few days ago,” Hal grinned. In truth her appearance was worse: the patches of frostbitten skin on her face had begun to peel, exposing sores that itched irritably despite the analgesic salve he’d applied. Her constant picking at the wounds reminded him of the doomed grazer in Nowatchik’s lab. It was apparent that she’d contracted a serious respiratory infection as a result of her exposure before she’d regained full consciousness. A dose of powerful broad-spectrum antibiotics was in the process of conquering the condition, and Hal was happy to have her awake and cognizant despite her appearance.

  Her inquisitive mind presented other problems, however, and trying to deceive her would consume more time and energy than he had to spare.

  “Who is she?” Dayuki repeated.

  “A prostitute,” Hal said after a moment. “A half-breed girl from Sin City.”

  “You are not so virile that Mistress Cirilo and I cannot satisfy your desires,” Dayuki said thoughtfully. “Why have you frozen a whore?”

  Hal didn’t know whether to feel pleased or offended. “You do have a way of cutting through the fat,” he laughed. “I’ll try to do the same. You understand that not everyone at the Fort is Onjin, correct?”

  “You are,” Dayuki replied. “Mistress Cirilo and her father are. McKeon-san is amplie…impluey—“

  “An employee,” Hal nodded. “A voluntary servant that receives money for his or her service. Most of the people you saw fit that description. The duties they perform were once performed by the Minzoku, but there was a bit of trouble between our people before either of us were born.”

  “A shameful time,” Dayuki acknowledged sadly. “It is said that Den Tun himself had a hand in it.”

  “The Onjin hired employees to take over the duties inside the Fort,” Hal went on. “It’s been that way ever since. Many of the employees today are their children and grandchildren. I broke a long-standing tradition when I brought you into the Fort,” Hal said. “Some of the employees believe that they will be put out and replaced by Minzoku again. They’re causing trouble and spreading fear among the rest of the employees.”

  “They should be punished!” Dayuki exclaimed indignantly.

  “Yes, they should, but many are very skilled, specialized workers. They would be difficult to replace. They know this and threatened to stop working if you weren’t removed from the Fort. Some want you killed; there were rumors that a few might even try to murder you. That’s why I had to get you out quickly, before they could make good on their threats.

  “But I’ve given a certain legitimacy to their underlying fear by protecting you,” Hal said. “It’s best if they all think you’re dead, and they’ll need convincing proof before they’ll believe.

  “Hence,” he gestured to the woman in the coldsleep pod, “a decoy.”

  “She is to die in my place?” Dayuki asked.

  “Does that disturb you?”

  “She is Minzoku,” Dayuki replied. “Her fate rests with mine in the hands of the Onjin. But may I ask a favor, Hal-san?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do not let her suffer more than necessary; her life has been difficult enough.”

  “Tennison’s on his way back,” McKeon told Tamara over the intercom. “He’s got the girl with him.”

  “I’m going to the sally port to let them in,” Tamara replied.

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  Sergio appeared in the doorway holding his coat. “I heard,” her father said. “I’m coming, too.”

  “It’s alright, Dad,” Tamara told him. “McKeon and I can handle it.”

  “I’m still Deputy Administrator,” Sergio said with familiar aplomb. Then added hesitantly: “Aren’t I?”

  “Of course you are,” Tamara assured him. In name only. Sergio’s duties had migrated to Tamara since Hal and Dayuki’s escape. She kept him busy with the endless menial administrative tasks, and he was just as visible to the rest of the Fort’s inhabitants, but the directions he gave and policies he implemented came from her.

  Tamara Cirilo could not have talked her cousin out of his shuttle without McKeon’s help. A twinge of jealousy pricked her heart at the thought. It still bothered her that Hal was so enamored (she could not bring herself to call it “love”) with Dayuki that he was willing to defy the Old Lady.

  But isn’t that what you’re doing? she asked herself. Are you willing to defy the Family matriarch for his sake, or are you just buying time?

  So far the Old Lady hadn’t demanded confirmation of Dayuki’s death, but Tamara would not lie if asked directly. She’d given herself a migraine worrying that each day would bring the call, that she would have to report that Lieutenant Dayuki was not only alive, but holed up under Hal’s protection.

  Half of the issue was now settled, but the Old Lady wouldn’t be any less furious that the Fort’s Deputy Administrator and intelligence officer had failed to carry out a clearly defined sanction for some ten days. The only reason the Minzoku girl hadn’t received a bullet in the head the moment she stepped out of the shuttle was McKeon.

  The Fort’s head of security had put forward a number of suggestions to decei
ve the Old Lady and get Dayuki safely off world. Each one had a better than fifty-fifty chance of success. At first Tamara thought that McKeon was simply doing what was necessary to bring Dayuki into the open. Hal was intelligent enough to know whether or not a scheme was feasible and would never have agreed to come out with the offer of anything less.

  As the days wore on, however, she began to suspect that McKeon was willing to participate in such a scheme if she and Hal desired. He never said so directly, of course, but he seemed to be planning more carefully than one might if it was nothing more than an elaborate ruse.

  Again, Tamara’s emotions tore at her: shock that McKeon would ever consider such a thing, gratitude that he had, and a nagging suspicion that she was missing something.

  A low-pressure front pushing up from the southwest brought cloud cover and significantly warmer temperatures as well as the threat of more precipitation. The layer of compact snow on the paths inside the Fort had become weak and slushy, making the footing a bit uncertain where it hadn’t been scrapped off yet.

  A lump formed in Tamara’s throat. She’d hated the damp, slushy parts of winter since she was a child. The beauty of fresh, sun-lit powder she could appreciate, but not enough to join in the yearly cross-country and downhill ski trips of previous years. Now the thought of leaving made her inexplicably sad. She would look back on Nivia’s most unpleasant characteristics with unrealistic fondness as she described them to her children and grandchildren who might well never experience life outside an artificial environment.

  “I will sorely miss this place,” Sergio said beside her as if hearing her thoughts.

  “Me, too, Dad.”

  McKeon stood by the sally port waiting for them. They had to force the door open through a soggy snowdrift and squeeze through in their heavy parkas to stand just outside the wall.

  Hal and Dayuki were only a quarter of the distance between the Fort and the shuttle. The dry, light powder of a few days before had turned to a heavy wet mire and the Minzoku girl was struggling—no, floundering—even with Hal’s assistance.

  “Why didn’t he wait?” Tamara asked. “We could have brought her back on a sled.”

  “I offered,” McKeon shrugged. “He said absolutely not. I don’t know what he’s thinking.” At least they were dressed more warmly now than when they fled. Part of Dayuki’s problem had to be the heavy clothing, which was two times too large for her. Leave it to Hal to push stubbornness to new heights.

  “At least bring a stretcher to the sally port,” Tamara insisted. “Dayuki’s going straight to the clinic.”

  Watching the two of them trudge through the snow was excruciatingly frustrating and Tamara grew more furious with her cousin with each passing moment. How could any human being be so damned dense?

  “You want some help?” McKeon called out when they finally reached the halfway point. Hal had to let go of Dayuki with one hand to make a negative gesture. The girl dropped to her knees with exhaustion.

  “This is absurd!” Tamara seethed. “Wait here!” She set out from the base of the wall, breaking trail as she went. Hal waved her back angrily, but Tamara ignored him. Hal left Dayuki where she sat and started forward to confront Tamara.

  He shook off a glove as he came, reached into a deep pocket in his parka and came up with his needle-beamer. Before Tamara could do more than register shock at the threat Hal turned back to Dayuki, raised the weapon, and fired.

  A jet of vaporized blood and flesh erupted from where the girl’s face had been, driving her body backward into the snow, arms flung wide. Bits of bloody bone and flesh began to patter out of the air around Hal as he turned away from the corpse and picked up his glove.

  Tamara choked on bile and stumbled back to the sally port. Sergio and McKeon caught her arms and lowered her to a sitting position in the snow bank. Hal arrived a minute later. A glistening gobbet of whitish-gray matter clung to the parka’s fur lining below his chin.

  Tamara leaned over and threw up.

  Hal marched up to Sergio until they were nearly nose-to-nose. The rosy tint in the elder Cirilo’s face faded to ashen gray. “I did what I had to,” Hal said coldly. “Now it’s your turn.”

  He pushed past them and vanished through the sally port without another word.

  The Embustero: 2710:04:28 Standard

  Training under Figenshaw’s tutelage ranked among the most grueling experiences of Terson’s life. Once the Embustero jumped there was nothing for the helmsman to do, providing the woman ample opportunity to put him through his paces. He spent every working minute of his shift in the hot seat running simulation after simulation.

  The first block consisted of basic “go from point A to point B” exercises that Terson mastered in a matter of hours. The second and third blocks, station and ship-to-ship docking, weren’t much harder—until Figenshaw ran them again without the benefit of the Automatic Docking System.

  Flying by instruments was nothing new to Terson, but nothing had prepared him for the sense of detachment brought about by the freighter’s sheer size. Aircraft, boats, even the small trainer spacecraft he’d piloted previously provided input on multiple senses: sight, sound and feel. He’d always thought of his vessel as nothing more than a second skin, but the Embustero’s bulk left him numb and disoriented. His instincts rebelled against the necessity to maneuver something he couldn’t see around objects only his sensors told him were there; he found it necessary to give his instruments a measure of trust that he’d rarely given to people and tried to compensate by patching his auxiliary monitors to various camera feeds around the ship.

  “I catch you doing that again,” Figenshaw warned, “I’ll shut them off. There are more important things to look at than what’s going on outside.”

  “I can’t fly blind!” Terson exclaimed.

  “You don’t have to!” Figenshaw insisted. “Your instruments and visual representations tell you everything you need to know.”

  “But they’re artificial.”

  “Don’t confuse artificiality with inaccuracy,” she told him. “The information you see on these indicators is hundreds of times more accurate than what you can possibly perceive with natural senses. You just have to learn to interpret them the same way you learned to interpret the feel of an aircraft nearing a stall.”

  “That comes naturally,” Terson countered.

  “The hell it does,” Figenshaw snorted. “You might think so because you’ve flown for so long, but how the sound of an engine or the feel of lift on a wing correlates to the behavior of your aircraft is no less a learned skill than what you’re doing now.

  “Let me ask you this: could you fly safely in extreme weather conditions without an artificial horizon?”

  “Absolutely not,” Terson answered without hesitation.

  “Why?”

  “You lose your frame of reference in clouds and darkness,” Terson explained. “You can’t tell up from down.”

  “What about your sense of motion?” Figenshaw pressed. “That doesn’t depend on sight.”

  “You can’t trust it,” Terson replied, “you know that.”

  “That’s right, on both counts. What you have to do now is apply the concept of artificial horizon versus inner ear to everything. It isn’t that you can’t trust what your natural senses tell you, it’s that they aren’t telling you anything.”

  Terson practiced hour after hour, frustrated by the long string of failures that invariably ended with a stinging critique and Figenshaw’s unemotional “Not there yet; do it again.” He began to look forward to the mindless drudgery of K.P. and latrine duty following his sessions in the simulator.

  Figenshaw eliminated the respites by getting him exempted from the general labor pool in order to better facilitate his training. The days blurred together as simulator sessions lengthened, leaving him just enough time to catch the tail end of the chow line and hit the bunk if he expected to get a decent night’s sleep.

  He made the mistake of trading sleep f
or bar time only once; Figenshaw proved herself capable of merciless sadism when she realized he was hung over. The only way out appeared to be to satisfy his tormentor’s expectations and Terson doubled his efforts, skipping meals to put in more simulator time. Figenshaw responded by increasing the difficulty of the exercises and adding homework.

  Terson dragged himself through a third block of navigation/docking simulations on one meal and four hours of sleep a day. Figenshaw shook her head sadly after he completed the final sim on his fourth try. “You know, Pelt, I think you just need to start over. I’ll reload block two while you get some chow. Be back here in an hour.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Figenshaw’s bad eye shot off at a painful angle. “What did you say?”

  “Go—to—hell,” Terson repeated carefully.

  “Refusing a direct order is worth a week in the brig,” she informed him. “I’m not going to babysit you, but that’s what you’ll get if you’re not back here like I told you.”

  “Fine—at least I’ll get some sleep!” Terson flipped off his harness and climbed out of the seat. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get shitfaced.” The rest of the bridge crew observed the exchange mutely, casting uncomfortable looks back and forth. Han-Ju moved to stand between Terson and the hatch, a gesture as futile as a rabbit staring down a truck.

  “How far are you going to let this go, Lita?” the deck officer asked.

  “Oh, I dunno,” Figenshaw replied lightly. “I’d kind of like to see him kick your ass.”

  Someone guffawed, setting off an explosion of laughter that broke even Han-Ju’s somber cast. Terson looked about him in dumb amazement, his bewildered expression feeding their mirth as his anger fizzled to impotence.

  The navigator slapped him on the back. “Got to hand it to you, Joey,” he snickered, “I didn’t think you’d put up with her shit for so long.”

  “You ran me out of sims,” Figenshaw smiled, walking around to face him. “You worked through that last half dozen almost faster than I could program.”