Outcasts of Heaven Belt

by Joan D. Vinge

  Maybe he’d been forced into it. But Djem hadn’t thought that Abdhiamal had acted like a man who had been forced…Raul knew that Djem would never forgive Wadie Abdhiamal—for the betrayal of their friendship, if for no other reason. What was it about that ship, or whoever ran it, that would make a man like Abdhiamal willing to sacrifice everything? Maybe he would never know. But if that ship was following them to Lansing…

  Raul stretched and turned to look at Sandoval. Sandoval sat with an expression of uncompromising boredom on his hawk-nosed profile, rereading a novel tape. A good officer, Raul thought. If he believed this use of his ship and crew was fruitless or pointless, he never let it show. Raul kept his own doubts and speculations private. Twenty-three kiloseconds to Lansing. And maybe they wouldn’t be disappointed after all…

  The sight of Discus, shrunken almost to insignificance, greeted Raul as he pushed off from the hatch, drifting down to the stony surface of Lansing’s docking field. He remembered looking up into a Demarchy sky, long ago, where Discus had been only a bright starpoint, one of a thousand scattered stars, and as unreachable as the stars. He remembered the feeling of isolation and desolation that had struck him then. But this time, invisible now but much closer at hand, there was the ship that he had left in low orbit above Lansing to ensure their safety. He moved cautiously as he waited for the handful of crew from the two docked ships, easing tension and unused muscles; grateful, after nearly three megaseconds, for the return of normal gravity. Across the field lay three other ships. He studied them with a fleeting curiosity, realizing that even Lansing had the nuclear-electric rockets that the Grand Harmony didn’t have; but realizing too that these ships were so deadly that even the Harmony would be better off without them. Below him (the angle of gravity’s feeble drag put the term into his mind), the semitransparent plastic that shrouded nine-tenths of Lansing rock showed muted patches of green and gold, pastelled by the angle of his sight. He thought of drifted snow, the pastels of impure gases crystallized by cold.

  This was Lansing, the once-proud capital of a once-proud Heaven Belt, the only world of its kind. Its self-contained ecosystem had re-created Old Earth, and that was why its population had survived the war; and because, as a capital, it had been a showplace and nothing more. He knew that Lansing had been reduced to piracy at the time of their last close pass with Discus; he wondered what they had been reduced to by now. His crew were nervous and hostile. He had given orders for them to remain suited even inside the asteroid, to isolate them from any contagion—and to isolate them from any other incidents that might come out of a face-to-face confrontation with the locals.

  They started toward the single airlock visible in the hillside above the ships. Raul glanced on up at the solitary radio antenna on the crest of the naked hill. It was half-illuminated by the cold light of the distant sun, sinking into shadow as the planetoid tumbled endlessly, imperceptibly. No lights blinked along its slender stalk as a warning to docking ships. His radioman had been unable to detect any broadcast response from Lansing. He wondered whether their communications had failed entirely, whether they even knew his ships had landed…whether—like an unpleasant premonition—they might all be dead.

  One of his men turned the wheel on the hatchway sunk into the rock; he watched it begin to cycle. The men behind him waited, without eagerness, without relief, without any sense of triumph at having reached their goal. He heard only broken whispers, an uneasy muttering, picked up by his suit radio. Their silence surprised him until he realized that it was an extension of his own; as if isolation and the pall of death that shrouded the Main Belt like a tent shrouded this world had affected them all. The airlock hatch swung out. With a sudden vision of the yawning pit, the gates of hell, Raul entered the underworld.

  The lock cycled again, replacing vacuum with atmosphere in the crowded space between. Raul felt his suit lose its armor rigidity, glanced back to be sure that no one disobeyed him by loosening a helmet. After nearly three megaseconds of uncertain reprocessed air, he knew well enough how strong the temptation was. He checked his rifle, settled it in the crook of his arm.

  The inner hatch slid open. He looked through—into the staring faces of half a dozen men and women, frozen in disbelief. They had not, he gathered, been expecting him. He pushed through into the corridor, searching the frightened faces for a sign of leadership; taking in the filth, the patched and piecemeal clothing. He heard the startled curses of the men behind him, raised his own voice. “All right, who—”

  A woman who might have been young or old moved away from the rest toward him, carrying something bundled in rags; he saw a sheen of tears filming her cheeks, her dark eyes fixed on him with peculiar urgency. He heard her voice, trembling, “…a miracle, it’s a miracle…” Before he could react she had forced the bundle into his arms; she pushed off and disappeared down the sloping tunnel. Taken aback, he looked down at the ragged bundle and found himself holding a newborn child. The baby made no sound; when he saw why, he turned his face away. “Whose baby is this?” His voice hardened with anger, with denial.

  One of the men moved toward him, fear still on his face, a kind of desperation dragging him forward. “It’s mine…ours. Please…please, let me have it.” Something in his tone made the baby a thing. He stretched his arms; one sleeve flopped free, torn up to the elbow. His nails were outlined with black dirt; dirt filigreed the lines of his hands.

  Raul held the child out slowly, uncertain. The father took it, almost jerked it from his arms. Abruptly the man pushed through the circle of armed crewmen and caught the edge of the hatchway. He thrust the baby inside, his hand found the control plate, his fist struck it and started it cycling.

  Raul saw Sandoval leap forward, but the man pressed himself against the wall, covering the plate, as the door began to slide shut. Sandoval’s gloved fist caught him by the front of his shirt, ripping the rotten cloth; the man pushed him away with a foot. The hatch sealed shut as Sandoval tried to force his fingers into the gap. The light blinked red from green above their heads. “Why you—” Sandoval turned back, as two of his crew pinned the man between them.

  “Sandoval!” Raul raised a hand. “That’s enough. That’s enough…It was a—mercy killing. Let him go.”

  “Sir—” He saw Sandoval’s rage trapped behind helmet glass.

  Raul shook his head, putting aside the memory of his own three daughters and two sons, all grown now and sound. He watched the father sag against the wall in slow motion as the crewmen released him. The man plucked mournfully at the drifting edges of his torn shirt, as though the tear were a death wound.

  Raul glanced back down the tunnel, saw that the rest of the onlookers had disappeared. He moved toward their prisoner through the crew’s muttered anger, through a ring of set faces. The man cringed and put up his hands, “I had to…I had to. Somebody had to do it; she knew that, but she wouldn’t admit it! Everybody said so. It would’ve died anyway—wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it? You saw it, it was defective…” He lowered his hands, reached out to grasp Raul’s suited arm, “You saw it?”

  Raul’s fist tightened against the urge to slap the hand away. He took a deep breath. “Yes, I saw it. It wouldn’t have lived.”

  The man began to whimper, clinging to his sleeve. “Thank you…thank you…”

  Raul shook him roughly, caught somewhere between pity and disgust. “Who are you?”

  The man looked at him blankly, stupidly.

  “Your name,” Raul said. “Identify yourself.”

  “Wind…Wind Kitavu.” The man straightened, letting go of Raul’s arm as reason came back into his eyes; aged eyes in a young man’s face. “Who—what are you doin’ here?”

  “Askin’ the questions. First, is anybody in charge here, and if so, can you take us to ’em?”

  Wind Kitavu nodded, staring distractedly into the muzzles of half a dozen rifles. “The prime minister, the Assembly. I know where the chambers are. I’ll take you…” His fingers searched the tear in h
is shirt again, drew the edges together nervously. “You aren’t the—” Raul watched the question form on his lips, saw him swallow it. “You want me to take you?”

  Raul gestured his men aside; letting Wind Kitavu pass, he followed, and the crewmen fell in behind him. He noticed that one of the prisoner’s legs was shorter than the other and twisted. The gates of hell; the capital of Heaven.

  They were not led out onto the surface as he had expected. Wind Kitavu kept to the subterranean hallways, where dull-eyed men and women with stringy hair watched them pass, showing mingled fear and wonder, but mostly confusion. No threat. He felt his wariness settle into a bleak feeling of depression. A woman pushed out from the wall, moving with Wind Kitavu, “…starship…?” Wind Kitavu shook his head, and she drifted free, her face tightening. Raul saw despair in her eyes as he passed, and his spirits rose.

  On his orders Wind Kitavu pointed the way to the communications center, and he sent Sandoval with two men to investigate. With the others he continued on, wondering what they would find when they reached the assembly chambers.

  Whatever he had been expecting could not have prepared him for what he found. Someone had sent word of their arrival ahead: seven figures stood waiting, tiny in a vast rough-walled chamber that he somehow instinctively knew must have been intended for storage and not as a meeting hall. And like gem crystals in a matrix of barren rock, the five men and two women shone, resplendent in robes of state. One man, Raul noticed, was still adjusting the folds of a sleeve tangled by haste. The nearest of them started forward, his drifting progress a ceremony, his face set in expressionless formality. Raul studied the intricacies of layer on layer of brocade as the official approached: the fibers absorbed and enhanced light, sent it back at his eyes in a shower of scintillating fire. He began to see, as he probed the wash of gemlight, the patches where it dimmed and faltered. The garments were stained and frayed, eaten by time. The man wore a soft, turbaned head covering of the same material; his seamed face and gnarled hands, fading darkly against the brilliance, were clean.

  Raul waited silently until the official reached him. The six assembly members, their own threadbare splendor muted, clustered slowly behind him. Their group stare rested on Raul’s weapon rather than his face. At last the man lifted his gaze, searching Raul’s helmet glass to meet his eyes. “I am Silver Tyr,”—the voice surprised him with its unwitting arrogance—“President of the Lansing Assembly, Prime Minister of the Heaven Belt—”

  The man broke off, as laughter rattled in Raul’s helmet; for a long second he didn’t realize that it was not his own bitten-off laugh, that it had come from one of his crewmen. He raised a hand to stop it, hearing mentally the clattering mockery the chamber would make of the sound.

  “And you are—?” The prime minister forced the words with rigid dignity—demanding respect not for an aging shadow man, ludicrous in the rags of lost richness, but for the undeniable fact of the lost dream-time, of what they had all been, once, before their fall from grace.

  “Raul Nakamore, Hand of Harmony.” And almost unthinkingly he held out a hand, gloved against contamination but open in friendship, in recognition. “We mean you people no harm; we only want your cooperation while we’re here.”

  The prime minister extended a hand, with the hesitancy of a man who expected to have it lopped off. “And what have you come here for, sir?”

  Raul shook the hand, let it go, before he answered. “We’ve come huntin’ pirates, Your Excellency.” He dredged the unaccustomed title up from a half-forgotten history lesson. He noted the ill-concealed start of guilty knowledge on more than one face.

  Seeing him observe it, the prime minister said, almost protesting, “But that happened almost a gigasec ago, Hand Nakamore—and it was an act of need, as you must know. Surely you haven’t come all this way, after all this time, to punish—”

  “I’m not speakin’ of your last raid on the Rings, Your Excellency—I think you know that. I’m speakin’ of a starship from outside the Heaven system, that destroyed one of our Navy craft and raided our main distillery—and is passin’ by Lansing on its way out of the system—”

  “Sir—” Raul heard Sandoval’s voice, turned at the sound of more men entering the room.

  Sandoval and the two crewmen joined his group, escorting an angry, thin-faced woman. Brown skin, brown eyes, brown hair graying at the temples: Raul assessed her as she assessed him. He felt her anger flick out in a lash of wordless contempt as she glanced at the robed figures of the assembly. Her gaze returned to him, the anger cooling; he thought of a fire banked, controlled, still burning underneath.

  “Sir, we found this woman in the radio room. She claims their comm’s out of order.”

  He nodded; turned back as the prime minister said, “We know nothin’ about a starship. You saw the only ships we’ve got. They can’t reach Discus any more—”

  “Face reality, Silver Tyr!” The sharp edge of the woman’s voice slashed his words. “He can see you’re lyin’; all of you, you couldn’t cover the truth any more than those robes cover your rags. If he didn’t know the truth before, he knows it now. The best we can do is cooperate, the way he says, and hope maybe he’ll be willin’ to bargain—”

  “Flame Siva! Would you betray the only people in the universe who care enough to help us? And your own daughter—”

  “No cripple, no defective, is a child of mine.” Her voice betrayed her. Raul felt the heat of bitter disappointment in the ashes of her words. The sagging figure of crippled Wind Kitavu tightened in a flinch. “But that’s irrelevant, anyway, under the circumstances.”

  A frown settled into the lines of the prime minister’s face. “Two of our people are on board the starship. They say the Grand Harmony attacked the starship first. It has a reason and a right to retaliate against you, and you have no legal claim on it, in our judgment. We have no intention of cooperatin’ with any attempt to seize it.”

  “I see.” Raul matched the frown, realizing that there was nothing he could really do to these people, because he had already destroyed their only hope. “Fortunately for you, we don’t really need your cooperation…but we won’t tolerate any interference. We intend to wait here until that ship arrives.” He studied their responses; knew, with certainty and a kind of callous joy, that it would. “One of my ships is remainin’ in orbit above Lansing; if we encounter any resistance, the captain has orders to hole your tent. If you want what time you’ve got left to you, don’t get in our way.”

  “Even on Lansing we don’t run to meet Death, Hand Nakamore.” The prime minister looked down at his gun.

  “Especially on Lansing,” Flame Siva said. “We’re Materialists, Hand Nakamore, realists. At least we’re supposed to be.” She paused. “Just what are you plannin’ to do to that ship and its crew? Will you seize it intact?”

  Raul laughed shortly. “That’s what we’ll try to do. But I’d disable it permanently before I’d let it get away from us again. And we want the crew alive, to show us how to run it. But if they refuse to let us board—piracy is a high crime by anybody’s law, punishable by death.” He saw the assembly members shift, glittering.

  “She’s lost most of her crew to you already,” the woman murmured, almost to the floor.

  “She?” Raul said, surprised. “That’s right”—remembering a detail of alienness and the detection of human remains—“she: a woman pilot. So her crew is shorthanded?”

  “Two of our own people are with them,” she repeated. He realized that it was more than a simple statement of fact: her daughter, the prime minister had said. Her hand rose, agitated; she brushed her neck, her matted hair, controlling a gesture he recognized as threatening. “The captain promised us the hydrogen we need to survive, if they helped her get it for her own ship…the hydrogen you wouldn’t share with either of us, unless we took it from you by force.”

  He waited, not responding because she hadn’t made it a challenge.

  “What would you give us if I help
ed you secure the ship intact?”

  Surprised again, he asked, “What could you do to guarantee that?”

  Thin hands crossed before her, locked around her thin arms; sleeves that were too long and too wide slid back. “Allow me to finish repairs on the radio…give me parts for it if you have them.” She glanced up, her eyes hard and bright. “Let me make contact with the ship when it approaches, to reassure them that it’s safe to come in close, so that you can take them easily.”

  “We could do that ourselves.”

  “No, you can’t. My—our people on the ship know the radio here and its problems, and they know my voice. A stranger’s voice would make them suspect somethin’ was wrong…and so would radio silence.”

  “You may have a point.” Raul nodded.

  “Will you leave us the hydrogen if I do that?” No fire showed this time.

  “If the ship escapes, they can come back with the hydrogen!” Wind Kitavu burst out. “Don’t take away our only chance—”

  She turned; her face silenced him. Raul wondered what showed on it. She turned back. “Will you?”

  Knowing how easy it would be to lie, he said, “I’ll request permission. Maybe I’ll get it; maybe I won’t.” He waited for her reaction, was puzzled by a kind of exasperation, as if she had wanted him to lie, wanted an excuse to perform treason. Or was it something else? He thought of Wadie Abdhiamal.

  “But the crew, then? If you…take the ship intact.”

  “If I take them alive?” Her daughter…finding in that sufficient explanation at last. “So she does matter to you?”