Ten Directions

by Samuel Winburn

“We did try but no reply. With no signal back from your ship you were just dead and buried up in heaven Boss. No loss to Gudanko though. You can guess how efficiently he slid into your office. High drama for your funeral but few tears the day after. Hard to get in, easy to go - ride with the tide - you know the score.”

  “What is the score, Calvin30?”

  The number at the end of the name identified the man as a clone. That explained where Aurora had seen his face, although unlikely his in particular. Clones. Their very existence told her how far Coms could go and why they couldn’t be trusted. Along with a wrecked planet. Little things like that.

  “Gudanko’s playing things his own way these days. Space isn’t the place he’s facing. The man is planning to Swiss cheese the planet for increased efficiency. A logical follow on from a fellow of his methodology.”

  August’s eyes squinted, and Aurora could hear his breath tighten. “That goddamn fool.”

  “So, Mars has been spared. That crazy lady paleontologist will be pleased at the reprieve.”

  Aurora sighed. Maybe her work still had a chance to succeed.

  “He’s insane. We shouldn’t muck around with things we don’t properly understand. Someone told me that and it’s got me thinking.”

  Aurora smiled and willed August to leave it at that.

  “Boss, I’m at a loss.”

  “Think about it. Even bringing anti-matter down to the Earth to power something like that would be incredibly risky. Even if everything goes okay, we will just eat our future faster. Efficiency isn’t the way. We learned that 100 years ago.”

  “What would you then recommend?”

  Be content with less, voted Aurora.

  “The technology will never be safe on the Earth. It’s our only home. We need to talk to the Revs.”

  “That good oil is on the boil.”

  “Right. Good. Then somehow you have to move us down to the planet.”

  “You will not feel this a satisfying fix Boss, but Gudanko will need to rescue you.”

  August’s eyes blinked at that. “What? That is insane. Gudanko cannot know. Not now. I absolutely forbid it.”

  Why August would be so alarmed stymied Aurora. Was the man’s pig-headed pride so big that he couldn’t stand to have to rely on his rival, even in a life or death situation? She almost said something.

  “August. You know I cannot entreat to fly the fleet. I have no pull for control. Think this one through. Gudanko will just have to see in your face that he’s taken your place. If he thinks he holds all the cards he will carefully deal, but out of his hand he may throw them away.”

  “Are you saying if he can’t control our fates he will see us dead?”

  “Umm, yes.” The stranger seemed momentarily puzzled by the comment. “There are many ways. It is easy to die in space.”

  “So, the only way to survive is to put our lives in the hands of the man who wants me dead?”

  A puzzled frown winked across the stranger’s face and Aurora realised the cause was August’s mixing of pronouns. The man didn’t know about Kalsang and herself. He was quite sharp to pick that up.

  “You are right - I don’t like it - but we can get out of Gudanko’s clutches better when we are on the ground.”

  “More room to move Boss.”

  August’s helmet turned to scan the room and picked up Kalsang pulling debris away to patch a leak. The monk smiled and gave a thumbs-up.

  “Calvin30?”

  “Ah, August. There is someone with you.”

  “You didn’t know about that? Have I surprised you?” August seemed genuinely pleased for his lackey to be at a loss for words.

  “August? How?”

  “I thought you knew everything Calvin30? How is this? My crafty friend does not even know what is going on in Mirtopik Com? What do I employ you for?”

  “Who is he?”

  “The monk. That monk from the Triton array you idiot. The one we lost. Well guess who found him?”

  August was clearly enjoying himself. Beyond the expected shock of the near impossible, Aurora noted, there was something else that struck her as odd. Did a flash of terror cross the stranger’s face? “Incredible, isn’t it? We were out by Mars and this guy just appears out of nowhere. How is that possible? What do you think?”

  The stranger was shaking, visibly unnerved by Kalsang’s presence. What was that all about?

  “What did he say?”

  “What did he say? What did he say? You don’t know? The infallible Calvin30. Do I have to tell you everything? Nothing much actually. That he survived the destruction of the Triton array and found me by accident. Can you believe that? Do you believe that?” August challenged.

  The stranger shifted uncomfortably, and then slowly his smile returned. “No Boss, I do not see how it is so. It is impossible. The probability is infinitesimal.”

  “Do you think he is a plant by Gudanko? Ha. And you think you play a long game Calvin30? The man must already know. What do you think?”

  “I, I do not know. It makes no sense but makes more sense.” The smile stabilised and the stranger’s face began to soften.

  “It makes no sense but makes more sense?” August mocked his subordinate’s uncertainty. “Really? Find out.”

  “Yes Boss. And what then? What if he is from Gudanko?”

  There was a long pause. Aurora felt sure August was on the verge of saying something she would never forgive.

  “He’s not.”

  “And how would you know amigo from foe?”

  August grinned. “He had an excellent reference.”

  Aurora felt a rush at that, something between love and pride. He’d listened after all.

  The clone scratched his head, working through the puzzle.

  “Phantom referrals seem out of the frame Boss. How else can this be explained?”

  August looked around. “I don’t know.”

  “And should the worst contradict your trust. What then must be?”

  August looked again at Kalsang and his vision narrowed.

  “We take care of it.”

  “As is our way, I’ll make that play.”

  August nodded.

  The strange man’s lip curled and then the link faded out.

  It took Aurora some minutes to take in that last bit, but as she did the tight walls of the Safe seemed to close in on her. August had irritated her and tormented her, but she hadn’t thought he was capable of anything evil. The more she thought about it the more it was obvious. How else could a man get to his position of power? Were the vulnerable moments they had shared just part of the same game? She didn’t know what to believe.

  After what seemed like impossibly long hours, her confinement finally came to an end when August slipped into the Safe to trade places.

  “How are you feeling? Are you able to go out?” he asked.

  She wasn’t. She hadn’t been able to sleep. Every inch of her body was bruised and depleted. She felt betrayed and frightened by one of the two men that had become her entire world. She had to warn Kalsang.

  “We’ll see how I go. I’ve had some rest,” she lied and pulled on the suit that August had just exited.

  “Are you sure?” He seemed honestly concerned. He seemed to be.

  “Well I’m not going to spend much more time cramped in here with you.” She winked at him, a nervous gesture since what she had said was exactly the truth.

  August seemed taken back by this. “Uh. Come right back when you need to.” At that moment, he certainly didn’t seem like a Com sociopath, but looks were deceiving.

  “Rightio.”

  Aurora steadied herself on Kalsang’s waiting shoulder. She motioned for him to walk with her over to the airlock of the Garuda where, once the space was re-pressurised, she and Kalsang could speak without helmets or the potential of being monitored. She told him everything she had overheard. Kalsang sat down to take in the news, then looked up at her thoughtfully.

  “I have something
to show you,” he said. Kalsang carefully extracted his neurovisor and handled it to her.

  Aurora braced herself as the tendrils slid painfully through her skull. She watched the neuroview mneme in amazement and horror. There was no way to put what she was seeing into a meaningful context. A whole world had been sucked dry, ripped to pieces and suddenly, blank, nothing, erased from the universe. It was the most terrifying thing she had ever witnessed and there was no context into which she could fit it. More frightening to her was that it scarcely penetrated the numbness in her being. The scenes unfolding before her made it clear how much her heart had itself been sucked dry and emptied out.

  Her focus shifted back to Kalsang at a time when it all became too difficult. She didn’t know what to make of this.

  “What?”

  He held his finger up to her lips.

  “I do not know Aurora, isn’t it?”

  He was crying.

  “I really do not know. It is too impossible. All I have ever done is what my teacher told me. Go here, do this. Easy like that. Even to Triton. Easy. Now August-la has built this terrible thing. All because of me, isn’t it? Now what can my teacher tell me? What?”

  Aurora became dizzy as the enormity of what he was asking fell on her. Her whole world and everyone she knew. She couldn’t save hypothetical bacteria on some inhospitable rock; how could she do anything about this? And here she was swanning around with man who had created this horrible machine. It made her sick. It was all too much.

  “I need help. You are my friend. So sorry.”

  The gravity of his request was communicated through the weary sadness in his eyes. “How?” Aurora mouthed, panicking. Kalsang bent forward and caught her falling head. Cradling it in his palms, he pressed his forehead against hers.

  “What to do?” he whispered, in a tone strangely soothing in its despondency.

  “We need to tell August. He will help.” Aurora wanted this to be true, but of that she was far from sure.

  “No, no, no,” Kalsang’s face contorted as he squeezed her hand, “August cannot be trusted.”

  An alarm sounded warning that the ship would be soon be slowing in preparation for arrival into the Earth’s orbit.

  Chapter 33 - Calvin30

  The vessel identified itself as the S.V. Senji Maru, a scavenging ship, the kind that cleared the lunar earth orbital lanes of lost bolts and ejected boosters and performed salvage operations.

  Following the mission parameters uploaded into its robotic brain it recognised its intended target and pursued it, unsheathing the laser welding tools from among the arsenal of instruments at the ends of its octopoidal arms. There was no option of avoiding it. The momentum driving the Garuda/Icarus towards Earth precluded steering. The electronic brain mapped the target schematic to the rotation of its quarry and, once locked on, took aim on the digitally highlighted sections. And then, in two quick bursts, the communication transmission and sensory arrays on the Garuda and Icarus were disabled.

  The action was silent and exact. The only indications were the sudden disappearance of the outside view in the Garuda’s external monitor and the subtle winking of a red diode on the pilot’s console. Those two simple changes effectively transferred full control to the attacker.

  The monotone of Vladimir Gudanko droned through the onboard phone.

  “Hello August. What truly wonderful news it is that you have survived such a terrible fate. It is completely unbelievable. The Board and I extend our profound sympathy for your plight and look forward to seeing you as soon as possible. We have arranged this escort for you back to Luna City. It is imperative that you stay locked on this ship’s beacon to avoid losing your way. I will be transiting to the Moon to greet you personally.”

  That whole scene would play out on automatic, according to a schedule laid down to the letter from long before August had flown up the rabbit hole in the sky. In fact, it had been the de facto back-up plan from the get go. All this was from a time that was by now almost irrelevant. The game had grown enormously since then. In those innings, August had once been King. In the new age dawning he might be more a pawn - an essential pawn nonetheless.

  Calvin30 dispersed the pieces with his fist. Together with his pipe, this chess set constituted the greater part of his personal non-fashion assets. As a rule, his position was unassailable, but this time his inspired gambit, sacrificing his castle to promote August back from lost pawn, was in peril.

  The pattern began with Queen Bhatterjee. Moving her into position was the lynch pin, and to execute this move he’d sold her Rev on the following logic. To correct their currently criminalised reputations as murderers of a now posthumously revered August Bridges, Kaliyuga Rev had been given a target. That Bridges yet lived the neuroscript transmissions from the Garuda sent to Bhatterjee confirmed this. How much she missed him was in her hiss. And why should she care that her maximum foe had fallen into the talons of his rival who would surely dispose of him on her behalf? Only this. Perhaps out of gratitude to his rescuers he might breath hidden truths of his horrible experiment. And, of course, August's reappearance at the side of his supposed assassins might rehabilitate their tarnished image. So, the plot hatched that the Revs would snatch August from Gudanko, with Calvin30 thankfully driving once again as irreplaceable to the cause.

  Calvin30 pondered the pieces scattered across his apartment’s Persian carpet as he bent to collect them. There was no hope in spotting a pattern - white and black casually intermingled, bishops on queens and kings under their castles. Yet Calvin30 caught himself trying to spot it.

  That mental trap of mapping order on chaos mirrored his current impasse. Calvin30 was joyous over August’s arrival. The appearance of his boss’s face put all the other pieces in place. All the pieces minus one that is. A fatal unforeseen gap had appeared in his perfect playbook. Unforeseen because it simply could not be - the thing that pushed through his worst dreams and upset his rest - the impossible actual improbable fact that made him want to scream - was that goddamn monk.

  That cat was so far out of Calvin30’s box - in fact nowhere near to its proximity. Not only that, but he’d popped out of that hat at the point of optimal pain. Had the monk returned to Jupiter he could have encountered any number of stopgap fates. The most likely a collision with the altered path of a satellite and the colony on Europa, a contingency Calvin30 had been monitoring. That plan had obviously fallen flat.

  Calvin30’s disgrace was consummate. Such an unjust juxtaposition of tough luck. Conceivably it was a bad dream, but dreams have the courtesy to break when you wake. The night was too warm and his skin too clammy in his pyjamas. He played his SlySynth on Alto into the bleary dawn trying in vain to find some better way to replay the monsters who were living well and happy in his head.

  Off and on Calvin30 dozed in ill-repose - awakening through the morning - compulsively re-imagining each moment of his talk with August over and over and over again in his neuroview. Again and again and again and again he dissected August's words and scrutinised the implacable presence of the monk, this ghost of a chance, his face, his expression, his impossible happenstance. Slowly, a picture forming in his mind became increasingly clear. What August had said was true - that the monk had not yet spilled the beans.

  But that didn’t restore his carefully played chessboard. The monk’s absurd reappearance had replaced Calvin30’s inspired plays with some horrid order ouroboros. No matter where he began his rumination, he ended up eating himself.

  Where the hell was he?

  The dawn was waking the walls of the run-down barrio where he was wandering. Calvin30 looked for landmarks and concluded he was lost, loitering some place below Hollywood in what looked like La Brea. He checked his neuroview GPS and located the Tar Pits close by. Oh, how appropriate. And, to top it off, he noticed with disgust he was still pimped out in his pyjama top.

  The gates at the Pits were open early for an event and Calvin30 displayed his instrument to be waved in as the entertainm
ent. He detoured from the group, attracted to a statue of a tar trapped elephant calling to his unstuck family. Poor fellow - off for a prehistoric afternoon wallow and ends up a fossil. A baby elephant, fearing its father’s fate, screamed, bereaved, but the mother appeared merely annoyed. Brother, can’t you tell the difference between mud and tar?

  Stuck in the muck in a truck with a mammoth. Stuck. That’s where he was. As outlandish as his plots had spun, Calvin30 hadn’t travelled this far by leaving loose ends laying. Any longer lapse in action could give traction to an unpleasant reaction. He had to pull the pin and call it a day. And yet he and they stayed. Stuck.

  Even an artist knows enough to not stray off the canvas, Calvin30 reasoned. Jazz itself was the tension between freedom and a frame. Going solo outside the set notes was a no no. And yet tempting.

  Fulminating on the pachyderm’s Palaeolithic stupidity, Calvin30 funnelled his parallel pathos into his horn - churning his ennui into the circular fire-breathing of Roscoe’s ‘Dragons’. Softly crescendoing into the cycle, longer and stronger, he concluded his solo in didgeridoo mode.

  If only he could similarly keep August and the monk out of trunk reach, but what sort of ooze could glue one and exclude the other? No tar seemed to tug at the monk, ostensibly not even death as Calvin30 had seen. That was too eerie to consider without despair, which placed August as the trappable variable. Then he was back to where he began. Calvin30 could not cook up any perception of what he had put August through out there. How could he conceivably fathom what he had done to the man? His creation had escaped him.

  Calvin30 halted. The Moon was higher than the Sun causing his shadow to be confused. Half of it somehow slipped through the crack of dawn. Heading counter to the course of things was also natural. Perhaps that was the point. Maybe the game was about more that hitting your marks and watching them fall. Perchance it was a dance.

  At that moment, the call came through. Great gears had begun to grind. The ocean was in motion. A Comsec goon on the phone informed Calvin30 that Gudanko had presumed to fly him to the moon, and Calvin30 could not refuse. He bid his adieu to the mired mammoth and meandered back to his apartment with the demeanour of a man abandoning his plans.