Inside Out

by Thorne Moore

  ‘My what? What are you talking about? We get credit, you said, offset against our future salary.’

  ‘Within bounds, Mr Burnand. The limit being twenty thousand IMU, and that’s always been more than enough to keep our Triton passengers happy. But you’ve certainly got through yours rather faster than most.’ McBride smiled pleasantly. ‘Still, not to worry. There’s plenty of free entertainment on board this ship, and of course meals are inclusive.’

  Merrit stared at him. He imagined leaping up, seizing the smug purser by the throat, shaking him, vomiting invective on him. But, numb with hopelessness, he knew he wasn’t capable of rising, or speaking, or doing anything. He sat there, like a crushed snail, beyond help. He watched them finish their hand. Selden won with two aces and gathered his winnings, casually sweeping up Merrit’s chips with the rest.

  Merrit took a deep breath. It felt like the first he’d taken for some time. He rose unsteadily to his feet. They watched, unsympathetic, indifferent. He picked up his last two chips and walked out. McBride, still watching the game, shut the door after him.

  Outside, Merrit reeled against the cold steel ribs of the corridor and slowly slid to the floor. He sat there awhile, arms round his head and his knees, engulfed in an emptiness that precluded thought. But out of the darkness, resentment gradually began to assert itself. Everything was McBride’s fault. The bastard! Him and Foxe! And those shitty cheats in there who’d robbed him, and Addo and Abigail and Seccor Police and Carbinier Corporation, and his school and his mother and malign fate. To hell with them! He’d make them pay. Once he got to Triton, he’d make them all pay.

  Into the maelstrom of his fury slipped consciousness of another presence. Some other breath, some small sound. He jerked his head up and found David Rabiotti standing over him, looking down with a blank face.

  Merrit pushed himself away and sprang to his feet. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  David looked at him, head slightly on one side, then on the other. Like a village idiot, thought Merrit. A dribbling village idiot.

  Or like a scientist studying an insect wriggling on a pin.

  Merrit shuddered. ‘Fuck off,’ he said, pushing past, and ran for the elevators.

  Chapter 6

  The Merrit was in the passage, occupying the portion of D-Deck between the reactor inspection chamber and the safety suit store. It was making wet blubbery sounds, punctuating the murmur of coolants in their pipes and the faint electrical hum of the monitors.

  For David Rabiotti, the Merrit was a subject to be noted and stepped round, like all the human bacteria that swarmed over his ship or, in the case of the clucking, interfering McBride, over David’s mind.

  The McBride was down here too, in the room where the men inhaled fumes and made grunting noises. And there were engineers on D-Deck, whistling or yelling at each other, messing, making hurried repairs before strutting away, back up to the light. The discordant clamour of human voices hurt David’s ears. They threw words at him, and pushed him if they saw him, though people seldom did see him. He preferred to walk where the bacteria were not swarming. Alone with his ship.

  Always so many of them on the top three decks, clamouring, jabbering, thrusting their fleshy features at him, trying to distract him from the steel, the cables, the currents and pulses behind the plastic wood veneer and the shabby carpets. Even amidst their cacophony, his consciousness of the ship was paramount. It was a living thing; a metallic organism, breathing, stirring in the darkness.

  D-Deck was far better. No fake distractions here, just the guts of the ship in gleaming conduits, and the workshops littered with instruments. His playground.

  He gauged his time. When the engineers abandoned the workbenches, he’d come out. They’d dim the lights as they left. He always dimmed them further. He worked better in the dark.

  That love of darkness was something his father had never understood – like everything else about David. Michael Rabiotti, head of Ragnox Research, had only ever confronted one problem that he’d found impossible to solve: his son. Hailed as the most brilliant scientist of his age, the man to whom the universe itself bowed down, he was the genius who’d burst through the existing bounds of knowledge and dragged the human race out into new planes of existence. How was it possible that he’d begotten an incomprehensible idiot?

  Somewhere in the forty years of unrivalled achievement that had opened up the Outer Circles to exploitation and dynamic anarchy, Michael Rabiotti had found time to marry and produce five daughters, all brilliant, all following in his footsteps. Then this.

  David’s malfunctioning heart was easily fixed. Anything physical was fixable. But what could be done with David’s mind? It was a black hole. Inexhaustible light was sucked in, but none escaped.

  Michael tried every corrective measure on and off the market before he finally admitted defeat – an admission he never shared. The world need know nothing, if David were settled somewhere far from public attention. Jordan Pascal had research programmes on Triton that might make something of the boy. Michael proposed. David agreed. Or he appeared to agree, enough to satisfy the Ragnox lawyers.

  Somewhere beyond their debates and furtive arrangements, David knew, with the homing instinct of a swallow, that he was going where Nature intended him to be, to the mothering, endless night of the Outer Circles, and this ship, his ship, his outer skin, would carry him there.

  The Heloise offered him greater liberty that he’d ever known at home, but not quite complete freedom. McBride’s erratic care kept dragging him with razor wire back to the shrieking light. He was compelled to present himself at times for inspection, to be washed and brushed down, and sent on bizarre missions among the bacteria, to recite gibberish, to stand and sit and eat at command. Afterwards, David could retreat into his own nether world.

  He passed unseen, blending into shadows, dissolving into corners. His tall but disjointed form could insinuate into gaps and cracks and niches other people would never suspect. He had allowed himself to be noticed by the Merrit, because the thing was intriguing. It was the wrong shape, making the wrong noises. Perhaps it was evolving into something else. But then it saw him and started making all the normal noises. It scuttled away before David’s ears began to hurt.

  He was careful to avoid the smoky, grunting room, and found his own store, a crate in one of the cargo bays with his cache of scientific files. He sat, pouring through technical words, charts, diagrams, data. In such a format, language made perfect sense.

  After an hour, he moved on to other business. He needed no clock; the rhythm of the ship was his measure of time. He knew that by now the workshops would be deserted.

  Long benches were strewn with a jumble of dismantled parts, nothing to do with the real functioning of the ship, as it sped on its way on Automatic Guidance. David was conscious of every wire and chip and cell, performing their part silently in the background, but the engineers provided by Ragnox Travel were bothered only with leaking shower heads, jammed locks and squeaky projectors. They always had work in hand.

  David settled down at a table, where an amplifier awaited reassembly, its components spread out in a tray. He set to work at the intricate jigsaw, losing himself in the exquisite logic of mechanical design.

  For two hours he tinkered, alone in the dark, with nothing to disturb him. Until there was a sound. Almost too soft to be audible, but David’s ears were alert to the song of D-Deck and any disturbance was enough to make him look up, like an animal scenting danger.

  A shuffle. Or a squeak, perhaps, of shoe leather on polished floor. Just the once, not repeated, but it was enough. David lay down his tools silently and moved like a ghost, to the door of the workshop. It was open, the passage beyond brightly lit, while the workshop itself was in deep gloom. He could stand in darkness and watch unobserved.

  The man. Perusing the electronic chart of the deck on the wall, fingers flicking confidently over the controls, illuminating one store, workshop, cargo bay after another, checking
the status of each one. It stood back, to take in the whole thing, head on one side, then nodded to itself. It paced back down the corridor, past three doors, pausing at a fourth to open it. The cyber-nexus booth.

  David followed. His privacy had been violated. He didn’t want to be here now, with this intruder. He paused when he reached the booth. The man sat at a screen, his back to the door, working in silence with lightning speed through lists and reports and manifests. Sneaking. Prying.

  David didn’t care about the sneaking and prying into records. It was the trespassing on his own territory that distressed him. As bacteria went, the man was not obnoxious. It didn’t babble, it didn’t surround itself with noise. In fact, apart from that one tell-tale whisper, it had been totally silent. But still it was an invader. David just wanted the Smith to go, and if it wouldn’t, David would have to go instead.

  Chapter 7

  Smith was impressed. The ship’s manifest was a model of rectitude, everything precisely accounted for. No secret cache of stolen bonds, no illegal narcotics stashed among the legitimate containers or concealed behind loose panels. Smith could vouch for it. Foxe ran his side of the ship flawlessly.

  Ragnox Travel was another matter. One glance through McBride’s chaotic files, including a private ledger, ill-concealed behind predictable codes, showed him skimming the profits from every conceivable source.

  Foxe had to be aware of this. McBride’s casual fleecing of the passengers was far too blatant to have escaped his notice. The commander, on the other hand, would ensure his own tracks were exceedingly well concealed if he had any criminal intent.

  If. Smith still hadn’t reached a definite judgement. No evidence of criminality in Foxe’s cabin, that was for sure. Nothing indicating expensive taste or a sybaritic lifestyle. A hermit with a penchant for antique literature.

  Smith had investigated every cabin. He knew what questionable treasures were hidden in the bank depository under anonymous wrappings, or in locked drawers or under beds. Seccor police files confirmed that the Ganymede passenger list was crawling with known criminals – tax evaders, bankrupts, drunkards and traffic code infringers – of only mild interest to the police branch, and none at all to Smith.

  McBride’s crew were almost entirely larcenous, but only on a small, domestic level.

  Foxe’s flight crew, surprisingly, were not squeaky clean. The blonde heavyweight, Siegfried had an alias and a criminal past. But he’d served his time and was reformed, on paper at least. The righteous Foxe was giving him a second chance, but probably never took his eagle eye off him.

  The boy, Timothy Faber, had a record too. A juvenile caution for causing havoc in a wine bar. Probably still looking for havoc, since he was barely nineteen, but before he knew it, he’d be in a respectable career with a wife and two kids, and weekends playing golf.

  Nothing criminal about Chief Officer Kwame Addo. Far from it – an impeccable and impressive military record. Which begged the question: why was he serving as a mere second in command on a D Class freighter?

  Then there were Smith’s fellow Triton passengers. Burnand – predictably, a pathetic record for petty pilfering. Abigail – some minor drug offences and a few outrageous debts. Selden – a convicted killer, and what a killing! But if he wasn’t broadcasting it, neither was he aggressively hiding it. He wore the glaring mark of Cain.

  The other three were more intriguing. Nagging riddles. Maggy, for one; prim and perfect Miss Jole. Surely that irreproachable front was no more believable than the dowdy knitwear swaddling her magnificent breasts. But Seccor’s records were suspiciously silent. Smith knew a fake identity when he saw one. He was itching to dig deeper, if only to satisfy his curiosity. Maggy was virtuous, she adored authority, she worshipped Foxe but, without doubt, she was keeping a very big secret.

  No criminal record for David Rabiotti, which went without saying because his father would have seen to it. David didn’t seem capable of comprehending crime, let alone carrying it out, but one had to wonder why he’d been packed off to the Outer Circles. It was a common ploy to mislay the black sheep of the family.

  Christie Steen. Now there was a really intriguing mystery. Fake name, of course. Smith had uncovered records for three recent Christine/Christiana/ Christobel Steens and they all had one thing in common: they were dead. His Christie was alive. Not for much longer, the way she drank, but for now she was still breathing, and behind that sodden vagrant front, she was, or had been, someone significant. It was the way she spoke, walked, watched, when she wasn’t actually on the point of drunken collapse. She’d exercised authority at some point. Was she running, or plotting, or was she under cover?

  To dig deep enough to get at her truth, Smith needed something a good deal more versatile than the Seccor terminal in Sgt Roper’s office, and he knew where to find it. He returned to B-Deck and contemplated his options.

  Smith had taken up the open invitation to tour Flight Control by accompanying three simpering ladies in search of flirtation. Siegfried had treated them to an impressive explanation of the assembled gadgetry, which kept the ladies twittering. Smith had smiled and said nothing.

  It was mostly junk. The steel block that Siegfried had called a gamma ray detector was actually a coffee machine. The huge table screen occupying the centre of the clinical control room, designated a traffic monitor – a temporary lack of traffic being the explanation for the blank screen – was an Altair 45 multi-player games console.

  Smith was perfectly aware that while the ship was on automatic guidance, routed from one beacon to the next, Foxe’s men had nothing to do but while away the tedious hours and look efficient if people dropped by. Most passengers, however theoretically aware of automatic guidance, preferred to believe blindly in a masterful captain and superbly trained crew, safeguarding them through the busy days and silent nights.

  So at least one officer would always be on duty in Flight Control. Even in the small hours. Smith knew. He’d tried, repeatedly, to find a moment when the coffee machine and games console were left attended, but so far, he’d failed.

  He knew their rota, to the second. He knew that Addo and Faber invariably shared a portion of the afternoon watch, so when the two officers strode down the corridor from Flight Control at three o’clock, Smith, who was sauntering past, instantly tuned into their conversation, while appearing to register nothing.

  ‘So you don’t think it’s something I’ve done.’ Faber was looking worried.

  ‘It will just be the daily briefing. He’ll have brought it forward because of Bridey’s business. Plan of campaign, that’s all. Unless you really have done something.’ They disappeared round the bend.

  Without pausing in his stride, Smith turned in to Flight Control.

  Sure enough it was momentarily abandoned, its monitors flickering away, unobserved. Smith strolled to the Altair and studied its huge screen. The officers had left it running, so Smith took the opportunity to wipe out one of Faber’s trolls.

  The coffee machine could be ignored, along with most of the other metallic monsters in the place, but in one of several annexes, he had seen…

  Yes, there it was. A neat grey console, drearily anonymous. Every ship with serious business would have an Ultima 230, connecting the ship to every other cyber-nexus within reach – every one that wasn’t protected and defended to military standards. Just the sort of research tool Smith needed.

  He sat down at the blank screen. Audio control was switched off. That was fine. Smith always worked in silence. He picked up a stylus with one hand, running his other round the sides of the Ultima. Aha. Not a 230, after all. A 430. A military model, designed for espionage modification, although the side compartment where the modification units should be installed was empty. Of course it was. Possession of military espionage hardware by civilian outfits was illegal. A pity Foxe was so law-abiding, but still, even without its military modifications, the 430 was a significant improvement on the basic model.

  Smith began conjuring up
records, noting them for future reference before moving on to the Seccor Index, with its flashing demand for authorisation. His stylus hovered over the notepad, on the point of entering a password.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ Officer Siegfried was standing in the doorway of the annex.

  Smith knew better than to show the slightest surprise. ‘Ah yes, I was hoping for a more detailed guided tour. Mrs. Simpson-Travis-Parker rather dominated the show on my last visit.’

  ‘She always does. Asks the same questions each time.’

  ‘That’s why I thought I’d come alone, but there was no one here when I arrived.’

  ‘Except me. Flight Control is never left unattended.’

  Smith nodded appreciatively. ‘Glad to hear it. Keeps the passengers happy, I’m sure, knowing a professional crew is always on hand, even if there’s nothing to do.’

  ‘Well, you never know when an emergency might arise.’

  ‘Has it ever?’

  ‘No.’ Siegfried stifled a massive yawn.

  ‘Must be tough being perpetually on duty for nothing. How much of a martinet is Commander Foxe? Surely he allows you to sneak out occasionally when everyone’s tucked up and snoring?’

  Siegfried pulled a face. ‘No way! But it’s not so bad, you know.’ He nodded towards the Altair. ‘We are kept occupied.’

  ‘So I saw. Still, even games must lose their novelty after the first month or so.’

  ‘Everything loses novelty after a month or so,’ corrected Siegfried. ‘Especially for the passengers. They get bored and start getting into mischief.’

  ‘Only so many re-screenings of Slice And Dice VI anyone can take.’ Smith quietly switched the Ultima off and shifted the seat round a little. ‘How do you deal with them?’

  Siegfried had retreated to the coffee machine and was pouring two mugs. ‘We have a ball.’ He spoke with sepulchral gloom. ‘The commander throws a surprise ball for the passengers. Every voyage. We’d be lynched if it didn’t happen.’