A King of Infinite Space

by Allen Steele

  Fifty years ago, this had been the highest-priced spread in the solar system. Kings, queens, and presidents had stayed here during Clarke County’s early days, and countless celebrities had graced its lobby with their presence. But that had been over a half-century ago, and while the Inn Lagrange was still nearly as large as Mister Chicago’s castle, its opulence had faded along with its notoriety. The carpets were threadbare, the walls needed repainting, the front doors creaked softly as I pushed them open.

  I spoke for two minutes with an assistant manager; she was very nice, and impressed with the fact that I knew how to change sheets, clean bathrooms, and wait tables, but the fact that my alter ego was retarded threw her. Breathing hard and having to hold myself up on the reservation desk didn’t help either. Sorry, Mister Ulnar, but we don’t have an opening for you.

  Strike one.

  On the opposite side of Apollo Square from the hotel was the Royal Stadium, formerly known as the Larry Bird Memorial Stadium. Basketball had once been a major spectator sport in Clarke County, but few games had been held in recent years; teams from Earth had stopped visiting the colony during the plague, and zero-gee handball had grown in popularity. For the most part, the stadium was mainly used for political rallies orchestrated by the Monarchists. The management was looking for custodians. I managed to walk over there without killing myself, and nearly landed a job until it was discovered that I wasn’t a card-carrying member of the party. I had to be politically correct in order to push a broom for king and country. The assistant superintendent sniffed and walked away before I got a chance to finish my spiel.

  Strike two.

  On Chip’s advice, I rented a wheeled stroller to support myself and pushed it down Broadway, the paved boulevard following the Queen’s River (formerly the New Tennessee River, before the revolution) around the equator to a boat dock located between the Asimov and Heinlein bridges. The dock rented canoes and kayaks to visitors for five kilolox an hour, and they were looking for someone to do scutwork such as mopping the pier and repairing paddles. The proprietor handed me a two-bladed paddle and asked me to hop in a kayak and show him my stuff. I had never kayaked before, but I gave it a shot. It’s a good thing the river was only six feet deep; otherwise I might have drowned when my boat capsized. I didn’t bother asking whether I had the job or not.

  Strike three.

  I took the north tram home in clothes that were wringing wet. A militia officer on the tram fined me a kilolox for being a public nuisance, and another kilolox for arguing with him. Using the clothes dryer in the hostel’s laundry room set me back ten centilox; my evening meal, a bowl of kasha (wheat soup—the cheapest item on the menu) cost ten kilolox. Sleep was free.

  I hadn’t been here eight hours, and already I was beginning to hate the place.

  The next day went the same way, and so did the day after that: short tram rides and long walks from one part of the sprawling colony to another, hitting up everyone who had placed a want ad in Clarke County’s public database. Most of the people who did the hiring were interested at first, but wanted to audition me before they made a final decision. The cafe in the center of Big Sky, one of the two towns in the biosphere, turned me down as an assistant dishwasher because I didn’t know how to load the robot. The goats in the livestock area wouldn’t come close to me when I tried to feed them. I nearly cut off one of my fingers with a machete when I attempted to harvest bamboo in Torus S-14; I made the mistake of asking whether the marijuana in the hemp farm in Torus S-16 was smokable (it was, which was why they didn’t hire me). I wasn’t big enough to be a bouncer in one of the brothels down on the Strip, the legal-vice zone down in Torus N-5. They offered me another job instead, but I wasn’t interested; lousy hours, and I don’t work well on my back.

  There was an opening for a bicycle courier at River House, the Pax Astra government center located just outside Big Sky. I knew how to ride a bike, but when I stopped in front of the walled quadrangle and saw those stark mooncrete buildings looming over the Queen’s River, with the royal crescent emblazoned above spiked iron gates guarded by two armed militia soldiers, I realized that I couldn’t possibly work in this place. I had been in Clarke County for only three days, and already I knew that the Pax Astra had become as corrupt and tyrannical as any third-world banana republic in my own century. The Pax was trying to pay off its war debts by imposing taxes at every level, while simultaneously building the Pegasus for the Royal Navy. Inflation had skyrocketed; government bureaucrats micromanaged every aspect of commercial enterprise, forcing business owners to buy licenses for everything from robots to restrooms. Political opposition was nearly nonexistent: no new parties had been successfully formed since the Monarchists had chased the New Ark off Clarke County after the coup d’etat of ’66. The news media had been muzzled and the arts virtually nonexistent, except when they served to glorify King Lucius and Parliament; reporters, authors, painters and vid artists who dared question government policy through their works had either been exiled or had vanished behind these gates, never to be seen again. People spoke in whispers of Royal Intelligence finks who lurked everywhere, ferreting out dissent.

  No, I couldn’t work here, especially not since I was trying to pass myself off as John Ulnar, a mentally retarded emigrant from the Belt. One of the guards was staring at me a little too closely; I quickly gave him the left-handed forefinger-to-thumb salute of a loyal Pax citizen, then hastily walked away before he could focus his monocle on my face.

  Maybe this encounter was what broke my bad luck streak. Less than an hour later, I finally managed to find a job.

  There was one thing I learned to do well in the twenty-second century. After nearly a year on 4442 Garcia, and another nine months on the TBSA Comet, I had sharpened this newly-found talent to cutting-edge refinement. Maybe I couldn’t tend robots, feed goats, row kayaks, cut bamboo, deliver messages, or bite pillows for a living, but I was the best goddamn floor mopper St. Louis had ever produced.

  In this case, though, they weren’t floors I was hired to clean, but windows. Two, to be exact: the windows on the northern and southern hemispheres of Clarke County’s biosphere.

  Each window was the width of a three-lane highway, eighty-two and a half feet in diameter. They allowed sunlight reflected from the bowl-like mirror shields to pass into the biosphere; once every sixteen hours, Clarke County’s halo orbit caused it to pass behind Earth’s shadow, causing an eight-hour eclipse that gave the colony its night. These clockwork days were not without cost, though. Even with the assistance of radiators and dehumidifiers, the biosphere had a tropical climate; miniature rain storms were frequent, and smog was an enemy. The windows had to be kept clean at all times.

  It was a shitty job, but someone had to do it.

  Every morning, I reported to a locker room in Torus S-2, where I traded my street clothes for a white jumpsuit, work gloves, knee pads, and a pair of rubber-soled boots. My colleagues were old ladies who gossiped with each other about their vile husbands and old men who spent their kilolox down on the Strip on gambling tables, liquor, and whores; everyone called me “kid.” They had deep tans, but no one looked particularly healthy; all of them walked with a perpetual slouch, and they peered at me with narrow, crinkled eyes that made everyone look Japanese regardless of their ancestry. Next to them, I was Sylvester Stallone.

  We wore penlike radiation counters on our jumpsuits and dark sunglasses. The counters were supposed to tell us if we had absorbed too many REMs and should be given temporary furloughs, but since those furloughs were unpaid (budget cutbacks, of course) the old-timers had learned sneaky ways of doctoring the counters. Everyone used lotion on their faces, necks, and hands. The sunglasses were thick-lensed and nearly opaque, but they were also tight and uncomfortable; if you broke a pair, then you had to pay for the replacement yourself, to the tune of three kilolox. So the window crew made do with cheap shades bought on the Strip, and they looked like owl-eyed retirees from Daytona Beach. I thought this was fun
ny until my work-issue pair shattered while I was bending over to pick up a scrub brush; then I had to buy a pair of cheapies for four hundred centilox that made me look like Kurt Cobain. When I took them off after work, it was an hour before the spots disappeared from my eyes.

  And so it went, day after day: wake up in the closet, get dressed, have a cheap breakfast at some commissary, then catch the tram to Torus S-2 where I’d get into my gear and join a group of geriatric drudges for another eight hours of back-breaking labor. At least the gravity at the windows was only three-quarters Earth-normal; it made it a little easier for me to work. The windows were divided into eight quadrants, four on each hemisphere of the habitat. In the morning, we’d mop one quadrant on one side of the biosphere; after lunch break we’d move to another quadrant on the opposite side. It took us four days to clean all the windows; by then, they’d be filthy once more, so we’d start over again the next morning.

  Down on my hands and knees, scrubbing away at bird crap and the footprints of children, I occasionally caught sight of Earth in the vast mirror beyond the thick glass. At first, it was difficult to recognize geographic features—the planet was reflected backward, and a century of polar meltage due to global warming had altered familiar coastlines—but Chip was able to help me identify places I had once known. From this distance, it was impossible to make out St. Louis as anything put a tiny pale spot near a bend in the Mississippi River. Florida was smaller than I had remembered it being, while the Great Lakes were a little larger. Baja California had disappeared.

  To entertain myself while I worked, I had Chip resume my history tutorials. The United States still existed, but in name only. The Pacific Northwest states had seceded from the Union in mid-century and had formed the independent nation of Cascadia; shortly after that, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine had broken off to become the New England Republic, followed by Alaska joining Canada as a new province. The nation’s capital was formally Washington, D.C., but the Fortieth Amendment had moved most of the government from the East Coast to Texas; the president now resided in Dallas, and Congress convened in Washington only once or twice each session. The flag had been officially changed in 2062; now there was only one large star in its field, ostensibly to represent unity among the forty-four remaining states, but in reality a tacit admission that more states might soon leave the union and it was pointless to keep subtracting stars from Old Glory.

  England had deposed its monarchy and had become a socialist democracy. The European Commonwealth had become a unified superpower that had toppled America from its position as the dominant global economic force. Russia was a battered wasteland still struggling to crawl out of the ruins of the twentieth century. The Middle East was largely uninhabitable, following the limited nuclear war that had annihilated both Israel and its Arab neighbors; India was slowly dying from the radioactive fallout from that exchange. Africa had finally ended its border wars between its nation-states and was quickly becoming Europe’s chief economic rival. Australia had forged a close political alliance with Japan and had become a major player in global politics. After it had virtually destroyed Hong Kong’s economy, China had reverted to Communist-flavored feudalism; it closed its doors to the West and was now hell-bent on genocide. No one but historians remembered the United Nations.

  After awhile, I stopped the history lessons. Too depressing. It was obvious that there was no point in returning to Earth; even if I could re-adapt to higher gravity, which itself was a dubious proposition, the world I had once known had ceased to exist. I would have been like a Victorian shot through a time warp into the middle of…well, a Lollapalooza concert.

  So I began exploring Clarke County. Might as well. I could be staying here a long time.

  It wasn’t easy. Chip warned me that Royal Intelligence wasn’t fond of people who simply wandered the colony out of curiosity; it made them suspicious. I became aware of things that looked like tiny dragonflies that flitted through the biosphere and within the tori: surveillance drones, capable of seeing and hearing everything within a thirty-foot range. I learned to pick up their buzzing as they approached, and then I tried to make myself look as inconspicuous as possible, even when what I was doing was perfectly innocent. Even so, I was twice stopped by militia officers and asked to present my card; nothing ever came of the shakedowns, but each time I was afraid that I might be escorted to River House.

  Everyone either knew someone who had gone to River House, or knew someone who had a friend who had disappeared behind its walls. I never met anyone who had actually been in there and come back out again, but then again, neither did anyone else. Or if they did, they weren’t talking about it.

  There was little that Chip could discover, either. He had established a link with Clarke County’s AI, but it was even less forthcoming than the Main Brain on Garcia; mountains of data were inaccessible to him, and he dared not probe too closely for fear of gaining unwanted attention. We eventually learned, after weeks of circumspect queries, that Clarke County’s AI had once been sentient, and that Blind Boy Grunt (as it called itself back then) had fomented the revolution of 2049 that ultimately led to the formation of the Pax Astra. Yet when the Monarchists took power, one of the very first things they did was lobotomize Blind Boy Grunt; the AI’s higher cognitive functions were infiltrated with viruses that deleted everything not absolutely necessary to keep Clarke County alive, then the AI was rebuilt so that it could never operate independently again. Blind Boy Grunt still existed, but he was even more retarded than John Ulnar was supposed to be.

  Nevertheless, we were able to discover where the Immortality Partnership once kept its offices.

  That was the beginning of the endgame.

  One evening after work, I catch a tram down to Torus N-9, where Clarke County General is located. If a militia soldier stops me to ask what I’m doing here, I’m prepared to tell him that I’ve pulled a muscle in my left shoulder. It’s not a lie; my shoulder hurts like hell. But I don’t run into any soldiers; I stroll past the hospital entrance and down a vacant corridor until Chip stops me at a door whose nameplate had been removed.

  The door is unlocked. I push it open; silent darkness within. I grope along a wall until my fingers discover a small panel. When I push it, the ceiling glows to life.

  An anteroom, completely empty. Scuff marks on the tile floor, but no furniture, nothing. Everything smells of dust. Another door on the far side of the room is ajar, revealing a short hallway leading to offices. On another wall of the room is a closed vault door.

  I walk over to the vault, grasp the locklever below the blank keypad, give it an experimental tug. Much to my surprise, it opens easily. The ceiling lights up as I step inside.

  The vault is a large, narrow room. Completely empty, but there was once something in here. The floor is lined with empty boltholes; running along the ceiling above the holes are disconnected conduits and elbow pipes, like severed metal veins. Scrape marks on the walls and floor. The room seems cold, even though it really isn’t; I find myself rubbing my biceps with my hands.

  “Is this it?” I whisper.

  “Yes, Alec,” Chip replies. “This is where the dewars were contained.”

  I shuffle further into the vault, staring at the holes, the pipes, the dusty walls. God, what a bleak, cold place. Hardly a tomb of pharaohs, or even King Tut wannabes. Difficult to believe that this is where I spent almost half a century, my head sealed within a cryogenic cylinder. Yet this is where I once resided. So did Shemp, Sam, Anna, Russell, Kate, John, and everyone else I had known on Garcia. Waiting for resurrection, and Mister Chicago…

  Erin had been here, too.

  “Where did they take everyone, Chip?”

  I don’t have to explain that remark. Chip knows exactly what I’m talking about; we’ve been through this dozens of times already, in the sleepless hours when I’ve lain awake in my little room in the hostel. It wasn’t necessary for me to come here, but it’s something that I just had to do.

  “I
’m still working on it, Alec,” Chip says, “but that information is classified Top Secret by the central AI. I’m not permitted to…”

  “Yeah, right. I know.” I walk through the vault, idly prodding the empty holes in the floor with my feet. Those dewars must have been huge, if they needed to be bolted down like that. It must have taken a lot of guys to…

  Something occurs to me just then. “Chip, tell me again…how many dewars were once in here? Not heads…the dewars they were in.”

  “A total of four hundred and ninety-five heads were contained in one hundred and sixty-five dewars.”

  Over a hundred and sixty dewars, each the size of a water heater. They didn’t walk out of here on their lonesome; someone must have carried them out. Scars on the walls, scuff marks on the floor. Big job. If the Immortality Partnership was bankrupt by that time, then someone else must have been hired to do the work.

  Maybe I haven’t asked the right question…

  “Chip, see if you can find a record of who moved all the dewars out of here.” I’m thinking aloud by now. “Maybe it wasn’t the Pax. They might have subcontracted it to someone else…Maybe a private company. And if they shipped some of those dewars…I mean, the ones the Pax didn’t sell to Mister Chicago…then maybe a private shipping company was hired to transport them to…I dunno, wherever they went to. Got all that?”

  “I understand, Alec. Parameters for search established.”

  “But do it on the QT, know what I mean? I don’t want the Nazis to know what we’re doing here.”

  “I understand, Alec.” Chip has gradually built a lexicon of my archaic slang; I no longer have to translate everything for him. “It may take some time. I will relate the results once I’ve completed my search.”

  “Fresh apples. Tell me when you’ve got something.”