A King of Infinite Space

by Allen Steele

  “That’s what this is about, isn’t it?” I’m beginning to feel something else again: ice-cold rage. I throw the bundle down on the floor. “The heads. Pasquale set this whole thing up just to grab the rest of the heads. You used me to—”

  “Didn’t you hear what I just said? We don’t have time for this!” Shemp reaches down, picks up the skinsuit, and shoves it back in my arms. “Now get this thing on and help Anna…”

  “I’m not going. I’m staying here.”

  “Alec, please.” Anna’s struggling to slide her daughter’s legs into the bottom of the skinsuit. Erin giggles and kicks her feet like an infant making a game of being diapered. “We want you to come with us. You’re still our friend. You’re important, you’re…”

  “I’m important?” I turn to shout into her face. “I’m important? If I’m so goddamn important, if I’m your goddamn friend, then why didn’t you two assholes tell me who you were when…?”

  “Just put the fucking suit on!” Her face is bright with anger, but tears stream from her narrowed eyes. Erin has stopped acting up; she stares at her mother in shock, her lower lip trembling with fear. “If you don’t come with us, Vlad’s people…”

  She stops herself.

  “They’ll what? Kill me?”

  Neither of them replies, and I realize that this is exactly what will happen. “Mister Chicago’s orders,” Shemp says at last. “If you’re left behind, the militia will find you and turn you over to Royal Intelligence for interrogation. Mister Chicago can’t afford that, so Vlad’s clansmen have been told to kill you if you refuse to come with us.”

  I stare at him. “You’d do this, wouldn’t you?”

  He shakes his head. “No, I wouldn’t, but it’s not my choice.”

  That’s it. Bottom line. Stay here and die. Go with them and stay alive…at least until Pasquale Chicago gets his hands on me. I’m not sure if the former is such a bad option. At least then I wouldn’t have to live with this heartache…

  “Just tell me one thing,” I say, looking straight at Anna, the woman who’s really the Erin I once knew and loved. “Why did you do it?”

  For a moment, she doesn’t say anything. “You and me…that was something special, but it happened a long time ago.” Then she takes her daughter’s hand, clenches it, holds it up for me to see. “This…this is something you can’t forget.”

  I gaze upon the second Erin, and it occurs to me that this frail young woman could have been my own daughter. There’re a dozen questions that still haven’t been answered; if I remain here, I’ll die without ever having learned the answers.

  “Man, you got what you came for,” Shemp says softly. “Now let’s get out of here.”

  I give it another moment’s thought, then I turn my back on both of them and start getting undressed.

  The alarms have been silenced, and the corridor is full of dead militia soldiers and live Superiors. The deceased have deep stab wounds or blaster burns; they’ve been pulled aside and laid against the walls to make room for Superior spacers wearing hardsuits painted with the sword emblem of the Algol clan. None of the soldiers look as if they died peacefully. Superiors don’t take prisoners, do they?

  But they will take the dead. When we exit the ward, we have to stand aside for a Superior pushing a folding hand truck loaded with a dewar. I look back, see two more Superiors hauling dewars the same way. They look like bargain shoppers toting away water heaters they’ve bought during a warehouse sale. Buy ten heads, take two for free, c’mon down…

  “You used Chip to get in here, didn’t you?” I ask.

  Shemp nods. “We’ve been tracking you through him, yeah. That’s how we managed to find out where you were. Once you located the dewars, he was programmed to open a comlink and transmit a coded signal to our ships…”

  “Ships? As in plural?”

  “Yup. Vlad’s and the Anakuklesis. They’re standing by in low orbit, waiting to take us on.”

  “Then why did he go offline?”

  “We had to keep you in the dark a little longer, and Chip needed the extra megs in order to interface with the base AI so he could knock out the security systems and take control of everything else…communications, main elevators, airlocks, the works. It was all hardwired into his system before you even left Garcia.”

  Before I even left Garcia. I stare at him in disbelief. It’s all been a setup, from the very beginning…

  “You did the legwork,” Shemp goes on, “but Chip had the plan. Right now, everyone above us is either trying to get down here or contact other lunar bases.” He smiles. “Fat chance. For another fifty minutes or so, this place is totally isolated.”

  “So what’s the rush?”

  “Only a matter of time before someone on the outside wonders why they’ve lost telemetry with Sosigenes. We’ve gotta be out of here by then. This is a major scam, dude. It’s been in the works for a long time now.”

  “And you went along with it. You and Erin…”

  “I prefer Anna, if you don’t mind.” She’s right behind us, carefully guiding her daughter around the bodies on the floor. “And I didn’t ‘go along with it’…I volunteered, once I was told what was at stake.”

  “Sure, yeah. Your daughter and all that. The least you could have done was tell me.” My voice goes ragged; I find myself blinking back tears. I’m not just angry; I’ve been betrayed as well. “Do you know what I did to find you? What I’ve been through?”

  Anna wraps her arm a little more tightly around her child and murmurs something that might be an apology. I don’t want to hear it. Suddenly, I find myself wishing she had remained dead.

  We come around the bend of the corridor, and there’s the freight elevator. Now I know what caused the thunderclap I heard earlier; its doors have been blown open, leaving a gaping hole where they had once been. I recall something Dr. Brumfelder told me earlier: the freight elevator leads directly to the surface and has its own airlock. The raiding party must have known in advance of its existence. A good plan, I have to admit. Paralyze the surface defense systems, seal off the base’s upper levels, take out any militia soldiers who manage to use the main elevator, and use the freight lift to enter and exit the base.

  Like Shemp said, a major scam. Shouldn’t be surprised. This is a Zodiac operation, after all, and they’ve got lots of experience in piracy. All they needed was a patsy to get them inside…

  A couple of Superiors in hardsuits guard the elevator; several more linger nearby, disconnected dewars in tow. Everyone’s apparently waiting for the car to come back down from the surface. I feel a pair of eyes on me; looking around, I find my old friend Vladimir Algol-Raphael. His helmet is off; the scar I left across his forehead hasn’t fully healed yet. There’s a hardness in his face that makes me wonder if I’ve got much longer to live, despite the fact that I spared his life when I could have easily taken it.

  “Your life, mine,” I say to him. “Remember?”

  He nods. “Remember, deadhead. But your life, Mister Chicago’s. See you soon, he will.”

  Well, that clinches it. My life isn’t worth two lox right now. Rohr Furland once told me that people who cross Pasquale Chicago tend to die in nasty sorts of ways. Once these guys get me aboard the Anakuklesis, Mister C will have some scores to settle with me.

  From somewhere far up the elevator shaft, there’s a mechanical grinding noise: the car descending from the surface. The Superior nearest to me steps aside to make room away from the exploded doors. When he does, I notice the body of a dead militia soldier that’s been shoved against the wall. His mouth is agape and there’s a blackened hole in his chest, but that’s not what catches my eye.

  Still clenched in his hand is a blaster.

  Nasty weapons, blasters. Chip once told me what they were, after the second time I saw one holstered to a militia soldier’s service belt back in Clarke County. Not exactly lasers, but more like compact particle-beam cannons. Good for only three shots before their cartridges expire, bu
t they’re pretty effective before then: capable of slicing through hardsuit armor, not to mention flesh and bone. Wicked little fuckers, which is why you don’t see them in spacecraft very often; they can also penetrate hullplates, causing catastrophic blowouts. This guy got killed by one so quickly, he didn’t get a chance to release his death-grip on his own gun.

  There’s little chance I can grab and use it before the Superiors rip me apart. But it’s a better chance than the ones I’ve got now…

  The elevator’s slowing down. I duck my head, pretend to rub the corners of my eyes as I try to gauge the distance between me and the blaster. Five feet across the floor, maybe six. It’s doable, if I throw myself the right way. I just need to…

  “You’ve got him all wrong,” Shemp says softly.

  A distraction. Good. “You mean your buddy Pasquale? Yeah, I’m sure you think only the best of him…”

  “Yeah, look, I know you think he’s totally evil, but that’s not the way it is.”

  “Uh-huh. Slavery’s pretty cool, once you’re no longer a slave. I’m sure Sam would have agreed.”

  “Sam’s not dead,” Anna says. “I just told you that because…”

  I dart a look back at her. “Look, you got your daughter, okay? You got everything you wanted out of me. Now just shut up and leave me alone…bitch.”

  She flinches when I say that; for a moment I regret my words. She might be wearing another face—and I still don’t know the story behind that number—but deep down inside she’s still Erin, and she started sleeping with Shemp—Shemp, for chrissakes, my best friend!—without telling me who she was, making me run halfway across the fucking system just so she could get her daughter back, without telling me that she named her daughter after herself while she changed her name, her face…

  Too many unanswered questions. A dull throb against my temples. Concentrate on the gun, the gun…

  Elevator’s almost here. Shemp murmurs something under his breath. Checking him out of the corner of my eye, I see that he’s gone eyes-up. Moe’s telling him something on his private line. Then he smiles. “Chill out, man,” he says aloud. “Everything’s going to be cool.”

  Yeah, right. I’ll show you cool, you backstabbing son of a bitch.

  Then the car slides into view. The Superior between me and the dead soldier takes another step back, giving me another foot of room to dive through.

  The lift halts, the doors slide open. At first I think it’s empty, but then a hardsuited figure steps forward. A baseline human, still wearing his helmet. He walks out of the lift until he’s standing only a few feet before me.

  Oh, no. Naw, man, this can’t be…

  He reaches up, unlatches the suit’s collar, lifts the helmet over his head.

  Pale lips against alabaster skin, long white hair pulled back in a ponytail. Cold pink eyes, like diluted blood on ice.

  Hot anger jets through my veins.

  “Young Alec,” says Mister Chicago. “It’s so good to see you again. I’ve been…”

  Duck. Turn sideways. Hurl myself at the dead soldier. Screw escape. All I want is the blaster, and one good, clean shot at this albino motherfucker…

  I’m not even halfway across the floor when something like a mallet slams into the back of my neck. Anna screams, the floor rushes at me and I

  tumble

  down

  a long

  shaft

  into

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  * * *

  I GOT ID

  We are as gods, and might as well get good at it.

  —Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth Catalog

  darkness

  cold

  sleep

  silence

  A tiny light ignites.

  It grows larger, becomes a circle.

  The circle flattens out, becomes an oval.

  The oval expands, becomes a spotlight.

  Then a figure walks into the spotlight, a lanky young man in his mid-twenties: long blond hair, old flannel shirt, baggy jeans, scuffed Reeboks with loose laces. Myself, the way I looked a hundred and five years ago. He stops in the center of the light and looks straight at me.

  “Hello, Alec,” he says. “I’m Chip.”

  I want to reply, but I can’t. It’s worse than being mute: I have no sensation of having a mouth, or even a body. I’m simply a presence, a ghost in my own dream.

  “I know this must be unpleasant for you,” Chip says, “but we’ve got to talk, and assuming your own aspect is the only way I can think of that’ll make you pay attention.” His tucks his hands in his pockets and shuffles his feet a bit. “Y’see, after having spent almost two years in your head, I’ve come to learn that you don’t listen very well. Always interrupting, always wanting to have the last word, not really caring what other people have to say…that’s what everyone says about you. Sorry, but it’s true. So, just this once…”

  WILL YOU SHUT UP AND LISTEN?

  The words vanish, and Chip’s still there. “Okay? Now, look, there’re a few people who want to talk to you. I’m going to bring them on one at a time. Erin’s first. Erin…?”

  He turns and walks out of the spotlight. A moment passes, then Erin comes onstage.

  She looks almost exactly the way she did the last time I saw her, back in 1995: long brown hair, wearing shorts and a tank top, sunburned and a little sweaty, as if she just got back from Lollapalooza. When she stops in the middle of the stage, a chair appears behind her: she sits down, crosses her long brown legs, and folds her hands together in her lap.

  “Hi, Alec. It’s me again…just the way you remember me. I could have done Anna for this, but I think it’s important that you see me this way. Maybe it’ll make things a little easier.”

  She looks away for a moment, then goes on. “The first thing you’ve got to know is that I love you, and that I’ve always loved you. Even after I lost you in the crash, I kept on loving you. If you hadn’t died, I think we would have eventually married, even had a child together. Erin could have been our daughter.”

  She nervously glances down at her hands. “But it didn’t happen that way. I had to carry on with my life, and that’s what I did. I met someone else a few years later…no, you didn’t know him…and we finally got married. It didn’t last very long, but I conceived Erin with him before we broke up, and when she was born I gave her my first and last names. That’s why there’s another woman named Erin Westphall who isn’t me.”

  A window opens next to Erin: a photo of an elderly woman, gnarled, frail, and gray-haired, seated in something that looks like a floating armchair. Standing behind is a woman in the last years of her youth. Both look like older aspects of Erin.

  “Anyway, when I was sixty-eight and knew that I wasn’t going to be around much longer, I opted for cryonic stasis. All the things I told you that day when you found me in bed with Chris were true…I did it because I wanted to see the future. What I didn’t tell you was that I also wanted to see Erin again. She was about forty by then, and a couple of years earlier she had signed up with the Immortality Partnership. There weren’t many new neurosuspension patients by then, and the Immortality Partnership was discussing the idea of shipping its existing patients to a space colony. So I invested what little money I had in the shrunken head treatment, and died in 2040 hoping that I would be reunited with my only child.”

  The window closes, leaving Erin alone once again. “But there was only one thing about this that troubled me, and that was the fact that you had already been in neurosuspension for the last forty-five years. I loved you, but nonetheless you were someone I had left behind almost a half-century ago. I had already spent nearly twice as many years apart from you as I had lived when I knew you, do you understand? I simply didn’t want to see you again. You were a tragic chapter of my life that I had closed a long time ago. Please forgive me, but that’s the way it was.”

  Unable to look at me, she kneads her hands together in her lap. Somehow, she lo
oks like an old lady now.

  “Before I signed the contract with the Immortality Partnership, I changed my legal name to Anna Townshend. I did this to make sure that you wouldn’t be able to track me down, if and when you were revived at the same place and time I was. My daughter kept her name, of course, but I figured that if you found her, you would immediately know that we weren’t the same person. Which, of course, is what happened.”

  She looks straight at me now. “But because I wanted to be certain that Erin could find me once she was revived, I had it entered in my permanent records that my real name was Erin Westphall, and that the other Erin Westphall was my daughter. I never once considered the notion that she and I would be so widely separated that we couldn’t be easily reunited. My main consideration was that you might find me, and somehow believe that I had gone into neurosuspension in order to be reunited with you.”

  She sighs and shakes her head. “But we were revived together, although it turned out that my new face had been deliberately altered so that you couldn’t recognize me…I’ll let someone else explain why that happened. When we were in the White Room together, though, I felt an attraction toward you that I couldn’t place, just as I seemed to recognize Chris before I knew who he was. For a little while, even without realizing what was happening, I was beginning to fall in love with you all over again. But then…oh, God…”

  Erin abruptly turns her face away from me. She raises her hands to her eyes, rubs them, takes a deep breath, goes on. “Do you remember when that…that animal, George…tried to rape Kate in the shower room? I had to fight him off her, and no one could stop him until his associate killed him? Do you remember that?”

  She stares straight at me, her eyes red, her voice ragged with tears. “You were there, Alec! You just sat there on the pot, taking a dump, watching everything…and you didn’t do a goddamn thing! I…you…just sat there…like…oh, goddammit…!”