A. Warren Merkey

by Far Freedom

  “I don’t have a wife and daughter,” he said aloud.

  [Quiet!]

  “I don’t have a wife and daughter! Do you give a damn about the boy or

  android or whatever the hell he is?”

  [I met your daughter. Makawee. I’m sorry about Chumani.]

  “Chumani? What about Chumani?”

  [Chumani died. She was only sixty. Why did you abandon them?]

  “We don’t have time for this, Admiral!”

  [You didn’t know.]

  “I didn’t know Chumani died.”

  [Two years ago. A mining accident.]

  “It always is. Did she remarry? No, don’t tell me. It isn’t the time to discuss such things.”

  [It was one reason I chose you.]

  “Because I abandoned my family?”

  “Because I could verify you have a family,” she said aloud in Twenglish. “The bad guys have no verifiable family. More Archives data analysis. Of course, the same could be said of me and Khalanov. We go back many years into our past - and we disappear. I have no relatives to tell me things I can’t remember. Records for us seem to have existed but are conveniently lost or destroyed. Much like the records of the interlopers.”

  “What interlopers?”

  “Most of the officers who run the Navy, including Etrhnk. What I don’t know is what they are. Or why. They come and go, all of them young and ruthless.”

  “Not something I need to worry about, Admiral! You made sure of that! You don’t seem very concerned about the boy. This place should make responsible people worry about a real child.”

  “I hoped there would be an active sensor sweep by some other agency, so that we could use the scatter. If something happens to me, I think you will take care of Samson.”

  Horss stopped walking and Demba halted a few paces ahead of him. She turned to face him, feeling her adrenaline surge before an augment brought it under control.

  “I’ll try,” Horss replied, sounding distracted. He moved toward her. She backed away and to the side. He moved past her, staring into the near distance. ” Something different here. A big heat track from up the corridor. Smudges on the wall. Things on the floor.”

  The admiral opened the weapons pod on her right forearm and a projector flooded the corridor in bright light. She aimed the light at the elevator. One door stood open, which was an incorrect condition: the doors always worked in unison. Someone had pried one open and beyond it the light illuminated the empty shaft. Samson’s spear and pack lay on the floor. Next to those items was…

  Something broke in her, the shock was so great. She hardly understood what the breakage was, only that she - or reality - would never be the same. Demba could resist screaming with only her greatest will. She held her breath to keep from screaming, to keep from vomiting.

  “Get us a ping, Admiral!”

  She closed her eyes and used her ocular terminal to order an active sensor sweep. A complex pattern of energy sprayed out from her yacht and caused reflections from every small feature of the African Space Elevator. She and Horss watched the data structure build in their eyes. They watched the machine intelligence sweep the data for patterns and targets of possible interest.

  “The top floor,” they said in unison.

  A transmat reference field seized them. The spiral corridor snapped out of existence. Dazzling yellow sunlight beamed into a great chamber through transparent walls. Deep blue sky painted the glass between massive arches in the domed ceiling. Six black carbon tubes, widely spaced, dominated the center of the floor: the freight shafts of the African Space Elevator. Patterns embedded in the floor, graceful arcs of gray, led toward the seventh tube within the circle of six, sweeping inward from the observation elevators at six locations at the perimeter of the floor. By one open elevator door a dark and sparkling mass lay slowly moving, as though breathing. It occasionally twitched. Sunlight danced across its coal-dark form, picking out every color of the rainbow. It was a ramp in shape which, though geometrically precise, seemed arbitrary, temporary. It looked like black velvet dusted with precious gems. Points of brilliant color cascaded across its planes and shot the surrounding building surfaces with spectra of light. As Demba and Horss approached she saw Samson lying in a pocket atop the slope of the thing. Demba couldn’t be sure, due to some kind of electronic interference from the creature, but she thought Samson was alive. The alien being shocked her, fascinated her, even despite her fear for Samson’s life.

  “I can’t find its xenotype in the catalog,” she commented, having done a rapid search of the sparse entries for such bizarre life forms.

  “Use a weapon,” Horss growled, raising his arm to point at the beast.

  “I’m perfectly capable,” a thin, clear voice from the creature said, “of conversing with humans. Please wait and don’t touch me.” It spoke Twenglish: still more fascinating. It seemed sentient! This would be an historic encounter, if her guess was correct! The admiral was nearly frozen in contemplation of the mysteries of a sentient nightmare alien and a child who shouldn’t exist. Horss wasn’t so constrained.

  “What have you done to the boy? He’s injured! Give him to us!”

  Demba was pleased with Horss’s apparently sincere reaction and regretful of her own lack of initiative. She let him lead, even as her data augment notified her of a stress spike in the telemetry from his Class-1 uniform.

  “I’m releasing the child to you,” the alien said. “He’s not dead. I stopped the bleeding. I’ll move now. Don’t be angry.” The dark mass abandoned its geometry and flowed out from under Samson, causing him to roll limply away from the smoking concrete just uncovered. Horss knelt down to examine Samson as the alien retreated. He wasn’t burned, despite the heat of the alien - except for his leg.

  “His leg!” Horss exclaimed. “God, God, we let this happen to him!”

  A parabolic reflector unfolded instantly from the weapons pod behind the captain’s right wrist and a visible beam of energy flashed at the alien. The energy reflected off the being, its flank having metamorphosed into something resembling a dense patch of diamonds. Reflected energy scattered in many directions, mostly upward where it pitted the surfaces of the chamber. In the next moment smoke erupted from the floor and the alien poured itself into the hole it made. It disappeared in less than two seconds.

  “I would have liked to know more about the alien,” the admiral said, upset that it departed. She felt there was a connection between it and Samson, because they both spoke Twenglish. Horss jerked her back to reality, made her see the horror of Samson’s leg: half of it was missing, as they knew it would be, the stump charred and bloody.

  “Damn the alien!” Horss declared. “What a terrible fool I am! The child is

  real! Let’s get him back to the ship.”

  “We can’t do that now.” Demba dreaded what might happen next.

  “What? Look at his leg! And his face! His hand! How can you let this child suffer? If he recovers consciousness he’ll be in terrible pain!”

  “Your physical telemetry has altered for the worse, Captain. That’s a possible precursor signal for a worm attack. Step away from Samson.” If he would move she would try to send Samson by transmat to the medical cocoon on her yacht. She couldn’t concentrate well enough to make the command while watching Horss intently for signs of impending aggression. “There’s a Mnro Clinic on Earth,” she said. “We can take him there as soon as possible.”

  Mnro. Physical telemetry? Horss understood the admiral was spying on his physiological data! Mnro. Not a good choice for a trigger word. The most famous name in history. Did he feel triggered? No. But he did feel very angry. The Request for Voluntary Reassignment. The kidnapping. The days locked away on her yacht. And now the boy! Why could she not convince him the boy was real, and spare him the guilt and horror of this moment? She deserved punishment! Horss rose slowly to his feet, tearing his gaze away from the wounded child. The admiral tried to approach to tend the boy but Horss pushed her
roughly away. She stumbled back.

  “Samson,” she said, gesturing toward the boy with arm extended.

  It would be so easy for him to grab that arm, Horss thought, and just throw her. Just throw her. It wouldn’t take long. The boy seemed stable, not in any immediate danger. How could he even imagine such a thing? A useless question! He grabbed for her arm. It was so close, yet he missed it. She moved it out of reach, just by chance, making him look inept. His anger continued to build and he seemed unable to bring it under control. Why did his augments not suppress his chemistry, to reduce his need for rage? Was this how a worm could work? Or was there something else, some conditioning that was forced on him without his awareness? He put the questions without answers out of his mind. He knew what he could do. It wasn’t nice, not even sporting, but it was justice.

  “You heard the trigger word, Captain.” Perhaps, but it was a poor choice, she thought. Too prevalent. She didn’t know what was happening to Horss. She could see he pondered too many thoughts, weighed too many decisions, to be under the influence of a worm. A worm, she thought, should take over his mind and demand the specific action for which it was programmed. She counted on such a single-minded imperative to lessen the captain’s fighting skills, allowing her a chance at survival. She thought he was now acting on his own initiative, trying to decide on a course of action that would satisfy both himself and Admiral Etrhnk.

  “Well, little lady, that’s a matter of opinion,” he said in excellent Twenglish, sounding like some American cowboy from an old western movie. “I don’t have an opinion. Don’t care. I just hanker to hurt one of the bad guys. You.”

  He attacked. Decades of martial arts training elicited a reaction from her body. For the second time her quickness made him miss and fueled his anger. She wasn’t surprised to show this small amount of ability. She knew she was quick. She knew she was familiar with every personal combat method to the point of unconscious reaction. But she wasn’t the artist that Horss was. She would pay for her transgression against him. She hoped she wouldn’t pay with her life.

  Horss attacked the admiral again, this time to study her ability. He would no longer make a fool of himself. It was apparent that she was trained for personal combat, despite being a desk sailor. He worked around her, trying a list of attacks and feints. She reacted predictably, just as standard training would have her do. In a few moments he was able to inflict minor punishment. “This isn’t something I enjoy, Admiral, despite what you may think. You’re not a worthy opponent. Don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you. I’m just making sure you won’t want me to captain your ship. I’m also working off a little steam, as they used to say in Twenglish. Call it giving you a lesson. If I really wanted to kill you, I would do this.”

  Horss pressed his attack, but she weathered it more easily than he anticipated, resorting to one of the purely defensive disciplines. He knew the weaknesses in every defensive school of combat. He would show her where they were. It required more effort than he expected, but he intended to hurt the admiral. As they danced around the sun-struck room, he remained dissatisfied with the fight. She wouldn’t take chances. She wouldn’t risk attacking him. Yet he felt she could do better. He sensed that, given the motivation, Admiral Demba might rise further to his challenge. It angered him that she held back, almost as though she didn’t want to hurt him. Yes, she was old and she was good, better than she knew she was. He didn’t need to hold back with her.

  The thought came to him that he could kill her. This woman toyed with him, even though she didn’t have the tools she needed to defeat him. She would fight defensively until he gave up, because she knew he held back. She was a smaller woman than those who challenged men in personal combat. She expected him to hold back, being a gentleman and an officer. What would she do if she really felt her life was threatened? If he did kill her - accidentally - her uniform might keep her viable long enough to save her. Why did he need to do this? Why did he want to keep asking himself stupid questions? Horss circled his adversary, giving her every clue that he now intended to unleash his full arsenal upon her. She half-crouched in a defensive stance but as she took the clues to his real intent, she relaxed into an upright position, as though she would resign the match. “You will fight.”

  She didn’t respond to his words. She responded to the language of his body, his declaration of war. Something more changed in her. As she watched him, seeing every vector of energy in the geometry of his body, seeing which muscles contracted, seeing where his eyes looked, seeing where his eyes should look next, she awaited his assault as it seemed to begin in slow motion. She could sense his first move and the two after that. She could determine which fist or elbow or knee or foot would become his weapon at exactly which point in space and time. At the computed instant a fire blazed through her body, forcing her limbs and torso through the painful distances needed to position herself for the killing blow. She couldn’t stop it. She could only marvel at the process.

  Samson awoke. He cried out in pain. His leg was on fire somewhere below his knee. As he wept he saw motion through his tear-blurred eyes. He blinked away tears just in time to vaguely see the admiral and the captain collide. The captain jerked sideways, fell, and lay still. After a few seconds, the Navy officers could no longer hold his attention away from the pain. He closed his eyes and shook with the effort not to scream.

  She killed him! How could she have killed him? Demba never intended to harm Horss. She didn’t think she was capable of harming him. She saw the negative telemetry from his uniform and knew his heart was stopped. She knelt by him and tried to see if his uniform was functioning to keep him viable. She now had two victims to transmat and only one medical cocoon. She worried that Horss’s condition would be too critical for his uniform and augments to treat.

  Demba stood to get a glimpse of Samson. She didn’t see Samson! As she stepped away from Horss’s body, it disappeared in that optical manner typical of a transmat. For a moment she assumed Baby took them both, winked them to the yacht, but then her thoughts cleared well enough for her to realize Baby wouldn’t initiate such action. Baby was, in fact, trying to get her attention by shiplink.

  [No,] she said to Baby’s request to transmat her. [Someone else has taken them. I want to know who. I’ll see if they’ll take me.]

  She waited. She was alone in the African Space Elevator. The sunshine was gone from the world. In the gathering shadow of evening the grid of ionized air that was a transmat reference field could almost be seen forming in front of her and expanding toward her. She turned around to face one of the windows. She looked out upon the darkening plain with its black dots of vegetation and scattered herd animals, visible beyond the outlying buildings of the elevator complex. She could see the brighter habitats of humanity shining in space at a Lagrange point, as the shadow of Earth took away the blue light scatter and made the atmosphere more transparent to the universe.

  Subsection 003

  She turned around, sensing the presence behind her. Fidelity Demba stood on a balcony overlooking a dark bay of an unseen ocean. From the starry night and the ephemeris of her data augment she had determined her exact location on Earth: a small city on the west coast of a slender peninsula called Florida. She had been waiting until night fell on this meridian of the planet. This interfering stranger had made her wait, his android butler attending to her comfort, but she was no less irritated with him - and with herself. She, an admiral of the mighty Navy, was made to feel virtually helpless and unimportant, and in fact she was just that: helpless. She could call her yacht and sail away this moment, but to where, to what kind of future? She would never board the Freedom again. She would never voyage into that dark unknown. She would never command a mission. She would probably never see Archives again, not that she would miss it so much. She would have Baby for the few months he would live until the chaos of life killed him. She might have her private staff, those few loyal servants who trained her and medicated her, keeping her viable in the blood
y precarious way of life that was the Union Navy. But eventually, or sooner, she would disappear, perhaps in death, perhaps into some unknown hell. And so, for what time remained of her freedom, she would not hurry to make decisions, not worry about the Galactic Hub Mission. She was only really interested in Samson and in her own reactions to him. He had broken something in her, opening her to impossible possibilities.

  Demba stared for many moments at the dark man who had come to stand near her in the dark of the balcony. She waited for him to ask his questions and make his demands. She had surprisingly identified him by image from her data augment. He was famous. Even so, it bothered her irrationally that it was him. She knew he lived here. She judged he could have a reason for doing what he did, interfering, as though he policed the Forbidden Planet. He did reside here with special permission. Yet, she was disturbed for some further reason that wouldn’t resolve itself. Perhaps she was expecting too much of her mental faculties after what happened to the child. She was broken now, and both intrigued and frightened by it.

  She didn’t speak but only stood there, looking at him yet not looking at him, perhaps lost in thought. Pan was unnerved by her silence, or was it something else? He saw her clearly in the images from the spy probe he sent to the space elevator. Her voice was less distinct, although her words were rendered intelligible by the equipment. Something about her disturbed him. She was, of course, a completely unexpected person, and that could be the cause for his elevated sensitivity. Even more unexpected was the boy.

  The boy. What a horrible injury! He hoped it was only an accident, yet the minor wounds seemed oddly mismatched to the gruesome severing of his leg. He didn’t want to think Navy officers would be so cruel they would harm a child, but he must keep that possibility in mind. The combination of the Navy and the wounded child would cause consternation for anyone. He would suffer the danger of the Navy if it saved the life of a child.