Brute Orbits

by George Zebrowski

  “Don’t bother!” Lenin shouted.

  They surrounded her, looking down at her as if she was prey. She stared up at them brazenly, knowing that they would attempt to speak rationally.

  Trotsky seemed the most restrained, but then he had already had his share of her.

  “You’ll pay…for killing…our friend,” he said in a halting voice that knew it was rationalizing.

  Lenin, Leibniz, and Newton knelt around her and leaned closer.

  Leibniz was timid. She saw the resignation in his eyes. There was no telling what was happening to the habitat. If the mess halls shut down, they would all starve—so why not steal a few moments of happiness? He went behind her, as if to avoid her gaze.

  Lenin and Newton grabbed her arms. She looked into their eyes and saw their resolve. Trotsky towered over them, watching.

  Lenin laughed and reached under her shirt. Newton fondled her naked belly, then took the shorts and underpants from her lap and tossed them aside.

  The absurdity of the names she had given them struck her as she began to struggle. Their namesakes would have been outraged. Well, maybe not Lenin or Trotsky, she told herself as if in a dream, recalling when she had played with boys as a child. But Newton had reportedly been a sexual innocent.

  Leibniz grabbed her long hair and pulled her head back. Trotsky put his foot on her chest, pressed her to the ground, then leaned over and ripped off her shirt, leaving her completely bare and shivering.

  Lenin rolled over on top of her, undid his fly, and pushed into her. Newton sucked at her breasts, while Leibniz worked himself around to her face.

  She cried out as Lenin began to move, and struck at him with her suddenly free right arm. Trotsky came around and knelt on it.

  Lenin finished and held her for a few pathetic moments, then slid off. Leibniz was still trying to get into position at her head when Newton took his turn.

  She took a deep breath, determined to thrust up with her hips and prevent Newton’s entry, when the ground rumbled and shifted beneath her, and she felt as if she were about to fall.

  Something was affecting the spin of the habitat, she realized with a cool detachment that escaped her fear of the men. Spin was stopping. The sensation of falling slowly took her and she floated off the ground, with three of the men holding onto her. Centrifugal gravity was gone. Without the acceleration of rotation, nothing would stay on the ground. Unrestrained objects would continue in the direction of spin. The sensation of the ground shifting beneath her also indicated that the asteroid had decelerated slightly—which would send objects toward the sunplate.

  As they floated off at a slight upward angle, she imagined that the asteroid had been struck by something. At first this might have affected its power source, which fed the sunplate, and also the attitude and spin maintenance gyro controls, slowing the Rock’s spin until it stopped.

  Lenin and Leibniz let go of her and drifted at her side. Newton held on. They heard cries, looked toward the barracks, and saw people floating upward. Without anything to restrain them, they would drift in the direction of spin, unless they had been inside the mess halls or barracks.

  Objects would tend to move according to the asteroid’s previous motions: forward and around what had been the central axis of rotation—and now in a drift toward the flickering sunplate. Centrifugal acceleration—and lack of forward acceleration after the initial departure boost had cut off and put the habitat into free fall—had overcome that tendency; but now it would take work to prevent it.

  “You fools!” she shouted to the men floating near her. “If you hadn’t been so eager, we might have held onto the grass!”

  They were turning together now, Lenin and Leibniz nearby and Newton on her arm, with enough upward angle and previous momentum to keep them moving into the great central area of the habitat.

  “Don’t let me go,” whispered a frightened Newton.

  “Idiots!” she shouted. “You may have killed us all.”

  “What are you babbling about?” Lenin asked.

  “We could starve up here!” she shouted, knowing it was an exaggeration.

  She knew what she had to do. Breaking Newton’s grasp on her wrist, she pulled back her leg and gave him an upward push.

  He tumbled away, head over heels, in obedience to the laws of physics set down by his namesake.

  “No one can reach you now!” she shouted, knowing that it was not quite true, but nearly enough as to make no difference.

  “Help!” Newton cried, and she almost pitied him, the prick.

  “Thank you!” she called back to him.

  Opposite and equal reactions, she thought happily as the grass came up to meet her. Newton tumbled away into the great space. Any of them could do what she had done, if they could think and reach each other, but only two could regain the surface in this way; one would have to be hurled away, and he would have no one to push against. The other way was to learn how to swim down to the ground.

  She grabbed the grass, and laughed; but in a moment she knew that being near the grass would at best enable her to pull herself to the barracks or the mess halls, where there might be some food and clothing available. If not, then starvation waited for them all, for floaters and grassholders alike.

  She looked up at the three men high in the space above her. They twisted and turned, but there was nothing to push against; even a more than modest amount of flatulence would not help much. If chance brought any two closer to each other, only one would be able to profit by the encounter; and from what she could see, they were too far apart now to ever meet again. They would have to swim before a collision with the sunplate injured or killed them.

  She looked around—and saw Stalin’s body drifting low some one hundred meters away. As she watched, it turned slowly, and its loose arms seemed to beckon.

  The sunplate, she noticed, was dimming slowly. Color was again draining out of the worldlet, and she knew that anything she could do to save herself would have to be done quickly.

  Turning away, she slipped like a sleek black cat through the tall grass, pulling herself forward hand over hand toward the nearest mess hall. It was strange that she could not lie down in the grass and rest, but her forward motion did not seem alien to her. The grass brushed against her bare skin with a pleasant sound, and she wondered if it would be possible for people to survive a lifetime of weightlessness.

  She paused for a moment and looked back at the sky where she had stranded the four men. They were distant motes now, far apart and unable to use each other as springboards. She did not feel sorry for them; they were like the salmon who hurled themselves upstream, only to die after spawning. Many died in the falls and rapids well below the warm pools where their future incarnations would have quickened into life.

  She looked to the barracks. A cloud of motes rose upward like smoke into the central space, composed of inmates who had been caught in the open when spin had slowed and stopped. They had failed to get hold of something, and with impetus from one unthinking pushoff or another, they had sent themselves up from the inner surface. Fortunately, the habitat’s spin had not stopped suddenly, or those indoors would have been hurled to injury or death. She wondered if that meant that AI maintenance and repair programs were at work.

  There was nothing she could do to help anyone. It was possible, given the scale of damage that would cause such a failure, that spin or reliable light would never return. For now, she was intent on reaching the mess hall, to see if any food could be had from the dispensers, before others near the ground thought of doing the same.

  Her stomach felt queasy from the spinless free fall of the habitat, but she was also getting hungry. She needed her strength, if only to return to the barracks to get some coveralls from her locker.

  She resumed her speedy hand over hand motion through the grass, keeping the mess hall in direct line of sight, so if the sunplate failed again, she might still be able to reach her goal in complete darkness.

  She paused
again, gripping the grass with both hands, and listened. Then, at her far left, she spotted small groups of grounders like herself, whispering through the grass like wolves. They would be no great danger, she realized. People in weightless condition have to keep one arm in the grass; and if they pick a fight, up they go, with no easy means to get back or to move around.

  She slipped forward again, picturing groups of people clinging to grass and buildings. The people inside had the easiest handholds.

  As she approached the first of the three mess halls, she heard a distant wailing from above. Looking up, she saw the cloud of sky-stranded inmates drifting slowly toward the sunplate. They were wailing and crying for help, like the damned being drawn into hell. Many of them were probably sick, vomiting from weightlessness, and too disabled to learn the trick of air-swimming to stop their forward motion and bring themselves down to the grass.

  She wondered how hot the sunplate was, or even if it was hot, or posed any danger to human beings if they should touch it. She had no idea of the velocity with which they would strike it; perhaps atmospheric friction might slow them to a mild collision.

  She noticed that other grounders had reached the vicinity of the mess halls, and were considering how to get inside. To do so, one would have to cross a grassless area, where there was nothing to grab.

  She made eye contact with two unfamiliar faces, a man and a woman who seemed to be a couple.

  “Quite a problem!” the man called to her. He was gray-haired and looked resourceful, but he sounded discouraged.

  The woman with him, a stout white woman with red hair, gave Abebe an admiring but competitive look. “Lose your clothes?” she shouted, smiling.

  Abebe grinned and nodded, and this seemed to reassure the woman. “Worse,” she added, and the woman gave her a sympathetic look.

  “What can we do?” the man asked. “Jump for the door?”

  Abebe looked around. There were at least a dozen other figures in the grass that grew up to the smooth open area in front of the mess dome. There was a surer way than jumping.

  “Once inside,” she called back, “we’ll be all right if we hang on to chairs and tables.” They were anchored, she remembered. “We’ll need a people bridge to the entrance!”

  “Hear that everyone?” the man shouted with renewed hope in his voice. “We gotta team up!”

  Abebe came up to the edge of the grass. “Start lining up behind me!” she shouted. “Grab my ankles, and do the same down the line until I’m across.” She estimated ten meters to the door, too far to chance a leap that might miss.

  She waited, glancing back to see who was coming to hold her ankles. It was the gray-haired man.

  “Hello,” he said, smiling as he gripped her ankles and tried to ignore her nudity.

  “I’m going to crawl forward,” she said, “and someone should grab your ankles.”

  “My wife is ready,” he said softly.

  “Go slow,” Abebe added. “The chain will lift some, and we’ll need forward push!”

  “Got it!” a male voice answered.

  “Hold tight,” she said to the man behind her. “Once off the grass, only your hold and inertia will keep me low. Any push from me will raise me.”

  “You know some physics,” he said.

  Cries reached them from the human swarm above.

  “Those poor bastards,” she said, as she looked up and saw that some of them were using the helplessly sick as reaction mass in attempts to kick themselves back to the grass. A strange game of musical masses was playing itself out, with a handful of grass as a reward. She was not looking forward to meeting the winners of that contest. Quite a few, she noticed, were not playing that game. They were slowly swimming against their forward motion, at an angle that would bring them down to the grass. She realized that only the ill ones, a hundred or more, would reach the sunplate.

  “Ready?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He pushed her slowly onto the ceramic apron that ran around the mess dome. She kept her palms flat on the paving, trying hard not to push down, wishing for a fly’s sticky hands. She was moved forward with almost no friction, and stopped when the man behind her reached the end of the grass. She was three inches off the surface, palms pressing against it gently.

  It took ten people for her to reach the door. She was a meter off the surface when she grabbed the edge of the open portal.

  “Now—everyone!” she shouted. “Start coming across the bridge.”

  One by one people pulled themselves over the bridge of backs, and found places inside the hall. When the last pedestrian came across, the end link in the chain started to cross, until finally only Abebe was left at the door. She pulled herself in, and hands helped her to a place at one of the tables.

  “Thanks,” she said loudly.

  “Thank you,” said the gray-haired man; his wife nodded. “My name is Gulliver Barnes, and this is my wife, Clare Staples.”

  Abebe nodded, looking around in the hope of finding some clothing; but the dome was all bare latticework and transparent panels, with the great pillar of the dispenser rising out of the floor.

  Clare said, “I’m afraid the only clothes are back at the quarters, dear.”

  Abebe nodded. “I’ll get there, after we eat.”

  “There’s power in the sunplate,” Gulliver said, “so the dispensers might be working. What do you think happened?”

  Abebe shrugged clumsily with one hand holding onto the table. “Something outside clipped us, stopping our set rotation, but maybe the systems will right themselves after things settle down.” She looked up through the dome, to where the human cloud was passing, and wondered what a sudden return to centrifugal gravity would do to it.

  Gulliver also looked up. “I see what you mean,” he said grimly.

  “Maybe,” she said, “if they stay near the axis, and come down around the sunplate as spin resumes, they can regain the surface at lower acceleration points.”

  “They could still break a lot of necks,” Gulliver said.

  “Is the sunplate hot?” she asked.

  Gulliver nodded. “But they might be able to push off before it burns them too badly. They won’t stick, that’s for sure. Even if we get spin back, there won’t be much attraction on the plate itself, since it’s right at the end of the zero-g axis. I think there’s some kind of gridwork over the plate. They might be able to grab the mesh struts and climb down, but I’m not sure.”

  “But will we get spin back?” Abebe asked.

  Gulliver gave her a look of doubt, but said, “There are self-repairing systems on the engineering level, robots and all. Depends on what they’re doing.”

  “If they’re doing anything,” his wife said.

  18

  A Tunnel Out of Life

  Abebe Chou’s Rock had been clipped by Rock Seven, sent out with greater boost into a cometary period that no one had been eager to calculate or record. It caught up with the slower prison and brushed forward along its axis for only a moment, then moved ahead. The automatic systems of both prisons slowed spin to zero, adjusted attitude, and ran through a long checklist of sensing information before resuming spin acceleration and control.

  Rock Seven housed six thousand women, all murderers of one kind or another, all multiple offenders, all young, reportedly cruel, heartless monsters who deserved to be executed; but a merciful criminal justice system had jumped at the chance to simply sever them from all human society for life.

  “We give you your lives,” the judges said, “and a place to spend them not unlike hell, but much more comfortable.”

  Judge Overton, Chief World Justice of the Orbits, said those very words to her, Lonnie Beth Hughes recalled as she lounged in her bunk one afternoon, in the second year of her exile. Born in Mexico City in 2002, raped by twelve boys when she was thirteen, she was being paid for sex by fifteen, and running her own whores by eighteen.

  When her father had gotten out of prison at forty, he had come t
o stop her. She had him killed. When her uncle got out at fifty, and came to stop her with a Bible in one hand and a chain in the other, she had him killed.

  When she was twenty, her brother got out of prison; he was thirty. He was more understanding, and helped her kill six members of her organization, along with several of the younger girls. They were all getting untrustworthy, and two of them proved it by donating evidence to the police to get rid of her so they could take over. She should have killed the last two sooner, as soon as she’d had their voiceprints certified to prove them liars. The police in her pay had provided the lab service, and also did the killings. Nobody could say she ever killed innocents.

  It was only what she had to do to live, nothing more. She’d never sold herself for drugs. Any woman could do that, and the judges always liked that better; it got their sympathy more easily, the few who were honest enough to be suckered. In fact, she had only killed people who were in the business and relatives, never civvies. She had been caught for a murder she had not done, and sentenced by a judge who was in business with her competitors. She had to admire that; it was the way she had always tried to do things.

  By the time her case got to Overton, no one knew anything but what was fixed for them to know.

  “When I was younger,” he had said to her, “people asked me, how do you know they’ll never get out. Well, nowadays we know. No one ever gets out.”

  It was simple. She was out here to die—to die with nothing left over.

  It was comfortable, but she didn’t have much of anything to do.

  It was boring.

  But she was lucky in one way. She didn’t need men. Fantasies of their hairy asses were enough. No smell. Some women liked the hair and the smell. And she didn’t need women, either, especially the stupid killers that got themselves sent here. She hadn’t gotten around to trying hairless Asian or African men, and now she never would.

  She had not really been caught at anything, ever. They’d had to make it all up to get her. She had honor and pride in that fact, but she kept it to herself because she knew that there was no one smart enough to believe her. And she wouldn’t have even blamed a smart one for not buying it; the police had been unusually clever in framing her.