Though Hell Should Bar the Way

by David Drake

  I was seeing the Matrix as a series of pathways instead of just being blurs of light which suggested energy gradients. I’d never be as good an astrogator as Captain Leary, but I was certainly becoming better than I had been.

  “I’m getting to be a better astrogator than the Academy would ever have made me!” I said to Maeve.

  I heard the words when they came out of my mouth. For a moment I was shocked, but what I’d said was the truth and nothing to be ashamed of. Even so I raised my goblet. To my surprise, it was empty. I remembered Maeve refilling it several times as I talked, and I was pretty sure that the server had brought more than one additional bottle during the evening.

  “Oh!” I said.

  “We could have more,” Maeve said. “It’s good wine. But I think I’d rather go up to my room.”

  I got up—lurched, rather; it was a banquette, so I didn’t knock my chair over.

  I was pleased to be able to step to Maeve’s seat and offer my arm. Apparently my experience in the rigging had given me the ability to walk upright even when I was drunk.

  I was certainly drunk.

  Maeve laid her fingers on my forearm and rose to her feet with the liquid grace of a fountain. I was pretty sure she’d have grabbed and supported me if she’d needed to, but I was perfectly steady.

  We walked through the restaurant. I heard Maeve call, “On the room, Jean,” but I was concentrating on walking toward the doorway. Everything outside that rectangle was a gray blur.

  An elevator opened beside me. Maeve directed me in. I didn’t recall an elevator before. We’d come up to the restaurant by stairs.

  The door opened again. We walked into a hallway. I must have been sobering, because I could see in color again. Everything was still fuzzy, though.

  We entered Maeve’s room. I heard the door close; I turned her toward me and kissed her. She responded with an enthusiasm that startled me. I cupped her breasts within the garment. The fabric must have been even thinner than it seemed to look at. It had been a very long time since I’d last been with Rachel.

  Maeve kissed me again but broke away. “Now let me talk for just a moment, Roy,” she said, “because I want this as much as you do. Now, just sit down.”

  She patted to the bed. I sat beside her and tried to embrace her again. She squirmed away and kept hold of both my hands.

  “You joined the Navy to protect Cinnabar,” Maeve said, her eyes holding mine. “Protect the Republic against all her enemies.”

  “All right,” I said. I didn’t know why she was talking about that. I wasn’t sure what she’d just said was true. I’d entered the Academy basically as a matter of inertia: I didn’t want to think about my future, so when Junior joined the RCN, I decided I would too.

  “There are people who use Cinnabar as a tool to make themselves important,” Maeve said. “The worst of these is Bernis Sand, who has a private apparatus outside the Foreign Ministry. She has the ear of very important politicians and we’re sure she’s getting money from the Republic even when she’s working against its best interests.”

  I shook my head to clear it. Maeve put my hands back in my lap and let them go.

  “What Sand is doing now,” Maeve said, “is trying to stir up war between Cinnabar and Karst. Which will be a disaster.”

  “Karst isn’t such a big deal,” I said. My voice sounded like a growl even in my own ears.

  “No,” Maeve said. “But that will breach the treaty, and we’ll be back at war with the Alliance.”

  I was staring at her bosom. She covered my right hand with her left and raised it to her breast. She giggled. I was so startled that by the time I reacted by shifting forward, Maeve had risen to her feet and walked around my outstretched legs to sit on my other side.

  “Now just listen for another moment,” she said. “I know you respect Captain Leary, and perhaps you respect Lady Mundy too. You should. But they’re acting as tools of Bernis Sand, and they’ll destroy the Republic unless they’re stopped. Our economy and our society will break under the strain of resumed all-out war with the Alliance.”

  Maeve leaned forward and kissed me again as hard as she had when we first came through the door. She said, “You’ll help me save Cinnabar, won’t you Roy? You’re a patriot, not one of Captain Leary’s retainers!”

  She lifted my hands to her breasts again.

  I pulled away and stood. I couldn’t claim to be sober, but my mind was as cold as the hull in space.

  “I’ll be leaving now,” I said. “We’ll work out what I owe you for dinner, but not just now.”

  I walked to the door like I was a puppet on a string, opened it, and went out into the hall. I half expected Maeve to come out of the room after me, but the door remained as I’d shut it.

  Instead of riding the elevator, I took the stairs at the other end of the hall. I think it sobered me up some; my legs worked, and my brain was starting to work again.

  And the anger helped a lot too. They—Maeve and whoever she worked for—were treating me like I was dishonest. They hadn’t offered me money, they’d offered me Maeve’s body. I wondered if Dad had used whores to bribe people too.

  The door at the ground floor opened into the street. I was about to cross, heading back for the Sunray and wondering what I was going to say about what’d just happened. Probably nothing, but I wasn’t in any shape to decide tonight.

  THE FOUNTAIN bubbled to the top again. I turned and went into the bar. I was sober again and I didn’t want to be.

  “A double of your house whiskey,” I said. I thought for a moment. “You do have whiskey on Saguntum, don’t you?”

  “We’ve got whiskey,” the bartender said. He turned up a glass and began to fill it from a bottle fitted with a pour spout. I wondered how much money I had with me. Enough to tie one on properly, I was sure. I’d probably have to borrow against my salary to cover tonight’s dinner, but I was damned if I was going to feel that I’d taken any money from Maeve and the people behind her.

  A man came in from the street and took a place at the bar to my left. “Say,” he said. “You’re Tommy Reisberg from Xenos, aren’t you? Have a drink on me, Tommy.”

  “I’ve never met Tommy Reisberg,” I said, “but I am from Xenos and I’ll cheerfully take your drink. If you’ll have one on me next.”

  Another man got up from the table and moved to my other side. “Say, I thought you were Tommy too,” he said. “What you doing in Jacquerie, Tommy?”

  The barman put my drink before me as I turned to look at the new man. I’d never seen him before. I’d never seen either of them before.

  “I’m still not anybody named Reisberg,” I said.

  The man on my right had brought his drink with him from the table. “Well, we’ll straighten things out over a few more of these,” he said. He polished off the clear liquid and set his glass down.

  I drank also. The local whiskey seemed to be a rye, but there was an odd undertaste to it.

  My knees gave way. The man on my right caught me as I fell into him.

  A coin rang on the counter. I heard the other man say, “Tommy never did have a good head. I think this’ll take care of everything. We’ll take Tommy home.”

  About that time the gray fog filling my head dimmed to black.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I didn’t exactly wake up, but I came around enough to realize that somebody was shaking me and shouting, “Get up, numbnuts!”

  The High Drive was on. The buzz made my brain tremble. I didn’t know where I was; I wasn’t sure who I was. It occurred to me that I might be dead and in Hell.

  “Get up, you little shit!”

  Water splashed in my face. A second voice said, “Hey, watch the bunk, Wellesley.”

  There was a rope tethering my thighs to the bunk. My eyes didn’t work right; I saw a blur lean close and move back, but I wasn’t sure anything moved except in my mind.

  The water on my lips tasted good. I licked them and sat up.

  “Ab
out bloody time,” the voice said. I threw up.

  I wasn’t aiming at the speaker—I wasn’t awake enough to do anything that organized—but I was looking toward the blur that spoke. I guess that was good enough to get the same result.

  The voice roared, “You little shit!” and something slugged me. I went back into blackness.

  * * *

  When I finally came around the ship was under way in the Matrix. I felt as if there was a membrane shrunk over my skin, moving when I did. It didn’t get in my way—but it was there.

  I opened my eyes. I was on the bottom bunk of a tier. The two higher bunks were raised against the bulkhead, which is how I’d been able to sit up before.

  The side of my jaw hurt. One thing at a time. First I had to learn where I was.

  The man at the console heard the bunk springs squeal and turned to look at me. “Bloody well about time,” he said. “I was beginning to think we’d paid good money for a deader. Not a lot of money, though.”

  I recognized the voice of the man who’d waked me the first time—and who’d then slugged me when I threw up. He was big and broad, though short legged as best I could tell in a seated figure. The right half of his skull was bald and he was missing the top of his right ear. I didn’t see any scar tissue on his scalp.

  He had a nasty voice, but I was already sure we weren’t going to be friends. If I remembered correctly from when I was still under the drug, his name was Wellesley.

  “Where am I?” I said. I was glad to learn that my voice worked. I didn’t try to shout, partly because I didn’t have the energy. I felt like a dishrag.

  I’d heard the outer airlock close as I came around, but I wasn’t sure whether it was for people going out on the hull or coming back in. Now the dogs of the inner lock drew back in a series of small clicks and the hatch opened. Three spacers entered the cabin, two in hard suits and the third in an air suit.

  They’d already taken their helmets off. One was a hatchet-faced spacer who must be seventy; the other two were as pale as anyone I’d ever seen.

  “Where you are,” Wellesley said, “is aboard the Martinique, on the way to Blanchard. And you’re a landsman.”

  “I rated able spacer in the RCN,” I lied. I didn’t know exactly what the situation was, but I didn’t see any advantage to blurting that I could astrogate. I wasn’t great, but I was probably as good as any of this lot.

  “I’m still captain of the Martinique, Wellesley,” the old man said as he continued to strip off his suit. He turned to me and said, “I’m Captain Langland. What’s your name, spacer?”

  The captain’s hard suit looked like a piece of junk, but it was better than the suit the crewman behind him was taking off. The air suit that the other spacer was getting out of was visibly patched with cargo tape.

  “I’m Roy Olfetrie, crew on the Sunray till you drugged and kidnapped me,” I said. “Where are we headed?”

  “That’s a bloody lie!” Wellesley said. “Two of your friends brought you aboard!”

  “We’re headed for Blanchard,” Langland said. “We’re twelve days out.”

  I sat up carefully. My arms were ready to support me but they didn’t need to; I’d slept off whatever it was that they’d drugged me with, though I still felt weak.

  I stank. I guess somebody’d cleaned the deck, but the front of my tunic was soaked with my own vomit. “Bloody hell,” I muttered. “Where do I clean up, Langland? And I need a change of clothes, at least a tunic. I’m not going to wait twelve bloody days.”

  “There’s the head,” Langland said, gesturing to the corner with the rear bulkhead. The screen there was the same grease-dulled color as the deck and bulkheads; with my current fuzzy vision I hadn’t noticed it. “And I guess a set of my slops’ll fit you.”

  I got up with only a momentary rush of dizziness and started for the head. “Look, Olfetrie?” Langland said. “You’re not raising hell about this?”

  I looked at him over my shoulder. “That wouldn’t do much good, would it?” I said. “You going to turn around and put me back on Saguntum?”

  “Like hell we will!” Wellesley said.

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured,” I said. I walked into the head and stripped off my tunic. “I’ve never been on Blanchard, but I guess it’s got bars. That makes it pretty much all same-same as Saguntum so far as I care.”

  “Well, you’re a cool little bastard,” said Langland.

  I ran water into the basin and rinsed out my tunic. Then I used the wet garment to wipe my face and torso before rinsing it again. One thing about a starship is that there’s always water from the tanks of reaction mass.

  I wasn’t looking forward to being a crewman on the Martinique, but after Dad shot himself I’d given up expecting things to be the way I wanted. This wasn’t going to be fun, but I guessed it’d be livable. If I was wrong about that, well, then I didn’t have any problems at all.

  * * *

  The Martinique didn’t have proper watches, but when we’d dropped into normal space so that Langland could fix our position, he swore and said, “Wellesley, we’ve got to get the starboard antenna back in service. It’ll be a month before we make Blanchard at this rate, and we don’t have food for that long.”

  “All right,” Wellesley said. “I’ll take the landsman out and we’ll free the cable.”

  We were all more or less average size, though Wellesley probably strained the expansion seams of the hard suits. I went to the less-good hard suit, though that was a toss-up: The cushion lining was almost completely gone from this one, but it looked to me like the interior flex at the joints was maybe in a little better shape than on the other.

  Wellesley cuffed me away. “Who told you to take a hard suit?” he snarled. “Put on one of the air suits until I decide you’re ready for a good one!”

  “I won’t wear one of those air suits,” I said. “Especially if I’m going out with you.”

  “You’ll do what I bloody say!” said Wellesley. “I’m the mate!”

  He cocked his fist. I set my feet and said, “I’m not drugged now!”

  Wellesley didn’t swing. I was about to start things myself, moving in and hitting him as many times as I could in the pit of his stomach. I wasn’t as strong as Wellesley and he had forty pounds on me besides, but I hit hard and I didn’t figure he was used to taking punishment.

  “Oh, back off, Wellesley,” the captain said. “I’ll take Olfetrie out. You recalibrate us for Blanchard with starboard in service again.”

  When the hatch had closed behind me and Langland in the airlock, I said, “What’s the story about the other two?”

  He frowned. “Glance and Bodo, no story,” he said. “They don’t speak much Standard, but they’re good spacers. I’m not sure where they come from. Never much cared, to tell the truth.”

  I wondered what he paid them. As little as he could, and that was probably less than a spacer with a better grasp of Standard would’ve gotten. I wouldn’t have called them “good spacers,” but I was comparing them against the Sunray’s crew. Chances were the run of RCN ships wouldn’t have measured up to that standard.

  The cable that extended and furled the starboard sails was jammed at the masthead. I climbed up to it and found the reason: The cable had been spliced into a rat’s nest about four times the diameter of the line proper. Apparently it’d worked for a while, but when it finally jammed, the cable guide had buggered it hopelessly.

  I came back down, put my helmet against Langland’s, and said, “I guess we can resplice this, but it isn’t going to be easy. Do you have a spare cable?”

  I could resplice it, anyway. I figured that whoever’d made the botch that I’d seen there now wasn’t going to do any better a second time.

  “Well, nothing of the weight,” Langland said. “That’s why I had Bodo and Glance splice it.”

  He led me to the outside supply locker. There was indeed a spool in it—marked #8, which meant it was exactly half the diameter of the cable
on the antenna at present. This was the cable that’d usually be used to raise yards, not to extend the antenna itself. On the other hand …

  “Okay, we’ll swap it out,” I told Langland. I wasn’t acting like a junior spacer, but they hadn’t recruited me in the proper way either. I hadn’t liked the notion of running out of food on the way to Blanchard.

  “But that’s not heavy enough,” Langland said.

  “It doesn’t have to serve for long,” I said. “We’ll take the old cable aboard and I’ll splice it in the cabin. If I try to do it out here, I’m likely to butcher it as badly as the first guy did.”

  That wasn’t true. It was, however, true that I didn’t want to do a major splice in a hard suit that I didn’t trust not to fall apart even without being poked by a frayed cable.

  I disconnected the hydraulic line, then went up the antenna again, carrying the new spool. It was a lot easier this time than it’d been on the Sunray. Not only was the antenna not extended—that was the problem, after all—but I cut the original cable and used it as a traveller after I’d reconnected hydraulic line.

  It was easier also because I’d done it before—and because I’d done a lot of other things as well since Barnes first ran me through my paces on the Sunray. I was confident, because I’d managed to hold my own in a picked crew under a famous captain. There were plenty of better spacers, but none of them were on the Martinique.

  We hauled the old cable in together, loosely gathered since there was no point in rolling it properly. I wasn’t looking forward to making a proper splice, but that was the job.

  * * *

  Wellesley complained that the cable took up most of the cabin, which it did. I didn’t bother explaining why I was doing the job inside rather than on the antenna. That was obvious if you accepted that I didn’t want to die because I’d ripped the suit open. Wellesley probably didn’t accept that, but even he wasn’t willing to push the business too hard.

  I’d squared the ends on either side of the previous splice. That was a bad enough job in itself as the Martinique’s saw was on its last legs. The power supply didn’t hold a charge—I had to recharge it three times on each cut—and the diamonds of the blade were worn almost smooth with the steel disk they were set into.