Balance Point

by Robert Buettner

  So far, to me as a GI, my father sounded one hundred percent credible.

  “It was a ship-to-ship engagement, not infantry. I stowed away to be there. When the cluster unfucked, I, the dumb grunt stowaway infantryman, wound up the only survivor on the only ship that made it through the last jump into the Slug rear. I could have killed him.”

  “Them.”

  “Him. It’s just one entity. We talked. It’s a telepath. Talks to the rest of itself in real time all across the universe.”

  I shook my head. “Three intelligent species and we’re the slow kids who can’t read minds. No wonder we don’t advertise this.”

  My mother wrinkled her forehead. “What, Dear?”

  “Nothing.” I leaned forward. “Then you killed them? It.”

  My father shook his head. “I could’ve. It said it just wanted to leave this universe.”

  I stared at my mother, pointed at my father. “He let the Pseudocephalopod Hegemony go?” I shook my head at my father. “Your duty—”

  “My duty was to try to do the right thing. I decided the right thing was to trust and not to kill anymore.”

  “It didn’t kill you.”

  “It trusted me. It spit me back across the jump.”

  My mother said, “My cruiser just picked your father up. He was half dead.”

  I sat back in my chair.

  Holy crap. History was a lie. Well, of course it was. I knew the liar who wrote it. “And who knows about this?”

  Mom said, “The intelligence officer who took your father’s after-action report in the infirmary knew a hot potato when he heard it. He brought it straight to me. I ordered him to shut his pie hole. I reported it straight to Howard Hibble when his ship rendezvoused with us. The intelligence officer died in Encino fourteen years ago. So, who knows the truth? Us. Howard. Now you. And I think Howard has told each incoming President since.”

  I shook my head slowly.

  Double holy crap. “Sixty million dead and you let him go? And the Slugs are still out there? If people knew, they’d hang you both. And they’d go nuts.”

  “Howard knew that. But Jazen, will you sleep worse now that you know it’s a lie?”

  After the war we had passed the Intelligent Species Protection Act because we never wanted to commit species genocide again. How could it be wrong that we hadn’t done it in the first place, after all? “No. I suppose I won’t.”

  My parents weren’t baby killers or profiteers or deserters after all. Therefore, I slept damn well while my father, the good, if arguably criminally naïve, Samaritan took the next watch.

  I had just wanted to know, for better or for worse. Knowing it was for better was icing on the cake.

  Orion laughed. “He was on the crapper?”

  I was awakened two hours later by Orion’s and my parents’ collective laughter as my father told yet another war story.

  I levered myself up on one elbow, threw off the blanket and sat up on the floor tiles where I had slept. The tale my father was wrapping up sounded slightly less improbable than the one about the giant telepathic Slug, but it made Orion laugh, which made it better than true.

  I made Orion tea and carried it to her on the foldout. Her dosimeter was still in the green.

  She wiped tears from her eyes before she sat up and sipped. “God, it doesn’t get better than this.”

  She had laughed so hard she cried.

  I blinked back tears, myself.

  What had Ya Ya Cohon said on Funhouse about how he would beat the rap? “Make you cry from happy?”

  Orion patted the foldout beside her, and I sat. She looked at my mother, pointed at me. “Isn’t he the best-looking man you ever saw?”

  My mother nodded. “He looks like his father.”

  “Poor bastard.” My father was sitting at the table, watching the passage monitor while he polished that damn cheap pistol again. He slid it across the table to me. “Your watch.”

  As I picked his pistol up, Orion lay back, then pulled my head down to her lips and whispered, “It really can’t get any better than this, baby. Now you got another mother, I can rest.”

  Then she pressed her thin lips to my cheek and closed her eyes.

  I sat with her there, and held her hand while she breathed, shallower and shallower, and ten minutes later her tiny hand turned cold in mine.

  I wept for my mother while my mother held my hand and rocked me. Maybe Orion was right. It couldn’t get any better than that for a kid who had nobody for so long. It certainly couldn’t get better for Orion, who chose to die on her own terms. Not many of us get that choice.

  “Jazen!” My father whispered, as he stood beside the table, pointing at the monitor screen with one hand.

  He held out his free hand, wiggled the fingers, whispered again, “The pistol!”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Adrenaline crackled through me like an electric shock, and I stood and stepped away from Orion and my mother, then peered at the monitor as I drew my father’s pistol from my trouser waistband.

  The lighting in the passage was crap. The cheap camera made it worse.

  Mom and Dad had chosen the room because it was isolated, surrounded by the blank walls of machinery rooms. There would be no other guests in this passage but lost ones. This shadow moved deliberately, not lost.

  I had thought that we were pretty safe here. I had dumped my bug, Orion had dumped hers before she came, and, after I went over their clothing, I figured my parents were clean. After all, their legends were dead solid perfect. That meant that they would have been assigned a snitch tail, which was, of course, about like no tail at all.

  I had also gotten rid of their damn phone in time, I thought.

  Dad whispered, “A little person foraging for food?”

  I shook my head. “Too big for a peep.”

  “It’s just one person, Jazen. Not a squad.”

  I adjusted my hold on the pistol grip. “Doesn’t mean anything. You got a twelve-pack last time because they were busting an illegal birth. Vice overkills Illegals to set an example.”

  “But just one cop?”

  “If they drop a twelve-pack on us, or punch up from below or down from above, or gas us, Mom could get hurt. She’s the prize.”

  The figure had gotten within ten yards, now, but still was just a clump of animate pixels. I couldn’t distinguish whether he carried a long gun, but that would be the worst case.

  Plan for the worst, be pleasantly surprised if it’s better.

  If the guy had a long needler, and got through the door in tactical armor, my father’s pistol wouldn’t be worth jack. If I shot the cop through the door first, however, I might knock him off balance. Yavi cops use and are used to being shot at with needlers, which won’t penetrate doors worth spit. The element of surprise isn’t all that great unless it’s the only element you’ve got.

  I dropped into a tactical crouch, selected an aiming point, based on where a cop of average height’s neck ring would join his helmet, then thumbed off the safety.

  My father slapped my arm down, pointed at his button monitor and whispered. “Don’t the cops here all wear body armor?”

  The silhouette creeping toward the door wasn’t peep short, but the profile didn’t match the sleek new style of body armor I had seen since I had been here, either. I leveled the pistol at the door again.

  A barely audible whisper rasped in the passage. “Parker?”

  I whispered to my father, “It’s not Cohon’s contact. He doesn’t know my name.”

  My father kept his hand on my forearm. “Orion’s name is Parker, too.”

  I shook my head, shrugged off his hand, tightened my grip on the pistol butt and snaked my finger inside the trigger guard.

  “Jazen! It’s me.”

  I guess the voice you most want to hear in the world is unrecognizable if it’s also the voice you least expect to hear in the world.

  My jaw dropped. “Kit?”

  “Open the freakin’ doo
r!”

  She scooted inside, my father closed and locked it behind her, and we faced each other.

  We generally limit kissy huggy during tactical situations anyway, and she was holding a big-ass nine millimeter. Not unusual, but it would be hell if your death certificate read “accidentally shot due to euphoric hug.”

  Her face looked like a tangerine. “Sleep in the tanning bed again?”

  “You always know how to make a woman feel special, Parker. Long story.”

  The four of us stood staring at one another like delegates to a jaw-dropping convention.

  Finally, I said, “How the hell—?”

  Kit said, “I remembered how you said you could still dodge the cops and swipe food by moving through the utilities, even after you got big. I followed the little people and asked them directions as I went.”

  I eyed her Yavi civvies, shook my head.

  She picked at her blouse with thumb and forefinger. “I know. Not my color.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I meant, you look mid-level Yavi enough. You didn’t need to—”

  It was her turn to head-shake. “The Yavi have the passages they think Trueborn spies would have to use cordoned off for at least two levels up and down, and two blocks all around this hotel.”

  I closed my eyes. “Crap.”

  “Not really. I made it in here through the utilities, and I’m a first time tourist. You’re the last of the freakin’ Mohicans in this place. All you have to do is lead the three of us to Stack Fourteen, Eastern, Ninety-six Lower.”

  I squinted. “Why would we—?”

  “You think I walked here? There’s a Scorpion double parked inside that stack waiting for us. Might be a warm climb, but—”

  “Kit, that may be the reason this place is cordoned off. If the Yavi found your ship, it’s not an escape vehicle, it’s bait.”

  She rolled her eyes. We did that to each other a lot in these moments. It’s that contrasting viewpoint thing.

  “Jesus, Parker!” She threw up her hands. “Just once. Just once, would you cross bridges when you come to ’em? Then let ’em collapse underneath you?” She turned to my parents, who stood watching our back-and-forth like the two of us were chimps playing tennis. Kit held out her hands to them like she was pleading for a call from the line judge.

  Then her mouth went round and she said, “Oh. Oh!”

  Kit shifted her pistol to her left hand, used the fingers of her right to comb her hair, then stuck the hand out toward them.

  I suppose there are more awkward circumstances for a girl to meet her boyfriend’s parents than having to move your pistol to shake hands in the middle of a clandestine rescue attempt. Or maybe not, if your hair looks like you blow-dried it with a flame thrower.

  I said, “Mom, Dad. This is Kit.”

  Kit said, “Jazen and I—”

  My mother reached out and took Kit’s hand in both of hers, smiling. “Oh, we know! Jazen never stops talking about you, dear.”

  Speaking as a boyfriend, this was all going surprisingly well. Speaking as a spy, though, we were all still up shit creek.

  I said to Kit, “I assume that Scorpion’s got a lit fuse?”

  She nodded, slid up her blouse sleeve and displayed a locked on countdown timer on her wrist. Then she tucked the pistol away, bent and tightened her shoe laces. “Fifty-seven minutes and counting. Time to run like we stole something.”

  I glanced at my mother and father, and they nodded.

  My father laid his hand on my mother’s shoulder. “We’ll keep up.”

  Then I remembered something I had almost forgotten. I stepped back into the room, knelt alongside the foldout and pulled back the sheet. Then I bent, kissed Orion’s cold and slight cheek one last time, and whispered, “For Ya Ya.”

  Promises kept. All of them.

  Kit knelt beside me and touched my arm. “Orion?” Kit’s voice trembled.

  I nodded, then stepped past the three of them to take the lead. As I inched sideways around Kit, I said, “I assume there’s a pick-up point in the neighborhood?”

  She nodded. “A listening post in a moonlet. It smells like garbage.”

  “Long, boring story. Later. Everybody stay close on me. This should be pretty straightforward.” I drew the shiv I had stolen; Kit and my father each drew their pistols, then I stepped toward the room’s door and reached out to open it.

  Boom!

  The door reached back at me like the fist of God, and slammed me backward and off my feet.

  My back struck Kit, and she shot sideways like the seven pin on the way toward the ten of a seven-ten split.

  In that slowed-down instant, I saw my father drop into a tactical crouch, and his pistol cracked, spit orange flame and kicked up from the recoil. I thought that he was quick for an old guy.

  To his front, the blue flash of a needler spit back as I heard it hiss.

  Then the room’s rear wall introduced itself to the back of my head and I didn’t see or hear anything at all.

  FORTY

  At first, when I got my bearings, lying on the hotel Kube’s floor, I thought I didn’t have my bearings at all and had reverted to childhood. A vice cop in armor stood in the blown, smoking doorway, his long gun needler trained on us.

  The needler whined as its cylinders recharged. But I hadn’t seen armor like he wore, the old mail stuff, since I was a kid. His visor was up, and I saw that he was an old man. Shallow in the cheeks, with thin, white hair, he looked older than my father looked, probably not older than my father actually was.

  As the ringing in my ears subsided, I heard my mother sobbing to my left.

  The room’s door lay where it fell in the room’s center, deformed by the breaching charge so that it rocked like a tray, and it still smoked and crackled.

  Beyond the ruined door, my mother knelt in the room’s far corner, cradling my father’s head in her lap. The old cop’s needler had caught Dad somewhere in the upper body. He was unconscious and bleeding buckets. I couldn’t tell more specifically about the wound, because my mother had snatched the sheet off Orion’s body and had wadded it to try and stop the bleeding.

  I staggered to my knees, started toward my mother and father.

  “No, Captain Parker.”

  I turned my head, then froze. The old man in armor was pointing his needler at me.

  There were powder burns on the guy’s armor. My dad had hit him at close range, but most of the guns the government allows to be sold on Yavet are specifically calculated to be good enough to kill peeps and other crooks but bad enough to be worthless against cop armor.

  I said to the Yavi, “Can’t you see he’s wounded?”

  The old man snorted. “I should hope so. I shot him. Didn’t I, Colonel Born?”

  I turned.

  Kit stood in the corner of the room opposite my mother and father. She was apparently uninjured by either the blast or by getting pinballed into the corner, and she still grasped her pistol. But she appeared confused, because she didn’t have the pistol trained on the bad guy, but sort of waved it listlessly, side to side.

  “Kit!”

  She looked at me, and I realized that tears streamed down her cheeks, and her head shook side to side, as slowly and listlessly as her pistol. She must have been injured in the fall after all, concussed.

  “Kit!” I pointed at the guy’s face.

  His faceplate was wide open, and she could make that head shot at this range literally blindfolded. Even I could.

  I pantomimed a pistol with thumb up and index finger extended. “Shoot the fucker!”

  The old guy shifted his aim to Kit, needler trained center mass on her torso, but he spoke to me. “You don’t get it, Parker, do you? Frankly, I didn’t either until I saw your partner’s face just now.”

  I got to my feet, stepped slowly between Kit and my mother, shaking my head at Kit. “No.”

  The Yavi said, “Yes, Parker. Yes. I thought you and Colonel Born were here working together, Mr. Inside an
d Ms. Outside. But that’s not the case, is it, Colonel? Tell him. You were sent here with two priorities. Follow your deserter partner to Yavet, then assist him to get his mother the starship captain off Yavet without interrogation. But that was priority two. Parker, priority one for Colonel Born was and still is to kill Admiral Ozawa over there, so we can’t interrogate her. And to kill you too, if you interfere.”

  I looked into Kit’s eyes, and saw that the Yavi, whoever the hell he was and however he knew, was right. When I had said to myself that I had never seen Kit Born cry at asassinations, I had been amusing myself. Kit motioned me to step aside with a head jerk. Her tears kept flowing, and the tip of the nine-millimeter’s barrel quivered like her lip did. But the muzzle remained aimed dead center mass at me, where I stood now, with my body shielding my mother.

  Now I shook my own head. “No, Kit.”

  She didn’t speak, just nodded yes. Then she waved me to stand aside with a tiny jerk of the pistol’s muzzle.

  The Yavi said, “It’s so interesting to watch a cold-blooded assassin’s mind work. Colonel Born is calculating, Parker. Not about whether to kill Admiral Ozawa. That’s just duty and simple mathematics. The Colonel has her orders. And the trade is simple for a soldier. One life, or perhaps two, against her planet’s future.”

  The Yavi was right. Kit had assumed it wouldn’t come to this. She had been confident that when she came to the bridge, even if it collapsed under her, something good would happen. Because it always did for her. But this time nothing good had happened, and she didn’t know how to deal with the awful reality.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw the Yavi shift his weight.

  Then he said, “No, the hard calculation for the Colonel in this moment is the how of it: If she shifts her aiming point to me, I’ll squeeze my trigger. The Colonel will be lucky to get a shot off at all, much less an aimed one. So, can she hit her own partner fast enough and hard enough that he will fall away and give her the kill shot she needs? Before I blow a hole in her chest?” The Yavi said to Kit, “Well, Colonel Born, what do they say in those awful gangster holos you all pollute the universe with? Do you feel lucky, Colonel? Do you?”