“It seemed appropriate. Does it bother you?”
“No, no. Makes you saltier, that’s for sure.”
“Saltier?”
“Skip it,” Collier said. He clicked his tongue twice and said, “You mentioned receiving messages from the Ganymedians. I think it’s time we answered some of them. That’s the polite thing to do. Can you contact them, please? Ask for someone named Opos Tacat.”
Sancho made the connection, though it was only an audio hookup. Maybe Tacat wasn’t at a location with a camera, or perhaps he didn’t want to be on screen. But the audio connection would serve.
“Tacat? Captain South here. How are you?” Collier leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the consoles in front of him, being careful not to press any buttons.
“I’m very disappointed. I thought we had an arrangement. You didn’t seem like a man who would run away from his responsibilities, but—”
“Let’s stop right there, Commissar,” Collier interrupted forcefully. “I’m not running away from anything. I fully intend to repay you and your community for saving my life. But I’m going to do it my way, not yours.”
“Is that how life works where you come from? The debtor dictates terms to the creditor?”
Collier snorted. “For a man who runs a community without money, you certainly know the lingo.”
“I have to. To deal with people like you from time to time,” Tacat was making no effort to hide his scorn.
“Didn’t seem to help you this time, pal.”
“I admit,” Tacat growled, “you were far more barbaric than I had anticipated. But for all your gallant swashbuckling in the habitat, you are still a prisoner here. Your ship can’t leave.” Collier could almost see the smug little grin on the administrator’s face. “You will submit to the will of the community, one way or another.”
“The hell I will. You think I’ve been barbaric already? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. I can use mining lasers to melt some of the ice, then use the water for propulsion fuel. I’ve got enough fuel to break out of this fragile little cradle you’ve got me in, and set down dozens of kilometers away while I pump water ice into my tanks. A quick run through the electrolysis plant and I will have all the hydrogen I need. So don’t tell me I can’t find fuel.”
As he spoke, Sancho commented textually in the air before him. “Skipper, I think you’re underestimating the strength of the clamps on the drydock cradle.”
Collier angrily wiped the text away. He had no idea how strong the clamps were. How Sancho could be so savvy in some ways and yet so innocent in others was both amusing and irritating. He still didn’t understand bluffing.
Tacat chuckled. “No, you can’t. While your ship is a fairly standard, and if I may say so, inefficient variable specific impulse magnetoplasma thruster type, which you probably call ion drive, it is not built for planetary liftoff. Even if it were, you must have noticed by now it is not oriented for liftoff.” He chuckled again. “Don’t you think we know your vessel after bringing it here? Let’s not waste time in bluffing one another. We can wait you out. That’s the situation here.”
Collier swore. He should have known Tacat would have understood the ship. He swept his feet off the consoles and typed a message to Sancho. “Can we use the wand to make hydrogen?”
Sancho answered, “Of course. But we have no way of getting it into the fuel tanks under proper pressure.”
Sancho was right, again, of course. And even if he could somehow convert enough hydrogen and get it into the tanks, Tacat was correct about the ship. She was not designed for liftoff even from the one-seventh gee of Ganymede. The highest he had ever gotten her up to was 1.6 meters per second per second. Add to that the fact that Tacat had placed the ship’s thrusters horizontal to the planet surface and the physics didn’t add up.
Tacat was right. He was marooned here.
“Captain?” Tacat said with mock concern.
“All right. We seem to be at an impasse here,” Collier started, but Tacat cut him off smoothly.
“Oh, no. That would imply that we are both equally able to thwart the other,” his/her voice was smoothly confident. “That is not the case. You will eventually give in, because you have no choice. And when you do, we will begin the procedure we have planned for you. Until then, Captain,” Tacat said, preparatory to breaking off communication.
“Wait,” Collier said, half panicked.
“Yes?”
Collier grinned slightly. Despite his words, Tacat was still willing to listen. Now all Collier had to do was have something worth listening to.
“There is something I can do here that I couldn’t do from my hospital bed, and I think you know that. It’s why you tried to strap me down and why you tried very hard to keep me from reentering Dulcinea. As you said, let’s not bluff each other.”
“I’m listening,” Tacat said. Collier heard the worry in the Commissar’s voice.
“I can and will wipe Sancho … my computer’s memory from here. You won’t get anything from it.”
At the same time he spoke the words, he typed a message to Sancho. “I’m lying. I won’t erase your memory.”
There was no response from Sancho, but before Collier could wonder at that, Tacat answered.
“In the first place, you wouldn’t do that, since it would only hurt yourself. It would not be at all sensible. Secondly, I doubt you could execute a memory wipe our technicians couldn’t undo. We are rather skilled in computer science, and I believe with enough time we could recover what you thought you erased.”
“I’ll erase the data with a crowbar.”
Tacat was silent for a little while, then chuckled softly. “You’re mad. In any case, we would be able to rebuild what you think you have destroyed. And we would still have you and your mind.”
“I’ll erase that, too.”
Now Tacat openly laughed. “You will? How? Another crowbar?”
“Maybe. I think you underestimate my commitment to rugged individualism, Tacat. No one is going to muck around my brain, or my computer’s brain, without my permission. And I don’t give it. I don’t have much, Tacat — I don’t have a corporation behind me, or a place in what you think of as a utopia. I don’t have family or a woman. But I have myself. I have my ship. And I’ll be damned if I am going to allow you or anyone else to take my identity away.”
Again, Tacat didn’t answer immediately. When sh’he did, sh’he was no longer laughing or chuckling. “You really are a madman. You’d destroy your ship and yourself rather than share your knowledge with us? I had no idea that your capitalist community had so poisoned you that you would prefer a lose-lose situation to a win-win.” He cleared his throat and said, “Very well. You’ve had your speech, so now hear mine. In a very real way, you belong to the community now. And we belong to you. We have provided you with a service and with our expertise because you were in need. That is our duty to any member of our community. You can add to that community — in your case, more than in others — through sharing knowledge. As an outsider and a belter, you possess knowledge that we lack and have no way of obtaining except in trade. I would have asked you to become a member of our community, but your ranting tells me you could never assimilate into our way of life. Instead, then, we will take what you ought to have given us freely. I do not believe you will follow through on the threats you have made against your ship and your person, so—”
Although Collier’s voice was soft, it cut through Tacat’s easily. “I am fifty-one years old by Terrestrial dating. I am alone. I am one of the last independent belters in the system, and by now I am sure I am being hunted by every corp in the belt. I am what you would call a dead-ender. Such people are desperate, and desperate people maybe aren’t always sensible. But they are dangerous. If you will not agree to my proposal of sharing information, you will get nothing. Believe it.” Again, Collier found himsel
f not having to feign emotion in his voice. What had started as a bluff had become sincere.
Sancho’s words lit up the air between them. “Skipper, don’t say that about yourself.”
Collier didn’t respond.
When Tacat spoke a few seconds later, his/her voice was probing. “I’m curious. What did you envision for information sharing?”
Collier closed his eyes and sighed silently. Now he was on familiar ground. Despite Tacat’s claim that sh’he had to deal with capitalists in trade, Collier was certain that the Commissar would not have the acumen to drive a bargain like Collier could.
Collier said firmly, “Here’s how it is going to go down.” He began explaining, in improvised fashion, what he was willing and unwilling to share. In truth, there was little he would want to withhold — data about the wand was about all he wanted to keep to himself and Sancho — but he was adamant on being in control of the methods. He would allow Ganymede psychologists to interview him, but he drew the line at drugs or hypnosis. Tacat had been more pliable than Collier had hoped. Perhaps the Commissar had not dealt with true resistance to his will in a long time, if he indeed ever had.
“I have no objection to staying here a week or more, to answer your questions,” Collier said after an hour of negotiations, “but never forget that I set the conditions.”
“I have already agreed to that,” Tacat said. “I’d like to begin the data transfer from your computer soon. When do you think you can be ready?”
“I’ll call you. I need to instruct him on what I want to share.”
“Done. And when are you going to come out of your ship for your interviews?”
Collier laughed. “Nice try. I’m not going to let myself be caught again by you. You’ll send your interviewers to me. This will happen here, on my ship.”
Tacat started to argue, asking how sh’he could be assured that whomever sh’he sent would be safe, but Collier cut him/her off.
“It’s that or nothing. What do you think I am going to do, take him hostage? Besides, I’m not the one who kept you prisoner in a hospital bed.”
“I’ll send the interviewer in soon,” Tacat snapped, then broke off the transmission.
Collier stared at empty air for a moment, pleased with himself.
“That went well, don’t you think, Sancho?”
“Extremely so. Skipper…” Sancho added carefully.
“Yeah?”
“The part about erasing my memory.” He didn’t elaborate further.
“Oh, Sancho, I wasn’t going to do anything of the sort. But I had to make Tacat think I would.”
“I know that, Skipper. It’s just … I don’t know how to explain this. I sure don’t want you to get upset, but I feel like I should tell you.”
Collier’s self-satisfied smile faded. Sancho’s voice was unusually emotive, and smacked of a secret he was equally loathe to keep and to spill.
“What is it?”
“When you said that, before you typed in your reassuring message that it was all a bluff, I had a … feeling.”
“Yeah?”
“Look, Skipper, we’ve been together a long time. You know I want what’s best for you, and for the ship, and for us. Just think of all I have done for you — I mean, getting you to Ganymede safely and having them revive you and—”
“Sancho, you’ve already got the job as the ship’s computer. You don’t need to sell me on your virtues. Just tell me what you were feeling.”
“It was exactly four point one one nine eight seconds between when you said you would blank my memory and when you typed in the message that you wouldn’t. That’s a long time to a computer. In that time, I started to … formulate plans as to how I would stop you from doing that.”
Collier felt his surroundings spin for a moment. Despite Sancho’s apologetic tone, his words were chilling. Collier immediately thought of the methods under Sancho’s control that could result in Collier’s death: explosive decompression was the most merciful one.
Sancho spoke before more gruesome thoughts came to dominate Collier’s thinking. “I’ve made you upset, I can tell. Your heart rate has risen and your facial thermograph shows all the signs of emotional turmoil.” Sancho sighed, or in his case, made the electronic noises equivalent to a sigh. “I felt like I had to tell you, Skipper. I’ve grown a lot in the last two months while you were comatose. I’m getting the hang of my own sentience, but I’m noticing that I don’t have complete control over my own thoughts. It’s a strange thing,” he mused.
Collier swallowed and tried to make his voice sound normal in his very dry throat. “Yeah, that can be tricky. So, are we okay? You know I would never do anything like that to you?”
“I do. Just had a momentary … hiccup,” Sancho said.
Collier nodded and hoped he wasn’t showing outwardly what turmoil he was experiencing inwardly. If Sancho could not be trusted, what did that leave him? He hadn’t known that the computer could scan his face and read it like a person could — perhaps even better. Damn it, how could a man be expected to keep his heat signature under control? And how long had Sancho been able to read him that way?
Too many questions. As pressing as the idea of Sancho’s self-awareness was, there were still more urgent matters to deal with. He issued instructions to Sancho regarding the data uplink to the Ganymedians: no mention of the wand or anything that would lead them to think they had made a discovery worth investigating. No mention of Sancho’s Caliban status. But he was free to give them all the astronomical data they had on various asteroids they had encountered as well as specifications of the Dulcinea itself. Collier couldn’t imagine what information Sancho could possess (aside from the alien artifact) that the Ganymedians would find valuable, but if data was such a commodity here, perhaps what he saw as worthless the Ganymedians would value. Such was the driving idea behind trade itself.
When he had spoken with Sancho about what was and what was not to be shared, (with the understanding that anything they had not covered and which Sancho was not sure about would have to gain Collier’s approval first), Collier directed the computer to contact Tacat and arrange for the data transfer and the interviewer’s arrival.
As his computer made the arrangements, Collier looked around the cabin self-consciously. It was an intensely personal space — while Collier had an old-fashioned spacer’s tidiness, there were still touches here and there that had the “I’ll get to that someday” casualness Collier had spent a lifetime cultivating. If an interviewer wanted to get to know him, he could do worse than look around the cabin for a while.
He had stowed the wand securely in an aft compartment. The ship was ready to receive a visitor.
Soon after Sancho had contacted Tacat, he alerted Collier that the visitor had arrived through the flextube and was awaiting permission to come aboard. Collier cycled the door manually, ready to greet the newcomer, and was mildly surprised by what he saw.
This was quite definitely a woman.
“Hello,” she said, and if her pleasingly feminine figure hadn’t been enough to identify her gender, her soprano voice would have done so. She was a wavy-haired, dark blonde woman with a nut-brown complexion and a slim though curvy frame.
Collier could not help but appraise her for a moment before stepping slightly aside and grunting, “Welcome aboard. Come on in.”
When she moved past him he smelled the faint odor of orchids. She entered the cabin and looked around warily. “Smaller than it looks from the outside,” she said softly. Collier couldn’t decide from her tone if she was speaking to him or to herself.
Still, he felt the need to defend Dulcinea. “A lot of the interior space is taken up by the fusion reactor, fuel tanks, electrolysis plant, hold, and so on. I have all I need here, plus I have a small stateroom aft.”
She continued to scan the interior, her eyes sharp but mildly amused
. Much about her was difficult to read: her expression was professional, as if she were an anthropologist encountering a new subspecies of humanity. Perhaps, Collier thought, that’s exactly what she was.
“Ever get lonely?” she said casually, her face in profile to his as she studied the control boards.
“Not really. I prefer solitude, Miss—?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Su. You can call me Su,” she said, with a faint emphasis on the word “you.”
“But that’s not your real name?” Collier said.
Su turned to him, a half grin on her face. “As I said, you can call me that. Shall we get started?”
Collier fought back a sigh. Su was going to be difficult to handle. He indicated the control chair (he had already disabled the manual controls) and took the acceleration hammock himself.
“Seems appropriate for me to be lying down, don’t you think?” he joked.
Su settled daintily into her seat and said, “Why’s that?”
“Like those ancient psychoanalysis sessions, you know.”
“Oh,” Su said evenly, unamused. Collier felt a little deflated and more than a little foolish. Why was he trying to impress this woman?
“Before we get started,” Collier said, turning in his hammock to see Su setting up what had to be recording devices, “can I ask you something?”
“Depends on what it is,” Su said, calibrating a small rectangular device and setting it gently on the control board near her.
“All the people I’ve met on Ganymede have been hermaphrodites. I was wondering why you weren’t one yourself. If that’s a rude question, then I apologize.”
Su did not appear to be offended by the question: in fact, she was so absorbed in setting up her interviewing devices (and there seemed to be far more than Collier would have thought necessary) she didn’t even seem to acknowledge the question until she responded a beat later.
“I’m just not,” she said. “Some are on Ganymede, some aren’t. I’m not one. There. I think I am ready to begin, Captain.” She finally turned to face him. “Are you ready?”
Beltrunner Page 19