The Venus Belt
Page 1
The Venus Belt
L. NEIL SMITH
Phoenix Pick an imprint of Arc Manor
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The Venus Belt copyright © 1980, 2009 L. Neil Smith. All rights reserved. This book may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise without written permission from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Cover copyright © 2009 Arc Manor, LLC. Manufactured in the United States of America. Originally published by Balantine Books (Del Rey), 1980.
Tarikian, TARK Classic Fiction, Arc Manor, Arc Manor Classic Reprints, Phoenix Pick, Phoenix Rider, Manor Thrift and logos associated with those imprints are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arc Manor Publishers, Rockville, Maryland. All other trademarks and trademarked names are properties of their respective owners.
This book is presented as is, without any warranties (implied or otherwise) as to the accuracy of the production, text or translation.
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ISBN (Digital Edition): 978-1-60450-414-9
ISBN (Paper Edition): 978-1-60450-442-2
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To my parents, Les and Marie Smith, and to
treasured memories of the lives and works of
H. Beam Piper and Karl Bray.
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Let no one hail this occasion as binding together our myriad interests and separate wills. Those represented here, the, respectively, United States of America and Mexico, the former Dominions of Newfoundland and Canada, the Republics of Quebec, Alaska, California, Texas, and Cuba—all enjoy unique histories and traditions which must be neither lost nor rendered inconsequential.
Rather, let us say that the barriers between us have been cast down, so that those histories and traditions might live and mingle freely as they will, toward a new synthesis, greater than the parts combined to create this, our own new North American Confederacy.
President Benjamin R. Tucker
In Continental Congress
July 2nd, 117 A.L.
*
The Venus Belt
1: Espionage Confederate Style
Tuesday, February 23, 223 A.L.
Denver’s overzealous District Attorney wouldn’t be raiding any more mom-and-pop porno stands. Not after last night’s covert photo session in his basement—that extra room nobody’s supposed to know about.
I’d chosen a wintry evening when he was out addressing Concerned Prudes Against Literacy, or whatever they call it. Breaking in was a cinch—I’ve had plenty of practice. So were the pictures—my light-amplifier’s bigger than the camera it attaches to, the size of a .38 slug.
And what a collection! Whips, chains, video cassettes. I haven’t seen so many rubber suits since they took “Sea Hunt” off the air. Next morning I sent a swell assortment of eight-by-ten glossies to the News-Post and Rocky Mountain Liberty, following up with an anonymous call, but I didn’t linger on the phone.
It wasn’t that I feared a trace, or SecPol’s voice-analysis procedures. In the first place, the call was routed over a line that isn’t even supposed to exist, courtesy of the Colorado Propertarian Party. And anyway, I used a Confederate-model vocal synthesizer, the kind chimpanzees and gorillas use to communicate with other folks. Took me six months to learn how to work the bloody thing.
In the second place, I’m totally above suspicion, with the pluperfect alibi: I’ve been dead for twelve years.
Mainly, I was in a hurry. I had an appointment in a broom closet, and was late for a game of golf. You might call it golf. I do.
My death? A reasonable, but fortunately unwarranted conclusion on the part of my former employer, the City and County of Denver, circa 1987. Though another several billion people—including critters I didn’t even know about then—had called it 211 A.L. That’s Anno Liberatis, and if you’ve got enough fingers to count up to 1776, you can figure out why for yourself. Now they’re calling it 223 A.L., and in the good old U.S.A., it’s 1999.
I put the phone away. The News-Post wanted the story, all right, and I wasn’t much worried about the city’s second largest paper, because, at that moment, Jenny Noble, Rocky Mountain Liberty’s editor in chief—and national Propertarian chairperson—was handing me a grilled cheese sandwich. I moved my soggy topcoat so she’d have a place to sit—her desk, after all—and slung my shoulder holster over the back of my chair. The battle-worn Smith & Wesson .41 clunked a couple of times before it stopped swinging. The edition in Jenny’s wastebasket was yesterday’s, but I was two months out of touch with my native land, so it evened out. Jenny interrupted my perusal of the front page before it got started:
“You and your cute little camera have a busy night? I understand they’re really going to run the pictures.”
Slender and freckled, Jenny’s a pleasure to be in the same room with, only partially because she’s pretty. She communicates enthusiasm, and her horde of gentle revolutionaries seemed to get the work out just to please her. Somewhere in her early forties, I believe, but it wouldn’t matter, even if she weren’t getting antigeriosis in the Confederacy.
“You bet your sweet by-line they are,” I answered through fried bread and melted plastic cheese. “Is it just me, or is there a new appreciation for the Bill of Rights over there? Lady on the city desk said they’ve been trying to get the goods on the D.A. for a long time.”
She grinned, which I enjoyed, and shut her door against the clamor from the crowded office beyond. Printers clattered through the glass; people tossed jokes and good-natured insults across the room. An occasional paper SST dipped and soared among the light fixtures. “There wasn’t always a lady on the city desk. Her predecessor got permanently blue-penciled by some lunatic from the Right to Life Action Squad—didn’t change their editorial position on abortion, thank goodness, but it sparked a timely re-evaluation of the News-Post’s stance on gun control!”
I laughed. She reached past me for a sheaf of print-outs from the in-basket, leafing through to check the status of a hundred subversive little exercises like mine last night. Somebody entered from the din-filled boiler room and dumped off another two-inch stack of hard copies. She looked up with a little frown. “You really have to go home right away, Win?”
I nodded. Win is me: Edward William Bear, late of Denver’s finest—even later for my golf game—former homicide dick, now P.I. and part-time spy for the North American Confederacy. If that’s too melodramatic, how about loving husband and soon-to-be-father, at the astonishing (at least to me) age of damned near sixty?
I swallowed another bite. “I could lie and add ‘regretfully,’ but I’m getting pretty old for these uncivilized Colorado winters.” I glugged down half the mug of Campbell’s soup she offered, watching snow fall heavily outside the second-story corner windows. My feet were icy, soaked clear throug
h, but it wasn’t just the weather; it was a dozen years of growing accustomed to clean air, instant hassle-free transport, and virtually nonexistent crime. I glanced at the day-old headline again and shuddered:
87 MISSING IN LATEST KIDNAP ROUND
“Don’t be ridiculous. You look ten years younger just since you smuggled that load of coke and silver over last December.” She gazed out at the noisy, bustling office, remembering. “Now that was a merry Xmas!”
I couldn’t help agreeing, on both counts—though ten years might be stretching it. Rejuvenation’s a gradual thing, especially for a guy who lived his first fifty eating, drinking, and breathing all the wrong stuff. “Clarissa gets the credit—Win Bear’s Practical Health Tip Numero Uno: marry up with a Healer, a beautiful one, if possible.”
Another smug survey of the semifrozen brown slush in the street, and I finished my sandwich, set the mug firmly on Jenny’s desk—it would most likely be buried in computer-droppings before anybody got a chance to rinse it out—and “Time to abscond. Tell your fellow-conspirators so long for me. Any time you need my talents as a burglar again...”
“You can’t get off that easily, Officer!” She rose with me to deliver a crushing hug and a peck on the cheek. “Love to Clarissa, and I’d better hear the instant your daughter arrives, understand?”
“Oof! You’ll be the first to know—in this universe, anyway.” I gathered up my coat and gun, folded the newspaper under my arm, and threaded through the maze of desks in the outer office. Against one wall on a yellow flag, a stylized rattler warned DON’T TREAD ON ME!, while a hand-lettered sign read THANK YOU FOR POT SMOKING.
Half a hundred defiantly colorful posters advertised the recently launched Fraser campaign. D. Nolan Fraser had created the Party back in 1971, unaware that the Confederacy existed. Two decades later, as Denver’s first Propertarian mayor, he’d pulled the city out of its share of a nationwide depression, and now, with a little imported help, the polls gave him an even shot at dragging the whole country, kicking and screaming, toward “civil liberties and economic freedom” via four years’ residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Hail to the Chief.
Hail, yes.
At the last desk, a girl had a dispenser of pop-ups printed to resemble federal neobucks; she blew her nose and threw the tissue in a wastebasket. The guy next to her repeated the gesture with genuine government-issue, and they both giggled at the green ink it left on the end of his proboscis. He grinned up at me and pointed to the placard taped to the wall above him: IN GOLD WE TRUST.
I shook my head and stepped into the reading-room, looking forward to some quiet. Halfway to the broom closet, I swiveled, surprised by the chattering of a printer even in this sanctuary. At a library table, typing furiously, sat—another Jenny.
“Last time I heard, you were doing business out on Ceres.” I hefted my snow-soaked topcoat to a more comfortable position over my arm. “Very hush-hush. Got a chip from Lucy and Ed about it. How’ve you been, Prez?”
President of the Confederacy, that is.
“Ex-prez, por favor.” She handed copy to an assistant, who hurried it off to god-knows-where. “I understand Olongo’s thinking about a third term, poor masochistic old ape. Say, what’s all this about his getting held up?”
That had been the day I left; I didn’t know enough about it yet to tell her, but spread the paper out to show its chilling headline. “Crime marches on—everywhere, it seems lately. Why do you suppose they’re only taking women?”
“Probably because they’re men. This makes over a hundred fifty thousand, doesn’t it?” She shook her head grimly.
“In the Americas and Western Europe, anyway. I haven’t really been keeping score.” I glanced down at another column. “Says here there’s another dozen IRS men missing, too.”
“Yes, and sales of canvas and quicklime are up in seven western states and rural New Jersey—old joke. But nobody supposes that’s got anything to do with the kidnapped woman—it’s just another healthy sign.” She patted the protruding handle of a hefty automatic tucked into a holster underneath her jacket. “Anyway, thank goodness it hasn’t spread to the Confederacy—and while I’m over here, it’s not going to happen to me, either!”
Jenny Smythe is just as decoratively energetic as Jenny Noble, and for an excellent reason; while the latter was being conceived in the United States, her charming “twin” began existence in the Confederacy at precisely the same instant. Yet physiologically she’s four years younger, due to some advanced paratronic skulduggery called stasis delay: her mama wanted her, right enough, but not just at the moment, thank you.
Complicated, isn’t it? In the history I grew up with, Alexander Hamilton decreed a tax on whiskey, almost touching off a second revolution. President Washington mobilized fifteen thousand federal troops to quiet it down, abetted by a professor-type named Albert Gallatin who didn’t want to see his fellow Pennsylvanians slaughtered.
End of Whiskey Rebellion.
In the Confederacy, Gallatin’s counterpart organized the irate booze-farmers, conned the bluecoats into taking his side, and marched on Philadelphia. Old George went to the wall; Hamilton beat it Prussiaward, inaugurating a minor quasi-fascist movement that caused trouble for a couple centuries afterward.
End of Federal Government, however.
While Jenny Noble’s riding herd over an unruly crowd of anarchists whom Gallatin might’ve kissed on all four cheeks in sheer Discordian delight, Jenny Smythe makes frequent visits stateside to lend a seditious hand. I’m not sure whether all this qualifies as “synchronicity”; it’s just one of a million semi-coincidences that need better explaining, at least to this retreaded old flatfoot.
“Well,” she said finally, “there’s good news, too. Fraser’s begun clicking with the media, almost a year before the Demagogues and Republicrats even nominate their mealy-mouthed barrel scrapings.” She indicated the books lying open on the table, works that Gallatin had never gotten around to writing in this here branch of probability.
“So you figured Fraser might crib a stirring speech or two from Rule of Reason or Principles of Liberty?” I sneaked a peek at my watch, an annihilation-powered goodie from the Confederacy’s fifty-year-old Lunar colonies.
“Hmmph! I’ve been known to give a stirring speech or two, myself.”
“Yeah. The last one started this whole expensive, complicated, and probably unethical undertaking. Well, write on, sister! Dinner’s a-cookin’, and probably so’s the little woman by now, late as I am.”
Jenny’s flunky stood waiting impatiently for the next batch of profundity. She let him fidget. “If Clarissa hears that ‘little woman’ crap, it’ll be you doing the cooking, right up to your prominent ears in the soup!”
“No thanks”—I curtsied—”just had some—tomato bisque, I believe. And now, dear former Chief Executive, au ‘voir. My closet awaits without.”
“Pass,” Jenny answered, turning down a terrific straight line, “I’ll be back in Laporte by the time your daughter’s due.” She made a show of looking me over. “Guess I’m sort of morbidly curious how she’ll turn out.”
I replied with a raspberry cheer, turning again to the closet, the only Propertarian institution that hasn’t changed in twelve years. Originally a tiny, insignificant splinter group valiantly determined to shove America back in the direction Tom Paine had pointed it, the Party had occupied a lonely disinfected cubicle here at Colfax and York amidst an otherwise pee-stained conglomeration of leftists, eco-freaks, and latter-day Luddites. Now Jenny’s yahoos owned the building, printing presses, hundreds of telephones, even a lively public bar downstairs. And numerous less well advertised facilities that SecPol—the Federal Security Police—even in its presently chastened condition, would doubtless frown upon severely.
One of those was this closet. I forced the creaking door aside and squeezed in. Peace at last. Here were the old familiar dingy sink with a little brown spider homesteading it as always, a couple of rusted buckets, a pl
astic garbage pail, and a damp, moldering smell that titillated my gag reflex. There was also a dry rotted two-by-four on the wall with nails sticking out from which depended a ratty battery of mops and brooms. Pulling at the frayed cord dangling in my face, I squinted in the fifteen-watt illumination, counting nails on the rack, and pushed up hard on the third, fifth, third again, and seventh from the left.
A hole in the universe—the P’wheet/Thorens Probability Broach—irised open before me. When the aperture was large enough, I stepped through gingerly, unwilling to test its matter-annihilating properties with a coattail or the heel of my shoe. Behind me, the Broach dwindled like the little dot you used to get when you switched off a TV set, then vanished with a pop! and a tiny, star-bright flash of blue.
I’d made it safely once again, to the other side of reality.
2: Voices from the Stars
Eyes watering in the sudden glare of Laporte’s Inter-world Terminal, I stepped through a glassed-in security booth onto the concourse. Commercial gunmen circulated, alert for the occasional unfriendly immigrant. The Confederacy welcomes strangers, but likes to look them over first. The only import we reject is hostile intentions.
Like many another “breakthrough,” the Probability Broach got invented by mistake. A dolphin—Tursiops truncatus—name of Ooloorie Eckickeck P’wheet had been aiming for the stars. Her human partner, Professor Deejay Thorens—who might’ve looked more natural, without her labcoat, somewhere among the pages of Penthouse—had cobbled the prototype together, and I’d been their first unwitting sample, accidentally collected.
Laporte’s a hop, skip, and a universe—call it sixty miles—from Denver. Each has its counterpart in the other’s continuum, the former as a minuscule Fort Collins suburb, the latter as the sleepy village called Saint Charles-Auraria. Each was once a candidate for capital of Colorado, Denver for its railroad. But Confederate stagecoaches ran on steam, so Laporte, an Overland Trail depot, became a population center of two million.