by Janet Morris
"Tea?" The scavenger blinked at her. "Okay, tea."
She circled wide of him to get behind her desk. The stink was of grease and oil and perspiration.
How long had this scavenger been out there? Long enough to have come up with whatever it was. She sat primly behind her desk, then decided her body language was wrong and leaned one elbow on it, picking up a stylus with which she punched up his file.
"You've been working your way upchain to me for ... sixteen hours, Mister . . . Keebler. That's fast work in any bureaucracy." She was scrolling his past data. This wasn't an uneducated person. This was an eccentric person, some sort of psychological misfit. A hermit with three Ph.D.'s and no assets but his salvage ship, his membership in a powerful union, and whatever it was that he had outside at spacedock.
"Well, D'rector, I been at this job a long, long while. I know when somethin's worth fightin' about."
"Oh yes?" She leaned back. "And what makes you think there's anything in that . . . container . . . you have out there?"
"You've got my statement. Statements. You've got your own people's reports—eleven of 'em, by my count, if everybody I talked to filed one. Whaddya think that is, came outta a white hole in an area that ain't been explored since the early days o' spaceflight, and then wasn't followed up because the ships sent out there didn't come back?"
"A piece of one of those ships?" she said hopefully. "Who knows what the stresses of collapsing into a black hole and then being spat out of a white one can do to metal?"
"Ma'am, no offense, but you don't know diddly about physics." The scavenger sat forward. "If that thing'd been part of a ship, an' fallen into a so-called black hole, by the time it got pushed out the other side—if ever—it'd be the size of a pellet of buckshot."
"Oh, well, then you don't think it fell into a black hole and was expelled out the white hole concomitant?"
"I don't think it was no ship o' ours, or anything o' ours, that got sucked into a black hole, no. And as fer what comes outta white holes, this hole o' mine—the richest hole me or anybody I know's ever fished—the stuff just comes outta it. There's more things in nature than people've got catalogued. And this here piece o' salvage is one o' them. Actual alien artifact from some advanced civilization. Gonna make me rich and famous."
Riva Lowe rubbed her forehead. It was damp. She couldn't have this unsavory person running around Threshold making waves. Or telling such stories.
"Well then, Captain Keebler, I guess you won't mind taking me out there to have a look at it."
CHAPTER 7
Out on the Streets
South kept stifling the impulse to fight somebody—anybody who was doing this to him—and his hands were trembling from the strain of not breaking loose.
But there was nowhere to run. He kept trying to convince his body of that, first during the towing phase, then when three big guys who were obviously cops "escorted" him into a futuristic paddy wagon; then again when, after interrogation, even bigger guys in white coats took him by ambulance to a hospital of some kind for more interrogation.
Where did you run when you couldn't get home from here?
Intellectually, he'd known that he had no place else to go by the time the ConSec lieutenant had ordered the tug to tow him. Emotionally, he'd known it when he first caught sight of the huge space habitat called Threshold.
He'd just sat there in his powered-down testbed and started to shake. Even in his suit, visor down, cooling system on high, he was sweating so badly that his eyes stung.
Threshold was a giant version of the space station that had been the dream of South's time, a dream you fought to keep. The design parameters of the first station weren't so different from Threshold: Threshold looked like a huge antenna strung with geometric shapes the way the first station had, but Threshold was an Escher rendering.
One look had convinced South that Lieutenant Reice hadn't been kidding when he said a quarter-million people lived out here. South saw things he guessed were processing plants for minerals and oxygen dug out of the nearby asteroids. In his day, you were talking yourself hoarse trying to convince Congress that the best way to supply man's needs in space was to put a permanent base on the moon and dig your raw materials out of the lunar regolith.
So it wasn't the technology that scared him. It was linear enough, from what he could see. The technology made sense. So did his feelings: they weren't crazy; they just didn't seem endurable.
Everything he'd known was dead and gone, mostly forgotten. It was too big a realization to digest. It had stuck in his craw. And so did the way these people were treating him.
There was something wrong, somewhere. He wouldn't have been hustled into a police station, then into a medical facility, in the old days. Where was Space Command? How about a technical debrief? Didn't anybody care about his mission? When South had demanded to go home, he'd been told that Earth was cordoned off, permanently off-limits to all but its caretakers and a privileged few—one of which, he wasn't.
Currently, Captain Joseph South was sitting in one more white room with recessed lights that mimicked sunlight so completely that he'd patted his coveralls for sunglasses he must have left on the ship. He'd answered dozens of stupid questions, none of which seemed relevant.
Now he was about to answer some more. The door opened, and in came a woman. He hadn't seen a woman for eighteen months until today, but his body was too scared to give the standard salute. He just crossed his arms and his legs and looked at her from his chair. "When can I go back to my ship? Where's my MMU—my spacesuit? I need to see somebody from Space Command." He kept saying the same things to everybody who came to talk to him.
They never answered any of his questions, so South didn't really expect this woman to help him. He was just reciting his version of name, rank, and serial number (all of which they already had).
This white room didn't have anything loose in it except Joe South, test pilot from the dawn of time. No bed, no table lamps, no desk drawers that pulled all the way out. (He'd checked.) Even the chair he was sitting on was bolted into a track. So was the one behind the clean and empty desk studded with electronics.
The woman came to sit behind the desk. He watched her hands, not her face. In them was a folder. She took documents out of it. Then she cleared her throat. "Mission Commander South, I'm your—"
"Captain's okay."
"Excuse me?" She peered up under her brows at him.
"Captain South'll do."
"Do you mean we've made an error?" She was frowning and when she did, her square face seemed to fold in on itself, as if she were a hundred years old. "Because if we have, we'll need to correct that right away." She tapped a stylus against pale lips. "Before the error chain gets any longer."
"I mean, yeah, I was mission commander of a one-man testbed, but so what?" He looked closer. Her mouth seemed to extend too far over to the sides of her face. Her eyes were like that as well, as if she were some film star who'd had too many face-lifts. "You're not going to understand. I need to talk to somebody from Space Command."
"I am somebody from Space Command, mister," she said. "Or as close to it as we can manage. I'm your reintegration counsellor. I've been sent over here to get your signature on some documents. Standard Relic procedure. We'll want you to check in with us twice a month. We'll need an address as soon as you've got one." She started moving papers from one pile into another as she spoke.
"You'll have to sign a few waivers." Three sheets went from Pile A to Pile B. "You were MIA for twenty years, then presumed dead, so you'll have some back pay coming, once we get things sorted out." She looked up at him. "Sign these, please, and push your right thumb against the sensitivity square beside your name."
He almost said he wouldn't be signing anything until somebody told him what the hell was going on. Instead he said, "Don't you people do standard mission debriefing?"
"Not when the mission's five centuries out of date. Sign here, spaceman."
He was so sh
ocked, and her order was so direct, he stood up and did as he was told, going through a pile of papers blindly, scribbling his name and pressing his thumb against the squares beside his signature.
He couldn't focus on any of them; his vision was blurry. After he'd signed the last one, he stared at it. It was a request for retroactive discharge.
He picked it up in trembling hands. "I don't want a discharge." He folded it and put it in his back pocket.
"What?"
"You heard me," he said. "I'm . . . retrainable." His voice shook. He was supposed to be smart. He'd always managed to fight his way through paper wars before. They weren't chucking him out on the streets somewhere more alien than Africa. They didn't do that to you. This was some kind of mistake. "I want to see somebody in my regular command chain. I want a list of options. Maybe I'll go back to flight school. ..." The last was barely audible.
The woman was looking at him with an icy expression. "We'll get you an appointment with someone who'll explain things to you. It'll take a while. Meanwhile, you'll check in with me twice a month. Here."
"Yes, ma'am." He had his hands clasped behind him. That way, she couldn't see them shake.
"Here's a temporary work permit, a low-ceiling credit card, which ought to serve your interim needs." She slid them across the desk toward him.
He didn't take them immediately. The whole room was swimming. The armed services weren't what they used to be. Not if they were just tossing him out the door like so much garbage. South wished he knew whether what they were doing was by the book, but their book was centuries ahead of his.
And they were giving him something. Maybe he was being foolish to look a gift horse in the mouth. They weren't going to let him starve. He just wished they weren't in such a damned hurry to get rid of him. "I'm going to sleep in my ship," he said because he wanted her to know he figured he had that right.
"Your ship's in quarantine."
"And I'm not?" He had wanted out of here. Now, he didn't want to leave.
"Here's an immigrant's handbook. We'll have to get you citizenship papers, you realize?"
"Huh? I'm a U.S. citizen in good standing. . . ."
"Threshold citizenship." She stood up, shook her head once at him, and tapped the little pile she'd pushed toward him. "Take your things and leave, mister. Get hold of yourself. In a couple of weeks, we'll talk again. Use this opportunity to orient yourself. I'm sorry I can't stay longer, but I have another case waiting."
"Another . . . Relic?"
She was walking toward the door. "Hell, no. We haven't had one of your kind for years. You're dismissed, spaceman. Go find yourself some R and R. And don't end up in jail. It'll make everything much more difficult."
"Yes, ma'am," he said.
She hesitated at the door and he realized he was supposed to leave with her. He picked up his pile blindly and walked out first.
In the hall, which was as white as the room they'd been in, she seemed to unbend. "Here's my number. My card." She handed them to him.
He took them and stuffed them into his back pocket, with the discharge papers. "Thanks."
"Try the Loader Zone if you want to work some of it off," she said.
He didn't know what "it" was, but she'd given him only that one piece of advice.
"How do I get there?"
"Out the front door. Turbo lift's on the corner. Level SB1, Red or Blue ought to do it. And, spaceman, good luck."
"Yeah, thanks."
She strode away on soundless, rubber-soled shoes. "Follow the red arrows to the front door," she called back before she disappeared down a corridor.
He did, thinking he was going to need all the luck he could get.
He found the street entrance, after asking several more people, who must have thought he was odd-looking. He'd had a shave and a haircut, so it was either his mission coveralls or his eyes. He knew in his heart that he wasn't going to be able to get his suit back, any more than he could bunk in his ship. He was beginning to wish he'd bought it out there, arguing with the ConSec lieutenant. He missed his AI, which was the damnedest thing of all. Birdy wasn't much, but at least they were contemporaries.
The Loader Zone was a welcome change from white and clean and sterile, and he drew a deep, shuddering breath when the lift opened on the raucous commercial cargo area. Here at least his adrenaline level was appropriate.
Men were guiding transports up to aprons, waving light wands, dressed in colors that probably still identified their function down here, the way your colors told your job description on an aircraft carrier.
The men were big and rough and there was a lot of yelling. There were also men who obviously weren't entirely human: he saw a couple of faces that might have belonged to upright-walking camels, and one that was actually scaly and green.
Nobody'd stare at him down here, that was for sure. He'd stuffed the wad of orientation material in his pocket. Now he realized he was hungry and got out the little card.
Credit card, just like in his time. He followed his nose to a place that served food and most of the menu was in English, so he ordered at the bar. There was still beer in the world. He didn't know why that made him feel so relieved. Most of the brands weren't familiar.
But he had a beer and some chili, and halfway through the chili, somebody came up next to him and jostled his elbow.
South had almost been able to forget that this wasn't just another foreign port—this was a foreign time.
The bar had neon and bottles and something that looked like wood and felt like wood under his hands and elbows. So when the guy jostled him, he told him to fucking watch his ass, and wasn't prepared to be grabbed by the shoulder and spun around.
Etiquette was different here, South realized when he saw how angry he'd made the fellow with the single, shiny earring and the long braid.
He'd been told not to end up in jail. He put up both hands and said, "Sorry, I'm sorry. I'm not from around here, and I've had a bad day. I don't want any trouble. Can I buy you a drink?" as quickly as he could.
The guy with the braid couldn't have been over twenty-five. He looked almost disappointed as he rubbed his jaw and said, "Yeah, awright. Where you in from, spaceman?"
"Uh—it's a long story."
"Gimme what he's having," said the longhair to the bartender. "They're all long stories. I'm Sling. I'm aftermarket. What's your trade, Joe?"
He hadn't told Sling his name. "I'm a test pilot—was."
"Was?"
"Long story, remember?"
"What you testing?" The keen interest under Sling's wispy brows was unmistakable. It was also clear that this guy couldn't raise a beard if his life depended on it.
South rubbed his jaw and felt the quick-growing stubble there. "X-mission." Maybe the jargon had changed. "Experimental. Black. No talkee." He smiled his most winning smile.
"Well, like I say, I'm aftermarket, if you need anything interesting."
"Aftermarket what?"
"What?" Sling leaned back on the bar. "I can take your average buggy and give you an additional light; I can drop a zero-point power plant into a fifty-year-old wreck. I can do other things, too, for the right price," he confided, after looking over his shoulder and then beyond South's to make sure there was no one within earshot.
The bartender was talking to his only other customer, down at the curve of the bar.
"Other things?"
"Come on, sport, you're not down here looking like that and talking about no-talkees if you're straight-up legal. You need a little extra firepower, I'm the man to see."
"Okay, I gotcha. I wouldn't mind a look at what you can do." At least he'd learn something. He had to start somewhere, and he knew from experience that a government pocket guide to wherever didn't tell you one hell of a lot.
"Eat up, then, Joe."
"How come you know my name?"
"Ah—oh, an expression, that's all. So you're Joe?"
"South."
"Sure thing. I like it. Has a r
eal directional ring to it."
When they'd finished their beers and South had polished off the chili, he paid the tab with the credit card, which worked without a hitch and should have proved to Sling that he was who he said.
Maybe nobody down here was too free with information. The place had that feel about it. At least it had a recognizable feel. So did the aftermarket shop of the man called Sling.
It wasn't exactly a chop-shop, but it was surely the cash-up-front, no-receipt-requested sort of place where you had your transportation needs attended to if your cargo had to be handled delicately, and you needed to be able to outrun a police cruiser such as the ConSec one that had found South's STARBIRD.
He heard lots of terms he didn't know, and saw lots of bits of ship and armament he wouldn't have dreamed could exist outside of a government facility. He saw indium and beam weaponry; he saw countermeasures packages for stealthing spacecraft; he saw what was supposedly an "a-potential weapons system" and "zero-point, scalar-pulsed jump drives, if you've got the cash. What's your limit on that card?" Sling pulled on his mousy braid.
"I don't know. Somebody just gave it to me." South smiled weakly and knew he sounded like some kind of outlaw.
Maybe he was. He couldn't be sure yet. But he was sure that he wanted to go back to STARBIRD. So he said, "I want to get back to my ship but it's in quarantine. Got any ideas?"
"Let's get drunk and think about it, on you."
There didn't seem to be a better option.
Sling's drinking tour of the Loader Zone included a running commentary. The Loaders had a union. They employed "subhumans and biogenetically engineered humans as well as purebreds. So lots of stuff happens down here that doesn't officially happen. You're in the right place, spaceman, for whatever you aren't doing."
Sling obviously thought that South was a heavy hitter doing something illicit and profitable. Well, that was usually drugs or guns or illegals. Things couldn't have changed more than that. This was still a human society.