Colonel Webster whispered, "No."
Trent said, "Oh, my." Before opening the outer airlock door, Trent secured himself to the airlock bulkhead with the snakechain that he had bound Webster's arms with. There were a row of six such snakechains in the airlock. Why six, in a ship whose maximum occupancy was two, Trent had no idea. He suspected that it had something to do with multiple redundancy; an understandable fetish in an organization as multiply redundant as Space Force.
Trent opened the outer airlock door then, and kicked the pressure-suited body of Colonel Webster as hard as he could. Trent chinned the radio bar. "Good-bye, Colonel Webster," said Trent aloud. "I hope you make it."
As an afterthought he added, "You poor, desperate fool." He clicked off the radio. "Winnie the what indeed," he muttered, cycling back through the airlock. He returned to the pilot's seat and strapped himself in again. He spent several moments enjoying the feeling of being able to breathe, and then said aloud, "Bring acceleration back up, Johnny."
Nothing happened.
Trent chinned the radio bar. "Johnny? Can you hear me?"
The voice was tinny. "Hi, Boss."
"Kick it back in, Johnny. Let's go." The pain flared along his right side as he was slammed back into his seat.
There were approximately six minutes left before, by Vance's stated calculations, he would be unable to blow up Trent.
"Hello?" said Trent.
Nobody answered him.
"Hello hello. Hi there. Is anyone out there?"
"Your pardon, Trent," came Vance's rumble a few seconds later. "I've been having a slight difficulty with Space Force. I'm curious as to why you beamed our conversation to Almundsen, especially as the telescope I'm watching you with shows you've just jettisoned your hostage."
"What makes you think I jettisoned the hostage?" Trent asked. "Maybe I just tossed a pressure suit out the airlock."
"Let me talk to Colonel Webster," said Vance immediately.
"He's asleep," Trent said instantly.
"I didn't think so," said Vance. "Why did you beam our conversation to L-4, Trent? Was it simply to gain time?"
Trent had done it simply to gain time; clearly it had not worked. "Confuse the enemy," said Trent, "divide and conquer."
"I think you did it to gain time," said Vance. "What was the other thing you thought I did not know?"
"Elite Commissioner Mohammed Vance," said Trent softly, "you are entirely too intelligent for my peace of mind."
"And you don't sound nearly desperate enough for mine. What have you done, Trent?"
Trent said, "I'll tell you in a minute."
"I am tempted to fire on you immediately."
"It would be a mistake."
"Unless you can give me a reason why I should not, I am going to fire upon you immediately."
"Okay, okay. Listen closely." In detail, Trent described what he had done to Spacebase One's missiles and energy weapons. "So of course the mirrors are shot. Same for the missiles; fire one if you don't believe me. The instant it starts to move you don't have a missile any more, just pieces of missile tangled up in fineline. Some of the pieces will have fuel in them." Trent paused. "Boom. A big one, I think."
When he was finished, Vance was silent for a long stretch. He broke it with the words, "I must assume you are bluffing. I do not have time to get an officer in there to check it out."
"That was the idea. But you do have time to pull your Peaceforcers out of the north end of Spacebase One before firing."
"This is likely," said Vance deliberately, "simply another ploy on your part to gain time."
The slight enjoyment that Trent had been feeling vanished. "Vance, I'm telling the truth."
Mohammed Vance did not reply in words.
On the rear holocams, displayed in the holograph floating before Trent's eyes, Trent saw the north end of Spacebase One's central cylinder unfold in silent, brilliant light.
Trent could not imagine such a catastrophe not killing somebody, somewhere.
After the briefest of pauses Vance said, "I see you were telling the truth."
"Oh my god." Trent could not find words. "Evil. You are an evil son of a bitch, Vance."
"I am an officer of the PKF."
"--that's what I said." Trent stared at the image, at the slowly expanding wavefront of the explosion. "How could you do that?"
"I gave an order."
Johnny Johnny said quietly in Trent's ear, "Boss?"
"Yeah, Johnny?"
"Better put the traceset back on, Boss. I need you."
Trent ripped his helmet off and pulled the traceset on. He melted into Johnny Johnny.
A missile was chasing him.
Johnny Johnny thought, How can I play the game when they keep changing the rules on me?
The missile showed clearly on radar. Zooming the holocams to their highest resolution, Johnny Johnny could barely discern the faint spark of the approaching missile's exhaust, violet against black.
Thinking calmly, This isn't happening, Johnny Johnny turned the "communications" laser on the approaching missile. It had no immediate effect; in a tight beam the laser was not highly accurate at such distances against something moving at high speeds. The missile itself took evasive action, varying boost irregularly as it chased the yacht.
Locating Colonel Webster with the radar to insure that he was far enough away, Johnny Johnny sprayed the space back along his trajectory with free positrons. It was his second and last line of defense. If the laser didn't get the missile first, the cloud of positrons undoubtedly would.
The explosion that would result when that happened would, Johnny Johnny was almost certain, kill both of him.
Johnny Johnny examined the situation for a few moments longer. There was nothing else he could think of to do. He programmed the autopilot for the yacht's full acceleration of 8,800 cepssa, beginning in twenty seconds and running until twenty seconds after the estimated time of the missile's impact.
Johnny Johnny hesitated a moment, then split himself back into his components; Trent stripped the traceset off quickly, and refastened his helmet against the death pressure vacuum he was anticipating shortly.
He had just finished when a small mountain fell on him.
The first second of just under nine gravities acceleration was all right.
The next was worse.
The third was exquisitely unpleasant.
The fourth was the worst agony Trent had ever experienced. The right side of his rib cage felt like it was caving in.
And then it got really bad.
The laser never touched the hurtling missile.
At sixteen seconds before estimated impact with Trent's stolen yacht, the missile struck the cloud of positrons, already glowing from interaction with the solar wind.
Trent, the world narrowed down to his fight for breath, knew none of this.
Suddenly there was light, heat--
--and grinning, with feral red eyes and wet sharp teeth, there was pain.
May 9, 2062.
Carl Castanaveras left the lighted tunnel and went out into the dusk. Night was falling as he entered the grounds of the park, and the huge transplanted trees about which the garden was designed were heavy with shadow, shifting and impenetrable. He reached with the Sight and was stunned by how strongly the grief struck him when he lowered his guards. The boy was sitting high in the branches of the tallest tree in the park, watching the sunset. The sky was clear that night, and it was colder than a summer of Carl's childhood could ever have been.
Carl spoke without sound. Trent, come down.
There was a visible flicker of movement at the top of the tree, and a rustling sound as leaves were displaced. Trent vanished into the denser growth around the center of the tree, and while Carl was still looking up, the boy who was not, after all, a telepath, appeared in the lower branches, paused, hung by his hands, and dropped two meters to the ground. He landed crouching, and straightened slowly. "Hi."
Carl bli
nked. "Hi." Trent was barefoot, wearing old jeans and a green shirt that could not possibly be keeping him warm. Carl felt almost alien in comparison; he was still dressed formally, in the black suit, and the blue-inlaid black cloak for warmth. He gestured back toward the lighted Complex. "I was just in with Suzanne. She said--"
Trent nodded. "Yes."
"I'm sorry, Trent. I ... don't know what else to say."
"Me too." Trent paused. "Me neither. This has been such a bad day," he said conversationally. "I can't believe it."
Now, standing there faced with the boy, Carl had difficulty finding words. "How can I help?"
"I've been thinking about that." Trent shivered, perhaps from the cold. "I have to leave."
"I ... don't understand."
"I have to leave here. Doctor Montignet will take me, I think."
"Leave?" said Carl stupidly. "The Complex?"
Trent said simply, "Yes."
"Why?"
"I'm not a telepath. I don't want to live with telepaths." In the darkness Carl was not certain of his expression. "I can't."
"Trent, why?"
Trent said slowly, "Father ... I think the day will come when you--when telepaths--will be normal, and the rest of us will be out in the cold because we can't compete. For most people it's going to be a while before that happens...." He averted his face and did not look at Carl. With a sort of amazement Carl saw a smile touch his lips. The almost insane grief never ceased for an instant, and the boy made his lips move in a smile. "You don't breed that fast." The smile faded to dead seriousness. "But if I stay here that happens to me now." He turned and looked straight at Carl, eyes pooled in shadow. "I've been webdancing in Capitol City's InfoNet. They don't touch me, you know. When I get an inskin, I don't think there's anybody on Earth who can touch me." Trent gestured toward the Complex, just visible above the fence around the park, looming white under its floodlights. "If I stay here I'm nothing. I love you all but I do not choose to be nothing."
Carl shook his head slowly. "Trent, that's crazy. Malko lives here with us."
"Malko has experience and knowledge and connections that make him valuable." The boy shrugged. "I'm a Pla--a webdancer. Father, there are lots of webdancers."
It stunned Carl, how helpless an eleven-year old boy could make him feel. He touched the boy with his mind and went reeling back again from the numbing hurt. He reached with one hand toward the boy and was startled to see Trent draw back.
Trent said flatly, "Don't touch me."
Carl stared at him. He said helplessly, "Trent?"
"I don't belong here." Carl was shaking his head no, not in negation but in pained disbelief, and Trent said softly, "Let me go."
And Carl Castanaveras, for a brief, time-wrenching moment, saw the future twisting itself about his son, and heard his voice say with the hollow echo of prophecy, "I think you are right. You do not belong here. I think you will never belong anywhere."
Trent was not even a telepath, but there was no one at the Complex who slept that night without Trent's broadcast pain twisting their dreams into nightmares.
That was how it came to be, when a staged riot broke out at the Complex on June the second, 2063, that Trent was not there. That was how it came to be that when the riot grew into war between the telepaths and the Peaceforcers who were sent in to "restore order," Trent was not there. That was how it came to be, that when a young Peaceforcer named Mohammed Vance ordered the use of tactical thermonuclear weapons on the telepaths--the telepaths who had held off the massed might of the United Nations Peace Keeping Force with nothing but their Gift--that was how it came to be that Trent was not with them.
Seven years later, the only nightmares that Trent had ever had concerned the day he found out that his people had been destroyed and that he, of his own choice, had not been with them.
The image from his nightmares was curiously sharp: a missile that should not have been there, dropping from the sky, expanding in heat and light....
At no time had Trent been totally unconscious.
Behind the polarized glassite of the pressure suit's helmet, Trent's face was white with pain. Everything that he looked at looked back at him in double image.
The Rolls was crossing over the far side of Luna on a high trajectory, moving far too fast due to the extreme acceleration Trent had been forced to employ to escape the missile that should not have been there.
Trent's voice was a trembling croak. "Johnny?"
The tinny voice came immediately. "Hi, Boss."
"We're alive again."
"No, still. But we've got problems."
"I can see, Johnny."
"We've lost structural integrity, Boss."
"I can see, Johnny."
The ship's hull had been half torn away in the blast.
Bizarrely, the major section of the detached hull floated not forty meters from the yacht, traveling along almost exactly the same trajectory, tumbling slowly. What had been the outer portion of the hull was partially melted.
Trent said, "How bad is it, Johnny?" He listened for nearly thirty seconds, and then said, "Cancel the damage report. What works?"
"Engine is in pretty good shape, Boss. Life-system, communications maser, and the autopilot are all still functioning, though I've lost access to some of the data the autopilot's carrying, and some of the rest got scrambled by the EMP from the blast." Johnny Johnny paused. "The lack of a hull," he noted, "tends to obviate the need for a functioning life-system."
"Johnny, don't make jokes when things are this bad."
"You do it all the time, Boss."
"I'm allowed. Is there any chance you can land this bitch?"
There was a pause. "The autopilot says, given our relative velocity to the Lunar surface, and the absence of our number three landing strut, a soft touchdown attempt is inadvisable."
"We don't have a landing strut?"
"Number one landing strut has been weakened significantly. Number two is tentatively rated in good condition; number three is gone. Boss?"
"Yeah, Johnny?"
"Are we going to die, Boss?"
"Probably, Johnny."
"Oh." Trent's Image was silent for a long moment. "Boss, I've enjoyed working for you."
Lying in the dark pain-filled haze, Trent could not for the life of him remember having written code that could have come up with a response like that. My Image, he thought, is not going to make me cry. He said quietly, "Thanks, Johnny Johnny. Take us down."
"I'll do my best, Boss."
"I know."
The Rolls lost height rapidly, the rockets firing almost parallel to the Lunar surface. They swept over Lunar farside in minutes, losing both altitude and speed, the proton-boron reactor burning to produce just better than 4000 cepssa. The ship reached nearside well north of the equator, over twenty degrees latitude. It flashed past Schiaparelli and Aristarchus in the Sea of Storms, moving slightly northeast, and passed some eighteen degrees north of Luna City at Copernicus. The ship had less than a kilometer of altitude when it crossed the thirtieth degree latitude. It cut over the north corner of Archimedes Crater, dropping ever lower, past the southern end of Aristillus.
Johnny Johnny said, "Boss, how large do mountain chains get on Earth? Pretty big?"
Trent could not even reply. He fought for air. In the holofield hovering above his face he saw the mountain range come up to greet them.
"My map says this is the Caucasus mountain range, Boss. Checking on radar ... and we're not going to make it over the peaks," said Johnny Johnny precisely. "Sorry about this, Boss. I'll try not to kill you."
The drive exploded up to eighty-eight hundred cepssa.
Trent tried to scream, but there was no air in his lungs.
The mountain chain continued to grow in the yacht's front holocams, but more slowly now.
As Trent was blacking out, Johnny Johnny crashed the yacht. The ship bounced once off the side of a peak, still slowing, and then Johnny Johnny smashed the yacht down onto
a wide, flat ledge, high up on the mountain. He cut the drives as they touched, and the craft rolled once, twice, and finally stopped, lying upside down at the edge of the rock abutment.
Hanging upside down strapped in his seat was, Trent found, a wonderful position under one-sixth gravity.
It was practically as good as free fall.
Unconsciousness claimed him.
Some time later--Trent estimated it at between fifteen seconds and eternity--his eyes fluttered open again.
It was probably a blessing that the right side of his rib cage was without feeling.
A voice yammered in his ear. Trent could not make out whatever it was saying.
With intense concentration Trent managed to undo the straps that held him in place in the upside-down pilot's seat.
In gentle slow motion Trent fell a meter to the yacht's ceiling. He stood slowly, reached up and carefully withdrew his handheld from where it was jacked in on the floor above his head. The voice in his ears ceased abruptly. With grave concentration, he reached up again and pulled his briefcase out from its storage place above the upside-down pilot's chair.
It took him most of a minute to get the briefcase open, and put the handheld inside it.
He congratulated himself on successfully closing his briefcase.
Trent's voice echoed oddly in his ears. "I'm still alive again."
He stepped into the passageway that led to the airlock.
With the shifting of the distribution of mass, the yacht began sliding off the rock ledge, down toward the surface. An out-jutting spar, a hundred meters down from the ledge, broke the yacht into two major halves, and the two pieces continued their tumble, a quarter of a kilometer down the mountainside.
Trent could not remember how he had come to be in this place.
He walked in a pressure suit along the foothills of a vast mountain chain, stumbling frequently. His briefcase was clutched in his left hand; the pressure suit's glove barely fit through the briefcase's handle. He was eight meters tall and there was a hell of a wind coming from somewhere; it kept knocking him down.
He fell, again and again. Each time he got back up and walked on, without a destination in mind.
The world around him was strange, all gray and white; the shadows were very sharply defined, and completely black.
The Long Run Page 20