Orbitsville Departure o-1

by Bob Shaw

  "Yes, but…" Ezzati glared at her, unwilling to concede the point. "I'll take it back from Hume and advertise it properly. Electronic archaeology is a big thing these days, you know. As a matter of fact…" He frowned into his glass as he swirled its contents. "…I might already have another customer. I seem to remember somebody else asking me about that machine."

  "Now you're being childish," Libby said, her voice vibrant with scorn. "Admit it."

  Dallen stared frozenly at Ezzati, willing him to produce a name.

  "Perhaps you're right," Ezzati said with a shrug. "Why should I get worked up when it isn't my money that's involved? You don't get any credit for bringing the job home with you. Not around here, anyway. There was a time when I was dumb enough to believe that all it took to get a man to the top in Madison was hard work and dedication and loyalty, then I got wise to myself and… Gerald Mathieu!"

  "You got wise to yourself and Gerald Mathieu?" Libby stared at him, feigning concern, and raised her gaze to Dallen's face. "Have you any idea what my idiot husband is talking about?"

  "I'm afraid he has lost me," Dallen said, moving away in search of a place where he could be alone with his thoughts, where he could begin to draw up his plans.

  Chapter 11

  There were now only two aircraft at the disposal of Madison City's executive board, and one of them had been grounded for more than a week pending the arrival of parts. Mayor Bryceland was inclined to treat the remaining machine as his personal transport, with the result that it had taken Mathieu four anxious days to get behind its controls. He had one decent fix of felicitin in hand, but had been rationing his usuage severely to obtain that slender reserve. As he fastened down the aircraft's canopy he felt tired and apprehensive, almost certain there would be a last-minute hitch to prevent his taking off.

  Far off to his right, its lower surface obscured by heat shimmers, was the blue-and-white hull of a space shuttle which had just landed. The churning of the hot air above the expanse of ferrocrete was so violent that Mathieu had difficulty in seeing the disembarking tourists, but it seemed to him that there were less than usual. It had already been a bad year for the hotels along Farewell Avenue — the thoroughfare which had once channelled millions of emigrants into space — and it looked as though things were going to get worse. There had to come a day, Mathieu realised, when the remote bureaucrats of Optima Thule would pull out the plug and stop subsidising the holiday pilgrimages to Earth. And when that happened he would be out of a job and would have to consider returning to his birthplace.

  The thought of venturing out among the stars, of having to spend the rest of his life on the surface of an incredibly flimsy bubble, brought the usual stab of agoraphobic dread. He began to reach for the gold pen in his inner pocket, became aware of what he was doing and returned his hand to the aircraft's control column. Far ahead of him, a quivering silvery blur at the lower edge of the sky's blue dome, was a freighter coming in from Metagov Central Clearing in Winnipeg. It gradually drifted off to one side and the on-board microprocessor advised Mathieu that it was in order for him to begin the flight.

  Deciding to do the work himself, he extended the aircraft's invisible wings to take-off configuration and increased the thrust from its drive tubes. In a matter of seconds he was soaring above the complex of disused runways which constituted most of Madison Field. He banked to the west and levelled off at only a hundred metres, aiming at the serried green ridges which were the southernmost reaches of the Appalachians. The ship's shadow raced beneath him, fringed with prismatics from sunlight which had become entangled in force-field wings. It came to Mathieu that this was his first time to be airborne since the City Hall incident… woman and child, crumpling, plastic doll faces with plastic doll eyes… and that he was deriving none of his customary satisfaction from the experience. Flying fast and low on manual control over the empty countryside had been one of his most biding pleasures, the perfect escape from all the pressures of identity, but on this summer morning his problems were easily keeping pace, like invisible wingmen.

  The pay-offs he had to make to run his illegal business were growing at a frightening rate, his work was suffering, women friends were reacting badly to changes in his temperment, and — looming above all else — was the responsibility for having extinguished two human personalities. There was the associated guilt… and the consequent fear of Carry Dallen, which felicitin could only allay for short periods… and it was hard to say which was casting the greater pall over his existence. And he had become so very, very tired…

  Mathieu opened his eyes and stared at the green wall of hillside which was tilting and expanding directly ahead of him, filling his field of view.

  Christ, fm going to the!

  He shouted a curse as he realised where he was and what was happening to him. His hands pulled back on the control column, but the hillside kept coming at him, huge and solid and lethal, determined to reduce his body to a crimson slurry. It was aided and abetted by the laws of aerodynamics which imposed a lag between a control demand and the ship's response, and he knew only too well that the penalty for acting too late was death.

  Mathieu cringed back in the seat, eyes distended and mouth agape, as the expansion of the hillside speeded up to become a green explosion. The control column was back to its full extent, punishing the shuddering airframe, calling on the ship to do the impossible — then an edge of sky appeared. The horizon rocked and fell away beneath the ship's prow.

  For perhaps a minute Mathieu sat mouthing swear words, stringing them into a meaningless chant while his heart lurched and thudded like a runaway motor which was tearing itself from its mountings. Only when his breathing had returned to normal and the prickling of cold sweat had died away from his forehead and palms was he able to relax, but even then he did not feel quite safe. He glanced around the quiet-droning environment of the cockpit and had actually begun to check his instruments when it dawned on him that the new threat, the new source of dancer, was in his own mind.

  An idea had been implanted, one which had been conceived during the brush with oblivion. For a single instant, in the midst of all the prayer and panic, there had been the temptation — strange, sweet and shameful — to push forward on the stick. In that split-second he could almost have gone willingly to his death, riding the crest of a dark wave.

  Mathieu tried to consider the notion dispassionately. It was shocking and unnatural to him, and at the same time it was strangely beguiling, full of intriguing contradictions.

  He had no wish to the — but he was attracted by the prospect of being dead.

  A state of non-existence had many advantages. There would be no more nightmares and no more of the terrible waking visions. There would be no guilt or fear. There would be no need to steal, no need to finance his habit. There would be no need to tie or to hide. There would be no need to go on and on tricking people into believing he was what he appeared to be.

  There would be no need to fear going into space or the prospect having to face the dizzy vastness of Orbitsville. There would be no need to dread failure.

  There would be no future and no past. In short, there would be no Gerald Mathieu, the man who only existed as a compound of failure. And as a special bonus, one he could claim immediately, there would be no need to hold at bay the tiredness which had begun to follow him everywhere like a stalking animal.

  That was perhaps the most seductive aspect of the idea. He could start right away by closing his eyes for a short period, say for one minute, just to see what happened and how he felt about it. There did not have to be any great melodramatic decision to commit suicide — it was more like a game, or an experiment which could be terminated at any point he chose…

  Mathieu glanced at his airspeed indicator and saw that he was doing almost a thousand kilometres an hour. Nice round figure, he thought. He relaxed his grip on the yoke, closed his eyes and began to count off the seconds. At once he became aware of the low-amplitude hum of the power plant a
nd the rush of atmosphere along the pressure skin. The ship was suddenly alive, yawing and twisting and dancing, impossibly balanced on an invisible pyramid of air.

  On the count of only twelve Mathieu snapped his eyelids open and found he was still flying straight and level. The universe was unchanged — a blueness of prehistoric purity above and all around him, vivid grasslands streaming below the ship's nose, occasional farm buildings smothered in vegetation, fleeting targets for his imaginary World War Two cannon.

  It's risky flying at this height, he told himself. A man could get killed.

  He took a deep breath, blinked to dear his eyes, and gave the task of flying his full attention, wondering if he would ever again summon up the courage for the great gamble. The aircraft butted and squirmed its way through a patch of turbulence, then settled down to quiet sensation less flight. It was hot in the cockpit and the sun seemed to be exerting a gentle downward pressure on his eyelids.

  Mathieu resisted it for several minutes before deciding there would be no harm, no real danger, in shutting his eyes for a mere ten seconds. It was, after all, just a game.

  There was no blackness when he closed his eyes — only a pink infinity swarming with magenta and green after-images. He reached the count of ten easily and decided to try for twenty. If I fell asleep now Carry Dallen would never be able to touch me. fm not going to sleep, of course, but it would be so good to stop running up those concrete stairs, to stop putting the trigger on the woman and child, to stop seeing them crumpling, falling, idiot eyes staring…

  An angry bleeping from the control console told Mathieu important changes were taking place in the outside universe, changes he ought to know about.

  But he waited another five seconds before opening his eyes, and by then it was possible to distinguish separate blades of grass on the hillside which filled the entire field of view ahead.

  He had time for one flicker of gratitude over the feet that there was absolutely nothing he could do.

  It was easy, he thought, in the instant of the plane becoming a bomb. Easy as…

  Chapter 12

  The planning of a murder presented special difficulties, Dallen had realised.

  Among them were the sheer novelty of the problem parameters and the ingrained moral objections which constantly disrupted his chains of thought. But this can't be me, the jolting recrimination would run, I just don't do this kind of thing. There was also the overriding need to make the murder look like an accidental death. An obvious homicide would trigger an investigation which was certain to reveal the circumstances which had led to Mathieu's fateful encounter with Cona and Mikel Dallen in the quietness of the north stairwell — and from there a short step in elementary police logic would lead to Carry Dallen.

  The subsequent punishment would be little in itself. Dallen did not even regard a one-way trip to Orbitsville's Botany Bay as a punishment — which was partly why he could not allow Gerald Mathieu to escape along that road — but it would separate him from Cona and Mikel, thereby adding to the hurt they had already suffered. There was only one way for the issue to be resolved. Mathieu would have to the, preferably in a way he fully understood to be an execution, but which would appear like an accident to all others. And therein lay the practical difficulties.

  Edgy and preoccupied, Dallen wandered into the kitchen and found Betti Knopp preparing lunch. She was a middle-aged voluntary worker who came to the house three days a week to shoulder the burden of looking after Cona, a duty she performed conscientiously and in almost total silence. Dallen was grateful to her, but had not managed to build any kind of conversational bridge. Aware of her uneasiness over his presence in the kitchen, he excused himself and went into the main room. Cona was standing at the window, looking out at the sloping perspectives of the North Hill. Her hair had been combed and neatly arranged in an adult style by Betti, and her attitude was one of wistful contemplation, just as in the period of homesickness following her arrival from Orbitsville.

  Dallen was tempted to indulge in fantasy — the past weeks had been nothing more than a nightmare and Cona was her old self. He went to the window and put his arms around her. She turned and snuggled against him, making a cooing sound of pleasure and only the smell of chocolate, which the old Cona always avoided, interfered with the illusion that somehow his wife had been restored to him. He stared over her head in the direction of Madison's City Hall, unable to stop dashing his mind against the barriers of the past. If only he had not arranged to have lunch with Cona that day. If only he had been in his office. If only she had gone in by the main entrance. If only Mathieu had blanked the Department of Supply monitor a day or an hour or a minute later or earlier…

  Dallen gave a low grunt of surprise as he discovered that Cona had cupped her hand on his genitals and was beginning to massage him with clumsy eagerness. For a second he almost yielded, then self-disgust plumed through him and he stepped back abruptly. Cona came after him, giggling, her gaze fixed on his groin.

  "Don't do that," he snapped, holding her at arm's length. "No, Cona, no!"

  She raised her eyes, reacting to the denial in his voice, and her face distorted into ugliness in a baby grimace of rage. She went for him again, strong and uninhibited, and he had to struggle to hold her in check. At that moment Betti Knopp came into the room with a tray of food. She gave Dallen a worried glance and turned to leave. "Bring it," he ordered, pushing Cona down into an armchair. The sudden force he had to use either hurt or alarmed her and she gave a loud sob which in turn drew a gasp from Betti, the first sound he had heard her make that day. She knelt by Cona and attracted her attention by noisily stirring a dish of something yellow and glutinous. Dallen stared helplessly at the two women, then strode to the other end of the room and activated the holovision set.

  "Speak to me, please," he said to the solid image of a thin, silver-bearded man which appeared at the set's focus. Dallen had dropped into a chair and folded his arms across his chest before realising the image was that of Karal London. He leaned forward intently.

  "…was in his early sixties," a news reader was saying, "and is understood to have refused treatment for the lung condition which led to his death. Doctor London was best known in the Madison City area as a philanthropist and creator of the Anima Mundi Foundation, an organisation devoted to promoting an exotic blend of science and religion. It was his work for the Foundation which took him to Optima Thule two years ago, and today there are unconfirmed reports that a bizarre experiment — designed by Doctor London to prove some of his theories — has been…"

  "Mister Dallen!" Betti Knopp appeared directly in front of him as if by magic, hands on hips, elbows stuck out in the classic posture of exasperation. "There's something we have to get straight."

  He said, "Wait a minute — I'm trying to hear what…"

  "I won't wait a minute — you're going to hear me out right now!" Betti, who had been almost totally silent for weeks, was transformed into a noise-making machine. "I don't have to take all this high-and-mighty treatment from you or anybody else."

  "Please let me hear this one item, and then well…"

  "If you think you're too important to talk with me why don't you contact the clinic and see if they got somebody more to your taste? Why don't you?"

  Dallen got to his feet, tried to placate Betti and only succeeded in attracting the attention of Cona, who added to the noise level by starting to pound on her tray with a dish. He turned and ran upstairs to his bedroom, slammed the door shut behind him and switched on another holovision. The local newscast was still running, but now the subject was hotel closures. He tried to activate the set's ten-minute memory facility and swore silently but fervently as he remembered it needed repair. Tense with frustration, he considered returning to the downstairs set, then came an abrupt shift to a more analytical mode of thought.

  It had been established that Karal London was dead, so the big question troubling Dallen related to the strange experiment. Was the fact of its being menti
oned at all an indication that there had been a surprising result?

  The notion seemed more preposterous than ever — the idea of a deceased scientist reaching out across the light years from Orbitsville and disturbing a material object on Earth — but why were the information media interested? Would anybody connected with the Anima Mundi Foundation have been in a hurry to spread word of a negative result?

  And why, he thought in a conflict of emotion, am I standing around here?

  There were five cars already parked on the gravel in front of the London place, and among them — inevitably it seemed — was Renard's gold Roliac. The front door of the house was open. Dallen went inside, found the hall deserted, and turned left to walk through the living room and the studio beyond. Afternoon sunlight had transformed the fantastic glass mosaic into a curtain of varicoloured fire. Dallen hurried past it and made his way to the corridor which ran towards the rear of the premises, following a murmur of voices. He reached the chamber housing the experimental apparatus and found the door ajar.

  In the dimness beyond were perhaps a dozen people in a rough circle about the case containing the six metal spheres. As his eyes adjusted to the conditions Dallen made out the white-clad figure of Silvia London, with Renard standing next to her. She was slightly stooped and was hugging herself as though trying to ward off coldness. Dallen knew she had been crying. He paused in the doorway, uncertain of his right to enter, until Renard beckoned to him.

  Feeling conspicuous, he moved forward a few paces and joined the circle of watchers whose attention was fixed on the first sphere in the row of six. A lengthy silence ensued and he feh a growing disappointment, a sense of anticlimax. It was apparent to him now that the members of the group were still waiting for a sign, for proof that their mentor continued to exist as an entity composed of virtually undetectable particles.