by Allen Steele
Yet fame can also be poisonous. Everywhere you go, you’re hit upon by low-lifes, grifters, and hardsuit bums of every stripe, all trying to swindle or con you one way or another. Unfortunately, I knew a lot of these guys from my lean years; it’s hard to turn down someone like Lenny the Legger when you and he used to get drunk every night at Sloppy Joe’s, even though you damn well know that Lenny would steal your face, or some other part of your anatomy, if he got half a chance. Others wanted us to smuggle things for them: dope, art, liquor, themselves. Still others had flinty schemes for getting rich; they spoke quickly, quietly, and sometimes very persuasively. It’s fortunate that Jeri was the Comet’s commanding officer and not I, or we might have gotten rooked very early. Some claim that Superiors have hidden extrasensory abilities, but there’s no trick to it; they’re simply better judges of human character.
I know. Once when we were docked at Ceres Station for a few days, waiting for some inbound cargo to arrive from elsewhere in the Belt, I decided to spend an evening at a favorite taproom. Jeri wasn’t with me; she didn’t drink and disliked spacer bars, but she let me have a night or two off-duty when we were in port. So there I was, sitting at the bar and making my way through a liter of Three Sisters of Pavonis when someone feminine and very much unlike Jeri sidled up to me and asked if I was Captain Future.
This wasn’t the first time I had been called that. In some way I never thoroughly understood, I had inherited Bo McKinnon’s mantle as well as his ship. No one had ever called my wife Captain Future, although she was the Comet’s CO. But Jeri was a Superior, which meant she had twice-size eyes and double-joined limbs and tattoos over every exposed centimeter of her skin. On the other hand, I was a baseline human, so I guess I looked the part. And people need heroes.
So I denied it, as usual (save for when that bank officer requested our holo for his office shelf), and she smiled and told me that it didn’t matter because I was the best spaceman she had ever seen. I wasn’t doing much else except watching skunked belters arm-wrestle each other, so we spent some time drinking and talking, and eventually she let me know that she wouldn’t mind spending even more time with me, in more intimate surroundings.
Any heterosexual male you may know—there’s still a few left; they’re the ones having trouble getting dates—may wonder why I turned down the lady, had they seen her themselves. Yet it wasn’t only because I loved Jeri and didn’t want to cheat on her; monogamy was something I had to learn, because it certainly wasn’t in my soul. It was also because I intuitively knew that this woman-to-the-umpteenth-power didn’t want to sleep with Rohr Furland, but with Captain Future. She was out to fuck a hero.
And that man wasn’t me.
So I turned her down. I did it as politely as I could, and she accepted rejection reasonably well. No yelling, no liquor thrown in my face; she smiled sadly, finished her drink, gave me a chaste kiss on the face, and then she was gone. I sold the rest of the liter back to the baffled barkeep, then left the bar and went up to the surface. A quick ferry ride back to the Comet and I was in the wardroom, putting away hot coffee and contemplating a cold shower, when Jeri found me.
She asked me if I was okay, and I told her yes, I was just a little drunk. She asked me if I had a good time, and I said yes, just watched some guys arm-wrestling. She asked me if I had met anyone, and I told her no, I hadn’t, I spent the evening all by myself, no kidding, really. And then she left and went back to our private quarters, and locked the door behind her.
I slept alone in the passenger cabin for the next two days.
And that’s how I learned two important things. First, it’s never wise to lie to a Superior, especially if you’re married to one. They may not be telepathic, but their eyes can see things yours and mine cannot, including the infrared heat patterns your face makes when you’re not telling the truth. And second, fame sucks.
The first point should need no further explication, but the second does, for it goes far to explain why Jeri and I came to be thrown out an airlock on Evening Star.
Down in Planet Patrol headquarters, North Bonnel was still restlessly pacing his office as Halk Anders sat grimly silent.
“If Future can’t solve this thing, nobody can!” Bonnel was saying jerkily. “And if ships keep on vanishing like that—”
A clear voice interrupted him:
“What’s this about missing ships? And what’s happened to Joan and Ezra?”
—Hamilton; The Comet Kings (1942)
We had just returned from another nine-month voyage to the Belt. Pretty much the usual routine: freight going out, asteroid ore and a couple of passengers coming back. We docked the Comet at Highgate’s outer ring, transferred the ore canisters to a lunar tug and put the passengers on a shuttle to Clarke County, and collected our fees from everyone involved. The trip added fifty megalox to our bank account, after taxes and tariffs, and we had two months of downtime before the next run.
Jeri remained aboard the Comet to oversee post-flight maintenance while I caught a shuttle down to Tycho City. One of the measures of success was that we no longer had to live aboard ship all the time; now we had a time-share suite on Tycho’s crater wall, co-oped with a couple of other husband-and-wife freighter drivers from the Association and occupied on a rotating basis. I was born and raised on the Moon, so that little place in Tycho was something like home for me. Much roomier than the coffin-size hostel sleepers I rented during my lean years, at least, and I didn’t have to scan my loxcard every time I opened the door.
This time, though, someone was waiting for me when I checked in.
Two someones, rather: a man and a woman, both a little younger than I, each wearing dark suits, sitting in wingback chairs in front of the window overlooking the crater floor. They had made themselves comfortable; Earthlight reflected off the ice cubes in the tall glasses of scotch-and-water they had purloined from the bar, and they were watching a handball game on the wallflat when I came in. They barely looked up when I entered.
“Pardon me,” I said, “but I think you’re…”
“Shh. Hold on a sec.” The guy sitting on the right held up a finger. “Watch Tsung make this point,” he murmured to his companion, pointing to the screen. “There he goes…lays it up just right, shoots…”
A raspberry buzzer, followed by moans and sporadic applause from the crowd. “Told you he wasn’t going to make that one,” the woman said. “Tsung’s good, but he’s not that good.”
“Hey, even the best foul up.” The man lifted his tumbler, took a sip off his scotch-and-water. My scotch, my water. “He’ll recover on the next turn, just watch.”
No point in checking to see whether I was in the right place; the door was keyed to my thumbprint. And this couple weren’t either of the ones who shared the suite. If they were squatters, though, they were most brazen pair I had ever encountered.
“Screen off,” I said, and they finally deigned to notice me when the flat went dark. “Security alert, please. Tell them we’ve got intruders, request police assistance…”
“Security alert override,” the woman interrupted. “Code Victor Thomas one-six-four-six, mark.”
“And cancel request for police assistance,” the man added. His girlfriend cast him a quick smile. Oops, forgot something.
I took a couple of steps forward, stopped when her companion swiveled around in the chair. A taser lay in his lap. He didn’t touch it, but it was only a few inches from his left hand. At this range, it wouldn’t matter whether he was a southpaw or not. Besides, if he and she were whom I suspected they were, it wouldn’t matter; the cerebral therapy they had doubtless undergone would have made them ambidextrous.
“Mind if you tell me who you are?” I asked anyway.
The woman stood up, straightened her skirt, reached into a breast pocket of her jacket and pulled out a black faux-leather wallet. “Pax Intelligence, M’sser Furland,” she replied, flipping it open to give me a brief glimpse of her I.D. card. “I’m Agent Dann, this is Agent
Jarvis. We’re here on official business of the realm.”
I’ve been visited by the law many times, even spent a few nights in jail for one misdemeanor or another. Cops don’t make me nervous, but these two weren’t cops. Pax Intelligence agents don’t hack apartment locks only to mix themselves drinks and settle down to watch a handball game unless they mean business. The monarchy’s constitution may allow its citizens the right of privacy, but the Second Amendment is nothing that royal spooks can’t supersede when they wish to do so.
On the other hand, there was nothing these guys had on me and Jeri. We hadn’t smuggled any contraband, taken aboard any passengers who didn’t have legal passports. All our taxes were paid in full, no tariffs had been avoided; there were no secret bank accounts on Earth, no lox squirreled away in aresian trust funds. The Comet was properly registered with the TBSA and met every standard for flight certification with the Mercantile Authority. Hell, we didn’t even have any cigarettes, although tobacco possession was so widespread these days that even the Tycho cops ignored it; if there were any smokes in the suite, it was only grade-A lunar marijuana another couple had left behind.
In short, we were clean. I had nothing to fear from these mutts. Ignoring the taser in Jarvis’s lap, I walked past them to pick up the tumblers. “That’s good, because the realm owes me for water and ice. I’ll let you have the scotch.”
Agent Jarvis looked at Agent Dann, Agent Dann looked back at Agent Jarvis, and they smiled at an unspoken joke they didn’t care to share with me. Not yet, at least. “Forgive the intrusion, please, M’sser Furland,” Jarvis said. “The agency will be only too happy to reimburse you once we’ve concluded our affairs.”
“And what affairs are those?” I took the tumblers to the kitchenette, emptied them into the recycler. A bottle of scotch was open on the counter. Damn, they’d found the good Earth stuff, almost as expensive as the ice they’d used. “If you’ve got something to talk about, let’s hear it. Otherwise, the door’s that way.”
Any fake warmth they had shown disappeared at that moment, their smiles evaporating like Wu Tsang’s lead in the handball game they had been watching. “Please take a seat, M’sser Furland.” Jarvis rested the palm of his left hand on the taser in his lap as he nodded to the chair Dann had just vacated. “We have important matters to discuss.”
At least he said please. “On certain occasions,” Jarvis said formally as I sat down, “Her Majesty’s Government finds it necessary to call upon its citizens to perform certain duties on behalf of the realm. This is one of those occasions. Agent Dann?”
Dann reached down to the floor next to me, picked up a black attaché case and placed it on the coffee table. “This briefing is being held in strictest confidence, M’sser Furland,” she said as she opened it, revealing the holopad nestled within. “You’re not at liberty to discuss these matters with any unauthorized parties or individuals. This includes members of the media, the Transient Body Shipping Association…”
“What about my wife?”
“Captain Lee-Bose has been detained aboard your ship. She…”
I started to rise, but Dann placed a hand on my shoulder and pushed me back in my chair. She was surprisingly strong. “Calm down, M’sser Furland,” Jarvis said. “She isn’t under arrest, and no harm will come to her. In fact, she’s being briefed on these same matters, just as you are. When we’re done, you’ll be allowed to communicate with her, so that you may reach a joint decision.”
“A decision about what?”
He smiled. “All in good time. Now, if you’ll pay attention…”
He reached into his jacket pocket, withdrew a fiche, and slipped it into the holopad. A humming cylinder of pale blue light rose from its surface: suspended within it was a pale orange planet. A tiny object orbiting above its equator. “Ever visited Venus?” he asked casually.
I had the distinct notion that, if I ever had, he would have known about it. “Nope. Not my idea of a vacation spot.”
He must have thought that was funny, because he laughed out loud. “No one ever goes there for a vacation, M’sser Furland. In fact, of all the worlds in the inner system, only Mercury is less frequented. But people do go there, and when they do, this is where they end up.”
He touched the pad’s base and the object orbiting Venus expanded, becoming a wire-model image of a space station: a long tube with four General Astronautics hab modules attached to its ends and several more clustered at its midsection, like a barbell with a pregnant hump in the middle. “That’s Evening Star, an industrial mining station established in aphrosynchrous orbit above the venusian equator. ConSpace completed its construction about a year ago. It…”
“Hey, look, I may have been spending a lot of time in the Belt, but that doesn’t mean I’m…”
“Please.” Jarvis raised a finger. “I realize that you’ve probably kept up with current events, but there’s certain aspects that haven’t been on the net. If you’ll let me finish…”
I shrugged, and he went on. “ConSpace, of course, is the remnant of the Earth-based space consortium which built Clarke County and established the original lunar mining operations at Descartes before…”
“Independence, the revolution, yeah, right. My dad fought in the Moon War.” I could have mentioned that my old man died regretting having supported the New Ark Party, a consensus government so weak-kneed that it was easily toppled by a gang of right-wing reactionaries. You don’t say things like that to card-carrying Monarchist, though, and I was already neck-deep in the proverbial septic tank. “Can we skip the history lesson?”
Jarvis ignored me. “Several years ago, ConSpace decided to reassert itself by commencing mining operations on Venus, the only planet within the inner system…”
“Besides Mercury.”
“Besides Mercury,” he added impatiently, “that isn’t in the realm.” He neglected to mention Mars, but most Monarchists don’t like discussing Mars these days. Those upstart aresians; imagine their unmitigated gall, seceding from the Pax Astra to form an alliance with the jovian colonies…which themselves had been originally established by ConSpace, I hastily reminded myself.
I glanced up at Dann, who was still hovering above my shoulder. “Say, would you mind getting me a drink? I think there’s still some scotch left, if you didn’t use it all.” She gave me a drop-dead look, then turned and walked into the kitchenette. When I looked back at Jarvis, his left hand had once again returned to his taser. “Aw, c’mon,” I protested. “I’m not going to try anything. Just thirsty, that’s all.”
An impatient sigh, then Jarvis touched the pad again. Tiny white spots appeared across Venus, most of them concentrated in the equatorial zone below Evening Star. “ConSpace’s mining operations on the venusian surface are controlled from orbit, by VR pilots often referred to as cloud divers. They downlink with ground-based ’bots which scoop up various metallic oxides from highlands regolith and load them aboard landers which, in turn, transport them back to Evening Star. Profits have been marginal at best, considering the overhead costs, but they’ve been enough to sustain Evening Star for the first four quarters of its operation.”
And that probably irked Parliament nearly as much as losing Mars. The space companies on Earth were the Pax’s oldest foe, their mutual animosity going back long before I was born, yet the Pax had dismissed Venus as a hellhole not worthy of even scientific exploration. Now ConSpace was making money from the Pax’s own backyard. Queen Macedonia was probably spitting soup over this.
“I imagine Her Majesty is…rather upset.” The faint rattle of floating ice cubes behind my back told me that Dann had brought me my drink. I raised a hand without looking, felt the cool tumbler against my palm. “Blessings to the Queen,” I quickly added.
“And all her loyal subjects,” Dann said formally. Jarvis gave a perfunctory nod.
I tasted my drink. Too little scotch, too much water. “So why are you telling me all this?”
“If you’re such a histor
y buff,” Jarvis said, “perhaps you can identify this person.”
He touched his remote again. Venus and Evening Star vanished, replaced by a rotating head-and-shoulders shot of a woman. Mid-thirties, long blonde hair, intelligent blue eyes. Pretty, but not beautiful. Oddly, she sort of looked the way Jeri might if she was a Primary. Something about her was familiar, but…“Never seen her before,” I said.
“Her name’s Jenny Pell. Currently, she’s the general manager of Evening Star. Before that, though, she was a senior member of Congress, representing New Ark Party…which, I hasten to add, she helped form.”
“Wait a minute…was she…?”
“Pell is her maiden name. When she was married, her last name was Schorr.” Jarvis nodded toward the holo. “Perhaps you may remember her now.”
I whistled under my breath. Yes, now I knew who she was. Jenny Schorr, the former wife of Neil Schorr, Prime Minister of the Pax Astra. But before that…
Oh, mercy. Now we were talking serious history.
Neil and Jenny Schorr founded the New Ark as an agrarian commune on Earth during the first half of the century; when the old consortium opened its Lagrange colony in 2048, it invited the New Ark to relocate from New England to Clarke County, where they established the colony’s agricultural community. But the New Ark resented the consortium’s autocratic rule; although Neil Schorr sided with the Earth companies, the following year Jenny Schorr instigated the revolution which ousted the consortium from Clarke County and ultimately led to the formation of the Pax Astra.