by Allen Steele
Their differences caused the couple to divorce shortly after the Pax revolution, with Jenny assuming once more her maiden name. Although Neil Schorr remained in Clarke County, he was no longer the leader of the New Ark, which had now become the colony’s major political party; Jenny Pell, on the other hand, was elected the first Speaker of Congress. Yet over the next seventeen years the Pax gradually stagnated under the New Ark’s utopian attempt to govern by mutual consensus of all its citizens. A new opposition party, the Monarchists, which favored replacing democracy with constitutional monarchy, gradually gained popular support. In 2066, Schorr and a small group of disgruntled former New Ark members, including one Macy Westmoreland, staged a bloodless coup d’état which overthrew Congress. When Westmoreland was crowned Queen Macedonia, her first act was to install Schorr as Prime Minister; her second was ordering Jenny Pell arrested on charges of high treason.
Pell somehow evaded capture, and fled Clarke County along with a group of New Ark loyalists. They made it safely back to Earth, and for a short while she waged a public crusade to convince the United Nations that the Pax Astra’s new Monarchist government was illegal and that Earth should intervene to restore the New Ark Party to power. But the U.N. remembered its humiliating loss to the Pax during the Moon War fifteen years earlier, so it didn’t have much sympathy for the instigator of the Clarke County revolution. Jenny Pell was ignored, and eventually she faded from sight.
“I thought she was dead,” I murmured.
Jarvis shook his head. “No, she’s very much alive, and employed by ConSpace now.” His lips curled in distaste. “Ironic, of course, that she would go to work for the very people she once opposed. Traitors tend to have shifting loyalties, though, so perhaps it makes a certain kind of sense.”
You could believe that, if you didn’t question the version of history taught in Pax public schools. The same stuff was drilled into me when I was a kid, but I also grew up hearing Dad talk about Jenny Pell: how she was the mother of the Pax Astra, only to be betrayed by her own husband. Like so many Moon War vets, my father carried a torch for Jenny Pell to his dying day. He might have been an alcoholic, womanizing loser, but I believed Dad’s eyewitness testimony far more than my schoolfiches, which tended to portray Neil Schorr as the fearless leader of the 2049 revolution and his former wife as a liberal opportunist who brought the Pax Astra to ruin.
“C’mon, she must be an old lady by now.” I took a sip from my drink, put my feet up on the table. “Probably needed a job, and ConSpace hired her. No big deal.”
Jarvis scowled. “We…seem to have a difference of opinion, M’sser Furland. This isn’t the sort of thing one would expect to hear from a loyal subject of the Queen.”
Whoops. Forgot for a moment with whom I was dealing. “I’m just saying that she doesn’t pose much a threat to the Pax. To us, I mean.”
He shook his head. “The treason charges against her are still outstanding, as is the warrant for her arrest.”
“Which brings us to the purpose of our visit,” Dann said. “We want you to apprehend Jenny Pell and bring her back to the Clarke County.”
I had just taken another sip from my drink; it almost ended up in my lap. I forced myself to swallow as I looked at her. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Sure it was. Every gag has a punch line, and this was it. These guys weren’t really Pax Intelligence agents; they were actors hired by old drinking buddies. Something the guys at Sloppy Joe’s souped up one evening. Hey, Rohr’s coming back from the Belt next week. Let’s see if we can make him crap in his pants. As practical jokes went, this one was a killer.
“Very funny.” I chuckled as I reached back to swat Dann’s knee. “You really had me going there.”
If this was the moment she was supposed to open her blouse and tell me that all this would be mine if I went to Venus, it didn’t happen. Dann gave me a cold stare, then removed my hand. She didn’t do it gently, but at least she didn’t break any bones.
“We’re not joking, M’sser Furland,” Jarvis said quietly as I massaged my wrist. “We want you and your captain to go to Evening Star, find Jenny Pell, and place her under arrest. You will then take her aboard your ship and escort her to Clarke County, where she will face trial on charges of high treason against Her Majesty and the Pax Astra.”
Damn. They were serious. This wasn’t something cooked up by the bros at Joe’s. I let out my breath, then removed my feet from the table and carefully placed my drink where they had been resting. “So why not go after her yourselves? Why are you coming to me?”
Jarvis raised a finger. “First, neither we nor anyone else from Pax Intelligence can go to Evening Star because it isn’t part of the Pax. Doing so would be a clear violation of the Treaty of Mare Tranquillitatis, since it expressly forbids any actions by the Pax against Earth-based space companies.” He raised another finger. “Second, although both you and your wife are Pax citizens, your ship is TBSA registry, which means that any business you conducted on Evening Star would be outside Her Majesty’s purview…”
“And you’d have complete deniability if we were caught,” I finished. He smiled and shrugged noncommittally. “That doesn’t answer the question. Why us and not someone else?”
“Oh, come now.” The smile became broader. “Surely you’re aware of your reputation. You’re the Futuremen. The gallant crew of the TBSA Comet…”
“Something we’ve been trying to live down.”
Jarvis shook his head. “Not when it’s suited your purposes, you haven’t. In fact, many people have come to refer to you yourself as Captain Future. You haven’t taken any great pains to deny that, either.”
“Hey, cadging a drink is one thing. Kidnapping a station manager…”
“An indicted traitor…”
“…is another, and you still haven’t told me why you want us to…”
“Because it will clearly demonstrate that the Pax is capable of reaching across space to apprehend any individual who poses a potential threat. Having a couple of heroes do the job is far better than relying on spies. Once you’ve brought Pell back to Clarke County, Her Majesty herself will publicly commend both you and your wife for your patriotic efforts on behalf of the realm. You’ll not only be handsomely paid for your work, but you can probably expect to receive knighthoods as well.” Jarvis shrugged again. “See? Not such a bad deal after all.”
Oh, no. All we had to do was fly to a station neither of us had visited before, locate its manager, abduct her, and spirit her back to the Pax. Besides the fact that kidnapping is a bad thing to do—funny how people tend to use patriotism to excuse their misdeeds—it was entirely possible that someone on Evening Star would dope out what Jeri and I were planning even before the Comet made orbit.
“Sorry, but no. Won’t do it.” I reached forward to pick up my drink. “Please give the Queen my best, but we’re not in the covert action business. You’ll have to hire someone else.”
“You’re sure about this? Quite positive?”
“Absolutely. Not our line of work. Sorry.”
He sighed expansively. “Well, I’m sorry, too, M’sser Furland. It just means that we’ll have to place you and your wife under arrest for the murder of Bo McKinnon.”
I had just picked up the tumbler. It slipped out of my hand and fell to the floor, spilling watery scotch and half-melted cubes across the carpet.
“Mutiny, too,” Dann added. “Don’t forget that.”
“Oh, yes. Right. Thank you.” Jarvis casually picked up his taser. “Under authority of Her Majesty and the royal government of the Pax Astra, you are hereby placed under arrest. Any further statements you choose to make shall be recorded and may be used as evidence against you during…”
“Wait a minute!” I started to get up, and froze when Jarvis leveled the taser at me. “What are you…!”
“Captain McKinnon didn’t commit suicide,” Dann said quietly. I didn’t have to look back to know that she had pulled her own taser. “In f
act, he was probably still alive aboard the Fool’s Gold when you and First Officer Lee-Bose launched four nukes from the TBSA Comet.”
“Clearly an act of murder,” Jarvis said. “Considering that McKinnon was the Comet’s commanding officer at the time, it also constitutes an act of mutiny.” Again, the humorless smile. “It’s possible that you may have committed piracy by boarding the Fool’s Gold without authorization of its captain and crew, but that’s something we can let the court decide.”
“Now wait just a goddamn…!”
“I imagine your first question is, ‘How do we know?’ Well, you see, that story you told everyone always smelled a little fishy, so some of our people did a little checking. They found some old records indicating that Captain McKinnon had previously purchased a surplus Royal Navy weapon pod and had it installed aboard the Comet. Then we checked net footage of your ship after it rendezvoused with Highgate. Surprise, surprise…no pod.”
Shit. I’d bribed a Pax bureaucrat to destroy all records of the pod’s purchase and installation, but apparently he hadn’t done as thorough of a job as I had been led to believe. The goons must have ferreted out some backup files he had neglected to erase; either that, or my pal had knuckled under interrogation.
“Now look, M’sser Furland.” Jarvis placed the gun on the coffee table, relaxed in his chair once more. “It’s a simple choice, really. One way, you do a job for us. Not a simple job, to be sure, but in the end you’ll come out ahead. A few more megalox, possibly even a knighthood. The other way, you’ll go on trial for murder and mutiny, and your story will be debunked as the worst hoax of the century. You lose your ship, your reputation…”
He shook his head sadly. “Probably receive the death penalty. You’re a tough man, yes, but do you really want your wife to take the long walk? I don’t think…”
“Okay, enough.” I shook my head. “You’ve got me.”
He cocked his head. “Pardon? I don’t understand.”
I let out my breath. “You’ve got me. I’m in. Whatever you want me to do…” I hesitated. “So long as Jeri agrees. She’s the captain. It’s her call.”
Jarvis looked at Dann. I heard her turn away, murmur something I couldn’t make out. They had a standby comlink with the Comet; another pair of PI agents had probably been working over Jeri while Jarvis and Dann were sweating me, no doubt. There was a long pause, during which I got to admire the view from the windows. A shuttle lifted off from the crater spaceport, a small sphere rising above pockmarked grey wastelands into black, star-flecked heavens. I would have swapped my soul to have been aboard it. But my soul wasn’t my own anymore, so even fantasy was no longer an option.
Jarvis nodded ever so slightly, then he looked back at me. “Captain Lee-Bose has given her consent. You married a smart woman. My compliments.”
“You told me I’d be able to talk to her.”
“If you wish. She’ll only reiterate everything we’ve discussed.” He stood up, tucked the taser into the shoulder holster under his jacket. “Her Majesty appreciates your cooperation. Sorry to have disturbed your privacy. We’ll get in touch with you tomorrow regarding details.”
He turned and started walking to the door. “Nice place you’ve got here,” Dann said as she followed him “Thanks for the drinks.”
“Sure,” I mumbled, “no problem.”
Another lie. This was definitely a problem.
Soon the Comet was screaming down through the clouds into the clear, moonless Venusian night. Curt’s instruments had not misled him. Below stretched Venusopolis, sprawling between the dark inland marshes and the tossing Western sea.
—Hamilton: The Seven Space Stones (1941)
The TBSA Comet launched from Highgate a week later. As soon as we cleared the station’s outer ring, I told the Brain to plot a Hohmann trajectory that, for the first time in either my life or Jeri’s, would take us closer to the Sun rather than further from it. The AI set course for Venus without question; the same couldn’t be said for its masters.
It was a relatively quick flight—42 million klicks in 83 days, a little less than half the time it usually takes us to get to the Belt—and we argued almost all the way. No, we shouldn’t be doing this; yes, we should have told the Pax to take a hike; no, abduction wasn’t legal; yes, we should have hired a lawyer; no, we wouldn’t have found one who would have taken on Her Majesty’s Government; yes, we should have fought this; no, we didn’t have any other choice. The only issue which wasn’t open to contention was that we were screwed if we did, and double-screwed if we didn’t.
And all the while, Venus slowly grew in size, becoming a little larger through the cockpit windows with each day that passed. Of all the worlds I’ve visited—Earth, Mars, Ceres and the other major asteroids of the Belt—Venus ranks as the most banal, if only because of its apparent lack of surface features: a washed-out yellow orb, with only the slightest shadowing of its upper atmosphere along the limb, as plain as a ball left out in the sun for too long. Standing watch in the cockpit, I amused myself by idly scanning the planet through ultraviolet filters; then it looked a little more interesting, all those reddish-orange cloud bands making it resemble Jupiter’s half-pint cousin, but even so it remained as stupefying as a Daughters of the Lunar Revolution tea party.
On the other hand, the Comet lacked the radar imaging equipment which would have penetrated those dense clouds and shown me the face beneath the veil. Beneath that placid lemon sky was a kind of hell that a devout Orthodox Christian would have immediately recognized: average temperature 735 degrees Kelvin, atmospheric pressure 1,260 psi, sulfuric acid for rain, perpetual twilight even at high noon. Mining ’bots specifically designed for this environment, resembling German tanks from World War I but made of ceramic alloys instead of steel, tended to operate for a few days at best before they broke down and had to be replaced. Only nine people had ever set foot on the Venusian surface, and five of them were still down there.
And orbiting the evening star was Evening Star, a silver toy some bright kid might have cobbled together from bits and pieces of spaceship models. Which pretty much summed up ConSpace’s design philosophy; instead of building another wheel-shaped space station or even a Bernal sphere like Clarke County, the consortium went cheap and erected Evening Star from surplus hardware, cannibalizing the very ships it sent out here for their hab modules, solar panels, stabilizers and telemetry equipment, until they got something that resembled a bat-winged crowbar giving birth to sausages. Ugly, mean, and efficient: just the thing for Venus.
A couple of other freighters had established orbits within a hundred klicks of Evening Star when we entered its traffic grid; they were either taking on cargo or dropping it off, so the Comet was in good company, despite the fact that it had never before been seen in this part of the system. Our friends at Pax Intelligence had already taken care of that little detail, by arranging for the Comet to win an open-contract bid to schlep 600 tons of aluminum and magnesium ore back to Highgate. It wasn’t often that TBSA freighters made the Venus run, but not so unlikely that it should have raised attention. If anyone asked, we would claim that the Belt was getting a little crowded lately, and we were testing the waters in another part of the system.
Great plan, except for one problem: despite all that fighting and feuding on the way out here, Jeri and I still didn’t have the foggiest how we were supposed to kidnap Jenny Pell. Jarvis had given us a pocket-size syringe-gun containing an ampoule of chloral hydrate, which he assured us would render her unconscious if we shot it into her neck, or we could remove the ampoule and slip it into a drink. Nice idea, as dirty tricks go, but how were we supposed to get her off Evening Star once we had knocked her out? It was quite possible someone might notice an unconscious woman being dragged through the station corridors, after all.
“We’re just going to have to make it up as we go along,” Jeri said. We were in the main airlock, suited up and waiting for the station ferry to rendezvous with the Comet. “Maybe we can get
her to have a drink with us, then…”
“Dose her in public? And what happens when she collapses?”
“Say she’s sick, then pick her up and carry her to the infirmary.” She shrugged. “On the way we detour to a lifeboat bay, steal a pod, and carry her back here.”
“And if there’s someone with us?”
“Let me take care of them.” Her rapier was sheathed on her belt. It wasn’t uncommon for spacers to go armed when visiting new stations, and we hadn’t been told that Evening Star had a no-weapons policy. “I’ll let you carry her.”
“Umm, I dunno…” There was a hard thump as the ferry nestled against the Comet’s docking collar, then a slow hiss as the airlock equalized pressure with that of the other vehicle. “Look, there’s got to be another way. Maybe we can get her to come aboard voluntarily.”
The butterfly tattooed across her face furled its wings ever so slightly. “And how do you propose to that?”
“Uh…invite her over for dinner?”
Fifteen minutes later, the ferry mated with the station’s east airlock. Its pilot, an acne-scarred kid almost young enough to be my illegitimate offspring, had said little to us on the way over, save for a self-conscious attempt to try out his Superior patois on Jeri: downside Venus, no come before, hey? and all that jazz. Jeri doesn’t talk that way around apes, so she responded with a few incomprehensible phrases that hadn’t yet entered the Primary vocabulary; that shut him down, and he remained quiet the rest of the way. I tossed him a centilox tip as we climbed out, just to make sure there weren’t any hard feelings.
We rented a couple of lockers in the ready-room and ditched our softsuits, then entered the station. A short, barrel-chested figure with a datapad awaited us in the passageway outside the airlock. It was almost impossible to tell whether heshe had originally been male or female. “Name and rank,” heshe said without preamble, hisher reedy voice offering no clues. Why are all androgynies bureaucrats?