Trust Territory

by Janet Morris

  South couldn't let that happen to him. He pulled the Con-Sec pilotry manual from its pocket and turned to the page he'd been studying. Once a test pilot, always one.

  If he could pass the ConSec entrance exams, he could get in line to reapply to Space Command. Spacecom wouldn't have him yet; he didn't have the credentials. Yet.

  But if he played his cards right he could earn them. He had friends in high places. Remson would help him. So would the Secretary General himself. But South had to be capable. He had to be competent on modern equipment. He had to be able to fly a state-of-the-art ship, not just a retrofitted hulk like STARBIRD.

  Having thought that thought he looked around guiltily, as if the ship could hear. But not even Birdy could hear his thoughts. At least not with her current level of upgrade. Contemporary command-and-control electronics anticipated their pilots to a spooky degree. Contemporary MMUs took performance cues from neural firings, he'd been told. Nobody talked about what the current generation of experimental spacecraft could do—not with South, who wasn't cleared for those kinds of conversations.

  But somewhere, somebody was testing something. Somebody always was. He wanted to find his way into whatever cadre that was and do what he'd been trained so expensively and laboriously to do.

  Until then he had to keep making himself useful, accrue brownie points, collect skills. If he hadn't needed to do those things, he'd never have had anything to do with Keebler's capture.

  If he couldn't stop shaking and get the Scavenger's plight out of his head—and the Ball with it—he wasn't going to help himself the way he needed to.

  And he needed to.

  By the time Birdy was parking in her slot, South was calmer. He racked his suit, slipped into Customs coveralls, and locked STARBIRD up tight. He was going to be late for his meeting on Keebler as it was.

  A little later wouldn't hurt. Maybe he could miss it altogether. After all it was a ConSec meeting, and he was Customs staff. Any after-action report he gave should go through his own channels, through Lowe's office, be vetted by Remson, and then go back down to Reice's people.

  He took a pager, enabled it, and clipped it onto his belt. Now Riva Lowe could find him wherever he went.

  So he went where he wanted to go, not where he probably should have gone. He went down to the Loader Zone, where things weren't so damned squeaky clean, and where regulations weren't the only way to get anything done.

  The smell of stale beer and vomit and grease and hot electronics soothed him. The chipped yellow-and-black enamel of the loading docks seemed almost as old as he felt. Neon shivered from bar windows. Bioengineered subspecies and extrasolar provisional workers gamed on street corners below streetlights strung on naked girders. Some people thought the Loader Zone was Threshold's armpit; South was sure it was Threshold's heart.

  He didn't really realize he was on his way to see Sling, the aftermarketeer who'd done the retrofit on STARBIRD, until he found himself at Sling's door.

  Nobody home, the inner lock's message-reader told him. He left his handprint and his name, then turned in the enclosed space to push the exit button and leave.

  Behind him the inner lock opened. "Hey, Joe?"

  Sling stood there, back-lit, twirling the end of his single long braid in his fingers. The shop behind was dimly lit, its contents a collection of hulking shapes in the semidarkness. "Comin' in?"

  Sling swaggered into the dimness, hands in the pockets of his coveralls, not waiting to see if South followed.

  Usually the shop was bright and all its clutter clearly delineated. Inside, when the door had squeaked shut, Sling sat on his desk made from an ancient spacecraft's wing flap and picked at a scratch on the old metal, watching South narrowly. Weird. Sling just kept staring at him.

  South said, "You okay?" They had been friends. At least he'd thought so.

  Sling said, "Compared to what? Want a beer?"

  Blue beer. South almost said no. Blue beer had a tendency to blitz him before he knew it. But then, "Yeah, okay. Couldn't hurt, after the day I've had."

  "Am I next?" said Sling, as he handed South the blue bottle. There were lots of drinks that didn't faze South the way that blue beer did, but Sling didn't drink any of them.

  And guys like Sling didn't trust you if you didn't drink with them. "Are you next for what?"

  "I heard they arrested Keebler. Am I next?" Sling had worked for Keebler, making a black box to order that Keebler thought might open the Ball. ConSec had confiscated the box, but by then Keebler was sure the box hadn't worked.

  South wasn't sure the box hadn't worked. But he was pretty sure that Sling wouldn't be arrested for consorting with Keebler in an attempt to open the Ball. South hadn't gotten arrested. He'd just been recruited by the Alien Artifact Working Group.

  And Sling had worked for South as well.

  "So that's how come you're looking at me funny, how come the lights are off. First, I'm not a cop." They'd had this kind of discussion before. Paranoia was a way of life in the Loader Zone. Sure, Sling had made a black box that Keebler had thought might open the Ball. But nobody besides South had an inkling that the box might have worked—not even Keebler. "I'm just a Customs Agent who likes your work."

  "So you've said." Sling crossed his arms.

  "Second, if you were worried I'd bust you, why'd you let me in? This is no place to hide out."

  "Hide in plain sight. I figured maybe we could cut a deal.

  You didn't answer me: Am I next? You guys going to come haul me off?"

  "Not my guys. And not if I can help it. I only wanted to talk to you about getting some training time on a patrol-type vehicle. I want to fly—"

  "Damn it, South, don't talk to me about stuff like that. Where would I get access to a patrol-type vehicle? They ain't legal for civilians. Just give me a little break, okay? You say you're not going to bust me. You going to ask me to come in and testify?"

  Information traveled faster down here than anywhere else on Threshold. If Sling knew that Keebler had been arrested, he surely knew that South was part of the Alien Artifact Working Group. "Nope. And if we were it would be as a friendly witness, way off the record. Promise."

  "Gee, thanks. Does your promise hold for ConSec, since you don't work for them?"

  South took a deep drink of the blue beer and said, "Nope. But that doesn't mean it's not worth something. And maybe I'll end up working for them, if that's the only way I can get in some time on milspec spacecraft."

  South hadn't meant to say it. He was still thinking about it only obliquely. Sling, who had a horror of authority and its inertia, looked at South as though he'd announced he was planning to turn into a python and swallow Sling whole, here and now.

  Of course Sling had never seen a python in his life, so maybe the aftermarketeer was looking at South some other way.

  Sling said, "Remind me not to make friends with strangers from lost times—next time."

  "Next time, I will. But this time, since I'm here, I want to talk to you about what my ship can really be expected to do, and whether there's anything else we can do to make her more capable, and how soon we can do it." Sling was only comfortable when he was working.

  South sympathized. And anyway, even if he did apply to ConSec and was accepted, STARBIRD needed constant upgrades. If he couldn't get his ship up to modem standards, he'd never get himself up to speed.

  It all seemed clear to him, now that he'd drunk half the blue beer. He didn't know how much this was going to cost, but he did know that he had to be able to keep up with Reice, the next time.

  If there was a next time. And there would be. That Ball was out there. It wouldn't go away. And South couldn't get away from it. He'd tried, ever since his flyby of an alien solar system, to do that.

  There'd been lots of those silvery balls out where he'd been.

  Flying around his ship, swarming and gliding like bats or butterflies, flouting every law of physics, in space and in atmosphere. . . .

  But he hadn't
been in any alien atmosphere. He'd just I flown by X-3. Not landed there. The landing was a figment of his imagination, a phantasmic artifact of putting a human mind/body system through a spongehole.

  Silvery spheres in a lavender sky, swooping like seagulls. One of the damned things had followed him home. Might as well admit it—if not out loud, at least to himself.

  Having admitted it, South's nearly compulsive need to acquire the fastest possible getaway spacecraft made perfect sense to him. After another blue beer, he'd probably even know how he was going to pay for all this additional retrofit he was sure he needed.

  CHAPTER 5

  Job Description

  Riva Lowe hit the virtual-reality enabler of the helmet she was wearing and the recreation bay around her disappeared. The stationary bike she was straddling became the back of a horse. The curving outer wall of Rec Bay Red became an African veldt.

  She felt reins in her hand and even the muscles of the dappled horse under her as it lunged forward, propelling itself with hindquarters and landing jarringly on its forefeet. Maybe she should have read the manual for Horseback Riding (with Jumping) more carefully before she'd started.

  But she was angry, and she needed to throw her body into enough strenuous exercise and real challenge to work off her fury. Otherwise she was going to say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing, and real trouble would be the result.

  How hard could this horseback riding be? Ancient people had done it every day, long before the birth of Christ. She'd read that in her orientation manual.

  She smelled deeply oxygenated air filled with something that tickled her nose, as if she were strolling in the agronomy bays: grasses and pollen and . . . dust.

  Her buttocks kept hitting the saddle hard. She gripped with her knees and leaned forward, raising her butt a few inches. As long as her knees held out, this clearly was the superior position. Her hands on the reins grazed the smooth muscles of the horse's neck and shoulders. Her thighs were beginning to burn.

  Good. Ahead she saw a silver glitter she didn't at first understand. Then she recognized it as water, running free in a channel. A lot of water. A wide channel. And in the distance, a cascade of water coming down from a sheer cliff.

  So this was Earth. She'd better hope the simulator knew what it was doing. She needed to be able to handle herself on the ancestral planet if this proposed trip of Cummings's became reality.

  She had never thought it would. But she'd never had a day like yesterday—or today.

  First His Royal Highness, Richard the Second, tried bribing her with the promise of a trip to Earth that Riva Lowe had dutifully passed to higher authorities. (Was the sky on earth really filled with rainbows and purple mountains topped by conifers, as it was in one of her office paintings?) Then Mickey Croft had decided that the trip was a great idea, not a dangerous flirtation with compromise.

  So she'd booked the simulator time. Never hurt to be prepared.

  Then the Scavenger had been brought in by ConSec, trussed like a Christmas turkey. (Maybe she'd get to see a real turkey when she went to earth; she thought they were pink and hairless with square snouts, curly tails, and long toenails.) When the Salvagers' Guild lawyers caught up with Keebler, their client, the Scavenger was in the indisputable custody of Threshold Secretariat under security lock, and Remson was personally making sure that the Scavenger didn't get so much as the one vidphone call to which the law entitled every citizen.

  Riva Lowe pulled on the reins and the simulated horse slowed before she, and it, plunged into the simulated water.

  The equine simulation was blowing hard through its nostrils, shaking its head and showering her with froth, and steam was rising from its shoulders.

  She was sweating herself, and breathing nearly as hard. Her thighs ached and burned and felt as if they wouldn't take a command of any sort. They were trembling.

  She muttered, "Simulation, end," and the horse was a stationary bike. The reins were rubber grips. Those grips were slick with her sweat. And her thighs were still weak and burning.

  She flipped back her helmet visor, thinking she'd go take a shower.

  Joe South was standing there, in a track suit with a virtual-reality helmet under his arm, watching her.

  "What are you doing here?" She was embarrassed. She clearly was winded. Sweat had soaked her gym clothes. Worse, she felt guilty. It was the middle of the day.

  "Needed to see you," South said, as if that made it perfectly fine that he'd chased her into Rec Red to gawk.

  "Well, this isn't my office." She swung off the bike and couldn't quite suppress a grunt. "Even if it was, you haven't made an appointment." I have a right to some privacy. Some recreation, damn you. Don't look at me like that.

  The pilot's eyes were still as wild as when she'd first encountered him. His body was still disturbingly animal in its presence, as if he inhabited it differently from the men of Threshold—as if he were somehow more inside it than a civilized person.

  South said, "I need to talk to you, off the record." He shifted to a wider-legged stance, holding the helmet in front of his crotch so that technically he stood at ease, alert, demanding, and more like some predatory beast in the simulator's banks than an employee of hers.

  "Because I tabled your request for transfer to ConSec?" she guessed. It truly had been a busy seventy-two hours. "If everyone who worked for me came to me personally to discuss every decision I make ..." She started to walk away from him, toward the showers. He made her uncomfortable. Sometimes it seemed she could feel his emotions, his animus, his distress.

  He followed doggedly. "Ma'am, there's got to be a way I can convince you. . . ."

  "There's not." She stopped. Looked around. Nobody else within earshot, just empty simulator stations, unused bikes, and a few open racquet courts. "And you don't want to transfer out right now. We're preparing a mission to Earth, at the request of Cummings the Second. I need your expertise for that trip—you're the only one of us who remembers Earth at all. We won't know if something's not right there, or whether Cummings is pulling some kind of scam." She dropped her bomb crisply, then looked back at the pilot to see the effect of her words.

  South seemed to be shivering all over. Then that stopped. His eyes narrowed and he stared even harder at her. Then he shook his fine head infinitesimally. "Okay," he said softly. "I give."

  She thought, then, that maybe it was the way his head sat on that muscular neck that made him so different. Or perhaps it was the way he absorbed the shock with just the tiniest hint of amusement flickering around his mouth.

  She didn't know, but suddenly her tired body wanted to find out what made this man so extraordinary. "South," she said, "walk with me." Toward the showers.

  He fell in beside her, looking down and over one shoulder at her, waiting for her to speak.

  "I . . . What did you think to gain, transferring to ConSec? Aren't you happy with us? We've spent a lot on that ship of yours, trying to help you acclimate. You can't just decide to transfer out, without a reason."

  "I was a test pilot, remember? I want to fly test craft. I need to requalify. I can't do that in my ship—in STARBIRD." He shrugged. "Tell me about this mission to Earth."

  South always wanted a mission. "You still haven't given up on getting back into Space Command, have you? I keep telling you, things aren't what you remember."

  "I'm finding that out. Thanks for putting me on the Earth roster."

  Something made Riva Lowe trip over her own feet. He caught her arm before she fell. Their helmets clanked together. Warmth ran up her arm. His eyes seemed huge.

  She shook him off, stepped back. "Commander South, you're clearly qualified for this junket. I'm going, and I want you as my advisor." There, she'd said it. She had a right to say it, but it sounded . . . personal.

  Oh, dear.

  South was waiting for her to say something else. So she said, "I want you to agree to drop the ConSec matter for now—at least until we've finished working the Ball problem. Yo
u can't hop from service to service while you're on a project like that one. Understand?"

  "For now."

  Infuriating man. "If what you want, eventually, is SpaceCom, then you'll need some special help." She moved forward, and he followed.

  "What kind?"

  He just couldn't understand the subtleties of deal-making here. She shouldn't get angry. She fabricated something he could understand: "Special counseling. A physical and psychological evaluation specialist—a therapist." A fitness report on South was just what she needed. "The fitness requirements for a test pilot, obviously, are higher than for the sort of job you have now." Idiot, just do what I tell you. We'll get you where you want to go. -

  "Therapy?" he nearly growled. He stopped, shook his head, and then said, "Yeah, I guess I need it."

  Strange man. Strange reactions. She said, "Wait for me, and I'll take you to see someone about it right now. We'll call from my place."

  Having offered South her personal assistance, she was more surprised than angry when he said, "I can't, now. But leave the name of the therapist with my ship's AI. I gotta see somebody like that, sooner or later. I'm so tired of trying to make sense out of things on my own."

  Name? Somebody? Did he understand what she was offering? South's voice was thick, and she reached out to comfort him somehow. He tossed his head and stepped back.

  Rebuffed, stiff and awkward, feeling clumsy, she said, "Fine. You'll find our therapy very thorough." She couldn't believe the pilot was rejecting a chance to come home with her.

  But she damned well wasn't going to ask him again.

  "Anything that'll help," he said, and waved at her. "Gotta go. My report'll be waiting for you."

  She watched him move through the simulator bay and wondered what the hell she'd done wrong.

  It wasn't often that she invited a subordinate to her home in the middle of the day. It wasn't often she bent the rules for anyone.