by Janet Morris
And that was a government too far away to matter.
Which this one wasn't, by a long shot.
When Keebler finally got out of the diplomatic complex he was carrying a foolish beeper. A beeper! Like he was some kind of paramedic or artificial intelligence.
Call and I'll be right there, you bet.
Only don't hold your breath, UNE.
Once Keebler was out of the cushy Blue Mid area and down in the Loader Zone, he felt better. But it took some time to hunt up the boys, who turned out to be crawling around the insides of Joe South's antiquated spaceship.
"You two still tryin' to make this salvage resemble a modern vehicle?" Keebler hollered down into the hole in the bulkhead behind STARBIRD's flight deck. "Well?"
"Yeah, Keebler?" Sling stuck his head up first. "Whacha want?" Sling still resented Keebler's having called off the bet. But ConSec had interfered. There was no welching involved. There was just ... no bet. Sling ought to be a better sport. Once he saw what Keebler had with him, he'd forget the stupid old bet. Keebler couldn't have taken Sling's ship from him now, even though he would have won the ship if he'd held Sling to their wager.
Now, "rich and famous" had taken on a whole new meaning.
Keebler put down the sack he was carrying and pulled out a six-pack of blue beer. "Got somethin' t' celebrate, kid. Get Southie up here. I got somethin' a-mazin' to show ye both."
South dutifully came scrambling out of the hold after Sling, wiping grime around his face. "What is it, Keebler? I thought you were never going to speak to either of us until the sun went nova." South's expression was mildly irritated, but curious.
"Have a beer, sonny. You too, Sling." Keebler opened two and handed them around.
South shook his head. "I dunno. This stuff makes me feel funny."
"Yeah, but you're more fun when you feel funny," Sling said. "I'll watch out for you if you get a little buzz on."
"You better take a swig, cause you're gonna need it," Keebler opined, hunkering down and reaching into his sack.
When he pulled out the box, Sling swore softly. "What's that, the family jewels?" Sling reached for it.
Keebler snatched it out of range of Sling's grimy fingers. "Keep yer hands off, Sling. This is a gen-u-ine alien artifact, given t' me by a gen-u-ine alien! In person. In the flesh." Keebler happened to look up right then, in time to see Joe South's face turn ashen.
"Drink up, sonny. Drink up, I say."
South took his beer and walked over to the bulkhead, as far as he could get from Keebler's pride and joy, the alien box, and just stared. He didn't touch his beer.
Keebler didn't get it.
But Sling did. "Keebler, hold on a minute. You sayin' you met the aliens?"
"Yep. Right here. On Threshold. In the Secretary General hisself's office! The aliens asked fer me, special. I'm their Pioneer, their special friend. Ain't that a kick?"
Sling said, "Yeah, some kick," and went over to take South by the arm. Keebler heard Sling ask, "You okay, man?" And South said, "Yeah, I guess. I'm just not up for a party. You know how it is."
Then Sling said, "Keebler, haven't you got someplace to go? Somebody else to bother?"
Keebler cursed them both for stuck-up damn-fool kids, and Sling for a poor sport. He stuffed his jeweled box in his bag, gathered up the unopened beers, and hightailed it out of there. There were plenty of people down in the Loader Zone who'd be glad to celebrate with a fella.
Plenty of people.
CHAPTER 22
Feeling Different
South couldn't find a single place on Threshold, up here above the Loader Zone, where he felt at ease.
Sol Base Blue, and the Blue Mid slip bay, were military: there at least he knew the rules. Or thought he did. But up here, where the privileged and the civilians called the shots, he didn't fit.
It was just that simple. He kept trying to find a way to acclimate, but he was failing, and he knew it. His hands were shaking. Whenever he was away from Birdy they trembled. And he couldn't stay in his ship forever. He had to work for a living.
Right now, his work was separating him from his ship. He felt like a hermit crab between shells out here on the Secretariat level, where all the brass was.
He'd seen an American flag here once, when he'd been at a diplomatic reception, and Assistant Secretary Remson had been detailed to make South feel like a guest.
But he wasn't a guest anymore. And he was expected to get around by himself. Get along by himself. Make sense out of the way life was lived on the Stalk.
These people who lived on the habitat called it "the Stalk" because it had all these branches and sidebars and spherical living modules that were accessed from a central core. He knew that. But he still got lost all the time, if he strayed from Blue Mid.
There everything was color-coded, and the tubeways took you where you needed to go without your ever having to get off and change cars. Or you could get a private car that would take you right where you needed to be. So he didn't walk around much, except in the Loader Zone.
The Secretariat level was all official buildings, and you had to know which door was which. Or they assumed you already knew.
He got lost so damned much, he was late all the time.
Now he was going to be late to see Riva Lowe at her quarters. He was sure she was going to tell him something he really didn't want to hear. Otherwise why not see him in her office?
Sling had given him a little card that you could use to route yourself: Punch in the destination you had in mind and a schematic came up, showing your position, the route to take, and your destination.
But he kept finding himself off-course. Maybe he wanted to be off-course.
Modem life sucked. South was spread too thin. He wasn't doing anything well, because he was doing too much that he only half understood. .He felt like a boomerang must feel: forced always to return to the spot it had fled; undergoing an exhilarating rush of freedom, then dragged back inexorably by something incomprehensible.
If he was the boomerang, then the Ball was the hand that kept casting him into the void. No, that wasn't right. Not the Ball. The Ball was the place he kept returning to, and that was all.
How many goddamn times had he been out to that Ball, and been yanked back by the leash at the last minute, before he could touch it...?
He stopped at an intersection and looked around. Buildings rose all around him. These weren't streets, these canyons whose bottoms he walked. Not really. They were just paths into and out of the buildings. Underground was forever, here. There was no surface level. The sense of being deep in a canyon came from the curve far above his head, crisscrossed by frail bridges and tubeways.
On most of the levels you couldn't see the sky at all. Up here, on the Secretariat level, you could. It was a starry night up here, all the time. Eternal night.
Here you knew you were living in a habitat. Down below, where the ceilings were low, you didn't.
He walked through a food court and a plant court, and found the main promenade on this level. As he craned his neck he could see balconies overhanging the courts. He should be able to find the right building. He'd been here before.
Somehow, he'd blundered his way onto the Earth junket. All this man-made living space seemed so oppressive because they were going to let him go home. They were going to let him go home.
Home.
Earth. He knew they had their reasons, and those reasons had nothing to do with his need to see a blue sky and smell real wind and feel real gravity. But he was so afraid they'd take away this chance that he might just blunder his way right out of it again.
He needed Birdy, badly, at moments like this. He needed something to hold on to. He walked around the food court, looking at the stalls, at the shops on the ground level. The people here were all dressed for business: secretaries, government functionaries, clerks, and every other kind of worker bee. Briefcases and book bags. White shirts. Photo IDs slung on neck chains and resting in breast p
ockets.
His heart was on Earth already. His soul had fled. All but a part of it, which still hovered at the Ball.
The aliens were here. Didn't any of these worker bees know that? Their faces were placid. Tired. Bored. Long-suffering.
What did all of them do, in the great weight of the government complex towering over their heads and hunkering down on top of them?
He tried his routing card again and it showed him where he was again, without a sign that it was losing patience with his incompetence.
He toggled it once more. Everything but details pertinent to his immediate locale disappeared. Nice. He hadn't known it could do that. He started moving through the crowd, looking up now and then, brushing shoulders with people who knew what the hell they were doing.
Don't look around. Forget the kiosks selling everything from tacos to rice noodles. Just pay attention.
He found himself at a pair of closed doors, between two storefronts. They looked like service doors. Beside them he saw a card slot.
He tried the door. It was locked. It said NO ADMITTANCE.
He looked at the card in his hand. It was adamant: the dot that represented his position was blinking, right on course, right where he was. His destination was beyond the door.
He looked for a button to push or a speaker grille: maybe he could talk to somebody inside.
There was neither. You were supposed to know how to get in. Finally he got out his Customs card and ran it through the slot. He heard a click.
He tried the door. It opened when he pulled. He walked inside.
Behind that utilitarian door was marble and dark wood-grain simulation, a lobby with a huge pot of silk flowers, real birds singing in a two-story cage, and a man behind a desk as long as STARBIRD's slip in Blue Mid.
He walked up to the desk and the man behind it said, "Yes? Whom did you wish to see?" as if South couldn't possibly have the right building.
"Riva Lowe."
"Floor?"
He couldn't remember.
"Never mind," said the man. "We'll just check." And he picked up a handset, shielding his keypad from South's eyes.
When the man put down the keypad he said, "Go right up, sir. That lift there."
Inside the lift, he didn't have to ask for a floor or a number. He was automatically deposited where he was cleared to go.
And Riva Lowe was waiting for him in the hallway. Her door was open behind her. She said, "You're late."
And he began explaining until, inside, she said, "Never mind. Help yourself."
There was coffee, and he poured some from a clear container into a glass.
She was already sitting on a long crescent couch. She said, "You'll get the hang of it, just watch. It's not so different from—"
"Earth? You want to bet?" He sat down, as far from her as he could get. He didn't want to spill coffee on her pale rug, or the elegant couch. And his hands were trembling again. She was bound to notice: "Can you tell me what this is about?"
There, he'd said it. Something about these people made it almost impossible to ask direct questions. But he kept trying.
"Certainly." She sat forward and picked up her own glass from the low table, watching him all the while. "We need to know if you're ready for this Earth trip. I need to be able to count on you."
"That's it? Just am I ready? I'm ready. Can't wait." With any luck, I can lose myself down there and you'll never find me. But then, what would Birdy and STARBIRD do without me?
"Well," she said with a sour smile, "I'm not."
"Excuse me?"
"I need your help, South." She said it as if she didn't believe it herself. "I told you, I need to be able to count on you."
"Yeah, I heard. But . . . help? What kind?"
"We're engineering a meeting between Cummings and the aliens, down there."
"On Earth? The aliens?" South lifted the coffee glass and drank, to hide his expression. He wasn't going to be able to help anybody with aliens. His skin crawled. "Earth, I'm your guy. Anything you want to know, I probably know or can figure out. Aliens—that's another story."
"Good. Obviously, I don't know anything about. . . conditions ... on Earth. We don't want to make some foolish mistake. With the aliens. Or among ourselves. Cummings knows all about Earth. He has us at a tremendous disadvantage."
"You're worried he'll have the aliens picnic on a hill of red ants? Or hike through quicksand? Or pick poison ivy? What?"
"Ah . . . any of those. Or all of them. Or none. We don't know what the dangers are, as I said. What if he tries to separate us from the aliens? Or to hurt them or scare them? He's xenophobic: he doesn't like the idea of another intelligent race that can give us a run for our money."
"Give us a run for our money?" These people didn't understand what they were dealing with. "Have you . . . seen them?"
"The aliens? Yes."
She had. He sat back from her. Then he put down his glass on the coffee table. "So, what are they like?"
"Like? Oh, that's right, you haven't seen— I have an idea. You tell me what they're like. Your AIP-T says you remember."
This was why she'd brought him here. He shook his head. "I can't."
"Why not? What if they aren't the same?"
"Because what I saw isn't what they are. I mean ... I saw ..." He closed his eyes.
She said, "You know, your therapy session went so well that you're scheduled for a pilotry exam. You want that very much, don't you?"
"Don't do this to me." He kept his eyes closed. He was trying not to remember anything.
She said, "According to your therapy reports, you've remembered quite a bit. You think you know something we don't. Why not tell us?"
He opened his eyes then. "You're serious about the exam?"
"After the Earth trip. And if you pass it, which your therapy reports suggest you can, we'll see about getting you the pilot's rating you want so badly. You'll be able to fly anything we have, eventually. But you've got to cooperate with us." She looked at him expectantly.
He stared back at her, trying to make her drop her eyes. She wouldn't. He'd never realized how feminine her face was. Yet she was threatening everything he'd done to patch together a bridge of sanity over what had happened to him. He didn't want to remember. The beautiful, misty planet. The rings around it, glowing with soft colors even in the daytime. All his dead relatives, happy as could be. Everything he'd lost, resurrected beyond the farthest stars.
He said harshly, "They show you heaven. They show you everything you want. It's beautiful. I thought I was dead. Maybe I was. Maybe this isn't me. Maybe I'm something they made to look like me. Nothing's real out there. It's all pulled out of your mind. . . ."
Then he looked away from her eyes, because they were beginning to get larger than they should be. They were beginning to float in front of her face. They were beginning to suck at him and tell him things he didn't want to hear.
"Good," she said, as if soothing a child who'd had a nightmare. "Good. Now, what else do you remember?"
"I . . ." He stood up.
Her eyes dragged him down. His body seemed to melt onto the couch. He could barely hold his head up enough to look at her. "You . . . don't think that's enough?"
"Not if there's more, Joe."
She wasn't the same person he remembered. Or he wasn't the same person he remembered.
"Well, there isn't any more. What do you want from me?"
"The truth."
"What truth? You tell me something: You saw them. Do you feel the same? Do you think you know what happened to you? Haven't you got the goddamned sense to be scared?"
"We're not frightened, Joe."
He didn't like the way she said that. He'd learned out at X-3 that you couldn't trust your senses, or your memories. A suspicion chilled him, and the old terror it raised in him gave him strength. "You did see them? You were with them, the aliens? Near them? Did you touch them?"
Somehow he wanted her to say she'd never touched them. He'd
been in his ship, in his suit, safe inside STARBIRD, the whole time. He'd been inside his suit, helmet down. He'd been curled up on his bunk, and the auxiliary life-support function had been engaged. Sealed in his suit. Double-sealed in his bunk. Triple-sealed inside STARBIRD's hull.
Life-support had never been violated. He'd never let them inside. He'd been—outside. He'd been standing in the rubble of his ship and his life-support had failed him. His climate-control system had died. His suit had melted off him, leaving him naked under lavender skies.
And there they'd been, floating at him. All of their care and all of their overwhelming need making him die and come alive and die again and be everywhere he'd ever been, with everyone he'd ever loved.
Then everyone was there, all alive. All happy. All under lavender skies with rings in them.
None of X-3's planets had had rings.
He was shaking all over, and she was still looking at him with too-big eyes that were too dark and had too much pupil in them.
"Answer me," he whispered after a million years had passed. "Did you touch them? Did they touch you? Were you in the same room with them, without a suit?"
She came toward him across the couch and he nearly cowered back from her. "Don't be afraid. We took all the necessary precautions."
"You did, didn't you—you touched one." He shook his head. He said pityingly, "Now you'll never know what's happening to you."
"We know what's happening. We're setting up consular relations. We're extending our guests every courtesy during their stay in the Secretariat. . .
"You let them inside Threshold?" He slumped back, wishing he didn't have to breathe. "They're breathing this air, and you're recycling it throughout the habitat? You're letting them pollute everything?"
"Shh, shh." Somehow she was holding him. He was shaking so violently he hardly felt her. Her hand was cool on his forehead. "They're in a sealed section. We know what the dangers might be. We're taking every precaution."
"And on Earth? How are you going to protect—" He stopped. He'd almost said "the Earth."