The Cunning Blood

by Jeff Duntemann

  Geyl was adjusting the webbing away from her breasts. "You're scum," she said, not even pretending a whisper.

  "As if you're not?" The fortyish woman was seated three seats to Geyl's left. "You know, they don't send you to Hell for throwing spitballs." Geyl looked away from the woman's slightly crooked grin, found Peter grinning back, and slammed her head back against the cushions, eyes closed.

  "I'm Erna. You two a happy couple?"

  "Man and wife," Peter replied. "For now, anyway. She talked me into offing her folks. If she'd have kept her mouth shut after that we might have gotten away with it."

  "What did you use?"

  Peter cracked his knuckles. "My bare hands. Blood's messy."

  "Heh! Boy, that's the truth. I knifed a trick who got rough and did he squirt or what? I like a man with good hands, you know?" Her grin now had the character of a leer.

  Peter craned his neck. The proctor emerged from the hatch, pulling the drugged young woman behind him by one ankle. She appeared to be asleep. "That your girlfriend?" Peter asked softly.

  Erna shrugged, her grin gone. "So what's a girlfriend? She was my cellmate, kid only 19. Won't even tell me what she's in for. But you should feel her heart pound. I just want her to survive." Erna watched sourly as the proctor toed his way forward along the ceiling and plugged the young woman into her seat. "She's way too pretty for her own good. I just hope they have a separate block for women."

  Peter watched the proctor arrow overhead and vanish back up the access tube. "Hell's been on its own for two hundred years. Nobody knows what they're doing down there. Who's to say if they even have prisons? Maybe it's just like getting sent to Dubuque, permanently."

  "You're an optimist, huh?" Erna was grinning again. "Maybe you're right. What'd they say—nine hundred men to each woman? Even a droopy old witch like me could make a good globe down there if they let me. Bet your wife could too. Guys like cute little noses like that. She got good tits?"

  Peter nodded. "The best."

  "Peter!" Geyl exploded.

  "She can be kind of an ice queen at times."

  Erna laughed. "Money can cure that. Or hunger."

  The proctor returned one last time, towing the drugged young man. He was plugged into a seat some rows behind them. The proctor then drifted above them, alternately looking at a wrist monitor and checking the lock on their flight webs. That done, he returned to the access hatch. "You're all in place, and I didn't have to club any of you. Good job."

  "We getting any food on this run?" asked a woman directly behind Peter.

  "Only if you want to stare at your puke all the way to Hell. They'll feed you when you get there. Or so we think."

  Erna twisted around as much as she could, to stare at the young man's face with a look of pure hatred. "You know, Mr. Sunshine, if I ever break out I'm gonna come looking for you, and when I find you I'll eat your balls on a hotdog bun."

  The insult carried such obvious venom that none of the transportees laughed. The young man paused with one hand through the lander's hatch. "Break out? Of Hell?" he said with a dismissive gesture. "Yeah, right." He chuckled and vanished up the access tube.

  They all listened to the hatch swing closed and seal. Erna swallowed hard. "No offense, Peter, but sometimes I just hate men."

  Not much happened for awhile. Peter leaned back in his chair, listening to the purr of fans, and to the nondescript clunking and whining heard more distantly through the lander's mooring to the zigship. He pictured the larger craft in his mind—again, from studies only; he had never been within a kilometer of an OVODS zig before: Two terraced cones base-to-base with the great black ring of the Hilbert drive circling them at their widest point. Lined up like black insects on the terraces were the landers, as many as three hundred. "Zig" was space industry jargon for ziggurat, the ancient stepped pyramids that the ships suggested, especially when returning from Zeta Tucanae naked of landers.

  Drifting from one reverie to another, Peter heard Geyl breathing beside him, close by and yet across some icy continent he might never bridge. His early contempt for her as an instrument of Canadian tyranny had warmed to something he had hoped could eventually become friendship, if he could get past his knack for infuriating her. They had training in common, at least, and a sense of mission. In some respects, she was doing the same job for 1Earth that he had been doing for the Sangruse Society—with the stark difference that 1Earth held all power everywhere, and the Sangruse Society was trying its level best to remain an unsubstantiated rumor.

  He still had to smile to think of the mission itself. Why sneak down acting like murderers and run the risk of getting locked up somewhere for the rest of their lives?

  Geyl wanted to know more about Hell, without letting Hell know that she knew. Something extraordinarily interesting was going on in Hell. Something dangerous, dangerous enough to make someone with 1 Earth's burned-in caution like Geyl willing to risk her life to get the truth. Try as he might, Peter could not come up with a hypothesis that he could take seriously.

  |Still doesn't make sense to me,| he subvocalized. |Any theories?|

  Nothing you would respect. Perhaps Hell found the Gaians.

  |Yikes. Or the Gaians found them—and decided to take their side.|

  Who knows? We're speculating here, and one speculation is as good as any other.

  Something Peter could only think of as a sigh of relief flowed over the transportees in the mostly empty lander, and it took a second to realize that they had weight again. The zig was finally underway, accelerating toward Earth's south celestial pole at slightly over half a G, putting distance between itself and anything that the energy released by the fold might damage.

  The zig would boost for about an hour, then cut acceleration and fold. Peter wished he could shout out a general announcement: As soon as we go weightless again, blank your minds! That would be useful, but it was outside the story. No one had warned them that the Hilbert drive had a predictable neuropsychological effect: At the moment the Hilbert field surrounding the ship was promoted to metaspace, whatever mood, thought, or emotion a person was experiencing would be amplified almost overwhelmingly.

  There were simple meditative techniques that every star-travelling individual, from ship's captain to the lowliest techs, used almost without intent just before folding. OVODS might have taught these techniques to the transportees—but who cared if a few died of fright or rage for that one moment in metaspace?

  Beside him, Geyl was breathing carefully and rhythmically, eyes closed, hands relaxed. She knew, and clearly had had some training for star travel. Erna was looking defiantly around, her fists clenched on either side. Anger. Others that he could see were bewildered or frightened. One young man had an anomalous smile on his face that could betray an erotic fantasy or some private inner joke.

  Joke!

  Peter tried to recall how much time they had left in boost. After they cut the big plasma gun, he had maybe seven seconds...

  The rest of the boost was an agony of anticipation. Then, abruptly, the sick feeling of falling. Now!

  "Hey, gang," Peter yelled, "Too quiet in here. What's white and falls up?"

  "Oh come on, Peter!" Erna scolded.

  "A retarded snowflake!"

  They had two seconds for the silly riddle to sink in. About half the transportees in the lander began chuckling. Then…

  Pinnnnnng!

  To Peter, a fold always felt like a bell struck by a hammer—but it was a synesthesic bell consisting of your mental state at the moment the fold occurred. This time, the bell that rang in him was a mighty peal of hilarity, his ridiculous joke made immense and all-consuming. The fold itself was instantaneous, but its effects faded in neurological time. He resisted the urge to throw himself against the webbing in violent laughter. He had been this way before, and calmed himself as quickly as he could. Peter became aware of men howling like dogs, or women screeching insanely—as well as one or two crying out in indescribable terror or livid rage.<
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  It went on for a minute or more, slowly subsiding to several people groaning and some weeping.

  "You shouldn't have done that," Geyl hissed at him.

  Peter shrugged. "Live with it."

  A chaos signature specified a location and a velocity, neither of which had any necessary relation to a starcraft's current location or velocity. Energy had to be conserved within normal space. In metaspace the notion of energy was meaningless. The OVODS zigship initiated its fold while moving in the direction of the constellation Octans at over a thousand kilometers per second—and appeared at the same instant in a close polar orbit around Zeta Tucanae 2, just rounding the south pole where no one and nothing lived above the sea ice.

  Not anymore, at any rate.

  When a Hilbert drive incremented the fractal value of its opposing fields beyond a degree of complexity expressible in normal space, the ellipsoidal volume enclosed by the fields radiated fiercely from radio waves to hard gamma rays. The burst—called a "grunt" from its signature broadband sound on radio frequencies—was instantly lethal to living things within a hundred kilometers, damaging beyond three hundred kilometers, and blinding to within several hundred kilometers. From the southern hemisphere of Earth, departing ships could be seen as brilliant blue-white stars that glowed for a second or two and were gone.

  When 1Earth had abandoned Hell to its inmates, it warned them firmly: Do not go beyond latitude 40° south! When an OVODS zigship reappeared in normal space, the actinic blaze surrounding the ship sterilized the sea ice for a hundred kilometers in every direction, and sent little rivulets flowing into puddles, to harden again almost immediately. Then the field vanished, and the ship was only a small white star moving swiftly against the Scorpion, its pattern almost unchanged by a jump of 23 light years.

  Hell's central city of Moloch was at latitude 37° north. The zig would release its landers just before crossing the equator, then coast over the north pole and back to the south pole before taking the fold back to Sol.

  Peter guesstimated the orbit in his head, and after about twenty minutes felt the plasma guns apply acceleration again. This time the zig was losing orbital velocity, to give the landers a head start into the atmosphere.

  Then, through the lander's hull, they felt a concussion like a distant thud of a mortar. Three seconds later, another. As the zig fell toward the atmosphere, it was slowly rotating, releasing a string of landers like hose coming off a reel. Their lander was one of the last, if not the last. The concussions of the zig releasing its cargo came closer and closer, ever louder, until with a wrenching twist the lander was thrown free, away from the zig's meager acceleration, and falling.

  Two seconds later, the lights went out.

  Several women were screaming in the new darkness. Geyl took the opportunity to whisper in Peter's direction: "I don't think this is the way it's supposed to work!"

  The Sangruse Device concurred, for Peter's ears only. Neither do I. I know the control sequence. Lights should remain on. The lander should fire its attitude jets shortly to position us for ablative re-entry.

  Peter leaned toward Geyl and whispered. "These things ablate in. We need to get stable at the proper insertion angle pretty soon, or we're in deep trouble."

  Peter felt Geyl's hand close around his. The darkness was total; he doubted her gesture was part of the cover. They waited, Peter counting in his head. One minute. Two minutes. The lander remained inert. Another minute passed.

  I am absolutely certain the attitude jets should have begun their sequence by now.

  |Are there records of landers failing on entry?|

  Who would keep the records?

  "Peter, you're an AE. Is there anything you might able to do?"

  Don't reveal my presence!

  Peter took a deep breath. "I'm tied to my seat, babe. I think they probably designed this cabin to keep us away from anything tinkerable anyway. The passengers are cargo."

  They felt acceleration then, lightly: an invisible hand that grasped and released, once, twice, then held with a feeling of bubbling uncertainty.

  "That's atmosphere."

  Over the next few minutes they felt the lander begin to tumble slowly in both axes.

  I know where the lander's controller is.

  |Can't get there from here.|

  You can't. I can.

  More tricks, then. |They told me you couldn't leave my body. |

  They're in a poor position to tell you what I can’t do! I've had years to think of all sorts of possibilities. What do you think I do while you're asleep?

  The tumbling had grown more severe. The other transportees were groaning. He heard one retching against the antinausea drug.

  I am building an agent at this moment, from a design I've had in store for some time.

  |Where?|

  In your stomach.

  Peter got the idea. However... |They barf-proofed us.|

  Only to a degree…and only Geyl's perception matters. The drug was not designed for this degree of vestibular disruption. I won't have to push very hard.

  Over the next several minutes, the tumbling grew more rapid and irregular. The turbulence of the irregular motion hammered at the lander and made it shudder.

  Behind them, someone vomited noisily. Others had begun screaming. Peter felt something splatter on the back of his head.

  Finished. Away!

  Peter's abdomen spasmed. He slammed forward against the web and twisted toward the aisle beside them as his stomach sent a considerable quantity of material explosively forward. Whatever the Sangruse Device had put together was fluid but very cohesive. It didn't even leave a sour taste in his mouth. He heard it splatter convincingly on the bare metal of the aisle bulkhead.

  Peter slammed his head back against the cot, licking his lips. Geyl's hand tightened around his. She reached up with her other hand and pulled his head down toward hers until he felt her breath on his left ear.

  "Peter.. .the mission's over. I know enough AE to be sure of that. We may only have a minute or two." Her whisper was a struggle against the constant wrenching motion of the lander. "I'm sorry I've been such a witch. You were right—the Governor General interfered in every detail of the mission—nothing was done as I recommended. I don't want you to die hating me."

  She's telling the truth. I'm monitoring the skin resistance of her hand. My guess is she would like you to apologize as well.

  |No freaking way!|

  Her good will could be valuable later on. Do you want to learn what 1Earth discovered about Hell? This could be a good time to ask.

  |We're about to die!|

  Don't count on that.

  Peter swallowed hard. "I don't hate you."

  "You hate Canada."

  "Touché. But you're an American."

  "I work for 1Earth. If I hadn't pulled you in on this, you'd be in one of the other landers."

  And not coming back. "I don't hate you."

  "Don't be polite. Tell me the truth. Tell me what you really think of me."

  "Ok. Your boss is a psycho. You need a real job. I admire your guts. I'd like to see your tits. I don't hate you. I don't want you to hate me either."

  She laughed, the warmth of her breath on his ear. "I don't hate you. I admire your guts too. And trust me, I'm nothing special on top."

  She's lying now.

  |About her admiration or her tits?|

  I don't know. It doesn't matter.

  The tumbling was making it difficult to speak. Others behind and around them were vomiting. Geyl pushed her head against his shoulder.

  Peter took as deep a breath as the constant tumbling of the lander would allow. "I'm sorry about last night, in the Illinois." He squeezed her hand.

  "Accepted. Let's leave it at that."

  "This could have been fun."

  "Yeah. Like I said, let's leave it at that."

  "No. I want to know what you found out about Hell."

  Geyl did not respond for several seconds.


  She really doesn't want to tell you.

  "Come on," Peter said. "I want to know what I threw away the rest of my life for."

  Good move. People with integrity respond well to guilt. I sense tremendous indecision. But it's resolving.

  "Ok." She paused for a long time. Peter felt her swallow. "There's too many people on Hell, by a factor of ten or more. We counted city lights from orbit."

  Significant. But it's not the main factor by a long shot.

  "Ahh. And what else?"

  "I can't tell you! My oath..."

  "About to be moot. I think you owe me that much."

  Geyl squirmed as much as the bands restraining her would allow. "We…we heard radio signals."

  "From Hell?"

  The cabin lights went on. Simultaneously, Peter heard the soprano roar of the lander's attitude thrusters kick into full play. The tumbling continued, but Peter could feel it damping simultaneously in pitch and yaw.

  Around the cabin, scattered people were cheering weakly. Erna was still convulsed by dry heaves. Most of the transportees remained silent.

  "My oath..." Peter heard Geyl whisper. She snatched her hand away.

  |Was she telling the truth?|

  Yes. Both times. And now the information may become useful to us.

  |I'll say. Is your puke machine going to come back and report?|

  If it can do so discreetly.

  |You should have told it to leave the lights out.|

  I did.

  Within minutes the lander had stabilized itself. The thrust continued after the last of its tumble vanished. Peter realized that it had passed its re­entry window and was rising above the atmosphere sufficiently to make one more pass around Hell's south pole.

  Geyl stared straight ahead in her cot, her arms folded in front of her. She refused to speak, no matter what Peter said. "Hey, it's not like I could have set this up somehow!" he hissed in her ear. Geyl remained silent.

  The orbit was very tight, touching the top of Hell's atmosphere. The thrusters worked continually to keep them from tumbling again. Perhaps an hour later Peter heard the main re-entry thrust sequence begin. For people who had not been through the previous hour's ordeal, re-entry might itself have been terrifying. Peter had ablated to Earth several times during his SIS training, and the continuous vibration did not faze him—and the other transportees seemed unaffected as well.