by Allen Steele
In the middle of the screen was written:
AN IMPORTANT PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT FROM BLIND BOY GRUNT.
Then, one line at a time, familiar words began to scroll up the screen:
“WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS IT BECOMES NECESSARY FOR ONE PEOPLE TO DISSOLVE THE POLITICAL BANDS WHICH HAVE CONNECTED THEM WITH ANOTHER, AND TO ASSUME AMONG THE POWERS OF THE EARTH, THE SEPARATE AND EQUAL STATION TO WHICH THE LAWS OF NATURE AND OF NATURE’S GOD ENTITLES THEM, A DECENT RESPECT TO THE OPINIONS OF MANKIND REQUIRES THAT THEY SHOULD DECLARE THE CAUSES WHICH IMPEL THEM TO THE SEPARATION.
“WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT …”
How could Blind Boy Grunt have known what had been said in the meeting? It hardly mattered. Now it was all over Clarke County.
“Oh my God,” Jenny whispered, closing her eyes again. “What have I done?”
4
Final Approach
(Saturday: 10:17 A.M.)
TexSpace SSTO shuttle Lone Star Clipper was a few minutes from initiating the OMS burn which would brake the spaceline for its primary approach to Clarke County, when the bridge crew received a priority transmission, relayed by TDRS comsats, from Washington D.C. The co-pilot, listening to the message through his headset while he studied the checklist strapped to his knee looked up from his work with an amused smile. “We’ve got another one, Rog,” he said. “Washington, Six-Ten Priority.”
“Hmm? What’s that?” Captain Roger Bach, examining the holo of his ship’s trajectory into Clarke County’s navigational grid, didn’t look up from his computer screen. “Six-Ten? Is that the FBI again?”
“Aye, sir. They want us to check the passenger list and confirm if we have someone aboard named … ah, Macy Westmoreland.” Pjotr Kulejan listened for a few more moments. “She may be traveling under an alias, so we’ve got a description. Female, obviously. Age, twenty-four. Five feet ten inches, one hundred and twenty pounds. Hair, brown; eyes, brown. No distinguishing marks. American citizen. Possible aliases are Macy Salvatore, Mary Boston, Sheila Shannon, Dorothy Taylor.”
“Sounds like a woman with something to hide.” Bach looked over his shoulder at the executive officer’s station. “Naomi, would you run a check on those names, please? What do they want her for, Pete?”
Kulejan shook his head. “They will not say. They only wish to know if she’s aboard. They’re holding on for a reply.”
Bach frowned. This was a little puzzling—a break from the standard operating procedure. FBI inquiries to passenger vessels making runs to Clarke County or other orbital destinations were becoming almost commonplace. Since Clarke County, in particular, had been built, fugitives who had once fled to Mexico, Cuba, or Libya were now heading for space. Because Clarke County was U.S. territory, it was perceived as a particularly easy escape; it was not necessary for American citizens to obtain passports or visas to visit the colony, so all one needed was the money to buy a ticket and the ability to pass the routine prelaunch medical and agricultural inspections.
At least, this was the way it seemed to those fleeing from parole officers, the IRS, credit bureaus, divorce lawyers, or various law enforcement agencies. But the arm of the law was long enough to reach across even 200,000 miles of space. What was generally unknown was that space law had evolved to foresee situations in which a person fled from Earth itself. A federal judge could now issue a bench warrant which extended the FBI’s jurisdiction into infinity and empowered the feds to temporarily deputize the Clarke County Sheriff’s Department to make a collar, if necessary.
Transmissions relayed from FBI headquarters in Washington. D.C. to commercial space carriers like the Lone Star Clipper were usually the next step. If it was confirmed that the fugitive in question was aboard a certain ship, the FBI then contacted Clarke County. Frequently, passengers floating through the transfer tunnel into the colony’s docking area found two Clarke County cops—now registered as U.S. marshals—waiting to bust them; usually they were escorted right back into the ship for the long ride home. It had become hardly more difficult to extradite someone from space than it was from Guam.
However, Bach reflected, the FBI normally informed spacecraft crews of the charges on which the fugitive was being sought. It was a routine precaution, if not common courtesy. Most of the time these people were only running from tax fraud indictments or minor felony convictions, but it was conceivable that a true desperado could panic and pose a genuine threat to the ship and its passengers. Thus the feds generally let the crew know what was going on so that they could keep an eye on the suspect until the ship had docked.
This time, though, the G-men were being unusually tight-lipped. That’s strange, Bach thought uneasily. I hope we’re not in trouble here.
Naomi Wada, in the meantime, had punched up the Lone Star’s passenger list on her terminal and had scanned the ninety-seven names on the mainfest. “We’ve got a ‘Mary Boston’ aboard, Captain,” she said.
“Let’s have a look at her,” Bach replied.
The executive officer interfaced her console to the display screen between Bach’s and Kulejan’s stations. The head-and-shoulders mug shot of a lovely young woman, taken at the passenger terminal on Matagorda Island as part of the preboarding routine, appeared on the screen. The photo resembled the description given to Kulejan by the FBI. Bach noticed that the woman looked a little distraught in the photo. Of course, a lot of passengers about to make their first orbital flight looked that way just before launch.
“Mary Boston came into Matagorda on a TexSpace helishuttle from Dallas-Fort Worth a few hours before boarding time,” Naomi said, checking her passenger file. “She paid for her reservation with an Amex Platinum Card.…”
Kulejan grunted. “Beauty and bucks,” he said. “A woman after my own heart.”
“Don’t ask for a date,” Bach muttered. “Where is she, Naomi?”
“First Class, Cabin Eight. She’s traveling alone. Don’t get any ideas, Pjotr.”
Kulejan laughed as Bach patched himself into the comlink. “Special Six-Ten, this is Captain Roger Bach. We confirm that we have your suspect aboard, traveling under the name of Mary Boston. Do you wish us to take any action? Over.”
A cool female voice came over the link. We copy that, Captain. Please be advised that Mary Boston, ay-kay-ay Macy Westmoreland, does not, repeat, does not represent any danger to your ship. Please do not make any effort to detain or interfere with her. Over.
“We understand,” Bach replied. “Will she be picked up upon our arrival? Over.”
There was a short pause. We cannot confirm or deny, TexSpace Three-two-one. Repeat, do not interfere with the subject. This is a priority request. Over.
The three flight-deck officers glanced at each other. Bach shrugged. “That’s affirmative,” he said. “Glad to be of service. Over.”
Confirmed, TexSpace Three-two-one. Thanks for your cooperation, Captain. Special Six-Ten over and out.
The comlink with Washington was cut. “Well, now,” Bach said. “The feds are interested in Ms. Boston, but it’s going to be hands-off all the way. Curious, huh?”
Pjotr Kulejan sighed and turned his attention back to his clipboard. “Not my worry. I don’t think the sheriff’s going to understand this stuff, either.”
Bach laughed dryly. Looking up, he could see through the wide, curving windows above his station a bright, spindly star gliding slowly into view. “Yeah, Bigthorn likes things quiet on his reservation.”
“Well, he’s going to get heap big noise this week,” Wada remarked. “Remember? The Elvis geeks we’ve got down in the zombie tanks?”
Bach shrugged again and turned back to his console. “Not my problem either. Okay, people, let’s look sharp for that burn. APU main bus, check …?”
Clipper-class SSTO shuttles were as far removed from the first-generation NASA space shuttles as Boeing 747s were from Douglas DC-3s. Columbia-class shuttles were 180 feet in height, including their external tanks and SRB boosters, and
had a gross launch-weight of 4.4 million pounds; they were capable of carrying ten persons, if they were close friends, to a low-orbit ceiling of 300 nautical miles. By contrast, the fourth-generation shuttles were luxury liners. Lifting off horizontally from runways with the aid of scramjets and reaching space with liquid-fuel rockets, the spaceplanes were 384 feet long, had a gross launch-weight of 68.7 million pounds, and could transport a hundred persons to a LaGrangian halo orbit 200,000 miles from Earth.
Despite the SSTO clipper’s size and power, though, the journey from Earth to Clarke County still took nearly three days to complete. Yet while all men are created equal—to paraphrase George Orwell—some men are created more equal than others. Thus there were three classes of accommodations for passengers.
Most preferred the cheapest standard, the Third Class “sleeper” fare: artificial hibernation induced by psychoactive drugs, so that one slept through the trip in a life-sustaining “zombie tank,” the spacefaring equivalent of steerage. Not only was this the least expensive ticket, for some it was the easiest, since they did not have to adapt to zero g during the journey—an unpleasant prospect for many. However, the major drawback of Third Class was the horrible, listless hangover the zombie drugs induced for a few hours after revival.
Second Class was available for those who wanted to experience the adventure of spaceflight. Yet, except for a small exercise gym and an equally diminutive passenger lounge, Second-Class accommodations aboard the clippers were scarcely larger or better furnished than the cabins of conventional airliners. Passengers spent most of the trip strapped into a couch, watching one in-flight video after another and becoming increasingly stir-crazy. Second Class, therefore, was usually the fare of choice for the adventuresome, or a least those who foolishly considered themselves to be adventurers.
First-Class passage was the most expensive—tickets averaged $100 per pound plus surcharge, as opposed to an average of $20 per pound for Third Class—but it was arguably worth the cost: a private cabin (albeit about the size of a walk-in closet) located on an exclusive deck, access to a larger passenger lounge, hot-water showers (as opposed to one lukewarm sponge bath for Second Class), and gourmet dining on Lobster Newburg and continental breakfasts (food-paste tubes and peanut M&Ms for Second Class, glucose on IV lines for Third Class).
One of the original NASA astronauts had lived long enough to ride on the Lone Star Clipper during its maiden flight. The old man’s comparisons between his cramped couch in an Apollo command module and his silk-sheeted sleepbag in his First-Class cabin had helped fuel TexSpace’s advertising campaign that popularized space tourism among the masses. It didn’t matter that the average tourist rode to Clarke County comatose in a zombie tank in Third Class or dry-heaving into a vomit bag in Second Class. The image that had been indelibly printed upon the mind’s-eye of the general public was of genteel, serene, Pullman-car comfort during three days of romance and adventure.
Macy Westmoreland had not been interested in romance or adventure when she had reserved a First-Class cabin aboard the Lone Star. Nor was she impressed with the dubious glories of spaceflight; she experienced during her first day in flight what the powersat space workers used to call “Star Whoops.” The only reason why she had opted for First Class was because she needed a private cabin. Privacy was necessary for her escape.
For the last sixty hours, Macy had isolated herself in Cabin 8. She had not visited the First-Class lounge, and she was beginning to smell decidedly rank because of her refusal to leave her cabin to use the shower stall down the corridor. When she was finally capable of digesting food again, she had requested that her meals be brought to her cabin, yet she was so nervous that she barely touched them. The only times she was disturbed was when the steward knocked on her door to announce meals or to check on her condition, and each time that happened she instantly flashed upon the handsome, cruel face of Tony Salvatore. Most of the time she told the polite young man to go away.
Macy lay—or rather, hung—in her sleepbag, wrapped like an insect suspended in a spider’s cocoon, against the wall of her cabin, distantly watching the window-like viewscreen as Clarke County grew increasingly closer. The shuttle was making a fly-by of the colony and the screen was displaying a close-up view of Clarke County as seen from the side. To Macy, it looked like one of the gimmicky electric corkscrews which Tony’s business associates persisted in giving the capo every Christmas.
The captain’s voice was coming over the intercom. Welcome to Clarke County, he said. As you can see, we’re making our primary approach at an angle perpendicular to the colony’s axis as we match our course with the rotation of the North docking sphere. We’re now firing our orbital maneuvering system in preparation for final approach and docking.…
A sudden tremble ran through the length of the clipper. Macy felt the shudder and sighed thankfully. Soon she would be inside the colony. She had no idea what she would do once she was there—as a tourist, she was limited to a one-week stay, and she needed far more time than that—but for a little while, at least, she was out of Tony’s reach.
She hoped, at least. Macy never really believed in God, despite her Roman Catholic upbringing, but now she prayed, and not for the first time during her long journey. Please, God, don’t let the bastard find me. Please, dear God, don’t let him send the Golem after me.…
Although the colony appears to be rotating as it spins on its axis two point eighty-five times per minute, this motion will seem to slow down and cease as we match rotation with North Dock. Also, from here you can see the construction work which is still being done on the colony’s North end, the four tori which are still being built. If you look closely, you can see the work crews.…
Once again, Macy’s eyes wandered across the padded walls of her cabin, the stylish NeoVictorian fixtures—brass handrails, leather foot restraints, fluorescent lights camouflaged as gas lamps, the framed print of an English hunting scene next to the viewscreen—to the sliding fake-oak panel of her closet door. Inside was her single piece of luggage, the nylon shoulder bag. A little black bag with her only hope for a future hidden inside.
She had no idea how much money was in there. There had not been enough time to count it. When she had cleaned out Tony’s bedroom safe, she had hastily shoveled the bundled $100-and $500-bills into the bag. Tony’s petty cash fund: At least a few hundred thousand dollars, maybe half a million in cash. Hardly a major dent in Tony’s gross assets—the real money remained in laundered bank accounts scattered across four continents—but it was Salvatore money nonetheless.
But the money wasn’t what would save her. At the bottom of the bag rested a small bundle of diskettes she had unexpectedly found in the safe and had impulsively scooped into the bag. Macy had not been given the time or opportunity over the last few days to boot up any of the plastic wafers—each unmarked except for a single digit, numbered 1 through 7—but in hindsight she had little doubt what the diskettes contained, the only thing which Tony would logically want to keep in a private safe within sight of his bed.
The Salvatore family spreadsheets. Not the doctored and fumigated books which were given to the IRS during one of their audits. The real books, the ones which showed where all the bodies were buried (literally and figuratively, hah hah). The records which could send Tony Salvatore and his whole goddamned operation straight down the toilet where they belonged:
Thank you for traveling TexSpace, and we hope that you will enjoy your stay in Clarke County.…
Tony Salvatore might be able to let his mistress go. Tony Salvatore might be able to write off hundreds of thousands in petty cash. Tony could, and probably would, find another woman, and five hundred grand probably represented the profit margin from only a few weeks of the family’s operations. But, Macy instinctively knew, Tony Salvatore would not—could not—let go of seven diskettes that could land him in prison, or even on Death Row if the right inferences were made. Many times, she regretted stealing the diskettes. She should have stolen only
the money. Money and sex were tangential matters to someone like Tony, who prized power above all else.
On the other hand, those seven little plastic cards could give her the only things in the world that she truly desired. Freedom and revenge.
Especially revenge.
Revenge for all the things he had done to her. Seducing a confused, screwed-up young woman from Boston who was all too willing to sleep with someone who could keep her in the fast lane. Degrading her into the drug-addled whore of a sleek, smiling monster. Slapping her around the bedroom when he had not gotten his ya-ya’s out of sex. Making her take the other names—Mary Boston, Sheila Shannon, or the most denigrating of all, Macy Salvatore—when they had gone to parties together, while she posed in designer gowns and clung to his side as a silent, painted bimbo while Tony laughed and shook hands with the elegant, loathsome creatures he called his “business associates,” all the time wanting to slash his throat with the broken stem of a champagne glass.…
The voice of the steward who had looked after her during the voyage came over the intercom: The captain has informed us that we are cleared for docking with Clarke County. Please check your seat harnesses to make certain that they are securely fastened, and please do not leave your seats until you’ve been cleared by the flight attendants. United States and Canadian citizens may leave through Hatch One at the right side of the forward section of the Second-Class deck. Foreign passengers, please leave through Hatch Two, where you will be escorted to passport control. If you have traveling companions in the Third-Class section, please follow the signs to the Green Line tram, which will take you to the Third-Class reception area in Torus Nine. On behalf of TexSpace, we thank you for …
Her eyes were shut again. She missed watching the viewscreen as the bright rectangular slot of the North Dock’s SSTO bay grew closer. Please, dear God, she prayed, protect me and let me destroy Tony Salvatore.