Orbital Decay

by Allen Steele

  He paused just before he left the room. “Who knows? Maybe it’ll be your phone number the NSA will catch.” He gave Crespin a wink and walked out.

  20

  Popeye Goes to Heaven

  HE HAD RECOGNIZED THE fat man as soon as he had walked into the filthy apartment in which he lived: Rocky, who wrestled with nurse sharks to impress tourists. But Rocky didn’t look like the type of guy who would make a fool out of himself dancing on top of the bar at Mikey’s Place. Sitting on the couch in the room, with Venetian blinds pulled down against the early afternoon sun, his hands resting not too far away from the place on the polished coffee table where a Smith & Wesson .45 automatic lay, he smiled in a way which probably signaled genuine amusement for himself, but which probably would have made Hooker afraid—if Hooker had not been too pissed off to feel fear in anything but an abstract, unrealized way.

  “That’s an unexpected question,” Rocky said. “I thought you had come here to do business with me, not to ask me about a chick I may or may not have ever met. I thought you had something else on your mind when I let you into my house.”

  “Maybe I do,” Hooker replied evenly. “But I want you to answer my question first. Has she been here?”

  Popeye absently tapped the edge of the mattress with his fingertips. His bunk was dark, the curtain closed, the only light coming from the little computer screen near his feet and the green-tinted readouts which constantly flashed and changed on it.

  Rocky stared at him silently for a moment, then leaned forward on the couch, fixing him with his dark, menacing eyes. “I want you to listen to me,” he said in a low voice. “It doesn’t matter whether your ex has been here to see me or not. What I do here, who I see, and with whom I do business… whatever that business may be… is none of your concern. Their right to privacy is mine, too, so I don’t appreciate your questions. I don’t care who told you about me, but if you don’t want to do business on my terms, then get the hell out of here right now and don’t let me see you again.”

  Hooker knew that the tall, thin kid who had answered the door and let him in was standing directly behind him. He knew that it would only take a word from Rocky—maybe not even that, just a flutter of his languid eyelids—for the kid to pounce on him, to dislocate his shoulder or slug him unconscious, or maybe even use the folding knife he carried on a strap on his belt. The kid was skinny, but there was something in the way he carried himself that made Hooker realize that he was a born, efficient, remorseless killer.

  “Then I’ll do business your way,” he said, “and then we’ll do it mine.”

  Rocky blinked. “How’s that?”

  “I’ll buy what you have to sell,” he said. To show he meant it, he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and showed the fat man the money stuffed inside. “Then you tell me what you know.”

  Suddenly the bunk’s curtain was yanked aside. He had just enough time to squint and blink at the glare of the overhead lights and raise his hands halfway to his face, when a bunch of people he could only barely make out shouted, “Happy Birthday!” and a dark blue blanket from another bunk was thrown over his head and shoulders.

  Popeye instinctively grabbed at the blanket and tried to throw it off, but strong hands thrust into his bunk to hold down the blanket, pinning his arms to his side. He kicked his legs as the hands pulled him out of his bunk. He fell to the floor of the bunkhouse in a heap, and for a moment he had a chance at freedom as the hands disengaged from his arms. But as he tried to struggle out of the blanket, several people swiftly pulled his arms back to his sides and kept the blanket yanked taut over his head.

  Someone knelt on his chest, pinning him to the floor. The voices around him were raucous; everyone was laughing, and a disjointed chorus of “Happy Birthday” began to swell. “Son of a bitch, get this thing off me!” Popeye yelled, and more people began to laugh.

  “Hold him down, hold him down!” he heard a voice—Virgin Bruce’s—shout. Apparently it was Bruce who was kneeling on his chest. “Gimme the rope!” Popeye panicked, began to fight, flailing his arms and legs, but there were too many of them. He felt a length of nylon rope pass around his ankles and tighten as unseen hands bound his ankles. The hands holding his arms strengthened their grip as the rope was passed around and under him, binding his arms and holding the blanket over the upper part of his body. “Hogtie the bastard!” someone yelled. “Throw him out of the goddamn airlock!”

  The only light he could see was through the fabric of the blanket; vague, shadowed forms passed between him and the overhead lights on the module’s ceiling. Now he couldn’t move at all; his arms were lashed to his sides, his ankles were bound together, and Virgin Bruce was sitting on his chest. “Airlock! Airlock!” a voice he recognized as Mike Webb’s began to chant. Others in the compartment—he estimated at least half a dozen-picked it up: “Airlock! Airlock! Airlock! Airlock!”

  The hands which had grabbed him from his bunk hoisted him off the deck and began to carry him. As they began to carefully push him up the ladder, he said, “You get this thing off me, damn it.” He knew it wasn’t worth the effort to raise his voice, and everyone laughed anyway and did nothing, so he didn’t bother even to struggle anymore. Someone grabbed him underneath his armpits and raised him the rest of the way out of the well, laying him on the cool metal surface of the catwalk floor. Several pairs of feet in sneakers padded up the ladder behind him, and a moment later he was hoisted again and was carried down the length of the catwalk, two men carrying his torso, one carrying his legs.

  “Shhh!” someone whispered through the blanket near his face. “Don’t make a sound, or we’ll make it worse!”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Popeye murmured, and heard a few of them laugh. They’re going to throw me out the airlock, Popeye thought. How the hell can you make it worse than that? He knew that they weren’t serious.

  The gang who had kidnapped him—Virgin Bruce, Webb, and a couple of others whose voices he recognized—had obviously thought their scheme through well. It was between work-shift changes, so the catwalk and the access shafts to the station’s hub were abandoned. A pulley had been jury-rigged in the access shaft so that his bound body could be raised with relative ease. Once they got him to the central shaft at Sky can’s core, of course, they didn’t need to carry him, only push him along the way. However, by the time they got Popeye to that point and began to propel him through zero g toward the Docks, the beamjack began to seriously suspect that his abductors might actually be intending to throw him out the airlock.

  He shouted, “Help!” and a hand was jammed over his mouth, through the blanket. “Shut up, for Christ’s sake!” he heard Virgin Bruce hiss angrily. “You want someone to hear you?”

  “If you’re going to throw me out the airlock, hell yeah!”

  He didn’t hear anything for a moment. “Look, Popeye,” Virgin Bruce said. “It’s… we’re not going to throw you out the airlock. You’re going out all right, but we’re not throwing you out. Today’s your birthday, okay? So we’re giving you a birthday present. It’s nothing worse than that.”

  “Then get this blanket off my head,” Popeye said.

  “But then you wouldn’t get the surprise,” Webb said.

  “I don’t want a surprise,” Popeye snapped. “I don’t… I don’t want something for my birthday. I didn’t want this. I just want to be left alone in my bunk, for chrissakes, so…”

  “Popeye, man,” Bruce said softly, “we leave you alone in your bunk all the time. We give you all the time you want to sit by yourself and mope. We like you, man. It’s your birthday, okay? Let us get you out of your bunk for once, do something different for you. If you don’t want that… well, then the hell with you, go back to your goddamn bunk.”

  Popeye thought about it for a moment. No, he really didn’t even think about it; he only weighed the choice, between lying alone in his bunk again, confronting his memories again, or…

  “What’s the surprise?” he asked.
>
  Virgin Bruce and Webb chuckled, and recommenced pushing him toward the Docks.

  He heard the hatch open and David Chang say, “Hey, it’s the birthday boy! Number four, gentlemen, she’s all yours. He’s here.”

  “Is everything set?” Webb asked. Popeye felt his feet bump against the side of the hatch as he was pushed through the prep compartment, and heard the sigh of the airtight hatch into the Docks easing open.

  “You’re all set. Signed out and cleared. And remember our deal,” Chang added, as Popeye was eased into the chill environment of the airlock compartment, “if any shit comes down, you forged my name on that form. Comprende?”

  “We copy,” Bruce replied. “Where’s Bobby?”

  “I told him he was sick and told him to go lie down for a while.” Laughter. “He said he was feeling fine, but I told him he was looking pale and that he shouldn’t worry, he should just take a couple of aspirin and rest and he would feel better. I wonder sometimes what that boy uses for brains, man.”

  “Damn if I know. Good deal. Close the hatch behind me, willya?”

  “Okay. Have a good trip.”

  Popeye heard the hatch slam shut behind them and lock shut, then Bruce turned his body around so that his feet were leading first. A moment later he felt the soles of his feet bump against an open airlock hatch, and realized that he was being pushed into a spacecraft. He also realized that he didn’t hear Mike Webb anymore. Someone in the spacecraft reached forward and grabbed his ankles, pulling him inside. He felt Virgin Bruce climbing in after him and heard him shutting the hatch. Whatever kind of craft he had just boarded, it was small; he could feel three bodies, his included, jammed closely together.

  Hands began to untie the ropes, and suddenly the blanket was pulled off. It was dimly lit, so his eyes didn’t have to adjust. Jack Hamilton was bending over him, a wide grin spread across his face. “Welcome aboard, matey,” he said. “Arf, arf, arf!”

  He realized then that he was inside the construction pod which was kept at Olympus for use on inspection and repair missions for the station. Virgin Bruce was buckling himself into the pilot’s seat, lashing the carry-strap of Doc Felapolous’ cassette deck to a hand rung. Through the canopy, Popeye could see space. “Find some place to scrunch into behind me,” Bruce said as he adjusted his headset. “We’ll be taking off once I get clearance.”

  Hamilton and Hooker eased themselves into crouching positions behind Bruce; they were so close together that their shoulders were squashed against each other’s and their knees were jammed against the back of Bruce’s seat. Virgin Bruce flipped a few switches, and lights went up on the control boards surrounding him as the spacecraft powered up, giving the inside of the craft a warm, Christmaslike feeling. Bruce unsnapped a small clipboard from below the canopy windows and began running down the preflight checklist, pressing buttons every few minutes. “I’ve never carried passengers before,” he murmured to them, “so you’ll have to be careful where you move your arms and legs, okay?”

  “What are we doing?” Popeye asked.

  “Going for a little ride,” Hamilton said breezily. “It’s Sunday. Didn’t you ever go for a ride in the park on Sunday? We’re going for a little Sunday drive.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s also your birthday. We wanted to do something a little special for you.”

  Hooker shrugged as best as he could. “I go on EVA almost every day of the week. What’s so special about this?”

  “This is different. You’ll see.”

  “Why is it different?”

  “You’ll see.” Hamilton gave him a smile. “Trust me. You’ll love it to death.”

  “Okay, you guys, pipe down,” Virgin Bruce said. “I’ve got to call in.” He adjusted the headset mike in front of his face and touched a switch. “Olympus Traffic, this is Pod Beta House Olympus, requesting permission to undock and to proceed to coordinates X-ray inconstant, Yankee three, Zulu three, do you copy over?”

  There was a pause. “I’m on a maintenance check, Traffic Control, cleared by Chang. Please check your log.” He snapped off the radio for a moment and looked over his shoulder at them. “Anderson is such a shithead,” he sneered, before snapping the radio on again. After a second he said, with sarcastic politeness, “Thank you, Traffic Control. Beta House Olympus out.”

  He flipped off the radio, muttering, “Only good for taking up space on the food chain. Okay, hang on.” He grasped the control stick and throttle and pulled them both back a little, and there was the tactile thump of the pod uncoupling from the station. Through the canopy Popeye saw the stars move slightly; it was the only indication that the pod was moving away from the space station. Bruce worked the controls, and the pod tilted as the RCR’s fired. Suddenly, they were looking at Olympus Station from a north polar perspective, a giant wheel from which they were gradually backing away. Over Virgin Bruce’s shoulder, Popeye could see a nearly identical graphic display of the station on the blue LCD screen.

  “Oh, hell,” Hamilton murmured. Popeye glanced at him and saw that the hydroponics engineer had his eyes tightly closed.

  “You okay, Jack?” Bruce murmured, not taking his eyes from the controls. “I’ve got a bag in here if you want it. I think.”

  “I’m fine. Just have to get myself reoriented. Don’t do anything too radical, that’s all.” Hamilton slowly opened his eyes, blinked a few times, and took a deep breath. “I’m okay. Going from sideways to vertical just throws me, that’s all.”

  He grinned and unsealed a hip pocket on the shorts he was wearing. He pulled out a plastic bag filled with brown squares: brownies. He opened the bag and pulled out a brownie, then from another pocket he produced a single pink wax candle. He stuck the candle into the brownie’s frosting and handed it to Popeye. “Sorry we can’t light it,” he said, “but Bruce says that even if we didn’t have an oxygen atmosphere in here, it would be too dangerous to have flame and smoke inside something this small.”

  “Fuckin’ A, buddy,” Virgin Bruce agreed. He had eased the controls into a neutral position, and was tapping instructions on the navaids computer’s keypad. Glancing through the canopy, Popeye could see that they were now off-center from Olympus Station’s axis, moving slowly toward the rim, although keeping the same distance. Bruce glanced over his shoulder at Popeye. “Just put her on automatic, man,” he explained. “Polar orbit. We’re just going to glide along here and have us a little birthday party. Yo, Jackie! Gimme one of those fine brownies. And let’s hear some music.”

  He reached up and punched the playback button on the tape recorder. The Grateful Dead’s lilting rock poured out, and Jerry Garcia’s voice sang:

  “A lotta poor man make a five-dollar bill,

  “Keep him happy all the time.

  “Some other fellow’s making nothing at all,

  “And you can hear him cryin’…

  “Can I go, buddy, can I go down,

  “Take your shift at the mine?”

  Virgin Bruce’s hands gently slapped his thighs in time with the music. “They don’t make music like that no more.” He accepted a brownie that Hamilton handed to him, and hoisted it toward Popeye in a salute. “Happy birthday, Popeye the Sailor Man.”

  Without realizing it, Popeye found himself smiling. He waved his brownie at Bruce, then gently pulled the candle off and let it drift in the air in front of him while he bit into the soft square. A few crumbs broke off and danced in front of his face, and his mouth was filled with the taste of chocolate. He let his eyes close in satisfaction. Real chocolate; not like the watered-down, antiseptic chocolate pudding that was served on the mess deck, but the real McCoy. However, there was an odd crunchy texture to this brownie, and a funny, aromatic taste to it. He ignored it. It was hard to find a good brownie in outer space.

  Hamilton was munching on a brownie of his own, a small nebula of brown crumbs dancing in front of his face. “Got one of the cooks on the mess deck to whip these up,” he said, and added, “Secret f
amily recipe.” He winked at Virgin Bruce, and Bruce winked back. Popeye decided to ignore that, too.

  “How did you guys know it was my birthday?” he asked.

  “Oh, I just happened to ask Doc Felapolous if anyone’s birthday was coming up soon,” Hamilton replied. “He looked up his records and, lo and behold, it was yours which was coming up. The guys decided that, y’know, you’re a nice guy and you’re quiet all the time, so it was high time someone did something nice for you. So here we are.”

  “So here we are.” Popeye shrugged and polished off his brownie. “I appreciate it. Thanks.” Without his asking, Hamilton pulled another brownie out of the bag and put it in his hands. “Good brownies,” Popeye said, and took a bite out of it. “Been a while since I’ve had anything this good.”

  “Glad you like ’em,” Hamilton said. “Hey, can I ask you a personal question?”

  Hooker hesitated. “Yeah. Sure. What’s your question, Jack?” he said through a mouthful of crunchy, weird-tasting chocolate.

  “Maybe it’s none of my business, but why are you so quiet? I mean, what is it that you have on your mind?”

  “I’m not sure if I should be telling you this, Hook,” Whitey said, hunched over a beer at the table in Mikey’s. “I got a family, right? I try to keep my nose clean, but you hear things, y’know? But I try to stay away from that stuff. You understand.”

  “No, I don’t understand,” Hooker said angrily. “Laura took off this morning with a couple of hundred bucks that belonged to me. Okay, so you tell me that you know where she might be and what she’s doing with it, but you also say you don’t want to tell me about it because you want to keep your nose clean. I mean, why the hell haven’t you told me anything before?”

  Whitey clasped his fists together on the table top. “C’mon, Hooker,” he mumbled, “don’t put that shit on me. I didn’t know she’d use your money.” He looked over his shoulder. The bar was almost vacant; only Kurt the bartender was in there, reloading the cooler with a case of beer. Late morning sunlight streamed through the windows. “Remember that guy who was dancing on the bar last night? The guy from Louisiana, the shark-fishing guide? Rocky, Fat Rocky?”