Ben Bova - Mercury

by Mercury(lit)

  Bracknell was taken from the habitat by one of the coral-uniformed guards to an airlock, where he retraced his steps of a few days earlier and returned to the Alhambra. The captain was standing at the other end of the connector tunnel with his hands clasped behind his back, waiting for him with a sour expression on his lean, pallid face.

  "I'm taking you on against my better judgment," said the captain as he walked with Bracknell toward the ship's bridge. Bracknell saw that he gripped a stun wand in his right hand. "Only the fact that my third man jumped his contract and took off for Earthside has made me desperate enough to do this."

  Bracknell began, "I appreciate-"

  "You will address me as Sir or Captain," the captain interrupted. "The computers do most of the brainwork aboard ship, but you will still have to learn astrogation, logistics, communications, propulsion, and life support. If you goof off or prove too stupid to master these subjects I'll sell you off to the first work gang on the first rock we rendezvous with. Is that clear?"

  "Perfectly clear," said Bracknell. Then, seeing the captain's eyes flare, he hastily added, "Sir."

  Captain Farad stopped at a door in the corridor. "This is your quarters. You will maintain it in shipshape condition at all times. You'll find clothing in there. It should fit you; if it doesn't, alter it. I'll expect you on the bridge, ready to begin your duties, in half an hour."

  "Yes, sir," said Bracknell.

  Alhambra departed Ceres that day, heading deeper into the Belt to begin picking up metals and minerals from mining crews at various asteroids. For the next several weeks Bracknell studied the computer's files on all he was supposed to learn, and took regular stints of duty on the bridge, always under the sternly watchful eyes of Captain Farad. He saw nothing of the captain's daughter.

  He spent virtually all of his spare time learning about the ship and its systems. Like most deep-space vessels, Alhambra consisted of two modules balanced on either side of a five-kilometer-long buckyball tether, rotating to produce an artificial gravity inside them. One module held the crew's quarters and the cargo hold that was often used to hold convicts outward bound to the Belt. The other module contained supplies and what had once been a smelter facility. The smelter had become useless since the introduction of nanomachines to reduce asteroids to purified metals and minerals.

  The captain assigned Bracknell to the communications console at first. It was highly automated; all Bracknell had to do was watch the screens and make certain that there was always a steaming mug of coffee in the receptacle built into the left arm of the captain's command chair.

  Through the round ports set into the bridge's bulkhead Bracknell could see outside: nothing but dark emptiness out there. The deeply tinted quartz windows cut out all but the brightest stars. There were plenty of them to see, but somehow they seemed to accentuate the cold darkness out there rather than alleviate it. No Moon in that empty sky. No warmth or comfort. For days on end he didn't even see an asteroid, despite being in the thick of the so-called Belt.

  Bracknell didn't see the captain's daughter either until the day one of the crew's family got injured.

  He was gazing morosely through the port at the endless emptiness out there when an alarm started hooting, startling him like a sudden electric shock.

  "What's going on there, Number Three?" the captain growled.

  Bracknell saw that one of the keys on his console was blinking red. He leaned a thumb on it and his center screen showed two women kneeling beside the unconscious body of what appeared to be a teenaged boy. His face was covered with blood.

  "We've had an accident!" one of the women was shouting, looking up into the camera set far above her. "Emergency! We need help down here!"

  "What the hell's going on over there?" the captain growled. Pointing at Bracknell, he commanded, "Get into a suit and go across to them."

  "Me?" he piped.

  "No, Jesus Christ and the twelve apostles. You, dammit! Get moving! Take a medical kit and a VR rig. Addie will handle whatever medical aid the kid needs."

  That was how Bracknell learned the name of the captain's daughter: Addie.

  He jumped from his comm console chair and loped to the main airlock. It took several minutes for him to wriggle into one of the nanofabric spacesuits stored in the lockers there, and minutes more for him to locate the medical kit and virtual reality rig stored nearby. Through the ship's intercom the captain swore and yelled at him every microsecond of the time.

  "The kid could bleed to death by the time you get your dumb ass there!"

  It was scary riding the trolley along the five-kilometer-long tether that connected the ship's two rotating units. The trolley was nothing more than a platform with a minuscule electric motor propelling it. With nothing protecting him except the flimsy nanofiber suit, Bracknell felt like a turkey wrapped in a plastic bag inside a microwave oven. He knew that high-energy radiation was sleeting down on him from the pale, distant Sun and the still-more-distant stars. He hoped that the suit's radiation protection was as good as its manufacturer claimed.

  At last he reached the smelter unit and clambered through its airlock hatch. He felt much safer inside.

  Despite its being unused for several years, the smelter bay was still gritty and smeared with dark swaths of sooty dust. As Bracknell pulled down the hood of his monomolecular-thin suit, a heavy, pungent odor filled his nostrils. The boy was semiconscious by the time Bracknell reached him. The two women were still kneeling by him. They had cleaned most of the blood from his face.

  Clamping the VR rig around his head so that its camera was positioned just above his eyes, Bracknell asked, "What happened?"

  One of the women pointed to the catwalk that circled high above the smelting ovens. "He fell."

  "How in the world could he fall from up there?"

  The woman snapped, "He's a teenaged boy. He was playing a game with his brother."

  "Thank the Lord we're running at one-sixth g," said the other woman.

  Then Bracknell heard the captain's daughter's voice in his earplug. "The bleeding seems stopped. We must test to see if he has a concussion."

  For the better part of an hour Bracknell followed Addie's instructions. The boy had a concussion, all right, and a bad laceration on his scalp. Probably not a fractured skull, but they would X-ray him once they had him safely in the infirmary. No other bones seemed to be broken, although his right knee was badly swollen.

  At Addie's direction he sprayed a bandage over the laceration and inflated a temporary splint onto the leg. With the women's help he got the still-groggy kid into a nanosuit. All three of them carried him to the airlock and strapped him onto the trolley.

  Clinging to the trolley by a handhold, Bracknell again rode the length of the ship's connecting tether, surrounded by swarms of stars that gazed unblinkingly down at him. And invisible radiation that could kill him in an instant if his suit's protection failed. He tried not to think about that. He gazed at the stars and wished he could appreciate their beauty. One of them was Earth, he knew, but he couldn't tell which one it was.

  Addie and the captain were waiting for him at the airlock on the other end of the tether. Together they carried the boy to the infirmary that had once been Bracknell's isolation cell and left him in Addie's care.

  "What's a teenaged boy doing aboard the ship, captain?" Bracknell asked as he peeled himself out of the nanosuit, back at the airlock.

  "My number one sails with his family. They make their quarters in the old smelter. Cheaper for him than paying rent at Ceres, and his wife's aboard to keep him company."

  A cozy arrangement, Bracknell thought. But boys can get themselves into trouble. I'll bet they don't sail with us on the next trip from Ceres.

  "Your shift on the bridge is just about finished," the captain said gruffly, as they headed back toward the bridge. "You might as well go back to your quarters. I can get along on the bridge without you."

  It wasn't until he was back in his quarters, after a quick s
top at the galley for some hot soup, that Bracknell realized his duty shift still had more than two hours to run.

  Was the captain being kind to me? he wondered.

  PURGATORY

  His life had no purpose, Bracknell realized. He breathed, he ate, he slept, he worked on the bridge of Alhambra under the baleful scrutiny of Captain Farad. But why? What was the point of it? He lived for no reason, no goal, drifting through the cold dark emptiness of the Belt, sailing from one nameless chunk of rock to another, meaninglessly. He was like an automaton, working his brain-numbingly dull tasks as if under remote control while his mind churned the same agonizing visions over and over again: the tower, the collapse, the crushed and bleeding bodies.

  Sometimes he thought of Lara and wondered what she was doing. Then he would tell himself that he wanted her to forget him, to build a new life for herself. One of the terms of his exile was that neither Lara nor anyone else he'd known on Earth would be told where he was. He was cut off from all communication with his former friends and associates; he was totally banished. For all those who once knew him on Earth, Mance Bracknell was dead and gone forever.

  Except for Rev. Danvers. He got a message through to me; maybe he'll accept a message from me. Bracknell tried to put that out of his mind. What good would it do to talk to the minister? Besides, Danvers had helped to convict him. Maybe his call was in response to a guilty conscience, Bracknell thought. Damn the man! Better to be totally cut off than to have this slim hope of some communication, some link with his old life. Danvers was torturing him, holding out that meaningless thread of hope.

  Now and then, between duty shifts and always with the captain's permission, Bracknell would pull on one of the nanofabric spacesuits and go outside the ship. Hanging at the end of a tether he would gaze out at the stars, an infinite universe of stars and worlds beyond counting. It made him feel small, insignificant, a meaningless mote in the vast spinning galaxy. He learned to find the blue dot that was Earth. It made him feel worse than ever. It reminded him of how alone he was, how far from warmth and love and hope. In time, he stopped his outside excursions. He feared that one day he would open his suit and let the universe end his existence.

  The only glimmer of sunshine in his new life was the captain's daughter, Addie. Although Alhambra was a sizable ship, most of its volume was taken up by cargo holds and the smelting facility where the first mate's family lived. The crew numbered only twelve, at most, and often Farad sailed without a full complement of crew. The habitation module was small, almost intimate. Bracknell knew there were liaisons between crew members; he himself had been propositioned more than once, by men as well as women. He had always refused. None of them tempted him at all. He saw relationships form among crew members, both hetero and homosexual. He saw them break apart, too, sometimes in bitterness and sorrow, more than once in violence that the captain had to suppress with force.

  Once in a while he bumped into Addie, quite literally, as they squeezed past one another in the ship's narrow passageways or happened to be in the galley at the same time. She always had a bright smile for him on her dark, almond-eyed face. Her figure was enticingly full and supple. Yet he never spoke more than a few words of polite conversation to her, never let himself react to the urgings of his glands.

  One day, as he left the bridge after another tediously boring stint of duty, Bracknell ducked into the galley for a cup of coffee. Addie was sitting at the little square table, sipping from a steaming mug.

  "How's the coffee today?" Bracknell asked.

  "It's tea."

  "Oh." He picked out a mug and poured from the ceramic urn, then pulled a chair out and sat next to her. Addie's eyes flicked to the open hatch and for an instant Bracknell thought she was going to jump to her feet and flee.

  Instead, she seemed to relax, at least a little.

  "Life on this ship isn't terribly exciting, is it?" he said.

  "No, I suppose it isn't."

  For long moments neither one of them knew what to say. At last Bracknell asked, "Your name-Addle. Is it short for Adelaide?"

  She broke into an amused smile. "No, certainly not. My full name is Aditi."

  "Aditi?"

  "It is a Hindu name. It means 'free and unbounded.' It is the name of the mother of the gods."

  Hindu, Bracknell thought. Of course. The captain told me she's from India. That explains the lilt in her accent.

  "Free and unbounded," he echoed. "Kind of ironic, here on this nutshell of a ship."

  "Yes," she agreed forlornly. Then she brightened. "But my father is making arrangements for me to marry. He has amassed a large dowry for me. In another few years I will be wed to a wealthy man and live in comfort back on Earth."

  "You're engaged?"

  "Oh, no, not yet. My father hasn't found the proper man for me. But he is seeking one out."

  "And you'll marry whoever he picks?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "Don't you want to pick your husband for yourself?"

  Her smile turned slightly remorseful. "What chance do I have for that, aboard this ship?"

  Bracknell had to admit she was right.

  He went back to his quarters, but before he could close the door, the captain pushed against it, glowering at him.

  "I told you to keep away from my daughter."

  "She was in the galley," Bracknell explained. "We spoke a few words together."

  "About marriage."

  "Yes." Bracknell felt his temper rising. "She's waiting for you to find her a husband."

  "She'll have to wait a few more years. Fifteen's too young for marriage. Maybe it's old enough in India, but where I come from-"

  "Fifteen? She's only fifteen?"

  "That's right."

  "How can she be a doctor...?"

  The captain's twisted lip sneered at him. "She's smart enough to run the computer's medical diagnostics. Like most doctors, she lets the computer program make the decisions."

  "But-"

  "You keep your distance from her."

  "Yes, sir," Bracknell said fervently. Fifteen, he was thinking. That voluptuous body is only fifteen years old.

  "Remember, I watch everything you do," the captain said. "Stay away from her."

  He left Bracknell's quarters as abruptly as he'd entered. Bracknell stood there alone, shaking inside at the thought that a fifteen-year-old could look so alluring.

  YAMAGATA ESTATE

  He was the family's oldest retainer, a wizened, wrinkled man with a flowing white mane that swept past the shoulders of his modest sky-blue kimono. Nobuhiko remembered riding on those shoulders when he'd been a tot. The man had never accepted rejuvenation treatments, but his shoulders were still broad and only slightly sagging.

  They walked together along the gravel path that wound through the carefully tended rock garden just inside the high wall that sheltered the Yamagata estate in the hills above New Kyoto. A cutting, clammy wind was blowing low gray clouds across the sky; Nobuhiko suppressed the urge to shiver beneath his light gray business suit. He had never shown such a weakness before his servant and he never willingly would.

  Never show a weakness to anyone, he reminded himself. Not even yourself. He had been shocked when he learned that four million had been killed by the skytower's collapse. Four million! Nobu had known there would be deaths, that was unavoidable. It was what the military called "collateral damage." But four million! It had taken years to overcome the sense of guilt that had risen inside him like a tidal wave, threatening to engulf him. What difference does it make? he argued against his own conscience. Four hundred or four thousand or four million? They would have died anyway, sooner or later. The world goes on. I did what I had to do. For the good of the family, for the good of the corporation. For the good of Japan, even. What's done is done. It hadn't been finished easily, he knew. There were still more lives that had to be snuffed out, loyal men and women whose only offense had been to carry out Nobuhiko's wishes. They were repaid with death, the ultima
te silencer. But now it's done, Nobuhiko thought. It's finished at last. That's what this old man has come to tell me.

  Once they were too far from the house to be overheard, Nobu said politely, "The years have been very kind to you."

  The old man dipped his chin slightly. "You are very gracious, sir."

  With a wry grin, Nobu patted his belly. "I wish I could be as fit as you are."

  The man said nothing. They both knew that Yamagata's tastes in food and wine, and his distaste for exercise, caused the difference between their figures.

  Delicately changing the subject, the old man asked, "May I inquire as to your father's well-being?"

  Nobu looked up at the sky. This man had served his father since he'd been a teenager. He still regards Saito as the head of the family, Nobu thought, no matter that Father has been retired in that lamasery for so many years.