Sidney's Comet

by Brian Herbert

  * * *

  Sayer Superior Lin-Ti resumed his place at the podium. Weary from three days away, he thought of the burdens of Ins position. So much responsibility, he thought. I should delegate more. . . .

  He flipped to Chapter Nine.

  Chapter Nine

  THE CAPPY PROBLEM, FOR FURTHER READING AND DISCUSSION

  February 16, 2341: Mandate of Retardation passed unanimously by the Council of Ten. The major tenets of this mandate held that “cappies” (“crips” and “retardos”) were to be sterilized, could not own real property and were to be committed to therapy orbiters.

  Tuesday, August 29, 2605

  In the few minutes before Garbage Day minus three began on Saint Elba with the opening of the habitat’s night shield, Sidney’s room remained in darkness. A nightmare captured his mind with a sense of reality that drenched his bed in perspiration—Sidney was imprisoned on a planet which rotated freely in a round cage. Spaceships entered and left through iron gates which clanked noisily in airless space as they opened and closed. He knew this was impossible, but his dream permitted no questions.

  It was an unhappy place. Desperate prisoners plotted escape. . . .

  “Escape . . . dawn . . . take the Hub. . .” Words echoed in Sidney’s consciousness and vanished like fine sand through burlap. He squirmed in his slumber, pushing blankets away to cool his body. Half awake now, he began to realize that some of the dream voices were real.

  “The snoring!” an urgent voice husked. It’s stopped!”

  “Is he awake?’ another asked.

  Sidney froze. His heart pounded. He sensed someone very near, listening to his breathing. Sidney tried to feign sleep by taking loud, deep breaths.

  Suddenly a strong hand grabbed his throat. “One squeal and you’re dead!” a man rasped. He pulled Sidney to the floor and held Sidney’s good right arm in a clamp grip.

  “What did you hear?” another man asked. His voice was high-pitched, commanding.

  “Nothing,” Sidney gasped, flailing his deformed arm helplessly. “I heard nothing!” Sidney looked beyond a shadow which hulked over him and saw faces half-illuminated by low light entering the room through the barred high wall window.

  “Let’s tie and gag him,” one suggested.

  “Maybe he’d like to throw in with us,” said another. It was the same husky voice that had spoken to Sidney in the darkness when he first arrived, warning him about Counselor Bremer. This was a potential friend.

  “Don’t chance it,” the man with the high-pitched voice said.

  “But he’s no threat to us,” the potential friend said. “This is so big no one can stop it.” But Sidney felt the grip of the man who held him tighten around his neck.

  “Stone’s right,” the man with the high-pitched voice said. “We have hundreds set to break! And thousands will follow!”

  Sidney breathed an audible sigh of relief as the grip loosened. The man released him, pushing him to the floor. Sidney rose to lean on the elbow of his right arm and looked at the dark outline of the man they called Stone.

  “You okay, fella?” Stone asked.

  But before Sidney could answer, the man who had held him said. “He’s a crip. Look at his arm.”

  “I can’t go with you,” Sidney said, thinking of his rendezvous with Javik. He counted five other men in the room, four kneeling around him and another standing near the door.

  “Suit yourself,” the man with the high-pitched voice said. Sidney noticed that the man’s face seemed pale whenever he got a glimpse of a section of it, even in the low light. These are doomies, Sidney thought.

  Before Sidney could gather the courage to phrase a question, a great clamor arose in the building. There was a loud thump in the room above, and from all around came the sounds of breaking glass and people shouting. The hall door slid open, casting bright light into the room. The noises grew closer now, and half-dressed men ran or moto-shoed by the door.

  “It’s started!!’ Stone shouted, jumping to his feet. “The thought barriers are open!”

  It was every man for himself. All except Sidney crowded to the door without another word, and then were gone.

  Through the open door, Sidney watched with amazement as hordes of clients surged and pushed in their frantic flights to freedom. Sidney heard gunfire in the distance, and the incessant wail of sirens. He rose to his feet

  A group of armed Security Brigade guards rolled by, followed by a cluster of Bu-Med attendants. “Halt!” the guards yelled. Gunfire rang through the hallway.

  Then Sidney smelted smoke, and heard screams of panic from outside the door. “Fire!” someone called out. “Fire!” Sidney snapped on his moto-shoes, peeked into the hallway.

  Mayor Nancy Ogg had not gone to bed after seeing Javik and Madame Bernet to their apartments for the night. Instead she returned to her own apartment and studied a checklist at the kitchen table. Gradually she fell asleep there, dropping her head to the tabletop.

  When the night shield began to open at dawn, reflected sunlight filtered through the kitchen module’s greenhouse roof. The Mayor stirred, knocking papers to the floor. She sat up, stretched and yawned.

  Busy day ahead, she thought.

  As the Mayor leaned over to retrieve her papers, she heard sirens whining in the distance.

  * * *

  As Sidney poked his head out of the doorway, he saw flames at both ends of the hall. Agonized screams filled the smoke-contaminated air. Several paces to his left on the floor, Sidney saw the bleeding bodies of two green-smocked clients. It was apparent that they had been shot.

  Sidney coughed as he ventured a few meters into the hall. Common sense told him to go back in the room and close the door. At least that would delay the inevitable, and left open the possibility of rescue from a window.

  “Into the flames, fleshcarrier!” a tenor voice inside his head commanded. “Down the hallway to your right!”

  “To certain death?” Sidney asked, aloud.

  “To POSSIBLE death,” the voice said, laughing.

  “Possible?”

  “If you’re lucky, you’ll get out.” Again, laughter.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Sidney said. He watched as many clients, attendants and guards gave up and sat in the middle of the floor to await death.

  “I will tell you this, curious fleshcarrier. It’s a matter of simple odds . . . as In a card game or at a roulette wheel.”

  “How thick are the flames?”

  “I do not MEASURE flames,” the voice said haughtily. “How does one MEASURE flames?”

  Sidney shook his head negatively, but started to roll in the direction designated by the voice. Rolling slowly at first, he passed seated and standing people who cried out or prayed. Others were already dead, and lay in confused positions on the floor. Sidney picked up speed.

  When he was only two meters from the dancing violet and orange flames, the heat had become almost unbearable. Suddenly the floor above the flames cracked and broke away. A great burst of cool white foam hit Sidney and the flames. He slipped and fell to the floor, his body and face covered in foam.

  “This way!” a voice called from above.

  Sidney wiped foam from his face and clothing. His eyes stung. He looked up to the floor above and saw a red-and-yellow-uniformed fireman drop a flexible metal ladder to him.

  “Hurry!” the fireman urged.

  Sidney struggled partway up the ladder, having difficulty on the flexible metal links due to his bad arm and slippery foam on his body. About halfway up, he stopped, breathing hard. “My arm!” Sidney gasped. “I can’t climb any farther!”

  Through blurry, watery eyes, Sidney saw three firemen lift the ladder. They helped him off at the top, then dropped the ladder back for more people.

  “You’re a lucky one,” a fireman said. “Over there,” he instructed, pointing toward a group of people who were gathered near a window, their shapes forming silhouettes against dawn light. “Get in the escape chute!” />
  Luck? Sidney thought as he followed the fireman’s instructions. Was it only a matter of odds?

  When Sidney’s turn came, he slid down a spiraling escape chute to ground level.

  Javik awoke to the piercing whine of sirens. From bed, he could see through the skylights of the bedroom module to the edge of the habitat’s outer rim far above. Beyond that, the sun reflected off the solar collector and peeked around the night shield, bathing the room in yellow light.

  He went to the balcony and looked across a terraced Japanese hillside garden to a large building in the distance. Flames licked from the windows of middle floors. Black smoke billowed in the air. Emergency vehicles screamed, rolling at high speed toward the conflagration.

  “Remain in your homes!” a loudspeaker truck boomed. “Keep all doors and windows shut! Emergency oxygen systems will not function if doors and windows are open!”

  Javik went into the living room module and scanned its contents. The room had bright green plastic tables and side-chairs, with a green paisley short couch that matched the curtains. He rolled to a wall-mounted telephone in a pool of sunlight near the couch, mentoed a tele-cube. It rose from its cradle on the phone, hovered in the air in front of his face.

  “Number please,” a pleasant female syntho-voice said.

  “Get me Hub Control,” Javik commanded. “Hurry!”

  “Sorry, sir. Those circuits are busy. Please try back in—”

  “Damn!” Javik cursed. ‘Then get me Elba House.”

  “Sorry, sir. Those circuits are busy too.”

  Javik mento-slammed the circuit shut. The tele-cube floated back to its cradle. Sidney will have to fend for himself, he thought. Right now I’ve got to take care of my ship.

  Javik dressed quickly and met Madame Bernet in the hall. Fastening the top button of a white-and-gold uniform dress, Madame Bernet asked, “You saw the fire?”

  “Yeah, and I can’t reach Hub Control! We’d better get to the ship! This whole orbiter may go up!” Javik wiped a hand through an uncombed shock of amber hair. The sleep-tormented hair did not smooth out.

  Reaching the street in seconds, Javik and the meckie rolled hurriedly along a motopath in the direction of the habitat’s spoke tubes, hoping to catch a monorail for the Hub. He smelled smoke.

  As they passed a small cluster of fruit trees, Javik stopped abruptly. “There!” he said excitedly, pointing toward the arch-glass monorail terminal building several hundred meters away. A mass of green-smocked clients, many of whom obviously had severe handicaps, streamed into the building. Some operated moto-crutches or rode in electric wheelchairs. Others ran or moto-shoed.

  “A breakout!” Javik moaned. “How in the hell are we . . .”

  Madame Bernet drew a long, gleaming knife from a concealed pocket in its dress, rasped: “We’ll force our way through!”

  “You’re armed?” Javik short-stepped back several paces and pulled his own pistol.

  “For your protection,” the meckie replied, gluing its gaze on Javik’s weapon.

  “Sheathe that!” Javik barked, glancing at two clients who were picking pears on the opposite side of the grove. “I have a better idea!”

  The meckie hesitated, then followed the command with obvious reluctance.

  Javik bolstered his pistol and grabbed the meckie by one arm. “Come with me,” he said.

  Madame Bernet did not reply, seemed to think for a moment before accompanying Javik. As they approached the clients, Javik saw that both were men, and he recognized the puffy facial features and vacuous expressions of mongolism. One of the clients, who was quite tall and fat, smiled as he extended a pear to Madame Bernet.

  Perplexed, Madame Bernet glanced at Javik.

  “Take it,” Javik said. “And smile.”

  Madame Bernet obeyed, then looked confused as she stood there with the piece of fruit in her mechanical grasp.

  Javik addressed the shorter client: “We need your smocks,” he said. “Okay?”

  Unresponsive, the client stared back with wide open, childlike eyes. He extended a pear, which Javik accepted.

  “They don’t understand,” Madame Bernet said, reaching into a deep pocket with her free hand. “My way now, Captain?”

  “Wait,” Javik said. “I’m going to try one more thing first.” He removed a shiny coin from his tunic pocket and offered it to the shorter client. The mongoloid smiled, reached for the object. Javik pulled it back gently, touched the man’s smock and said, “Trade.” Then Javik offered him the coin again and pulled at the smock. “Trade,” he repeated.

  On the fourth attempt, the client understood. He removed his smock and handed it to Javik in exchange for the coin. Madame Bernet followed the same procedure to obtain the other smock. Entirely naked now, the mongoloids stood smiling as they examined their shiny new treasures.

  “I don’t see any guards yet,” Javik said, “but you can bet they’re around somewhere.” They threw on the green smocks over their own uniforms.

  “Hide in the crowd,” Javik said. “We’ll get the smocks off when the Shamrock Five’s in sight.”

  But when they reached the monorail terminal, the meckie stopped abruptly. “Go no farther,” it said tersely.

  “What?” Javik said, turning to confront Madame Bernet.

  “I sense . . . danger,” Madame Bernet said.

  “You have a short-circuit,” Javik snapped. “This is the only way!”

  But the meckie stood rigidly, with both hands thrust into the pockets of its smock.

  “Do as you please,” Javik said. “I’ll go on without you!”

  The meckie stared straight ahead at an indeterminate point in the distance. Its expression was resolute.

  “Damned thing can’t respond,” Javik cursed as he rolled away. “Just like the Bu-Industry meckies. The minute an unusual situation arises . . .”

  Javik reached the terminal building and pushed his way through a noisy crowd of clients. It smelled of human waste and perspiration inside, and Javik spent a long hour pressed against other bodies before he was able to board a railcar for a standing-room-only ride.

  Minutes later, the car came to a stop in the Hub. To Javik’s surprise, he saw hundreds of black-uniformed security men standing outside next to long, clear glassplex units. Javik did not see a single client in the bunch. As the car squeaked to a stop, he realized the reason for this. The security men manually connected glassplex hall-tubes to each door of the monorail car, thus forcing all clients to follow a controlled exit path.

  “I’m trapped!” Javik yelled, hardly able to hear his own words in the din of humanity.

  When the car doors opened, most of the clients realized they had been tricked. “Let us out!” they yelled, beating furiously on the glassplex windows of the monorail car.

  Javik smelled tear gas in the car. He was forced into the hall-tube in a rush to escape the gas, and Javik saw some clients pushed back against the walls. He lost his own footing momentarily then, but eventually was able to regain control and began to move forward with the crowd.

  I’ve got to get back to the skip! Javik thought, desperately.

  He saw a large holding room ahead, filled with a mob of green-smocked, angry escapees. The surging crowd slowed and stopped before Javik reached the room. He stared at a clear glassplex side wall just an arm’s length away, felt hot, perspiring bodies against his own.

  Maybe I can shoot holes in the glassplex, he thought. I could break off a piece and crawl through. . . .

  Someone stuck an elbow in his ribs. It hurt. No, he thought. There are armed guards everywhere out there! They’ll kill me if they see my weapon!

  Javik ran through the options with military precision. Soon it became apparent to him that he could do but one thing. I’ll have to find someone to listen to me, he thought.

  The telephone rang during Hudson’s Tuesday morning shower. Earlier than usual this day, he was anxious to watch the first election returns on home video. It never fails, he thoug
ht irritably, mentoing the water off. The minute I step into the shower. . . .

  Hudson stepped out onto a simulated marble tile floor and wrapped a towel around his waist as he counted the third ring of the phone. He heard a thump overhead. That damned crazy woman upstairs, he thought. Doing unsanctioned exercises in her bathroom again. I’ll make another complaint to the Anti-Cheapness League. They’ll take her away this time!

  Hudson sat on the commode cover and mento-answered the call. A tele-cube flitted forth, pausing in front of his mouth.

  A scramble code beeper went off as Mayor Nancy Ogg identified herself at the other end of the line. “Lieutenant Javik is missing!” she said, her voice faltering. “We’re searching everywhere!”

  “What do you mean? He arrived, didn’t he?” Hudson scowled as he heard a loud thump upstairs.

  “Yes. Last night. I saw him . . . and the meckie . . . to apartments for the night. Personally. But there’s been a major breakout from Elba House since, and a terrible fire there!”

  “Judas Priest!”

  “Elba House is still burning! We’ve got mass confusion here, Dick!”

  Hudson put his hand over the tele-cube as he heard another thump upstairs, yelled: “Keep quiet up there!”

  “Are you there, Dick?” Mayor Nancy Ogg asked. “Are you there?’

  “Yeah,” Hudson snapped, releasing his hand from the tele-cube. “Listen, Nancy, can you control the fire?”

  “We think so. I’m getting reports on it every half hour.”

  “Where is Madame Bernet?”

  Detecting anger in Hudson’s tone, she replied nervously: “The killer meckie? Why, my Security Brigade took it in. They’re checking its memory circuits . . . to see if it might have disposed of Javik prematurely.”

  The telephone beeped.

  “How the hell did this happen?” Hudson asked, unable to suppress his rage any longer.

  “Well, it wasn’t my fault!”

  “Maybe if you’d been a little more dedicated to your job, instead of always trying to think of ways to get off Saint Elba . . .”