by Allen Steele
“Don’t worry about him.” Chris bent down to grab him by his jacket collar and throw him against a bench leg. “Worry about yourself, or so help me, I’ll…”
“Chief. Stop.” I saw what Olson saw: the murderous expression on the old man’s face, the utter lack of sympathy. One man was dead already; I was afraid there would soon be another. “He…”
“Take care of the kid,” Chris snarled, his eyes never leaving Olson’s as he squatted in front of him. “Let me handle this one.” The younger man was shaking; there was no ignoring the gun barrel that hovered only inches from his face. “Talk! Tell me what you did with David Laird!”
Olson hastily shook his head. “I don’t…I don’t…who’s…?”
“You called him Pete, and you damn well know where he went!” Chris yanked him forward by his collar, slammed him against the bench again. “He didn’t tell you that stuff for no reason! He was looking for help! Now tell me what you did, or…!”
“I sent him away!” Olson’s voice became a terrified whine. Where there had once been a bully was now only a coward quivering. “I…he said he had money…money he’d stashed away, and all he needed was a way out of town. Some place where no one would find him. So I got him on a boat…”
As he spoke, I heard Jake groan. Looking around, I saw him begin to stir. The kid was coming to; no doubt he was in considerable pain. Turning away from Chris and his captive, I knelt beside him again. “Easy, boy,” I murmured, putting down my gun to help him roll over. “Relax. You’re going to be all right…”
“A boat to where?” Another thud from behind me; Chris had just slammed Olson against the bench again. “Where did you send him?”
“Nava…Navajo.” Olson was trying hard to remember something he’d done three years earlier. “Yeah, that’s it. Manuelito, I think. Some town in Navajo where we…my dad’s company, I mean…ship breeding stock. I took his money, got him a ride out there…”
Suddenly, what everyone who’d met Peter Desilitz had told us about him was beginning to make sense. All the unpaid debts, the rent he’d skipped: he wasn’t pissing it away on ale but was squirreling away money to buy passage aboard a freighter that would take him to the other side of the world. A frontier settlement on Navajo, as far from the central provinces as you could possibly get.
“What…?” Jake opened his eyes, peered at me with bleary confusion. “Who’s…how did you…?”
“It’s all right.” I reached around to the back his head. He had a lump the size of a grasshoarder egg, but I didn’t find any blood. He’d have a bad headache, but that was all. “We got help, that’s all. You’re going to be…”
“Manuelito?” Chris demanded. “Are you…?”
He abruptly stopped, and in the next instant I heard a sudden, agonized gasp. Looking around, I saw him rear back on his haunches, his left hand reaching up to grab at something that Olson had shoved against his chest. There was an evil leer on the stockman’s face as he thrust his arm forward, but it wasn’t until Chris fell back that I saw what the object was: the shearing scissors, its long blades protruding from Chris’s heart.
Twisting away from Jake, I snatched at where I’d carelessly left my gun on the floor beside me. Olson saw me; kicking Chris aside, he made a grab for the old man’s fléchette pistol. This time, though, he didn’t have the advantage of surprise. I got off a shot before he was able to lay a hand on Chris’s weapon. The pulse knocked the gun away from him; another shot threw him headfirst against the wall and made him lie still.
I scrambled on my hands and knees over to Chris. He lay on his back, left hand loosely wrapped around the scissors. I knew better than to pull them out, but even if I had, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Blood, dark red in the wan light of the lantern, pumped from around the edges of its blades and seeped from the corners of his mouth, and when I crouched beside him, I saw the color fading from his face.
“Get…him…” he whispered. Then he closed his eyes.
That was the last thing he said.
I sent Jake to find a proctor, making sure that he’d tell him to bring a doctor as well. Chris was beyond medical assistance, but I knew that someone would have to officially pronounce both him and Gary dead. Jake appeared reluctant—all he wanted to do was put as much distance between him and the stockyard as he could and never come back again—yet one look at my face, and he knew that he’d better do as he was told.
Once he was gone, I found an old blanket lying across one of the stalls and used it to cover Chris. Gary didn’t get the same courtesy. I removed the scissors from my friend’s chest, careful to wear my gloves as I did so, but otherwise left the scene undisturbed. The proctors would want to know everything that happened, and although I’d have Jake to back up my version of the events, I didn’t want there to be any lingering doubts whether I’d killed either of the two men.
Nonetheless, I found myself standing above Kyle Olson for a few minutes. There were two fléchette pistols within easy reach; either of them could put an end to his existence before he even woke up, and I doubted that anyone besides his family would mourn his death. But I didn’t have it in me to commit murder, so I found a roll of twine and used it to bind his hands and feet. He remained unconscious throughout, unaware of my deliberations.
I sat on the floor beside Chris for a while. He’d come with me to this place to find the man who’d killed his best friend, only to meet his own fate. A lousy way to die, stabbed to death by a punk in a foul-smelling sheep shed. He’d been a good man, one of the last of the original colonists. He deserved better than this.
It was hard to look at him, so I pushed myself to my feet and, for lack of anything else to do, walked over to the pens to see how the sheep were doing. Remarkably, they’d remained quiet during the entire thing. Most of them were asleep, and the few who’d witnessed the killing of two men had done so in silence, passive observers who cared little about what humans did to one another in their little world. I envied them.
With no one except the animals to keep me company, I walked over to the door and leaned against the frame. The stars were out, with Bear high in the night sky. As I waited for someone to show up, though, I found myself looking to the east. Toward Navajo, where David Laird had gone.
I remembered Chief Levin’s last words; I knew what he’d meant. And I also knew that I had one more death to avenge.
Book 4
We won’t find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system…It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species. Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers we have not yet thought of.
—STEPHEN HAWKING,
speech at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, June 2006
Part 5
THE LOST CITY
Like a silver wedding band lost from the finger of some celestial giant, Starbridge Earth hovered in its Lagrange-point orbit near the Moon. Infrequently visited by the maintenance crews who came out every so often to repair micrometeorite damage and check long-dormant electronic systems, the hyperspace portal hadn’t been opened in nineteen years. All but forgotten, it was a silent reminder of a brief time when people from Earth had traveled to the stars, only to have the door slammed in their faces.
A hundred miles away, the gatehouse was just as silent. A spindle-like collection of modules and solar vanes, its only sign of life were the blue and red navigational beacons that flashed at each end; its windows were dark, and the air inside was stale and cold. Yet the station was not entirely dead. Electricity trickled through its circuits, maintaining the low-power current necessary to keep the comps from decaying. Many years had passed since the last time the station had been occupied, though, and no one knew whether it would ever be used again.
There had been suggestions over the years that both the starbridge and its gatehouse should be
dismantled, its components auctioned off as scrap metal. After all, the starbridge led in only one direction, and that way was now closed, for reasons unbeknownst to those who’d been left behind. Yet individuals with long memories and foresight had prevailed; there was always a chance, however remote, that Starbridge Coyote might become active and a ship might yet emerge from hyperspace. When that day came, the mystery would be solved; for that reason alone, they argued, the starbridge should remain operational, its gatehouse ready to accept and respond to a signal transmitted by an incoming vessel.
So Starbridge Earth stayed where it was, the nearby gatehouse its only companion. In the darkness of the eternal night, their comps murmured to each other like an old married couple muttering in their sleep. Day after day, week after week, year after year, they dozed among the stars, waiting to be awakened.
And then, all of a sudden…
On a flatscreen within the gatehouse control room, a red light flashed. It blinked several times, the only source of illumination in the dark compartment, before it was replicated by other lights on other screens. A few seconds later, lines of type began to scroll down the screens, unread by human eyes yet nonetheless significant to the artificial intelligence that had stood vigil for nearly two decades. Within moments, various comps were roused from their diagnostic subroutines, each performing automatic procedures programmed in their memories; one comp was dead, its systems decayed beyond self-repair through years of disuse, but relays were hastily rerouted, and its chores were quickly assumed by its companions. In the meantime, the master AI performed the series of rapid and inhumanly complex calculations that only a quantum computer was capable of making without error.
Ten seconds after the first light glimmered on the comp screen, a command was sent to the starbridge. Deep inside the ring, comps responded to instructions they hadn’t received in decades. Zero-point energy generators stirred, sending power through the hundreds of miles of wires packed like ganglia inside the giant torus. Within moments, starbridge was fully awake, its interior quietly humming with anticipation.
Almost as an afterthought, the gatehouse AI sent a signal to the Moon. A brief and simple message, to be received by a comp within the space-traffic control station at Copernicus Centre. Yet the message went unheeded; the room was unoccupied at that particular moment, its most recent shift having gone to bed several hours earlier, and so the transmission from Starbridge Earth wasn’t noticed for quite some time, and even then only after a technician chanced to glance at the automatic logbook and spot an anomaly. By then, many other things had happened.
Light swirled within the center of the starbridge, quickly becoming a kaleidoscopic funnel opening into hyperspace. A brilliant flash from the depths of the wormhole, then a small vessel plunged forth from the spacetime rift.
Jorge opened his eyes, took a deep breath. His second jaunt through a starbridge hadn’t been as bad as his first, but he still wasn’t accustomed to its violence. This time, at least, McAlister hadn’t needed to warn him not to look when the Mercator went through the wormhole; Jorge still felt a touch of vertigo, but he knew that it would pass.
“Glad to see we got through,” he murmured.
“You didn’t think we would?” From the left side of the cockpit, McAlister gave him an amused glance. “Believe me, if this starbridge weren’t operational, we’d still be in orbit around Hjarr. There’s no way we could’ve made the jump.” He reached up to snap a couple of toggles on the overhead console. “I’m just surprised that it’s still functional. I would’ve bet that someone would have shut it down by now.”
“You didn’t say that before we left.”
“Didn’t want to jinx the mission.” The pilot gave his console a quick inspection, then turned his head toward the passenger compartment. “Everyone all right back there?”
“We’re fine,” Greg replied, raising his voice to be heard. “Just don’t do that again anytime soon, okay?”
McAlister laughed out loud, but Jorge was no longer paying attention. Through the cockpit windows, he caught sight of something that, until little more than a week ago, he never thought he’d see with his own eyes. Just off the port side was a broad, silver-grey crescent, its sunlit side marred by craters, rills, and vast basalt plains. The Moon…and beyond that, in the far distance, a blue-green orb, flecked with bands and swirls of white, that vaguely resembled Coyote save for its enormous oceans.
Earth.
He’d seen pictures of it throughout his life, but even though it was a world his father and grandparents had known well and told him about, somehow he’d always thought of it as a mythical place, no more a part of his daily experience than a bedtime story he’d heard in childhood. And yet there it was, as tangible as the seat in which he was sitting, more beautiful than he’d ever expected.
“Nice, huh?” McAlister murmured, and Jorge looked around to see that the pilot was following his gaze through the windows. “It’s been a while for me…but this is your first time, so I can only imagine what it’s like for you.”
“Uh-huh.” Jorge couldn’t think of anything else to say. Words failed him.
“Yeah, well…we’ve got a long way to go, so let’s get to work.” McAlister rested his left hand upon the keyboard between their seats and, studying the comp screens before him, began entering navigation coordinates. “Get on the com, see if you can pick up any chatter. Try the Ku band…that’s the one most commonly used by local space traffic. Even if Vargas is right, and there’s no one on the gatehouse, someone must have noticed our arrival.”
Jorge nodded as he turned toward the communications panel. Switching the frequency finder to the appropriate channel, he slowly turned the knob first one way, then the other. Distant voices, rendered almost unintelligible by static, came through his headset, yet he heard nothing that sounded like a message being sent to an unknown spacecraft that had just emerged from the starbridge.
“Not getting anything,” he said. “At least, not anything that’s meant for us.”
“I’m not surprised,” Vargas said from behind them, and Jorge looked around to see that he’d left his seat to come forward. The former Union Astronautica pilot floated in midair behind him and McAlister, holding on to a ceiling rung as he gazed over their shoulders. “Even if the AI transmitted a signal to Copernicus, there’s only half a chance that anyone’s even listening.”
Jorge didn’t miss the irate expression on McAlister’s face. He clearly didn’t like to have passengers visit the cockpit uninvited, and Vargas even less so. Vargas was the mission’s guide, though, so there was little McAlister could say about his presence. “What, you think their traffic controllers are asleep or something?”
“I wouldn’t doubt it. There’s just not as many spacecraft out here as there used to be, and the ones that are follow pretty rigid schedules.” With his free hand, Vargas pointed to the local-time chronometer just below the center window: it read 0232 GMT. “That’s the wee hours of the morning at Copernicus. Five bucks says the graveyard shift is sacked out.”
Jorge had no idea what bucks were, but it didn’t sound like a bet he was willing to take. He looked at McAlister. “If he’s right, then no one knows we’re here. I’d like to keep it that way.”
“You’re not going to contact anyone?” Vargas asked.
“I’d rather be discreet, at least until we have a better idea of where things stand. Someone may eventually figure out we’re here, but…”
“Oh, I’m sure someone will figure it out, sooner or later. But until they do…” Vargas shrugged. “Yeah, you’d do well to maintain radio silence. With any luck, we’ll be a long way from here before anyone gets around to trying to locate and track us.”
“My thoughts exactly,” McAlister said. While the other men were talking, he had finished entering the coordinates into the nav system. He pressed the key marked EXEC, and luminescent figures appeared on the center screen. “All right now, hold tight…”
“Hey!” Vargas snapped.
“How about a little warning?”
McAlister grinned, the only sign that he wasn’t ignoring him. Grasping the yoke with his left hand, the pilot gently pushed the throttle bar forward. A hollow thrum from the rear of the spacecraft as its main engine ignited, then Jorge felt himself being pushed back into his seat. Vargas yelped as he grabbed another ceiling rung for support; reaction-control thrusters fired to adjust the shuttle’s trajectory, and an instant later the view through the cockpit windows changed as Earth and the Moon gradually shifted positions.
Their next stop was Earth.
Once the Mercator achieved cruise velocity, it would take a little less than seven hours for the shuttle to reach its destination. McAlister fired the nuclear main engine until the shuttle reached 1-g. This used up most of the shuttle’s fuel, but since he was counting on replenishing the hydrogen tanks from Earth’s atmosphere once they arrived, there was no point in holding anything in reserve beyond what he’d need to make a safe landing. Besides, if someone on the Moon was alerted to the Mercator’s presence, the additional speed would make it harder for the shuttle to be located and tracked.
Yet there was no need to worry. While everyone except McAlister and him slept, Jorge had continued to monitor the space communications network, roaming across the different radio bands as he sought to detect any conversations that might indicate that someone had become aware of an unusual event that had occurred at Starbridge Earth. All he had heard, though, was normal comlink chatter, and remarkably little even of that. It was as if traffic between Earth and the Moon had become a fraction of what it had once been. Indeed, he and McAlister spotted only one other craft: a distant, starlike object that went by in the other direction, probably a lunar freighter making a routine outbound flight.
“After the bridge went down, that was pretty much it for the offworld colonies,” Vargas explained. He lounged in his seat in the passenger compartment, his outstretched legs crossed together and floating in the center aisle. Now that the shuttle was no longer accelerating, its interior had returned to free-fall conditions. “It was…well, the last straw, I guess you could say. The Western Hemisphere Union had collapsed, the European Alliance was barely holding together, the Pacific Coalition was in ruins, and just about everything else was a mess. Without access to 47 Uma, there was nowhere for refugees to go. It wasn’t long before the lunar and Martian colonies became overcrowded, and after a while the various governments back home got tired of supporting them when they were having so much trouble feeding their own people.”