by John F. Carr
One day, on the eighth week of his journey, Sergei came over a rise, and found a lovely hillside meadow, surrounded by trees, but with a beautiful view of the rolling hills that stood between him and Castell City. At the bottom of the hill was a stream. He marked the spot carefully on his map. This was a perfect spot for a small farm, in fact, a cluster of small farms. It reminded him of the setting of the family dacha back in Russia, the site of happy memories of his youth.
Something to discuss with Moira when he saw her. He smiled to himself. Somewhere in the past few days, the feeling of if he would see her again had become when he saw her again. He marked the occasion by playing the whistle that he had found in the bottom of his rucksack, eating a leisurely meal as he admired the view.
Just a few days later, Sergei’s journey almost ended. Later he wondered if he had begun to slack off as he got closer to his destination, missing something he might otherwise have noticed. It was morning after a truenight, with the temperature just starting to rise. He had been walking through some rocky hills, and following the floor of a small canyon. It was a shadow that warned him, something behind him casting a shadow to his right, a quick motion in the corner of his eye.
He spun and brought his rifle up to his shoulder instinctively. The move probably saved his life. It was a cliff lion, a nasty animal not too different from the lions of earth, a large one, probably massing over 100 kilos. It hit the barrel of the rifle, which drove Sergei onto his back as the butt of the rifle slammed into his shoulder. He screamed in pain and anger. The lion screamed as well, as the rifle barrel gouged an ugly wound in its ribs. It tried to claw at Sergei, and snapped its jaws, but the length of the rifle threw off its attack.
Sergei pulled the trigger, and howled as the rifle kicked against his broken collarbone. The lion went over his head with a shriek of anger, and turned again. Sergei scrambled around, grabbed his pistol out of his pocket with his left hand, and as the lion hit him again, he emptied the cylinder into the beast. He ended up underneath the lion, its last breath hot against his face.
He lost track of time—didn’t know how long he laid there—too weary to push the animal off and check his wounds. It was pain that finally got him to move, pain from his right shoulder, pain from his left ear where the lion’s claws had raked the side of his head, pain from his back where the rocky floor of the canyon had impacted against his spine.
The first thing he did was clumsily reload his pistol. He didn’t bother chambering another round in his rifle. It wouldn’t be of much use one-handed. He thought about taking the creature’s hide, but that would be a long struggle with only one arm functioning. He didn’t know if these things traveled in packs, or in pairs, or alone, but he figured he should get moving.
He cut a strip off the side of his cloak and fashioned a crude sling for his right arm. He tried to put a bandage around his head to protect his ear, but couldn’t raise his right arm enough to be successful. He slung his rifle over his back, and turned to his route. Nothing to do but keep moving.
It took a few T-weeks for Sergei to feel anything like normal again. His collarbone seemed to heal pretty well, although he grew weary of wearing his leather shirt continuously. The shirt had no buttons, and he couldn’t get it off over his head. Little tasks became difficult with only one good arm, and he had to carry his pack slung only over his good shoulder, which caused it to ache as well. He practiced firing his rifle left-handed, dry-firing to save ammunition, with the barrel resting on a forked branch he had cut for the purpose.
Sergei found a small farm where the husband and wife took pity on him, took him into their log cabin, bathed and dressed his wounds, gave him a good meal, and some dried meat and bread for the road. The woman had clucked with sympathy at the wounds the lion’s claws had left on his ear and the side of his neck. She said it was too late to stitch them, and that there would be some nasty scars. Sergei tried to pay them for their troubles, but they refused. Wouldn’t want to take profit in the misfortunes of a stranger.
This was the spirit that had caused Sergei to grow to love this world, and so many of the people in it.
Sergei continued to record his journey, taking pictures and recording comments. He described what plants and animals were edible, which posed some sort of a threat, what the best routes were. He also began to record information about the people he encountered, more numerous as he moved west. There was much information to capture, about their settlements, their farming methods, their customs, and other information. He was amassing quite a travelogue.
*
*
*
Sergei arrived in Castell City at the end of twelve T-weeks of travel. That was on top of three T-weeks on the steamboat followed by another three T-weeks at the Dover Mineral camp, so he had been gone from the city for eighteen T-weeks, well over four months on the Terran calendar.
His shoulder still ached, and the scars on his neck still pained him, but he had largely recovered from his encounter with the cliff lion. He unrolled a long-ignored pouch of coins, and rented a room in a boarding house that catered to trappers. He went to a barber, and for the first time in almost two T-years, got a clean shave, and got his hair clipped short around the ears and the back of his neck. A bath in the back room cleaned dirt that had been with him for many T-months.
A general store provided a new khaki shirt, denim trousers and boots, and he felt like a new man, and hopefully looked like a new man as well. He had to be careful. With so few people at the Dover Mineral camp, they might have figured out who had been prowling around their offices, although they may not have realized that he had gotten the desk open and seen the shimmer stones. With luck, anything they might have figured out would end with the false name and cover identity he had used during the trip. But now that he was back in Castell City, since he had no intention of reporting in, he must also avoid being recognized by anyone in Fyodor’s intelligence network.
The city was tense and unhappy, and many people were moving about the streets openly armed. So Sergei did the same, with a new holster for his revolver, and his knife on his other hip. The tensions between Harmonies, miners and the CoDominium had obviously become worse.
To avoid being seen in public, he decided to wait until the end of a shift, and approach Moira as she walked home from work. He sat in his boarding house room, and looked at the shimmer stone. He thought of his mission. He remembered the words of the caseworker, “If it is necessary, we will make the rivers of this planet run with blood before we let it serve the rivals of the Rodina.”
If he reported in, everything he had grown to love could be destroyed. He thought of what that might mean for Moira, for Deacon Miller, for his preacher friend, for the musicians and other regulars at Harp’s. He thought about how even Fyodor and the Russian community on Haven would be swept into the conflict. He closed his hand, and put away the shimmer stone. Russia no longer mattered to him. The concerns of Earth were not his concerns anymore. He would not make contact with Fyodor—there would be no word coming home from his mission.
Sergei felt a sudden sense of relief. He had put this decision out of his mind, but it had followed him ever since he had run from the Dover Mineral camp. And now that it was made, it was time to find Moira.
Sergei called to Moira from an alley as she walked by. She looked puzzled for a moment, staring at him without recognition. But then her face lit up, and she rushed to him with open arms.
“Sergei!” she cried, “I thought I’d never see you again!” She kissed him, so fiercely he felt like his lip would split open. “I like you with a clean chin and short hair! But you look so thin, mo chroi.”
She touched his left ear with concern. “And what are these scars? You poor dear, what have you been through?”
“You wanted to see me again?” he asked, with hope in his heart.
“Of course I did, you silly wee man.”
They found a small park and a secluded bench to sit on, she recounting gossip of the past T
-months, and he giving her an abbreviated version of his travels up and down the river.
Sergei took a deep breath. “Has anyone been asking about me?”
She looked at him quizzically, “No, why would they?”
“I was on an intelligence mission, gathering information. In my trip east, I saw things people didn’t want me to see. And there are people expecting to hear from me, people I must disappoint. I can’t stay here in Castell City, it wouldn’t be safe.”
She looked at him closely. “I had a feeling there was something more to you than met the eye. Who have you been gathering information for, and why?” She had tensed up, a worried expression on her face. Sergei remembered her tale of betrayal back in Ireland.
“No one, anymore,” he said, “And you were not, no one at Harp’s was, ever part of my mission. The Russian government wanted to know what the mining companies here on Haven were doing.”
She stared at him intently. “Can I trust you?”
“Yes, you can trust me,” he answered. “I would never do anything to hurt you. And I don’t ever want to keep anything from you again.” She began to relax and hold him more closely as he went on. “My mission is over. I decided it could bring harm to you, to the people here on Haven. So I won’t complete it. I want to put Earth behind me, build a new life, a life with you. But we can’t stay around here. It wouldn’t be safe. I need a new identity, a new name.”
“You don’t like to be called Sergei?” she asked.
“It was never my name,” he said, looking at her closely for her reaction.
She was thoughtful for a moment, but then smiled, and kissed him again. She stroked the hair on the back of his neck. He began to relax himself.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” she said. “No matter what other people call you, I will always call you mo chroi. You can tell me the whole story later, we’ll have plenty of time. Where will we go?”
Plenty of time. Sergei liked the sound of that. He thought of the old preacher, and one of his songs. He thought of the hillside meadow he had found above the creek. He smiled and replied, “We are bound for the Promised Land,” and sealed that promise with a kiss.
2054 A.D., Luna Base
Maxwell Cole waited patiently while Marshall Wainwright, Assistant to the Director of the CoDominium Bureau of Intelligence, studied his viewscreen. The 3-Vee wall mural displayed a forest scene out of the Pacific Northwest instead of the stark lunar landscape outside. As Cole watched a squirrel run up a large conifer, he mused that he and the squirrel had a lot in common; they were both trying to set something aside for the coming winter.
Cole was a short timer, only three more years and he could put in for retirement. After twenty-seven years in the intelligence service, ten of them with the Navy, he was used up, tired of sticking his fingers in numerous holes in the CD’s ever-leaking dykes. Let the younger operatives save the peace; his time was just about up.
Or was it? he wondered, as Assistant Secretary Wainwright discreetly coughed.
“Agent Cole, we have a situation developing on an outer world called Haven—a misnomer if there ever was one. It’s a newly colonized world by some sect that calls itself the Church of New Universal Harmony. You’ve read the files.”
Cole nodded. The anxiety that had begun to gnaw at his lower stomach, ever since he’d been sent that file, began to grow. Haven, an almost lifeless iceball of a moon, was all the way at the outer edge of the envelope of CD explored space—seven Alderson Jumps away from the nearest habitable world. Haven was certainly, this close to retirement, no place he ever wanted to visit.
The Harmonies, one of the Neo-Millenniumite Sects, had bought the settlement license, so officially Haven was not part of the CoDominium. In reality, however, all human occupied worlds belonged to the CoDominium; the only question was whether they were or were not valuable enough for an “official” CoDo presence. Cole had a nagging suspicion that this iceball was about to change ownership.
“The Bureau of Colonial Government,” Wainwright continued, “was not displeased to see the Harmonies settle Haven as long as it remained the worthless piece of real estate it first appeared and a final “resting place” of sorts for the Bureau of Corrections. However, the situation has changed now that shimmer stones have been discovered.”
Right, thought Cole, and now somebody doesn’t want to pay the Harmonies a licensing fee for shimmer stone mineral rights when they can obtain one for a much smaller fee from the CD Bureau of Colonial Government probably the same Companies who’ve been looting hafnium from Haven’s so-called “worthless” crust.
The Assistant to the Director stroked the length of his long, thin nose. “It appears that we have one of those situations developing that requires a senior agent with great skill and discretion. Since, obviously, our part in the events that are about to occur on Haven must never become public knowledge.”
Cole shook his head in agreement, wondering if somehow his superiors had agreed to blame the mess now developing on Comstock on him, the last agent assigned to that hell-hole. If he’d learned nothing else in his lengthy career it was that in intelligence often what appeared to be a nod up was in actuality a shove down.
“Serendipitously, for all involved, it appears that the Bureau of Relocation also has a rather strong interest in the Haven question. It appears to be the ideal location for subversive elements within the confines of the terrestrial CD to be permanently isolated without invoking the offices of the Bureau of Correction or the Fleet.”
Good conundrum: When is a prison planet not a jail? Answer: When it’s called Haven and is over a year’s travel from Earth with little or no possibility of return.
“Your job, Agent Cole, will be to find legal justification for CoDominium intervention.”
It sounds so easy rolling off the Assistant to the Director’s tongue, Cole thought. What it really meant was that he had to organize or foment a revolution; or what could pass for such on a misbegotten world like Haven. Thus providing, for the Grand Senate, an excuse to appoint a Consul General and send a battalion of Line Marines to restore the benefits of CoDominium order and civilization.
“You will be provided with a list of contacts and a review of certain ‘unstable’ elements there by someone who has just returned. We’ve had an ad hoc team in Castell City—provided by BuCorrect—for some time, but they’ve been unable to close. In fact, initially, they did such a poor job that the stink they raised reached Luna Base and the Marines were sent in.
“That won’t happen again, due to the rider on the last Fleet Appropriations’ Bill in ‘52. In fact, the Marines were recalled last year.”
Cole remembered that rider; he’d thought it odd at the time when he learned that both Grand Senators Adrian Bronson and Gordon DeSilva, traditionally bitter enemies, were behind a rider to keep official CDAS forces off non-CoDominium colonies. Now, it made sense: they wanted the Marines off Haven so they could foment a big enough crisis that would bring in the Fleet. That would force the CoDominium to take charge of Haven and they could run the place through their proxies, in this case probably a CoDo viceroy or consul-general.
“I’m afraid that budgetary demands,” Wainwright continued, “make it impossible to give you all the resources you might need; however, you will be given a rather ‘free hand’ in carrying out this operation. Kennicott Metals has graciously offered their services in the way of funds and operatives upon your arrival on Haven. I suggest you take them up on their offer.”
Cole nodded.
The Assistant to the Director of CD Intelligence Services turned his attentions back to his viewscreen. Looking up, he said, “My Secretary will provide you with a travel chit and the necessary documents and discretionary funds.”
Knowing full well that no objection by him would be tolerated, Cole cursed under his breath and left the office.
— 11 —
JANESFORT WAR
Frank Gasperik and Leslie Fish
2055 A.D., Haven
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The zodiac raft with the name Black Bitch painted on her side growled away from the off-planet shuttle floating in the lake laden with crates marked Mining Equipment. If one inspected the invoices attached, as the Bitch’s captain had bothered to do, one would find they were destined for one Max Cole, delivery at Castell City, or the port thereof, to be placed in bond until called for. This could have presented a problem, Castell City Port being nothing but a rough, pontoon dock, except that Max Cole stood wrapped in off-planet cold weather gear, in the full light of Cat’s Eye, waiting for his cargo.
He wasn’t alone.
The man accompanying him was as recognizable to the locals as Cole was a stranger. His name was Jomo and he was a thug. He inspired fear and the kind of respect born of it. He was tall and broad and scarred and of mixed parentage, the result of the usual problems one found in the Transvaal. He had received a message three T-days earlier from the Ayesha Refueling Station about the crates delivery and their contents. He knew that someone off-world had it in for the Harmonies, but he didn’t care who or why as long as they provided him with credits and guns—and stayed out of his way when the blood ran.
Jomo watched the boat as it moved towards shore and, like Cole, was dressed warmly. They didn’t speak but stood patiently as the cargo was unloaded.
Cole identified himself and signed the receipt, and the Black Bitch, reeking of the alcohol she used for fuel, turned back to the shuttle for another load. A motion from Jomo, and his crew—not the usual dockworkers—began hauling the crates onto handcarts and trundling them towards the rough jumble of buildings known as Docktown. Somehow it already had the indefinable aura of “slum” that most port communities seemed to acquire.
Jomo and Cole slowly followed the handcarts toward a large, for Haven, building dug into a low bank with a freshly painted sign proclaiming it to be the Simba Bar. They trailed the crates inside after the unloading. Another motion from Jomo, and the pair were left alone in the main room of the establishment.