by David Drake
She turned fiercely toward Ned. “I only want what’s mine!” she said. “Do you have to be a man to get what’s due you?”
“You shouldn’t have to be,” he said. He sniffed or laughed. “A lot of things shouldn’t be the way they are, though.”
“Don’t I know it,” Lissea muttered. She drank the tumbler down to the last two fingers of its contents, then offered it again to Ned. He finished it.
“Arlette says,” Lissea said in the direction of the trees, “that her daughter Sarah is in a pretty bad way. She could use some company just now. I said I’d see what I could do when you got back to the ship.”
Ned looked at her. “I . . .” he said. “I didn’t want to make a bad situation worse.”
“That’s always a possibility,” Lissea said. She stood up. “You’re the man on the ground. I won’t second-guess your decision.”
Ned stood up also. He felt colder than the night. The radio inside the Swift was live again.
“Captain?” Raff called.
“In a moment, Raff,” Lissea said. She looked at Ned. He stood below her on the ramp, so their faces were level. Very much as . . .
“Well?” she demanded.
“I left my commo helmet back in Liberty,” he said. “I’ll go get it now. I’ll probably return with the other personnel in the morning.”
Lissea nodded crisply. “As you wish,” she said.
He looked away but didn’t move. “It’s Paixhans’ Node for our next landfall, Tadziki was saying?”
“That’s right. It’s a long run, but nothing that should present real problems. We should be able to update our data on the Sole Solution there.”
“Right,” Ned said. He reached into his pocket and brought out the pistol. “Will you stick this back in the arms locker for me?” he said. “I don’t know why I brought it in the first place.”
Lissea took the weapon and nodded again.
Ned glanced in the rearview mirror as he drove away. Lissea still stood in the middle of the hatchway, silhouetted stiffly against the soft light.
PAIXHANS’ NODE
Pilotry data indicated the airlock/decontamination chamber of the Paixhans’ Node Station could accommodate two suited humans at a time. There was nothing about the landscape to attract strollers, so the Swift’s complement left the vessel in pairs at the three-minute intervals the entry process required. Ned accompanied Louis Boxall near the end of the slow parade.
“I think,” Boxall said, “that my ancestors must have had Paixhans’ Node in mind when they wrote about Hell. Sang about Hell.”
Ned looked around him. The atmosphere was breathable, as close to Earth Normal as, for example, that of Tethys. The communications station which the Bonding Authority maintained here filtered and heated the air to one hundred fifty degrees Celsius to kill possible spores, but there was no need to supplement the atmosphere to keep the station personnel alive.
The station person, actually.
Apart from that, however, Paixhans’ Node was dank, wretched, and purulent with life—all of which was fungoid. Water condensed from the air, dripping over every surface. Sheets and shelves and hummocks of fungus grew, rotted to slime, and were then devoured by their kin.
The highest life-forms, the Nodals, were human-sized and ambulatory. They had a certain curving grace, like that of a fuselage area-ruled for supersonic operation. The Nodals crawled a millimeter at a time as though they were osmosing across the surface of the rocks. The contact patch served also for ingestion, absorbing all the stationary fungus in the Nodals’ path.
The Nodals were the closest thing to beauty on a world with a saturated atmosphere and a sky that glowed white at all times from the light of billions of stars. They were also the only real danger here, not for themselves but because of the spores which ejected from the core of a ripe Nodal.
“Hell’s supposed to be hot and fiery,” Ned said. He picked his way carefully across the slippery rocks. The Swift had put down half a klick from the station because the ground closer to it was too broken to be a safe landing site. It didn’t make a great footpath, either.
“Not on the Karelian Peninsula,” Louis said. He gestured. “This would do fine.”
They used their external helmet speakers to talk. Normally when personnel wore protective suits, they spoke through radio intercoms. On Paixhans’ Node, electrooptical radiation from everywhere in the Milky Way galaxy converged at the apparent distance of forty-one light-minutes. Ordinary com munications gear was swamped to uselessness; though for properly filtered apparatus, the unique conditions were of enormous value.
The Bonding Authority was the lubricant that made the interstellar trade in mercenary companies work. The Authority guaranteed the table of organization and equipment of mercenary units to the parties who wished to hire them, and guaranteed to the mercenaries that they would be paid per contract.
For the Bonding Authority to function efficiently, it needed something as close as possible to real-time communications across the galaxy. The communications station on Paixhans’ Node acted as a transceiver serving the Authority and, at considerable fees, the needs of other users.
“Well,” said Ned, “I won’t tell you your ancestors were wrong.”
Their path would take them within arm’s length of a Nodal. It swayed gently to a rhythm beyond human comprehension. The creature’s upper portions swelled slightly from a pinched waist. Bubble-like vacuoles as well as chips of solid color were visible beneath the translucent skin. The axial core had a pale yellow tinge.
“Via!” Boxall swore. “Don’t touch it or you might set it off.”
“They’ve got to be as bright as tractor enamel before they’re really ready to burst,” Ned said. He angled well away from the Nodal nonetheless. “That’s what the pilotry data says.”
“The pilotry data isn’t going to be dissolved from inside if a spore lands on it,” Boxall said. He laughed sharply. “Come to think, I guess it might. But it wouldn’t care the way I do.”
They were nearing the station. It was a hemisphere over a hundred meters in diameter. Antennas of complex shape festooned the dome and were planted in farms some distance away.
“I hear,” Boxall said after a moment, “that you might know something about the guy who mans the station. Gresham?”
Ned nodded, though he wasn’t sure how visible the action was beneath his suit. “I made something of a study of it,” he said. “Of him.”
There was a lot of information on Friesland, in the Slammers’ archives. Uncle Don had never said anything about it, except that he’d seen the prettiest sunset of his life once on Taprobane.
“Gresham worked for the Bonding Authority,” Ned said. “He was a field agent, new to the job. He talked too much. At least that was what prisoners said later.”
“He was bribed?” Boxall asked.
“No, he just talked. While he was inventorying mercs hired by the Congressional side on Taprobane, he let out that while there was supposed to have been a battalion of Slammers’ tanks landed in the capital to support the Presidential party and secure the spaceport, it was really only two infantry companies.”
The external speaker distorted Boxall’s whistle. “So the Congressional party took the spaceport,” he said.
“Nope,” Ned Slade said coldly. He’d watched images of the battle, mostly recovered from the helmet recorders of dead troopers. “But they sure-hell tried. And it wasn’t cheap to stop them, even for the survivors.”
They’d reached the dome. Close up, the structure loomed over them. Water condensing on the curved sides dripped down in sheets of gelatinous fungus—orange and saffron and a hundred shades of brown.
The light above the airlock blinked from red to green. Boxall pressed the latch button.
“Afterwards,” Ned said, “there were discussions between the regiment—”
“Colonel Hammer?”
Ned nodded. “Colonel Hammer. And the Bonding Authority. Everybody knew what Gresha
m had done, but all the evidence was secondhand. Handing Gresham over to the Slammers for execution would compromise the Authority’s prestige and neutrality. That was what the higher echelons felt, at any rate.”
The airlock door slid abruptly into the side of the dome. The chamber within was a meter square. The walls were glassy and faceted internally.
“What they did,” Ned said, “the Authority did, was to offer Gresham a contract. So long as he worked for the Authority, his life was safe. Not even Hammer’s Slammers were willing to murder an Authority employee.”
The door slammed home with the enthusiasm of a guillo tine’s blade. Ned’s visor went opaque for protection. Infrared light bathed the men from all six surfaces of the chamber. Ned bumped his companion as they both turned slowly, sure that the light cleansed every crevice of their suits.
“And then they transferred Gresham here, to Paixhans’ Node,” Ned said. “For as long as he lived. Seventeen years so far.”
His visor cleared. An instant later, the lock’s inner door shot open. Ned and his companion stepped into the foyer where empty suits stood or lay on the concrete floor. The air was muggy.
They stripped off their own suits and followed the sound of voices down a hall to a large room with equipment built to waist level around all the walls. Surfaces above the electronic consoles were of a gleaming white material that cleaned itself.
Most of the Swift’s complement stood and looked with neither comprehension nor particular interest at the equipment surrounding them. The Warson brothers squatted before a console. They weren’t touching the access plate in the front, but they were pointedly not touching the access plate. The fragments Ned heard of their low-voiced discussion were surprisingly technical.
“Look, Master Gresham,” Lissea said in the tone of someone forced to argue with a senile relative, “that’s between you and your employers. We’re perfectly willing to pay you—we’ll pay you in rations, if that’s what you’d like. But—”
“It wouldn’t do any good,” said the man to whom she spoke. He hunched in the room’s sole chair, a black structure which appeared to have been scooped from an egg. Its flat base quivered nervously at the floor, like a drop of water on a sea of mercury.
Gresham was sallow. His bones stuck out, and there were sores on his elbows and wrists.
“Master Gresham,” Tadziki said calmly. “We can’t afford to offend the Bonding Authority. All we’re asking from you is information on the Sole Solution.”
“On Alliance and Affray, you mean,” Gresham said. As he spoke, Ned noticed that the man’s teeth were black stumps. “On the Twin Planets.”
Gresham grinned with something approaching animation. “But you don’t know that. Yet. I’ll tell you everything you want to know. But you have to stop whoever’s stealing my food.”
“We’ll give you food!” Lissea repeated.
“It won’t help!” Gresham cried. He tried to get up from the chair, but he couldn’t summon the strength. He began to cry. Through the blubbering, he mumbled, “I have to eat the fungus. The rations dispenser drops a meal for me. And they steal it! They steal it! I have to eat what I gather outside or I’d die.”
In a tiny voice he added, “I want to die. I can tell you anything about anything in the galaxy. But I want to die.”
“Well, that could be arranged,” said Josie Paetz.
Yazov gripped his nephew’s jaw between his thumb and forefinger. “Don’t speak like that!” he said. “He’s a Bonding Authority employee. If he wants to die, then he can kill himself!”
Yazov released Paetz as though he was flinging away a bloody bandage. The younger man was white-faced. He swallowed before he holstered the pistol which he’d thrust into his uncle’s belly.
“Who steals the food?” Lissea asked. She seemed to have swept frustration out of her mind. “Not the Nodals, surely.”
“Who else is there?” Herne Lordling asked.
“I don’t know,” Gresham said. “I’ll show you, though. It’s almost time.”
Gresham snuffled loudly to clear his nose. He seemed almost oblivious of the presence of other human beings. Resupply ships would arrive on an annual, or at most, a semiannual schedule. The number of other vessels which touched down on Paixhans’ Node must be very small.
“Time for what?” Coyne asked. Everybody ignored him.
Gresham got up from his chair and stepped to the hallway door. He walked like an old man, his head down and his legs shuffling forward mechanically. Though he couldn’t have been much over fifty years old, deficiencies caused by a diet of local produce had aged and weakened him. He was lucky to be alive.
Or perhaps not.
Across the foyer from the control room was a chamber one meter by ten, with a high ceiling. The long wall facing the foyer was of a gleaming, glassy material like that which lined the airlock. There was a niche at waist height in the center of it.
“A Type Seven-Six Hundred Rations Dispenser,” Tadziki said approvingly. “Or maybe a Seven-Eight Hundred—it’s a matter of storage capacity, and I can’t be sure how deep the room is. It’s a bulletproof design. Trust the Authority to buy the best.”
“What is it?” Ingried said peevishly.
“When somebody’s alone in a station like this,” the adju tant explained, “you don’t want to leave all the rations under his control. People get funny. A dispenser like this provides his meals one at a time, so that he doesn’t decide to make a bonfire of a six-months’ supply when he’s having a bad time one night.”
“This poor bastard’s had a bad time longer ’n that,” somebody muttered.
A chime sounded softly in the bowels of the mechanism. A sealed carton about thirty by thirty by ten centimeters in size dropped into the niche. Gresham reached out as if to take it.
“As if,” because after seventeen years he certainly knew it was going to vanish again, as it did.
“Via! Bloody hell! Blood and martyrs!” across the semicircle of mercenaries standing behind Gresham. He turned, looking almost pleased.
“Stop that happening,” he said, “and I’ll help you. I’ll save you; I know how. You can’t give me my freedom, but let me eat food again.”
Lissea looked at Tadziki. He pursed his lips and said, “There’s the question of your employer’s intention in this matter—”
“No,” Gresham said. He fumbled carefully in a breast pocket of his coveralls and brought out a folded sheet of hard copy between two fingers. He handed it to Tadziki.
Tadziki opened the document. “‘Inspection of the Type Seven-Six Hundred dispenser by manufacturer’s representatives indicates the unit is in proper working order,’” he said/read aloud. “‘This office will not authorize further off-site repair expenditures. If station personnel desire, they may procure local support and charge back costs within Guidelines Bee Three three-nine-four to Bee Four ought-ought-seven inclusive.’”
Gresham began to cry again. “Sixteen years ago they sent that,” he said. “They don’t care if I starve so long as they can say they stood up to Colonel Hammer!”
“Seventeen years seems a pretty long time,” Lissea said doubtfully.
“It’s that much longer than some eighty poor bastards got on Taprobane,” Deke Warson said in a voice that could mill corn. Ned wasn’t the only member of the company who knew why Gresham had been exiled to this planet-sized dungeon.
“Which brings up the other question,” the adjutant went on. “I think we can presume the problem with the food—whatever—isn’t the Authority’s doing, though it doesn’t appear to bother them a great deal. I suspect that—President now, isn’t it?—Hammer might still be displeased by meddling with what he considers his business.”
Lissea looked puzzled. “Surely that’s no concern of ours, is it?” she asked.
The Boxall brothers had been talking in low tones ever since the meal container vanished. Now Louis looked up and said, “If it’s a choice of the Bonding Authority or Colonel Hammer wanting
my hide, I guess I’d choose Hammer. But believe me, Gene and me aren’t going to fix this if Hammer is involved.”
“You can fix it?” Tadziki said sharply.
“We might be able to do some good,” Eugene said in the tone of someone making a promise with everything but the form of the words.
“But not if it pisses off Hammer,” Louis repeated. “Sure, it’s a big universe, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.”
“I think I can clear things,” Ned said. His hands were trembling, but he kept his voice steady.
“You, Slade?” Herne Lordling sneered. “You’re going to use your vast influence as a reserve ensign to bring President Hammer around?”
“Herne!” Lissea said.
“Slade?” said Gresham. “You’re Slade?”
“You’re thinking of Uncle Don,” Ned said to Gresham. He looked at Lordling. “I don’t have any influence with President Hammer,” he said. “I saw him once on a reviewing stand, that’s all. But my uncle commanded the regiment’s initial force on Taprobane.”
“You’re Slade,” Gresham whispered. He reached toward Ned but his hand paused a centimeter away, shaking violently.
Ned gripped Gresham’s hand. “I’ll need to send a real-time message to Nieuw Friesland.”
His eyes focused on Lissea. “I’ll pay for it personally,” he added.
She shook her head. “It’s an expedition expense,” she said.
Gresham began to giggle hysterically. Ned had to hold the older man to keep him from falling.
At last Gresham got control of himself again. “I’ve been here for seventeen years,” he said. “They pay me well—there’s a hardship allowance. And there’s nothing for me to buy. I’ll pay for the cursed message!”
They walked back into the control room. Ned and Tadziki supported Gresham; Ned thought of offering to carry the man but decided it might be an insult.
Gresham unlocked a keyboard. A holographic screen sprang to life above the console. He typed in his access code, summoned a directory for Nieuw Friesland, and added an ad dress to the transmission. He seemed both expert and much stronger while he worked.