“You’re well educated, given your background.”
“You mean someone killing all the people who were taking care of me when I was eleven? That background?” Trent demanded. He shook his head. “It’s just the inskin. Makes me look smarter than I am – makes most Players look smarter than they are. Data to hand isn’t the same thing as knowledge internalized – that’s why apparently intelligent Players do such boneheaded things every now and then. I guess you haven’t met many Players.”
“Not socially. I’ve put a number in front of firing squads.”
Trent laughed. “You have no social graces, Vance.”
THEY TALKED ON and off for several hours, waiting for the PKF to board the remains of the house, or for the house to start getting hot. At one point Vance said, “There are things I like about you.”
“Everybody likes me,” Trent said. “I knew you did too.”
“The thing I most like about you is that you are not a Muslim. For generations Muslim ideologs misread the Koran, misinterpreted the Prophet’s words. They were weak, in those days, as you and yours are today, and the weapons they used were the weapons your allies use today – the bomb, the sniper, the hostage. But after the Unification those who were weak grew strong, those who were strong grew weak.”
“We might be weak,” said Trent. “But we took your death star away from you.”
“ ‘We?’ Forgive me, but though I insulted you with mention of your allies, this is not the case. You have the Unity. You who are, as best I can see, about to die.”
“With you,” Trent reminded him. “But in any event Monitor has the Unity, if anyone does – and Keith Daniels. I left him aboard.”
Vance closed his eyes. Trent could almost see him thinking back through the psychometrics Daniels had been given over the years, wondering who’d been turned, and who’d been merely incompetent to pierce Daniels’ Reb-installed conditioning.
WHAT WAS LEFT of the house, in its multiple pieces, had reached the upper edges of Earth’s atmosphere. The exposed edges of structures began to glow with the heat of their passage.
VANCE OPENED HIS eyes and looked at Trent and said almost the last thing Trent had expected to hear from him:
“I saw Andrew Strawberry play once. The Paris Chiefs beat the Saigon Rams thirty to three. Strawberry stood there in the pocket, all two hundred and fifteen centimeters of him, and threw for over three hundred yards. He just threw it over the heads of the defenders. It was a grand sight.”
“American football,” said Trent. “A fan of the air game. I guess I’m not surprised by that. You’re the sort who’d throw long. During the TriCentennial, when the West Coast rebelled, the entire senior PKF establishment as well as the Secretary General, all of them wanted to proceed cautiously. Not you. You had troops in the air the same day.” He shook his head. “It’s probably a good thing that Elite aren’t allowed to play pro football.”
“There is no regulation against it,” said Vance. “A retired Elite could play if he chose to. I doubt one would, though. Elite do not retire young – only a few have ever retired.” He studied Trent. “Basketball, of course.”
Trent nodded. “Sure. Practically the only real sport played in the Fringe. Everything else cost too much – too much gear, too much organization, too much land.
“It’s getting hot, isn’t it? I’m using what’s left of the attitude and nav rockets to keep the house moving – we’re skipping across the atmosphere like a rock across a pond. It’s a good thing we’re so deep in the house’s interior … No, don’t thank me, we’re still going to die, just a little more slowly....
“I was a huge Knicks fan. And then the gutless corporate sons of bitches who owned the franchise picked up and moved it to Sao Paolo after the TriCentennial.” Trent made a sound of disgust. “Cowards. One tiny little rebellion.”
“During which you conspired with the Secretary General.” He paused, but Trent didn’t comment. “You saved the backbone of the InfoNet during the rebellion, kept it from destruction. This is – one of things I detest the least about you – your willingness to behave reasonably ... to not do things that are counterproductive.”
“How long would I live if I released your hand?”
“Five seconds. Less. Understand, you are the most dangerous person I have ever met,” said Vance. “The world adores you, and you frighten me. Not even so much as yourself; you are only a man. But you possess a reputation, and there is an aura about you ... Trent the Uncatchable. The untouchable. The thief and the liar and the pacifist, the man who walked through a wall –”
“I’m not a pacifist,” said Trent. “I just don’t think you should kill people if you can possibly avoid it. Killing is wrong. It’s always wrong. Even when it’s less wrong than something else, it’s always, always wrong. The dragon brain enjoys it and wants to wallow in it, wants to enjoy that pain and fear –” Trent shook his head. “I felt complimented every time you raised the bounty on me. It hurt my feelings, back in ’76, when you put a larger bounty on Sedon … but I do understand why you did it. There was a man who was pure dragon all the way through.”
It was hot enough in the small room that Trent was sweating hard within his suit. He couldn’t imagine how hot and uncomfortable Vance must be, trapped in the impact field with the smell of the blood wafting up to him.
“Sedon was less dangerous than you are.”
“Maybe so. He’s dead and I’m still here, giving you grief.” Trent turned back to the controls. “Let’s see how you and I are doing. The people who raised me are dead, Sedon is dead, Adrian Hilè is dead – let’s find out if you and I are going to join them, shall we?”
“Do you ever wish,” Mohammed Vance asked, “that you’d made different decisions?”
“Sometimes,” Trent agreed. “Sometimes I do.” He touched two controls within the holofield, studied the results, touched two more. He couldn’t keep the grin off his face. “But then there are moments like this – that make up for it.”
The rest of the house came apart around them.
THE ROOM JOLTED once, jolted again so hard Vance thought they were about to die, and then a blinding light fell upon them –
Vance said, “What –”
It was just sunlight, but after hours in the darkness, it hit their dark-adapted eyes like a flare. Trent turned to look at Vance, shielding his own eyes with one hand. “Isn’t that pretty. Look at the blue sky, Vance. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve seen a damned blue sky?”
In the sunlight Vance saw the room clearly for the first time. The dark curved areas beyond Trent were a viewport, with blue sky now visible beyond. Instruments and gear were arrayed about them – they were in the pilot’s cabin of some sort of vehicle.
“It’s a jumpjet,” Trent said. “Capable of landing on quite a small piece of land.” He was grinning hugely. “Let’s go do that, shall we?”
Vance had not noticed the slowly growing gravity, until abruptly it lessened, and he had the sense that they were dropping. Trent’s hands moved across the controls. “The rest of the house has come apart around us. Radar’s not going to be able to pick us out of the general debris, spysats might find us after they analyze the video for a while, but that won’t happen soon.” Vance became aware of the sound of the sky being split apart, a distant howl, as the ship they were in descended into deeper pressure.
Twelve minutes later they were on the ground.
“I’M SORRY YOU were here,” Trent said, rising from the pilot’s seat. “You guys were supposed to think I’d died when the house came apart. Even Credit I’d have sold you on it, too, if I hadn’t had to drag you down here with me.”
In the wall behind Trent, a hatch opened – beyond it Vance could see two shades of blue, lighter and darker.
Trent smiled at Vance, shrugged, opened the door wider and stepped out of the hatch – for an instant as the door opened bright sunlight burst through and into the cabin –
“Goodbye, Mohammed,
” Trent said, and then the hatch swung shut and Vance heard the bolts catch.
He could only move his fist slightly, but he was far enough back from the control panel that it gave him the ability to cover two thirds of the panel. He splayed his right hand as widely as he could, stretching the covering Trent had bound it with – felt the material stretch. He caught the cloth between his knuckles, clenched his fist tightly, was rewarded with the first small tear – splayed his hand again and felt a finger poke out into the air.
Seconds later he had most of the hand through the bag and started firing. He played his fist laser across the control panel, took a deep breath when the smell of scorched plastic first wafted to him, and kept firing. Flames flickered across the panel, blue and green, and then the melting plastic caught and burned fiercely. Vance wondered if he was going to die of smoke inhalation –
– and then the impact field died.
Vance leaped forward, palmed the doorpad for the hatch. Nothing happened, and the heat from the fire was causing his uniform to smolder. He kicked, once, twice, with his robot leg, and the door buckled, sunlight streaming in around the cracked edges. The influx of air caused the fire to leap higher, and Vance got his hands on the door’s edge and tore it out of its frame, leaping from the burning ship into –
He landed on sand, and took two automatic steps forward, away from the burning ship behind him.
It was like walking into a hot, moist holograph. A bright sun, brilliant blue skies. It didn’t feel real to Vance. Drifting white clouds, far above him. The smell of salt hung heavy in the air. A shimmering blue-green sea reached out to the horizon and it was silent except for the crackle of the fire behind him, and the gentle waves lapping at the beach.
Palm trees, vibrant green and tan, swayed in the balmy breeze, off to his left.
The sand he walked upon was white as snow.
The jumpjet had landed on a small oval island, less than two hundred meters long, less than eighty wide. Vance could see the ocean in every direction across the island’s length and width.
Trent’s footsteps were plainly visible in the sand, leading away from the ship and down toward the ocean.
Toward it.
The footprints ceased three meters before the high water mark.
There were no other footsteps, no other sign anywhere else on the island that humans had ever visited this desolate rock.
After all these years, Trent had finally returned to Earth –
– and was gone.
About the Book
Given how long it took to produce this novel for publication, I won’t make any representations about when the next Trent story will appear. A collection of short fiction, mostly Continuing Time stories, will probably appear first, however. Keep an eye on my blog, danielkeysmoran.blogspot.com, for updates.
– Daniel Keys Moran, March 2011
Table of Contents
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Notices
Prolog
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
About the Book
The A.I. War, Book One: The Big Boost (Tales of the Continuing Time) Page 23