The Aftermath gt-16

by Ben Bova

  Koop grunted. Headquarters was on the Moon, he knew, which meant that messages took half an hour or more to go one way.

  “I’ll relay the message to Commander Vishinsky,” he said. “She’s inside the rock right now, out of range of my handheld.”

  “Headquarters sounded pretty antsy,” the comm officer said. “And they also want to know who put Vishinsky in command,”

  “Whatcha tell them?”

  “Same thing she told me: Commander Bolestos died and she took over for him.”

  Koop thought it over for a second or two. “Good enough,” he said. “For now.”

  * * *

  “It’s opening!” Tamara breathed.

  Noiselessly, the metal gate was sliding upward.

  Elverda began to clamber to her feet. Dorn lent her a supporting hand.

  Yuan felt perspiration beading his lip. Once Tamara takes a step past the gateway we’re all in this for keeps, one way or another.

  “You first,” he said to Tamara.

  She hesitated. “No.” Turning to Elverda, “You go first.”

  “Me?”

  “You’ve seen it before. I want you to see if it’s the same as it was then.”

  Yuan thought, Or if it causes the old woman harm.

  Elverda nodded, looking slightly anxious. “Very well,” she said.

  She handed her folded shawl to Dorn, then stepped firmly past the thin groove in the dusty floor that marked where the gate had rested.

  Yuan saw a diffuse light coming from beyond the gateway. Elverda walked toward it, her frail figure erect, unbent. Then she turned a corner and disappeared from his view.

  Dorn stood like a stolid figure carved from ironwood. Tamara was on tiptoes, her arms extended as if she were about to take flight. Yuan heard his pulse thumping in his ears.

  No one spoke a word. The tunnel was absolutely silent.

  Elverda stepped toward the light, her own pulse racing. The only other time she had seen the artifact it showed her a vision of her own life, of the mother who bore her and loved her, of the baby she had never had. It transformed her from a bitter old woman ready for death into a companion for the man-machine Dorn, willing to ply the cold emptiness of the Asteroid Belt to help him find his atonement.

  Now she ducked into the grotto where the light glowed coolly. She stopped and stared into the radiance. Its brightness softened, and she saw vague shapes forming and dissolving over and over again, like waves lapping up on a beach, like clouds wafting through the summer sky. She wanted to see her mother again, wanted to hold her and tell her what she’d never been able to say in real life, that she’d always loved her.

  But when the shapes coalesced it was not her mother who faced her: it was Dorn, half human, half machine, reaching toward her with both his arms. Like a helpless baby. Like a boy reaching toward his mother. Like a man who felt lost and despairing, desperate for a helping hand. And she knew that she had to sculpt this semi-human, make his heroic statue for all the world to see, make it out of metal and stone, etch every fine tracery on his metal side, make the stone glow like the living flesh of his other half. That was her task, her duty, her goal, to immortalize this man and make his final atonement a memorial to human conscience.

  The figure faded, the light dimmed down to a soft pastel radiance. Elverda knew she was finished here. The artifact had opened her mind again and made her understand the path she must take.

  With a heavy sigh that was part thanksgiving, part regret, she turned and walked back to the three who were waiting for her.

  “Well?” Tamara asked, even before Elverda stepped over the line that the gate had made. “Is it the same?”

  Elverda smiled at the woman. “Yes, the same. And different.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Gesturing toward the grotto, Elverda said, “See for yourself.”

  Tamara licked her lips. Dorn remained unmoving. Yuan wondered what he would see—if he worked up the nerve to face the artifact. Better to let Tamara go in, see how it effects her first.

  “All right,” Tamara said. “I will.”

  She took a deep breath, like a fighter facing an unknown opponent, and strode past the open gateway.

  And the gate began to slide shut behind her.

  “Wait!” Yuan yelled, lurching toward the metal gate. He tried to hold it, but the impassive steel slipped past the palms of his hands and settled firmly on the stone floor.

  “It’s never done that before,” Dorn said, his deep voice sounding puzzled.

  “How long will it stay closed?” Yuan asked.

  “I don’t know,” replied Dorn.

  “She’s trapped inside there,” Elverda said, “with the artifact.”

  Tamara heard the soft whisper of the gate sliding shut, heard Yuan’s startled, “Wait!”

  Whirling about, she saw the gate coming down slowly, inexorably. It settled on the stone flooring, cutting her off from the others. For the flash of an instant she balled her fists to pound on the impassive metal, but she realized it would be futile.

  Looking around, she saw that she was in a womblike grotto, a natural hollow in the rocky body of the asteroid. Or was it deliberately carved out by whoever created the artifact? she asked herself.

  The artifact. Tamara saw a soft glow coming from around a bend in the grotto. It must be in there. She glanced back at the gate again, felt a pang of alarm that it had closed her in. But there’s air to breathe, she realized. It’s warm and snug in here. It’ll open again. The cyborg says it operates on its own schedule. I just happened to be on the inside when it automatically shut. It’ll open again. It hasn’t deliberately trapped me in here.

  Summoning up her courage, she stepped softly, hesitantly, toward the light. It seemed to glare brighter as she approached it, pulsing like a living heart, blazing so intensely that she closed her eyes to mere slits and yet they still watered painfully. Tamara threw an arm over her brow. It was like staring into the Sun.

  But there were shapes in the brilliance. Shifting, undulating shadows that seemed to beckon her closer, closer.

  She saw a ten-year-old girl in leotards practicing at a barre before a ceiling-high mirror. Herself, at school in Novosibirsk. The day… that day. Tamara felt the strength ebb out of her legs. She wanted to sink to the floor. She wanted to cry. But she could do neither; she was frozen where she stood. Yes, there was the sour-faced school nurse coming to tell her. Your mother, Tamara Vishinsky. Your mother is dead. Car accident on the icy road.

  Ten-year-old Tamara did not cry. She walked stiffly to her locker to change into her school uniform. But Tamara saw the expression on her own young face: the world had come to an end for her. She never danced again.

  Her father. Drunk, almost always. Petting her when he wasn’t beating her. Tamara learned that it was better to be petted. She learned how to soothe her father’s drunken rages, how to warm his bed and take her mother’s role in his life. Daddy. She saw him in his coffin with the snow sifting down like frozen tears.

  And he stirred to life and became Martin Humphries. Humphries, who bedded her the first day he saw her. Humphries, who commanded her. Humphries, whose half-insane anger reached across the solar system to bring death to those he feared.

  And she understood how to soothe him, how to control him, how to turn his own wrath into a weapon to use against him.

  Of course! It’s so simple! Tamara laughed despite the pain. She had known it all along: how to control a man, how to keep him from hurting you. But now she understood far more. How to use her innate power not merely to protect herself, but to control a man, to make him do what she wanted, to be in command of him. So simple. So primitive. So powerful.

  Two deaths, perhaps three, and Martin Humphries would welcome her back to his bed. From there she could control the most powerful man in the solar system. From there she would wield the power. Humphries would do her bidding. Gladly.

  But the pain. The searing, merciless pain that cut through her
like a red-hot knife. The pain persisted. It would never go away.

  ASTEROID 67-046

  Koop stood uneasily at the lip of the hatch that led down to the artifact. He and the armed crewman with him were both in nanofabric space suits, despite being inside the pressurized and heated glassteel dome that Humphries Space Systems engineers had built on the surface of the asteroid.

  Outside the dome’s airlock sat the squat, spindly shuttle-craft they had used to fly from Viking to the asteroid’s surface. A segmented access passageway connected the shuttle’s airlock to that of the dome. To Koop it looked like a giant earthworm.

  “How long’ve they been down there?” the crewman asked, echoing Koop’s own nervousness.

  Without bothering to look at his wrist, Koop answered, “Damn near three hours now.”

  “Maybe I oughtta go down and see if they’re okay.”

  “Naw,” said Koop. “If the captain wants us he’ll holler for us.”

  The crewman nodded half-heartedly. Then he asked, “Is he still in charge?”

  “Who? The captain?”

  “Yeah. I mean, Vishinsky seems to be giving the orders now.”

  “He’s still the captain.”

  “You think so?”

  “I’ll tell you when I don’t.”

  “What’s she like in bed?”

  Koop drew in a breath. He’d known it would come to this, sooner or later.

  “None of your damn business,” he growled.

  The crewman grinned at him.

  Yuan’s voice came through the speaker set into Koop’s bubble helmet. “We’re coming up.”

  “Okay,” said Koop, adding silently, Good.

  Koop peered at them carefully as they climbed up through the hatch set into the dome’s floor. The four of them seemed unchanged by their experience with the artifact.

  The cyborg was still as stolid and menacing as ever. The old woman was the same. Tamara was smiling, but there wasn’t any joy in it. Her smile was like a cobra’s. The captain—well, maybe he did look a little different. More serious. Quieter. Like he had a lot on his mind, a lot to think about.

  “Isokuru,” said Yuan to the crewman, “go power up the shuttle.”

  “Hai!” The crewman made a perfunctory bow and started through the airlock.

  Koop edged over to the captain’s side. “Did you see it?” he asked in a near-whisper.

  Yuan pressed his lips into a thin line and nodded. “I saw it.”

  “What was it like?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I don’t think I can describe it, Koop. I don’t have the words for it.”

  Koop glanced at Tamara, then asked, “Do you think I—”

  “It’s shut down now,” Yuan said. “We don’t know how long it’ll stay shut. It kept Tamara in there for more than an hour.”

  Before Koop could say anything more, Tamara tapped Yuan on the shoulder.

  When he turned toward her she gestured to Elverda and Dorn. “We’re not bringing these two back with us.”

  Yuan felt his brows hike. “We’re not?”

  “No. Kill them now. Let this be their final resting place.”

  Perspiration trickled down Yuan’s ribs. “Why don’t we just leave them here? They wouldn’t last long.”

  “Kill them. I want to bring absolute proof back to Martin that they’re both dead.”

  “Oh, so he’s not Mr. Humphries anymore.”

  Tamara gave him a pitying, almost disgusted look. “Kill them both. Now.”

  Yuan’s hand slid to the sidearm at his hip. His hand was trembling, he realized. Elverda lifted her chin and stood before him at her full height like an Incan queen facing her doom regally. Dom stood beside her, impassive as a machine.

  “I told you to kill them,” Tamara insisted.

  This isn’t a computer game, Yuan was saying to himself. These are real people, real living human beings. Even if the cyborg is half machine, he’s still a man. In his mind’s eye he saw the blood splashed across the old commander’s chest, the startled look in his sightless eyes. It must have hurt when the blade went in, Yuan thought. It must have hurt like hell.

  “Kao Yuan, you’re not fit to be captain of your ship,” Tamara snarled. “I’m taking over. You’re nothing but a gutless coward.”

  Coward? Yuan’s inner voice echoed. Coward? Yuan saw again what the artifact had showed him. He saw himself at the end of his life, respected by everyone, surrounded by his devoted children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He saw warmth and safety and admiration. He saw love.

  “Koop!” Tamara’s voice cut through the vision like a diamond-bladed saw. “Kill them both and leave this pathetic coward with their bodies.”

  “Me?” Koop squeaked.

  Yuan’s mind was racing. I’m not a coward, he said to himself. I’m on the wrong path and if I murder these two I’ll never be able to get off that track, never be able to reach the path that the artifact showed me.

  “Stand down, Koop,” he said to the Hawaiian. “That’s an order.”

  Koop looked relieved, Tamara furious.

  “When Humphries hears about this—”

  “Hears about what?” Yuan replied softly. “That I refused to murder two unarmed prisoners?”

  “That you’ve disobeyed his orders,” she snapped. “He’ll kill you. He’ll have you roasted on a spit.”

  Yuan laughed at her. “No, he won’t. I understand what my path has to be, Tamara. I’ve seen the end of my life. Humphries isn’t going to kill me. I’m going to live a long, long time—and raise a big family.”

  “You’re crazy! The artifact’s unhinged your mind.”

  “No. The artifact’s shown me how to live.”

  Tamara uttered a guttural growl and flicked her right hand. The stiletto-slim blade snapped into her hand.

  “No!” Yuan shouted, reaching toward her. She slashed his arm. Blood spurted. Koop remained rooted where he stood, eyes popping, mouth open but no sound coming from it. Yuan clapped his other hand over the slicing wound that pumped blood through his grasping fingers.

  Tamara whirled and sank the bloody blade into Dorn’s human side. She felt it scrape along a rib, then sink deep into his chest. The cyborg grunted and tottered backward a step.

  Yanking the blade free, Tamara turned to face Elverda. The old woman put out her arms defensively, but she was frail, her arms bone thin, no barrier at all to the knife.

  Then Dorn’s mechanical arm flashed out. His metal hand closed on Tamara’s fingers. Bones snapped and she screamed in sudden agony. The blade dropped clattering to the floor as Tamara sank to her knees, her face white with pain and shock.

  Dorn released her, then collapsed himself, his tunic darkening with blood. Yuan and Koop both rushed to him, leaving Tamara gasping and staring wild-eyed at her mangled right hand.

  Elverda knelt beside her just before she fainted from the pain.

  SALVAGE SHIP VOGELTOD:

  TWO MONTHS LATER

  “Let me get this straight,” Valker said to Kao Yuan. “You want me to hand Hunter over to you?”

  “To its rightful owner,” said Kao Yuan, nodding toward Elverda Apacheta, sitting on the front few centimeters of the big recliner in the middle of Valker’s compartment.

  It had taken two months for Yuan to track down Hunter, which he had released after taking Dorn and Elverda aboard his own Viking. After seeing the artifact, Yuan realized that he had to return the sculptress and her cyborg companion to their own ship and let them find their own destinies among the asteroids.

  Yuan still bore a scar from Tamara’s knifing; he refused to allow nanotherapy to remove the scar. Something to show my grandchildren, he thought. A reminder of the wrong path I was on.

  Dorn recovered, albeit slowly, from his chest wound, thanks to stem cell therapy. Tamara’s crushed fingers had healed completely. Yuan made it clear to the crew that she was a prisoner; she had free rein of the ship, except for the bridge. She was not permitted to comm
unicate with headquarters.

  “When Humphries finds out what you’ve done,” she warned, time and again.

  Yuan would simply shake his head, grinning. It doesn’t matter what Humphries threatens, he told himself. I’ve seen where my life leads. I’ll get through this, one way or another.

  At last Yuan found Elverda’s ship under tow by Vogeltod, heading for Ceres. Vogeltod’s skipper, Valker, had graciously welcomed them aboard his vessel and brought them to his own quarters to discuss the situation.

  Valker sat behind his oversized desk, smiling handsomely at his two visitors. Elverda smiled back, a little uncertainly, from her perch on the recliner. Yuan, wearing a crisply clean uniform with captain’s stripes on its cuffs, was sitting on the edge of Valker’s bunk, the only other available seat in the jam-packed compartment.

  “You’re Elverda Apacheta,” Valker said, more of a statement than a question.

  “Yes. I am the owner of the Hunter.”

  “You’re a very famous woman,” Valker said, his smile going even brighter. “I looked you up. I’ve never met a sculptress before. I’m honored to have you aboard my ship.”

  She smiled back at him. “You are very gracious.”

  “No, not at all.” Valker’s smile turned almost shy. Then he suggested, “Why don’t we have some refreshments while we’re talking? It’s almost dinner time.”

  “I’d like to get this settled as quickly as we can,” Yuan said.

  “We have an injured man aboard Captain Yuan’s ship,” Elverda said. “I don’t want to leave him for very long.”

  “I see,” said Valker. “Okay. Let’s talk business. When we found Hunter she was drifting and abandoned. That makes her a derelict, according to IAA regulations. We took claim of her and we’re bringing her back to Ceres.”

  Elverda objected, “But she’s not salvage—”

  “No, she’s not,” Valker agreed, stopping her with an upraised hand. “But she was a derelict and we have a legal right to sell her for the best price we can get.”