by Ian Whates
The young officer put his pistol on Carver and said, “You led us a pretty good chase, but you forgot one thing.”
He was wearing a black Navy flight suit with a big zip down the front and pockets patching the chest and legs; that know-everything-tell-nothing expression blanked his face.
“I did?”
“You forgot you’re an indentured worker. Your Judas bridge led me straight to you. Your owner will be here as soon as he can find a place to park his ship. I reckon you’ve got just enough time to tell me your side of the story.”
While the scow lowered towards a setback below the ridge, Carver told Rider Jackson more or less everything that had happened out at the brown dwarf. Rider Jackson knew most of it, of course, because he’d seen the footage and data the tug had sent to Mr Kanza, but he listened patiently and said, when Carver was finished, “I didn’t know he was lying about your brother. If I had, I would have put an end to this a lot sooner.”
“He was probably lying about a lot of things.”
“Like giving me a 50 per cent share in the prize, uh?”
“Like giving you any share at all.”
“You might well be right,” Rider Jackson said, and looked for the first time at Useless Beauty’s tank. “Care to explain why you came along for the ride?”
“I have nothing to give you,” it said.
“I bet you don’t. But that wasn’t what I asked,” Rider Jackson said, and that was when Mr Kanza arrived.
Grim and angry and out of breath, he bulled straight across the roofless cube and stuck his shock stick in Carver’s face. Carver couldn’t help flinching; Mr Kanza smiled and said, “Tell me what the !Cha found and where it is, and maybe I won’t have to use this.”
Rider Jackson said, “There’s no point threatening him. You want to know the truth, figure out how to get the !Cha to talk straight.”
Mr Kanza stepped back from Carver and aimed the shock stick at Rider Jackson. “You were indentured once, just like him. Is that why you’re taking his side? I knew it was a mistake to let you go chase him down.”
“You could have come with me,” Rider Jackson said, “but you were happy to let me take the risk.”
“He told you. He told you what that thing found and you made a deal with him.”
“You’re making a bad mistake.”
The two men were staring at each other, Rider Jackson impassive, Mr Kanza angry and sweating, saying, “I bet you tasted the stick in your time. You’ll taste it again if you don’t drop that pistol.”
Rider Jackson said, “I guess we aren’t partners any more.”
“You’re right,” Mr Kanza said, and zapped him.
Carver was caught by the edge of the stick’s field. His Judas bridge kicked in, his muscles went into spasm, hot spikes hammered through his skull, and he fell straight down.
Rider Jackson didn’t so much as twitch. He put his pistol on Mr Kanza and said, “The Navy took out my bridge when I signed up. Set down that stick and your pistol, and I’ll let you walk away.”
“We’re partners.”
“You said it yourself: not any more. If you start walking now, maybe you can find somewhere to hide before the cutter turns up.”
Mr Kanza screamed and threw the shock stick at Rider Jackson and made a grab for the pistol stuck in his utility belt. Rider Jackson shot him. He shot Mr Kanza twice in the chest and the man sat down, winded and dazed but still alive: his pressure suit had stopped the flechettes. He groped for his pistol and Rider Jackson said, “Don’t do it.”
“Fuck you,” Mr Kanza said and jerked up his pistol and fired it wildly. Rider Jackson didn’t flinch. He took careful aim and shot Mr Kanza in the head, and the man fell sideways and lay still.
Rider Jackson turned and put his pistol on Useless Beauty’s black cylinder and said calmly, “I don’t suppose this can punch through your casing, but I could shoot off your limbs one by one and set you on a fire.”
There was a brief silence. Then the !Cha said, “You will need a very hot fire, and much more time than you have.”
“I have more time than you think,” Rider Jackson said. “I know Dana Sabah, the woman flying that cutter. She’s a good pilot, but she’s inexperienced and too cautious. Right now, she’ll be watching us from orbit, waiting to see how it plays out before she makes her move.”
“If she does not come, then the settlers will rescue me.”
“Uh-uh. Even if the settlers know about us, which I doubt, Dana will have told them to back off. I reckon I have more than enough time to boil the truth out of you.”
Useless Beauty said, “I have already told the truth.”
Carver got to his feet and told Rider Jackson, “It doesn’t matter if it’s telling the truth or not. All that matters is that we can escape in the scow. But first, I want you to drop your pistol.”
Rider Jackson looked at the pistol Carver was holding – Mr Kanza’s pistol – and said, “I wondered if you’d have the guts to pick it up. The question is now, do you have the guts to use it?”
“If I have to.”
“Look at us,” Rider Jackson said. “I’m an officer in the Collective Navy; you’re a prisoner of war sold into slavery, trying to get home … We could fight a duel to see who gets the scow. It would make a good ending to the story, wouldn’t it?”
Carver smiled and said, “It would, but this isn’t a story.”
“Of course it’s a story. Do you know why !Cha risk their lives chasing after Elder Culture artefacts?”
“It’s something to do with sex.”
“That’s it. Back in the oceans of their home world, male !Cha constructed elaborate nests to attract a mate. The strongest, those most likely to produce the fittest offspring, made the biggest and most elaborate nests. Simple, straight-ahead Darwinism. The !Cha left their home world a long time ago, but the males still have to prove their worth by finding something novel, something no other male has. They have a bad jones for Elder Culture junk, but these days they get a lot of useful stuff from us, too.”
“It’s lying about what it found,” Carver said. “It told me it lost it, but I know it has it hidden away inside that tank.”
Rider Jackson shook his head. “If it still had it, it would have killed you and paid off Mr Kanza. And it wouldn’t have called up the garrison back at Ganesh Five.”
“It did? Is that why the cutter came after us?”
“Why do you think traffic control spotted you so quickly? It told them what you were up to, and it told them all about my deal with Mr Kanza, too. Dana Sabah told me all about it when she tried to get me to surrender,” Rider Jackson said. “I guess our friend thought that involving the Navy would make the story more exciting.”
“Son-of-a-bitch. And I thought it was on my side because it owes me its life.”
“As far as it’s concerned, it doesn’t owe you anything. The only reason it stuck with you is because you have something it needs. Something as unique as any ancient artefact, something that can, it believes, win it a mate: the story of how you tried to escape.”
“Your own story is just as good, Lieutenant Jackson,” Useless Beauty said. “The two of you are enemies, as you said. Fight your duel. The winner will take me with him – I will pay well for it.”
Rider Jackson looked at Carver and smiled. “What do you think?”
“I think the war is over.” Carver was smiling too, remembering something Jarred had said. That peace was harder work than war, but more worthwhile.
Useless Beauty said, “I do not understand. You are enemies.”
Rider Jackson stuck his pistol in his belt. “Like he said, the war is over. Besides, we both want the same thing.”
Carver lowered the pistol he’d taken off Mr Kanza’s body and told the !Cha, “You’re like Mr Kanza. You think you own us, but you don’t understand us.”
“You must take me with you,” Useless Beauty said.
“It wants to find out how the story ends,” Rider Jackson t
old Carver.
“I will pay you well,” Useless Beauty said.
Carver shook his head. “We don’t need your money. We have the scow, and I have about thirty metres of a weird thread I took off Dr Smith’s body. It’s superconducting and very strong, and I can’t help wondering if it’s something you and her pulled out of Ganesh Five B.”
“I told you the truth about what we found,” Useless Beauty said. “It escaped us and destroyed our ship, but it did not survive. However, I admit this thread may be of interest. I must examine it, of course, but if it is material transformed during the destruction of the ship, I may be willing to purchase it.”
“That’s what I thought,” Carver said. “It may not be an Elder Culture artefact, but it could be worth something. And maybe the data from the probes I dropped into Ganesh Five B might be worth something, too.”
“I may be willing to purchase that, too,” Useless Beauty said. “As a souvenir.”
“What do you think?” Carver said to Rider Jackson.
“I think we’ll get a better price on the open market.”
“I can force you to take me,” Useless Beauty said.
“No, you can’t,” Carver said.
“And even if you could, it would ruin the ending of your story,” Rider Jackson said. “I’m sure the settlers or the Navy will rescue you, for a price.”
There was a long moment of silence. Then Useless Beauty said, “I would like to know what happens after you escape. I will pay well.”
“If we escape,” Carver said. “We have to get past the cutter.”
“Dana Sabah’s a good pilot, but I’m better,” Rider Jackson said. “I reckon you are too.”
“Before we do this, we need to work out where we’re going.”
“That’s pretty easy, given that you’re an indentured worker and
the Navy wants my ass. Think that Kanza’s old boat will get us to the Alliance?”
“It just might.”
The two men grinned at each other. Then they ran for the scow.
TIME PIECE
Joe Haldeman
If starships can instantly jump interstellar distances yet nevertheless Einstein is not violated, interstellar war will displace its soldiers far from their home times …
“Time Piece” was the trial run for the basic idea behind Haldeman’s classic novel The Forever War, which won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1975. A combat engineer during the Vietnam conflict, this was his second professional publication, pregnant with much. Since the early eighties he has spent nine months of the year writing full-time, the rest as an adjunct professor in the Writing and Humanistic Studies programme at MIT. Of his thirty or so books written in about forty years to date, all but four have been SF. As of early 2011, six bookcases held one copy each of every book and magazine he appeared in, a total of fifty-eight shelf feet, which might seem almost a forever shelf to writers starting out.
THEY SAY YOU’VE got a fifty–fifty chance every time you go out. That makes it once chance in eight that you’ll live to see your third furlough; the one I’m on now.
Somehow the odds don’t keep people from trying to join. Even though not one in a thousand gets through the years of training and examination, there’s no shortage of cannon fodder. And that’s what we are. The most expensive, best trained cannon fodder in the history of warfare. Human history, anyhow; who can speak for the enemy?
I don’t even call them snails any more. And the thought of them doesn’t trigger that instant flash of revulsion, hate, kill-fever – the psyconditioning wore off years ago, and they didn’t renew it. They’ve stopped doing it to new recruits; no percentage in berserkers. I was a wild one the first couple of trips, though.
Strange world I’ve come back to. Gets stranger every time, of course. Even sitting here in a bogus twenty-first-century bar, where everyone speaks Basic and there’s real wood on the walls and peaceful holograms instead of plugins, and music made by men …
But it leaks through. I don’t pay by card, let alone by coin. The credit register monitors my alpha waves and communicates with the bank every time I order a drink. And, in case I’ve become addicted to more modern vices, there’s a feelie matrix (modified to look like an old-fashioned visiphone booth) where I can have my brain stimulated. Thanks but no, thanks – always get this picture of dirty hands inside my skull, kneading, rubbing. Like when you get too close to the enemy and they open a hole in your mind and you go spinning down and down and never reach the bottom till you die. I almost got too close last time.
We were on a three-man reconnaissance patrol, bound for a hellish little planet circling the red giant Antares. Now red giant stars don’t form planets in the natural course of things, so we had ignored Antares; we control most of the space around it, so why waste time in idle exploration? But the enemy had detected this little planet – God knows how – and about ten years after they landed there, we monitored their presence (gravity waves from the ships’ braking) and my team was assigned the reconnaissance. Three men against many, many of the enemy – but we weren’t supposed to fight if we could help it; just take a look around, record what we saw, and leave a message beacon on our way back, about a light-year out from Antares. Theoretically, the troopship following us by a month will pick up the information and use it to put together a battle plan. Actually, three more recon patrols precede the troop ship at one-week intervals; insurance against the high probability that any one patrol will be caught and destroyed. As the first team in, we have a pretty good chance of success, but the ones to follow would be in trouble if we didn’t get back out. We’d be past caring, of course: the enemy doesn’t take prisoners.
We came out of lightspeed close to Antares, so the bulk of the star would mask our braking disturbance, and inserted the ship in a hyperbolic orbit that would get us to the planet – Anomaly, we were calling it – in about twenty hours.
“Anomaly must be tropical over most of its surface.” Fred Sykes, nominally the navigator, was talking to himself and at the two of us while he analysed the observational data rolling out of the ship’s computer. “No axial tilt to speak of. Looks like they’ve got a big outpost near the equator, lots of electromagnetic noise there. Figures … the goddamn snails like it hot. We requisitioned hot-weather gear, didn’t we, Pancho?”
Pancho, that’s me. “No, Fred, all we got’s parkas and snow-shoes.” My full name is Francisco Jesus Mario Juan-José Hugo de Naranja, and I outrank Fred, so he should at least call me Francisco. But I’ve never pressed the point. Pancho it is. Fred looked up from his figure and the rookie, Paul Spiegel, almost dropped the pistol was cleaning.
“But why …” Paul was staring. “We knew the planet was probably Earthlike if the enemy wanted it. Are we gonna have to go tromping around in spacesuits?”
“No, Paul, our esteemed leader and supply clerk is being sarcastic again.” He turned back to his computer. “Explain, Pancho.”
“No, that’s all right.” Paul reddened a bit and also went back to his job. “I remember you complaining about having to take the standard survival issue.”
“Well, I was right then and I’m doubly right now. We’ve got parkas back there, and snowshoes, and a complete terranorm environment recirculator, and everything else we could possibly need to walk around in comfort on every planet known to man – Dios! That issue masses over a metric ton, more than a bevawatt laser. A laser we could use, but crampons and pith helmets and elephant guns …”
Paul looked up again. “Elephant guns?” He was kind of a freak about weapons.
“Yeah.”
“That’s a gun that shoots elephants?”
“Right. An elephant gun shoots elephants.”
“Is that some new kind of ammunition?”
I sighed, I really sighed. You’d think I’d get used to this after twelve years – or four hundred – in the service. “No, kid, elephants were animals, big grey wrinkled animals with horns. You used an elephant gun to shoot at them.
<
br /> “When I was a kid in Rioplex, back in the twenty-first, we had an elephant in the zoo; used to go down in the summer and feed him synthos through the bars. He had a long nose like a fat tail; he ate with that.”
“What planet were they from?”
It went on like that for a while. It was Paul’s first trip out, and he hadn’t yet gotten used to the idea most of his compatriots were genuine antiques, preserved by the natural process of relativity. At lightspeed you age imperceptibly, while the universe’s calendar adds a year for every light-year you travel. Seems like cheating. But it catches up with you eventually.
We hit the atmosphere of Anomaly at an oblique angle and came in passive, like a natural meteor, until we got to a position where we were reasonably safe from detection (just above the south polar sea), then blasted briefly to slow down and splash. Then we spent a few hours in slow flight at sea level, sneaking up on their settlement.
It appeared to be the only enemy camp on the whole planet, which was typical. Strange for a spacefaring, aggressive race to be so incurious about planetary environments, but they always seemed to settle in one place and simply expand radially. And they do expand; their reproduction rate makes rabbits look sick. Starting from one colony, they can fill a world in two hundred years. After that, they control their population by infantiphage and stellar migration.
We landed about a hundred kilometres from the edge of their colony, around local midnight. While we were outside setting up the espionage monitors, the ship camouflaged itself to match the surrounding jungle optically, thermally, magnetically, etc. – we were careful not to get too far from the ship; it can be a bit hard to find even when you know where to look.