by Adam Roberts
‘Absolutely. Perhaps somebody from the Legal Corps could come along, to . . . ?’
‘She says no, no military lawyers. She just wants you and Colonel Philpot, the two of you, asked for you both by name. Which makes me suspicious. I think she’s insisted no lawyers because she wants to try some half-assed wordgames with you, try and trik you into an admission of liability. The meeting will be recorded, so just watch your words. Hell, I’d like Legal with you,’ booms the Veep, ‘just as you would. But these are the terms on which we get her. Reel her in slowly. General Niflheim assures me that you are a man with a cool enough head to handle this. He has the greatest confidence in you.’
Slater glances at Niflheim, who nods in confirmation, although his face carries a concentrated expression of pure contempt that, did he not know better, Slater might think was directed at him.
Up, salute, snap-heels, and through the big door.
Outside, in the beechwood-lined corridor, Philpot falls into step alongside the new colonel. ‘See?’ he says, with a mischievous grin. ‘Colonel Slayer, my man, sir. How it feel?’
‘Good,’ says Slater, beaming. ‘Only, wat crawled up Niffy’s nose and died? He seemed pretty pissed, despite all the good news and cheer and all.’
‘Haven’t you heard’ says Philp, sombrely. ‘He’s dying. Some cancer or some other cancer. The problem with all these pharmakos everybody is taking all the time nowadays is that they make you look and make you feel just fine, so when a cancer comes it can spend a long time stewing inside you. I heard that every single organ in his body has metastasised cells in it. Months to live. Only months.’
‘Fuk,’ says Slater. ‘That’s hard. Still — Colonel Slater. That has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?’
The Quanjet is parked on the Presidential runway, and Slater only has time for short call to his wife on the way to the craft. ‘Darling, you won’t believe my news.’
‘Wat news won’t I believe?’
‘Will you believe, I wonder, that you’re now Mrs Colonel?’
‘But I was so fond of my old surname.’
‘Seriously, Marina, I just heard — it’s promotion.’
‘Why that’s wonderful news, my love,’ she says, her fine features folding into a pretty smile at mouth and eyes. ‘Wait, I’ll get the kids . . . you can tell them direct.’ Her face leaves the screen, and Slater is instructed to turn off his phone and board the craft before she returns. Already, even in this luminous moment of triumph, the worm of anticlimax is starting to stir. So it’s over, so we won, and wat next?
Unlike a tried-and-tested Elemag plane, and despite the fact that they’ve been being flown for two decades now, Quanjets are still classified as in development. Accordingly, both Slater and Philpot must remove their uniforms and clamber into spacesuits before launch. ‘But my suit is at Fort Glenn,’ Philp complains. ‘This one’s too big for me.’
‘It’s regulations sir,’ says the Corporal-Pilot. ‘In case of accident.’
And they strap in and the plane sweeps down the runway in regular flight, and climbs over the eastern seaboard in regular flight. Philp fidgets in his seat, unhappy in his spacesuit, which doesn’t fit quite right. Slater peers through the window at the ground sinking away below him. ‘Don’t you never get tired of looking out of airplane windows?’ asks Philpot, grumpy in his ill-fitting suit.
‘I don’t suppose I do,’ replies Colonel Slater, letting his eye rest on the view below him, receding below him, the faceted running bulge and dip of the Appalachians, the morning sun stroking their eastern flanks; the moon-coloured clouds clumping and stretching through clear air over the mountains; the sheer clarity and depth of deep air. Halfway into the flight the Quanjet fires its engine, and flight becomes much more rapid. In minutes the window is blak.
They park at a small civilian house, hurtling through the hurtling Uplands, and are greeted by two depressed-looking natives. There is a smell of sour milk in this house, and too much detritus is floating through the air; papers, crumbs, kit, a sok. It has the air of being seedy, a house defeated.
‘Your suits, gentleman,’ says one of the Uplanders. She was more than drug-thin. Indeed she looked actually half-starved: her cheekbones making two sharp ^s on each side of her long ↓nose, her eyes bulging like gobstoppers. ‘I take it,’ she said, ‘that you have your own personal transponders, in these suits? Please remove them. We’ll keep them here, under the watchful eye of your pilot and his second officer.’
They do this. Both the Corporal-Pilot and his second have pistols in their hands; they are floating together by the porch door, watching carefully.
‘Are you carrying weapons?’ the second Uplander asks Slater and Philp. He is similarly thin, with an unpleasant red moss pattern of broken bloodvessels in his eyeballs.
‘We are not,’ said Colonel Philpot. ‘Care to frisk?’ He holds his arms out.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ says the woman. ‘Please come with me.’
‘Are we going straight to meet Gradisil?’ asks Slater.
The woman, leading them out, does not reply.
The Uplander plane is small, and in a poor state of repair compared to military craft. There are bare wires poking through holes in the wall. The door, in the nose, is manual release, and the handle is very obviously bent. It takes the starved-looking woman several goes before the nose gets heaved shut, and then she has to apply a long strip of putty-style sealant to the gap, presumably to preserve cabin pressure. She straps herself into the pilot’s seat almost listlessly. They break away from the house, drift briefly, and then power up the Elemag and angle down, piking up speed.
‘Do you have a name?’ Slater asks.
She does not reply.
There’s a hiatus.
Um —
‘You’d think,’ Philp complains, shortly, ‘that they could have got a suit that fitted me better than this one. It’s not like I’m an abnormal-size guy, or anything.’
They fly on in silence.
‘So,’ says Philp, after long talkless moments have passed. ‘Marina pleased about the promotion?’
‘Oh?’
‘You called Marina, I saw. Told her about the promotion? She pleased?’
‘Sure is.’
‘Of course she is, the old lady, of course she is. You’re luky to have Marina, Slayer. You’re a luky guy.’
‘I’m a luky guy,’ Slater agrees.
‘Wat I mean, she’s beautiful. And hey she adores you — ’
‘And Daria,’ says Slater, smiling loyally.
‘Sure,’ says Philp, nodding. ‘That’s right.’
The talking dries up. It seems as though there’s nothing to say. The body of the plane throbs with the weird action of the Elemag.
Eventually Philp says: ‘so, we’re finally going to meet the great Gradisil. Finally meeting her face to face. The gre-e-at Gr.’
‘I guess so.’
‘Grr-grr. Meet her face to face. I’ll confess I’m excited.’
And they are silent again, as if they really have nothing to say to one another. After so many years!
There’s the gathering pull forward of deceleration as the plane climbs.
With a worryingly heavy bump the plane doks at another house. The anonymous pilot leans the mass of her leg against the release lever, and squeezes the nose open. There is a burst of breeze, and crumbs and grit is suked past Slater and Philpot’s faces. ‘Maybe we should put our helmets on,’ Philp jokes.
The air pressure settles. ‘In there,’ gestures the pilot.
Slater wonders whether the pilot is coming too, but it seems not. He leads the way, with Philpot floating behind him, through the nose and into a spacious and almost entirely empty room.
‘Finally getting to meet the famous Gradisil,’ says Philpot cheerily. ‘Hey, I’m almost excited.’
But Gradisil is not in the room. Nobody is in the room, and it is almost bare of furnishings except for a screen tagged to the wall halfway down.
‘Wat’s this?’ Philpot asks. ‘Is this a staging-post? Who is it will be taking us to the real rendezvous?’
Slater hand-over-hands to the screen, examines it. There’s an on-button. He pushes this.
Gradisil’s face on the screen is immediately recognisable. ‘Hello Lieutenant,’ she says.
‘Madame President,’ says Slater, smoothly, floating bak a little so his face isn’t filling the camera. ‘Actually I’ve recently been promoted.’
‘Colonel Slater,’ says Philpot, offscreen.
‘Congratulations,’ says Gradisil, gravely. ‘It’s a well-deserved promotion I’m sure.’
A shudder runs through the room. It is the door being shut. There is only a small porthole window in the door itself to give a view of the outside, and after Philp has pushed himself and swum over to this he reports angrily: ‘Hey, she’s disengaged. She’s flying off.’
Slater takes the situation in his stride. He sighs. ‘Madame President,’ he says, trying for a stately and slightly disappointed tone of voice. ‘Wat is going on? This is not a smart play on your part, Madame President.’
‘I’m sorry about this, Colonel.’
‘You intend to hold us prisoner? This won’t achieve anything, I’m afraid. The war is over, and I’m afraid you lost. This sort of kidnapping is not an act of war now, it’s merely a criminal action. You’re merely opening yourself to prosecution.’
‘We do not intend to hold you prisoner,’ says Gradi. ‘I am sorry about this, I really am. I was just looking you up on USUP web. You have two children, I see.’
Slater has that sensation of sudden insight, that static-electric sensation in his scalp, that tumbling sensation in his torso as if he were about to fall. I’m sure you’ve had that sensation, that numinous gleam of sudden realisation, the peek into the imminent future. Suddenly Slater comprehends. ‘Philp,’ he calls, his voice loud in the small room. ‘Put your helmet on now.’
But Philpot, at the door, is slow. ‘Wat?’
Slater has pulled the helmet up from its poket at the upper-rear of his suit, pulled the smart plastic up and over and fastened it at his collar in front of his chin. The flaps fold down, and he fumbles with the buttons. ‘Philp,’ he urges, his voice muffled now. ‘Do it.’
‘That won’t do you any good, I’m afraid, Colonel,’ comes Gradi’s mournful voice. ‘I truly am sorry. It’s nothing personal.’
The left flap is fastened, and the right is almost there when the door to the room explodes. The whole far wall explodes, and it’s bang and it’s whsh. Flash of white-orange light. There’s the briefest of blazes, a cupola of fire that swallows Philp and dashes hungrily at Slater, but is suddenly inverted, suked away as the air that feeds it vanishes into the nothingness outside. Slater is yelling. He feels his body yanked and twisted, a wet rag that some muscular force is trying to wring dry. He is shouting, his voice inside his helmet is very large in his ears. His hands are ungloved, and the catch on the right side is not properly fastened, although the smart-plastic has sealed the side and front flaps to make his helmet a clear dome with two creases in it running bak of shoulder to front of shoulder. But the catch on the right needs to be fastened, and he needs to - get - his - gloves - on — he is not properly suited up for spacewalk.
The room bukles and spins.
Adrenalin gives everything a weird clarity and precision. He sees the whole length of the room wobble and flex, and the sheared chunks of the far wall vanish twinkling into the darkness with extraordinary rapidity. He is falling along the throat of the room, and he forms the phrase in his mind, with exaggerated exactness, my hands are ungloved. He wonders how tight the elastic seal at his wrist is. He wonders if he will be able to get his hands into the gloves, which are flapping like pennants on the suit sleeves as he is thrown forward.
But no sooner has he started to wonder this than the room has vanished from around him, and he’s tumbling head over heels, or heels over head, and his naked hand in plain vacuum reaches up to the right of his collar and cliks the button closed.
The primary sensation he is aware of is as if he has plunged his hands into ice water. The fingers are puffy and unresponsive, like the fingers of a very very old man. Like, he thinks, the fingers of a dying man.
No.
And then his hands have gone numb, and he can’t feel anything from the wrist down any more.
Get the gloves on, he thinks. Get the gloves on. The phrase has its own lolloping rhythm. Get the gloves on. Get the gloves on. Get the gloves on.
His left hand, working like a leper’s hand, nudges and manoeuvres the right glove over his right hand. He pushes, he pulls, feels the rasp of fabric against the skin of the fingers. He strains his hand into the glove, strains in it, and then reflexively tries patting his wrist to secure the fit.
He is aware of sensation returning to his right hand. The way he is aware of sensation returning to his right hand is that it hurts, is that fuk, it hurts. The fingers all feel broken. They throb, and the skin burns, and the slightest movement hurts.
I wonder, he thinks to himself, if I’m in pre-shok. I wonder if this sense of mental calmness will soon be overtaken with panic, or actual shok. Before that happens, he thinks, I must get my left glove on.
He reaches round with his right hand, makes clumsy grasping motions, but every flex of each finger joint is agony. Closing his grip hurts in a dozen places, and unclasping the hand hurts in a dozen different places. And he can’t seem to find the glove.
The world is right there, immediately before him, an enormous gleaming balloon, rotating impossibly about his head, spinning its vast airy curve round and round and round.
Can’t find the other glove. He reaches, he reaches, he reaches, his breath is desperate in the enclosed space of the helmet. Where is the glove?’
Stop this.
Stop.
Stop this. Be calm. Calm down. It must be there somewhere.
With his gloved right hand he works systematically around his wrist, ignoring the pain of his hands. He finds the short cord by which the glove is tethered to the sleeve, but there is no glove at the end of it. This takes a moment to sink in. It has fallen off. Fuk, that’s not good. He’s lost it, and that’s not good. But how can it have fallen off? This is a USAF suit, made to the highest standards. Calm, and be calm, calm, think.
Slater thinks. His breath scurries and rasps inside the helmet. Perhaps the glove snagged on something as he was suked out of the exploded house. Perhaps it was ripped off. It hardly matters how. Wat matters is that he has no glove.
This is not a situation for which he has been trained.
The whole enormous balloony Earth twirls and twirls about the axis of his head. His head has become the axle-point of the spinning cosmos.
He raises his left hand and holds it in front of his helmet. The hand is blak, like it has been dipped in dye. Is that bruising, he wonders, a total bruising around the whole of the hand? Or is it frostbite, a freeze-dried hand? There’s the vaguest throbbing numbness somewhere in the centre of the palm. Perhaps it’s not quite dead yet. But then it won’t be long. Won’t be long before the hand is dead.
Won’t be long, Slater thinks, before I’m dead too.
Got to get my breathing under control, or I - will - [puff] — hyper - [puff] — venti - [puff] — late. Late as in the late Colonel Slater.
He centres himself. He has to think through his options. He has to set his transponder going, wait to get piked up. But he has no transponder, of course; he surrendered that to the skinny woman.
This is such a stupid play for the Uplanders, he thinks. That cadaverous Uplander waiting in that house, with the Corporal-Pilot and his second officer pointing guns at him. When he and Philp do not return they’ll take him into custody. I guess he doesn’t mean anything to the Upland cause. But this is a crazy play. It’s plain terrorism; it’ll only result in a military crakdown. Perhaps that’s wat Gradisil was angling for.
Not angling with my d
ead body, he thinks. Not if I can help it.
But he can’t help it. This, he knows.
The first question is: has he been given a right-hand or a left-hand suit? The odds are on the former, but it’s possible it’s the latter. Also, it is hard to tell when his fingers are so sore-numb. But he can just feel the nubbins of the control inside the glove; so at least it’s a right-hand suit; and that’s something.
Slater applies pressure, and the Elemag fibres charge, and his rotation slows, and his rotation stops. All those filament fine lines of force through which he is hurtling and spinning. With his fingers he conjures a weak Elemag field out of his suit, meshes with the invisible contours of his environment, orients himself. The world has stopped circling his head, like a cartoon of an astronaut hit on the head with a comedy mallet. It steadies on his right hand. He wobbles, a little. His battery is too weak properly to manoeuvre himself.