by B. V. Larson
Scarn thought about it. “Sure,” he said at last. “Why not? What could go wrong with trying to do the right thing?”
Scarn stared into the near edge of the happy partiers where Neva Savvan now gazed back at Scarn. She gave him a half-smile. Perhaps she was glad he’d showed up.
“You two have a lot of god damned nerve,” Turtle said. “And I thought I was crazy. She is beautiful though.” Turtle took another look at Scarn.
“He’s had four of those,” the barman said from behind them. “Four komodos.”
“Focus, Scarn. You’re drifting. She’s a guest originally, you know. From one of the richest suites.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said after a moment. “Her parents must have freaked when she went crew.”
“But it doesn’t make any difference to you, does it?”
“No.”
Turtle leaned closer to Scarn. “You know what I find psychopathic here? She’s your direct supervisor’s spouse and the mistress of the captain, but she’s making eyes at you. Even worse, you’re thinking about how to do something about it. Two seconds of sanity, Scarn—that’s all it would take for you to see it. ”
Scarn pushed himself away from the bar. “I’ll go speak to Stattor,” he said.
“Tell him we’re being invaded. Do it before you puke.”
Scarn’s mind was floating, just a little. He drifted into the party-goers, and they closed around him like a school of minnows in an algae tank.
Everyone’s face was slightly distorted, rodent-looking. It had to be an effect from the komodos.
When Neva saw him leave the bar, she moved to intersect his path in the anonymous middle of the crowd.
Amid all the others, his gaze fixed on her strangely blue eyes. She was finally close, within easy reach. The tips of her hidden breasts touched his chest. She was as tall as he was and, inches away, her eyes looked into his.
“I don’t understand this,” she whispered. “I hardly know who you are.”
Neva put her fingers at her neckline and pulled the spider-mesh down an inch to show him the implant he knew would be there.
“I’m a guest. From the highest house. I shouldn’t be reacting to a breather.”
The implant allowed her kind to regulate her rationality, anything from ice queen to raver. Lots of rich guest girls had them. They liked to be in control when they went out of control.
In the crowd, no one could see below waist-level. Scarn’s hand moved forward to take hers.
“Why do you touch me?” she asked. Her words sounded more like an audible thought than a question. Her fingers pressed into his palm. “Why do you stare at me?” Her dark hair wavered around her face. “What are we going to do?”
Scarn saw a trace of fear in her eyes. He felt lost in his own desire and wasn’t able to imagine how they might look to others.
Around them, party-goers began clapping. Over Neva’s shoulder he saw the grinning, sweating Stattor. The man had paused for applause and was now looking their way.
Perhaps Stattor had said something interesting to the upper-deckers about a new mineral discovery in the mines, or a planet that might support human life. Scarn knew he should clap, and he almost remembered the mission Turtle had sent him on—but he didn’t care right now.
Only the woman inches in front of him was entirely real to him now. She was real down to the desire he smelled in her blood. It was so strong he could sense it in the nervous energy that radiated from her hand into his.
Her lips barely moved when she spoke. “Take me away. I want us to be alone.”
Scarn’s eyes scanned the room—he was in the middle of a crowd. Could he actually hope to sneak out, let alone with this exceptional woman?
The answer was immediate and obvious—it was impossible.
It was one thing for a pair of cleaned-up breathers to come and go. They weren’t important. They were barely tolerated.
But there were people watching Neva. Any high-level guest had a security detail that would note her every move. Dallen, her husband, had only to look in their direction. Stattor as well was probably monitoring his mistress’ location.
Scarn’s rational mind, despite four powerful drinks, told him that seeing her alone was impossible.
But he kept looking around, searching for a way, any way, they could get away with it.
A commotion broke out near the front entrance. A tall man was having a seizure. He hunched his shoulders high behind his neck and held his arms and hands in front of him like a scurrying rodent.
Several women shrieked and ran to the far corners with their men following close behind.
The stricken guest took a dozen tight, creepy steps one way and then spun around. He quick-stepped back the way he’d come.
Fearing a likelihood of contagion, people flowed along the walls like a fluid, staying as far away from him as they could get.
It was just a stress reaction... no, it was a viral infection... no, it was a pseudo-psychosis...
Or maybe Turtle was right.
Scarn had discounted the rumors he’d heard. People claimed that in random sectors at first two or three people would zerk out. Then small groups would go mad, and then, the story always finished, so many people had been affected that Security came and sealed off the entire area and called it a construction zone. The rumor had seemed too extreme to be credible.
Chapter NINETEEN
A security team advanced through the room of partiers. They were the captain’s men, and at the moment they were all out of smiles.
They subdued the tall man savagely. He fell to the floor and was stormed with booted feet, slamming into his back and midsection until he went limp.
Scarn had never let go of Neva’s hand. He hadn’t even considered doing so. He took the opportunity of the confusion and focus on the madman to move his body closer to hers and then against her as he stared into her eyes.
He wanted to remember the curve of her cheek and the dark chaos of her hair. He wanted to brand her image onto his memory. He didn’t care who saw his lips touching hers....
Turtle bumped into them, whispering so loudly into Scarn’s ear that his breath was like a blast of steam. “Are you crazy? Captain’s coming!”
Turtle jammed his thick body between Neva and Scarn.
Scarn felt a burst of outrage that anyone would interrupt them, but after five seconds, he had raked together enough discretion to look around and appear interested in the madman again, who was being dragged toward the lifts by his backward bent arms. They looked dislocated.
Neva had faded away. She’d vanished into the crowd the moment their hands and lips had parted.
Captain Stattor approached in his motorized throne. At his side was the black-haired, bearded Commander Dallen who waved his willowy hands, while he stooped and his receding chin busily chattered in the captain’s ear.
The fat man’s sweating face showed humble happiness, the only emotion he ever displayed in public. Mushroom farming production up five percent? Intense humble happiness. If someone told him that Level 12 had blown out with massive casualties, he would invent soft-brained homilies about honor and patriotism to go with his standard humbly happy expression.
“We will celebrate their honor. Our thoughts and prayers will be with them,” or, with abrupt simplicity, “We’ll look into it.” That was the easiest lie of all.
As Stattor and Dallen headed directly toward him, Dallen continued to ferociously explain something to Stattor. Perhaps he was detailing Scarn’s previous destruction of UT equipment, or one of them had spotted him pawing Neva. It was hard to say which crime he was about to be accused of.
“...control,” Commander Dallen was saying to the Captain. “...it’s the essence of human destiny. We—” Dallen looked up and took half a dozen seconds to register that the someone in front of them was the person he had put on two weeks’ forced leave.
“Good evening,” Scarn said, and he introduced himself to Stattor by name. He re
ached forward and did the obligatory touching of his flesh. Close up, he noted that the captain’s face showed traces of great discomfort.
“Ah, Mr. Scarn,” Captain Stattor said. His voice was reedy, constricted-sounding, as though the fat in his neck pressed heavily on his larynx. “You showed so much promise. But I hear that you’ve damaged some of our finest equipment.” The eyes in his sweat-beaded face squinted even more. “You mustn’t do that.”
Commander Dallen leaned forward. “You could lose more than your temper, Scarn. Control. That’s what sets us aside from trashlife. You saw that fool of a guest tonight. He lacked control. When we direct ourselves, we direct our destiny.”
Puerile statements of the obvious annoyed Scarn, but he forced a smile. “You should write that down. But we psychonauts could direct our destinies better if UT didn’t use third rate replacement parts. Those machines I disabled could have killed the next psychonaut that used them. Turtle and three psychonauts in my section got flashed because their repaired—repeat: repaired— retrieval systems were defective. Counting the one I was using, that makes five units that I know about. Somehow, I lived.”
“That must’ve been an accident,” Dallen said smoothly.
“Who makes these parts?” Scarn asked Stattor, overstepping all kinds of boundaries. “Slaves on their lunch breaks?”
The fat man’s wonderfully humble expression was starting to look more like grimacing endurance, but his shoulders jiggled in private mirth.
Commander Dallen radiated slick disgust. “Don’t forget your manners and talk yourself into an unpleasantness,” he said. “You’re acting disturbed, Scarn. Perhaps an examination is in order.”
“I am disturbed, as we all will be when we start finding defective replacement parts in the life-support system.” That fourth Komodo had given Scarn a suicidal impulse to say what was on his mind.
“We wouldn’t allow that to happen,” Stattor was saying in his constricted wheeze. “No, no, no. Heavens, Mr. Scarn. You don’t seem to be enjoying the celebration! You have such... serious concerns.”
“It’s one of my many afflictions,” Scarn said, trying to check his impulses. “Every time defective equipment tries to kill me, or I get caught up in the middle of a parasitic invasion, I have trouble dancing the night away. I get nervous about it. It’s a personal short-coming.”
“Invasion?” Stattor asked, turning to Dallen. “By parasites? Who’s being invaded?”
“Those sealed-off sectors throughout Tarassis,” Scarn answered. “You know, sir, the places allegedly undergoing repair or renovation. I have it on good authority that those are quarantined areas, filled with damaged crew. Isn’t that right? As captain, you should know. Is anyone else alarmed by this? Or was it all explained away in a memo I didn’t get? That poor fellow your security detail just stomped and dragged away—he’s not headed for the infirmary. He’s going straight to quarantine.”
“Quarantined sectors?” Captain Stattor demanded. He still looked baffled and amused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, my good man.”
Right then, Scarn saw how easily the man could lie. Of course he knew about it. It was his ship. How could he not know?
And Commander Dallen? He looked blankly at Stattor and shrugged to indicate his lack of knowledge. He lied almost as well as his captain.
“A parasitic invasion?” Dallen asked dismissively. “You’re drinking komodos tonight, aren’t you?” With his fingers, he made a bursting gesture at his forehead, to indicate what he thought of Scarn’s accusations.
“Komodos?” Stattor wheezed. “Is that a good drink?”
“Mildly hallucinatory,” Dallen explained. “It also increases paranoia and decreases inhibitions. They’re often abused by insecure people who feel they’ve lost control of their lives.”
Against inexhaustible ignorance, there was no defense. Scarn was just another cranky psychonaut projecting the enemies inside his head onto the world.
“Now, Scarn,” Dallen said, sternly. “I’ll give you thirty seconds to tell us what you know about this alleged ‘parasitic invasion,’ as opposed to what came to you as revelation.”
Stattor seemed interested, in a joyful yet humble manner.
“You saw the man over by the door,” Scarn said. “Who hasn’t seen that kind of thing? They’re doing to us what we’re doing to them, and Turtle can pinpoint the source of the invasion.”
“Invasion?” Stattor said through his fat-rolled lips. He waved his little arms. “Does he mean the pseudo-psychosis?”
“I believe so, Captain. It’s the stress of the work—the very nature of the work. Sometimes, for reasons unknown, their minds come back a bit confused. It’s usually temporary.”
As Dallen spoke, Scarn noticed for the first time that the man had no eyelashes. That, when added to his receding chin, made his head look snake-like.
“Sometimes,” Stattor said, “regardless of the nobility of the cause, a few good people are lost.” His chest rumbled, and he cleared his throat, never breaking his humble grin. “But this colony is all family, Mr. Scarn. Remember that. All one big family.”
“Some families eat their young,” Scarn said and was amazed at the pointlessness of his risk. The captain, however, seemed to think it amusing. When he chuckled, different parts of his body shook at different frequencies.
Scarn looked at him. Captain Stattor’s clothes seemed to become transparent, and Scarn saw him as he would see him naked. It was more of a larval look than that of a human. He saw Stattor with nubs for arms, a tiny head and even tinier eyes.
“Scarn,” Dallen was saying briskly, “how many of those have you had? What’re you seeing? Strange animals? What do I look like?”
“I wouldn’t let you babysit anything you could eat.”
Stattor sputtered and laughed out loud. Sweat was now rolling off his chins and soaking into his shirt. “Let me try one of those komodos! A double!” He moved himself toward the bar on his broad humming chair.
Dallen clasped his hands behind his back and smiled pleasantly. “I know Stattor pretty well,” he told Scarn, “and now he knows you. To your misfortune, I imagine. Enjoy your evening.”
Dallen walked off, following after the Captain.
Scarn stood there, slowly enveloped by the milling crowd. He wondered if he should be horrified at what he’d said.
He’d blurted out a dozen doom-laden sentences in front of his boss and his captain. His heart pounded everywhere in his body. When Stattor awakened in the morning, he would certainly remember the comment about families eating their young. Scarn’s name would go on some list along with other auxiliary fuels to be fed into the core—if he wasn’t already there for wrecking UT equipment.
It was just like when he’d destroyed the probe units. Just like when he laid eyes on Neva Savvan. His rational mind had emptied, and he’d been victimized by his own chemistry.
Some part of him wondered if Dallen had it right about control. Control was the thing that separated guests and crew from breathers. At times, he and Turtle seemed to have very little of it
He wondered then if maybe he himself was dealing with some kind of possession... maybe some kind of lightweight version of it?
What he needed most at the moment was to get out of the press of bodies. He wanted to hear some silence, to get a deep breath, to reorient.
Passing the elevators, he reached an outer chamber near the hull. It was softly lit, carpeted and, because of Stattor’s presence, there was not a speck of dust anywhere.
As he made his way to the nearest observation lounge, he passed only two other couples, but they were too involved with each other to notice him.
Lounges were situated on the outer edges of Tarassis, and as he approached, he could feel the artificial gravity subtly shift under his feet.
In the lounge itself, through the transparent bubble overhead, he could see the rocky, sensor-covered surface of the great ship as it curved gently away. Beyond that very near hori
zon, the frozen turbulence of the galactic core was spread against blackness. A million suns as sharp as pin points surrounded the ship.
Somewhere out there spun a planet full of aliens who apparently knew of the adventurous humans aboard Tarassis. They were gradually coming aboard, driving the humans mad, but no one in charge seemed to be willing to take the matter seriously.
Chapter TWENTY
For several long moments, Scarn thought he was alone—but there was one other person in the lounge, seated in darkness against the far wall. Scarn went to the farthest-away formchair and dropped into it.
As it massaged and comforted him, he stared into the stars and re-imagined his infinite insignificance. Reduced, he would be two cups of dust, and a million years after his death, these millions of stars would look almost the same. Other species would look at the galaxy, as he was looking now, and feel the same insignificance anew.
And if those alien species were anything like Scarn, this wouldn’t make them cringe or recoil into hopelessness. Scarn’s guts firmed up and his attitude reformed itself: There were only two cups of dust at stake. So, stomp the accelerator. Get wherever faster.
“Why are you here?”
He had closed his eyes for a moment, but from the voice he knew who he would see when he opened them.
Neva Savvan’s hair flared around her face, and even in the dimness, he could see her eyes, the color of frozen atmospheres.
Scarn stood up and faced her, closely. “I said some things to Stattor that your husband thinks I’ll probably have to answer for. I needed to get away before I did myself any more damage.”
“My husband says a lot of things he doesn’t mean. He also says a lot of things that don’t mean anything.”
Scarn’s fingers touched her hand. At the contact, he felt something shift inside his head. It was as though some kind of field swept through and seized him.