“From his tats, it looks like he was a member of the Merchant Navigators, but I don’t know if that’s what broke him.” The nurse shrugged. “Could have been later. Medical data from before Handover is difficult to find.”
“I see.” Such a lack of administrative tail was one of the many reasons I had chosen to move to Nouvelle Geneve in the first place.
“I will keep an eye out for anything else on him, if you like?”
“And send those trial records to me, please.”
“Sure.”
I got his name, thanked him, and assured him there would be a little something for him in the next packet. True to our unspoken contract, he saw to my comfort and left me to my thoughts.
As I drifted off to sleep, I resolved to keep an eye on the comings and goings of this particular Broken. Something odd was going on, and I sensed opportunity.
RELEASE
“Monsieur Borges, may I have a moment?”
I started, almost bumped my head against the locker. I had been so engrossed in a final check of my hardsuit I hadn’t heard anyone enter the morgue. I carefully put the thigh guard down, pasted a respectful smile on my face, and turned around.
When the warden asks, the smart inmate bloody well treats it as an order.
“Of course, Warden Tailleur,” I said, taking in the warden and his companion.
I had scarcely laid eyes on Tailleur since my arrival. We had made arrangements the first time we met. I did not offer a bribe. He did not demean us both by asking for one. We instead came to an understanding that was to our mutual benefit. I would be respectful, and so would he.
Standing next to the warden was a woman in a civilian jumpsuit, a hardsuit carrier hanging from one shoulder. I would have called her nondescript but for her eyes, which were an arresting shade of green-yellow I don’t think I’ve seen before or since. She didn’t speak, but allowed the warden to make introductions.
“Dr. Azelié Dumont, this is Monsieur Prometheus Borges. He has charge of the site you will be visiting.
“Monsieur Borges, Mademoiselle Dumont is a professor at the university. She wishes to observe your work site firsthand as part of her studies. Please see that she is accommodated in every way. I will send a lighter to fetch her at, say”—he looked at the woman for approval—“seventeen hundred hours?”
She nodded.
“Of course, Warden,” I said, admiring Tailleur’s style. He could have easily said I was the gang boss who would be chaperoning her to the mine and gone on to threaten me to impress her with his importance, but he hadn’t. He could also have told her story entire, leaving us nothing to talk about on our trip—he didn’t. He could have promised dire repercussions should she be harmed, but we both knew anyone who offered violence to a visitor or staff on my job site was not getting off AL-1517B alive.
Respect—it makes transitioning between all our individual little spheres so much smoother.
It may sound odd, but I sometimes miss Warden Tailleur.
“I will leave you in his capable hands, then.”
“Thank you,” Dumont said.
“Mademoiselle. Monsieur.” He gave a little bow and departed.
“I’ve got some final suit checks to make. Have you gone through yours?”
She nodded. “I’ll check it again.”
I smiled in approval. I have always been a firm believer that critical gear should be cleaned and checked often and thoroughly.
She hung her suit and started her checks.
She made no comment on what had to be, for her, odd behavior from the warden.
Then again, I had no idea what they had discussed prior to seeking me out, and paying complete attention to checks can mean the difference between death and a minor inconvenience, so I gave her a pass.
I only grew suspicious when we boarded the lighter and saw no equipment other than her hardsuit. She was also far too comfortable with silence. I had known a few assassins in my day, and they had been similarly quiet.
“So, what brings you here, Doc?” I asked, trying to allay my growing concerns when she had remained silent for half the trip out.
“I wanted to observe something.”
“Oh? The mating habits of the common inmate hold that much interest for you?” I asked, searching for a button, a lever, something I could use to pry some sense of her into the light.
“Not that kind of doctor,” she said. “I’m a PhD.”
“Sociologists study such things, don’t they?”
“I suppose they do, but I’m a physicist and mathematician . . .” She trailed off.
“What, then?” I asked, growing tired of her reticence.
“I’ve been working a rather difficult orbital mechanics problem involving the orbits of AL-1517B and SU-4222H.”
“Oh?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I couldn’t see why a physicist would need to visit us. I waited for her to elaborate, but she refused to, so I pressed: “Couldn’t you have just used data from the local shipping traffic?”
“Not in this case.”
“And you don’t need a lot of equipment for your observations?” I asked, gesturing at the nearly empty cargo space between us.
“Not in this case.” Her tone was meant to shut me up.
Fuck that. “Perhaps if you were to tell me what you need, I could be of some assistance?”
She looked me in the eye, jaw working. “I need to see for myself.”
“What?”
“All my models show an anomaly I cannot explain.” Her lip curled as if she smelled something foul. “Some data that just doesn’t make sense.”
“So the university sent you out here?”
She looked away, color rising in her cheeks. “No one sent me. I came on my own centime.”
That surprised me. And explained a lot.
“What is the nature of the anomaly?” I asked once I’d digested that information.
“Neither this asteroid nor SU-4222H should be in their respective orbits.”
“Should be?”
“I do not believe their orbits are natural. I think the mine sites are rich with heavy metals and rare elements because they were the original sites for the engines that pushed the asteroids into place.”
I smiled. “But humans haven’t been here long enough . . .” I trailed off as she shook her head and the implications started to sink in.
“It was not a human project. And I think it ended catastrophically.”
“But, that would mean—” I shut my mouth. I am not normally so slow on the uptake, I swear, but everyone knew that, despite exploring thousands of systems over hundreds of years, humanity had found no sign of an alien civilization, living or dead.
“That I’m crazy?” she said with what I took to be a bitter smile.
Remembering Renaud, I shook my head. “No, not crazy.”
She cocked her head, looking unconvinced of my sincerity.
“Oh, I don’t know the maths, but . . .” I trailed off. I am not a superstitious man, and don’t give much credence to madmen, but this would cost me very little, and might just be something my mother would be proud of, were she to learn of it. Decided, I turned to Dr. Dumont. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to ask for another inmate to join my crew.”
“Oh?” she said, brow raised in question.
By then I had a few years practicing Gallic shrugs, and offered one of my best. “He might shed some light on your mystery . . .”
MINING
“Lighter NBC-EB, we are two minutes out.” The lighter pilot’s broadcast was in the clear and over all channels.
“Stand by one minute at present range, lighter NBC-EB,” my foreman, Mohammed, said. “We are detonating.”
“Copy, standing by one minute.”
We had already cl
eared the trench, and once we’d all checked in, Mohammed detonated the string of explosives. As the rubbling charges shook the slurry of icy stone beneath my hovering body, I took a moment to survey my little kingdom in the big black. AL-1517B is shaped like a mangled kidney. My new mine site was on the face of the inner curve on the sunward side, about ten minutes from the main colony. It was shaped like a rectangle of about two hundred meters by one hundred meters.
Prison-orange hardsuits and IFF beacons, glaring to both the naked eye and on my HUD, swarmed back into the trench carved about waist high right through the middle of the long axis of the rectangle. In a matter of moments, mined material was on its way to the refinery.
One of the lessons I’ve learned in my time is that smooth is fast in most things. And my crew worked with a smooth precision that made them very fast indeed.
“You are clear to land, NBC-EB,” Mohammed said.
I watched as Renaud’s ride crested the extremely short horizon and began its descent into the irregular, shallow bowl carved into the asteroid’s surface by human tools. I called up production data from the site on my HUD while I waited. I smiled at the numbers. Mining might not be something I had any training for, but I do know how to assemble and run a crew. Even in my absence, they had produced significantly more rare metals and elements than any of the other teams working AL-1517B. Part of that was luck, of course: we were following a vein of material the previous team had uncovered before ending their term and vacating for home and eventual out-processing. But every member of my crew was well motivated: I needed something to keep my mind off my situation, and they wanted those little extras pleasing me, and the warden, secured.
Procuring Renaud’s immediate release to my crew and quick transport out to the mine had cost me some favors, but nothing out of pocket. Such an inexpensive arrangement would have been impossible if the crew hadn’t been so productive. I was, I admit, rather proud of my achievement.
“So, who is it you sent for?” Dumont asked on a private channel. After explaining her findings and the data she claimed proved it, she’d spent the rest of the shift taking measurements and examining the site. As she was decently skilled with her suit and stayed out of the way, no one had complained. I knew the crew wanted to know what she was doing here, but no one but Mohammed had asked as yet, and his only question had been to find out if she could work heavy equipment. I do like task-oriented people, and Mohammed’s focus had, he’d told me, cost him a marriage. He hadn’t told me he’d murdered her and her lover when he discovered them, leading to his incarceration here. That I had to learn from prison staff.
“Doctor, before I make the introductions, I need you to promise to keep an open mind.”
“That sounds . . . ominous?” I could hear what I took to be a smile in her voice.
“Can you? Keep an open mind, I mean?”
“Monsieur Borges, you have said you think this person might help me. You are the first person with half a brain who didn’t look at me like I was an idiot when I mentioned the possibility of an alien intelligence fiddling with orbits in this system. The least I can do in return is, as you say, keep an open mind.”
“Good. I can’t promise anything, but . . .” I left it at that. Renaud was Broken, and I might have just heard what I wanted to hear from him. And even if she was right, and he was right, there was no guarantee they would be able to communicate. Broken were called such for a reason.
The lighter docked.
Renaud shot from the hatch almost before it had fully opened.
“Monsieur Borges, thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” the Broken babbled, his suit describing an alarmingly fast arc toward me. “Can you hear it?”
“Renaud, slow down, please,” I said, hoping he would slow his speech as well as his approach.
“I can hear it! Aren’t you excited? Can’t you hear it? I assume that’s why you got me out!” he said, each phrase hard atop the next. He did, however, slow his approach, though not until the last second. I was ready to evade him when he maneuvered to a smooth halt not three meters in front of me.
“Fuck.” Dr. Azelié Dumont said the word with feeling.
“Is that an offer?” Renaud asked. For once he actually waited for an answer. She didn’t give one. I turned to look at her through the faceplate of her helmet. The physicist’s expression made it evident she thought herself the butt of some vile joke.
“Open mind, Doctor,” I reminded her. “Open mind.”
“But not too open! That’s how you go mad, you know!” Renaud added.
OPENING UP
“I don’t know about this, boss.” Mohammed did not like Renaud. He liked the fact I was doing what the Broken wanted even less.
“Will the charges put anyone at risk?”
“No, but . . .”
“But we lose a day or two of work. I’ll cover it. We’re well ahead of quota anyway, thanks to your hard work.”
“If you say so, boss.”
“I do.”
He jetted off toward the far end of the trench for a final check of the pattern. Renaud followed in his wake, surprisingly quiet. At least I hoped he was being quiet and not broadcasting on another channel something mad to my crew, who were in the bunkhouse, eating well and enjoying some liquor I’d brought to celebrate my return.
“What is he about?” the physicist asked.
I made sure we were on a private channel before answering. “Renaud? He’s Broken.”
“So I gathered. Why do you think he knows something?”
“Renaud said he committed the crime that got him sent here because of the song he was hearing from up here.”
“So? Don’t most schizophrenics hear voices?”
“They do. But schizophrenics are not Broken. And Broken don’t get sent to penal colonies. They’re too volatile and dangerous. They get housed and doped to the gills, not sent out to an environment where they might do harm to others.”
“So the magistrate screwed up?”
“No. I checked the records. Renaud was able to suppress his madness for the duration of the trial. Even when the defense called in a panel of psychologists and medical experts, they couldn’t find evidence he was Broken.”
“Then he’s not Broken,” she said with bitter conviction.
“Just like evidence of alien civilizations doesn’t exist?”
“That’s not—” She closed her mouth.
“Not fair or the same, right? I know. Look, I asked you to keep an open mind. This is costing you nothing, and might just provide an answer or two.”
“But why are you doing this?”
Long-suppressed memories rose up to threaten my composure as I searched for an explanation that would suit. “Because Broken often seem to know stuff they can’t reasonably know. Because if, like Renaud says, something called him here and made him right in the head while he lied to the magistrates and the experts, then maybe that thing could offer us a way to fix the Broken.” My throat was closing by the time I finished, making the words come out in a choked, harsh whisper I hadn’t heard in almost a century . . .
“Charges ready, boss,” Mohammed said on the general push, covering whatever Dumont might have said.
“Right. Get clear and we’ll set them off,” I answered.
“Copy. Clearing. Renaud?” Mohammed moved behind the shelter of the bunkhouse on the far side of the dig.
“Copy. Can’t wait to meet the singer!” he said, jetting smoothly away from the trench workings.
“Detonating.”
MARVELS
“What the fuck is that?” I whispered.
“It’s the singer—or part of it,” Renaud said, wiping some slurry from the smoking object/concept/color/object/color/concept/object? The thing Renaud had uncovered seemed to change physical dimensions every time I blinked or looked away.
“Jesus Chri
st,” Dumont breathed. “I never . . .”
“Are you seeing what I am?” I asked.
I gave up trying to fix it in my head but forced my mind to take an average of its appearance in order to place it in some meaningful category of thing. It was, perhaps, glowing a bright white-green, mostly describing a gentle arc approximately one hundred centimeters in length and fluctuating at about ten centimeters in width.
“You bet.” Renaud was gleeful, gloved hands digging more of the amorphous thing from its grave.
“Fuck,” Dumont said.
“What?” Renaud and I asked, nearly simultaneously.
“Maths. Some mathematicians and physicists theorized how objects formed of or in a higher-order dimension might not possess a fixed state to lower-order perceptive capabilities like ours.”
I wasn’t sure I understood her, but I for damn sure didn’t understand what I was looking at.
“Oooh . . .” Renaud’s gasp sounded as if he’d been stroked along every nerve at once. The object he held seemed to melt and run into another form, this one more boxlike and far smaller.
“Shit,” I said. Some part of the thing had seemed to penetrate Renaud’s hardsuit for an instant.
Renaud suddenly went rigid, arms and legs flung straight out at his sides like Vitruvian Man. He slowly drifted, gurgling, from the surface of AL-1517B.
The thing, half pulled from its grave by Renaud, changed again.
I reached for Renaud, but Dumont slapped my glove away. “Don’t! He may be contaminated.”
I checked his beacon. All sensors in the green.
“And don’t tell me you checked! We have no fucking idea what happened, so the suits can’t very well test for it.”
“Boss?” Mohammed’s orange suit appeared about ten meters above the stricken man, cargo capture gun aimed and ready.
“Do it.”
A fat, spinning, ten-centimeter-long dart chugged from the gun on a puff of gas. The net deployed in a glittering circle that captured Renaud’s immobile form. The edges of the net, striking the surface of the asteroid, immediately bonded with it, bringing the Broken to a halt.
Fantastic Hope Page 13