Then he looked back up at her face and found it as pleasant as the rest of her. Her eyes were brown, her lips were full, her hair pulled back from her face, bound with a bright red ribbon behind her head and then cascading down her back. All in all, she was a delight for a connoisseur of feminine beauty, which Ladislas Rusko had been before he had found his true calling.
“What is your message then, Jillieman?” this girl asked while he gazed at her, her eyes coming to meet his as boldly as she spoke.
“What is your name, sister?” he asked in reply.
“Michelle Britt,” she answered, an odd expression on her lovely face, an expression he could not read.
“Michelle Britt, I am Ladislas Rusko. Have you heard of me?”
“Yes,” Michelle said, turning to glance at her silent companion and then back at Rusko. “I’ve seen you on the tri-D.”
“Then perhaps you know of my message,” he said, finally handing each of them one of his tracts.
It was only then that he really looked at the other girl, smaller than Michelle, and dressed in a similar garment, which revealed as much of her young beauty as it did of Michelle’s. There was perhaps an oriental cast to her features, and a special kind of prettiness about them, but not the same sort of sensuality he saw in Michelle, not the same sort of mystery he saw in her eyes.
“I’ve heard about it,” Michelle said.
“I preach love and understanding,” Rusko said, “for all beings.”
Michelle started to say something, but apparently changed her mind and said, “Do you really believe that crap?”
“Look at me and ask if I believe it. I have become a brother to all sentient beings. I am a human and I am a Jillie as well. Both are combined in me. Love and understanding are possible.”
Michelle shook her head, a strange kind of gleam in her eyes. “I don’t believe it.”
“But, sister, it is so.”
Michelle looked down at his naked loins. “You’re still a man.”
“You say that because I have no female organs,” Rusko said. “That is so. Our Jillie brothers are both male and female at once. I can be that too.”
Michelle looked doubtful, Rusko thought. “How?” she asked.
Rusko smiled. “There are ways. Had I a male lover here I could show you.”
“I don’t think I’d really care for a demonstration.”
“Men can make love to men and women can make love to women. You know this?”
“Sure.”
“And I can make love to either. Either can make love to me.”
“I know what you mean,” Michelle said. “I’ve seen it done. I’ve even tried it, but I don’t care for it.” She cast a pregnant glance at her companion, who averted her eyes and looked away.
“Ah, but to make love to a Jillie,” Rusko told her. “That is what must come next. Men and women making love with Jillies. Then this war can end.”
“Would you really go to bed with one of those things?” Michelle asked quietly, apparently not astonished by his statement.
“Of course,” Rusko said with sincerity. “This must be done if our universe is to be saved.”
“Well, there’s one of them in Asterport,” Michelle said.
“Yes, I know, but I have been denied permission to meet it. They will not allow me to go to the space station.”
“It’s dead,” the oriental-looking girl said, with perhaps pleasure in her voice.
“Dead?” Rusko asked.
The girl nodded. “Yesterday. It killed a government psychologist and tried to steal a scout ship. They killed it before it got away.”
“Oh, that is so sad, so terribly sad,” Rusko said. “I had hoped that understanding could begin. But they—the government—they do not know how to go about it.”
“And you do?” Michelle asked.
“Look at me. I am the way.”
“Man, have you got a Messiah complex.”
“Perhaps some men must.”
“Maybe,” Michelle said hesitantly, for the first time seeming unsure of herself.
“Think upon this, sisters. Think about all that I have said. You can yet see the truth of it.”
“Okay, I’ll think about it,” Michelle said.
“Forget it,” said the oriental-looking girl. “I’m going home before I get sick.”
“Jutta,” Michelle called, then paused. “I’ll see you later.”
“We’ve got a date for tonight, you know,” the girl said with something in her voice that may have been mixed anger and pity, and then she turned and walked away.
“What of you, Michelle?” Rusko asked. “Do I repel you?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you not leave as well?”
“I’m kind of a nut myself,” she said. “Sometimes I like crazy, ugly things.”
Something stirred within Rusko.
“It grows late,” he said. “I must return to my apartment for nourishment.” He paused, and then said hopefully, “but there is ordinary human food there too. Would you care to dine with me?”
“I’ve never seen a man without a stomach eat before,” she said, though what her eyes said Rusko could not tell. “Might as well.”
And as they turned and headed back toward the slidewalk that would take them across the city to the apartment Rusko had rented that morning, he told himself that this strange, perhaps perverted girl would do much more than just watch him take nourishment. And that was something that he needed very badly. Just how good was she going to be in bed? he wondered.
31
Five standard days had elapsed since the funeral of the crewmen slain during the abortive mutiny aboard the Pharsalus when First Officer Cling Reddick of the Iwo Jima did not report to the bridge to relieve Lieutenant Akin Darbi from his responsibility as Officer of the Bridge.
Lieutenant Darbi informed the captain, Daniel Maxel, who had just entered the bridge following a routine inspection tour of the ship.
“Thank you, Mr. Darbi,” Maxel said, concerned over this unusual behavior on the part of the usually efficient new first officer. Going to the bridge command console, which he now shared with Admiral Bracer when he was on the bridge, Maxel punched out the code numbers of the first officer’s cabin and then waited for a reply. None was forthcoming. When a second and a third try brought no response, Maxel went on to all-call. “Mr. Reddick,” he said into the microphone, his voice sounding throughout the cabins, corridors and passageways of the great starship, “this is Captain Maxel. Please contact me immediately. Mr. Reddick, please contact the captain on the bridge at once.”
After waiting for a few moments, Maxel then buzzed the ship’s sickbay, and was answered by Medical Aide First Rutha Jennin.
“Yes, captain,” the nurse said, two-thirds of her face swathed in plastiskin covering the hideous ruin done to her by Jillie small-arms fire.
“Has Mr. Reddick reported to sickbay?” he asked.
“No, sir,” the medical aide said. “Mr. Reddick hasn’t been here since his last physical day before yesterday. Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know. Thank you.”
Snapping off the communicator and waiting a few more moments for Reddick to respond to his all-call, Maxel wondered what could have become of him. Dammit, that just wasn’t like Cling to fail to show up for duty.
“Master-at-arms,” he said at last.
The young Marine sergeant, the only whole man present on the Iwo’s bridge, snapped to attention. “Sir,” he said loudly.
“Please go to the first officer’s cabin at once and see if you can locate him.”
“Yes, sir,” the young Marine said, did an about-face, and marched from the bridge.
While he waited, Maxel felt a growing sense of foreboding. Reddick was being eaten up by his anxieties. He had been ever since the starships lifted from Adrianopolis, but things had gotten worse in the last few days. Maxel had believed that Reddick was still capable of handling himself, of takin
g control of his emotions, his depressions, his despondency—but, and this thought frightened the new captain, but what if he hadn’t? What if Reddick were to break under the strain? What if he wasn’t as strong as he and Bracer had believed he was? What if…
The communications gear of Maxel’s command console buzzed. The captain’s prosthetic hand hit the switch and waited while the tank cleared to show the face of the young master-at-arms, an expression on that face of something approaching panic.
“Yes?” Maxel asked.
“Sir,” the master-at-arms said hesitantly, “sir, would you please come to Mr. Reddick’s cabin at once? Bring the admiral and Dr. Jaffe too, sir, please.”
“What is it, Phillian?” Maxel demanded of the master-at-arms.
“I think you’d better see for yourself, sir,” the other replied, his face growing more ashen as he spoke.
“Very well,” Maxel said. “I’ll be there at once.”
Quickly Maxel contacted both Admiral Bracer and the starship’s chief medical officer, and then left the bridge.
Bracer felt annoyed as he rolled down the corridor to meet Maxel. He had been in the officer’s galley, sipping a. cup of warm tea and discussing aspects of astrogation in the difficult nebular regions off Creon with the starship’s astrogator, Bene O’Gwynn, and Mr. Cumberland. It seemed that this was the first time in several days that he had been able to get his mind completely off the problems around him, and discuss something in a purely abstract way. And he had enjoyed matching wits with the keenness of Miss O’Gwynn’s mind. She was sharp, this once beautiful woman whose face and parts of her upper torso were now plastiskin and ceramics, and given time she might one day come into her own as a ship’s commander. And Cumberland—he was astonished at the chaplain’s knowledge of astrogation. He hadn’t imagined that he was as well-read a man as he was. But—Maxel’s call had interrupted him, and it had seemed urgent, and now it had plunged him back into the very anxieties he had been wanting to avoid. What had happened now?
“Reddick’s cabin,” Maxel said when he was close enough to speak.
“What the hell’s going on, Dan?” Bracer asked anxiously as they approached the section of the ship devoted to officers’ quarters.
“Beats me, sir. Phillian looked so upset that I didn’t press him about it.”
“You should have.”
“Yes, sir, I suppose I should have.”
“Remember it next time.”
“Yes, sir, I will.”
By this time they had reached the cabin. The hatch was standing open, and the master-at-arms and the medical officer were both inside. So was Mr. Reddick.
Reddick had taken an old, worn Sam Browne belt that must have dated back to his Academy days, and carefully fitted one end of the belt around the molding of the cabin’s central overhead light fixture. The other end was looped around the first officer’s neck. His feet dangled a good dozen centimeters from the deck, a meter from an overturned chair that he must have kicked away. Commander Cling Reddick, First Officer of the LSS Iwo Jima, was very dead.
“Suicide,” the medical officer said flatly.
“You’re sure?” Bracer asked in the same tone, knowing that was the only answer, but hoping that somehow the medical officer could find another explanation.
“Very sure, sir,” Dr. Jaffe said. “It’s suicide. The man was primed for it.” He looked down at the metabolism analyst in his hands and gazed at its readings for a few moments.
“Doctor Jaffe,” Bracer said slowly, feeling an emptiness inside himself that was more than that of his missing organs, “a few days ago you told me that he was as stable as any man on this ship.”
The medical officer looked up, forced a weak, uncertain smile onto his face. “Yes, I did, sir. He Was, I believe.”
“Are you saying that we’re all ready to do something like this?”
“No, no,” the medical officer answered, one hand going to his forehead in a feeble gesture of uncertainty, almost hopelessness. “What I mean is, well, Mr. Reddick was, a few days ago, as stable as you or me, if any of us can really be called stable. No, I mean, sir, what happened aboard the Pharsalus a few days ago…”
“The mutiny?” Bracer asked.
“Yes, sir,” Dr. Jaffe replied. “It did something to Mr. Reddick. It—well—he was, I suppose, holding out some kind of feeble hope that someone would do something like that and get away with it. He hoped, sir, that some dens ex machina would get us out of this mess. Er, pardon me, sir, I meant…”
“It is a mess,” Bracer said. “Go on.”
“Well, sir, when the Pharsalus mutiny failed, it killed something in him. It made him, well, see the uselessness of it, I suppose. From his standpoint, I mean, sir.”
“Thank you, doctor,” Bracer said, still feeling that emptiness. “How long has he been dead?” Maxel asked.
“Well, the analyst says about three and a half hours, maybe just a little more.”
“Would it do him any good to put him in cold-sleep?” Bracer asked.
“Well, normally it would, sir, but my readings also indicate that he took poison before he hanged himself, DBN-derivatives or something of that nature. I had heard that there were some aboard ship.”
“Dan, did you know anything about this?” Bracer asked.
“Yes, sir,” Maxel answered. “I didn’t want to bother you with it. We made some searches, but didn’t come up with anything.”
“Search some more then,” Bracer said.
“Yes, sir,” the Iwo Jima’s captain replied.
“Go on, doctor,” Bracer said.
“Well, the damage to his nervous system and his brain appears to be far too extensive. He must have taken a massive dose. No, sir, to answer your question, I don’t think cold-sleep would help. I’m sorry, sir.”
“So am I,” Bracer said and turned away and rolled from the cabin on the power treads of his body cylinder.
Commander Cling R. Reddick, First Officer of the LSS Iwo Jima was ejected into space. His body followed a slow trajectory out of sight, aided by a reaction pack strapped to his back. The body vanished in the direction of Breakaway’s sim, where in several months it would be cremated.
In a way Absolom Bracer envied him. It was very clean.
32
The meters and dials and gauges rose and fell, flickered their needles back and forth. Digital counters spun their number wheels, paused momentarily so that human eyes could read their figures, and spun again. Tape reels, both magnetic and paper, recorded this data, that information, sorted it, while other circuits relayed digests of the information to the central computer that collected all data, growing data that spelled out the simple fact that without replacement parts, without human reinforcements, the modulation station on the planet Breakaway would cease to function in a matter of standard weeks. And beyond and above the click and chattering of relays, the swish of spinning tapes, was the ever-present hum of power—and even at two-thirds normal, it was an awe-inspiring level of power.
Comm Tech Third Sheila Brandt stood in awe of that massive power, channeled up from the power generating station three thousand kilometers to the south of this, the modulation station that impressed intelligence onto the radio waves created by this enormous power. And though it inspired her, she knew that it was a great, dying beast. Even she could perceive that.
Out there on the surface her team and others like it had searched out every surviving element of the antenna array, other teams had reconnected those elements, and now power still flowed into them, climbed skyward toward the relay satellite. But with each passing hour the fabric of the antenna net grew slightly weaker, even as the power that fed it grew slightly weaker, and it had almost become a matter of guesswork as to which was going to give out first, the power station or the antenna.
And really, to those beyond Breakaway, to Earth and to the Paladine, it didn’t much matter which gave out first. When one did, it was over. The FTL link
would be broken, and even if the station were repaired within a few weeks, it would take years before the electromagnetic bridge was re-established with Hart and Obad Stations. FTL messages would stop at Hart and Obad and would have to be carried between them by spaceship, and right now there just weren’t enough ships available for courier duty.
This Sheila Brandt knew, as did every surviving person on Breakaway, and labor as they might, pushing themselves to the very limits of their endurance, there wasn’t a hell of a lot more they could do about it.
Breaking herself out of her trance, Sheila once again made her rounds, checking the dials and gauges and meters, noting the readings of each on the pad of paper on her clipboard. There had been a time, not so long ago, when all of this was done routinely by computer, but now the computers weren’t as reliable as they had been. People like Sheila had to assist the computers, and together they might keep things going a little longer.
She paused before one particular meter, noted that its needle was dangerously close to the red zone, checked the instruction plaque above the meter, and decided to wait just a little while longer before shunting the circuit’s power into another.
Having finished her rounds, she found a place to sit down, glanced at her watch, calculated in her head that she had been on duty for twelve hours so far and was just about as exhausted as she could ever remember having been. God, did she want to lie down!
We All Died at Breakaway Station Page 17