The starship’s image blotted out the stars; unobtrusively, he used his water ration to clean his face and hands.
Not a ship. Wadie pulled back, halfway through the Ranger’s lock, as the room opened before him. This is a world.
“This is the control room.” The captain moved past him, her voice husky in her hoarse throat; he heard the clanking as Shadow Jack still fumbled with a pressure suit in the lock behind him. He drew a long breath of cool air, coughed once as his startled lungs reacted.
“Hello, Pappy.”
The captain pushed off from the wall, with the indefinable lack of grace that marked her alienness more than her face and hair. She moved across the vastness of the control room toward the instrument panels. He suddenly realized that the room was not empty, that he was being studied by a girl and a short pale-skinned man. “Betha—” A smile spread in the man’s grizzled beard—an old man, too old to still be in space, to still be sound…The slim brown girl wasn’t looking at him at all, but only staring through him toward the lock. She was a Belter, ludicrously dressed in faded pants cinched by a flapping belt.
“You mean to tell me this is all you brought back?” The old man gestured at him, half joking, half appalled. “This—fop? You traded our Rusty for this?”
The captain shook her head, amused, said blithely, “No, not ‘Shadow Jack and the Beanstalk,’ Pappy. I just said we didn’t get the golden goose…and maybe we’ve been the golden goose, all along, and didn’t know it.”
Wadie felt Shadow Jack brush by him with the cat in his arms. The boy tossed her out into the air, giving her momentum, and she paddled on across the room, perfectly at ease.
“Rusty!”
She made rusty meows of pleasure, moving toward the old man’s familiar hands.
The Belter girl’s face startled him, transformed by wild bliss as her eyes found Shadow Jack. He looked away from her, back at the old man. “Wadie Abdhiamal, representin’ the Demarchy. And usually better than this. I’m afraid two hundred kilosecs in that deathtrap didn’t do much for my appearance.” The old man laughed.
Shadow Jack glanced back at him. “Try it for a couple megasecs, sometime.”
The captain drifted against the control panel, lines of strain settling on her face again, making it grim. “It was hell, Pappy. I didn’t want to make you come into Demarchy space to pick us up, but I don’t know how much longer the life-support system would have held up. It wasn’t adequate for two—and with three…” She rubbed her face, smearing grime. “The past two days were worse than the whole two weeks going in. But we had to bring him along. It was the only way we could get out of there. Their communications network is incredible; they already knew everything about us—everyone did, on every single separate piece of rock. And every one of them just waiting to grab our ship and play God with it—just like the Ringers. We can’t trust either of them now; if we want hydrogen we’re going to have to take it.”
“Captain Torgussen,” Wadie said, “the government only wants—”
“I know what you want, Abdhiamal. My ship. You made it clear enough. But your Demarchy will have to catch us first.” Her eyes cut him, blue glass. “I’m sorry, Abdhiamal, but you’re on our ground now. Consider yourself our hostage.”
Shadow Jack laughed, sitting back in the air. The girl moved away from the panel to his side, her face expressionless.
Wadie said nothing, saw the captain hesitate.
“You don’t seem very surprised. You didn’t believe what I told you at Mecca, and still you let this happen?”
“I didn’t know whether to believe you or not. After what you’ve been through, I figured maybe you really had given orders for the destruction of your ship, and I didn’t want to take that chance. And I didn’t want to take any chances with the Tirikis. And if you were lying about cooperating…well, I’m on your ship; that gives me another chance to change your mind. Heaven Belt needs your help.”
“We don’t owe you anything; greed and hostility are all we’ve met in Heaven Belt.”
“Why did you come here in the first place, except to trade on the fact that you figured we were ridin’ high? Why shouldn’t we be as greedy? One hundred million people—most of the Main Belt—died in the first hundred megasecs after the war. And the ones that are left…” He pointed at Shadow Jack and the girl. “Look at Lansing. Their people won’t last another circuit around Heaven. And we’re all headed for the same thing, unless we have your ship.”
She frowned, hooked a shoe under the security rail that edged the panel. “The fact remains that we have rights of our own, as human beings—including the right to leave this system if we choose—and you’re not willing to give them to us. It’s true we came here to trade, because we thought Heaven had things we wanted. But you’ve got nothing to offer, and we can’t afford to waste our ship and the rest of our lives for nothing. Morningside can’t afford it. We just don’t have the resources to throw away on you.”
“I—admit we didn’t consider your position—” He broke off, the crassness of it embarrassing him. “We made a mistake, not considerin’ your position. It was a stupid mistake. But we aren’t the Ringers; we don’t just want your ship, we want your cooperation. We might still have some things you’d want. It wouldn’t have to be forever. The use of your ship, its reactor, and its shop, for a hundred and fifty megasecs. We’ll deal with you fairly.” The part of him that had questioned MacWong asked, Will we? The Belter kids stared at him, distrustful, more in sympathy with outsiders than with a man from their own system.
The captain moved restlessly. “I don’t believe that. Everything I’ve seen shows me I can’t depend on the Demarchy. You can’t even depend on each other. Even if you meant every word you said, someone else would make it a lie and attack us…I’m not blind, Abdhiamal, I can see what’s happened here, and I know it’s true that you need help. If I’d only had some sign to prove to me that at least the Demarchy was worthy of our trust. But I haven’t. We can’t help you; you won’t let us. It’s impossible.”
“Captain, I—”
“The matter is closed.” Something in her voice told him that it was closed, irrevocably, and that the reason went much deeper than a simple betrayal of trust.
Not understanding, he only nodded, his own fatigue and exasperation leaving him defeated. “To what end am I your hostage then, Captain?”
Her eyes shifted, clouding. “I don’t know. Whatever end we come to, for better or worse…will be yours too, I suppose. You helped us out of a tight spot, Abdhiamal. Inadvertently, but you did help us. I’ll try to be as fair to you. If we get the hydrogen we need, I’ll find a way to get you back to the Demarchy before we leave the system. It will only be a—temporary inconvenience.” She looked at him strangely for a moment; turning away, she reached for the old man’s arm. “Oh, Christ, Pappy, I’m so tired. So glad to be back.” He pulled her close, too close; held her until she broke away, kissing him once, tenderly.
Old enough to be her father…Surprise let a grimace of distaste pull his own mouth down; he covered it as they looked back at him. Only four, in this large, empty room; and two of them were Belters. Too empty. “Where’s the rest of your crew?”
The old man glanced at the captain; she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter; he’ll find out soon enough, I suppose.” Her hand gestured at the screen and knotted into a fist. “They all died at Discus. And we’re going back. Pappy, get started on a course for Discus. We can’t risk staying here any longer. We’re going to take what we need from the Ringers, Abdhiamal, any way we can, and that’s going to suit me fine.” She threw it at him, defiant, before she turned to Shadow Jack and the girl. “I’m going to get us out of here as fast as I can. I want to be sure no one from the Demarchy can touch us. We’ll be doing one gee for five or six days, again, to get us back to the Rings.”
“It’ll be worth it.” Shadow Jack cracked his knuckles. The girl’s mouth set in a line; she nodded. She moved closer to Shadow Jack, st
roking his bare arm lightly. He glanced down at her, irritated, but didn’t pull away.
“Thirsty?” she said. He straightened out of his drifting slouch, smiled suddenly, wiping his hand across his mouth. “Yeah!” He pushed off from the wall and they left the room.
The old man was strapped into a seat, working at the panel. The captain moved out into the air to collect a pencil and an unidentifiable metal cube. She pushed the cat into a compartment in the wall.
“Captain—”
She started back toward the control board. “What?”
“I’d like permission to use your radio.”
“Refused.” She reached a chair, maneuvered herself down.
“But I need to—”
“Refused.” She turned her back, cutting him off as she began her work at the board. He waited, studying the tasteless combination of pale-blue walls and green carpet. He noticed a stripe of deeper blue on the wall, an arrow, and the word down.
“The Lansing ship is secure. Are the co-ords in, Pappy?”
“They’re in. Ready when you are.”
“Right. Ignition…thirty seconds. Feet on the ground, all of you!” The last of it went over an intercom, rattling off the walls through the empty heart of the ship. Wadie watched her hands move through a sequence on the panel, felt the light, familiar hand of gravity settle on his shoulders. And begin to bear down: His feet touched the floor, the drag against his legs continued, increasing past the point of familiarity, past the point of comfort. He backed up, caught hold of a bar along the wall, remembering thirty seconds of one gee on a Ringer ship, and realizing what it would be like for the next five hundred thousand seconds. Pain wrenched his muscles; the blue-on-blue streaked wall filled his vision down…His hands tightened, and he stood, enduring the pain, ignoring the heart that beat against his ribs like a fist.
He stood—and moved tentatively away from the wall, as the pressure bearing down on him stabilized. Dizziness made him sway, but he controlled it, balanced precariously as the captain and the old man rose from their seats. They looked toward him with expectant pity; the cat struggled out of the wall through a plastic porthole, made a circuit of his legs, licked his booted foot consolingly with her tongue. He folded his arms; looked down, and back at them across the room. He smiled, blandly.
The captain turned and walked out of the room. The cat bounded after her, tail flying like a banner.
“Abdhiamal, is it?” The old man came over to him, held out a hand. “My name’s Welkin, navigator on the Ranger.”
Wadie nodded, shook his hand, wondered at his motive in offering it. He noticed that Welkin’s hand was bright with golden rings, like Betha Torgussen’s; and that his grip was strong and firm…But the old man must be tough, if he could take one gee—ten meters per second squared, the gravity of Old Earth. This was what it had been like to live on Earth. A crash and Shadow Jack’s pained “Hell!” rose from somewhere below them. No wonder we called this system Heaven.
RANGER (IN TRANSIT, DEMARCHY TO DISCUS)
+ 2.25 MEGASECONDS
Fifty Kiloseconds later Wadie climbed the empty stairwell, one step and then another—wanting to crawl and knowing there was no one to see it, but determined that he would keep control over something, if only his own dignity. He had investigated the lower levels of the ship’s living area: the crew’s quarters; the alien lushness of a hydroponics lab adapted to one gravity; the workshop—the last memory was almost a hunger. He had seen everything but the section on the second level, behind a sealed doorway where a warning light blinked red. And everywhere he had been stunned by the incredible waste—of water, of air, of living space—in a matrix of drab austerity that was primitive compared to the Demarchy’s sophistication. He contemplated the irony in the idea that the Morningsiders considered themselves poor, when in some ways they were the richest people he had ever seen.
He reached the top of the stairs, leaned against the railing until the dizziness passed and his heartbeat slowed. His muscles ached dully when he stood, and when he moved pain burned in his trembling legs like a hot wire. He did his best to put his new clothes in order before he entered the control room.
The others were already there, watching something on the viewscreen. The captain and Welkin sat in chairs. Shadow Jack and the girl lay on the carpet, spreading their weight over the greatest area. The girl was trying to do pushups, her body rigid from the knees, as he looked in. He saw her elbows tremble, watched her collapse face down on the cushion. She lay spread-eagled on the floor, defeated. “I can’t.”
“Then don’t,” Shadow Jack said, and more gently, “It’ll be over soon, Bird Alyn; we don’t have to get used to it.” He flipped playing cards out into the air, watching their incredibly swift plummet to the rug. “Look who finally woke up.” He looked back over his shoulder; the cat sidled past his head and sat down on the cards.
Wadie bowed casually, carefully keeping his balance. No one moved in return, and indignation rose in him until he remembered that he couldn’t expect civility here. Pirates…He almost smiled, struck by the memory of what it had meant to be called a Belter, once, in the time when the only Asteroid Belt was Sol’s. He studied the captain’s face, clean now like her fair cropped hair; met something in her eyes that startled him. She glanced down, lighting a pipe. The tangy sweetness of whatever burned stirred memories in him, instinctive, of things he had never seen.
“At least you’re a likelier-looking trade this time,” Welkin said.
Wadie looked down at the blue cotton work shirt, the blue denim pants that stopped ten centimeters short of his ankles. He had forced the pants neatly into his polished boots. The boots braced his legs, but weighted them down like lead. “At least I’m clean.” He stepped carefully over the doorsill and crossed the room, holding his head up, back straight. He reached the nearest swivel seat and lowered himself into it, leaned back easily, breathing again. The girl stared up at him, awed. Shadow Jack looked away with a frown; he muttered and pushed the cat, scattering cards.
“Captain…” Wadie turned in his seat, reordering his arguments. He stopped, as he realized what they had been watching on the screen. “You’ve been monitoring Demarchy communications?” Six separate images showed on the bright screen, each one a different broadcast frequency. He recognized a general newscast, three corporation hypes, two local arbitration debates.
The captain nodded. “It’s been—enlightening.”
“Has there been anything about your ship from the Tirikis?”
“Yes, news items; and there was a—” She glanced back at the screen, as two of the broadcast segments suddenly disappeared, replaced by an octagonal star caught in a golden paisley, on a field of black. As they watched, the symbol blotted out the rest of the segments one by one. “What is this, Abdhiamal?”
“It’s a call for a general meeting; any demarch who wants to participate can monitor the final debate, startin’ now, and vote on the issues involved.” He remembered uneasily that it had been two hundred and fifty kiloseconds since they had left Mecca, more than two hundred and fifty kilosecs since his last report. “I expect this’ll be the debate about your ship, and what happened at Mecca. The Tirikis started to promo the second we left the rock; and nobody’s heard a word from me. I’d like to monitor the debate. And I’d like a chance to defend myself, if you’ll give me an open channel.”
She put her pipe aside. “All right, I’ll monitor the meeting. You can listen; but I can’t let you speak.”
“Why not? Your ship’s clear. And they can track you by your exhaust, they don’t need a radio fix—”
“I don’t need you telling them our plans. I’d rather let them guess.”
“Captain, I need to talk to them. This meetin’ could mean my job.” They all looked at him, unresponsive. He swallowed his irritation. “You—experienced the communications network we’ve got; it’s from before the war, and it still works as it should. It’s what makes the Demarchy work—every demarch’s got equa
l priority on it, and anybody with a gripe about anythin’ can broadcast it. Everybody who’s involved or interested can debate. If they need to, they take a general vote, and the vote is law.”
“Mob rule?” Welkin said. “The tyranny of the majority.”
“No.” He gestured at the slender golden teardrop on the screen, symbol of the hundred-and-forty-million-kilometer teardrop distribution of the trojan asteroids. “Not here. You can’t get a mob together across millions of kilometers of space. It keeps the voters’ self-interest confined to their own rock. They’re independent as hell, and they’re informed, and they judge. A jury of peers.”
“Then why would you be worried about losing your job?”
“Because I’m not there to defend myself; the Tirikis can claim anything, and if nobody hears different from me, what are they goin’ to think, except that it’s true? My boss will be answering them in my place, and he doesn’t even know what’s happened. If I can’t tell them, I could take him down with me. The government floats on water, and if you rock the boat you drown.”
The captain leaned forward, pressing her hands together. “I’m sorry, Abdhiamal, but you should have considered that before you came with me. I can’t afford to let you speak now…Do you still want to listen in?”
He nodded. All the symbols but one were gone from the screen again; as he watched, the time lag closed and the last one faded. The general meeting had begun.
“…should already have put our fusion craft in pursuit.” Wadie rested his neck against the seatback, as Lije MacWong’s final argument drew to a close on the screen. “We’ve done all we can to follow the wishes of the Demarchy. Too many things are still unclear to us, too, because we only know what you do. I’m a civil servant, no more, no less. If the people want to remove me for working in the people’s interest, that’s your privilege. But I don’t feel that I’ve done anything to betray your trust.” A band of color showed at the bottom of the screen, slowly turning violet from blue; voter participation was eighty per cent and rising.