This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Peter Sargent
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Sleeping Sickness
Ever since we locked the Shudders up, we’ve never let them out. But there are a few who can dupe the psych test and go free. Most think they’d know a Shudder if they saw one. They think he’d sway like an old time snake wrestling Pentecostal, but that’s not how it goes. When the ivory tower first diagnosed the syndrome, it noticed that only the eyeballs vibrated. The second misconception is this: all Shudders are killers, or would be if we didn’t lock them up. But this is also false; only a few have ever progressed far enough into their mania that they emerge with a corpse in their hands. And the ironic thing is, these few who are truly bonkers are also the most likely to score a false negative on the tests and walk free. And they often harbor a homicidal rage about those of their kind who remain imprisoned. You see, it only makes matters worse.
* * * *
The crew cleared a space in the Dominick’s cargo hold and Freddy danced in it. The captain, Mark Trumbul, sat on a crate and glanced at Celia. She saw him do it, and she knew he was glad to see her smirk. She was warming up to him. They weren’t into each other or anything like that; she was a med student and Trumbul’s hair was too salty to let him get away with any sailor nonsense.
He leaned over and spoke to her.
“I’ve met a lot of folks trying to get the hell away from something, but not too many hard cases. First strategy is, get Freddy pissed. Even if it don’t work on you, everyone else gets a kick out of it. He’s kind of like a dancing turkey; do you see?”
A drunken Freddy was agile, but when sober he was clumsy as hell. He being the Dominick’s medic, this was sometimes the source of gory embarrassment. But Celia liked him. She was still making up her mind about Maynard, the one across the circle from her. He was odd.
“What does Howard Space think of it?” she said.
“What Uncle H don’t know won’t hurt him.”
The Dominick wasn’t Trumbul’s ship. Uncle H owned it, and they probably didn’t want Freddy jiving on the clock and they probably didn’t want the crew clapping and giving him nudges to keep him spinning – even if it did make Celia feel a little less uneasy (And god, she hated looking like a stray pup in front of these people). H wasn’t in the business of growing up lost teenagers out in the dark of space. But Trumbul always said, endorsing even middling optimism among the working class made the work go easier. Or cheaper, if you have to put it in H’s words. And there was that blessed time before reaching the last rim when Howie didn’t bother with adult supervision. The mission wasn’t on yet, but that time was drawing near.
Maynard checked his watch and left. A mass of curly hair covered the back of his head, little swirls sticking out in all directions. He carried a book. Celia thought he talked like he knew more than anyone about everything, but that he was afraid someday folks would discover he was just making stuff up. She wasn’t so purblind that she had to sum up a guy in a sentence, but she wasn’t that hopeful either.
Maynard returned a few minutes later, leaning over the captain and saying,
“Echo Rim’s on the scope.”
Trumbul put his arm on Maynard’s shoulder and said,
“Okay, let’s not take it in too quick. Give us time to wash our faces.”
Maynard nodded and walked off. Trumbul stood and told everyone to clear out. Freddy was still dancing, so the captain wrapped him in a bear hug, as if Freddy was an over-active boy. He whispered something in the drunken turkey’s ear, and Freddy sank in his arms. The captain led him away. Celia sat there by herself. The captain didn’t need to speak to her; she knew her job here.
* * * *
To people of an earlier century, the Sorter might seem very peculiar and frightening, and at the same time very familiar. Ever since UNIVAC and the 1952 election, it’s been tempting to digitally crunch statistical data on one end and forecast human behavior on the other. By the end of the twentieth century, computerized tests for personality, intelligence, and occupational and romantic compatibility were common. However, these were scattered and suffered limited reliability. What they all lacked was a foundation in some unified theory, a theory that one day came around and wound up as the Sorter. The Sorter can match you with a job or a spouse, and you ignore its advice at your own peril. The Sorter knows you better than your Mom; better than your ex. It knows where you belong, and that’s why they call it the Sorter. And it’s the Sorter that tells you if you’re a Shudder, if you’re too dangerous to be let out at night by yourself.
* * * *
Celia was alone in the hold, putting cryogenic chambers in order. The crew wouldn’t come down here now that she was deforming their dance hall into a macabre nursery. This was the point where her admiration for sailors ended. Sick slobs, they all acted tough, but give them a room full of fetuses suspended in goo, and they run. It would’ve been nice if Helen were here to keep her company.
Her thoughts meandered back to the only friend she’d ever had at the university (could’ve been more than friends – but try not to think of it). They’d shared their skepticism of the Sorter – call it cynicism if you want – but Helen was gone now.
Maybe it was best that Celia was by herself with the experiment. She needed to concentrate on this job. Her advisor’s words still drummed her brains: brilliant as you are, you’re a pencil mark away from expulsion. He’d said this while looking down at a small metal object on his desk. It was a ring with a single moissanite gemstone and a phlegmy coating. The sight of it had made Celia want to bolt and vomit, or do the same in reverse. But that wouldn’t have helped. This man was just the first Dominican on the way up to the burning picket.
The message had been clear. There were two open secrets in the medical department. The first was that the Sorter didn’t work at all. The second was that acting on that knowledge meant an audience with the Grand Inquistor. Celia owned a fine intellect, but she’d had some trouble with the administration. She knew what was best for her. She knew she had the brains to make a difference, but a damn machine that no one around her department believed in kept ticking to itself, mumbling coded expletives about her. Her opposition to it hadn’t made her popular – hell, it had made her marked prey.
Helen had been her co-conspirator in their simple plot to live in freedom. Now Helen’s ring sat on the advisor’s desk, in its center the little black eye of silicon carbide winked at Celia. The slimy veneer was dismembered adipose tissue. Helen’s guts. There had always been a rumor that the administration disappeared its problem students, and sometimes even the most absurd rumors leave an eerie ring of truth in their wake.
“Just don’t junk it.” She whispered to herself. “I mean it this time, girl.”
She thumbed the side of her index finer, where she kept Helen’s ring, stone turned inward so that it hurt a little – to keep herself from forgetting.
If this mission worked out, it would show them something they couldn’t ignore. This experiment was the big one. It was all about Howard Pharma finding the cause, and the cure, for Shudder syndrome. Then they could make a profit, she could make a career, the ex-Shudders could go free, and anyone could believe whatever they
wanted about the Sorter. And maybe Helen could rest in peace.
Trumbul was right when he suggested Celia was running away from something. But she wasn’t just a scarred teenager making her way in the world. It would take more than liquored entertainment to raise her spirits and save her ass.
She checked the cryo chamber temperature. It was coming up okay. She had to keep everything heated evenly, or else the fluid broke apart and was useless.
She jumped when the Dominick shook.
“You’ll get used it.” said Trumbul. Celia spun and saw him leaning against one of the cylinders. The heat lamp at the bottom made the colloid glow, and turned his face a shade of orange. He said, “It happens when Echo syncs her grav to ours. I’ve been to rims where they turn down the grav to save power, and then it’s quite a shock when we switch over. Makes me nearly puke every time, I’m not afraid to say.”
Celia turned back to her work. “I’m looking forward to meeting Dr. Wilson.” She said. “It’ll be good to have another techie around, at least for a little bit.”
“They’re not so craven as you think. The crew, I mean. Once, the vats broke down, and the kiddies woke up. They screamed until they drowned in the liquid and shriveled into a mess. It would drive you inside yourself too, like Maynard. He had your job until that disaster, you know. Don’t tell him I said so.”
Celia focused on the temperature controls. “Captains prefer ghost stories.” She said.
“It’s not a joke. Things don’t always work as well out here as they do back home. That’s why this is a research vessel – if everything went to spec, it wouldn’t be research, would it? Besides, the Sorter put you here, right? You belong in this work. The rest of us are just along for the ride. None of us is cut out to dissect human skin and put tubes in it.”
It was true; the Sorter had put her here, in an odd turn against its usual policy. She half suspected the administration had rigged it, in preparation for doing something rather foul. But she needed this; so she just filed that away as Possibility Number Two, among several others.
“Didn’t the Sorter select Maynard too?” she said.
“I guess it did.” said Trumbul. “So if he couldn’t handle this, think about the rest of us. All I meant to say was; people do like you. They avoid you because of your kind of work.”
“According to the Sorter, my work is who I am.”
He walked passed her, toward the cargo bay doors. The safety lights were flashing now. The doors rumbled as they parted.
The captain said, “You’ll like Wilson. He’s a true Darwinian.”
Celia frowned. It was odd that there was still a need to distinguish Darwinists from the rest. For all the fascination with the Sorter and its supposed scientific progress, there was still a strain of that old-time religion out here in the cold. Well, okay - they were just two kinds of faith.
She said, “Scientists tend to be Darwinists, captain.”
Trumbul laughed. “That’s Darwin, Australia.” He waited for her to say “Oh” and then went on, “Our schools were cross town rivals… What is it?”
He’d caught her grinning. She said, “You don’t sound very authentic. All this time, I thought you were one of those who just wanted to be Australian.”
Since Howard had built Launch One in Queensland, the population of Down Under seemed to empty into space. The lifestyle suited them. Everyone knew the good captains were Aussies. It tended to produce a lot of impostors.
“What?” said Trumbul. “You get out here for too long, you meet folks; you pick up different ways of talking. Deep space makes you a mongrel, Celia. Ask Wilson.”
* * * *
“Have you been keeping up with your studies?”
“Yes sir.”
Wilson was a very tall man, but he moved with unnatural ease. His skinny legs didn’t bend much beneath his long jacket, the pockets of which carried dozens of instruments and computer pads and other odds and ends. He gripped a rod in his pointy finger tips, scanning the cryo chamber and then looking up and down Celia’s short and stubby frame.
“They’ve been feeding you. You’re about five kilos bigger than your stat sheet says you are. Maybe it’s better. If you have to go 0-g, you might find it hard to eat.”
A motor whined and Wilson pointed his head up. He looked like a bird, but his movements didn’t jerk like a bird’s. More like a lively plant bending in the sun. He watched a crane carry a line of small chambers overhead.
Without looking away he said, “But don’t fool around up here. I know you can get used to goofing off. If you can believe it, that was the sort of thing I was trying to escape back home. But I come here, and what do I find? So take it seriously. Your work is a privilege. And don’t forget that you’re working outside Echo. If you accidentally get yourself shot out into space, no one will ever find you.”
The crane lowered the chambers. A small fetus was curled up in each. Motionless. The bottom of one chamber touched the top of one of the bigger vats Celia had prepared. It made a popping noise, and steam billowed around them. Celia heard a liquid sliding around, and when the steam cleared, the proto-child floated in the fluid before her. The other small chambers emptied their cargos in a similar manner.
“They say you’re top of your class.”
“Not just my class, sir.”
“Right.” He attempted a smile, and gave up.
The crane took the empty chambers away, and Wilson walked back to the cargo bay door. Trumbul was standing there, and Wilson stopped near him.
He said, “Echo Rim’s received distress calls from the Elam Penitentiary. I communed with corporate and they agree that you should not respond under any circumstances.” He glanced over at Celia, speaking a little louder. “When you pass Echo, you might be out of the reach of your government, but don’t think for a moment that you’re out of the reach of your employer.”
Wilson went for the doors, and they closed behind him.
Celia glanced a Trumbul. “Cross town rivals?”
“We beat them at every game.”
* * * *
The problem with the Sorter today is that its hegemony is breaking up. Nothing lasts forever, they say. It all started with the Shudders. At first, people were saying to themselves, thank god we have the Sorter – what could’ve happened without it? The Sorter had linked a murderous psychosis to a genetic mutation that affected more than one half of one percent of the population. For psychotic killers, that far exceeded any comfortable limit. And while a few Shudders did turn into monsters (cannibals, some say), the more interesting story was about the thousands of locked up Shudders who became model prisoners. For Christ’s sake, they invented a meditative cult. They called it Starcord: sit in the dark, don’t move, don’t fuss. In your mind, find the chain that draws the heavy elements in your body back to the stars from which they came, and then back along the thread of stars to the galactic center from which they came. Find your own source, and control the beast, or something like that. Like some folks used to say, it was solid gold BS.
The important thing is that Starcord’s pacifist manifesto got to people’s conscience. And the Sorter’s eminence began to fall in some quarters. The problem was, and this is always the problem, many people maintained their allegiance. The division fell along the usual lines. Those who wanted to free the Shudders were seen as liberal and elitist by the others, who fancied themselves plain spoken and the protectors of traditional social values. They weren’t about to give up the fifty years of social well being that the Sorter had provided, let alone risk letting loose humanity’s worst predators (as identified by a scientifically proven oracle), just because of some near-sighted political correctness.
* * * *
The Dominick kept to circadian rhythms, with most of the crew asleep for eight hours out of every twenty four. The lights dimmed, everyone hit the hay, and the boat coasted on autopilot. And when they woke up, they’d be outside Echo, in outlaw territory. Celia couldn’t sleep.
She wandered into the hydroponics garden. The air was muggy and sweet tasting. She nestled among a few large fronds and sat on the edge of a rack. She pulled a paper wand from her pocket, lit one end, and dragged smoky air from the other.
“Hey.”
She saw Maynard holding a chemical scanner. He didn’t look happy to see her, or disappointed or surprised either. His flannel jacket and clothes were tattered, but he didn’t smell funny. At least he bathes, Celia thought. But why are all the men up here either ice floats or lunatics?
He said, “Are you nocturnal too?”
“My dad was a military man” said Celia, actually finding that she wanted someone to talk to. “Families don’t go on patrols, but me and Mom lived at Leo dock. The place was always humming.” She rolled her eyes away from Maynard, who stood like a statue, and snorted a laugh. “So I’m used to odd sleep patterns. Civilians have a luxury.”
Maynard was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, “Except the military isn’t out here.” At last, he moved, pointing the chemical scanner at Celia’s leg. It was bouncing against the rack. “Nerves?” He said.
“I’ve always had it. It comes from living in space, you know?” She watched Maynard’s stony posture. “At least, it’s that way for normal people. Are you just going to stare at me?”
“Sorry.” He turned around and stuck the probe end of the scanner into a plant tube.
Celia sighed. She took a drag. These damn things only made her mouth flap. But it was better than thinking about what might happen to her if things didn’t work out. It was better than thinking about Helen. She felt the band around her index finger.
“Look,” she said, “Don’t mind me. The captain told me what happened to you. He told me not to say so, but I’m crap at keeping secrets. But I understand; sort of. Well, if I can be honest, and I always am when I’m on the stick, I don’t think I would’ve taken it as hard as you if an experiment went bad. I’ve got a stomach for these things. I’m a goddam scientist.”
Her leg tapped a rhythm on the metal. Her mind wandered, trying to place the tune.
Maynard said, “Your job’s illegal. That’s why we’re outside the treaty zone.”