Outcasts of Heaven Belt Page 5

  “No!” Dartagnan cried.

  Siamang turned; held her, struggling, against the panel. Dartagnan glimpsed her face beyond him, the loathing and the fresh, sudden terror; her shining, golden skin. Siamang pulled her away from the board, twisting her arm behind her. “Okay, Red, if you want her first. She’s sweet on you anyway…” He pushed her at Dartagnan.

  Chaim caught hold of her, dropped his crutch, fighting to keep his balance. “Mythili…”

  She spat in his face, pulling her jumpsuit closed. Siamang laughed.

  Chaim let anger show. “Forget it; I’m not interested.”

  “Don’t do me any favors, mediaman—” She was flint-on-steel against him, her outrage burned him like a flame.

  He let her go, wiped his face; he said roughly, “Believe me. I’m not doing you any favor.” But, God help me, maybe I’m saving your life—and mine. He looked back at Siamang, leaned down to pick up his crutch, covering sudden inspiration. “I’ve got a better idea. Instead of spacing her later, put her out here, now, in a suit with the valve jammed. The sun’s going down…she’ll suffocate or freeze…and we can watch, to make sure she’s dead. A tragic accident.” He felt her anguish, her helpless rage; felt a hot, stabbing pain in his stomach.

  Siamang smiled as the possibilities registered. “Yes, I like it…All right, Red; we’ll do it your way. But there’s no reason why I still can’t have some fun with little Fukinuki, first…” He reached up, began to unbutton his jacket.

  “Yes, there is.”

  Siamang looked at him. “Oh?”

  “It’s getting late, the ship’s batteries are running down. And besides, the wind’s rising. If you expect me to get us up out of here safely, I don’t want to wait any longer…Won’t you get enough pleasure watching her die out there—?” Dartagnan’s voice rose too much.

  Siamang smiled again, slowly. “Okay, Red, you win…Get into a suit, Mythili, before I change my mind.”

  She walked wordlessly past Dartagnan, clinging to the shreds of her dignity; he watched her put on a suit. She fumbled, awkward, made clumsy by gravity and nervousness. Wanting to help her, Chaim stood motionless, turned to stone.

  She turned back to them at last, waiting, the helmet under her arm. “All right,” she murmured, barely audible. “I’m ready…”

  Siamang crossed the cabin to her side, reached behind her head to the airflow valve at her neck. She shuddered as he touched her. Dartagnan watched him tighten the knob that shut off the oxygen flow, watched his body tighten with the effort.

  “Put on your helmet.”

  She took a deep breath, put it on. Siamang latched it in place, motioned her toward the lock. She went to it, stepped inside, jerkily, like a broken doll.

  “Red.” Siamang gestured. “You do the honors.”

  Dartagnan hobbled to the control plate, counting seconds in his mind. He could barely see her face, staring back at him, saw her mouth move silently: Damn you, damn you, damn you!…He thought there were tears in her eyes, wasn’t sure.

  He nodded, whispering, “Goodbye, Goody Two-Shoes. Good luck—” His hand trembled as he reached out to start the lock cycling.

  He turned back with Siamang to the control panel, watched the viewscreen, waited. The seconds passed, the lock cycled. She appeared suddenly on the screen, stumbled as the wind gusted…fell, got up, fell again as she tried to run, trying to reach the sheltering dome, too far away. The shifting, slate-blue dust slipped under her feet; she fell again, tried to get up, couldn’t. At last he saw her try to free the frozen valve one final time…and then unlatch her helmet. She raised her head, too far away for him to see her face; he dragged a breath into his own tortured lungs. She reached for her helmet again, frantically…crumpled forward into the dust, lay coiled like a fetus, lay still.

  Dartagnan made himself look at Siamang; looked away again, sick. He sagged down into the pilot’s seat, reached for the restraining straps. Siamang turned back from the screen, the obscenity of his pleasure fading to stunned disgust. “Get us out of this graveyard.” He moved past Chaim, toward his own padded couch; stopped, turned back. “By the way, this time it was premeditated murder. And you did it, Red. Keep that in mind.”

  Dartagnan didn’t answer, staring at the screen, looking down at the empty seat beside him.

  He took the ship safely up through the atmosphere, learning that getting up off a planet’s surface was much simpler than getting safely down. He rendezvoused, docked the shrunken landing module at last within the stretched, arachnoid fingers of the parent ship; he heard his father’s voice directing, guiding, encouraging…knowing with a kind of certainty that after what he had seen and done on the world below, he couldn’t make a mistake now.

  On board the main ship again, he moved through the levels to the control room, found their flight coordinates already in the computer. Mechanically he took the ship out of orbit, barely conscious of what he did; as he turned away from the panel Siamang congratulated him, with apparent sincerity. Dartagnan pushed on past, wordlessly, and ducked into the aluminum-ringed well. He reached Mythili Fukinuki’s cabin door, stopped himself, and with a sudden masochistic urge, opened it and went inside. He slid the door shut, drifted to the bed, pulling off his jacket, his shirt, one boot. He forced his aching body into the sleeping bag, settled softly, mumbling, “Good night. Goody Two-Shoes…” And finally, thankfully, he slept.

  When he woke again his face burned under his touch, his ankle was hot and swollen inside his boot. He went down into the commons, forced himself to eat, found a bottle of antibiotics and swallowed a handful of pills heedlessly. Then he went back to the cabin, locked the door, and slept again.

  He repeated the cycle four more times, avoiding Siamang, before his fever broke and he remembered to check the ship’s progress. He made minor alterations in their course, lingered at the screen for long seconds, searching the darkness for something he would never find. Then he tried to use the radio, and was deafened by a rush of static. He realized that Siamang had done something to the long-range antenna while he slept; there would be no more radio contact until they were back within Demarchy space. He checked the chronometer: Less than half a megasecond of flight time had elapsed; even without the added mass of the propellant tanks they had carried on the way out, more than three megaseconds still remained.

  “How’s our progress?”

  He turned and found Siamang behind him. “Fine, as far as I can tell.” His own voice startled him, unexpected.

  “And how’s your conscience?”

  Dartagnan laughed sharply, nervously. “What conscience?”

  Siamang smiled. Dartagnan risked a look straight into his eyes. They were clear, the pupils undilated; he wondered whether that was good or bad. “I wondered whether you might be suffering the pangs of remorse; you’re not looking too well.” Faint mockery, faint disapproval…faint suspicion.

  Chaim scratched an unshaven cheek, cautiously expressionless. “Only the pangs of a fall down stairs.” He glanced down at his unbuttoned jacket, the cheap bedraggled lace on his half-tucked-in shirt. He looked back at Siamang, flawlessly in control, as always. He raised his hands. “I was just going to go clean myself up,” he muttered, and retreated.

  Seconds sifted down through the hourglass of time; the ship moved through the darkness, slowly gaining speed. The casual persecution Siamang had inflicted on the trip out grew more calculated now, and more pervasive; until Dartagnan began to feel that Siamang only lived for his personal torment, a private demon sprung from his own private hell. He lived on soy milk, as the chronic tension exacerbated his ulcer; he began to lose sleep, as Siamang’s probing found the hidden wounds of his guilt. He felt the armor of his hard-won, studied indifference wearing thin, and wondered how much more he could stand. And he wondered what pathology drove Siamang to methodically destroy the loyalty of the only “witness” in his own defense…

  Until suddenly Dartagnan saw that it was no pathology at all, but a coldly rational test
. In spite of what he was, in spite of everything, Siamang didn’t trust him…and unless Siamang was completely convinced of his cowed submission, and his totally amoral self-interest, there might be a third Tragic Accident before the end of this Odyssey of Lies and Death. They were safely on a homeward course; he was entirely expendable again. Three deaths might be hard to explain, but Siamang had the means to sway public opinion at any trial—as long as there was no one to testify against him.

  His sudden comprehension of his danger steadied Dartagnan on the tightwire he walked above the abyss of his desperation: He would endure anything, do anything he had to do; there were only two things that mattered now—his own survival, and the reward that he would have earned a thousand times over…Not a ship, not his freedom, but the knowledge that Siamang and Sons would pay. They would pay to bring Mythili Fukinuki back to the Demarchy; they would pay for Sekka-Olefin’s death…they could never even begin to pay enough, for what they had done to Heaven’s future.

  And so he endured, ingratiating, obedient, and smiling—always smiling. He lived for the future, the present was a darkness behind his eyes; he was a man on a wire above the starry void between the past and their destination. And in the refuge of his cabin, he found the private world of Mythili Fukinuki, in a chest filled with books and papers. Ashamed at first, he rummaged through them, finding the precise impersonalities of astrogation manuals…and books on poetry and philosophy, not only recent but translations into the Anglo from all the varied cultures of their heritage on Earth. Passages were marked with parentheses, question marks, exclamations; her own thoughts held communion in the margins of the shining plastic pages or spilled over, filling notebooks.

  He began to read, as she had read, to fill the empty stretch of time. He felt her presence in everything he read, in each small discovery; beyond anger or bitter grief, she gave him comfort, brought him strength…And he understood at last that he had hated prospecting because he hated loneliness; that because of his resentment, being with his father had been the same as being alone. But he saw himself on his own ship, imagined Mythili Fukinuki as his partner—and knew he would need nothing more, need no one else, to be content…A much-opened book of poems fell open again in his hands, and he saw her plain, back-slated writing in the margin: It will be lonely to be dead; but it cannot be much more lonely than it is to be alive…

  He found a grease pencil in the sack of his belongings, and slowly, as though there was no strength left in his hand, wrote Yes, yes, yes…The vision of her motionless form, the swirling dust of Planet Two, choked his memory; he snapped the book shut. No, I wasn’t wrong! He put the book carefully into his sack, and after that he stopped reading.

  But he realized then that if he was wrong, if he was as guilty as Siamang himself…if Mythili Fukinuki had died because of him, then even if he survived to give testimony, it would only be his own word against Siamang’s, and that might not be enough. Siamang had influence; he had nothing—he had no proof, without Mythili. And if she was dead, he had to be certain that Siamang would never get away with it. Somehow he had to find a way to make Siamang incriminate himself. But his camera was ruined, the radio was out; he didn’t even have a tape recorder on him…or did he?

  He got up silently, and slipped out of the room.

  They were well within Demarchy space; a hundred kiloseconds remained before they would dock at Mecca. Dartagnan made radio contact at last, as Siamang looked on, and set up a media conference for their arrival. A hundred kiloseconds…and still he had no proof.

  “Come on, Red, let’s celebrate our impending return to civilization.” Siamang gestured, smiling openly, without sarcasm. “God, it’ll be a relief to get back to the real world! This whole damned thing is an experience I only want to forget.”

  “The same here, boss. The sooner the better.” Dartagnan followed him below, humoring his apparent good humor. Chaim drank soy milk cut with water, trying to lull the chronic spasms of his stomach; Siamang drank something that he assumed was considerably stronger. But Siamang’s mood stayed easy and congenial, his conversation rambled, innocuous, clever, only slightly condescending, “…join me in one drink at least, Red—” Siamang slid one of the magnetized drink bulbs across the metal surface of the table. “How much can it hurt?”

  “It hurts plenty, believe me, boss. I’d like to, I would; but I just can’t take liquor.”

  “It’s not vodka.” Siamang’s tone turned conspiratorial, and sharpened slightly. “I want you to have a drink with me, Red. I won’t take no for an answer.”

  “No, I’m sorry…”

  “Drink it.” Siamang laughed; Chaim felt his stomach tighten. “Do it—as a favor to me.”

  Dartagnan hesitated, toying absently with the metal band that circled his throat beneath the high collar of his jacket. “All right, boss; just one…if you’ll do me a favor in return?”

  Siamang started. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I want my payoff now. I want you to give me a corporate credit voucher for the value of my scoutship.”

  Siamang frowned. “I’m willing to transfer the credit to your account directly—”

  He shook his head. “Sometimes direct credit transfers don’t—get registered. I want it in writing before I do my part to keep you clear of that murder.”

  Siamang’s frown deepened, lifted slowly. “All right. Red…I’ll humor you. I don’t expect you’ll let me down if I do; since you’re in this as deep as I am, and you’ll go right down with me—” He went out of the room.

  Dartagnan sat staring uneasily at the cup. What the hell; it hasn’t done anything to Siamang…He turned the metal collar slowly around his neck. Damn it, it’s worth a bellyache; it’s worth anything, to be sure I get what I need.

  Siamang returned, passed the voucher across the table to him. “Is that satisfactory?”

  Dartagnan took it in his hands, like a starving man holding food. For a second the realization of what that money could mean to his own future rose into his mind, and made him dizzy. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely, “that’s just perfect.” He folded it and stuck it into his boot. He lifted the drink bulb from the table, “I’ll drink to that.” He pulled up on the straw, and drank.

  He tasted nothing, only the bland sweetness of pear juice; he went on drinking, surprised, finished it.

  Siamang drank with him, smiled. “What are you going to do with a ship, Red? You mean you really don’t enjoy being a garbage man to humanity?”

  “I’ve recycled just about all the shit I ever want to face, boss. Just about all I can stand…” He squinted; the light glancing up from the table top hurt his eyes: Come on, that’s impossible…suddenly afraid that it wasn’t.

  “Going to be a prospector, like Sekka-Olefin?”

  He looked back at Siamang. “Not like Sekka-Olefin. He—made a mistake.” Siamang’s voice set his teeth on edge, his skin prickled, he began to feel as though his body was strung together on live wires. “Just like my old man…I’m not going to make that mistake.” Shut up! He shook his head, the light broke up into prisms.

  “What mistake was that, Red? What mistake could there be that a man who’d go into your profession hasn’t made already?”

  Chaim almost shouted it, shaking with uncontrollable rage. He choked back the words, gagged on sudden self-loathing…Why isn’t Siamang feeling it? And then he realized that Siamang hadn’t been drinking anything at all, except fruit juice. Siamang was entirely sober; and he had been given one last test…

  Mecca City opened around him, vibrant, brilliant, beautiful, an alien flower…his mind sang, a choir of voices, the voice of the city, eternal life. He cupped life in his hands and drank…life streaming through the prism of his fingers in rainstars of light. He was eternal, he laughed, inhaling the city fragrance of sound, chords of cinnamon and cloves, leitmotif of gardenia…of corruption…a fragrance growing, that deafened him, shattering his ears, shattering his soul like crystal, shattering the crystal city…A cloying s
tench of decay clogged his nose, his mouth, his lungs, like slatey dust; the fragile towers withered, fading, shriveling around him; like bodies decaying, betrayed…death was eternal, only death; and her face, all their faces turned to him, turned to ruin, worm-eaten, rotting, decayed…I know you…Mythili, I know you…he had no voice…I know you aren’t!…I know you…He heard her sobbing, like flowers, crystal acid-drops eating away his viscera like decay, I don’t want to! I don’t want to die…I want to live…I have to…want to live…Cradled in the arms of death, worm-riddled, he saw his flesh rotting, falling from his bones…and it was the end, the end of the world…

  Dartagnan woke, moved feebly on the floor in the bathroom of his private cabin, trying to remember how he had gotten here, why he had eaten hot coals…why he was crying. He lay still, too weary to move, listened to the grating whine of a fan…the exhaust fan. He remembered, then, being sick to his stomach. He touched his face, filmed with wetness, sweat and tears—and vomit; God, he hadn’t done a very clean job of it. He pushed himself up, drifted to the wash basin to shut off the fan. He saw himself in the mirror, shut his eyes instead and swore in a fury of humiliation—

  Siamang. He reached down, dragged his boot off, swearing again as he wrenched his still-swollen ankle. But he laughed in satisfaction as his hand closed over the crumpled, drifting prize, the credit voucher. Still there…He tried again futilely to remember what else had happened; knowing that Siamang had drugged him for a reason, and that he could have said anything, would have said anything, and anything could have been the wrong thing. But he had the voucher; and he was still alive—A flicker of nightmare, a discontinuity, shook him; he ran his hands down his body in sudden fear. He was still alive. The metal collar was still around his neck; he had what he needed. Maybe, just this once, something was going to come out right…

  He stripped, went to the shower, sealed himself in along with his ruined clothes, and turned on the water. He let it run, heedless of the waste, through three full shower cycles, an entire kilosecond, until he finally began to feel clean. Life, and—almost—self-respect, stirred sluggishly in him again as the heat lamp dried the sheen of water from his skin, baked the shame and the last of the stiffness out of his mind and body. He shaved, did what he could with his clammy clothes, put on the one fresh shirt he had saved for their return to Mecca. Appearance was everything; he had to present a good appearance when he faced himself in the eyes of the media cameras…He investigated his ankle. The brown skin was still splotched with ugly bruises, but it was healing, slowly, with the passing of time. He forced it back into his boot, polished both boots with his dirty shirt. He thought about other wounds, and wondered how much time he would need before those were healed as well.