21st Century Science Fiction (85 page)

“We’ve been called up from Earth for a job only we can do. It’s a high and lonely destiny, up here among the cold stars! Mundane people couldn’t stick it out. That’s why Areco went looking for guys like us. We’re free of entanglements, right? We came from our parents’ basements and garages to a place where our powers were needed. Software can map those rocks out there, okay; it can track them, maybe. But only a human can—can—smell them coming in before they’re there, okay?”

“You mean like precognition?” Charles stared at me.

“Not exactly,” I said, even though Myron claims he’s got psychic abilities, but he never seems to be able to predict when the Shooters are going to go on a rampage on our turf. “I’m talking about gut feelings. Hunches. Instinct! That’s the word I was looking for. Human instinct. We outguess the software seventy percent of the time on projected incoming. Not bad, huh?”

“I guess so,” he said.

I spent the rest of the shift showing him his console and setting up his passwords and customizations and stuff. He didn’t ask many questions, just put on the goggles and focused, and you could almost see him wandering around among the asteroids in Q34-54 and getting to know them. I was starting to get a good feeling about him, because that was just the way Kev used to plot, and then he said:

“How do we target them?”

Vinder was so shocked he dropped the Blue Judge. Roscoe turned, took off his goggles to stare at me, and said:

“We don’t target. Cripes, haven’t you told him?”

“Told me what?” Charles turned his goggled face toward the sound of Roscoe’s voice.

So then I had to tell him about the Shooters, and how he couldn’t go into the bar when Shooters were in there except when he was flackeying for one of them, and what they’d do to him if he did, and how he had to stay out of the Pit of Hell where they bunked except when he was flackeying for them, and he was never under any circumstances to go into the War Room at all.

I was explaining about the flackeying rotation when he said:

“This is stupid!”

“It’s sheer evil,” said Roscoe. “But there’s nothing we can do about it. They’re Shooters. You can’t fight them. You don’t want to know what happens if you try.”

“This wasn’t in my contract,” said Charles.

“You can go complain to Kurtz, if you want,” said Bradley. “It’s no damn use. He can’t control them. They’re Shooters. Nobody else can do what they do.”

“I’ll bet I could,” said Charles, and everybody just sniffed at him, because, you know, who’s got reflexes like a Shooter? They’re the best at what they do.

“You got assigned to us because you tested out as a Plotter,” I told Charles. “That’s just the way things are. You’re the best at your job; the pay’s good; in five years you’ll be out of here. You just have to learn to live with the crap. We all did.”

He looked like a smart guy and I thought he wouldn’t need to be told twice. I was wrong.

We heard the march of booted feet coming along the corridor. Vinder leaped up and grabbed all his action figures, shoving them into a storage pod. Norman began to hyperventilate; Bradley ran for the toilet. I just stayed where I was and lowered my eyes. It’s never a good idea to look them in the face.

Boom! The portal jerked open and in they came, Lord Deathlok and the Shark and Iron Beast. They were carrying Piki-tiki. I blanched.

Piki-tiki was this sort of dummy they’d made out of a blanket and a mask. And a few other things. Lord Deathlok grinned around and spotted Charles.

“Piki-tiki returns to his harem,” he shouted. “What’s this? Piki-tiki sees a new and beautiful bride! Piki-tiki must welcome her to his realm!”

Giggling, they advanced on Charles and launched the dummy. It fell over him, and before he could throw it off they’d jumped him and hoisted him between them. He was fighting hard, but they just laughed; that is, until he got one arm free and punched the Shark in the face. The Shark grabbed his nose and began to swear, but Lord Deathlok and Iron Beast gloated.

“Whoa! The blushing bride needs to learn her manners. Piki-tiki’s going to take her off to his honeymoon suite and see that she learns them well!”

Ouch. They dragged him away. At least it wasn’t the worst they might have done to him; they were only going to cram him in one of the lockers, probably one that had had some sweaty socks left in the bottom, and stuff Piki-tiki in there on top of him. Then they’d lock him in and leave him there. How did I know? They’d done it to me, on my first day.

• • • •

If you’re sensible, like me, you just shrug it off and concentrate on your job. Charles wouldn’t let it go, though. He kept asking questions.

Like, how come the Shooters were paid better than we were, even though they spent most of their time playing simulations and Plotters did all the actual work of tracking asteroids and calculating when they’d strike? How come Mr. Kurtz had given up on disciplinary action for them, even after they’d rigged his holoset to come on unexpectedly and project a CGI of him having sex with an alligator, or all the other little ways in which they made his life a living hell? How come none of us ever stood up to them?

And it was no good explaining how they didn’t respond to reason, and they didn’t respond to being called immature and crude and disgusting, because they just loved being told how awful they were.

The other thing he asked about was why there weren’t any women up here, and that was too humiliating to go into, so I just said tests had shown that men were better suited for life on a Gun Platform.

He should have been happy that he was a good Plotter, because he really was. He mastered Q34-54 in a week. One shift we were there on the Bridge and Myron and I were talking about the worst ever episode of Schrödinger’s Rock, which was the one that had Lallal’s evil twin showing up after being killed off in the second season, and Anil was unwrapping the underwear his mother had sent him for his thirty-first birthday, when suddenly Charles said: “Eugene, you should probably check Q6-17; I’m calculating an Intruder showing up in about Q-14.”

“How’d you know?” I said in surprise, slipping my goggles on. But he was right; there was an Intruder, tumbling end over end in a halo of fire and snow, way above the plane of the ecliptic but square in Q-14.

“Don’t you extend your projections beyond the planet’s ecliptic?” said Charles.

Myron and I looked at each other. We never projected out that far; what was the point? There was always time to spot an Intruder before it came in range.

“You don’t have to work that hard, dude,” I said. “Fifty degrees above and below is all we have to bother with. The scanning programs catch the rest.” But I sent out the alert and we could hear the Shooters cheering, even though the War Room was clear at the other end of the Platform. As far out as the Intruder was, the Shark was able to send out a missile. We didn’t see the hit—there wouldn’t be one for two weeks at least, and I’d have to keep monitoring the Intruder and now the missile too, just to be sure the trajectories remained matched up—but the Shooters began to stamp and roar the Bonus Song.

Myron sniffed.

“Typical,” he said. “We do all the work, they push one bloody button, and they’re the heroes.”

“You know, it doesn’t have to be this way,” said Charles.

“It’s not like we can go on strike,” said Anil sullenly. “We’re independent contractors. There’s a penalty for quitting.”

“You don’t have to quit,” said Charles. “You can show Areco you can do even more. We can be Plotters and Shooters.”

Anil and Myron looked horrified. You’d have thought he’d suggested we all turn homo or something. I was shocked myself. I had to explain about tests proving that things functioned most smoothly when every man kept to his assigned task.

“Don’t Areco think we can multitask?” he asked me. “They’re a corporation like any other, aren’t they? They must want to save money. All we have to do is show them we can do both jobs. The Shooters get a nice redundancy package; we get the Gun Platform all to ourselves. Life is good.”

“Only one problem with your little plan, Mr. Genius,” said Myron. “I can’t shoot. I don’t have the reflexes a Shooter does. That’s why I’m a Plotter.”

“But you could learn to shoot,” said Charles.

“I’ll repeat this slowly so you get it,” said Myron, exasperated. “I don’t have the reflexes. And neither do you. How many times have we been tested, our whole lives? Aptitude tests, allergy tests, brain scans, DNA mapping? Areco knows exactly what we are and what we can and can’t do. I’m a Plotter. You’re just fooling yourself if you think you aren’t.”

Charles didn’t say anything in reply. He just looked at each of us in turn, pretty disgusted I guess, and then he turned back to his console and focused on his work.

That wasn’t the end of it, though. When he was off his shift, instead of hanging out in the Cockpit, did he join in the discussions of graphic novels or what was hot on holo that week? Not Charles. He’d retire to a corner in the Forecastle with a buke and he’d game. And not just any game: targeting simulations. You never saw a guy with such icy focus. Sometimes he’d tinker with a couple of projects he’d ordered. I assumed they were models.

It was like the rest of us weren’t even there. We had to respect him as a Plotter; for one thing, he turned out to have an uncanny knack for spotting Intruders, days before any of the rest of us detected them, and he was brilliant at predicting their trajectories too. But there was something distant about the guy that kept him from fitting in. Myron and Anil had dismissed him as a crank anyway, and a couple of the guys on B Shift actively disliked him, after he spouted off to them the way he did to us. They were sure he was going to do something, sooner or later, that would only end up making it worse for all of us.

They were right, too.

When Weldon’s turn in the rota ended, he brought Charles the French maid’s apron and tossed it on his bunk.

“Your turn to wear the damn thing,” he said. “They’ll expect you in the bar at fourteen hundred hours. Good luck.”

Charles just grunted, never even looking up from the screen of his buke.

Fourteen hundred hours came and he was still sitting there, coolly gaming.

“Hey!” said Anil. “You’re supposed to go flackey!”

“I’m not going,” said Charles.

“Don’t be stupid!” I said. “If the rest of us have to do it, you do too.”

“Why? Terrible repercussions if I don’t?” Charles set aside his buke and looked at us.

“Yes!” said Myron. Preston from A Shift came running in right then, looking pale.

“Who’s supposed to be flackeying? There’s nobody out there, and Lord Deathlok wants to know why!”

“See?” said Myron.

“You’ll get all of us in trouble, you fool! Give me the apron, I’ll go!” said Anil. But Charles took the apron and tore it in half.

There was this horrified silence, which filled up with the sound of Shooters thundering along the corridor. We heard Lord Deathlok and Painmaster yelling as they came.

“Flackey! Oh, flackey! Where are you?”

And then they were in the room and it was too late to run, too late to hide. Painmaster’s roach crest almost touched the ceiling panels. Lord Deathlok’s yellow grin was so wide he didn’t look human.

“Hi there, buttholes,” said Painmaster. “If you girls aren’t too busy making out, one of you is supposed to be flackeying for us.”

“It was my turn,” said Charles. He wadded up the apron and threw it at them. “How about you wait on yourself from now on?”

“This wasn’t our idea!” said Myron.

“We tried to make him report for duty!” said Anil.

“We’ll remember that, when we’re assigning penalties,” said Lord Deathlok. “Maybe we’ll let you keep your pants when we handcuff you upside down in the toilet. Little Newbie, though . . .” He turned to Charles. “What about a nice game of Walk the Dog? Painmaster, got a leash anywhere on you?”

“The Painmaster always has a leash for a bad dog,” said Painmaster, pulling one out. He started toward Charles, and that’s when it got crazy.

Charles jumped out of his bunk and I thought, No, you idiot, don’t try to run! But he didn’t. He grabbed Painmaster’s extended hand and pulled him close, and brought his arm up like he was going to hug him, only instead he made a kind of punching motion at Painmaster’s neck. Painmaster screamed, wet himself and fell down. Charles kicked him in the crotch.

Another dead silence, which broke as soon as Painmaster got enough breath in him for another scream. Everybody else in the room was staring at Charles, or I should say at his left wrist, because it was now obvious there was something strapped to it under his sleeve.

Lord Deathlok had actually taken a step backward. He looked from Painmaster to Charles, and then at whatever it was on Charles’ wrist. He licked his lips.

“So, that’s, what, some kind of taser?” he said. “Those are illegal, buddy.”

Charles smiled. I realized then I’d never seen him smile before.

“It’s illegal to buy one. I bought some components and made my own. What are you going to do? Report me to Kurtz?” he said.

“No; I’m just going to take it away from you, dumbass,” said Lord Deathlok. He lunged at Charles, but all that happened was that Charles tased him too. He jerked backward and fell over a chair, clutching his tased hand.

“You’re dead,” he gasped. “You’re really dead.”

Charles walked over and kicked him in the crotch too.

“I challenge you to a duel,” he said.

“What?” said Lord Deathlok, when he had enough breath after his scream.

“A duel. With simulations,” said Charles. “I’ll outshoot you. Right there in the War Room, with everybody there to witness. Thirteen hundred hours tomorrow.”

“Fuck off,” said Lord Deathlok. Charles leaned down and displayed the two little steel points of the taser.

“So you’re scared to take me on? Chicken, is that it?” he said, and Myron and Anil obligingly started making cluck-cluck-cluck noises. “Eugene, why don’t you go over to the Pit of Hell and tell the Shooters they need to come scrape up these guys?”

I wouldn’t have done that for a chance to see the lost episodes of
Doctor Who,
but fortunately Lord Deathlok sat up, gasping.