Acts of Conscience (44 page)

“Friends?”

He smiled again. “Two of your... assailants are in this hospital too, Your... autopilot ran them over with the camper, then landed the damned thing on top of them. They’re lucky to be alive too. Pretty badly crushed, I understand.”

I tried to reach up and feel my head, but my left arm was stiff, covered, apparently, with some stiff elastic bandaging. I put up my other hand, right arm looking just fine, and tried to feel the side of my head. More bandages. And quiet.

Pietros held up my barrette, curiously twisted looking, and said, “Here’s another reason you’re alive, Mr. du Cheyne. Good old Lÿr hit this as well as your skull. Otherwise you’d probably be in therapy, trying to grow new brain tissue. An axe blow to the left temporal lobe is a serious thing.”

So they say. “Ship.”

He nodded, frowning. “The... uh, your library software has informed us you’ve got special medical facilities aboard that can heal you much faster than our... primitive medical methods. We’ll be transporting you to the cosmodrome this afternoon.”

“Thanks.”

He frowned, turning the ruined barrette over in his hands. “Mr. du Cheyne, do I understand your... software has the power to override standard injunctions against taking human life?”

I think I managed a smile of my own. “That’s just an old myth, Mr. Pietros.”

Dark eyes on mine. “Mmm. I didn’t know that.” He tossed the thing onto the nightstand by the table. “Look, I don’t know what the hell happened, out there on the veldt. I guess I don’t really care. Those two fellows down in the broken-bone ward... well, one’s in no shape to talk. Wubbo says you killed one of his friends, shot up a hunting party for some reason, that he and the others were just...” An expressive shrug, “Bringing you to justice.”

I thought about denying it, but: “I guess so.”

Anger briefly creased his brow. “You guess so. Fucking asshole.” He seemed to stare for a minute, as though trying to read my thoughts, “Mr. du Cheyne, do you know we have the death penalty here in the Compact Cities? Even for
vreemdelings
like you?”

I shrugged.

“One little shot and you go to sleep and then we bury your ass.”

“How nice.”

More anger, a darkening of his already swarthy complexion. “Your... friend, the Salieran... being, says you were trying to save the wolfen.”

“Maybe so.”

A sigh. “I guess I don’t care why you did it, Mr. du Cheyne. You didn’t do it
here
, so its none of our damned business. We’ll be taking you out to your ship, where you can spend as long recovering as you want. After that, we want you off Green Heaven.”

“No planetary government here.”

A look of solid contempt. “No, Mr. du Cheyne. There’s nobody can force you to leave. But no Compact City will have you, Mr. Troublemaker, and the Groenteboeren...” He smiled again. “Maybe you can go visit
Les Iles des Français
, or even go hang around with the Hinterlings.”

“Thanks.”

He got up and walked out of the room, without looking back.

Seventeen: Late the next day, I sat alone

Late the next day, I sat alone on the bridge of
Random Walk
, looking out across the cosmodrome’s landing field. Ships out there, of various types. That one a big cargo hauler, engines on the bottom, control cabin in the nose, the rest of it just empty hull with yawning doors, waiting to be filled. Off to one side, mounted on meilerwagens, standing in a neat row, I could see the external fuel tanks, cheap, disposable, fully biodegradable, waiting to be mounted.

As old a design as you’d want to see. Twenty-second-century vintage, tanks most likely filled with incandescent compressed air, air crushed until the molecules’ electron clouds were at the edge of collapse. Not efficient. Not pretty. Just cheap.

I flexed my left harm, holding the elbow joint in my hand, marveling at how well I felt. Took care of a lot of minor maintenance problems while they were dealing with the big stuff. I remembered being brought out here in an ambulance, Pietros and his people helping me up the gangplank, watching as the hatch closed behind me.

I don’t know how I managed the long hobble to medical bay, just remember collapsing into the diagnostic chair, remember feeling the cap slide down over my head, head filling with alien thoughts... Gaetan! the suit’s joyous whisper. Heard the medical software’s pompous voice, Considerable peripheral damage from incompetent treatment modalities. He’s lucky to have survived at all.

Felt the diagnostic probes slide in, like cold icepicks stabbing deep, here, there... felt my blood start to fizz, pain everywhere, all at once, at the symbiotes were reprogrammed for a major overhaul. I remember thinking, just before I blacked out, This feels like love.

Silly.

And yet...

I got up out of the engineer’s seat, stood with my hands on the back of the pilot’s seat, hands on the spacesuit’s warm, living integument, looking out across the field to where a group of workers and machines were folding up a photosail, packing it away into its launcher pod.

I wonder what Leah Strachan is up to, right now. No sign of
Torus X-2
out on the landing field. Gone back home, most likely, taking her with it, perhaps. I imagined her, already home, wrapped in the circle of Gordon Lassiter’s strong, uncomplicated arms. Uncomplicated? No, Gaetan, that’s just the excuse you make, a way you can look down on him.

I unhooked the suit and started putting it on, first this piece, then that, integument swaddling me everywhere, rainbow shadows starting to sparkle upon the bulkheads and control panels as I pulled on the helmet, completing the circuit. When I put the circlet round my brows, I could feel the warm glow of the suit’s happiness. Identical, in every respect, with every surge of happiness I myself have ever felt.

Is that all I ever was? A tool, happy to be employed?

Soft pocking of tiny footsteps behind me, like little horse’s hooves on the hard plastic deck. I turned and beheld the Kapellmeister, standing still, seven eyes waving above it’s back, looking at me.

“Feeling well, I trust?”

I shrugged. “Ready to go?”

It came forward, crawling into the leg space under the control console, then hopped up in the flight engineer’s chair, settling itself against the upholstery like some kind of impossible dog. “I’ve stowed my rats and rabbits in the stateroom you indicated.”

Momentary image of a bunkroom full of loose rats, rabbits hopping around, suspecting their eventual fate, all of them looking for a way to escape.

The library AI whispered, In cages, Gaetan. The cages are well secured.

“OK.” I sat down in the pilot’s seat, put my hands on the armrest controls, watched the ship come to life, everywhere, all at once, numbers and graphs cycling and spinning, telling me God was in His Heaven and all was right with the universe.

Little voices, all around me. The voices of my true friends. My only friends. One of them now asking the tower for clearance, vectoring me obliquely up out of the atmosphere, on a trajectory that would, very quickly, carry me out of the plane of the Cetian ecliptic, beyond the necessity of space traffic control.

Outside, an amber light began to flash, and I imagined antique klaxons hooting. Imagined workers across the field turning to watch me rise, workers filled with envy because they too have dreamed this dream. Felt my heart start to flutter with that old, familiar, well-loved excitement.

Green Heaven was an old dream, a childhood dream, a boy’s dream.

Blue light played around the field, flickering on the other ships, lighting up the front of the terminal building, reflected in its glass, then the ground fell, taking my breath away. By God.

One long, hard moment of joy as I felt the ship respond to my will, soft chatter of cooperating AIs in the background, ship tipping, ground angling away beneath me as I passed over the heart of Orikhalkos. Right there. That’s my hotel. There, by the waterfront, those drydocks. The killpit where... Over there, that’s the dollhouse where Delakroë and van Rijn...

We left the ramshackle mess of little boxes that was the city behind, rising higher, then higher still, out over the Koperveldt plain. Down there, rivers and hills, tiny colored dots that I knew must be boerderij houses. Where are you now, Gretel Blondinkruis? I imagined her outside, standing tall and proud, shading her eyes as she watched my little ship transit her heaven. Do you wish you were going with me, Gretel Blondinkruis? Wish someone would come and take you away from your ordinary world?

Then, the foothills of the Thÿsbÿs were rising, plains of brass replaced by a rolling landscape of metallic green forest, then mountains covered with snow, slopes steepening, angling upward to the heights, where not even snow could fall... The ship slowed abruptly, so quickly the compensators miscalculated, allowing me to feel a slight tug through my inner ear, ship turning, careening past a vast gray cliff, coming to a dead stop in midair, hanging this for just a moment, then falling straight down into a saddleback pass in the mountains.

Time for one quick look around, Opveldt and Koudloft over there. Yellow-white wasteland of the Adrianis Desert in the opposite direction. This is the Aardlands Bergpas, trekked by the embryonic Groeteboeren as they fled the abandonment of Kalyx Station, headed into the wilderness. Then we were down.

From the top of the gangplank, the view was disquieting, if for no other reason than that they were... all there. Somehow, I hadn’t anticipated the... reality.

Beside me, the Kapellmeister said, “I count sixty-four dollies.”

Shit. I clattered down the stairway, trying not to look at them, walked over to where Delakroë and van Rijn stood beside the tailgate of a large truck, one with a big wooden cage for a cargo bay.

The library whispered, This resembles the sort of truck used on Earth in late Medieval times for hauling swine to the slaughterhouse.

Van Rijn, smiling his gappy smile, rubbed his hands together, breath a frosty jet in the cold mountain air. “Good to see you again, Mr. du Cheyne.”

I gestured at the dollies, huddled together in their chains. “This isn’t exactly what we contracted for.”

A sigh. “We’ll pay you pro rata for the increase. When we get to Epimetheus.”

I smiled, turning finally and looking right at the dollies. Little cowgirls, all of them looking right at me. Wondering? No way to know. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck try to stand up. I said, “If you don’t, I’ll impound the cargo and sell it myself.”

Click-crack
.

I looked up to find Delakroë had pulled a solid-propellant revolver similar to the one I’d seen in Tegenzinstad. Was aiming it at my head. I said, “What do you think will happen if the ship’s communications laser is discharged at you?”

A sigh from van Rijn. “Sometimes, Delakroë...”

The other man looked nervously at the ship, then uncocked the gun and slid it back inside his coat.

Van Rijn said, “If the money’s not forthcoming at our destination, you can simply shoot me, Mr. du Cheyne. Our Epimethean hosts will most likely pay handsomely for the privilege of watching you do it. They’re like that.”

I took a deep breath, looking at the dollies again. “Let’s just get them on board and get going.”

o0o

The large, habitable moon Epimetheus, circling the planet Prometheus, itself circling 40 Eridani A, lies some 9.72 light years from Green Heaven, circling Tau Ceti. At
Random Walk
’s best pseudo-velocity, that would be a voyage of eight days, twenty-one hours, zero minutes, forty-nine-point-six-eight seconds.

Instantaneous, of course, from the point of view of the voyagers, but then it would take us more than thirty hours to reach the jump point, even though what passed for a Cetian systemic government, Compact Traffic Control, set no speed limits for out-of-ecliptic travel.

The glory of the takeoff then, rising straight up out of Aardlands Bergpas, hearing van Rijn’s muttered astonishment, the Kapellmeister commenting on the impressive view. My hands on the controls as Green Heaven became a cloud swirled, entirely undistinguished little globe, lost among the stars. Velocity rising as we sailed out of plane...

The ship, a stolid voice, whispering, At any reasonable relativistic velocity, you will waste too much fuel. Take it easy. Reminding me, in its own oblique way, that fuel costs money. And money, of course, is why... I tried not to think about the dollies, locked in their staterooms below, like so many doomed rats and rabbits.

Now, I sat alone in the control room, still in my suit, but with the helmet off and tucked through my belt, eating my dinner alone, looking out at the stars. Motionless, unidentifiable stars, just so many steady, meaningless lights.

Van Rijn had been surprised when I’d taken him below, had shown him how to use the galley, had told him he’d be eating dinner alone tonight. Hurt look on his face? I couldn’t tell, didn’t want to imagine him saying, Don’t you like me, Mr. du Cheyne?

Well, I don’t, you oily son of a bitch, but...

The Kapellmeister had stood still in the galley, watching as I’d turned and headed back to the control room. Making no movement to follow me? None. Maybe it would just go on down to its room full of rats and rabbits and suck itself a nice little dinner. Or maybe stay up and have a nice chat with Mr. van Rijn, surely an interesting sort of human character for an alien to investigate.

I wondered how van Rijn would react to a Kapellmeister’s eating habits.

No matter. And no matter how I sealed myself in, I couldn’t escape from some feral awareness of all those dollies stowed away on my ship. Is everyone else immune to it? Well, no. Silly. But why isn’t van Rijn reacting? That dollhouse back in Orikhalkos didn’t have
every
sort of man in it. Just a certain kind of man.

I put my dinner aside, parking it at the top of the control panel, stood and started pacing back and forth, looking out the windows, trying to think, trying not to think, failing at both endeavors.

Slowly, piece by piece, took the spacesuit off, listening to its last moments of disquiet before disassembly brought deactivation. Don the new barrette I’d taken out of storage, cut the suit back on line, just like old times? I looked at the thing, sitting on the arm of the pilot’s chair, nestled amid the hand controls, where I’d left it.