Black Hole Sun (8 page)

“I was being ironic.”

“Or sarcastic.”

Slowly at first, almost as if the platform instead of the train is moving, the station passes by the window. A moment later an air horn blasts as the engine winds over the ribbon of rail, the city growing smaller as the TransPort blows out of New Eden. Soon the biodome of the settlement seems far away and unreal, a shrinking dot on the Mars landscape. The picture in the window melts into a liquid of color and sound so that only the distant peak of Olympus Mons remains. The horizon is gone—not melted, just gone—and the
world I know becomes flat and red and dusty.

I close my eyes, and the dream comes quickly: I'm back in the hospital, the reconstructive surgery ward. Father stands over my bed.

“This is the third rejection,” the surgeon says. “His brain waves simply are not a match for any donor that we have on record. Alas, the experiment is a failure.”

A faceless bureaucrat in a lavender CorpCom suit suggests, “Perhaps his mind is too weak to host an artificial intelligence.”

Father disagrees. “Too strong is more likely. My son's DNA is of the highest quality. His surrogate was chosen from hundreds of thousands of women, all of them strong, intelligent, brave. No, it must be the donors that are inferior.”

“Or incompatible,” the surgeon says. “We can keep trying.”

“No,” Father says, patting my hand with all the affection of a piece of meat. “I cannot risk Operation MUSE. You'll need to seek more suitable subjects.”

From the haze of sedation, I grope for his arm and somehow find it. “Mimi,” I say, my voice slurry and sounding very far away. “Use Mimi.”

“Who is this Mimi?” Father asks.

“His former chief,” the suit says. “She was KIA in Tunnel Two-E.”

“Do it,” Father tells the surgeon.

“But sir,” the suit protests. “We are already in violation of ethic protocol, as well as legal—”

“Damn your ethics,” Father bellows. “And bugger the law. That didn't stop our last project, and it won't stop this one. My son is destined for greatness. This experiment will help him reach it.” He mechanically pats my hand again. “Doctor, you may proceed. And give him a higher dose of anesthesia. I do not want him to remember this conversation.”

But I do remember it, and the memory jars me awake. I rub my eyes, not knowing how long I've been asleep.

“Only a minute or two,” Mimi says. “But do try to get some shut-eye, cowboy. It's a long ride to Hell.”

Bishop TransPort Station,
Outpost Fisher Four
ANNOS MARTIS
238. 4. 9. 15:22

By the time the TransPort train reaches the end of the line, we are the only things left in the baggage car. Despite Mimi's repeated reminders, I've gotten little to no sleep. Par for the course these days.

Vienne is first out of her seat. “Ready, chief.”

Fuse and Jenkins are still asleep in the seat in front of us. Jenkins's snores sound like he's sucking his soft palate through his nose.

I grab my bag from the rack. “Hop to, Regulators!”

“He's awful bossy,” Jenkins says, yawning and stretching.

“Because he's the chief,” Vienne replies.

Jenkins pauses to cogitate that one. His eyes glaze over.

“Aw, look what you've gone and done.” Fuse snaps his fingers in Jenkins's face. “His brain's overloaded. You can't push a terabyte of data through a transistor, lov—duck—Suz—Vienne! Yes, Vienne.”

“File out!” I say. “Don't make me say it again.”

“Bossy britches,” Jenkins grumbles.

Fuse pops him in the head. “Sorry, chief. He's a might peevish after a long haul. He'll be more pleasant once he's had a walkabout.”

On the landing area, the first thing I notice—the whistle of an arctic wind outside the dilapidated station, followed by the slap of frigid air on my face. The second thing I notice—no greeting party.

Just an empty station that's seen better days. The way an ancient ruin has seen better days. Tiles fallen from the ceiling. Platform covered in rat droppings. Paint peeling from the walls and handrails. It's a disgrace the way the TransPort company has let the station go downhill from neglect.

“It's carking cold here,” Jenkins complains, obviously still peevish. He drops his duffel and begins hopping around. “Where's our ride? I'm freezing my ass off.”

“I'd be your ride.” A miner steps out of the shadows as the TransPort train pulls away. It's Spiner, part of the crew that hired us. Never thought I'd be happy to see such an ugly face.

“Welcome to Hell's Cross, Regulators. My name's Spiner.”

I offer a hand in greeting. He looks at it like it's infected with plague. “Nice to see you, too. Mimi,” I say, “scan the area. Find out what he's up to.”

“Attempting scan, cowboy,” she replies. “Acoustic resonances here are complex. Give me thirty seconds.”

“Fifteen.”

“I'm an AI, not a time machine.”

Jenkins raises his hand in greeting, a gesture that Spiner also ignores. “When do we eat, Ruster?”

“When you get hungry, I s'pose,” Spiner says.

“No, I mean,” Jenkins huffs, temper rising, “when're you going to get us some grub? And a bed, while you're at it.”

Spiner scratches his concave belly. “I'd not known
dalit
was allowed to sleep in beds like decent folk.”

“Decent folk? I've had about enough of that rot!” Jenkins grabs the miner by the straps of his overalls and lifts him up like a scruffy puppet. “Don't no mud puppy talk to me like that!”

“Put 'im down, Jenks!” Fuse barks. “How many times'd I tell you about that?”

Jenkins plops the man, who is swinging and kicking wildly, on the ground. “Ah, it don't hurt him none.”

Fuse steps between them. “What Jenkins means in his own imbecilic way is that it's been a long time since we bugged out of New Eden, and we'd like a chance to tuck in and have a lie down.”

Spiner looks as if someone asked him to solve integrals in three dimensions.

“Stand down,” I say. “Jenkins, put away the knife—I'll handle this. Spiner, what's the next step here? We've been in the open too long.”

Spiner nods, oblivious. “The old woman says I'm to carry the six of you to the Cross.”

“Six?” I say. There are only four of us. “Mimi, where's my scan?”

“Completed,” Mimi responds. “I detect a total seven biorhythmic signatures. All human.”

“Yes, six,” Spiner says to me. “You four and the Regulators behind you.”

I do a double take. Regu—

“Very interesting,” Mimi says. “The other two signatures are in my data banks. You're not going to like this: One is Ockham—”

“Ockham!” I say. “I know you're here. Show yourself!”

The old Regulator steps out from the shadows. Now I know why Spiner was so out of sorts. Ockham is the last Regulator he ever expected to get off that train. Me, too.

“You messed up my little game,” Ockham chuckles, leaning against a support column and cleaning his nails with a survival knife. “How'd you know it was me?”

“X-ray vision,” I say. “Why are you here?”

“Doing the same job that you're doing. Thought you and your three little Regulators could use a hand. Even up the odds, you might say.”

“What about your fee?”

Ockham winks with his one eye. “Found a private investor. You can split up that little pie. I'll keep the big all to myself.”

On cue, a boy dressed in the collarless uniform of a CorpCom inductee steps from behind a concrete column.

“Jean-Paul Bramimonde,” I say.

“Regulator?” Jenkins says to Spiner. “You said two more Regulators. That boy ain't no Regulator. He ain't big enough to pick up a—”

“What game are you two running?” I interrupt.

Jean-Paul squares his shoulder. Lifts a proud chin. “You refused to be my master, so I hired Ockham instead.”

“You took money to be this boy's master?” I ask Ockham.

“Which is my right,” Ockham says. “According to the Tenets.”

“We're on a job!” I yell at him. “You didn't ask permission to do any training.”

“That's just it,” Ockham says as he grabs his gear and leads Jean-Paul away. “I don't need your permission to do nothing. Do I,
dalit
? Come on, young Bramimonde. Let's take a look at this famous South Pole they gab so much about on the nets.”

“Chief?” It's Vienne's way of asking if I'm going to allow this to happen.

“Let it be. For now,” Five Regulators is infinitely better than four. Even if Ockham is a presumptuous gasbag. “Regulators! Roll out! We've got work to do.”

Vienne wrinkles her brow but falls in line. Fuse, taking his cue from her, does the same.

“I don't like it,” Jenkins huffs. “An old man like that horning in on a job. I saw Regulators like him in my old CorpCom. Two years I spent taking their guff. Do this, boy,
do that, boy. I'm almost a nine-year. I ain't taking orders from no walking fossil.”

“If you're fobbed about it,” I say as we follow Spiner down a path that cuts through the permafrost, “think how the miners are going to feel.”

Outpost Fisher Four, South Pole
ANNOS MARTIS
238. 4. 9. 16:18

Outside the station, the continental divide of the Prometheus Basin rises into the steel blue sky. The wind whipping down from the basin rim almost freezes us before we can take ten steps. Behind me, Jenkins complains about the cold and Fuse complains about Jenkins complaining. I swear, they're like an old married couple.

“More walking,” I bark at them. “And less talking. Regulators! Double-time!”

We start jogging down the narrow, icy road, and a dozen meters later, we pass through an open wrought-iron gate that acts as the mine entrance.

A sign above the gate reads
to know work is to know god
. They might as well have written
the orthocracy was here
.

Ahead of us stands a steel tower that controls a lift mechanism. That's the main shaft, I'm guessing. A tipple, which was used to bring the ore to the surface, marks a second
shaft. Both the tower and tipple are coated in thick rust, an indication that they've seen no use in years. To my left are several giant mounds of heavy guanite, the leftover product of the mines. Before, guanite was a valuable resource, but now it, like the miners, is considered worthless.

“Monitor everyone's vitals,” I tell Mimi. Then call to Spiner, “We have to get out of this cold fast. I don't want my crew dying of hypothermia before the fun starts.”

He points to a corrugated metal structure a hundred meters ahead. “That's the tram house. It takes us underground. Where it's warmer. Not warm. But warmer.”

The tram house is ten by ten, with one door and four Plexi windows. The ground around it is streaked with snow, the soil furrowed and warped, as if cut by a massive scythe.

“In the before days,” Spiner says as he leads us inside, “all this ground was permafrost, and the foundation for the tram house had to be jackhammered out of it. That was before Phase Blue come and living got easy. Well, get on the lift. It takes us down to the tracks.”

No wonder the Dræu think the miners are easy pickings—the lift door stands wide open, and the only elevator is an open hydraulic lift. It's an open invitation for the cannibals to waltz right in and take whatever they want.

“Mimi,” I say. “Start a list for me. First item, close down this lift.”

“Check.”

“And keep sweeping for human signatures. Make
sure there's no ugly surprises waiting for us.”

“Beat you to it,” she says. “Nobody here but us ducks.”

“That's chickens.”

“Yes,” she says, “I know my poultry.”

“You're telling jokes now? Since when do you have a sense of humor?”

“I told you,” she says. “I'm evolving.”

“And that's supposed to reassure me?”

We reach the tram. It is an open ore car modified to carry people. The driver sits in a jump seat, controlling the vehicle with a joystick. The passengers sit on benches and hold on for dear life.

As soon as we start, wind and dust whip through the tram. The air is tepid and stinks of sulfur. Even though there are rows of dim lights on both sides of the tunnels, entering the black hole of a mine means leaving the rest of the world behind. Day and night no longer matter. Time itself seems to stop.

“You're very quiet,” Vienne says as she sits beside me. She lowers her voice. “Something's troubling you. Is it Ockham?”

She locks eyes with me, and I feel a sensation of fluttering behind my belly button, like my legs are being unscrewed, when she turns her head so that her hair falls behind her neck. Her chin lifts, and my eyes trace the curve of her lips.

Stop. Don't think of her like this. Don't think like this at all. I force my eyes closed. Push the air out of my lungs until they shake like my hands are shaking, then let the air out in
controlled segments. When I open my eyes, I can breathe normally, and the rush is gone. For now.

“It's Ockham,” I agree. “And the boy. And this job. We need all the Regulators we can get, but Ockham's taking on an acolyte here, now, in this place? That's stupid.”

“Poor judgment,” she says, nodding in agreement.

My voice is hushed. “It's against the Tenets to shoot another Regulator, right?”

“This is why I will never be chief,” she says. “I would've shot him by now.”

“Ha!” I laugh, and she fails to remain stone-faced. For a moment I lean close to her. Despite of everything else, there's something about Vienne that makes me stronger, even though she turns my insides into jelly.

Soon we reach warmer air, which is infused with guanite dust. It blows around like powder, and we can't help but inhale it. Soon all of us have brown nostrils, and our lips are caked. We already look like miners.

Ahead, the trail widens to accommodate rows of squat concrete houses. Ugly. Utilitarian. This place reminds me of the Norilsk Gulag.

“Is this Hell's Cross?” I ask.

“No! The Cross is more swanky than this. It's called Crazy Town,” Spiner says. “Used to be where the slave labor lived. They got left behind when the mines closed, then went crazy and torched the place.”

We leave the tram and walk in silence through Crazy
Town. It smells like dried, musty plaster. All around us, the boulevard is jammed with debris. Burned-out fuel barrels scattered among the skeletons of trucks. A bulldozer. A small bus. The buildings are sagging hulks with crumbling arch-ways, dried-up gardens and fountains, broken-out windows, and swaying walls held together by rusted-out rebar.

“Spiner,” I ask, “what's our destination?”

“Hereabouts,” he says, and makes a hard right into pitch darkness. A few seconds later he flicks on a headlamp. The beam sweeps across our faces. “Come on, now. You're not afraid of the dark, are you?”

I wait long enough for Mimi to do a sweep. Then give the order: “Regulators! Helmet lights on. Follow him.”

“Yes, chief,” Vienne and Fuse reply in unison.

“See, love?” Fuse says. “We're already two peas in a pod.”

“Get your own pod.” Vienne punches him so hard, his armor seizes up. “Next time I draw blood.”

“Nice right cross you've got there.” Laughing, Fuse shakes his arm, relaxing the hardened sleeve. “If ever there's a friendly row among the troops, remind me to choose your side.”

At least he's good-tempered about getting his ass kicked, I think.

“His suit doesn't think so,” Mimi says. “The nanobots controlling the bioadaptive fabric are responding slowly to the aversive stimulus. They aren't used to forceful blows. Apparently Fuse isn't a battle-hardened soldier.”

“That was something,” I say, “I didn't need an AI to figure out.”

Over the next few minutes, Spiner guides us quickly through a cavernous room. Then Jenkins yawns and leans against a wall, knocking loose a shower of dust that coats him from head to waist. He jumps up and starts slapping himself. “Damn this farging guanite!”

“What kind of dance is that?” Fuse says, laughing.

Jenkins stops mid-slap. “Huh? Dance?” Then his eyes narrow. “Stop having a laugh at me!” He makes a dive at Fuse, and they both end up tussling on the ground.

“Boys!” I shout, and they stop, but not before exchanging a couple more shoves. “Fuse, stop baiting him. Jenkins, behave yourself.”

Then I notice Ockham watching, arms folded, like he's judging them. And judging me. He steers Jean-Paul toward Spiner and then slows down. Waiting for me.

All right, I think. You want to have words, let's have words. “Some place, no?” I say after catching up with him.

“It's no place for Regulators,” he says.

My helmet beam highlights his face. In the narrow light, his scar and missing eye give me the feeling that he's wearing a grotesque mask.

“So I was cogitating,” he says, “how was it that you got to be chief of this little davos of yours?”

“Circumstances dictated it.”

“Did circumstances give you only one Regulator, too?”

“She's worth five.”

“A davos is to have ten.” He blows his nose into his hand. “The Orthocrats, they knew the right way to train a Regulator. Not some assembly line of mass-produced piddle-poor knockoffs. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Fibber,” Mimi says. “You're very offended.”

“That's where the word
davos
come from,” Ockham continues. “A master would take on nine followers at the same time. The acolytes learned how to fight single-handedly, but they learned how to fight as a group, to defend their brothers, too. They lived together, ate together, fought together, and when it had to be, died together.”

“Pompous windbag,” Mimi says. “Every Regulator knows this.”

“Shh. Let him talk. Let's see what his angle is.”

“That's why when a master died,” he continues, “the acolytes all joined him in death or became
dalit
. It was a beautiful death. It was the Tenets. All that changed when the Orthocracy fell apart. Regulators went from being peace-keepers to soldiers.”

“Common knowledge, Ockham,” I say, thinking of Vienne. She's devoted her life to serving the Tenets, her davos, her chief. Her greatest ambition is to die a Beautiful Death. My ambition is to keep her alive.

Ockham knocks the dust off my shoulder, revealing the double chevron symbol of chief sergeant. “The old
masters never needed stripes to be leaders.”

“The old masters are dead,” I say. “Times change.”

“Maybe. Maybe not, no?” Ockham says, lifting his head, showing the stubble on his chin and jowls. For a glimpse of time, he isn't an over-the-hill, burnout mercenary, but a young soldier, strong and confident. “Something else I wanted to get off my chest. You and that Vienne?”

“What about us?”

“I've seen the way you look at her. You think you love that girl, and you probably do. But feelings have got you blinded to something. Want to know what?”

“No,” I say, resisting the urge to throttle him, “and I'm not all that interested in you telling me.”

He does anyway. “Because the thing about her that makes your head spin like a busted gyro is the very thing that will keep you apart.”

“You're pretty poetic,” I say, “for a crusty oldie.”

“How'd you think I got this crust, sonny?” He laughs deeply, and his face takes on its weary caste again. “War ain't the only battles I've lived through. There's worse wounds than them what bullets leave in you.”

Let it go, I tell myself as Ockham moves up to be with Jean-Paul. It's not worth the trouble to give him the smack he deserves.

“Do it anyway,” Mimi says.

“Quit kibitzing,” I tell her.

“It's my job to kibitz.”

“I thought it was to keep me alive.”

“I'm an AI of many talents,” she says. “Plus, there are less obvious ways to keep you alive.”

Up ahead, Spiner switches on a light, and the group takes a left turn. Vienne waves us forward.

“Double-time,” I say.

We begin jogging, crouched low to avoid an encounter with the ceiling, and catch up at the end of the tunnel. We stop in front of an air lock, a circular iron door with a porthole in the center.

Here the tunnel is almost perfectly round. The surface is as smooth as glass. “You miners do good work,” I say, running a hand along the wall.

Jenkins scoffs. “Good work, nothing. The rusters didn't dig this tunnel.”

“Good eye,” Spiner says. “Big Daddies did the work. No man can match them chigoes for tunneling. Not even the best guanite miners on this planet.”

“Who would that be?” I ask.

“Us, of course.”

“Poor but proud,” Vienne says quietly.

In the glow of the lights, I can make out a brick wall to the left and a broad steel gate to the right, wide enough to drive a power sled through.

“No multivids for security?” I ask Mimi. “No retinal scanners?”

“Nothing,” she says.

“No surveillance equipment at all? I don't believe it.” Fisher Four really is a hundred years behind the rest of Mars.

“Stop exaggerating,” Mimi says. “You're just used to very sophisticated technology.”

“You're alluding to yourself?”

“It goes without saying.”

“But you said it.”

“Au contraire,” she says, “you did.”

A few seconds later white light floods the tunnel as Spiner rolls open the air lock. “Home sweet home,” he says, and steps inside.