Black Hull (13 page)

Red and blue lights flashed in the rear
window. Mick slowed the car down and pulled over. A cop walked briskly to his
window.

“Sir, are you deliberately trying to
kill someone tonight?” the cop said.

“I’ve got a flight. I’ve got to
practice.”

“Jesus Christ, you’re Micky Compton,”
replied the cop.

“Well?”

The cop peered in at the passenger seat,
seeing his softly sobbing wife.

“Ma’am, are you okay?” he asked.

“She’s fine. The restaurant back there,
our waiter was a jerk.”

“Mr. Compton, my son’s a big fan of yours.
Would you mind signing something for me?” he asked.

“Make it quick. Like I said, I have a
mission.”

The cop disappeared, racing back to his
squad car. Mick looked at Karen but she quickly looked away, out into the dead
night, her empty future. Each stretch alone had been harder than the last. She
knew she could not stop him from going. She also didn’t know if she could last
another three years alone, cold, longing. The cop returned with a pad of paper
and a pen. A voice crackled on his walkie-talkie:

“Officer Reel, we’re scanning for a 3072
blue Ford Mustang Cobra, suspect assaulted a man at Scalini Fedeli
.
” The
cop stepped back, looked at Mick’s Cobra.

“Excuse me a moment,” said the cop.

“No, come here. Give me it.” The cop handed
Mick his walkie-talkie.

“Jim Reynolds?” Mick asked.

“This is sergeant Reynolds,” the voice
responded.

“It’s Mick Compton you asshole.”

“Mick?”

“Yea, tell Jake to clean that mess up at
Fedeli’s.”

“That was you?”

“Yea. The prick next to us had a mouth
on him. Lucky he didn’t catch me on a bad day. He’d be going to the hospital.”

“I’ll tell Jake it was you Mick. No
problem.”

“This rookie’s not bad.” Mick eyed the
anxious cop standing at his window.

“Alright, let me clear this up right
away. Call me before you leave the system next week.”

“Sure.” Mick handed the walkie-talkie
back, took the pad of paper from the cop, signed it, and sped off.

“You’re not going to talk to me now?”
Mick said after several minutes of silence passed.

“Talking doesn’t work with you anymore
Mick. It hasn’t for years,” she replied.

Mick ignored her and turned on the
radio, drowning her and all his thoughts out to the sound of Stevie Ray
Vaughan’s screaming guitar.

Mick’s eyes opened slow. Before him a horrible
event unfolded: Sera stood over the once-immaculate face of his rescue. Her
fine lines were bruised out of proportion, her lower lip swollen, sweat
knotting her hair in clumped strands. Sera was reaching back to slap the
defenseless girl again when he mustered the energy to speak:

“Stop,” he said.

“I hope it was worth it Mick, this
pretty little thing. You know I could stand getting hit by you, even behind my
back. That I can take. But you bring a lying piece of garbage on board, trying
to—” her hand collided with the girl’s cheek and left a fat welt, “not only
steal my ship, all my money, but tell me Utopia is charging triple? That it’s
closing in a month?” Sera readied her fist for another strike.

Mick rose to his feet, rubbing his head
and walking toward her. “Let her be.”

“Why should I? You think I don’t kill
women? That’s an antiquated notion of civility, something from your time, not
mine.” She turned to the girl, “You caught me on a nice day, I was going to
leave you to die peacefully in space. But you seduce him into bringing you
aboard, and then you start with the,” she grunted, smacking down again,
“lies—bullshit lies.”

“I’m not lying,” the beautiful,
new-scarred girl whimpered.

“Hey, I said relax for a minute,” Mick
said, seeing himself in Sera’s rage.

“Relax? I’ll relax after we shoot her
into space and you jump the hell out of M82. Then I’ll relax. How about that?”
She turned her head, ice in her eyes, hoping he’d instigate her further.

It’s more than just the ship, the
robbery, the lies. She deals with that all the time. It’s got to be something
else. The girl’s beauty. It angers her.

“Please,” Mick said, about to restrain
Sera as blood flowed freely from the girl’s cheek.

“Oh come on Mick, she’s a cellbot, she
can take it.”

So that’s a cellbot. Humanity’s
imagination and power all bent upon the execution of aesthetics. My god, who
could blame someone for never wanting a human again.

“She’ll help us,” Mick said.

“She’ll tell us lies and try to destroy
our—” Sera was cut off by XJ and GR. They had both been staring expressionless
at the fray until XJ spoke:

“Sera?” he said.

“What?”

“Carner replied. She’s right: Utopia
permits have tripled.”

“What about the deadline?” Sera said,
her drawn fist falling to her side in disbelief, her spirit escaping her.

“We’ve got to come up with a new plan,
don’t we?” said GR.

“I’m sorry Sera. It seems we have a
month to get the money together.”

Sera collapsed alongside the beautiful, broken
girl who lay soundless, battered into the hull beam. Red warmth dripped onto
her. Neither said a word. Together, they juxtaposed all that aroused and
saddened Mick, and from whom he derived sadness and from whom arousal he could
not tell. It was all meaningless to him anyhow; their plight was not his. He
had enough for his jump, and Sera had retrieved what she’d gone after. All that
was left was to return to Melbot’s and let GR learn the jump module. As for the
girl, if he hadn’t saved her, he’d tried to. He could live with that. Either
way, his acts of charity and lust were over. He had something precious that now
required his full attention.

Some people learn over time to restore
order and happiness in their lives. They make their mistakes, grow, and are
still free to live in their new gratitude and humility. They cherish the now.
Others do not, because the cost of their lessons is too great. Freedom is taken
away as a result of their mistakes, and so the wisdom, the humility, and the
gratitude gained is wasted on a crippled life. It is never put to full use. It
may avail itself partially to some circumstance or another, but it will never
be true unfettered freedom: A blank slate.

Blank slate. That’s what I’m heading
toward. A blank slate, lessons learned, wisdom and humility intact. I can’t
continue to pity these drifters. To the green wastes, and I’m gone.

“I’m sorry Mick, but you know what this
means, don’t you?” Sera finally spoke, tilting her head up.

Mick eyed her half vacantly, already
detaching himself from the world and people he’d come to know in fourteen. He’d
made a conscious decision to forget their struggle, stop trying to help, and
focus all his thoughts on how he would conduct himself once he returned home.
To
where and when shall I send you?
GR would soon ask him.
There’s a
ballroom near MIT. My sophomore year of college. A dance. A tight golden
waterfall of silk and heat. The taste of new lips. A bright-eyed optimist who
believed in the present.

“I’m sorry,” she started. He nodded
dismissively, feeling entirely done with her, the beautiful girl, the robots,
fourteen, Utopia, all of it.

“Why?” Mick barely said.

“I can’t let you go home.”

 “It’s not so bad Mick. In fact,
you’ll have a lot more time to rematch me,” XJ said as he pinned Mick’s last
remaining knight with his queen.

Easy for you to say robot—your AM makes
it easy for you to forget everything that matters—that once mattered to you.
I’m dying—trapped in a cage—lost in spacetime.

“Oh come on Mick,” XJ tried again,
sensing Mick’s waning interest. “Sera will have the money in no time. Then
you’ll have your wish and return to your home.”

“I need a drink.”

“I’d be perfectly happy to get you one
if you’d make your move.”

“Do you know what I’m thinking about
XJ?”

“Whether or not you can kill Sera in her
sleep?”

Dead on. Another one bites the dust—the
end justifies the means.

“How’d you guess?” Mick laughed,
suddenly finding his imprisonment comical.

“Only because you’ve been repeating
yourself about it for the past half-hour, in which time we might have started
our second match if you’d focused.”

Mick rubbed the bruise on his head where
Sera had struck him. He wondered if he had enough strength to take her head
on—if she really was a
cellbot
. He hadn’t tested her on her threat yet,
but the thought hadn’t left his head since she’d told him he couldn’t go home.

She can’t tell me what I can’t do, that
I can’t go home, see the loves of my life, prevent my sole purpose of
existence.
Logic
replied to him:
She wouldn’t make that bluff—she can ruin your chances.
She’s the one who told you T-jumping existed in the first place. XJ had no
idea. Without her, you’d be drifting, dead by now.

“So what’s she keeping me around for?”

“You’ll have to ask her yourself,” XJ
replied. “Now would you please move, Mick? Otherwise I’m going to have to rouse
GR to take over.”

Sera poked her head into the room,
“You’re smarter than that. Why do I need you around?”

“Because I’m a man—you need my scent
aboard the ship.”

His reply gave her pause; she smiled,
her eyes sparkling.

“Be smarter than that.”

“No more killing—I told you I’m done
with that.”

 “You don’t have a plant, there’s
nothing to worry about. If we’re going to triple our fund, we’re going to have
to sell high end hardware. There’s no other option. I can’t make it in a month
without you.”

“More expancapacitor droids?” Mick
replied.

“You’ll be killing them for us.”

More nameless lives, strangers
artificially stored in a file format. More Emily Hussons. The layer of robot
makes it less personal, easier to get the job done, less likely to haunt. The
fastest way to make the money, the fastest way to get home.
Conscience
interrupted:
You know better now Mick—a .HUM is a person’s soul. You’re
committing murder if you go through with this. You can’t hope to start a new
life at the expense of the lives of others.
Selfishness replied:
And
what other choice do I have? Fight her? Kill her in her sleep and try to
navigate back to Melbot’s station? Forget it. I’ve tasted her power. She’s not
human.

“Are you human?” Mick asked her.

“Of course. But if you think that’s
all
I am
—if you’re getting ideas of taking control again—then you really don’t
stand a chance of seeing your family again.”

Mick bit his lip and rocked back in his
chair, his hand brushing his pawns, knocking them into XJ’s pieces.

“Mick! That’s no good. Good thing I
saved our game,” XJ said. He suddenly twirled his head and flashed, as if
restarting his brain, then began to reassemble the pieces in their proper
positions.

“Okay.”

“Okay what?” Sera replied.

“I’ll do it. I’ll kill them. Just fly me
there, and let’s get this over with.”

“I knew you were a good soldier,” she
smiled.

“And what about her?”

“I’m dumping her at our next stop. She
might be worth something.”

“Dumping?”

“Good night Mick.”

Sera left them alone with the chess
board.

Does she plan to sell her? Is Utopia the
closest thing to morality here? A mindless immersion, a void, the only path to
ethics being a total absence of the need for them?

“Mick, it’s still your move,” XJ
prodded.

“XJ, what’s the newest model cellbot
sell for?”