Brute Orbits (7 page)

“What is it?” Polau asked. “Do you want to put words in our mouths? What do you want out of this, anyway?” Polau fixed him with his black eyes, pointed a finger, and said, “What’s it that you don’t want us to know about? What aren’t you telling us?”

Tasarov was almost impressed by the man’s probing.

“Of course you can go on,” Tasarov said with a smile, “and so can anyone else. I’ll be interested in what you have to say.”

For an instant Polau looked at him as if he were grateful, and Tasarov realized with a small shock that it was genuine. “Thank you,” the thief said.

“Did you think I wouldn’t let you?” Tasarov asked, still wondering what the man had in mind, what had suddenly filled him with gratitude.

“Well…we didn’t ever get along…”

“And you thought I’d take it out on you with this, too?”

Polau nodded, and Tasarov saw his chance to be manipulative in a good cause by making an ally out of an opponent. Maybe. He couldn’t think of the thief as a credible enemy; the man was not up to being an effective one; he was too transparent for that; but it would be better to calm him down, if only for a short time.

“You’ll have the mike when you want it,” Tasarov said, still wondering if he was somehow missing something. Maybe Polau was plotting. Tasarov tried to imagine what that might be, but it just didn’t seem to be there. Whatever had sent even this fleeting eruption of gratitude into Polau’s face might be real enough to be grounds for a hope of some kind.

They both stood up at the same time, and Tasarov offered the man his hand. Polau took it. “I’ll be ready,” he said, turned and left the room.

As he sat down again, Tasarov looked around at Wood, Ruskin, and Howes, hoping to catch something in their expressions about what had just happened.

Finally he asked them. “What do you think? Howes? You know him better than I do.”

“He seems sincere,” Howes said. “I can’t tell. I think he means what he’s saying. I can’t see what’s in it for him, I mean aside from doing it. What harm can he do?”

“I agree,” Ruskin said. Wood nodded in agreement.

“We won’t be able to stop anything they say,” Tasarov said, “and we don’t really want to. That’s the whole point. If any of this can do us some good, it has to be in getting a rise out of Earth.”

But he couldn’t rid himself of the suspicion that Polau had something else in mind.

■

The men’s mood brightened as the broadcasts began. As Tasarov watched them in the mess—he went to a different one each evening—he saw that they had developed a solidarity of striking back, of not simply taking what had been handed to them and showing the authorities their stoicism. How long would this courage last? Not long, Tasarov feared. Certainly not thirty years.

The first man who went on read a long love letter to his dead wife, and demanded that it be recorded and delivered to his daughter…

The second confessed his crimes of murder and rape, embellishing the details and addressing his victims’ relatives directly, implicating them in crimes of their own by announcing that his victims had revealed them to him before he killed them. He claimed that he was reporting all his conversations with his victims before he killed them, then mocked the authorities for getting him for such a small number of crimes…

The third one began softly, then worked himself up to a fever pitch, announced his coming death, and stabbed himself in the heart with a long needle. Tasarov confirmed the man’s death on the air and signed off for the day.

This was just what he wanted. No restrictions, no censorship. He wondered just how far it would go, and how it would affect the authorities on Earth.

On the second day a man named Uri Perrin came in and demanded to have a two-way conversation with a priest, to confess his sins. There was no answer. Perrin began to declaim his sins, from the first ones of his life, one by one. As he reached his later years, he began to annotate his sins, justifying this one, condemning that one, as if he were both sinner and confessor. His descriptions grew longer, more detailed and vile. Finally, he stopped and sat silently before the transmitter, nodding his head repeatedly.

Tasarov came in and sat down opposite him. At last, Perrin noticed him and shouted, “They listened! The Holy Father himself listened and gave me absolution for my sins!”

“And the penance?” asked Tasarov solemnly.

“Eat shit and drink piss once a week,” the man said, nodding happily.

“Your own?” asked Tasarov.

“Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter!” the man cried out. “I can do that, I can do it. It’s just, it’s just!”

He got up and left, sighing with relief, his face glowing with the beatific vision that beyond his penance, which he would perform for the remainder of his life and in the centuries of Purgatory that he would gladly endure, lay Paradise and Redemption.

By the time Polau came in, Tasarov was somewhat curious to hear how the thief would bleed into the microphones. By now Tasarov was fairly sure that Polau had something to say to the people who had exiled him, maybe to someone in particular. It had to be something like that, maybe something very private, something very simple, even sentimental. Maybe he was even ashamed of it.

Polau came in and stood by the door, looking around at the facilities. Tasarov sat in a chair just to the right of the waiting microphones. Polau looked at him, and Tasarov noticed that the man’s eyes were moving back and forth rapidly. Was he that afraid of what was in him? Whom was he planning to address?

Tasarov felt generous for a moment, and sat back, determined to put Polau at ease. Polau reached behind himself, brought out a long pointed metal rod about two feet long, and lunged at Tasarov. The point found flesh, but Tasarov managed to turn slightly as the sharp metal pierced the muscle of his left shoulder and struck the metal wall with a burst of sparks.

Polau grunted and knew that he had botched it. Cursing, he jerked the rod back, giving Tasarov enough time to stand up. Before the little thief could step into his second thrust, Tasarov kicked him under the chin. The bar fell from his hands and clattered on the floor as the blow lifted Polau and threw him on his back.

As he lay there stunned, Tasarov picked up the bar, turned it to the blunt end, and struck him across his right knee cap. Polau let out a feeble cry.

“Why?” Tasarov demanded of the dazed man.

Polau tried to speak, but it was all mumbles. Finally, he managed to say, “Gotta kill…you!” and tried to sit up. Tasarov hit the other knee. “Big sonnabitch think you’re God,” Polau muttered. “Show you who’s in charge.”

The door opened. Ruskin and Wood came in, followed by Howes.

“He tried to kill me,” Tasarov said angrily, stepping back, startled that he hadn’t killed Polau by now. “With this! Howes, do you know what this is about?”

Howes seemed reluctant to speak.

“You’d better tell me what you know, kid!”

Polau lay on the floor, breathing hard, still trying to speak. “Goddamned big fuck left us all to die in that stupid town. They massacred most of us, then beat the shit out of those who were left.” He pointed a finger. “He was gone by then!”

“What’s he talking about?” Ruskin asked.

Tasarov looked at Howes, then at Wood, and tried to remember. A lot was still missing inside him. It was there somewhere, if he could just turn a corner and catch it.

Howes said suddenly, “He was jealous of you…and me.”

Tasarov looked at him with surprise. “But there is no you and me.”

“You couldn’t tell him that. He bragged how he’d be the boss once he killed you. You were the one to kill. He always wanted to impress me, ever since he brought me along on that job we got caught for. Thought he’d get me that way.” Howes gave a futile laugh. “I think he really wanted you, one way or another,” he said, looking directly at Tasarov. “But there was more, wasn’t there?”

Tasarov did not remember Polau from the Dannemora break. Maybe it was a friend or relative of Polau’s that died. He looked at the man on the floor and tried to remember—and the massacre in the resort town came back to him. By the time it happened he was long gone, leaving those who had not escaped to face an army division. He had heard about it later. There was nothing he could have done. The break and the taking of that town had given him and many others a chance to disappear, even though later he had been captured as someone else. In the end, it was every man for himself. Some did better than others.

“What do we do with him?” Wood asked.

“You stupid assholes,” Polau rasped from the floor, struggling to raise himself up on his elbows. “All this shit about talking back to the folks at home—it’s all his way of keeping you busy, with him on top!”

The effort produced a sudden gurgling in his throat. He fell back and was still.

Howes knelt down, examined him, and said, “His throat’s busted…he choked to death.” He looked up at Tasarov, and for a moment it seemed he had lost his last friend in the world, as worthless as that friend had been.

“I didn’t try to kill him,” Tasarov said as Howes stood up.

“He would have killed you,” the younger man said. “It’s just as well. He was going crazy thinking about everything. He was no good. Got me caught the first time we ever did anything. Ruined my life, what there was of it.”

“I’m sorry, kid,” Tasarov said, almost meaning it, and still puzzled that he had not killed the little assassin after the first blow.

Howes looked up him. “Are you really the big shit he thought you were? He hated you like I never saw anyone hate.”

Don’t answer, Tasarov told himself, knowing that the younger man didn’t really expect an answer. And don’t ask him why he didn’t warn me, if Polau had bragged to him.

“I’ll bury him,” Howes said without looking at Tasarov. “I knew you’d get him.”

■

More than a hundred men spewed into the microphones over the next few weeks and months, as the habitat fell away into the abyss. Some men pleaded, others were heartfelt as they reached down into themselves to tear out their suffering and hurl it homeward. They sang their growing agony and horror, and were eloquent as if eloquence were a force of nature able to open hearts and minds, given to them as the last weapon they would yield against their own kind.

They were evil men, and good men who had done evil, confused and lost men; and not that different from the more successful, better protected criminals who still lived on the Earth and would never be caught or punished.

Finally, the Earth responded.

Warden Sanchez appeared in the hollow. His image snapped into view, and he seemed to be sitting like a big Buddha on the muddy land that now grew some pitiable green here and there. He seemed to look around at the toy town of barracks and human gnats who lived there, and he said with the voice of a god:

“These broadcasts will now stop. We are turning off the programs that govern the power to the transmitters.” His face was severe, as if he wanted to explain further but had decided not to.

“Can we turn it back on ourselves?” Tasarov asked Ruskin.

“Maybe.”

They were sitting on the steps to their barracks, taking in the sunplate’s light, which was preferable to the cold light of the engineering level.

“You have only yourselves to blame…” Sanchez continued as a shout of derision went up from the crowds looking up at his figure. More men came out of their barracks and spread out across the countryside, breaking up into groups, as if hunting for something.

Tasarov stood up and watched, wondering, then realized what was happening.

“They’re after the holo projectors,” Tasarov said, hoping that they were too well hidden to be found; they might be needed one day.

“Can Sanchez see them coming?” Ruskin asked.

“You know the equipment better than I do. Are they seeing us?”

Ruskin nodded. “They probably always could. Some of the men know where the projection points are. They’ve been over the ground by now.”

Tasarov gazed up at the giant sitting figure of Sanchez, and felt something of the rage that was in the inmates’ hearts. The warden could do nothing to stop them, but he still seemed unaware of what they were doing.

Sanchez stood up and walked around. The giant figure was impressive to the point where Tasarov almost expected to hear and feel his footfalls shaking the land.

“This will be my last appearance,” Sanchez said with his deep, growling voice, and was cut in two at the waist.

“They’ve damaged one of the projectors,” Ruskin said with a laugh.

Cheers went up from the men as they watched.

Sanchez was oblivious to what was happening. “I suggest that you seek order amongst yourselves. You will come to need it, since you will have to police yourselves in the coming decades.”

As he spoke, his bottom half moved away from his top; then his top and bottom separated into two sections, but each continued to move as part of the whole.

“He’s been quartered,” Tasarov said.

“We will not hear any more of your broadcasts,” Sanchez’s head continued. “They come from a small portion of the sky, and can be jammed. We didn’t want to send shutdown commands to your computers because we thought it best to be able to hear you, and observe your progress—but we will do so now…”

His voice faded, the quarters of his body melted away, and there was silence in the asteroid’s great hollow.

“They’ve found all the gear,” Ruskin said.

“A pity,” Tasarov said, wondering if turning off the communications gear was irrevocable. “Sanchez was impressive. I would have liked to have him around—once in a while.”

He would have been a link with home, Tasarov thought, and now there will be none.

■

The men were unusually quiet for the next few weeks, as it sank in how cut off they were from home now. It might have been better to have left the warden’s holo gear alone, but no one wanted to say so.

Tasarov retreated into himself, now that the broadcasts had been stopped. A few men came once in a while and spilled their guts bravely into the recording gear, and went away.

Tasarov now faced up to what he had been avoiding since the Dannemora break. His wipe had been another escape. But now, as he came back fully into himself, he realized that the Dannemora break had been a failure, if only for him—in the follow-up details, when he had chosen an incompetent wiper to hide his identity.