Mutant Star (20 page)

The screen lit to show the young Akimura, dark hair windblown, a small golden hoop sparkling in his left earlobe. His expression was wary.

“Rick, I just had a call from your mother. She was asking for you. Wants you to call her.”

Akimura gave a strange laugh. “I’ll have to call her one of these days. But right now I want to talk to you, Colonel.”

“What can I do for you?”

“You said to call if I wanted a job. Is the offer still good?”

“Of course. When can I expect you?”

“On the next shuttle out of SFO.”

“Fine. There’ll be a pass waiting for you at the gate.”

“Better make it two passes, Colonel.”

Hawkins frowned. “I’m not in the business of providing free rides for your friends, Rick.”

“This is more than a friend, Colonel. And if she doesn’t come, I don’t, either.”

“I see. Well, bring her along then. But tell me, is she telekinetic?”

Rick smirked. “Is she ever. Colonel, you’re getting two little mutants to help build your castles in space. Congratulations.” The screen went dark.

Hawkins hummed part of the Triumphal March from
Aida
and watched the golden-white curve of the Moon slip past his window. Then he turned back to his screen.

“Leporello, get me Jasper Saladin.”

“He’s in a meeting.”

“Then leave him this message: ‘Answered prayers on the way.’”

***

The old Victorian house looked run-down and shabby. Three bikes were parked outside, none of them Rick’s. Julian parked his skimmer, walked up the porch stairs, and pressed the doorpad twice. He could hear music playing and the sound of heavy footsteps, getting louder.

“Yeah?” The doorscreen was blank. Only the audio appeared to be working.

“I’m Julian Akimura. Rick’s brother.”

“Rick’s gone. Moved out.”

“When?”

“Last week. Hey, Henley, when’d you tell Akimura to get out?”

A faint voice replied. “Years ago.”

“His brother’s here.”

“He is?”

Julian heard a second set of footsteps approach and then the door creaked open. A man with pale white hair, pale skin, and pale blue eyes peered out, blinking like an owl at the midday sun. His pupils were enormous. He wore a ruffled white shirt similar to the kind Julian had seen on Rick. “Listen,” he said. “If you see your brother, you tell him he owes Henley for damage on my sound system.”

“I don’t know where he is. I’d hoped you did.”

“Huh. That’s funny. I don’t know. Or care.”

The door started to close.

“Wait,” Julian said. “You told him to leave?”

“Yeah.” The biker’s tone was defensive.

“May I ask why?”

“May you ask why?” he mimicked. “Certainly, sir. We requested the absence of his presence because he decided to turn mutant on us.”

“Turn mutant?”

“Yeah.” Henley gave him a scornful look. “You should know. Floating things through the air. Reading minds. The usual creepy stuff.”

“But he’s a null.”

“Go tell him that.” Henley started to turn away, then paused. “Look, your brother was all right. He even saved my life once. But he doesn’t belong here. And don’t come looking for him again.”

The door closed.

“Thanks,” Julian said to nobody.

So they had gotten frightened and thrown Rick out. Julian shook his head. For a moment he was tempted to force his way into the house and give them all a really good scare with a few telepathic tricks. Dripping ceilings. Melting walls. Rick would have enjoyed that. But Rick wasn’t here.

His temper cooled. Julian couldn’t shake the feeling that Rick was in the middle of some calamity. Throughout their childhood Julian had known the instant his brother had gotten into trouble: twinsense had twanged as though it were a tuning fork held to his ear. It was humming now, prickling the hair on the back of his neck. Had Rick really turned into an operant mutant? Impossible. It had to be impossible. But where was he?

More worried than ever, he drove back to Berkeley for the afternoon shift in the lab.

Marcus Schueller greeted him with a smile. “I always sleep better when you’re riding, Julian.”

“You may sleep well. But I see nightmares.”

Schueller frowned.

Whoops. Not supposed to say anything to influence the sleepers.

Influence the sleepers.

Julian froze as the notion crystallized. If another telepath had been in the vicinity, he would have blushed with guilt and shielded his thoughts. No. No, he couldn’t do it. But yes. Yes, he would.

He waited until Schueller was snoring, then made a tentative telepathic probe. Reached down to the man’s dreaming consciousness and inserted the image of Rick.

Help me find him, Marcus. Show me where he is.

The sleeping man grumbled a bit, shifted his position, started to sit up. Quickly, Julian withdrew the link, afraid that his probe had been too strong, too direct. Would Schueller awaken and remember it?

No. The sleeper rolled onto his back, mumbling. After a moment his vocalizations trailed off into steady snores. Good.

Julian sank down into the flare connection.

He was in space, aboard an orbital station. Julian watched as his brother strode down a hall, into a compartment where he donned a green, double-layered pressure suit. Rick connected the safety cable, opened the airlock, and propelled himself telekinetically into the airless void. The lock closed behind him. Slowly he approached the girdered platform. Welders floated above and below, at impossible angles. All were intent on their tasks, some using vacuum-adapted torches while others relied on the strength of their mutant talent.

The skeleton of a pavilion similar to the one Rick had just exited was taking shape, held in place by the platform. Small flares of energy here and there revealed the constant activity of welders. Rick took his place among them, telekinetically mating ceramic steel to ceramic steel in sandwiched, baffled layers. But there was a flaw. Wait, no. … The skeleton sagged, began to break apart, and the multistory platform holding it ruptured. Men and women screamed behind pressure masks, tried to jet away, out of range, only to be swatted like insects in slow motion by drifting girders, severed from their lifelines, left to drift helplessly, far from the Pavilion.

Rick was one of them. He floated on his back, unconscious or dead. Near him floated another whose face was familiar. Alanna. Both of them motionless. Then an eyelid flickered and Rick’s eyes opened. He came alert, rolled to his left, and reached for Alanna. When she was safely in his grasp, he began to use telekinesis to draw the scattered workers toward the Pavilion’s safety. The few other mutants quickly added their talents to his. All were quickly swept up by rescue teams. But Rick remained outside, shaking off all the eager hands wanting to pull him in.

He jetted back toward the wreckage, and floated next to it, staring intently. Then he closed his eyes.

Folded metal unfolded. Shattered panels reformed as though puzzle pieces were being set in place. As Julian watched, his brother repaired the half-finished Pavilion. He made it halfway back to Hawkins’s Pavilion before his energy failed. He had to be towed in.

The vision faded. Julian sat up.

He knew where his brother was. Or would be.

***

The blue curve of Earth filled two thirds of the window. Rick stared at it in fascination. With satisfaction, Rick took in the dense blackness of space. Alanna stood beside him, speechless.

A thin, olive-skinned man with a long face entered the room.

“I’m Jasper Saladin,” he said. “I’ll be supervising you. Ever done any welding in vacuum?”

“No.”

“How about low-g?”

Rick shook his head.

“Marvelous.” Saladin smiled sourly. “We’re starting from scratch here.”

“Colonel Hawkins said you wanted telekinetics,” Rick said. “If you need trained ones, then train us.”

Saladin regarded him silently. Then his mouth curved upward at one corner in a grudging smile. “All right. Let’s get started, before we waste any more time.”

Rick and Alanna followed him along the corridor and down several levels into a wide bay.

“There are pressure suits on the wall,” Saladin said. “Put them on and let me check the seals and oxygen supply.”

He strapped himself into a red suit and mask and his voice over suit-to-suit intercom was strangely flattened. “Good. I want you to get used to moving in zero-g vacuum in these suits. Make certain your tethers are in place. We’ve got interlocking webbing on the soles of your suits, and matching pathways to keep you in place. If you should start to drift, these lines are the only way we can haul you back.”

“The only way?” Rick said. “Seems dangerous.”

Saladin flashed him an unreadable look. “It is. Now plant yourselves firmly on the path. I’m going to open the space doors and we’ll be in vacuum. Everybody secure?”

He pressed a wall-mounted keypad. Airlock doors slid into place over the entrance to the main Pavilion as a warning klaxon sounded. At the far end of the shuttle bay a wall was sliding back to reveal the dense blackness of space beyond.

Rick felt a thrill of terror course up his spine. Space. Vacuum. He had asked for it, hadn’t he?

“Everybody okay?” Saladin glanced at them quickly. “Now try walking forward.”

Rick pulled one foot free from the clinging path—it seemed to take forever. The step he took was more of a hop. He had to force his leg back down as it wobbled, weightless. Like walking through water, without the stiff resistance.

“Not as easy as you thought?” Saladin said.

“This is really inefficient,” Alanna said. “No wonder you’re behind schedule.”

“Oh, really? What would you suggest?”

“This.” She pulled one foot free, then the other. Floating above the pathway, she curled her legs under her and suddenly shot forward as though propelled. “It’s much easier to do it telekinetically.”

Rick regretted that Saladin’s mask cut off his expression.

“I’m sure it is,” Saladin said after a moment. “I’d suggest you make full use of your talents to assist your work.”

“When do we try welding?”

“I thought we’d wait until tomorrow …”

“Let’s do it now,” Rick said. “You were the one worried about wasting time.”

“All right. Fine. This way.” Saladin moved in graceless hops toward a work area near the far curve of the bay. “These are steel-infused girders that we routinely use in construction of the pavilions.”

“Why don’t they just build these on Earth and ship them up?” Alanna said.

“Too expensive to put them in orbit. And the insurance costs are prohibitive. We can’t guarantee every launch will be perfect when we’re transporting things on this scale.”

Rick glanced at the metal supports. It would be easy to meld them, he saw. Child’s play. He waited through Saladin’s labored explanation, then began mating girders as though he had been doing it all his life. A little pressure here, concentration there. A quick flare of energy and voila.

“Very nice,” Saladin said.

Rick began to twist the girders into abstract patterns.

“You’re wasting valuable material.”

“Come off it, Saladin. This has all got to be waste for practice.” The surface of the girders was smooth and gray, flickering here and there with the glint of light off some mica chips in the ceramic epoxy mix. As Rick watched, the mica chips glittered and grew larger. The surface of the girder became rough, pockmarked, riddled with holes and bubbles. Rick realized that he was looking into the girder, at the structure of the thing. He saw strings of molecules snaking around one another. And he understood that there was something wrong with their spidery patterns, something dangerous and unstable.

“How much of this metal has been used on the new Pavilion?” Rick asked.

“That’s a strange question,” Saladin said. “Why should you …”

“Just answer it!”

“Maybe a ton.”

“It’s all got to be replaced,” Rick said. “And right away.”

“You must be joking.”

“It’s riddled with flaws, Saladin. A microassay should tell you what’s wrong and where.”

“How do you know?”

“I can see them.”

Alanna swung around in slow motion. “See them? Rick, what are you talking about?”

“I don’t know how,” he said. “But I can see into the metal. See where the microbubbles are.”

“Bubbles?” Saladin’s voice was tinged with alarm. “But we checked this equipment thoroughly.”

“Then check it again.”

“But how can you see them?”

“I told you,” Rick said sharply. “I don’t know. But they’re there. And you’d better do something about them or there’ll be a bad accident.”

Alanna leaned toward him. “Can you see that, too?”