Outland (20 page)

It paralyzed him for a moment. The call was on his personal line, not the one linking his quarters to the office.

If he didn't move himself he'd never find out who it was. He stood, hurried to the console, and acknowledged the call.

The screen cleared, displaying large letters. O'NIEL, W.T, TELECOMMUNICATION—STATION GREEN—REAL TIME TRANSMISSION.

He stared at the letters as though at any moment they might band together snake-like to jump out and bite him. Automatically his hand went to the top of the console to adjust the tiny video pickup positioned there, to make certain it was pointing at him. The pencil-sized camera hummed as its innards came alive.

He sat down, typed into the console O'NIEL, W.T. together with his personal code, then, PROCEED.

The letters vanished and were replaced with bright wavy lines indicative of momentarily confused electronics. The lines cleared, straightened, and he found himself staring at Carol. She looked back at him. He knew his own pickup must be working because she hurried to replace her look of concern with a smile.

"Hello there."

For a long moment he didn't reply, just stared at her, drinking in the vision. Her face was less haggard than it had been the last time he'd looked at it, via the taped message she'd left him. When she'd left him.

Don't think about that now, he commanded himself. There's not enough time left to waste any on that. Think about how beautiful she is, how warm and friendly-familiar. Not how far away.

"Hello there yourself." He summoned up a slight grin. It was very hard.

It flustered Carol. "I'm doing it again," she murmured unhappily. "I've had plenty of time to prepare what I was going to say. I was going to be so devastatingly clever. And here I am, looking at your face, and my mouth has gone to mush. Jesus."

"How is Paulie?" he asked.

She tried to regain her composure. "He's fine. I promised him he could talk to you." She gestured to her right. "He's in the next room, out of pickup range. Probably destroying the furniture."

Her voice trailed away, leaving an awkward silence. It made little difference to O'Niel. He was quite content just to look at her.

"Are you feeling well?" she finally asked. Anything but that torturous silence!

"I'm okay," he lied.

"I'm . . . ah, Paulie and I . . . our reservations have come through. We're booked on a flight home." O'Niel just nodded. She looked down, making a pretense of checking the console readouts at her end. "The reservations . . . I didn't think it would hurt . . . are for three."

O'Niel scrounged a cigarette from a console drawer, struck the end against the metal to light it. "That was very thoughtful of you."

"Please . . ."

He cut her off quickly with a short, nervous shake of his head, not wanting it to go on. "I can't."

She stared back at him, not understanding. "Why not, for God's sake?"

"I just can't." He wanted to look at her and not look at her, hold her close and send her away. "I wish I could."

"What is so important?"

She was bringing it all down on him, all over again, and it seemed so unfair. They'd been through it all a dozen times before and there was no need to do it again. The knot in his belly was big enough now. It was pointless to try and explain yet again and make it worse.

Besides, he had other things to worry about. He wanted desperately to tell her about Sheppard, about his situation, about the significance of the steadily down-counting readouts. He couldn't. It would have been unfair. He loved her too much for that.

So he waved loosely at the pickup and said, "I'm too tired to go into it now, Carol. I just can't leave." He made a gesture of helplessness. "That's all."

"Maybe that's
all
for you, but it's not enough for me," she shot back, unwilling to let it drop. "What is it? Do you think you're making a difference?" It came out half question, half accusation. "Do you think you're making the Universe a better place? Do you think what you're doing is worth giving up your family for?"

O'Niel tried to frame an answer, failed. In all the time they'd been married he'd never been able to compose a satisfactory one. He simply stared back at her, tired and sad-eyed.

She'd seen that look before, sighed resignedly. "You're a stubborn son-of-a-bitch."

"Yes," he agreed.

There was a pause. Then she must have seen something else in his face. Her voice changed and her expression turned wary.

"Something is wrong there, isn't it? Something serious that you're not telling me."

"No."

"You're in trouble. I know it. Every time you start speaking in sentences of less than two words I know you're in some kind of trouble."

He looked straight at her, forced himself to sound reassuring. "I'm okay."

She stared back at him, spoke through clenched teeth, the frustration nearly overwhelming her. "Damn you." Then she looked away from the pickup and called out, "PaulIe! You can come in now." She faced him again, lowering her voice but not the intensity in it.

"I love you."

As she stepped aside an eager young face replaced hers. It lit up the screen, radiated happiness and innocence; two things O'Niel hadn't seen much of lately.

"Daddy!"

The knife floating in O'Niel's guts twisted. He fought to conceal the pain. "Hey, Paul. Good to see you. How are you doing?"

"Great. Mommy let me stay up late because this was when the call went through. They told us the lines Outland are always busy." He lost some of his initial enthusiasm. "I miss you."

"I miss you, too." The knife moved with exquisite delicacy.

"Mommy says as soon you get done what you have to do, you're going to come home with us."

"As soon as I get done."

"What's it like on Earth?"

"It's beautiful." It had been a long time but O'Niel didn't have any trouble remembering. "You'll see so many wonderful things and have so many friends to play with. It'll be great."

"Mommy says on the flight they put you to sleep for a long time."

"For a while," he replied. "It won't seem like very long."

"Will it hurt?"

"Not even a little. It's just like going to sleep in your own bed. You'll just wake up and be home."

He looked doubtful. "I'm going to sleep through my birthday, mommy told me. How can I have a cake and a party if I'm sleeping?"

O'Niel smiled. "Next birthday you'll have a double party, and you'll get twice as many presents."

"Can't you come with us?"

"Not right now."

"Soon?"

"Yes . . . soon."

"I love you, Daddy."

That almost did it. A child's guileless plea can crumble even an iron will. O'Niel found himself choking on his next words, struggled to keep control of himself and the fatherly smile frozen in place.

"I . . . I love you, Paul. You take care of mommy now, until I can join you."

"I will. See you, Daddy."

The screen image broke apart, became a cluster of weaving, dancing lines. It looks like I feel, he thought glumly. He wasn't surprised Carol hadn't come back on. She'd already taken her best shot.

The screen patiently declared END TRANSMISSION. O'Niel didn't deactivate it, kept staring at the words, replaying the whole transmission over and over in his mind's eye. It was quite a while before he turned it off. When he finally did so, the conversation had faded until it was just another hopeful dream.

It was busier than usual in the shuttle loading bay. The level of activity had been increasing for several hours. Landing crews bustled about checking their equipment and instrumentation, some real work soon to be required of them. Maintenance workers assisted in the ready-up. Huge containers of ore were given a final aligning while thick-soled convoyers were freshly lubricated and warmed up

SHUTTLE—IN TRANSIT, the oversized readout shouted above the busy crews. ARRIVAL—1 HOUR 55 MINUTES.

The clip was plastic and so were the shells. The riot gun was designed to supply high stopping power at short range. A gauge and dial on the side allowed the user to adjust the velocity of each shell by modifying the solid shaped charge of propellant within. That way the wielder could do real damage to an assailant without blowing a hole through the vacuum sealed corridors or accessways.

The empty clips were stacked next to a framed picture of Carol and Paul on the coffee table in O'Niel's apartment. A box of shells sat nearby.

O'Niel paused a moment to study the picture, noting that for once Paul's hair was neatly combed. Carol looked radiant.

Then he returned to loading shells into clips, his manner wholely businesslike. He positioned each shell as though his life might depend on its not jamming.

When he was finished he turned his attention to the gun which lay in pieces on the far end of the table. He checked each section before snapping it into place, adding a drop of oil here, blowing away a speck of lint there. The barrels were spotless, the firing mechanism free-flowing, the stock set firmly in place. He rechecked the lenses on the short sight, aimed the gun, and swung it from right to left.

He frowned and set the gun gently on the table. Using a tiny tool he adjusted the sliding weight set in the underside of the stock, moving it a millimeter rearward. Raising the weapon once more he went through the aiming procedure again, letting the gun balance in one hand. That was better.

Rising, he reached for the loaded clips piled alongside the picture and began slipping them into his pockets. The last thing he did before leaving the room was slide a full magazine into the gun.

The volume of sound issuing from the Club indicated that it held a fairly good-sized crowd. Music seeped out around the edges of the hatchway. The dancers would be off-duty now, O'Niel thought as he made his way through the accessway nexus. If he'd taken the time to peer inside he would have noticed that there was not a lot of mixing taking place but that the bar was exceptionally busy.

Sheppard was finishing his coffee . . . real coffee . . . and a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon. He glanced up at the neat digital readout imbedded in his desk monitor. It said in soft green: SHUTTLE—IN TRANSIT. ARRIVAL—1 HOUR 32 MINUTES.

The bacon was properly cooked this morning. Crisp and not soggy. He used a piece of bread to shovel up the last of the scrambled eggs.

The corridor O'Niel had chosen was empty when he entered it. He'd checked out the previous one and hadn't encountered a soul.

Now he made his way casually down the little-used accessway. No one came up from behind to pass him and the hatch at the far end stayed shut.

Moving quickly he turned and unlatched the security panel hidden in the west wall, slipped the gun inside and locked the compartment. Then he continued on his way, taking a different path back to the office.

A in the shuttle loading bay increased. The landing crew was completing pressure tests on the lock, to ensure that no precious atmosphere would leak out while loading was in progress. Seals were triple-checked. The arrival of the shuttle was an ordinary occur that was always handled with extraordinary care.

It was crowded in the Admin Ward Room. Breakfast was still being served. Huge plates of fried, scrambled, and soft boiled eggs were interspersed the tables with bowls of biscuits, gravy, grits, cereal, bacon, and muffins. There were cold flagons of several kinds of fruit juice, pitchers of milk, self-warming tanks of coffee and tea. The napkins were false linen instead of just paper.

As opposed to the frenetic blare of conversation in the workers' cafeteria the talk in the ward room was subdued. Its occupants preferred to affect a genteel air they had not been born to. It gave the Sunday brunch the feel of a gathering at some Earthside Country Club.

Soft lighting made the imported food look even better than it was. The women sometimes moved to form their own bubbly, animated groups while the men would sit swapping jokes or production figures or, in a more serious vein, this or that problem at the mine.

They managed the admirable task of ignoring the one problem that was on everyone's mind.

Above the tables and conversation the room readout flashed: SHUTTLE—IN TRANSIT. ARRIVAL—0 HOURS 43 MINUTES. No one paid it any attention. It was only a clock. Shuttles arrived every week, on schedule.

O'Niel strode through the front entrance and looked around. Sheppard was not present. The General Manager often preferred to eat in the privacy of his own office and this morning was no exception.

It was several seconds before the Marshal's presence was noticed. As soon as it was the conversation faded faster than a liter of oxygen exposed on Io's surface. Everyone turned to look at him.

He stood in the doorway and smiled pleasantly back at them.

Within the shuttle bay a pulsating horn began to wail. Lights flashed and startled attendants rushed to man their positions. There were a number of muffled curses as coffee was hastily downed or abandoned. The readout overhead flashed: SHUTTLE—OUTER MARKER. ARRIVAL—EARLY.

O'Niel studied the silent group of diners, said conversationally, "Good morning."

A few subdued "good mornings" drifted up to him. Hands fumbled with glasses and utensils but no one resumed eating. O'Niel started toward the nearest table, mentally noting who was present and who was not.

He recognized one face, shifting toward her. She tried to smile back at him.

"How are you, Ms. Spector?"

The woman who'd greeted him so warmly his first official day at the mine looked flustered. "Uh, fine, thank you, Marshal." She almost started to ask reflexively, "How are you," but caught herself in time.

O'Niel turned his attention to her breakfast companion. "Mr. Rudolph? You doing okay this morning?"

"Morning, Marshal. I'm fine, yes." Rudolph stirred his hot cereal nervously.

O'Niel's gaze rose: He scanned the room, locking eyes with those not looking elsewhere. "I hope everyone's fine this morning. I hope you're all having a pleasant time." He walked past one of the serving tables. "Looks good." He selected an apple from one plate, began gnawing on it. The sound was loud in the suddenly silent room.