Schismatrix plus (17 page)

Paolo's face wrinkled. He rubbed gently at the oozing sores beneath his chin. "Trade our bodies for our art. Forget it, State. The rest would never go along with it. Can you imagine Kleo"—his voice fell—"her legs open to that thug captain?"

"I didn't say it would actually happen," Lindsay said. "I only want you to agree to back me up. Do you want the head launched or don't you?" Paolo glanced back into the tunnel. "I say yes," came Fazil's voice.

"Then I want one of you to go to the launch room and help set parameters," Lindsay said. "And the other to come with me and help me load the launch ring. And not a word to anyone about our agreement, understood?"

"You get us our launch. Then we'll make you look good with the others. Like you talked us into it with sheer charisma, right?"

"Those are my terms," Lindsay said. "You keep my secrets, I'll keep yours. Now, which of you is going to set the launch?"

"I will," said Paolo. He squirmed past Lindsay in the tunnel and vanished in the darkness, headed for the launch control room. Fazil peered out. "What's in the crate?" he said.

"Evidence," Lindsay said. "Souvenirs from past raids and the like. Things that might embarrass us, now that we've settled here for good." It was half the truth, as Lindsay understood it. The embarrassment would not come within esairs but at the Mech cartel, when the pirates would have to be on their best behavior. Major cartels like Themis were particular; even in their dogtowns, open piracy was not condoned.

The pirates had loaded the crate without his knowledge and told him to launch it. By this token he knew that their coup was close. Fazil moved into the tunnel with his candle. "May I look?" He reached past Lindsay and put one hand on the packing crate. A pitch-black roach squeezed head first out between the plastic slats, waving whip-thin antennae as long as a forearm. Fazil snatched his hand back with a hiss of disgust. Lindsay made a quick grab at the roach but missed.

"Filthy," Fazil muttered. "Help me with the head." Lindsay followed him into the workshop. Together, they heaved and wrestled the massive head out into the corridor. It was a tight fit in the narrow tunnel. "Maybe we should grease it," Lindsay said.

"Paolo's face isn't going into eternity with a snotty nose," said Fazil. He blew out the candle and resealed the workshop. He pushed the sculpture ahead of him, toward the launch ring. Lindsay followed, towing the crate. The route was devious, traversing gnawed-out rock veins where the air was stale. The ring's loading dock was near the surface of the asteroid, set in one wall of esairs' major industrial center. Here, next to the launch ring, they manufactured the decoys.

The decoy complex was a grapelike cluster of fermentation bags, connected by flaccid hydraulic tubes, anchored with guy ropes and ringed by harsh banks of bluish grow-lights. The cluster hung in midair, its translucent chambers churning sluggishly.

The complex had not been shut down completely; that would have killed the wetware. But its production was cut almost to nothing. The blowpipes had been unplugged from their output duct into the launch ring. Instead of thin decoy film, they were producing a thick, colorless froth. The air reeked with the sharp fever stench of hot plastic.

The Family's robot was on duty. It stopped in mid-program as Fazil floated past it, clutching the head. As Lindsay drifted by, the robot crouched quietly, a powder bellows gripped in its forward manipulators. Its huge single eye tilted to follow him in movement, with a ratchetlike clicking. The robot was all wires and joints, its six skeletal limbs made of lightweight foamed metal. It was bigger than Lindsay. Its brain and motor were shielded in its torso, behind barrel-like ribs. The forward end held the sensors and two long, jointed pincer arms. A cross-shaped junction of four swiveling limbs sprouted from its aft end, set that way for work in free-fall. It had a rotary spindle tail for drilling.

The robot lacked the smoothness of a Mech unit, but there was an alarming liveliness about it. It was like an animated skeleton, a vivisected animal stripped down to jumpy knee-jerk reflex.

When Lindsay drifted out of range, the robot clicked back into motion, kicked off a wall, and plugged its bellows into the wet duct of a fermentation bag.

Fazil crawled over the head and caught it against the wall. The launching ring had an airlock of translucent plastic. Fazil plucked a tightly wrapped green spacesuit from the wall and shook it out. He zipped himself into it and unzipped the airlock wall. He stepped inside. Lindsay passed him the crate.

Fazil zipped the airlock shut and opened the loading chamber. A curved rectangular section of wall slid up on spring-loaded exterior hinges. Air gusted out into the vacuum of the launch ring. The airlock's flimsy walls sucked in, clinging like soap film to an interior support trellis. Five huge roaches and a cloud of smaller ones burst from the crate's interior, kicking in the vacuum. Fazil shrieked silently behind his transparent faceplate. He batted around his head as the roaches convulsed, their paper-thin wings beating in crippled angles. Decompression bloated their abdomens. Froth oozed from their joints and rumps.

A roach clung vomiting to the plastic, near Lindsay's face. It had been eating something within the crate. Something viscous and red. Faint wisps of steam were coming from the crate. Fazil didn't notice; he was swatting the roaches out into the launch ring.

Fazil stepped through the hatchway into the ring and pulled the crate after him. He wrestled it into the launch cage.

He emerged, then knocked the last of the dead insects through the chamber hatch and locked it shut. A green ready-light came on as the hatch door sealed the circuit. An LED raced through numbers as launch power hit the magnets.

Fazil pulled the entrance zipper and air rushed in. The plastic airlock flapped like a sail. Fazil climbed out, shaking. His shouts were muffled by the suit. "Did you see that?" He pulled his own zip down to mid-chest. "What was in there? What were they eating?"

"I didn't see them pack the crate," Lindsay said. "Could have been anything."

Fazil examined the smeared sleeve of his suit. "Looks like blood." Lindsay leaned closer. "Doesn't smell like blood."

"This is evidence," Fazil said, tapping the suit. Lindsay was thoughtful. The pirates had lied to him. They had tried to be clever, as clever as the Shapers. They had tried to make someone disappear.

"It might be best, Fazil, if we launched that suit."

"Have you seen Ian today?" Fazil said.

"I wasn't looking for him."

They eyed one another. Lindsay said nothing. Fazil glanced quickly, warily, over one shoulder at the LED. "It's launched away," he said.

"If you'll launch the suit," Lindsay said, "I'll scrub the inside of the airlock."

"I'm not launching this suit with the head," Fazil said.

"You could feed it into one of the chambers," Lindsay said, pointing.

"The fermentation vats." He thought fast. "If you'll do that, I'll help you set this complex to full capacity. You can make decoys again." Lindsay pulled another suit from the wall and shook it out. "We'll launch the head. We'll dump the suit. We'll do those two things first, and then we'll talk. All right?"

The moment to attack was when Lindsay had his legs half trapped in the suit. That moment passed, and once again Lindsay knew he had bought time. He and Fazil manhandled the head into the airlock. Fazil zipped the lock shut behind the two of them. Lindsay opened the rectangular hatch. Light spilled into the launch ring's glassy interior, gleaming off its inset copper tracks. The iron bars of the launch cage shone with a faint rime of condensed steam from the body that had been within the crate. Lindsay stepped into the launch ring. He shoved the head within the cage and set the clamps.

Fazil's shadow passed across the light. He was slamming the hatch. Lindsay wheeled and jumped.

He got his right arm through. The hatch door bounded off flesh and bone and Lindsay's suit began at once to fill with blood.

Lindsay snarled as he jammed his head and shoulders past the hatch. He snagged Fazil's leg with his left hand. His fingertips dug deep into the socket of the Shaper's ankle and he smashed the man's shin against the sharp edge of the hatch. Bone grated and Fazil, levered backward, lost his grip. Lindsay slithered out into the airlock, still grappling, and jacked his foot into Fazil's crotch. As Fazil convulsed, Lindsay seized the man's leg and bent it double, jamming one arm behind Fazil's knee. He braced himself against the Shaper's body and yanked upward, wrenching the man's thighbone from its socket.

In agony, Fazil scrabbled for a hold. His hand struck the edge of the hatch and slammed it shut. The launch ring's circuit sealed and the ready-light came on.

Lindsay held the leg and twisted. Two globes of his own blood floated up within his faceplate. He sneezed, blinded, and Fazil kicked him in the neck. He lost his grip, and the Shaper attacked.

He threw his arms around Lindsay's chest with the panic strength of desperation. Lindsay wheezed, and black unconsciousness loomed close for four loud heartbeats. Then he kicked wildly, and his foot caught the edge of the airlock's support trellis.

They spun, grappling. Lindsay slammed his elbow into the side of the Shaper's head. The grip loosened. Lindsay swung his free arm over Fazil's head and seized his neck in a hammerlock. Fazil squeezed again and Lindsay's ribs bent in the power of his Shaper-strengthened arms.

Lindsay locked eyes with him through his blood-spattered faceplate. Lindsay's face rippled hideously. Fazil went wall-eyed in terror and tried to claw his way free. Lindsay broke his neck.

Lindsay was panting. The suits had no air tanks; they were for brief exposures only. He had to get out into air.

He turned for the airlock's exit. Kleo was there. Her eyes were dark with fascination and terror. She held the zipper's outside tag. Lindsay stared at her, blinking as a microglobe of blood clung to his lashes. Kleo pulled her favorite weapon: a needle and thread. Lindsay kicked off from Fazil's body. He fumbled for the tag. With a few deft moves, Kleo sewed the zipper shut.

Lindsay pulled at it frantically. The slender pink thread was like steel wire. He shook his head: "No!" Vacuum surrounded him. He was cut off; the words that had always saved him could not leap the gap.

She waited to watch him die. Overhead, the LED raced through its readout. The lights were dimming. A launch off the ecliptic required full power.

Lindsay pulled left-handed at the hatch. There was a faint vibration through his fingers. He kicked the hatch, savagely, three times, and something gave. He pulled with all his strength. The hatch opened, just a finger's width.

Safety fuses tripped. And all the lights went out.

The hatch opened easily, then. The darkness was total.

He didn't know how long it would take the circling launch cage to grate to a stop within the ring. If it were still whirring by at klicks per second, it would shear his arm or leg off as neatly as a laser.

He couldn't wait long. The air inside the suit was thick with his own breath and the reek of blood. He made up his mind and thrust his head into the ring.

He lived.

Now he faced another problem. The cage was resting within the ring, somewhere, blocking it. If he reached it on his way to the Outside, he would have to turn around, wasting air. Left or right?

Left. Breathing shallowly, favoring his arm, he leaped along the inside of the ring. He cradled his arms against his chest, using his legs, bounding, somersaulting, skidding.

Three hundred meters—that was half the length of the ring. All he would have to go. But what if the camouflage plastic was sealing the ring's launch exit? What if he had already passed the exit in the blackness, noticing nothing?

Starlight. Lindsay leaped upward frantically, remembering only at the last moment to catch himself on the rim. esairs' gravity was so weak that his leap would have put him into circumsolar orbit.

Once again he was outside the asteroid, amid streaks of charred black and off-white blast sumps.

He leaped across a buckled crater, almost missing the far rim. When he grappled along a stretch of pumice, rock powdered under his fingers and went into slow orbit just above the surface.

He was gasping when he found the second airlock: plastic film dappled with camouflage, inset into the surface of esairs where the Family's first drill had bitten in. He brushed the film aside and twisted the hatch wheel. His right arm was bleeding steadily. It felt broken again. The hatch popped free. He slipped into the airlock and slammed the outside hatch behind him. Then there was another. He was panting steadily; each lungful offered less, and he tasted inhaled blood.

The second hatch opened. He pulled himself through, and there was a sudden flurry of movement in darkness. He heard his suit rip. Cold steel nicked his throat, his legs were seized, and he screamed as hands in the blackness grabbed his wounded arm and twisted.

"Talk!"

"Mr. President!" Lindsay gasped at once. "Mr. President!" The knife against his throat drew back. He heard a deafening buzz-saw grinding, and sparks flew. In the sudden gory light Lindsay saw the President, the Speaker of the House, the Chief Justice, and Senator 3. The sparks went out. The Speaker had held the blade of her small power saw against a length of pipe.

The President ripped the head from Lindsay's suit. "The arm, the arm," Lindsay yelped. The Chief Justice released it; Senator 3 released his legs. Lindsay breathed deeply, filling his lungs with air.

"Fucking preemptive strike," the President muttered. "Hate 'em."

"They tried to kill me," Lindsay said. "The equipment—you destroyed it?

We can leave now?"

"Something tipped 'em off," the President growled. "We were in the launch center with Paolo. Learning how to smash the launch controls. Then Agnes and Nora show up. Supposed to be sleeping. And all of a sudden, black as fire—"

"Power blackout," said the Speaker.

"I yell ambush," said the President. "Only it's black. They have the advantage: fewer of them, less chance of hitting their own. So, I go for machinery. Sleeve knife into the circuitry. We hear Second Senator howl, meat breaks open."