Sidney's Comet (7 page)

Chapter Three

U
P CLOSE WITH THE MASTER, FOR FURTHER READING AND DISCUSSION

“I feel complete. This is my legacy to the nation.”

Remarks made by Uncle Rosy to his personal secretary, Emmanuel Dade, concerning the recently completed Black Box of Democracy. Uncle Rosy disappeared three days later (on May 16,2318) after personally supervising selective memory erasures on everyone involved with the project. (From E. Dade’s unpublished notes.)

Friday, August 25, 2605

“What the hell happened?” General Munoz demanded. His orange mustache bristled as he glared at Dr. Hudson. “Another miscalculation?” Munoz stood in the center of his living room module with his hands thrust deeply into the pockets of a dark brown robe. His new gold cross hung about his neck, outside the robe. It was well past midnight, the first hours of Garbage Day minus seven, and his hair was sleep-tousled. A brass table lamp near the window cast yellow light against the General’s side, leaving half his face in shadow.

A fair-haired, taller man of perhaps thirty-five stood in a gold robe at the General’s side. Hudson recognized Colonel Allen Peebles, the General’s adjutant and lover. The younger man had pale blue eyes which to Hudson seemed to look at some indeterminate point in an unfocused distance, as if Hudson was not there. Hudson had long since learned to control his thoughts of revulsion in the presence of these two, since they, like Hudson, were fitted with mento transceivers.

“We have problems,” Dr. Hudson said, a bit out of breath. He removed his overcoat, slung it over the back of a white nauga chair and slumped into the chair. “As I told you on the phone, our biggest concern is that the comet’s speed has increased dramatically. We now estimate its arrival in seven days rather than thirteen.”

“Oh damn!” Colonel Peebles said, speaking in an exaggerated lilt. He took a seat in an adjacent chair, crossing his legs gracefully.

“I hate surprises,” Munoz said. Continuing to glare at Hudson, he popped a sleep-sub pill and washed it down with a water capsule.

“And I’ve just discovered a second computer error,” Hudson said.

“The new Comp six-oh-two?” Munoz asked.

“No. This time it was the Willys twelve-forty that calculated the comet’s ETA . . . off by six hours.”

“In the wrong direction, I presume?” Munoz said.

“Naturally.”

Munoz shook his head, stared glumly at the floor.

“The comet is not behaving according to known laws of physics,” Hudson said, rubbing the fringe of black hair on one side of his head. “Just one hour ago, it made a ninety-four degree turn, veering off into space for a time. Then it made another sharp turn, back to a collision course with Earth.”

“How odd!” Peebles said. “What are we to do?” He sat sideways in the chair to look at Hudson, an arm draped across the chair back.

“Silence!” Munoz commanded, shooting a fiery glance at his adjutant. “I have to think!” Munoz moto-slippered to the couch, sat down with his hands grasping his thighs. “How could the comet change like that?” he asked, staring at the floor.

Hudson shrugged. “I don’t know. This thing’s a complete mystery to all of . . .” He stopped as Munoz looked up and glared at him. Such words had been spoken before.

“Get out new orders, Allen,” Munoz said. “Have the crew ship ready three days earlier . . . by Tuesday afternoon at fourteen hundred hours.” He turned to Hudson.

Hudson spoke as Munoz was formulating a new thought. “I’ll call Saint Elba and have the mass drivers moved up too.”

“Right,” Munoz said. “And tell ’em to double-check the E-Cell charging bays. We don’t want any last minute problems.”

“I’ll reiterate that.”

“Anything else?” Munoz asked.

“We’ll have to set up new recharging stations along the route in deep space,” Hudson said. “The others are placed incorrectly for the new course and time. I’ll refigure it right away.”

“Good,” Munoz said. “We still have the matter of the pilot. There’s no time left . . .”

“Have any more garbage balls spoken to you?”

“What do you mean by that?” Munoz snapped.

“Maybe you were tired. The mind and eyes can play tricks. . . . ”

“It was in flames, and came right at my face! I was there! And listen to the clincher: there is a Sidney Malloy!”

“Yeah?”

“He’s a nobody in the Presidential Bureau—Central Forms.”

“You’re not actually thinking of using him?” Hudson asked.

“I have a strong feeling—call it intuition, I don’t know. Something tells me. . . . ”

“We need to go on more than intuition,” Hudson said. “Everything rides on this mission, Arturo. This calls for the best, only the very best.”

“I know.”

“Did it occur to you that your trash can magic trick might have been performed by the Black Box?”

“No,” Munoz said. “I’m sure they had nothing to do with it.”

“On what evidence? You puzzle me, Arturo—relying so heavily on intuition for critical decisions.”

The General’s black pupils became steely hard. “And you are a man of facts, Dr. Hudson. Precise scientific facts.” Munoz fingered the burnished gold cross which hung from his neck.

“I am—and there is a concise scientific answer for every question.”

“Don’t be so sure of that. I’ll tell you one thing. Anyone that can make a ball of burning trash speak to me has my undivided attention. The voice told me to use Malloy, and I’m damn sure not going against its wishes. Hell, Dick—maybe that was God himself. Speaking to ME!”

“Okay, okay. This Malloy—can he be trained?”

“Anyone can be trained,” Munoz said. “You know that. And Malloy knows a pilot—one of the three-hundred on whom we have files.”

“Oh?”

“Javik,” Colonel Peebles said. “He’s a ruffian.”

“Funny thing though,” Munoz said. ‘This Javik is sharp, maybe the best we can find. He knows the Akron class space cruiser and has exceptional reaction times.” Munoz lifted a manila folder from the coffee table, handed it to Hudson.

Hudson thumbed through Javik’s dossier file. “He’s had mass-driver mechanics training, too. Odd that he’d know Malloy. They went to high school together. . . . ”

“Javik is bull-headed and quick-tempered!” Peebles said.

Hudson nodded. “Poor attitude quotient,” he said, reading from the report. “Gets in fights all the time.”

Munoz shook his head in exasperation, spoke tersely to Peebles: “His bull-headedness . . . as you call it . . . was actually independent decision-making. He took out an entire enemy fighter squadron with one star class cruiser—”

“And a Major’s jaw with one punch,” Peebles said. “I saw him knock Neil Smalley down. In fact, it was my testimony that got Javik tossed out of the service.”

“The decisions he made were absolutely correct,” Munoz insisted. “His only error was in striking an officer. Major Smalley shouldn’t have pressed him about procedures.”

“It won’t matter anyway,” Peebles said, raising his blond eyebrows. “He’s on a six-day pass and is nowhere to be found . . . I’ll bet he’s shacked up.”

“You’re going to send Javik and Malloy on this mission together?’ Hudson asked, looking at Munoz.

Munoz nodded, then glanced at Peebles. “You’ll find Javik, Allen,” Munoz said, smiling knowingly, “ . . . when you hear what I have in store for him.”

Peebles did not reply, stared at the General impertinently.

“The ejection pods on his ship will be disconnected, and the rocket engines will have a certain . . .” Munoz paused, glanced at Hudson with a mischievous smile.

Hudson returned the smile. “I believe planned obsolescence is the term for which you were searching, General,” he said. “The radio has been prepared similarly.”

Peebles brightened. “That sounds pretty good. . . . ”

“And no rescue craft anywhere in the vicinity,” Munoz said. ‘The world will never know that a comet really threatened us, or that he stopped it.”

“What about an enforcer?” Peebles asked.

The General raised an eyebrow. “An enforcer?”

“Yessss,” Peebles said, his voice a cruel purr. “Conceivably, Javik could repair anything you disconnect. And we don’t want any chance of him getting off a distress call.”

“True.”

“Let’s send along Madame Bernet.” An evil, purse-lipped smile danced along Peebles’s mouth.

“Ahh!” Munoz caressed his mustache. “The Montreal Slasher!” He turned to Hudson. “The meckie is available?’

“Yes,” Hudson said. “Just back from a mission. Madame Bernet silenced eight guys on that one . . . permanently.”

“This will be delicious,” Peebles said, smiling like a death’s head. “But alas,” he added sadly, “it will be the last mission for our finest killer meckie.”

Munoz rubbed his temple. “Bring Malloy and Javik to me,” he said.

Four hours later, inside the Black Box of Democracy . . .

With his ankles crossed beneath his body, the tall fat man known as Onesayer Edward sat naked on a blue and gold prayer rug with one hand resting on each knee. Soft morning rays of sunlight from an overhead skylight warmed his bare shoulders and the back of his shaved head. Flicking a downward glance at his pendulous stomach and at the great folds of flesh which cascaded to the rug from every part of his body, he imagined that he must resemble a wallowing hippopotamus. Onesayer grimaced at a surge of pain from one ankle, tried to think the things he was supposed to think.

The prayer rug was on a loft of Onesayer’s private Black Box of Democracy penthouse, and in the background he heard the soft, lilting notes of the Hymn of Freeness. Uncle Rosy had written that tune. It was the theme song of the Sayerhood.

Gazing at a burnished bust of Uncle Rosy which rested on the leading edge of the rug in a pool of sunlight, he noted the floating red arrow at the sculpture’s base pointed straight ahead and sharply down. This indicated the precise location of Uncle Rosy’s immense chair on the main level of the building. An inscription on all four sides of the bust’s pedestal carried the admonition: “Keep The Faith.”

I cannot get into this,
Onesayer thought.
And it used to be so easy!
He sighed twice, causing his flabby chest to rise and fall like an undulating wave, then stared at the sculptured, cherubic face of Uncle Rosy.

He thought back to his boyhood on the asteroidal sayer’s retreat of Pleasant Reef, and upon the two hundred eighty-seven years he had spent in the Black Box. Remembering the first day he had seen Uncle Rosy sitting upon the great chair, he recalled being in awe of the Master’s presence. To Onesayer, Uncle Rosy seemed godlike, always sitting in the shadows and never revealing his face.

Flicking a fly off his leg, he thought,
I was one of the original sixty-six. . . . the Master brought me from Three-Sevensayer to Onesayer in ninety-three years, skipping me ahead of others, putting me in slots that became available. . . .

Onesayer glanced at his onyx class ring angrily, recalling Uncle Rosy’s exact words to him, spoken nearly two centuries before: “I will step down within fifty years, Onesayer Edward. You will become Master. Be patient, and all will come to you.”

Be patient!
Onesayer thought bitterly, looking up at the ceiling in dismay.
How long do I have to wait? I know all about Freeness and Sharing For Prosperity. . . . I have served on twenty-seven bureau monitoring teams
—

Uncle Rosy’s words came back once again: “You will be the Protector . . . the Chosen One. . . . ” Onesayer lowered his gaze.
Ha!
he thought, glaring at the bust of Uncle Rosy.
He is always coming up with new excuses for not stepping dawn, saying I have much to learn. . . .

His thoughts were interrupted by an intercom buzzer whose rapid-fire tones told him the Master was calling. Onesayer mentoed the circuit to open it, replied aloud, “Yes, Master?”

“The new Bu-Industry Tower, Onesayer. You are prepared for our ten A.M. dedication?”

“Yes, Master. There is plenty of time.”

“See that you are prompt.”

“I have never been otherwise, Master.”

There was a long silence at the other end of the line, followed by, “Our new Lastsayer will meet you at the helipad.”

“I am aware of this, Master. He will be trained properly.”

“Very well, Onesayer. And do not forget to show him the Bureau Monitoring Room afterward.”

Onesayer Edward rose wearily after the conversation ended and short-stepped across a hardwood floor. He rode the escalator downstairs, then made his way across the cool blue slate of his dining room module to the bedroom module. There he looked at a row of identical friar brown robes in the closet and said to himself mockingly, “Let me see now. . . . Whatever shall I wear today?”

Mayor Nancy Ogg stood at the Hub Control Room viewing window, watching as two space tugs pulled containers of raw materials to a loading dock near the newly enlarged double doors leading to Hub Sections A and B. It was midmorning Friday, and she had supervised all night as meckie and human workcrews enlarged the doors, tore out partition walls and removed work in progress to make room for assembly of the mass drivers.

It’s going well so far,
she thought, yawning as she stared at a box of sleep-sub pills on the console. A hunger pang shot across her midsection.

Mayor Nancy Ogg glanced to her left at a tap-tap-whining sound, watched a floor-mounted electronic mail terminal spew out a letter. One of three electronic mail terminals, this unit was reserved for classified correspondence. A flashing blue light on the machine indicated it was a Priority One transmittal.

Gliding gracefully to the terminal, she tore the letter off and examined it.

From Dick,
she thought angrily, reading the heading.
Well I don’t care to hear from him!
She rolled the letter into a ball and hurled it across the room.

Mayor Nancy Ogg returned to the viewing window, watched through tear-glazed eyes as the space tugs released their containers on the loading platform and then left via the docking tunnel to retrieve additional containers.

She turned to stare at the ball of paper as it lay on the floor near the Control Room’s bank of C.R.T. screens.
I’d better look at it. Duty before personal matters.