The Pedestal (20 page)

I keep expecting the pilots to burst into this area—if they do, I guess I’ll be completely out of luck—but after fifteen or twenty minutes, I decide that the ship’s crew has exited by some other route. The spinning in my head has slowed considerably; it’s not altogether gone—I feel like I might toss my cookies again without much provocation—but it’s much more tolerable now. My muscles quiver like gelatin as I disentangle myself from the nylon web and scramble to my feet. I’m tempted to reenter the cargo bay, since I’m at least somewhat familiar with the lay of the land; the sound of human voices within dissuades me. There’s really no other choice but to follow the nearby hallway into the depths of the ship, trusting that a way out will ultimately reveal itself.

With every bound, my nausea abates; I feel almost human again—for all of two minutes. Just as I’m congratulating myself for so expertly dodging the proverbial bullet, faintness begins to take hold of me again.

I just can’t catch a break.

I’m not sure, but I think I’m breathing the wrong kind of air; I feel it moving gingerly past me, as if the entire craft is being purged of its atmosphere. Is it just me, or does this ship seem unusually determined to kill me? The hallway funnels through a narrow hatch into the control room. I slip inside because there really is no other place to go; thankfully, the space is unoccupied. With the engines at rest, the ship is dead silent, save for the gentle breeze rustling my hair.

At first, I’m unclear what the air is moving toward, until I see the door. I’m not sure how I missed it, actually; it’s just ahead of me, situated directly opposite the one I’ve just entered through. More notably, it’s boldly placarded in large, green letters:

EXIT.

My heart quickens; my mouth hikes in a dumb grin. The door is ajar, beckoning me like a beautiful siren.

I ought to be grateful—if not downright excited—to have found a way off this deathtrap; instead, though relieved, I feel my smile falter, bending under the crushing weight of cynicism. If I step off this craft, it won’t be onto the safety of an airport tarmac, where shuttles and city trams idle in wait for someone to please. Outside this cosmic portal, a spiraled umbilical intercourses with the Unified Space Station. I can easily discern the bizarre, slinky-like structure through the door opening.

I can’t believe I’m in freaking space, dang it. Not on some orbital pleasure cruise, mind you, but skulking around on a GFL freighter like a diseased ship-rat. I don’t have any business out here, disconnected from my world.

And I’m pretty sure I’m not in for a pleasant reception.

On the other hand, I know what awaits me if I stick around for the return trip. It’s not the sort of trade I like to make, but I’m forced to weigh probable disaster here over certain death back home. Either way, I can’t remain here for long; I need air—real, life-giving air—and I have my doubts that I’ll make it off this ship at all if I don’t get some right now.

Wheezing, feeling weak—and a little confused—I forget for a moment that gravity has more or less abandoned the equation of walking in space; carelessly, my leading foot pushes off with too much vigor, launching me into a flying leap. My head rebounds off the ceiling with a dull
thunk
and sends me flailing back to the floor. My hands extend instinctively to absorb the impact, but instead skate down the back of the copilot chair. The friction flags my velocity; I still hit the floor with bone-jarring violence, but it could’ve been worse.

I sit up and blink as my body begins to gently levitate from the floor. My scalp smarts and my neck is rapidly stiffening, but my pride is perhaps damaged worst of all. I’m reminded of a time when I fell down the escalator at the downtown Hyatt. Arthur was there, along with close to a hundred gawking bystanders, who apparently had never fallen in their life; Arthur was never a fan of slapstick, but I remember he laughed his butt off as I bounced down those stairs like a beach ball. I realized then that even the best of friends will laugh at your expense; that doesn’t mean they aren’t still your friends. At least this time I looked miswired without an audience.

At once, I notice my periphery shrinking, which I figure can’t be a good thing. I should make a frantic dive for the door, yet it doesn’t seem that important anymore. Plus, it seems so far away, and it’s sliding farther and farther into the horizon. My mind seems to detach from reality, floating over a fuzzy plane of existence where everything’s trivial and time is a fixed point. Or a circle. Or a point in a circle.

Here we go again.

I’m seated in a folding chair at the center of what might normally be a conference room; the furniture has been removed, but its feet have left behind subtle impressions in the carpet. I count the former locations of twelve chairs and a single long table. My head feels better. Similarly, all traces of nausea have vanished, though my stomach now cries out in ravenous neglect.

I can’t say for sure how I came to be in here, but I must have been carried; I certainly didn’t walk in here on my own, anyway. I’m not restrained, which doesn’t actually mean much, when you think about it. Not many prisons require restraints these days; the landscape of the moon, for example, is enough to deter escape from its penal colonies. Likewise, I’m as good as restrained here. Beyond these walls is infinite, empty space—as good a deterrent as any desert or glacier.

I’ve been pouting for several minutes about my sour luck when I notice an unopened bottle of water at my feet. My lips are dry; my stomach feels like a sprung steel trap in my belly. With trembling hands, I rip open the bottle and drink greedily, downing more than half the bottle in one long pull. My tummy gurgles with delight.

“Good, you’re awake,” says a disembodied voice. The odd shape—sort of ovalish, only bisected off from center—and emptiness of the room makes for an interesting set of acoustics; I can’t place the origin of the voice, because it seems to have spawned from the air itself. I drop the bottle and stand in one startled motion, poised to—well, I’m not sure what I’m gearing up for; it’s just one of those primal reactions that prepares your body for fight-or-flight while your mind flips a coin. At least, that’s what mine is doing.

A man steps into the room from a side door and approaches at a distance, careful to stay well outside of my reach. It strikes me as humorous that anyone would think me worthy of such caution, yet my amusement doesn’t reach my lips.

There’s no telling how long he’s been there; I didn’t even hear the door open, and that bothers me. I wonder if others are standing by invisibly, watching me like a rat in a death chamber.

“You gave us all quite a scare,” he says. He’s reedy-framed, I note, built for perching over a microscope rather than grunt work. Even in my weakened state, I know I can overpower him if I need to. Still, glancing into his eyes, I see a fierce spark of intelligence that warns it would be a grave mistake to underestimate him.

I haven’t spoken a word yet, in part because he hasn’t actually said anything requiring a response, but moreso because I’m busily processing my surroundings. I steal a glance through the open door, preparing to bolt the moment an opportunity arises.

The man smiles—not unkindly, but knowingly. “The crew’s out there,” he assures me in a calm, reasonable tone. “You won’t get far.” Abashed, I nod my understanding and then, unsure of what other options remain, I drop back into the chair. My water bottle lays empty on the floor; its spilled contents have left an oblong spot on the carpet.

“Name’s Hollister, but everybody calls me Hal.”

I nod and open my mouth to speak, but for a terrible moment, I can’t tease my name from the slush of my fragile mind. Ah, but there it is. I’m still me.

“Wilson,” I reciprocate.

He takes a couple of timid steps deeper into the room, peeking over his shoulder as someone passes by the open door. “So, Wilson. Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here?”

I laugh humorlessly. “Trust me—you wouldn’t believe me if I did.”

“Try me.”

I pause for a beat, then offer a noncommittal shrug. What can I possibly say? We lock eyes and I sigh; for a split second, frustration flexes in his jaw. “Just so we understand each other,” he says with sharp annunciation, “you aren’t walking out of here until I’m convinced that you aren’t a threat to this facility. So I suggest you start talking.”

Nothing in his demeanor is in any way threatening; firm, sure—but not at all hostile. He’s a model of self-control, and I don’t doubt him for a second. I’d like to level with this guy, but the truth is simply too unbelievable. I feel I have no choice: I have to lie.

“I work at the GFL loading dock,” I tell him. “I must’ve bumped my head in the cargo bay and lost consciousness.” I don’t even know where that came from, but it sounds thinly plausible. In another spurt of genius, I add, “I’ve never been popular with the guys I work with; this might even be their idea of a prank, knocking me out and all.”

The only thing more ridiculous than my laughable inability to deceive is that I repeatedly bother to waste my breath trying. Had this particular fib fallen from the lips of someone else—anyone else, in fact—Hollister might have bought it. As far as fibs go, this one is completely within the realm of possibility, after all. Alas, just as always, I’ve betrayed my duplicity with a barrage of tells—any one of which would tip off a person with half a brain. One look at Hollister reveals that he knows I’m blowing smoke. As sure as he senses that his cunning is more powerful than my physical prowess—which is average, at best—he also senses that I’m grasping at straws, even if he doesn’t yet understand why.

I should’ve taken his warning more seriously; I should’ve told him the truth. Sure, it may have damned me as much as the lie, but at least the absurdity of my plight would be to blame rather than my shameful failure to follow basic instructions.

Wordlessly, Hollister frowns and walks briskly from the room. Unthinking, I rise to follow. At the door, he turns and—surmising my intentions—shakes his head with an ironic frown. I’m struck by a barely containable compulsion to tackle him—or something likewise radical—before he can depart, leaving me otherwise helpless to do anything at all.

But I don’t.

Hollister shuts the door, and as the locks engage in a tribal symphony of clinking finality, I hear my window of opportunity slam shut. A half hour later, he reappears; this time, he’s trailed by seven other men, each visibly more dubious than the previous, as if ordered by their useless ability to exude distrust.

“Wilson, I’m offering you a final opportunity to plead your case,” he says calmly—condescendingly, really, as if addressing a child. “Just so we’re clear, I don’t believe a word you’ve said so far.”

I swallow, my tongue grating like dry sandpaper against the roof of my mouth. No point in defending my honor, I suppose. “What are you going to do with me?”

“Well, let me just say this: we don’t have the resources to hold a prisoner, and we have no intention of risking your return to Earth if there’s a chance you’ll endanger our flight crew. You’re a liability, and the rules out here aren’t very forgiving.”

I swallow again. “What exactly are you saying?”

“I’m saying that if we can’t be satisfied that you’re not here to harm us, we’ll have no choice but to dispose of you.”

I feel the blood trickle like cold acid from my brain into the hollows of my shoes, scouring the pipework of my heart with the stinging burn of dread. I’m not sure what to envision, exactly—the phrase
disposed of
leaves much to the imagination: banishment into space, perhaps; incineration with the weekly trash?

Oh, God.

I don’t even realize that I’ve begun to speak until I pause in midsentence to take a breath. I don’t bother to correct myself now, though, because it’s clear to me that my body has wisely deduced—even before my feeble little brain could form a sound conclusion—that there really is no other play left.

The truth shall set me free—if there is freedom in death, as there is in vindication, anyway.