Tomorrow’s Heritage (11 page)

“Jael.” Mariette spoke so softly Todd strained to hear her. “She looked so old on that broadcast today. I hadn’t realized how much she was aging recently. Why doesn’t she retire?”

“Mother? Retire? Unthinkable! you know that.” Todd hesitated, then said, “I don’t want to be morbid, but you know how much Dad’s birthday anniversary means to her.”

“Yes, I know,” Mari replied wistfully.

“It can be like old times, if we try. Jael wants it so much. It gives Dad back to us, even for a little while. All us chickens, back home under Mama’s wings. Okay, hell, she was maternal off and on, depending on whether her business cutthroating gave enough time for us. But we’re family. We came through plenty together because we were together. When you consider how many people have no family continuity at all . . .”

“Like Dian,” Mari said suddenly.

Mari, caring, fiercely protective of “her people” on the Colony. Empathizing with Dian Foix, orphaned during the Death Years, living through the Chaos while her heroine grandmother patched up the wounded and rescued the damned. And Pat, caring, holding a dying baby, begging doctors to save her, forgetting he was supposed to be a cold-blooded politician, interested only in votes.

They could care so much; the capacity was tremendous.

Mari moved over to Kevin’s chair and leaned over the back, clasping her slender hands across his chest. After a long minute’s consideration, she nodded. “All right. I’ll come to Saunderhome.” Her announcement took both men by surprise. Kevin squirmed around to look at her. Mariette laid a finger on his lips. “I’ve decided I will. That’s that. I’ll go, Todd, if you promise me something in return.” Kevin relaxed, as if he had guessed what she had in mind.

“Conditions?”

“Compromises,” Mari replied slyly.

Defeated, cornered by his own words, Todd smiled. “What?”

“Information. You bragged you could tap in on anybody.” Todd didn’t know whether to keep fighting or submit gracefully. He was more than cornered; he was trapped. “Information we can’t get. Maybe only a Saunder can get it, a Saunder with inside connections and a global telecom network to dip into. It can’t be Pat. He couldn’t step off that campaign platform, even if he believed the way we did. And it certainly can’t be Carissa. Jael’s as wrapped up in the campaign as Pat is. Besides, we can’t count on her being impartial.”

“Don’t be overconfident about me, either,” Todd said sourly. “Impartiality about what?”

“Survival, of our allies and our private funding on Earth.” Kevin drew her arms about his neck, holding her hands in his.

“You’re talking espionage.”

“No.” Mari was emphatic. Why didn’t Todd trust her denial? “Saunder Enterprises is a quasi-nation, duly chartered by P.O.E. We’re not asking you to hunt out anything that shouldn’t be available to any member of the family, or to the president of ComLink Corporation.” Her manner became wheedling. “Todd, you must. You’re the only one who knows how to bypass all those accountants’ data locks and the rest of that comp technicalese. You say you took up where Dad left off. You understand his patents better than anyone, right?”

“A few SE top techs might disagree with you about that.” Todd enjoyed the flattery but knew he was hemmed in all around the circle.

Did he want to say no? It wasn’t paranoia to think they were being threatened here at Goddard. If the missiles were real, could any of the rest of it be real, too? Against his will, Todd felt a growing curiosity. He was being sucked into a whirlpool, not knowing where it would take him.

“Just what am I supposed to find if I push through the accountants’ comp locks?”

“Fund juggling. Account clipping. Rigged trials . . .”

“Mari,” Todd said wearily, “I can’t do anything to reverse court decisions. Those are people who were convicted in dozens of nations. Whether or not you and I agree with the judgments, the trials are over and done with. Surely there are appeals courts, legal means . . .”

“If the victims are still alive. Find out for us, Todd.” She paused, and Kevin gently stroked her hands, encouraging her. “If they’re frozen but okay, well, we hate it— it’s against their will—but there’s a future for them. And we’ll see that future gets here as fast as possible, and their governments will eventually revoke their sentences. I don’t care if you and I and Pat are all gray-headed and doddering by then. I’ll personally go to Antarctica and escort them home to their families, to their grandchildren.”

Todd rubbed his chin, thinking over the technicalities involved. Kevin nudged him. “We’re mostly worried about the Antarctic confinees, it’s true. But our finances are in serious shape, too. We’ve tried to get the data, demand audits. Our people planetside keep getting snarled in red tape. They won’t be looking for you to come in on the flank. Just get us some proof so we can tell the world and make them turn loose those funds.”

“Any other little miracles you’d like me to perform while I’m at it?”

Mariette lit up. “You’ll do it?”

Todd spread his hands in surrender. He didn’t mention his own growing suspicions on the same matters which concerned them. He had to save himself
some
bargaining power for later. “Do I have a choice? It’s blackmail, you know. You set this up, Mari. You were planning to do this all along, weren’t you? Okay. And in exchange, you’ll come to Saunderhome for Dad’s anniversary. Agreed?” Mariette left Kevin and rushed to him, wrapping him in one of her exuberant embraces. “
Oof!
Hey! It won’t be so bad. Dian’s going with me. She and Kevin and Carissa can play peacemakers if we start getting out of hand with family togetherness.”

“Sweet little Carissa,” Mari said cattily. Todd had never quite understood her dislike of Pat’s wife. “Is she bothering to keep track of that blond bitch with the overdeveloped mammaries, or does she just let Pat run out to the end of his leash now and then?”

This wasn’t the time or the place to let her explore that animosity. Todd grabbed what he had won before things could go wrong. “If my shuttle’s ready after the maintenance checks, we could catch a window on the next turnaround vector. I’m going to pick up Dian and Beth Isaacs and a few of my rotation personnel at Geosynch HQ for a ride to Orleans Port.”

Dian and Beth and the others on Project Search’s team were going to be his guests at the Science Council conference, when he would read the paper regarding the alien messenger vehicle. They had worked very hard, and they deserved to be there with him when the spotlights turned his way.

“I’ll set it up for the two of you with Traffic Control,” Kevin said. Mariette’s face fell, but she didn’t seem too surprised. Kevin heaved himself up out of his chair and stood in front of the picture of the mountain. “I won’t be accompanying you planetside. I’m needed here. Please make my apologies.”

“Jael’s hoping you’ll join us,” Todd said. “She asked about you specifically.”

“Sorry. I can’t. Maybe there’ll be another time, when things aren’t so tense. I admired your father tremendously. I’d be honored to be included in a family commemoration for him. But not at this time.” There was a note of finality Todd couldn’t miss. Unlike Mari, Kevin wasn’t nursing a possible “yes” in his mind.

Kevin McKelvey wasn’t boasting. He was needed. It wasn’t merely his expertise in military matters and the fact that the liaison troops were loyal to him and able to share their training with Goddard’s civilians. Kevin had served on the Colony’s Planning Group for two years. He had been good at it, and the Group had turned to him often for leadership. In some form or another, he had been bound to rise to the top. He didn’t seem to yearn for political power the way Pat did. But he had a gift of command, as did Pat. People recognized it and sought him out.

The Saunder women were drawn to men of action and vision, out-of-the-ordinary men. Ward Saunder, the fey, eccentric scientist. Jael Hartman’s old-money family hadn’t seen his potential, but Jael had turned her back on a world of tradition, elegance, and wealth in order to marry the penniless inventor. Now Mariette was turning her back on Earth and risking everything because of her belief in Kevin MeKelvey and the Colony he led. With McKelvey at Goddard, Mariette’s presence at Saunderhorne would be a mere token appearance. No matter how many quarrels Todd patched up, Mariette would head back to the Colony, and to Kevin, as soon as she could. A foregone conclusion.

Kevin stood at parade rest. “You take care of her,” he said heavily.

“Of course I will,” Todd returned, bristling. “What kind of order is that? She’s my sister.”

“That’s the only reason she’s going planetside.”

Suddenly, Todd realized that wasn’t a quaint male-superiority statement. Kevin was merely stating the, to him, obvious. Mariette wouldn’t have agreed to this trip to Earth for anyone
but
Todd. And Kevin wouldn’t have felt she was safe with anyone less personally interested in her welfare. In his own way, McKelvey was expressing a great deal of confidence in Todd.

Then Kevin slapped his hands together loudly, making Todd start. “How about some food, since everything’s settled?”

“Look, if you’re on short rations . . .”

“We’ve got storehouses. We’re dispersing and decentralizing. We’re doing fine. No problem. We’ve got some nice cottonseed derivatives for you to try out. You’ll like them better than our amaranth moonshine, I’ll bet,” Kevin said with a wink, noting Todd’s barely touched glass. “And the usual fish and rice and yams—oh, and there’re some green vegetables and plump little chickens. Why don’t I just plug through your diet card and whip us up something?” Kevin went into the dispenser alcove. His bulk nearly filled the mini-room. Todd wondered where they had got a diet card file on him. He hadn’t given it to them.

They have files on everything, probably. They’re fully computerized and comfortable with technology, racing to meet the future. Bright, well informed, and brave to the point of fanaticism.

But they need me to probe SE’s files planetside. That’s a tie with Earth they can’t afford to cut yet.

Kevin waited for the dispenser monitor to okay his selections. “I imagine you’ll want some sack time, too, after running through that shooting gallery.”

“I’d like to check in on Gib, see if he’s doing okay . . .”

“Sure! I’ll arrange it. He’ll appreciate the thought. What can we do to entertain you until a launch window clears? That’ll probably be thirty-six hours away, or so. Maybe a run out to the docks? Would you like to see how we’re coming on the Mars colonizer? We’ll trust you to keep that under your hat.”

Irrepressible. Fund shortages and missile attacks be damned. They were going to try for Mars. They might even make it. And twenty years hence, the Goddard Colonists who stayed with the first station would undoubtedly be worrying about a growing independence movement among their children on another planet.

A ride out to the docks would probably give Todd a close-up view of the damage to the torus as well. The threat of extinction, and the hope of an endless series of tomorrows on Mars.

“Yes, I’d enjoy seeing the Mars ship. Very much,” Todd said, smiling.

“We thought you would.” Kevin grinned back at him, letting down the barriers. No pomp, suitable to a space colony governor. This was the big bear of a man Todd had met on numerous other visits to Goddard, a slow-talking giant with a wry sense of humor, very likable, someone Todd was glad Mariette had fallen in love with. She had picked some bad ones in the past. This time she had shown some sense.

Mari relayed the trays as Kevin passed them out, and they gathered around the table to eat. Todd was relieved to discover they had programmed some wine for him rather than more amaranth liquor. The wine, too, was locally produced. But it had vigor, waking his tongue. Nothing subtle about it, though the flavor was good. Kevin raised his glass and clinked it against Todd’s and Mariette’s. “To us. Good fortune attend us.” They drank to that, and Kevin licked drops of amaranth off his lips. “And just as soon as we clear away the petty details, we’ll get started. Mars it is!”

CHAPTER SIX

ooooooooo

TODD felt as if he had been tiptoeing across a thin hull for the past several days. The tension was getting to him. At Goddard, once Mari had agreed to come to the family reunion, she and McKelvey had been in good spirits. They had taken Todd on the tour of the facilities, and he had given them his promise not to reveal the missile attacks or their planned Mars expedition. They wanted both of those to be Fairchild’s ammunition in her campaign against the Earth First Party. That promise had seemed a cheap price for Todd to pay—keep his mouth shut in exchange for a harmonious trip to Earth and Saunderhome.

True to her word, Mari
had
been easy to get along with on the flight down to Geosynch HQ. Their pilot, Gib Owens’s temporary replacement, was a fellow habitat citizen, of course. That made Mari comfortable. It was safety in numbers, with Todd the outsider.

Matters changed, though, as soon as they arrived at Geosynch. While they waited for the heavy orbital ship and a good re-entry window, Mari went on the defensive. She began making cryptic remarks, being sarcastic in the middle of commonplace conversations, until Todd’s staff scratched their heads in confusion. Todd seethed every time Mari capped one of her stunts by glaring a warning at him to keep the cat in the bag. Dian wasn’t fooled for long. Eventually, in private, she demanded to know what was going on. There was a brief yelling match between the siblings before Mari grumpily acknowledged she had caused the confrontation herself. She liked Dian, trusted her. So Dian was let in on the news. Part of it, Todd held back some of the details about the most recent missile attack, but Dian was horrified enough by what they told her. He didn’t like to think how she would react if she knew how hair-raising things had been there for a while.

Even after Dian joined their little conspiracy, Mari didn’t shut up. Some devil nagged at her. It always had, Todd admitted with resignation. Perhaps it was part of his sister’s lifelong fascination with danger. She desperately wanted to bottle up the information so that Fairchild could use it as a surprise against the anti-Spacers. At the same time, Mari was like a little girl figuratively cupping her hands, hiding a treasure, and gloating, “I’ll bet you can’t guess what I’ve got!”

By the time the Earth shuttle docked at Geosynch HQ to pick them up, Todd wanted to shake Mari until her teeth rattled—not an easy trick in free fall.

Secrets. On all sides. And he was in the middle of them. He had to concoct convincing reasons to explain why Beth Isaacs and Anatole and Wu Min were riding down to Earth with him and Dian and Mari. The other passengers on the heavy orbital vehicle knew the work schedules of everyone along the satellite net. Project Search wasn’t exactly a secret, but it wasn’t everyday knowledge, either, not even among those highly trained techs sharing the trip with them. More lies. Todd told anyone who asked that Beth and her colleagues were going to New Washington to update some new improvements on ComLink’s translator-splitter. To his relief, the cover story was accepted without question. Mari, too, took it at face value. Dian and the others stayed away from any talk about the Global Science Council as well, despite their mutual eagerness regarding the upcoming event.

The process frayed Todd’s patience. He was becoming sick of it all, was almost sorry he had decided to sit on the revelation about the alien messenger this long. But it wouldn’t be much longer before he could tell someone.

To top off his edgy mood, the landing at Orleans Spaceport was particularly sloppy. They touched down and jounced for kilometers, Mari bitching most of the way, comparing this shoddy piloting to the crack techniques of her Goddardites. Disembarking, too, was inefficient and seemed to take forever. Todd had planned to be at Saunderhome by noon, and he began to wonder if they would make it by sunset at this rate. At last the gate checks were complete and they and the other shuttle passengers stepped onto the ride strip for another too-slow trip over to the global terminal.

The handle of the little case Todd was carrying grew slippery with his sweat. He glanced down at it in annoyance, taking a better grip. Such a small container to hold such momentous news: holo-mode data cubes, crammed with vital information about the alien messenger. Dian smiled at him, reading his mind. Then she turned back to Mariette. Beth and Anatole and Wu Min were listening with interest as Mari described Goddard’s speed language-learning experiments, its attempt to bridge the gaps in the multinational Colony.

Todd’s sweaty palms itched, and his jumper was sticking to his back. The air-recycling mechanism inside the travel tube must have failed. Pat’s SE Trans Company share-leased part of Orleans’ facilities, and big brother deserved a complaint.

Mariette had arrived at the same conclusion. She mopped her high forehead with her sleeve. “Pat’s not paying his rent? It must be forty degrees centigrade in here.” Dian and Beth Isaacs seconded her opinion. The other two techs who had ridden down with Todd, and a group of passengers from one of Riccardi’s Incorporated Network’s satellites, grumbled, too. Some of them glowered up at the arching polarized plexi window-roof covering the ride strip. It was still more than a kilometer to the global terminal, too far to carry luggage in this heat. Normally, if Todd had been in a hurry and alone, he would have toted his baggage and walked ahead, adding his own pace to that of the rolling conveyor. Condensation dripped from the plexi, now and then splattering one of the passengers underneath. Todd wished there were some way to get over to the private hangars quickly. He was anxious to climb into an air-conditioned flier and get airborne.

The ride strip was bumpy, needing repair. Several times it had shifted under his feet, nearly tipping over his luggage. A few people took extra steps and nudged their bags along with their knees. Most just endured the discomfort.

Then Todd saw something move at the edge of his vision, to his left, beyond the dark plexi. A lot of confusion out there. Vast crowds were surging this way and that across the terminal’s domestic runways, taxi lanes, and maintenance areas. They were milling about the ground traffic near the hangars, also. The normal view out there showed nothing more interesting than baggage trams or a mechanic heading for work. Today the hectares of pavement resembled an insect’s nest. People swarmed, running, waving objects Todd couldn’t identify, their mouths moving, though no sound reached him inside the insulated plexi.

“What’s going on out there?” a Riccardi tech asked of no one in particular.

He was a competitor, but Dian answered him in a friendly tone. “It’s just a run-of-the-mill civil insurrection.” She wasn’t joking. The sparkle was gone from her eyes. It was as if a door were slamming inside her, to guard against a hostile outside world.

“They’re coming this way!” Beth Isaacs shouted.

Part of the crowd split off and rushed toward the transfer tube, a sea of humanity, soundlessly howling. In the middle of that sea, several men and women rode a commandeered baggage tram. The power was on full, and some of the mob couldn’t get out of its way. The tram squashed them under its treads and rumbled on. Blood spattered; the motorized tram careened wildly, aiming for the plexi window-roof.

“Gonna hit us,” Dian warned, slipping into her old accent. “Gotta make a barricade. Luggage.”

Todd grasped her idea and shouted. “This way, everybody over to this side of the ride strip! Pile the luggage Up! Get down! Hurry!” He couldn’t play general for everyone. Riccardi’s employees were leaderless and refused his orders. Dian helped Todd push Beth Isaacs, Mariette, and the rest of their group flat on the moving strip, despite Mariette’s wanting to stand up and see what was coming.

Todd peeked over the heap of baggage as the tram smashed into the plexi wall. The entire tube roof shuddered, though it didn’t break. The sound penetrated, however, dinning at the trapped passengers. Stalled, nose up and treads spinning futilely, the tram perched against the transparent wall. The mob overran it and began beating with fists and clubs on the polarized barrier.

Riccardi’s personnel grew panicky, screaming. Those who were still standing staggered into one another and into their luggage. Normally they rode this strip without conscious thought. Now they lost all sense of balance, as helpless as babies.

Alarms Went off, lances of noise stabbing Todd’s ears. How many times was he going to be hit with that terrifying sound in one week? he wondered bitterly. He craned his neck, looking toward the far end of the ride strip, still a half-kilometer distant. Uniformed security troops, running, trying to get at the point of attack.

How many? Were they CNAU Civil Order Enforcement or some of the terminal staff? Todd had more faith in the national troops. But right now he would welcome any kind of assistance.

Most of the security guards were probably already busy fighting that army of rioters out on the tarmac beyond the plexi.

“We’d better try to make it to the terminal,” Todd decided. Dian was on her hands and knees, laboriously dragging a suitcase, edging forward in the ride strip’s direction of travel.

Mari crouched beside Beth and the two techs. “If I only had a . . .”

What had Mariette been about to say? “If I only had a gun?” Goddard Colonists didn’t like playing sitting duck. Mari had been through too much of that recently. She wanted to fight back.

“Forget it,” Todd told his sister. “There’re too many of them. Come on. Get moving that way, toward the guards.” He unfastened his jumper and slid the little case with the holo-mode masters inside. The stretched cloth held the case snugly against his chest. He couldn’t risk having the case knocked about or taken out of his hand. But if they broke through and killed him, they would get the case, anyway.

As that thought struck him, he heard cracking plexi and an animal roar exploding from dozens of throats, even above the tortured whine of an abused tram engine. The mob had picked up the tram and hurled it against the window-roof until they had broken it!

“Get ‘em! Get the damn Spacers!”

“Kill ‘em! Kill ‘em all!”

“Spacers! Spacers!”

The murderous crowd spilled through the narrow opening, running along the ride strip, chasing the passengers. Todd saw them in slow motion, time and space distorted. The women struggled to move, crawling or stumbling forward and trying to keep the baggage with them as protection. Their pursuers were stumbling, too, almost comically. But they kept coming, still yelling, promising what they were going to do when they reached the unarmed Spacers.

Todd dropped back, letting the women and the two male techs move ahead of him. Parallel to him, outside the plexi window-roof, the rioters who hadn’t broken through continued to scream silently and pound on the wall between them. No threat from them, so far.

Inside the tube, it was a different story. The leader of the tram commandeers outraced his companions. He was tall, taller than Pat, but thin. Eyes burned in a dark, plague-ravaged face. Gaunt hollows showed when his puffing cheeks sucked in as he gulped for breath. He knocked down a Riccardi tech, stomping the woman mercilessly, then rushed on, heading toward Todd’s group.

Filthy, clawlike hands reached out for Todd’s throat.

Todd avoided the clumsy charge, tripping the man. They both swayed awkwardly for a second as the mob leader clutched at Todd’s jumper, trying to stay on his feet. Todd felt the holo-mode case shifting against his skin. Fearing he would lose it, he brought his knee up sharply, then kicked the man’s skinny legs out from under him.

His attacker toppled backward, falling half on and half off the ride strip, writhing and screaming. The tall man was unable to get a solid purchase on the strip or the narrow stationary curbing at its edge. His long legs dragged forward along the strip while he hung onto the curb, or tried to.

In another few seconds, some of his followers had caught up. They tripped over his legs, still extended out onto the strip, blocking their way. A few jumped over him and approached, yelling obscenely. Others were busy beating and kicking the trapped Riccardi techs. Todd saw a club raise and come down on a tech’s head, splattering blood.

“Spacers! Kill the bastards and bitches!”

“Wipe ‘em out!”

Hate for the humans who had escaped an Earth-bound, miserable existence. The mob was in rags, haggard-looking. Todd didn’t know if they were starving or drugged or simply searching for loot and victims. He didn’t care. Rational thought ceased as more of the rioters loped directly for him and the women behind him.

He picked up a suitcase and threw it, hard. The bulky makeshift missile bowled into the charging forerunners, stopping two of them instantly and knocking the rest off their strides. Shrieks of outrage and pain echoed off the roof and curving walls.

“Hey, lover, that’s it!’ Dian imitated Todd, throwing several small pieces of luggage. She lacked the strength to knock anyone down, but the unexpected barrage kept the rioters dancing and ducking.

“Steady me, Beth!” Mari yelled. She swung a case around her head as the taller woman bent double, holding Mari by the waist to prevent her from falling. Mari let go of the case as if it were a discus and roared in triumph as a woman rioter went down.

The techs added their throwing arms to Todd’s as he yelled warnings. “Take your time! We’ve only got so many!”

“Let me get a clear shot at the damn Spacers!” Someone in the mob had a gun. He was pushing people out of the way and pointing the pistol at Todd’s group.

Instinctively, Todd dived at Dian and Mari, and the techs tried to shield Beth Isaacs. Mari attempted to squirm away, reaching for another suitcase to throw.

“Daminit, Mari, get your head down!” Todd couldn’t grab at her. He had his hands full with Dian. She was thrashing, whispering incoherently. There were nightmares in her expression. He didn’t know what she was reliving but feared it was something very much like what was happening now. The world in slow motion. Would he see the bullet leave the muzzle in slow motion, close in on them slowly, race slowly to kill one of them?

A shot cracked and he flinched, then realized the sound came from the other direction. The rioter wasn’t pointing a gun at them any more. He was gawking in disbelief at a spreading bloodstain high on his chest. Then he was falling like a tree sheared off in a hurricane.