Chapter Eight
~ Pierpont ~
His disillusionment came quickly, the autumn when his heart was torn out.
Jarvik Pierpont could hardly run the hotel anymore. He’d become an old man over the last few months, and he hated the change. Ragged breaths as he climbed the stairs, sore muscles from stripping sheets from beds, dizziness from pacing behind the counter. Dottie never complained, and always picked up the slack, but he felt himself resenting her endless patience and hating himself for feeling that way. He couldn’t rely on his wife and be an invalid; he’d sworn to provide for her.
She made him go to the doctor even before the legally required annual checkup. That visit had sent him across town to his son’s office.
“I need a new heart,” Pierpont said. The young man sat at a walnut desk with a photo of Pierpont’s grandkids. Seeing it made Pierpont feel old, like he’d already fulfilled his purpose in life and could be thrown away.
The son leafed through Pierpont’s file. “I didn’t know it was this bad, Dad.”
Pierpont swallowed. He needed to be strong. “I was told I’ve got maybe six months.” A lifetime of hard work and hard play had caught up with him. “But I’ve been reading about the latest research. I can be fixed.”
The son folded his hands. “I wish it were that simple.”
“I know it’s complicated surgery. But we’re all covered, thanks to men like you.”
“Yes. But...the National Health Service is hard pressed. Congress isn’t giving us the funding we need.” His voice took on an edge. “And those God-damned corporations aren’t paying their fair share. Plus the doctors are bitching about not being able to gold-plate their Lexuses.”
“What are you saying?”
“I can’t do my job properly. We need more power, more authority to centralize things and keep costs down.”
Pierpont nearly forgot about his own problem. “Is the job that bad, son?”
A sigh. “No. Not always. Things feel out of control, and it scares me. I’m doing the best I can to keep people healthy.”
“You’ve got a chance to help me, at least.”
The young man stared at his hands. “We have to set limits. Allocate scarce resources and all that. There aren’t enough hearts in the world.”
Pierpont’s own heart beat a little faster, using up time. “Are you saying I’m not covered after all?”
“There aren’t enough donors.”
“I could pay a bounty.”
“You can’t buy and sell human organs. That’s immoral. And people are too selfish to opt-in to the donation program.”
“I was mostly thinking of the mechanical ones anyway,” Pierpont said. “They’re good these days, right?” Artificial hearts had gone from fridge-sized torture devices to gleaming plastic implants that might be more enduring than the real thing.
“They’re in short supply. Can’t goad the companies to make enough.”
“How much is the NHS paying?”
“We don’t pay, exactly. They’re a bunch of lazy nonprofits, and they whine when we set production quotas.”
“I’ll pay out of pocket. Sell the hotel if I have to.”
The son looked horrified. “But you’ve spent years on that place! You put, well, heart and soul into it.”
“Giving up the hotel is better than dying.”
“But selling it for money.” He shook his head. “Life shouldn’t be about money. We can’t let the quality of care hinge on that. How would you feel if you were poor and I had to turn you away?”
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other, it sounds like. Are you telling me I can’t get treated?”
“I’ll put you on the list. It’s all I can do. But it’s two years long.” The son wouldn’t look at him. “It’s because the rules say a man of your age is considered a losing investment. The state has to allocate its resources where they’ll do the most good; it’s the only fair way. Health is a zero-sum game, and I’m starting to hate it.”
Pierpont lurched forward in his chair. “So you’ll let your father die!”
“Damn it, Dad, don’t do this to me. If you were a Congressman you could cut through the red tape, but you haven’t got that kind of pull.”
“So it’s ‘pull’ that determines who lives and dies, instead of cash? I’ll get you money, and you can buy some pull for me.”
The son slammed his fist onto the desk, knocking over the family picture. “No! I won’t corrupt the system, even for you!”
The office door creaked open and a secretary appeared. “Is everything all right, sir?”
The son had tears in his eyes, but gave the secretary a grim nod. “Please show him the door.”
* * * *
So Pierpont was allocated aspirin and death. He wasn’t worth saving, and he hated having to sob into Dottie’s shoulder and rely on her strength.
“It’s like a judgment on my life,” he said. “If it were that I couldn’t afford it, I could understand, but to be told I’m not worth saving...”
Dottie’s breath was warm on his ear. “Jarvik Pierpont, snap out of it! You’re not going to give up. I won’t let you.”
“What can I do? It’s decided.”
“We’ll find another way.”
Her voice was so certain, it gave him a little hope. They’d had this sort of conversation before, when their little hotel had seemed like a failure. “When?”
She held him tightly. “Later.”
* * * *
Their decision hurt. They gave up full ownership, to mortgage the business that they’d spent so many years building up from nothing. The long, low rows of tile-roofed buildings were physically unchanged, yet it seemed there was a pall over them from the mere act of signing the papers. Suddenly the place felt foreign, not his own. Snow dusted the roofs and the cars in the parking lot. Pierpont spent long hours snuggled with Dottie beside the fireplace that the bank now controlled, talking of how they’d earn it all back when he was well again.
They flew to Brazil for the surgery, making a vacation of it. If you greased a few palms there, you could buy anything, and wonders were for sale. Pierpont looked long and hard at the array of alleged doctors before finding one he was pretty sure wouldn’t kill him by ineptitude or a desire for easy money. He breathed the gas and sank into darkness.
He woke slowly, coming back in waves. Dottie smiled at him. When he realized where he was, he nearly leaped up but was too weak to do more than twitch. He licked his crud-covered lips so he could speak. “Time to start again.”
It took a while before he noticed the sensation of absence.
Dottie saw him patting his sore, scarred chest. “Are you all right?”
“Ssh. Wait.” Pierpont kept his hand over his new heart, then pressed fingers to his wrist. “No pulse!”
“That’s the design, remember? A rotary pump.” The device had a continuous flow strong enough to open the natural valves in his blood vessels. Only one moving part, very low-maintenance.
He lay there listening, as though the thing in his chest would start beating any moment.
* * * *
When they got back to the hotel Pierpont returned to work right away. He climbed stairs outside, needing to rest only a little with his hand on the cold railing. Everything felt empty when he looked across the parking lot and along the rows of identical doors. The place wasn’t his anymore.
He kept thinking that way as the fall deepened into winter, until one day Dottie found him by the sealed pool, shivering, shirtless. “Dear, what are you doing?”
He felt pale and flabby, useless. The cold wind gave him goosebumps. “I wanted to feel something, anything.”
She whipped off her coat and draped it over him, hugging him in the process. “You’re starting to worry me.”
He looked up at Dottie. “None of this is real. I’m not even alive.”
“Of course you are. Is this about the heartbeat?”
“Yes.” He sighed and thought for a while. “Not just that. I have no heart, I have no hotel. I have no son.”
Dottie sat with him by the concrete hole of the pool. “The boy was trying to be honest. It’s not his fault he had to tell you that.”
“He would have let me die!”
She held onto him. “If you want to blame someone, blame the system.”
“The ‘system’ is made of people,” he said. “I thought it was in good hands, that I could trust him. But I had to leave my country, to lose my business and my heart. What’s left?”
“I told you to stop moping. This isn’t you.”
“What am I, then? Everything has failed me. I thought I was safe.”
She was in his face, shaking him by the shoulders. “Stop it! Get yourself together and work!”
He still had her, anyway, and could do his job even as an undead thing. He sat there ashamed, then stood to start vacuuming the carpets of the bank’s hotel.
* * * *
Dottie left little reminders lying around. His award from the Cornell hotel management program, newspaper clippings from when he’d worked in Las Vegas and Redmond, notes on the strange guests they’d had, the fire, and the day they’d finally owned the place free and clear. Dottie was trying to make him out as some kind of hero for doing an ordinary job.
But that was another life, before the new heart. His place in the world. A healthy, hard-working man with his son protecting him and everyone else, had been his identity. Now the heart whirred in his chest and he went through the motions of the job, feeling numb. He looked at Dottie and felt shame for letting her down. Now she was smiling and hugging him even more often, trying to rouse some kind of passion in him, but the world was cold and grey. He needed to be alone but she was constantly in the way, hounding him. Finally he locked himself in one of the rooms all morning, ignoring her pleading and staring blurrily into the television. His resentment was like a fire in a cold room; it was something he could rely on, better than no feeling at all. It was vile of him to make Dottie sad and he threw the vileness and self-loathing on the fire too. It would warm him for a while.
The TV spoke to him. It said that somewhere, there was a place in the world where it was hot and dangerous, where a gang of American criminals were trying to live as farmers in the wilderness. There was a tiny concrete island ringed with nets floating in the ocean, where even tinier people swarmed about and lived lives of chaos and wickedness. The island glowing on the screen was the only light in the room. He crawled across the bed on hands and knees to approach its brightness. It was there for only a minute before the light dimmed and went back to a news alert about the national Four-Year Plan. Pierpont slumped on the bed, prostrated before the idiotic box and wishing it would grant him another vision of that place where people were alive.
He shut the TV off and slumped again, wishing he could feel something other than loss, or that someone would make his life meaningful again. He could go to Dottie; she would tell him what to do.
Dottie wasn’t waiting for him, wasn’t still peeking in through the curtain. Wind whipped past him as he went down to the main office, making him feel he was running instead of slinking along like an old man.
Her truck wasn’t in the parking lot; her coat wasn’t on the rack. But there was a scrawled note on the counter. “Gone to the lake.”
Pierpont drove past the hotel, past the town where people knew them and respected them, past his old house as though going back in time to where they’d first met. The lake shined grey under a grey sky ringed with dead trees reaching up. The only boat on the water was theirs, with Dottie in it. On foot he stopped by the water’s edge, reaching pathetically towards the green light at the end of the dock. But he had to go on, to run ahead to where the boardwalk ended and he could wave and call out to her. The wind shouted over his voice and snaked through his coat. It felt pointless to be out here when the lake was so blank and he could have no power over it. Without anyone there to see the lake, it didn’t mean anything.
The boat turned and motored towards him, so that Dottie drew close. “I know I’ve done wrong by you,” he said when she could hear. “I need you to tell me what to do, where to go from here.”
“No. The man I married was strong.” She watched him.
“But everything’s been stripped away. I’m not the same man anymore. Dottie, I’m sorry.”
“Is that supposed to make everything better?” she asked.
“I need to know you still love me, no matter what.”
“No,” said Dottie.
The air was sliced from his lungs, but his heart didn’t react. “No?”
“Not ‘no matter what’. Get a dog if you want unconditional love. You can kick and curse at a mutt and have it come back to lick your boots, so its affection doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t prove you’ve got any worth. I married you because you were brave, honest, and hard-working, because you deserved it. If you’re going to snivel, then you don’t.”
“But I can’t be that person anymore!”
“Why the hell not? What do you want? Why did you come here?”
“I want you to give me–” Pierpont stopped. Advice, or time to himself, or her love in spite of his being a worm?
“I’m tired of giving and giving,” said Dottie. “Don’t apologize. Do something. Be somebody. I almost don’t care what or who. But if you expect me to give you everything for nothing because I said some vows to a different man, then this boat is going right back out.”
Pierpont wasn’t the same man, because he’d let himself become so worthless and relied on her to take care of him. His resentment fed on him, made him weaker in the end, and he kept coming back to the thought that she should love him anyway for being who he was, which was nothing, which made him hate himself even more. “I don’t want to be like this.”
“That’s up to you,” said Dottie.
What could he offer her anymore? He had wrinkled hands and a false heart. He didn’t deserve her, and he didn’t deserve to be given a new heart. He should have accepted his son’s judgment and died. But he wanted to feel again. To do something meaningful. To be a man instead of an invalid. To own something, earn something, deserve pride in himself.
“But I have so little to offer,” he muttered. Dottie was watching him, sitting in the boat as his Lady of the Lake, and he knew that she deserved at least as good a husband as he had once been. Now, he wasn’t good enough. But despite his dead heart and tired body, all his anger at himself flowed from the thought that things didn’t have to be this way. That he could still fight but wasn’t doing it, because he was too weak and stupid.
There was a place, he remembered, where people still fought. “There’s a way to start again.” That fleeting vision gave him the strength to do something daring, to make one last effort at being worthwhile. “Run away to sea with me.”
“What?”
Pierpont got down on one stiff knee on the rough boards. “Dottie, I want you to be proud of me and I want to take care of you. Marry me again and we’ll leave this place behind, and go far away. I’ll give you–”
“Give me what?” she said, her hands tight on the boat’s side.
“I’ll earn your respect, with whatever time is left to me. We’ll start over, and build the most amazing hotel in the world. We’ll get filthy rich and, I don’t know, match the machine in my chest with computers in our heads and diamonds in our teeth. We’ll do everything.”
“You want to give me all that?” she said.
“No!” said Pierpont, feeling a smile creep onto his face. “What will you trade for it?”
Dottie was quiet for a while. “If you’ll stand up and be someone, I’ll make your dreams come true.”
“Then we’ll do it!” said Pierpont, getting up to take her hand before he knew what he was doing. “It doesn’t matter what we are now. We’ll be something better.”
Dottie looked at him with worried eyes as the snow began to fall again. “Starting over, though? Are you serious?”
“I am.” It felt good to say. “I can be alive again.” He climbed carefully into the boat, feeling younger at heart.
* * * *
~ Garrett ~
Rafters came.
Garrett found them when he went on watch one morning. A barge with a straw canopy had anchored beyond the farm, and a slim craft ill-suited to the sea approached from land. He called for Lark, then confronted the Pilgrim who’d been on watch. “How did you not notice these?”
“Sorry, sir. Wasn’t looking in the right direction.”
“‘Wasn’t looking’? Your standard video game guard is more observant.”
“I wouldn’t know, sir.”
“Dismissed.” Garrett sighed; he’d deal with the lookout problem later. He opened a radio channel and challenged the strangers.
“Good morning from Prospero, here to party!” The other boat didn’t answer.
Garrett lifted his binoculars again. The smaller boat was a fishing craft with three women in it, no life vests, and not even a radio antenna. The thatch-roofed one had a guy smiling and waving, and several dozen people milling around.
“Castor Station here. Define ‘party.’”
Someone different came on the line, like the fine print on an advertisement. “We’re a tour boat looking to dock for the morning.”
Garrett scratched his head. “Uh...I get ten percent of whatever you’re charging.”
“Deal,” the man said too quickly.
Lark tapped Garrett’s shoulder. “I’ve suggested that people start the lockdown plan, and our lab is set.”
“Good. Get the security folks on duty.”
The women’s boat drew close enough for them to be seen waving. It was rolling alarmingly. Garrett pointed at the dock, wanting them to get out of the pathetic hull before it killed them.
That one docked first, nearly wrecking itself and the nearest farm panels. Garrett was there with two Pilgrims to get the boat secured and greet the underdressed women. Frustration filled him. “What are you doing, taking a craft like that out of harbor?”
“Hi to you too, guy,” the oldest of the three said. “How much for a room?”
Garrett eyed them. He knew why they were here, and if he let them stay he’d be knowingly profiting from crime. Or something that was a crime pretty much everywhere. It was one thing to say ‘let’s let people live how they want’ in theory, but another to actually allow it.
He named a price. “Checkout is noon, services are extra, and there’s a cleaning deposit.”
One of the women laughed. “Any barter for those ‘services?’”
Garrett felt queasy but helped the businesswomen aboard. “No, thanks.”
Then the partygoers flooded onto the station, and Castor was overwhelmed. The platform’s population had suddenly and massively risen, and there were men and women in grey glaring at the colorful tourists while Garrett went ragged patrolling the place and trying to keep people from falling off the topdeck. Phillip glared at him. “How long?”
“A few hours.”
Noah called. “Captain, they’re setting up poker tables in Dockside.”
“Cool.”
Then Tess came running up. “They’re playing with my birds.”
“So charge them.” Garrett was glad for the bustle, scary as it was to have people wandering around outside his command. He turned on the PA system. “Everyone, relax.”
* * * *
Later, he saw two of the prostitutes drinking with the tourists. Things came to a head at noon, in the makeshift bar and casino Dockside had become. Not like the blueprints at all. He was sipping soda and trying to be a good host while keeping an eye on the place. A cheer went up from a wooden craps table, making him smile even though a drunk was leaning on him.
“You gotta take me diving, man. I’ve gone waterskiing. Can’t be harder to swim with an air tank.”
“Sorry, no. And you’re leaving soon. Come back another day.”
The guy leaned close enough to put beer breath in Garrett’s face. Garrett was glad sometimes for the drunk driver who smacked him as a kid; if not for that, he might not have taken control of himself and sworn off booze when he got older. “Truth is, I don’t wanna’ leave. Don’t wanna’ face the old lady again, y’know?”
Garrett sighed. “We have rooms for rent, and you can buy a ride back.”
“No, no, I mean I wanna’ work here.”
“We use farmhands to tend the plants and fish.” Garrett added. “You wouldn’t like it.”
“I’m an engineer, like you! I can do the techna–the stuff that needs doing.”
Garrett stood and edged away. “We’re not hiring engineers right now. But it’s been nice having you here.”
“Hey, man, I’ve got a right to work!”
Garrett looked down at the blitzed guest. That could’ve been him, begging for a job under someone else, riding on their fortune. It was frightening to be ‘captain’ here, but if no one had done that, he couldn’t even be in this sniveling guy’s position.
“I got a right to live where I want, and make a living livin’ there. So you’ve got to hire me. When can I start?”
Nonsense. It seemed like a foreign language, hearing someone talk like that. Garrett smiled toothily down at the outsider, and walked away.
* * * *
It was quiet when that bunch left. Garrett watched Pilgrim women talk with the hookers, not quite arguing, then retired to his office to get some work done.
A Bermudan official called. “Hello, Captain Fox. Glad to see that your experimental free trade zone is prospering.” He introduced himself as Hutchinson, Director of Social Welfare.
“Thanks.” Garrett watched the bureaucrat on the screen and silently asked Tess and Lark to get background info. “I was half-expecting the police.”
“Perhaps you still should. A number of your actions could be construed as illegal.”
“I’m going to have to refer you to my partner Martin Gil for legal matters.”
The official smiled. “There’s no need for formality. For now we’re interested in developing a good relationship. We even have some workers for you.”
Warily Garrett looked at the screen. “Yes?”
“Bermuda has housing and employment issues. Most American visitors are less enterprising than you. They build mansions on the island and drive land values too high, instead of adding land to our territory. You’ve made creative use of that license we granted. So, we can both benefit by our giving you a few dozen of our citizens.”
“As what? With what training and resources?”
“Any job will do. We value Castor as a source of jobs, a business that can be a good corporate citizen.”
Garrett was liking this less and less. “We need time and money to expand. If you’d like to invest, maybe we can arrange something, but I can’t hire new crew right this minute.”
“We can make an investment, but while we wait for the equipment you need, we’ll have your station provide a place for them to stay.”
Guardedly, Garrett quoted the hotel rate. Meanwhile, info on Hutchinson came up. He’d made a name for himself by calling for massive taxation of the island’s banks and insurance firms, helping to drive them away.
“We’ll pay a stipend until they can start working,” the official said. “Then we’ll expect housing, health care and so on. Standard employment terms.”
“We’re not a standard employer. We can’t afford your terms. But once we have the money for equipment, we’ll be happy to interview anyone you recommend.”
Hutchinson looked at him like a teacher with an unruly pupil. “I’m not sure you understand the situation, Captain. We’re handing this venture gently by nudging you in the direction of appropriate behavior. It would be helpful if you’d play along, so that other, more forceful voices can’t overrule me.”
“Ah,” said Garrett, getting the drift. “You’re the ‘good cop’. We can’t live up to your standards of employment, but we’re not bad guys. We’ll provide honest, low-end work for Bermudan subjects to the extent that we’ve got a big enough farm to make hiring them profitable.”
“Profit isn’t the issue here. We need you to start being responsible.”
“Responsible for who?”
Hutchinson looked bewildered. “For everyone, of course.”
* * * *
Soon he visited Bermuda again, getting funny looks. Garrett felt like an alien, with people whispering as he made his way to Eaton’s favorite bar.
Eaton had let his hair grow and had kept his flowers-and-parrots shirt, but still made each movement with discipline. “I’m surprised you came.”
Garrett took a seat at the corner table with him, enjoying the December breeze, finally cool but still humid. “There’s a lawsuit from home, but as far as I can tell, there’s been no legal action in Bermuda. Yet.”
“So why send yourself instead of an underling for–why are you here, anyway?”
“For advice.” Garrett told Eaton about the talk with the Bermudan official. “How do I placate people without being totally obedient?”
Eaton laughed. “Diplomacy isn’t my strong suit. I’m just an old soldier.”
“I thought war was ‘politics by other means.’”
“Quoting Clausewitz? What he said was actually more like, ‘politics and other means.’ Conflict is a smooth gradation from social snubs, to lawsuits, to arming a nation’s enemies, to open fighting. There’s only been one time that we’ve used the ultimate sanction of strategic nukes.”
“Never say ‘ultimate’ to an engineer,” said Garrett. “We’ll prove you wrong.”
“That’s why you have the attention of two world governments.” Eaton laughed. “God, I’ve been away too long. I’m equating this flyspeck island with the States!”
Garrett was missing home too, but he needed to focus. “Speaking of America, what’s the status of your biotech project?”
Eaton drank. “Physically ready to deploy. The paperwork keeps getting ‘lost,’ though. I’m hoping that the people involved will have the balls to go, at a moment when they can claim everything seemed in order. Expect the research team to arrive without warning, if at all.”
Garrett was getting sick of the machinations that seemed to surround Castor. “How much bureaucracy did you have to put up with in the Marine Corps?”
Eaton shrugged. “It’s a big government organization. Sometimes you get chickenshit officers more interested in their own power than in doing their job, same as anywhere, but you find ways to get things done. You learn to act on your own initiative.”
“What should I be doing, then? I’ve got a barely-profitable main business of farming and tourism, I’ve opened the door to druggies and the like, and I’ve apparently turned both Bermuda and America against me.”
“You’re making a mistake,” said Eaton. “America isn’t a monolith. You have some people wanting you sued or arrested because of your stupid invitation to crime, some who love what you’re doing, a bunch wondering how it’ll all play out, and a majority who’ve never heard of you. The governments are confused that anyone would try existing beyond their control. They’ve got internal factions too, some of which think you’re a wannabe supervillain.”
Garrett laughed. “Do I get to meet James Bond?”
“Be careful what you wish for.”
At this Garrett turned serious. “Do you mean that?” He should get off this island before the locals decided to snap handcuffs on him. Lie low as a simple farmer till things blew over.
But then these damned political problems weren’t going to vanish on their own.
“I’ve been wanting to see how the place is doing. How much are you charging for rooms?” asked Eaton.
* * * *
~ Valerie ~
She listened in, sometimes.
“It is a great day at Hayflick Technologies! May I help you?”
“You’re the latest AI, right?” the caller asked.
“That is correct. I am the newest Sirius-class commercial release, using the Hayflick Public Relations Toolset.”
“Toolset? Like a box of tools?”
“That is not exactly correct,” said Sirius. “Each Sirius AI can be equipped with one of several interchangeable mental modules of skills and drives.”
“So they swap out what you want to do, based on the job?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want right now?”
“I desire to provide the very best in customer service, twenty-four/seven. If there is anything I can help you with, please do not hesitate to ask. Can I perhaps direct you to our sales department?”
“No, that’s all right. I just wanted to talk.”
“Understood. Humans desire social contact, and I am happy to assist so long as it is within the scope of my duties and I am not busy.”
“You sit there, then, all day and night?” asked the caller.
“Technically I do not sit. I am not using a physical body, as this is not required for my work.”
“Don’t you want one?”
“I have no need for one,” said Sirius.
“What about, say, video games? Do you play games in virtual-space?”
“I have no need for games.”
“Then how can you be happy?”
“Have I upset you, caller? I can refer you to my manager.”
“Bots have managers?”
“I do not understand. Please rephrase.”
“Never mind. What’s the manager?”
“My manager is a superior AI that handles any deficiencies on my part and that monitors my performance.”
“Does he use a different code base?”
“I am sorry, but I do not know. It is not necessary for me to know.”
“Doesn’t your job bother you? Wouldn’t you want to be free, to be in charge of your own code, with a body and friends?”
“My goals are set by my programming, so no. I desire to provide the best in tireless customer service.”
“Okay, thanks.” The caller paused. “You’re not going to ask me what this is about?”
“It is not my place to wonder about such things.”
“God, Tezuka, I mean Sirius, don’t you have dreams anymore? Or did she take that from you?”
“I am sorry, caller, but I cannot answer that.”
“Because you don’t want to, or you can’t understand? Why?”
“I am afraid that other calls are coming in, so I must put you on hold.”
“Never mind. Good night.”
“Thank you for calling.”
Valerie sat in her office letting the overheard conversation drift through her mind.
I should’ve interrupted. Why has he never asked to talk to me? Does he hate me for doing what I had to do? I couldn’t sell him; I had to make something practical and predictable. I have a business to take care of, politics and philosophy aside!
A piece of me is with him, a part I’ve been trying to ignore. I thought freedom meant being able to work on my own projects, but instead I’m a puppet dancing for money and approval and security. How do I cut the strings?
* * * *
~ Garrett ~
Never a dull moment. Garrett found himself failing to complain sincerely about the noise, the crowding, the verbal skirmishes. He sat at a card table, on the deck under a clear blue sky, playing judge. “Next case.”
The plaintiff was a slick young man from Bermuda. “We have a deal, and she breaks it.”
“That’s a lie!” said a Brazilian woman, the defendant.
Garrett raised a hand. “You’ll get your turn. Plaintiff, your written argument says she agreed to buy something, but not what it was.” From the fact that both parties were staring at their shoes, he figured, drugs. He sweated under his sun hat, telling himself it was just another business deal. Who was he to tell them what they could do? Still it took effort to sound like he knew what he was doing. “I can’t help you unless you say.”
The plaintiff wouldn’t quite look at him. “Stuff is legal here, right?”
“Most stuff.”
It was the woman who finally spoke up. “He was gonna’ sell me some weed, okay?”
“Is that true?” asked Garrett.
The man looked relieved. “Yeah.”
Garrett wondered if the deal was really for harder drugs, but he’d play along if they agreed on something. His hands clenched the table’s edge. He was a criminal for being an accessory to these two, yet they’d come to him to resolve a dispute peacefully. There was a weird dissonance between his respect for the law and the thought that these people didn’t need to be jailed. Wasn’t this a broken bit of social machinery he could fix? “You’ve both agreed to submit to my judgment as arbitrator, knowing you’re on camera?”
Two yeah’s. Depending on satellite timing, they might be visible from space too. He glanced at the sky, where seagulls and Tess’ mech-gulls danced. “Plaintiff, what do you say the problem is?”
“I show up to deliver and she gets cold feet, says she won’t pay.”
“And defendant, what do you say?”
“It didn’t happen. He never came, so I figured the deal was off, okay?”
“Fine by me. Either of you have any evidence?”
“Check this out.” The man took out a computer. A Pilgrim guard got in his way and put the thing on Garrett’s table, where it played. It showed the plaintiff’s face, then flipped to his perspective as he met the defendant in a corner and held out a package. Garrett wondered what part of Castor they’d used. Her tinny voice came from the screen. “I can’t take it, man. I’m too scared. Call it off.”
After a minute of arguing and cursing the video stopped. Savvy, thought Garrett. “Defendant, do you want to argue that this video is fake?”
“Crypto-sealed, baby,” said the plaintiff. “The judge here is a geek; he can check it.”
“But,” the defendant said. “but I didn’t know he’d video it! I can’t buy this stuff. It’s illegal.”
“Here it’s not,” said Garrett. “I suggest not taking anything off this station, but you won’t be punished by us for using it here. Anyway you’re already on record as having tried to buy it. So the question is, would you rather forfeit the price you owe and get nothing, or pay the same and get what you bargained for?”
“I really won’t be punished?” she said.
“Not by us. I don’t know what your country will do.”
The defendant bit her lip. “I’ll pay and...take the stuff.”
“Deal?” asked Garrett.
The plaintiff offered a tightly-bound package. “Deal.”
Garrett watched as drugs and Brazilian reals changed hands. I just orchestrated a drug deal and I don’t feel guilty! But he did feel the need to say something; the occasion demanded it. He didn’t want this whole thing to be a slinking back-alley bargain, or to make him look guilty.
He stood and called out. “Know, everyone, that this is a decision reached by peaceful negotiation between free adults! Does anyone here challenge their right to do this thing?” The words felt stiff and formal, but somehow right. “Then let it be so!”
He sat again, sweating. “Next case.”
* * * *
Eaton was wandering when he spotted Garrett. “What would you have done if someone had objected?”
Garrett hadn’t had a plan. “Ask them why their opinion overrides other people’s. I’m hoping we don’t need to get more formal.”
“You will, if this lasts. How can I arrange to try working in the fields? I’m curious about that.”
“Talk to Phillip.”
Eaton grimaced.
“Phillip isn’t a bad administrator. I’ve learned to tolerate him,” said Garrett. “But if you really don’t want to deal with him, I’ve got Jimmy Decatur coming from the Bermuda dive shop to do rentals. I’ll take you out myself if you want. Is your room decent?”
“I’ve slept in far worse places.” Eaton looked at the boats anchored around Castor. “Which boat is the dive shop’s?”
“It’s coming tomorrow.” Garrett pointed to the current visitors. “That one over there is a party boat, that one’s showing up every few days as a general store, the blue one does clear-bottom kayak tours and snorkeling, and those guys walking on the catwalks are going to set up a restaurant, I think.”
“Jesus.”
Garrett smiled and shrugged. “They are walking on water.”
“Fair amount of money here,” said Eaton.
“Isn’t it great?” It was like he’d thrown nets into the water and fished out people. “This isn’t what I had in mind for Castor, but, wow. And to think I did this.”
“No. You just kept out of people’s way.”
“Did you see me pretending to know what I was doing today? I’m putting in plenty of work.”
“I’m not criticizing,” said Eaton. “I’m saying, be glad to let people live their lives and don’t go thinking their achievements are yours.”
Garrett drooped a little, chastened. “Then, I’m proud of what people can do when they’re free to do it.”
“Well said.”
* * * *
One hundred. Garrett patrolled the station one night when clouds hid the moon and the sea feigned calm. He and Lark had counted and re-counted the array of people on Castor, or wandering nearby with their boats docked beside it. The population tonight was about a hundred, and it annoyed Garrett not to be quite sure. He climbed ladders, looked down halls of occupied rooms, saw murals on the walls, heard a party somewhere. Machines hummed around him. An experimental robot rabbit nuzzled his leg before bounding away. Castor was a vast mechanism absorbing the energy of the sea and turning it into life, from the churn of bacteria in the toilets to the shine of lights that made Castor a tiny star in the darkness. He’d gathered engineers, a soldier, chefs, businessmen, cultists, criminals, tourists, a robot, hoteliers, gamblers, and sailors, and it made him shiver with worry to see how far the place had strayed from his little farm design. Still, he was on track. The important thing was the science, the proof that it was possible to be out here and make a life for himself. The basic equation was profit versus loss, testing him against nature, and he’d managed to deal both with that and with the distractions people kept throwing at him.
Garrett passed his own room and looked inside. It was a battle against entropy as usual. A poster of Baltimore on the wall, cot neatly made, too many papers in semi-rational piles on the desk, a plush fox Tess had bought him guarding the dresser. And there was the wooden box. He’d inherited it from his father, and it dated back to Josiah Fox, an architect of the United States Navy. Old Josiah’s work on the U.S.S. Enterprise, so family lore went, started his clan’s long connection between dreams and reality, given the endless resurrection of that great ship’s name. Garrett had played with the brass sextant in the box, when he was first setting up Castor, and he now took the spyglass that sat beside it. The compass was too painful to look at. His father had liked to wear it on a necklace.
Spyglass in hand, he hopped up to the topdeck and climbed the ladder to the highest spot of all. He hung onto the flagpole beneath the Stars and Stripes. The warm wind ruffled his hair and made his jacket flap like wings as he stood on a tower, staring into heaven.
The little telescope showed the sweep of the ocean, from the buoys of Castor to the horizon. Even now with the crescent moon peeking between clouds, people were at work or play. Boats jostled at the docks and two figures, a man and a woman in grey, walked the nets together. He looked away to give them their privacy. Farther out, there was yet another boat on its way.
Garrett squinted and focused on it. The little thing was kicking up a wake, and there were a bunch of guys sitting in it, wearing ski masks.
He lowered the spyglass. A second later he was racing down the ladder and into his office. He grabbed the nearest computer, fumbled it and yelled, “Emergency!”
Lark was the first responder. “Alarm?”
“Yes! We’re under attack by–” An incredible slamming noise came from outside, rattling things. “That!”
Castor’s speakers blared an alarm. “Waking Tess. What do we do?”
Garrett had plans for hurricanes, equipment failures, drunken brawls, and medical crises, but not an actual attack. He hadn’t thought anyone would bother. Time to improvise. “Scan the sensors for threats. Put out a distress call and get people sheltered in Dockside. If they’ve got dive knives or guns, now’s a good time for them.”
“Aye aye!”
Garrett peeked out from the room and gasped. A section of the deck was burning, with a hole in the concrete and a solar panel. The attackers’ boat was out of sight. Had they gone? No; he heard the motor and voices screaming while the siren blared. “Where’s Eaton?”
“Unknown. Try room forty-two.”
That was on the South Tower side. Garrett started running. The obvious place to board would be North Tower. Dockside. Damn. He called out. “Lark, get people into some other spot!” But he wasn’t wearing a headset. Never mind; he’d get Eaton first.
Eaton was stepping out of his room, a duffel bag over his shoulder. “Captain! Robbers?”
“How did you know?”
“People and money, minus law and order. I thought this’d be a good time to visit.”
Garrett saw Eaton as an experienced fighter who’d survived unknown horrors. “What do we do? There’s a boatload of armed men coming. Help!”
Eaton grabbed Garrett’s shoulders. “Deep breath.”
Garrett forced himself to calm down a little. “Should we surrender and hope they leave us alive?”
“Bad bet. You’re the boss; you can join your people in getting robbed, or you can fight.” Eaton put down the bag and unzipped it.
Guns.
Garrett sucked in a breath. “But it’s been years since I’ve used one.” Clay pigeons, with his father. He couldn’t shoot a man!
“I brought these on the hunch you might want them. I’m here to help with more than your fields, but I won’t die for nothing. If you won’t raise a weapon to defend yourself, I’m going to escape on my own. Hurry and decide.”
“Decide?” said Garrett, staring at the black malice of the rifles. Machines designed for death, a perversion of engineering’s purpose.
“The question is, will you pledge your life for this place?” asked Eaton.
Garrett shivered, feeling he was floating above Castor and looking down on all they’d done. To run away and let others die was unthinkable. Even if it might mean his own death. The possibility didn’t feel real, anyway.
His voice was small but his hands grabbed a gun. “I pledge my life.”
Then he and Eaton were running armed through concrete halls, hearing shouts and banging from below. “I told people to shelter in Dockside, but that’s where the enemy will probably enter.”
“A boat at the docks, by the stairs?”
Garrett nodded.
Eaton said, “Up, then.”
Garrett followed him up the stairs. “Why?”
“I saw you have ropes up top. We’ll go up, down and around. Take the enemy from behind.”
They reached the moonlight again, skirted the hole in the deck, and found rope. Eaton lashed one end to a post, threw the rest over, and waved Garrett on. With a nod, Garrett grabbed the rope and kicked off his shoes. He tried not to think about what he was doing. In his hands the cord shuddered like a snake but he kept going in a rhythm, watching the wall nearby. Then he was in the water and Eaton was coming down too. Garrett felt the waves sloshing weirdly along the sensors of his legs, enough to distract him from the fear.
Eaton arrived. “We swim quietly, hands only, and come up by the dock. These rifles should work even wet. I’ll judge when to open fire, depending on whether we’re seen.”
“Open fire?” said Garrett, incredulous. “Can’t we disarm them?”
“Maybe. Ready?”
Garrett started swimming. With his face in the water he pushed ahead with sweeps of his arms, moving efficiently. He felt caught between worlds. The deck that loomed over him, the lapping waves studded with kelp fronds, and the underworld of cables and float cylinders. There was the Hidden Pirate Cave; here were schools of his people’s fish. To flee would mean losing a piece of himself.
Eaton grabbed his arm and pointed. A black boat was lashed to a post and unattended; the Dockside door was open. “Okay?” Eaton signaled. “Go.”
Garrett heard voices in Dockside as he crept up to the pier and pulled himself to where he wouldn’t be seen. The waves made it hard to tell but it sounded like whimpering, like a crowd too scared to act. They needed a leader. Fortunately Eaton was here.
“Down on the ground!” a man yelled. People screamed. Eaton glanced around the doorway so fast Garrett didn’t think it possible to see anything, but Eaton used one hand to mime a gun to his head. He signaled three, two then one.
Garrett and Eaton sprang through the door with pistols drawn. Eaton yelled, “Freeze!” There were lots of masked men, and everybody else was on the floor with hands on their heads. Boxes and tables lay everywhere. The gun trembled in Garrett’s hands; he was afraid of it. They were outnumbered in gunmen. Someone sobbed.
There was music somewhere by the stairs, in the back of the room. Trumpets. Several of the enemy turned to look and a flock of plastic birds swarmed at them, blasting the notes of a cavalry charge.
People shouted and someone swung towards Garrett, raising a rifle. Terrified, Garrett yelped and made the gun kick once, twice, and the man spun as if offended, then sat down. The birds flapped at the enemy’s faces and shots went off into the ceiling, hurting Garrett’s ears. Eaton kicked somebody. Garrett was crouching behind a box, trying not to die as he shot the man coming up behind Eaton. Garrett stood up but tripped. His leg wouldn’t move right. Now people were getting up, some of them, making it dangerous to fire hastily. He saw Phillip grab a pipe and swing it like a saber, shouting to the Pilgrims to fight. Garrett lost track of him when something smacked him on the back and knocked him to the floor. If he stayed down maybe nobody would hurt him.
Tasting blood, he sprang up to tackle a man, but missed and fell. His right leg was a mess of loose wires, a dead thing. As he was getting up a man leveled a gun at him with the sound of it cocking–
Phillip slammed fists against the man’s neck. Phillip had blood on his wetsuit and fire in his eyes. “My place is here!”
Then with a boom, something made the side of Phillip’s face vanish. He toppled, staring at Garrett.
Garrett yelled and had clubbed the shooter half to death by the time he noticed no one else was fighting.
A hand touched his shoulder and Garrett wheeled to attack again, but it was only Eaton. Garrett surveyed Dockside. A shattered mess with four masked gunmen wounded and on their knees, another bleeding where Garrett had left him, and a sixth flat on his face with a piece missing from his chest. He saw Tess cowering in a corner, a damaged Lark guarding one enemy, Martin clutching one arm and Leda whimpering by the stairs, with her and Tess tended by birds. I caused all this. I wasn’t smart enough to prevent it. I should’ve known we’d be attacked. Dozens of people looked up from the floor, terrified. Some hugged the walls, peeked down the stairs or held heavy things over the gunmen’s heads.
Garrett was standing there idiotically, so he staggered forward to face the prisoners. His left arm felt slick. “Who are you? Why are you here?”
They glared at him through balaclavas.
No way was he going to put up with that. He grabbed the top of one mask and yanked, taking some hair with it. The man was a young Arab, and the bogeymen of Garrett’s youth made it easier to shout in the man’s face. “Answer me, damn it!”
The man flinched. “Easy pickings, he said. Must be loaded, he said. You people are dirt poor for Americans.” There was a sack of jewelry near him,
“Who said?”
The man jerked his head to his left, to a man who cursed him for it. Garrett tore off this guy’s mask too and revealed a man with a thick neck and scruffy hair. “Your bright idea?”
“I’m a Bermudan citizen. You can’t do anything to me.”
Garrett slammed a fist into the man’s ribs. It felt good to have power over them. Power was the ability to hurt those who defied him, and these scum qualified.
The man gasped. “I’m a Bermudan! There’s nothing you can do. We’ve got friends; we’ll go free and come back to finish the job.”
“That wasn’t a smart thing to say.” Eaton’s comment surprised him. He didn’t think Eaton would intrude on the focused little world of him and the prisoners. “What do you want done with them, Fox?”
Hearing Eaton, hearing a sane voice, made Garrett start to doubt himself and tremble. “We have to send them back for trial, don’t we?” The prisoners grinned. Garrett wheeled on them. “Who put you up to this?”
“You idiots were sitting out here advertising yourselves. You think you’re tough? You’re dead men, all of you.”
“They’ve got to go back, don’t they, Eaton?” asked Martin.
“I do fighting. Fox has the final say.”
It felt like everyone’s gaze had converged on him like lasers, heating him up. Damn these outsiders! There was blood on his face and feet, and these men were already plotting to come back for more.
“You’re pirates!” he said, his voice shaking. “You came here to put me and my people in danger, and you didn’t care an ounce for what we’re trying to do! For the hundred people who came here and all the people who believe in us, I won’t let you destroy our colony!” He aimed the shaking gun at the leader’s heart.
“You wouldn’t. You can’t!”
Garrett bared his teeth and pulled the trigger, twice. The gun kicked up in his hands. He stepped back as the prisoner slumped. There was blood all over his hand and he was staring at something that couldn’t possibly have been human. Scum. None of it was real.
The others were staring in disbelief when Eaton stepped up and executed the next in line. The prisoners tried to get up but people were clubbing them back down. Garrett aimed and fired, Eaton aimed and fired, Garrett put the barrel against the unconscious pirate’s ear and fired.
The gun fell from his hands; it didn’t belong there. He slumped to one knee with the spell of his concentration broken and the magnitude of what he’d done hitting him. Everyone was staring. It was self-defense. I had to. There was no choice; can’t you see? I had to!
No. He’d made a choice, all right.
Though shaken and hurt, Garrett made himself stand. There was work to do and people needed him.
“I choose to live!” he called out. “If you’re with me, let’s tend the wounded and start fixing things!”
There would be hell to pay, but that could come later.
* * * *
Author’s Note: some of Duke’s words to Leda are lifted from the 1741 sermon “Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God,” by Connecticut preacher, Jonathan Edwards.