I drifted, once, in a pallid sea of unconcern, locked away in tight DuoLab sheets, so carefully protected from myself and the world. Master Snoop must have known even then the threat I posed. Nightsheet’s angel freed me but Master Snoop turned the tables. I fooled them all and now through sheets of blackness I see myself, wrapped tight in Späflex against the nothingness of space. On the edge of the corridor, my back to the door I float, waiting for the boot to kick me back again. At DuoLab I drifted, lying still. I knew I’d beat Master Snoop someday and drift no more but find my place. In place now, I see my soul drifting against a tomorrow impossible to see across Einstein’s wall of light. Yes, pale goddess, I know I can do something. That’s why I can’t go with you now. No, I won’t turn around. No.
Something grows through the roar. I sit gently against my chair, watching the corridor recede. Something tries to get my attention. Something from the past, from-
“Virgil!” a voice cried from the speaker. “The transponder on Circus Galacticus has triggered this encrypted message from the moon Charon.
“This is Dante Brennen. You and Circus are in extreme danger-or are likely to be-so listen closely.”
Wizard? No longer mad?
“I’m recording this on December Twelfth, Twenty-One Fifteen. Everything’s gone to hell.”
Virgil shifted his gaze to the viewport. He saw only the black of deep space. A few pieces of broken plastic floated in front of his face. He brushed them away and they tumbled across the command bridge.
“I tried to foresee this,” the recording continued. “The habitats in the asteroid belt finally achieved total independence from Triplanetary with the construction of Ceres Beta, the network of Bernal spheres, factories, and ranches they’ve been building for the last decade. The Autarchists have been able to convince enough of the four and a half billion Belters that trade with Earth had finally become a liability. I tried to develop the Valliardi Transfer in time but it just wouldn’t work. You were the only one, Virgil. The only one.”
Only now, Virgil mused, there is another. And you don’t even know that it’s you.
Brennen paused. There was a sound of ice cubes, of something being drunk. “They stopped trading. It was a net savings for the Belt habitats, since they could finally manufacture everything the Earth had to offer. They got along just fine for a few years. Then Triplanetary, instead of just going to another part of the Belt for raw asteroids, well-they fell in with the Recidivists. The trade cutoff didn’t hurt the Belters, but the Earth needs materials manufactured in the Belt. They need the asteroids and think that the Belters are somehow getting in their way.
“After well over a century of freedom, Earth has a State again.
“Earth and its orbital habitats are the seat of this nascent Empire. Most Martians are staying neutral, but split allegiances abound. And Lunarians, poor doomed misfits, have declared solidarity with the Belt.
“It’s war, Virgil, with you our one chance. Your anti-matter pods-and I pray to God you still have them-could turn the tide in this battle.”
Virgil shook. The restraining straps resisted the violent movements. I was the wild card. Wizard kept me up his sleeve, an ace for the master magician.
“Nobody knows when you’re coming back,” Brennen said. “I kept the secret of your mission. Maybe this will all be over by the time you return. If not, you are the random factor that could tip the scale toward freedom or death. I can’t offer you any advice-I’m behind the curtain of time. I can only warn you and relay encrypted updates to these message posts. I will keep doing this as long as I can. Good luck, my mad friend. You are humanity’s one dim hope.” His voice faded.
Virgil let go a desolate breath. Death Angel, why do you keep testing me like this? Madman speaks and give me runes. Where’s your ghost, pretty Death Angel?
Something crackled and Brennen’s voice returned. It sounded even more desperate.
“Virgil. It’s May Twenty-Second, Twenty-One Sixteen. Angel City has decreed new austerity measures which, as I predicted, are achieving the exact opposite of their intentions. Half the Earth is starving and the local habitats can’t feed them because they’re building warships at an incredible cost. Dissident habitats have been destroyed for attempted desertion. I was able to sabotage the government’s only functioning anti-matter plant and its stockpiles. Yes, I’m on the Belter’s side, but not the Autarchists. They’re becoming as bad as any Recidivist. The Trust has engineered an effective laser shield, which we installed on Bernal Brennen. It’s a rogue habitat now.
“None of the warring factions possesses the Valliardi Transfer. Your ship is the only spacecraft with that capability. Valliardi died under interrogation-he was old. He couldn’t have told them anything more than theory, anyway.” There was a pause, a long swig of something. “You’re our only hope, Virgil, our only hope. Delia Trine-you remember her-she told me that she didn’t want to live through the war.”
No! Don’t wrap yourself up and fly away!
“She’s with about five hundred other people who built a hide-out on Mercury.”
Dead, now. Dead and old and cold and gone. She waited out a war and-
“It’s a cryonic preservation unit, totally automated and run on solar power.”
What?
“She told me to tell you,” Brennen said, “that she’ll wait for you there.”
“Delia?” His teeth clacked against the breathpiece.
“I hope to be able to encrypt another update to you. Good luck, Virgil.”
Wizard’s voice goes beck to blank space where it came from and I sit. A soft roar begins to envelope me.
“I await your instructions,” the computer said.
“No other updates?”’
“None.”
Virgil flexed his fingers under the pressure suit. A stinging itch encircled his left wrist, then subsided quickly. “What year is it now?”
“A transmitting clock on the satellite indicates May Sixteenth, Twenty-One Sixty-Three. Four hundred twenty-six Zulu. I have recalibrated our clock to reflect this.”
“Do you have any preliminary scans of the solar system?”
“That will take several hours.”
“Straight.” Delia, Delia. Why must I always wait? You’ve waited longer, though. Long and frozen. And the years you waited before freezing down. Why wait for me? What has Master Snoop got in mind for you to do to me? Or has the Death Angel merely been waiting to claim her toughest catch? And what has changed since the last message, forty-seven years ago? What made Wizard risk madness to escape Earth? Too much. The roar… the roar!
Under the assault of changing events, Virgil’s battered mind shut down.
The body drifted limply about the confines of the command chair, driven by random muscle twitches and restrained by the single safety harness.
“Wake up,” the computer said, three hours later.
Virgil tried to roll over. “Didn’t anyone program you not to interrupt dreams?”
“What is your name?”
“Call me Ishmael.”
The computer made no sound for a moment. “That name is not entered in my files.”
Damned right. He kept his eyes closed.
“I am programmed to shut down in the event of a security breach by unknown personæ.”
“Virgil, damn it. Virgil Grissom Kinney.”
“Sequence Kinney. Virgil, you had thirteen days of sleep when you were being operated on. That ought to have been sufficient.”
“Where were we?”
“Epsilon Indi.”
“Where are we?”
“Sol.”
Virgil shifted in the chair and smiled. “Then I’ve gone over eleven years without sleep, objectively speaking.”
The computer was not amused. “I’ve finished the preliminary scans.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“The only neutrino flux I can read is from the sun itself. There are some low-level infra-red sources throughout the system, but concentrations are evident near Earth orbit, in the asteroid belt, and here, near the orbit of Pluto.”
Virgil opened his eyes and sat up. “Where’s Mercury?”
“The other side of the sun.”
“Calculate a transfer there.”
“I would advise transferring first to a position from which we can observe directly our destination. I calculate a possibility that the space surrounding the planet may be seeded with flak.”
“To keep us from transferring in?”
“To destroy us if we do.”
“That’s stupid. You couldn’t fill enough of space to guarantee that.” He began to loosen the headpiece of his pressure suit.
“A density of units of one gram per six million cubic meters would be sufficient to cripple this ship. They could fill space to an altitude of twenty thousand klicks and would require less than four hundred million kilograms of mass.”
Virgil unsealed the headpiece and pulled it back, removing the breathpiece. “They’d go through all that expense not even knowing if I was coming back? That’s ridiculous. It’s uneconomic.”
“True. If we were the only Valliardi ship.”
Could they be scared of the Mad Wizard? “What makes you suspect otherwise?”
“Anything could have happened in the past half century. I think we should be cautious.” Suddenly, the computer changed its speech pattern to one of extreme urgency. “Alert! Put your helmet back on and go to battle stations.”
“Why?”
“We are not the only Valliardi ship. Six of them just appeared eight seconds ago.” Sirens wailed. Virgil fumbled with the head-piece, his left wrist aching. “No offensive action on their part yet. I have lasers trained on each. We’re surrounded. One each fore, aft, port, starboard, topside and below. I await orders.”
Virgil tried to speak with the breathpiece half in his mouth. Words and saliva tumbled over one another. “Don’t fire unless attacked first. They may have Brennen’s laser shielding, if they’ve got the transfer.” His left hand lifted a protector cap from three red switches. “If we can’t get out, I’ll cut the electrostatic fields on the anti-matter pods and erase this portion of space.”
“I don’t like that idea.” The lights under the switches winked out.
“Hey! You can’t do that!”
“I just did. I am sending a hailing message.”
Ben, you fool, you’re ruining my plan. “Stand by to transfer to any random point between Jupiter and Saturn on my command.” His right hand covered the transfer button.
A man’s face appeared on the HUD. He wore a breathing device but no space suit. His head was bald, or shaven; dozen of wires and electrodes covered his scalp. He stared directly at Kinney without blinking. His voice sounded old and rasping and it wavered, as though he could not control his speech well.
“This is Wing Commander Sterkoy of Akros Gamma Protection. We have half-gram Valli pellets set to transfer into six vital points in your ship. Surrender now. We have identified your ship as Circus Galacticus, which left the solar system Twelve June, Twenty-One Oh-Seven.”
“How fast can you transfer out of here?” Virgil asked in a low voice.
“One nanosecond from decision to execution. After that, the transfer is instantaneous.”
“Program this-at some random moment in the next minute, transfer out without any warning. You have a destination plotted?”
“Yes.”
Virgil looked out the viewport at the ship off the bow. Spaceship design had not changed much in half a century. It looked like a cone that had been laid on its side and stomped. Its exterior displayed the ravages of many transfers-pits and scratches and even a few small craters covered the plating. The ship was only half again larger than the average executive shuttle.
Hardly seems a threat, but if they transfer six half-gram pellets into Circus, they could cripple it. They might even have one aimed in here.
“Please begin shutting down power. We shall board in full armor.”
“Start shutting down, Ben. Nonessential equipment first.”
“Complying.”
Even Ben does not know when we’ll transfer. He’s leaving it up to a random number generator. Will they be able to track us somehow? Why did Trapper look so… so intently at me when I wasn’t transmitting my own image back to him? Why-
The control room closed in on him and Circus Galacticus vanished from the orbit of Pluto.
I tried to listen when I knew she lay dying in the hospital. Lovely Jenine lying there, aging decades within days from the progeria plague epidemic, youth sucked from her by a viral time machine. I try to be cold. The medics look at me and I hear a roar and they begin to speak in a Language I can’t decipher. I race from the room, their eyes swiveling to follow. Crash of body and metal. Trays smash to the floor, scalpels glittering. I take a fistful to lance me into red darkness. I cry as I see myself below, twisted and foamy, medics running around. Something begins to open up-
“Counterattack! Fire all-What? What?” Jord Baker twisted around in the command chair. He stared at the room, then at his pressure suit.
“How did I get here?”
“What is your name?”
“Baker.”
“Sequence Baker. We escaped from Beta Hydri and are currently sixty-nine degrees above the plane of the ecliptic from Jupiter’s orbit.”
“The solar system?” Baker looked out the viewport and saw only stars. “Calculate a course back to Earth on fusion engine power. I’m not going through a transfer again.”
“It would be inadvisable.”
“God damn you,” he said, reaching for the engine switches and input board. “I’ll do it myself.” The lights under the keyboard winked out.
“Hey! Who’s in command of this ship?”
“I have often wondered myself.”
Baker slammed his left fist against the enclosure button. The controls pulled away from him and he grasped his wrist where a sudden pain burnt. Unstrapping, he drifted to the viewport and hung on to the railing.
“Look-” he turned around to face the speaker grill. “I’m sick of the way I’m being used like some sort of robot you can turn off when you don’t need me. I wanted to die and you stuck me in someone’s body and now I wake up in different places where things have changed from the last time I was around and I don’t remember sleeping or what happened in between. Now”-he swallowed the saliva that had accumulated around the breathpiece-“Why can’t we go to Earth?”
The computer considered the situation.
“On our entry into the solar system, we received warning that a state of war existed-”
“Replay it!”
“I can paraphrase.”
“Replay it.”
The computer further considered the situation. It made a sound like a bug hitting glass, then replayed Brennen’s messages. Baker listened, running a finger over someone’s cheek-bone and feeling the rough Späflex layer covering it.
“Who is Virgil?”
“Sequence Baker contains no information concerning the subject.”
Baker shot across the room to land backside-first in the command chair. “We’re going to Earth. Under four gravity acceleration. Maintain a constant scan for other ships and summarily blast anything that comes within range.”
“Jord-they have the Valliardi transfer now. The ship was surrounded three hours after we arrived. They could even transfer an asteroid right in our path.”
“Connect the vernier rockets to your random number generator and have it make minor course changes at close but random intervals. Override it whenever we stray too far from course. We have enough fuel to last us, don’t we?”
“Yes. This was built for interstellar fusion travel.”
Baker tried to scratch his nose, but the headpiece resisted. “Then let’s do it. How long will it take?”
“Seventy-one hours not counting time taken to correct the minor course changes.”
“Very minor. Just enough to avoid rocks they might transfer into our path.”
“All right.” A light flashed on underneath the main engine array firing switch. “Ready.”
Baker lifted the cover from the switch and held his finger over it. “Can this body take three days of acceleration and deceleration?”
“Possibly. Might I point out that at one gravity the trip would only take twice as long. The squaring of time would make it-”
“Six days instead of three. That will leave us more vulnerable to attack.” Baker took a deep breath and noticed the stale quality of the recycled suit air for the first time. He did not know whether this other body could withstand three days at four gravities.
“How about two gravities?”
“One hundred hours for the full trip.”
“Go with that, then.”
“Working. Why do you want to go to Earth?”
“When did you start delving into motivation?”
The computer emitted a scratch of static. “Ever since you gave me judgment.”
Baker snorted. “Have you worked out the course yet?”
“Ready.” The light under the switch went out and did not go on again. “Why do you want to go to Earth?”
“Damn you! I’m tired! I’ve been through so much in the past God knows how many days that I just want to get off this circus of the damned and stand on some ground for a while. I may even want to die for good this time.”
The computer said nothing. The light glowed under the engine array ignition switch. Baker pressed it. Vernier rockets fired for a few instants, realigning the ship. Then the main array cut into full power, its thrust crushing Baker into the cushions. Breathing shallowly, he wondered whether this strange new body would survive even the one hundred hours. The roar through the ship was more felt than heard, a low quaking in the pit of his stomach.
“I would not advise leaving the chair for the duration of the trip. You’ll be fed through the injection port in your wrist. Your body has been in zero-gee for over six and a half months. You’ll survive the trip, but you must be careful.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before I almost had us go at four gees?”
“I wouldn’t have let you do it. I know more about your new body than you do.”
“Will I have to listen to you for the whole trip?” When the computer did not answer, he said, “Have you found out what year this is?”
“Twenty-One Sixty-Three.”
“Any signals from Earth or the habitats?”
“None. That would not be unusual, considering the use of laser and maser tight beam communication.”
What am I getting myself into? he wondered. Before him, he saw the small yellow disk of the sun amid the sea stars. A dim white point glowed a few degrees away from it. He loosened the pressure suit headpiece.
“I’m taking this off.” His arms felt like sacks of gravel. He unsealed the suit and removed his headgear. “What, no smartassed suggestions?”
The computer did not answer.
Baker lay back in the chair and closed his eyes. I feel heavy as lead even though I know I’ve taken far greater acceleration. This new body’s worthless.
Baker ached through the two days before turnover point. After making three attempts at rising from the chair to remove the rest of his pressure suit, he gave up and groaned.
“Flameout in four minutes,” the computer said.
“Don’t give me a countdown. Just do it and let me have those few seconds of bliss. Just give me long enough to get out of this suit. Is it time yet?”
“Three more minutes and a few seconds.”
“You said four minutes over an hour ago.”
“Relax.”
Baker could not relax-he was too exhausted. The computer had given him a dozen alerts in the past fifty hours, all of them false alarms. They had not detected any ships, just sundry large rocks and chunks of comet. Now he waited for the short relief he would get from flameout, when the engines shut down and the ship rotated into position for deceleration. After an eternity, the computer spoke.
“Flameout in ten seconds.”
Baker wondered whether he would get space sick from the sudden return to weightlessness. He did not have time to finish the thought.
“Flameout,” the computer said, then followed it immediately with, “Firing lasers.” Baker’s flesh prickled in the presence of the powerful electric fields the weapons generated. Something kilometers ahead of the ship flared white and began to cool. The lasers fired again.
“What’s going on?” Baker shouted, trying to find some clue on the displays before him.
“At the moment of flameout, six ships again surrounded us by Valliardi transfer. Their velocities were already matched to ours and they were ready to attack. I expected something along those lines with a probability of about sixty-five percent. I fired the lasers at flameout in a spiral pattern and destroyed five of the six ships. I disabled the sixth. Shall we bring it onboard?”
“Hell no! Begin deceleration.” Baker stripped off the Späflex pressure suit and nestled back into his seat.
“I don’t expect another attack,” the computer said, “until we are in Earth orbit. Ready to decelerate.”
The ship pitched easily on the vernier rockets until it had made a one hundred eighty degree rotation. Another burst of rocket fire stopped the motion.
Baker sighed. “Wake me up in fifty hours. And maintain battle readiness.” He punched the engine array firing switch and the weight descended on him once more.