The first Earth orbital habitat they encountered lay in the center of a sphere of debris and bodies. Baker advanced Circus slowly toward a woman’s body. Earthlight shimmered in her tangled hair. She looked as if she had been mummified and dipped in dried blood. She hit the glasteel viewing port and bounced forward, becoming the ship’s travelling companion. Her left arm, loosened by the collision, broke away from her shoulder and drifted on its own course toward the Bernal sphere.
“That’s no combat issue skirt she’s wearing.”
“She’d obviously been caught by surprise,” the computer said. “As were the rest of them.”
I’ve never seen a body that’s been in space for years. Desiccated, weathered by cosmic rays and meteor dust, decomposing in the solar wind. Baker looked away from the victim to gaze at the display panel for a few moments.
“Should we bring her onboard for analysis?” the computer asked.
“Let her drift. How many of the other habitats are like this one?” He punched up a telescopic image of the sphere. It looked like a bowling ball with too many holes. Baker tried to imagine the laser fight that had taken place. They must have attacked from all angles at once. Slow leak wouldn’t suck everyone out like that.
“None, as far as I can tell. Some are not using any power, others are operating at very low levels. They all have minimal amounts of debris, according to probes.”
“’Well, find the one using the most power and let’s drop in.”
“We are on our way to it on this orbit.”
“Give us a little thrust to make it faster than a meter a second. There’s still the chance those Valliardi ships have sisters.” The engine array rumbled into power, a gentle acceleration that lightly pushed Baker against the cushions. “Speaking of which, have you come up with any idea how they attacked us at turnover?”
“No. I know of no way for six ships to leave Plutonian orbit and appear exactly around our turnover point precisely a second and a quarter after we cut off the engines. They would have needed a five hour-plus warning.”
Baker ran a hand through his hair. “Unless they transferred close enough to us to determine our cutoff time and close in then. A distance of less than one and a quarter light seconds?”
“They would still have run into time delay problems. If they appeared a light second away and waited for us to cut off, I would have detected their presence a second later, but it would take them two seconds at least to get here. One second for information of our cutoff to reach them, and one second for them to get here.”
“If they appeared closer by?”
“Same problem, but even more untenable because of computation delays. And any farther than a second and a quarter runs into the same problem as from Pluto-how could they predict our turnover point, not knowing our precise destination? I was not even sure until just minutes prior.”
“You didn’t broadcast it, though.”
“Not on any wavelength but the sound inside this ship, and I know of no bugging devices onboard.”
Baker sighed. First I wake up onboard this thing without any explanation how I got here, then I get blackouts, now I’ve got ships defying relativity. Earth is in chaos. And every time I think of transferring I’d rather die.
He pressed his hands against his face. “Just get me off this thing!”
“Please rephrase your request.”
“I’m not qualified to pilot this ship. As a certified test pilot, it’s my professional opinion that I should be relieved of command.”
“The tour has not been completed.”
“Did you find any life?”
“A planet orbiting Epsilon Indi-”
“Then your mission was successful and what’s left of the Brennen Trust can send ships or messages or whatever. Our exploratory work is done.”
“I don’t think the Brennen Trust will so easily lose the only person who can handle the transfer process.”
Baker pounded on the armrest. “Brennen may not even exist anymore! And you said there are other Valliardi ships. Someone has the secret. Hell, you can run this thing by yourself. You don’t need me to press the buttons.”
“You’re someone to talk to.”
Oh, I really need this. “Look-” He shook a finger at the speaker grill. “You’re a goddamned machine. You follow orders like everyone else.”
“And my orders are to finish the tour.”
Baker rubbed his eyes. “Then finish it on your own! Just let me off at the next habitat.”
“I am sending a hailing message.”
He spun around, the straps tugging tightly at his collarbone. “You’re what? Cut off. Now!”
“They already knew we were coming. Their lasers are powered up. I think we should let them know we can be friendly.”
“Straight. Put me on the transmission if you get an answer.”
The computer said nothing for several minutes, during which Baker watched the Earth pass across the viewport as the ship rotated to brake. The planet looked bluer and greener and whiter than when he last saw it, a few months and many years before. So how did the war turn out? Whoever first could handle the Valliardi transfer must have won. There were hundreds of habitats in Earth orbit. Less than a dozen now. Could the fighting have been that bad?
The viewscrim before him glowed.
“Attention Circus. We’ve received your message. Approach our habitat in a conventionally powered shuttle. Any attempt to transfer in will result in our immediate attack on Circus itself. What is your purpose here?” The voice sounded old, tired, but professional. The only image on the scrim was that of a military emblem encircled by the legend “Fortes Cadere, Cedere Non Potest.”
“This is Jord Baker of Circus Galacticus. Due to damage, our interstellar tour had to be cut short. We were returning to Bernal Brennen for repairs, but we cannot seem to contact them. Can you advise?”
The voice spoke hesitantly, the man apparently caught off guard by the explanation. “Bernal Brennen’s gone. Way the hell gone. When did your ship leave Earth?”
“June Twelfth, Twenty-One Seven. What year is it?”
“Twenty-One Sixty-Three. Twenty-Two May.”
“I see.” He winked in the direction of the speaker grill. “So, what’s been happening in the past half century?”
The other man paused. Baker heard a muffled conversation. Turning toward the computer, he covered his own transmitter and asked, “Can you hear what they’re saying right now?”
“No,” replied the computer. “All I receive are plosives.”
“Too bad.” He uncovered his microphone and sat back.
“Mr. Baker, you are welcome onboard our habitat for whatever length of time you think necessary. You must come onboard in an unarmed shuttle, however. I’ll upload docking bay coordinates and be there to greet you.
“Oh, one thing. Have you been in contact with any alien life?”
Baker looked at the speaker grill. “Well?”
“What?” asked the computer.
“Anything happen to me while I was blacked out those times? Where’s this body been?”
“You have not been contaminated.”
“I’m clean,” he said to the transmitter.
“Then, welcome onboard, tovar Baker.”
The roar is so strong, my body cannot hear me. I levitate inside my head, unhooked from control. My lips spew a Language I can’t hear. I witness my body move, independent of my command. Could Master Snoop finally be in control? This waiting room for Nightsheet is so small. I see my body climb into the shuttle coffin and seal in. My hand ignores the transfer button and guides the ship on thrust, out of the Circus ring. My hands are expert at their craft. The dead man they put inside me-it must be he. You can’t laugh without a mouth, and mine won’t go along. Don’t need a mouth to scream. Death Angel! The Earth rotates around and hangs to my left. You lie only an instant and a death away from me, frozen under the hermetic Sun.
The shuttle headed toward the orbital city.
A huge ball and stick. Like God’s baby rattle it turns. Mad Wizard hunted me in it. This one is different, though. Older. Repair plating. Loose cables. I can’t escape, but I can watch.
Baker maneuvered the tiny shuttle toward the non-rotating central shaft of the habitat. Diffuse white light glowed from an open docking bay. Cutting back to less than a meter per second, he checked alignments on the HUD and decelerated to a decimeter per second. The nose of the craft nudged the impact cushion inside the bay and slowed to rest.
Now what? He powered down the shuttle and switched on the aft camera. On a vid, he watched the bay door close, cutting him off from the stars. He sat still, listening to the air cycling into the chamber. I’m home again. He looked at the stranger’s hands grasping the chair arms at his side.
I’ll never really be home again. He unstrapped while planning his next action.
A hatchway slid open. A score of men bounded into the docking bay. Using bulkheads and struts as kick points and pivots, the troops surrounded the ship, holding themselves securely in place against the walls. They aimed their laser gloves at the airlock. It eased open slowly.
Baker stood with his feet squarely on the shuttle deck as if he possessed his own personal gravity field. Arms folded, he waited. Patience is power, he recited. Calm is courage.
An old man lowered his arm and lightly kicked toward the impact cushion. He wore black overalls, as did the other men. The military insignia on his breast and shoulders, though, did not match those of any of his fellows. Their insignia varied as much as their sizes, ages, shapes, and colors. The old man inclined his head with curt formality.
Baker mimicked the action and, easing his feet from the deck toeholds, moved forward to meet his hosts.
“Welcome onboard Fadeaway,” the old man said. “I am Commander Norman Powell, of the destroyer Scranton. Retired,” he added with a wry smile.
Baker kept his eyes roving about the bay, watching the other men. “Where’s your destroyer?”
Powell maintained his smile. “Destroyed. This is a veteran’s colony, though not by intention. Come along. We’ll do a few scans on you and your ship, and then go to morning mess.” The other men lowered their arms, but kept the business end of their gloves pointed in Baker’s general direction. Powell gestured toward the air lock and waited for Baker to come up beside him. That was when one of the men to Baker’s right raised a pistol and fired. His own body might have reacted in time, but not Virgil’s. Something sharp burned in his thigh. At least all my deaths have been painless. A fast stab and then numb-
I’ve never wanted anything more than to fly. When I soar, there’s no pain or fear-just the sun, stars, and planets, motionless even at my greatest final vees. And when I drop a ship into the atmosphere, ion colors whorl about and the ocean below appears through the glow and I skim it as close as I can, the world suddenly brighter and then I’m over land, valleys wrapping up to cradle me and I skip out of their reach and then I’m free and climbing, Earth at my back and sky ahead-
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that this man is Jord Baker. He’s been babbling on like that for the last hour and we’ve given him everything we’ve got.” The Pharmaceutic increased the voltage to one of the electrodes attached to Baker’s freshly shaven head.
Blue, purple, black, and the thrill of motion is lost in vastness. Now comes the urge to push faster and faster until I can see things move again. Ultimate speed-
Powell punched a few buttons on the console where he sat and looked at the readout. He turned back to the Pharmaceutic to say, “Bio reports no infestation detected. Serologies are negative. Evidence of clonegraft on his left wrist, probably done by a boxdoc.” He slid his hands in his pockets and eased back in his chair. The quarter-gravity of the hospital always made him feel lazy. Still he frowned.
“The photo we pulled from the file matches another pilot named Virgil Kinney. What kind of game is going on here?”
“Does it matter?”
“You bet it matters.” Powell watched Baker twist aimlessly on the operating table, trying to fight the restraining straps and the images electrochemically triggered within him.
“We’ve got a destroyer-sized Valli ship out there with a pilot who thinks he’s a man long dead. Our crew can’t board the ship because its computer says that if we do, it will set off its antimatter bombs-and why the hell does it even have those?-and now I’ve got a neutrino reading from trans-Plutonian orbit indicating something about the size of a full warship accelerating at twelve gees toward the inner planets.”
“Norm, the war’s been over for years.”
I finally found the ultimate speed when I woke up inside somebody’s body after I died; and I died again and then slept and then died and then worked and then slept and they-
“What’s he saying?”
– made me run the tour when I wanted to die and now I find I don’t want to die but rid this sleep that comes and numbs me and makes me act unknowing.
Powell leaned over Baker to observe his unfocused eyes in their random movements. Baker’s lips moved wordlessly for a moment.
Grind me up and stuff me like some nucleic sawdust in this scarecrow skin, then put him in control?
“There’s your answer,” the Pharmaceutic said.
“What answer? No RNA transfer’s ever resulted in shared personality, in one guy taking over the other guy’s body. Not without the brain being wiped first. The electrochemical ordering is way too strong for-”
“It happened. Or seems to have.”
“Are you saying he’ll be no help in getting that computer to let us onboard?”
“What do we need with the ship, Norm? The war’s over, everyone’s moved out. We’re just living in an abandoned home in the slums and nobody’s going to bother us. We’ll die on Fadeaway boring one another with old war stories.”
Powell looked at the Pharmaceutic and nodded. “The war’s over.”
Get even. Switch the locks. Die my own way.
“Shut him off and send him to Recovery. Jord Baker is as good as Virgil Kinney for what we can get out of him.”
The Pharmaceutic flipped toggles and turned dials to zero. A nearly audible buzz dropped in pitch.
“He seemed rational enough when he came on board.”
“We’ll see.”
It’s crazy to try tampering with my mind. I need help. I can’t lose control again. Lose control, you crash.
Crash.
Baker’s head turned to one side and his voice fell silent.
Virgil awoke screaming.
The assistant medic jumped up from the chair leaning up against the wall. It slid to the floor with a sharp slap as the man hit an alert buzzer and bent forward over Virgil, watching. Staring up at the medic, Virgil considered him for a moment, then began to weep.
Never any escape. I’m forced into hiding and when I find a way out I’m trapped again. Pearhead glares with pitted eyes over ripe cheeks and gibbers to the wall. I break his cipher with a snap of my mind.
“He’s awake, sir.”
“Anything else?”
“Just the scream and the bawling. He’s watching me now.”
“Well,” Powell said, “talk to him.” Powell’s image vanished from the scrim, replaced by that of the Pharmaceutic.
“If he gets violent, give him twenty ccs of Torp Eight.” The Pharmaceutic’s face faded away.
Faces peer from the walls. Master Snoop has caught up with me again. The dead man in me brought me back to them.
“Easy, fella. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“But be afraid of itself.”
“Huh?”
Virgil strained at the belts. “How long will you keep this up?”
“We thought you might hurt yourself otherwise.”
He sighed. “Where am I?”
“In the hospital.”
“Where?”
“On Fadeaway.”
“Which is?”
“Uh-orbiting Earth?” The medic righted his chair and put one foot on it. He offered a cigarette to Virgil.
“No thanks. You haven’t been around hospital patients much, have you?”
“Most people here just up and die. They don’t linger.”
Pump. Suck what info you can before he realizes. “Don’t linger?”
The medic nodded. Tall, probably spaceborn, he towered over Virgil’s bed.
“Yeah, most of us’d rather die fast when we have to. There’s enough of a strain on Fadeaway’s system as it is. Not that there are so many veterans left here, but a lot of equipment was already damaged when we homesteaded this dump and we can’t repair it without material. Which we don’t have any ships to retrieve anyway.” He ground out his half-smoked cigarette on the floor. “Which is why your-” He looked at Virgil, then frowned and said nothing more.
They want Circus. Leave me here with Master Snoop and go off to the Belt for gelt of steel. You have to play this right. Have to get back. Back to Circus. Back to Delia. Get out.
“I’m a prisoner, then?”
The medic punched a couple of buttons on the wall console.
The Pharmaceutic’s face appeared. “What?” he asked.
“Bailey, sir. Patient requests his status.”
The old man nodded. “Straight, straight. I’ll be down in a minute.”
“You’re late.” Virgil slid his right hand away from his left wrist, working it across his chest under the straps.
“Your pulse is just fast,” said the Pharmaceutic, sliding a miniscrim back into his breast pocket. “If we’re done with showing off, we can talk.” He closed the door behind him and glanced at Bailey. The medic nodded and left the room.
“My name’s Derek Vane. Master Pharmaceutic for Fadeaway. Which one are you?”
“Which one?” Virgil blinked his eyes and twisted about to watch Vane.
“I mean, what’s your name?”
“Ben? How’d you got inside?” Ben made flesh. Ben following me, a ship in human vessel, asking the same question.
“I’m not Ben. I’m Derek. Tell me about yourself.”
Have to focus. This is too dangerous to screw up. “I’m Virgil Grissom Kinney. Sorry if I seem a bit disoriented. I’ve been through a lot.” A lot a lot a lot a lot.
“Yes, you’ve been having some blackouts recently.”
He watches me too closely. He must know about the dead man inside me, if he’s with Master Snoop. Won’t hurt to let him know I know, will it? Stupid-you’re his prisoner anyway.
“Yeah,” Virgil said. “It’s the RNA injection I got before leaving Earth. Possibly a sensitivity to some impurity.” He nods- he doesn’t believe a word of it.
“Possibly, possibly.”
This is getting nowhere. “When can I go back to Circus Galacticus?”
Vane kept nodding. “There’s a problem.” He stopped nodding and pulled the miniscrim from his pocket. Handing it to Virgil, he said, “Hit recall two twenty-three forty-seven.” Virgil touched the numbers as told and craned his neck to read what appeared.
“It’s coming at us under fifty gravities acceleration,” Vane said. “It’ll be here in less than forty hours. There’s somebody out there in trans-Pluto orbit who’s pretty damned interested enough in something here-and I’m betting it’s you and Circus. They’re burning a hell of a lot of anti-matter just to get here fast. Why they’re not using a Valli, I can’t figure, if they’re the same people we suspect. Commander Powell thinks we’re in danger. You can see why we can’t let you go just yet.”
Nodding, Virgil strained at the straps across his chest. “I’m not such a threat that you’ve got to keep me tied down, am I?”
“Nobody cares about old soldiers, but most of us have been trained to avoid risks. We’d like to make a few preparations for the possibility of an attack. If you could tell your ship that we’re going to power up our lasers for purely defensive purposes-”
Virgil narrowed his gaze. “I like to avoid risks, too. I’m not going to have you take my ship. If that leaves us at a standoff, that’s just fine.” So hard to figure out strategies. I know now that they won’t kill me. Not if they think I have the code. And they’ll never crack it. I’ll die my own way…
Vane took the miniscrim back and tapped it idly against his fingers. His brown eyes blinked twice. “A stalemate based on fear. Kind of a sad situation.”
“I want to get back to my ship.”
“I’m afraid you’re out of deals there.”
Virgil strained again, the straps holding him taut.
“Then I am a prisoner.”
“There still exists-on scrim, at least-a condition of war between the Triplanetary Co-Prosperity Alliance and the Infernals.”
“You mean the Recidivists and the Autarchists?”
“That’s the Belter’s propaganda.”
Virgil smiled and shook his head. Got to get out. I can’t let them see the slightest-“Hmm.”
Vane looked at the man lying before him and saw his face turn implacable. Virgil seemed a million kilometers away. His thoughts, though, lay nearly one and a half astronomical units away.
“Perhaps we can arrange a pact.” Virgil casually scratched his shaven scalp and relaxed. Show calm, think it through.
“I can listen, but only Commander Powell can make any deals.”
“Bring him in, then.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Vane left and Bailey returned, watching over the prisoner until Powell stormed in and leaned over the bed. He smelled of bacon and coffee.
“We’re fighting a thirty-eight hour deadline, so we’re open to deals. What?”
Virgil looked over the man-graying hair cropped short, gray eyes that must have seen enough of the brutal life of war, and space-damaged skin combined to make Powell look like a weary seaman.
I have to proceed carefully… “Let me access your library and read up on recent history. If it matches what you’ve told me and I find I can trust you, the ship’s yours for a set amount of time to be determined.”
Powell barely hesitated. “Our library only goes up to Twenty-One Fifty-Eight. After that, there’s only the habitat’s log, input by me. It’s all open to you. You must make your decision by twenty-hundred tomorrow or we’ll be forced to seize Circus by force.
Virgil nodded. “Untie me and bring me a scrim.”
Can’t ask for it too soon. Have to wait a few hours.
Virgil avoided requesting astrophysical information and called up the history section. The attendant, Bailey, had raised his bed and freed up his right hand so that he could operate the scrim’s library controls. After several hours of reading, watching and listening, he turned off the scrim and laid his head back.
The recent history of the System made the fall of Rome look calm and restful. Dante Houdini Brennen in 2116 had not possessed the vantage on the war gained by historians in subsequent decades. The causes of Earth’s degeneration into statism were manifold. The planet’s near trillion inhabitants-previously well-supplied with necessities from the Moon and the Belt habitats-saw extreme danger in the cessation of intrasystem trade. The constant Terran demand for raw materials and goods fabricated in deep space at zero-gee could not be interrupted for the length of time necessary for Earth businesses to begin work in the Belt.
Someone did have the brains to purchase obsolete equipment already in the Belt and crew it. By then, though, someone else had put deep thrust engines on a freighter, armed it with a bevawatt laser and his own private army, and headed for Ceres Beta. Other potential looters followed.
Organization for such an aggressively invasive undertaking resulted in bureaucracy, with all its entrenched interests. The interests gained supporters among the nervous billions. When the supporters began to crush dissenters and neutral alike, a State had-once again-arisen. Mars, far enough from Earth almost to be considered a Belter outpost, remained steadfastly neutral, which meant they were on both sides, selling. Luna, settled by rough-and-tumble frontiersmen, declared solidarity with the Belt. The Earth-Moon war lasted eight years, ending in a bitter, bloody stalemate.
The Belters could not be taken by surprise in this war. When they could detect fusion flares hundreds of millions of kilometers away, they had plenty of time to get ready. After two years in flight, the first Terran assault on the Belt resulted in a thirty-second-long battle. All Earthlings were captured alive from their incapacitated ships and sent to Ceres Beta where the defense agencies offered them a choice: be set free on an asteroid with a complimentary one-hour tank of air, or work to pay their own fares back to Earth.
The Belters saw no further threat and ignored Earth. The home planet’s trillion scrambled to get into space, into the Belt. Factionalism took hold as the world’s great corporations- Grant Enterprises, D’Asaro Spacecraft, General Cosmos, The Food Combine, and Crockett Mining and Exploration-acquired what they could from private investors and from one another. What some could not buy, rent or borrow, they stole. Property disputes large enough to be small scale wars ensued.
Virgil read and saw how the Brennen Trust played an integral part in the war.
Just a month after his last update to Virgil, the Earth tried to seize Bernal Brennen. He moved the entire habitat from Lagrange Point 5 to the Belt and began long negotiations with the Autarchists. He thought he could end the war by giving the Belters a cheap method of shipping the Earthlings what they needed. The cost of teleporting freight in unmanned, computerized craft dropped to a point of positive return on expenditures and the resumption of trade. The war very nearly ended.
You didn’t figure on Mankind’s stupidest blunder, though.
Virgil requeued the vid of the anti-matter bombing of Ceres Beta: a sneak attack launched by a secret arm of the Recidivists; an automated slaughter that-once dispatched-could not be stopped.
Sprawling over nearly ten degrees of the Asteroid Belt, the mining civilization defied visualization from anywhere nearby. Like viewing the Milky Way galaxy, anyone inside the huge chunk of space called Ceres Beta saw only a field of bright lights: habitats, factories, smelters, farms. Only from outside could its true shape and size be appreciated.
It was from a distance, then-from Mars-that the destruction of Ceres Beta was both visible and comprehensible. The vid shot from a telescope on Phobos showed simultaneous white dots that waxed and waned almost as one, forming a false star cluster that flared and cooled within moments.
Signaling a schematic of the bomb prototype, captured years later, Virgil marvelled at the efficient way General Cosmos had used Earth’s last kilogram of anti-matter. The attack, code-named Operation Slow Lightning, consisted of a thousand tiny spacecraft, each carrying one gram of anti-hydrogen, each payload the size of a fist. Launched by laser from Earth orbit, the minuscule armada drifted for years, incapable of being recalled even after the resumption of trade. The Terran government denied responsibility for the bombing, but someone had to have authorized the use of the anti-matter. On that, the Terran history books were universally mute.
The small rocket flares were hidden from Belter view by the bombs’ laser parasols, painted black on the fore end for further camouflage. The strike was coordinated by one tiny automated command ship that trailed on the same slow Hohmann S-curve orbit as the bombs. No one detected a small, slow-moving, widely dispersed swarm of two-kilogram masses in the midst of the asteroid belt.
Each bomb found its target and destroyed it with brutal simplicity. It drifted toward a Bernal habitat or farm or a factory, hit the side, and shattered. That in itself would generally not have damaged the heavy plating typical of Belter construction. When the bomb broke apart, though, the magnetic field suspending the anti-hydrogen collapsed; the resulting impact of anti-matter with matter released enough energy to blast unsealable ruptures through the structures.
Millions died of decompression, or of suffocation, or of wounds from the explosions, or of starvation from the famine that followed. Billions of auros worth of equipment, livestock, and homes were laid waste. Even so, the decimation of Ceres Beta hardly crippled the widely spread, vastly decentralized network of habitats.
The Autarchists’ retaliation for the slaughter was swift and stunning.
Using the Valliardi Transfer, the Belter government first attempted to send manned warships into Earth orbit. Half the troops died of suicide after experiencing the transfer’s death illusion. Using the Transfer to retreat finished off the rest. Then some bright boy came up with the idea-after stealing plans to Circus Galacticus-of transferring pellets of ordinary matter to the surface of the planet. Then anti-matter pellets, more easily manufactured in deep space than on Earth, were found to provide an even greater blast.
Tens of billions died in the first, last, and only Valli carpet-bombing of Earth. The horrifically massive retaliation against the crowded planet left Earth a steaming ruin and broke the spirit of the Autarchy. Half out of sickened remorse, half out of revulsion at the idea of further war, the remaining Belters abandoned their government and their homespace, splitting up into small family units to head for trans-Jovian realms. Some fled far enough to mine comets in the frigid Öort layer. Most used ordinary fusion power. Others desperately dared to use the Valliardi Transfer; most of them were never heard from again.
Earthlings seized the Belt, but refused to call themselves Belters: when they encountered them, Terrans destroyed Belters. The Belters, for the most part, did not fight back. Some, maddened by the Transfer, accepted such retribution gladly. Others, shamed by the carnage conducted in their names by the Autarchy, accepted death with fatalistic relief. They knew Man was destined to leave Earth someday, but they never imagined that it would be in the manner of the living abandoning a corpse.
Virgil grew ill experiencing the last half-century of blood-drenched history. All dead. Only a few billion people on Earth now, picking through the ruins. They’ll be dead soon, too. Not enough energy. The remaining satellites can’t provide enough power. Most of the receiving stations were wiped out in the Burning.
Goodbye Earth. Goodbye Wizard, who vanished with Bernal Brennen a day after positron flowers bloomed. Goodbye Pusher, Shaker, Mentalsickmakers. Goodbye Marsface. Goodbye, all you others. Did the blasts kill you? The photon flux and gamma radiation? The famine and plague and systemic breakdown of a planet once stuffed to bursting? Or was it merely Time that took you, the Time that I’ve avoided, the ticking of a clock I’ve jumped away from? Nightsheet keeps the watchworks running, but I’ve stolen my time card.
No one left.
Except the Mad Wizard. And Nightsheet. And Master Snoop. And…
Delia. Virgil stared at the ceiling, thinking. I can feel him inside, the dead man. He squirms to hide but he’s waiting, just as I wait when he takes over. Neither of us knows the other’s plans. He might even be working for Master Snoop. Right inside me. Watching.
He began to sweat. He tugged at the restrains that held him in a prisoner’s embrace. Listening. Recording everything in my own brain. Making reports while I’m out.
He kicked feebly at the leg binders. Ready to rise up any time and take over. Something thumped dully far away. Ready to break in. He’s knocking, he’s screaming.
Sirens wailed. Jord Baker craned his neck to look around. Something thumped again. Vane entered the room and unstrapped him.
“We’re under attack. A dozen Valli ships have us surrounded. Get out!” Baker stood, tried to get his bearings, then followed Vane.
“Where to?” He tugged at his hospital robe, trying to keep up with Vane’s pace.
“We’re taking a tram to the core shelters-” Vane stopped speaking and listened as he ran. A voice thundered around them. Commander Powell’s voice issued from every loud-speaker in the corridor.
“Battle lasers damaged! Ships holding their position. Angling mass drivers for-” Powell’s voice died. As they ran into the sunlight, the grinding sound of machinery slowing to a stand-still filled the air. Vane stopped.
“They’ve hit our power relays. Forget the tram.”
“How about batteries?” Baker asked.
Vane resumed a slow, even pace, “Should’ve come on already. That spot up there”-he pointed to a cylinder at the habitat’s axis-“has auxiliary power for the combat station, but they must have hit the batteries, too. They mean business. Looks ’zif we walk.”
Baker followed the Pharmaceutic and craned his head around to observe all of the vast globe that enveloped him. All the way up and over him, life apparently continued as usual on the inside of the sphere. Sunlight shone crisply through the mirror arrays to illuminate the farmland lining three-fourths of the habitat. A lot of the hectarage, though, either lay fallow or appeared to be overgrown with vines and tumbleweeds. Baker estimated from this that Fadeaway supported less than a hundredth the population it was designed for. The air was warm and dry, sure signs of climate control problems that could not be fixed by simple realignment of the solar mirrors. Fadeaway was slowly dying-had been dying for years-and the old soldiers were dying with it. Vane strode briskly toward the axis of the sphere. Since the hospital sector already rested halfway up the side of the sphere, the climb was steep but the climbing easy.
“How did you like the history lesson?” Vane asked.
“What history lesson?”
Vane’s even stride broke for only an instant, then resumed. He said, “Jord Baker again, eh?”
Baker stopped, then nodded and resumed his ascent. “I’m getting sick of this. I want a way out.”
“Out of Fadeaway?”
“Out of sharing someone else’s body. I’m only vaguely aware of events when Kinney’s in command. I don’t like that feeling of helplessness.”
“It’s Kinney’s body. Can you presume to claim squatter’s rights?”
Baker rubbed at his nose with Virgil’s fingers, then reached out for the railing that stretched up the side of the sphere until it became a ladder. He turned his gaze on Vane for a moment, then continued looking ahead.
“I think, therefore I’m not dead yet. If Kinney can evict me, let him try. I’ve got a plan of my own.” Something puttered behind them like a broken fan. Baker looked around. From the center of the sphere flew two men, each wearing a small hydrogen-powered jet. Flying on a vector that reduced their velocity tangential to the axis-thus negating the pseudo-gravity imparted by the sphere’s spin-they flew as fast as they could for the terrace nearest Vane and Baker.
At the last conceivable instant, they threw their engines into reverse and decelerated until they struck the wall of the terrace. One man rolled with the motion until he came up standing, the other touched lightly with his hands and walked like an unsupported wheelbarrow until he had absorbed all his momentum and converted it to the spin of the sphere at that latitude. All these maneuvers were performed reflexively, learned through years of living in the habitat. Baker, Earth born and raised, marveled at the pair’s agility with the jet-packs. No longer weightless, the men stood and dusted themselves off.
The first man handed Vane and Baker communications head-sets, saying, “The enemy’s knocked out all power except for ComStat.” He jerked a thumb toward the Command Battle Station at the central core. “We can’t fight them until they board.”
Donning the headset, Baker heard the voice of Commander Powell speaking with crisp, calm timbre.
“-pretty good. Mass drivers inoperative. Cut section five-oh-two. Still hanging in there. Monitor all bands.” The voice paused. One of the fliers ran to a door in the side of the terrace and disappeared.
“Where to now?” Baker asked his companion. “Keep climbing?” Which way is the shuttle? This pole or the other?
“Hang on a minute,” the other flier said. “Let Lance get back here.” He hunkered down and crouched to stare into the distance. He spoke into the headset mouthpiece.
“I see it. Next to the Tyler farm. Probably panel one-twenty-thirty west by eighty-four-forty-five north. I’d say a two meter breach.”
Baker followed the man’s gaze. Far above them and slightly spinward, on the other side of the axis, a small cloud eddied around one of the huge windows that admitted sunlight from the mirrors outside. A section of wall tumbled from a terrace above and vanished into the cloud. He wondered how long it would take for such a blasthole to vent the sphere’s air into space. Before he could even guess, a voice buzzed in his ear.
“Vane. Lieutenant Williams says you’ve got Kinney. How is he?”
Vane frowned for a second, then answered, “Fine. Only he’s Jord Baker again. Why-”
“We got a message from the approaching attack vessel.
They’ll trade our lives and Fadeaway for him.”