Overkill (28 page)

Humans, the grezzen found, often referred to dead things that they had constructed, and to things that moved, as though they were alive.

In this way the grezzen came to understand why the ghosts back home were deadly to his species. The humans had made the ghosts. Though the ghosts moved like living things, they were not alive. Therefore his species could not feel them. Therefore the ghosts were able to approach and kill grezzen. It wasn’t humans’ nature, or certainly their strength, that made them so dangerous. It was their capacity to multiply destruction.

The subservient who Halder had questioned answered, “We took on three hundred new steerage passengers at Mousetrap, sir.”

“Six dormitory modules in the cargo bays, then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are the cooks ready to feed three hundred new mouths?”

“Feed, sure. It’s only a week, subjective. But the ’Trap’s hydroponics were down. You know we’re always heavy with Trueborns from Mousetrap to the Motherworld. They’ll bitch ‘cause there’s no fresh fruit.”

The grezzen felt irritation swell in Halder. “Trueborns. Speaking of which, we got enough of Colonel Born’s cold cuts left to feed that thing that’s stinking up my cargo bay?”

“We could throw it a couple Trueborns.”

Halder found this entertaining. Then he said, “Seriously, it worries me having that thing aboard my ship.”

“The animal or the spook, sir?”

“Stop cheering me up, Russ.”

“When do you want to run lifeboat drill, sir? They all hate that.”

“Right after the first Trueborn orders strawberries.”

The grezzen felt no movement, but he felt a stir of activity among the thousands of humans whose activity Halder coordinated. Then the great nest of the
Midway
once again leapt across the emptiness. From the threads he had just felt, it was clear that his journey was approaching its end.

Once he reached the human Motherworld, he would find Cutler.

The grezzen curled his body upon itself and willed himself to sleep, to gather strength.

Seventy-five

“This is crap!” I waved a hand at the other passengers, milling and grumbling by the hundreds around the
Midway
’s lifeboat deck.

Kit stood staring at me, arms crossed, head cocked. “It’s just lifeboat drill. What is your
problem
, lately, Parker?”

I drew a breath, blew it out. My problem was that I was short.

The problem itself was, I suppose, common among soldiers since Hannibal’s first elephant driver approached the end of his hitch. But the expression originated among conscripts serving in a proxy war between one of the seminal Trueborn democracies and some competing totalitarian ideology. The unfortunate neutral site (smart ideologies break other people’s furniture, not their own) was called Vietnam.

Short was a state of irrational, pugnacious risk aversity. It was induced by surviving most of one’s time in hell and not wanting to have the world screw it up in the last couple weeks. Short soldiers ducked hazardous duty, slept in flak jackets, snarled at anyone who got too close to them, and were huge pains in the ass.

I tugged up my sleeve and read my ’puter. March 21. I had thirty-eight days remaining immunity. Per the purser’soffice onboard, Cutler’s bonus to me had cleared escrow. Too small for him to notice and revoke, but everything in the world to me.

I had been a felon under summary death sentence since the day I was born. Now all I had to do was get to a bank on Earth, with a retinal scanner and a teller that dispensed clean Trueborn dollars. I might even find such a bank in the New Denver Terminal. Then I would book a return trip to Mousetrap. The cash would buy a Shipyard ID scrub, a first-class one, complete down to bone-deep alteration of my Legion tatt.

Thereafter, my corpse wouldn’t be worth a Weichselan franc to a bounty hunter. I would be just another broke legal, but for the first time in my life I wouldn’t have to sleep in a mental flak jacket.

No bounty’s paid on an immune. So even though Jack had me penned up here aboard the
Midway
, killing me now was a businessman’s worst nightmare, unprofitable. But knowing that the clock was ticking while he was on my ass didn’t make me a smaller pain in Kit’s.

Ten feet from us, in front of one lifeboat hatch, six Trueborns linked arms and started singing about how they longed to rest their eyes on the fleecy skies and the cool green hills of Earth. The ship’s speakers had begun playing the song before morning announcements. Apparently, it got played daily on the Mousetrap to Motherworld run. I hadn’t been so ready to vomit since the grezzen had spewed on me in the shuttle’s cargo bay.

I pointed at the singing Trueborns and rolled my eyes. “If they assign us to that lifeboat, I’ll just go down with the ship.”

Kit gave me a smile so beautiful that I ached. “Lighten up, Parker. They’re just glad to be going home. And the sky really is fleecy and the hills are green.”

She took my hand in hers, traced the finger of her other hand up my forearm. “I can show you. I know a beach place in the Caribbean.”

I pulled my hand away. “Not now.”

Her forehead creased and I read hurt and incomprehension in her eyes. “Now more than ever. Now, finally. We hand off the grezzen to my boss in New Denver. I’ve got accumulated leave. You’re discharged with a bonus.” Her voice dropped and so did her eyes. “I thought that you . . . ”

I did. More than anything in the world. But a Yavi who didn’t have the right to be born couldn’t tell that to a Trueborn colonel with a master’s degree from Dartboard.

“Look, I just have some things I need to take care of.”

“Let me help. Just tell me what—”

Tell her I was a capital felon? And that I had concealed my rap sheet from her since the day I met her? Now, there was a way to begin a relationship.

I raised my hand. “Spare me your Trueborn condescension.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What in the hell are you—? I thought I knew you.”

“Well, you don’t! Maybe that’s best.” I turned away so she couldn’t read my eyes.

A purser’s mate stepped up to me, chipboard in hand. “Sir, I need you to stay in line.”

I stepped out of line, instead. “Better?”

He stared at me the way I would stare at a Trueborn. “You have to have a lifeboat assignment.”

I stalked back toward Second Class, pointing over my shoulder at Kit. “Put me in the one that’s furthest away from her!”

Second Class has several bars. I spent the next six days hiding in plain sight in them, uncommunicative and alone with my misery. The purser herself tracked me down in one. She patiently explained lifeboat safety. She politely told me how her assistant was just doing his job. I was a complete dick with her, too. She entered a note on her chipboard, which I imagine read, “Complete dick. No lifeboat.”

Finally, I decided to spend some time with the only person aboard the
Midway
who was more uncommunicative, alone, and miserable than I was.

And he wasn’t even a person.

Seventy-six

The sleeping grezzen opened his center eye when he felt a human enter the cargo bay.

Jazen said, “When we land, you and me will go knock back a few.”

Jazen’s system was depressed, his reflexes slowed. The grezzen had learned this was symptomatic of knocking back a few.

Jazen had been the first to visit him here in his prison, shortly after the two of them had been so uncomfortably confined in the small shell. Jazen had used a snakelike apparatus to spit liquid through the cage onto the grezzen’s body. At first the grezzen had recoiled, horrified, thinking the liquid was kerosene. In fact, it was warm water mixed with a surfactant that cleansed his fur of the filth to which they had both been subjected, and it felt wonderful.

The episode had ended when other humans native to the
Midway
discovered them. Jazen was restrained, until Kit chased off the other humans.

Now the grezzen sat up as Jazen approached.

The little human sat on a small rack in front of the grezzen’s cage and said, “Came down to say goodbye.”

The grezzen understood that soon the
Midway
would descend into an uncountably vast nest of humans. Somewhere among them Cutler lurked, and so did the grezzen’s moment of revenge. All that the grezzen had endured he had endured in anticipation of that moment. Yet he would miss Jazen. Not his thread, which the grezzen could touch from anywhere. He had grown fond of seeing and hearing, almost of smelling, Jazen, as he had of Kit.

The relationships were, however, what humans called one-way streets. He continued to withhold his consciousness from them. It was no longer just a matter of protecting his race. He had persuaded himself that if he did not reveal himself to Jazen and to Kit, if they merely believed and suspected, he would not be obliged to kill them.

At that moment a double chime echoed throughout the cargo bay, and a human voice said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be landing in New Denver two minutes ahead of schedule, in six hours and twelve minutes. Our approach takes us over the North Pacific Ocean and American end of the Rocky Mountains, and views should be spectacular. Dining and shopping facilities will close in one hour, in preparation for arrival. If you’re unfamiliar with C-drive vessels, our descent will be imperceptible, but you will be required to return to your berthing deck at that time to assure proper passenger distribution to lifeboats in the unlikely event of . . . ”

At the mention of lifeboats Jazen muttered something and sighed. The grezzen understood the disagreement that had separated his two humans. It made the grezzen’s silence more difficult to maintain, because he knew that both were miserable without the other. He could fix things with a few thoughts to each.

The human voice continued, “ . . . and we’ve just passed within the orbit of Luna, so we’re now on Earth Standard time. If you would like to reset your ’puter, the local time at New Denver is ten twenty-three
A.M.
, April 30, 2108.”

Jazen stood, and the grezzen felt alarm and fear spike through the small body.

Jazen thought, “My immunity expires April 29, 2108.”

The grezzen watched Jazen snatch at one forelimb with the other, then squint at the little ring around his claw. He said aloud, “March 28, 2108.” Jazen exhaled. “I must have misheard her.”

At that moment, Molly, the human who brought the grezzen his meals, entered the cargo bay, pushing the cart that held his food.

She showed her teeth at Jazen. “Mr. Parker. Lookin’ forward to the fleecy skies and cool green hills?”

“Molly, what’s the date?”

She turned her forelimb. “Let’s see. I just reset my ’puter. April 30, 2108. We always lose a couple days time dilation Mousetrap to Motherworld.”

The grezzen felt Jazen’s heart rate increase. “A couple days? My ’puter says it’s March 28!”

“Well, yes, sir. Almost nobody makes ten back-to-back jumps like you and Colonel Born just did. You’ve easily lost a month and a half.” Molly showed her teeth again. “Bad news, you maybe missed somebody’s birthday. Good news, now you’re a month younger than they are!”

Jazen’s shoulders sagged, he sat again, and thought. “How stupid can I be? Getting a theoretical month tacked on to the tail end of my life by time dilation always seemed as irrelevant as prescription drug coverage. Now—”

“Mr. Parker? You alright? I—”

Jazen waved a claw at her. “I’m fine, thanks, Molly.”

She left the cart alongside the grezzen’s cage and stepped back toward the hatch. “You’re sure?”

Jazen nodded, and she left Jazen and the grezzen alone in the cargo bay.

Moments later, the grezzen felt another human presence close by.

Seventy-seven

Clack
.

I winced without thinking. The sound of an automatic pistol slide chambering a round is a sound no GI who has heard it misidentifies.

Twenty yards away in the cargo bay, One-eyed Jack sighted along the barrel of a gunpowder automatic pistol he steadied on me, two handed.

Jack lifted one hand off the pistol, and tapped a finger on the ’puter strapped to his opposite wrist. “ ’puter running a little slow, Parker? Mine’s on the money. So to speak.”

He rewrapped his hand around his pistol, slid his finger onto the trigger, and shuffled toward me.

I stood and raised my hands.

Jack flicked his head at the grezzen. “What the hell is that?”

“Friend of mine. Don’t piss him off.”

Jack smiled. “Bet I would. If he knew what I’m thinking.”

“He does. He reads minds.”

Jack poked the pistol forward. “Read this, wise ass! It’s easier for me if you walk off this ship. You fetch the same price if I turn you over alive as dead. But keep smartin’ off and I’ll shoot you now, and carry you off. All it is to me is a weapons violation fine.”

“Why are you here now, then? Why didn’t you just follow me off the ship?”

“Competition. In my business, the early bird catches the Illegal.”

To our left, something rumbled.

Then plasteel squealed, as the grezzen pushed apart its cage bars like they were taffy, thrust a paw between them, and slapped at Jack.

Jack leapt back. “Holy shit! Holy shit!” He fired at the grezzen twice.

While Jack was busy, I ran. I had one foot through a man hatch in the cargo bay bulkhead when I looked back. The grezzen was completely out of the cage now, on all sixes, snarling down at Jack, who lay on the deck, squirming.

Jack fired one round at the grezz, point blank. Then Jack scrambled to his feet, chased me out the hatch, and fired another round that spanged off bulkhead steel six inches from my ear.

I ran for my life.

Seventy-eight

The grezzen, alone and free in the cargo bay, retreated as six times six humans, perhaps more, entered the space and rushed at him, stingers crackling. These were the hard-shelled strain of human that had surrounded him when he had entered the
Midway
.