Reality Matrix Effect (9781310151330) (20 page)

“Vince, I told you this would happen!”
Aurora complained. “They’re not used to it!  Come on, now. At
least adjust the gravity simulator!”

The tall, thick-lipped man wearing the
dress uniform of the Merchant Fleet grinned
mischievously.

“See what’ll happen if you stay
Earth-bound too long, Aurora?  Just goes to prove what I been
sayin’. Either use  it or lose it. Time for you to get back
into the Fleet before you get like these two!”

Aurora looked aggravated but said
nothing as a laughing Vince Barnard adjusted a control beneath the
black acrylic tabletop. Slowly, Rayna and Keith raised their heads
and staggered forward. Even with the gravity simulator reset to
Earth-normal, the holopainted asteroids, stars and distant nebulae
that surrounded them made their heads spin. Rayna looked down,
carefully trying to make her way to one of the vacant seats at the
table, but the illusion of walking through open space—of floating
high above the surface of an asteroid suspended below her
feet—played havoc with her sense of balance. Keith was just as
disoriented.

“Here, Rayna,” Aurora offered, rising
from her seat and striding confidently toward the newcomers, “take
my hand.”

Rayna grasped Aurora’s hand
gratefully. By focusing his attention on the path Rayna’s feet
traced against the background of stars and planetoids superimposed
on what he knew must be the floor, Keith managed to follow them to
the table. He heaved a sigh of relief and mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief as he sank onto a cushioned chair.

“Rayna, Keith.... I’m so sorry about
this—”

“Aah, don’t worry about it, Aurora!”
Barnard said, slapping Keith sharply on the shoulder. “These two
may be Earth-bound, but they’re friends of yours. I bet they’re
good sports. You didn’t mind too much, did you?  I mean,
you’re not a couple of tight-assed robbies who don’t know how to
have fun, are ya?”

Keith and Rayna exchanged glances, and
Aurora rolled her eyes.

“Some place, this Eduardo’s,” Barnard
continued. “Never been here before myself, but I’ve heard lots
about it. Never would’ve believed they could come so close to what
it feels like out in space.”  He looked about him
appreciatively. “Pal of mine came here once. Said they put him
right on Mars!  Not bad, since we never even colonized Mars
for real. Wonder where they get the pictures.”

“I told you before,” said an obviously
irritated Aurora. “None of this is photographic. The visual effects
are like holopaintings, only without any frames to cut off the
three-dimensional images. The sounds and smells are
computer-generated simulations.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. You told
me.”

“I’m afraid we brought this particular
environment-generator disk in ourselves,” Aurora said to Keith and
Rayna. “Vince insisted on a space environment that would be like
the asteroid run, where we served together in the Fleet. He even
arranged for the hologuide to be in the form of a Fleet officer.
 Kind of romantic, actually.”

Barnard grinned and reached for
Aurora’s hand, but she deftly managed to avoid his
touch.

“Unfortunately, the only space
environments they had on file here were set for other planets and
even other galaxies. (You know, there’s really no limit to the
environments you can create with holopainting and sensory
simulators.)”

Keith glanced at Barnard, who was
watching Aurora with adoring eyes. The guy might have the social
graces of a mutant elephant, Keith thought, but he’s sure crazy
about that woman.

“Anyway,” Aurora was saying, “they
said they couldn’t do anything for us on such short notice. We’d
have to wait at least a week to get a custom-designed environment.
So I told Vince I’d see if I could get an Asteroid Belt
environmental disk myself. I told him I wasn’t sure it was such a
good idea, since neither of you two had ever been off-planet,
but....  Well, you know. I’m sorry. I should have warned
you.”

“You don’t have to keep apologizing,”
Barnard told her with a friendly smile. “They’re not hurt. In fact,
it probably did them some good to get a little taste of what us
merchanters go through!”

Aurora shook her head in displeasure
but said nothing. For a while, the four of them sat quietly amid
the awe-inspiring spectacle of space.

“It’s all right now, Aurora,” Keith
finally said. “Really it is. As a matter of fact, I find this
environment intriguing. How realistic is it?”

“Damned close,” Barnard said brightly.
“O’ course, nothing’s quite like actually being there. Right,
Aurora?”

Aurora smiled weakly.

“Where did you find the disk?” Rayna
asked.

“Oh, I knew Rafe had just finished
making one for his next exhibition, and—” A sudden chill descended
on the room, and Barnard’s eyes blazed.

“Rafe!” he boomed, rocketing from his
chair. “You mean that softheaded, granite-footed idiot you were
with last night?”  His narrow gaze focused suspiciously on
Aurora’s impassive face. “Is he the guy you left the Fleet to shack
up with?”

“Sit down, Vince,”  she urged,
tugging on Barnard’s sleeve. “Rafe’s an artist. That’s how he makes
his living. Ask Rayna. He did a holopainting for her.”

“That’s right,” Rayna responded
quickly in a soothing voice.

Keith’s mind raced. He hadn’t expected
things to turn ugly this soon. He was wondering how to defuse this
potential explosion when he suddenly realized that his efforts
weren’t needed. He ran his right index finger along the side of his
nose and tried to hide smile on his lips. Rayna had the situation
well in hand. She had adopted her most detached, professorial tone
and was now expounding on the art of holopainting.

“Actually, the process is quite
fascinating,” she said. “The artist uses a standard computer art
program in combination with an interference-pattern simulator. Some
holopaintings, like mine, are hooked up to a real-time clock to
reflect the passage of time. Makes me feel like I’m living in a
house overlooking the beach instead of an apartment in the
city!  All the information about light  intensity,
shadows and so on are programmed into the computer when the
holopainting is made so that—”

“Computers!” Barnard snorted more in
disgust than anger as he dropped back onto his chair. “Computers
and robbies. They’re for woms. They keep the weak sisters in charge
of the rest of us.”  He blinked and leaned forward, brow
furrowed with determination.

“Out in space, though,” he asserted,
“boy, out there, it’s a whole different story!  Out in space,
there’s no room for weaklings and cowards. In space, a man’s got to
be a man!”  He gestured broadly at the astronomical scene that
surrounded them and smiled in self-satisfaction.

Puzzled, Rayna frowned and looked at
the merchanter.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “I don’t
understand. Don’t you use computers for navigation on merchant
ships?  And to monitor your fuel mix?  And to maintain
your life-support systems?”

“Well...uh...I—”

“Sure we do,” Aurora volunteered.
“What do you have against computers all of a sudden,
Vince?”

Barnard wore the frustrated look of a
man who had long ago been persuaded to a particular point of view
but could no longer remember the arguments that had convinced
him.

“Aw, forget it,” he said. “Let’s get
something to eat. I’m hungry enough to eat a whole
squawker!”

Aurora turned to Keith and Rayna. “A
squawker’s a sort of cross between a chicken and a turkey that’s
been bred to thrive in the colonial domes on the various
asteroids,” Aurora explained. “Squawkers are very big and have a
high proportion of meat to bone, fat and other waste. For most
merchanters, a home-cooked dinner of roast squawker is a high point
of the whole trip.”

“Yeah,” complained Barnard. “About the
only high point. Those rock-farmers sit up there being waited on
hand and foot by robbies while us merchanters get packed into the
smallest possible crew space to make more room for their supplies
on the trip up and for stuff like their damned Nitinol wire in the
shipments back to Earth. We might be in the colonies six weeks and
maybe we get invited to eat with the bowl-squatters twice. The rest
of the time, everything’s strictly business, and we get stuck with
standard-issue space rations instead of squawker to
eat.”

“You sound pretty angry,” Keith
said.

“You bet I am. And I’m not the only
one. You just wait till word gets out about the
Nitinol!”

Keith looked at the big man in
surprise. “Why?  What’s wrong with the Nitinol?”

Barnard’s eyes locked onto Keith’s,
then took quick measure of Rayna and Aurora. Suddenly, the
merchanter seemed tense and withdrawn.

“Aah, never mind. Just don’t be
surprised if colony-lovers like that Althea Milgrom start catching
a lot of heat pretty soon!”

“Vince, what in the world are you
carrying on about?” Aurora asked.

“I said to forget it!”  Barnard’s
expression was hard and distrusting. Despite the coolness of the
room, beads of perspiration dotted his face.

Suddenly, an area of star-spattered
blackness vanished to reveal the white-walled corridor that
connected the Ultramarine Room with the rest of Eduardo’s. A man
wearing the uniform of a Merchant Fleet lieutenant marched
authoritatively into the room, leaving two enlisted men guarding
the outer doorway.

“Emergency alert,” the lieutenant
announced to Barnard, ignoring the presence of the others. “All
Merchant Fleet leaves are hereby canceled. You will report back to
base immediately.”

The color drained from Barnard’s face,
and he stared dumbly at the officer.

“I—I just wanted to have dinner with
an old friend,” Barnard finally said, his voice little more than a
hoarse whisper. The newcomer’s steely blue eyes targeted Barnard
like those of a tiger stalking its prey. “Come on, Hank,
I—”

“All leaves are hereby canceled,” the
lieutenant repeated in a low, threatening voice as he tapped the
insignia of rank on his uniform.

Barnard swallowed and rose from his
seat.

“Sorry, Aurora,” he said. “Maybe
another time.”  He worked his way around the table and headed
for the door, which remained open.

The officer waited until Barnard had
crossed the threshold into the hall before turning to the
others:  “This emergency is top secret,” he told them. “I
presume I can count on your discretion.”  Then he pivoted and
followed Barnard down the corridor, pausing only to close the door
to the Ultramarine Room. 

 
***

  
Keith and the two women
regarded each other in stunned silence. “What was all that about?”
he wondered aloud.

Aurora shook her head slowly. “I don’t
know,” she said, “but something’s not right.”

“What do you mean?” asked
Rayna.

The taller woman pursed her lips and
tapped them with a forefinger.

“I’m not quite sure,” she said. “It’s
just that...I guess I’m relieved that we won’t have to walk on
eggshells around Vince for the rest of the evening,
but.... Well, for one thing, it’s pretty rare to have an
emergency that would require cancellation of  all Merchant
Fleet leaves. Last time that happened, there had been a series of
big earthquakes in China, and Fleet was put in charge of getting
emergency supplies into the disaster area. The Trans-Mat facilities
were all out, so we had to use special air shuttles and parachute
the stuff in, just like in the late 20th Century. But by time that
happened, everybody had already heard about the earthquakes. You
can’t keep something that big secret for long. Have you heard
of anything remotely resembling a disaster today?”

Keith shook his head. “No,” he said,
“and here’s another thing. There was something odd about the way
Barnard reacted to that lieutenant. It wasn’t just respect for
rank. It was fear. Barnard was scared clear out of those gaudy
merchanter boots of his!  I suppose it might just be some
personal thing between the two of them, but it sure seemed
wrong.”

“I noticed that, too,” Rayna
commented. “Vince seemed to know the lieutenant. He called him by
name at one point—‘Hank’ I think he said. Not ‘Sir.’  Not
‘Lieutenant.’  Just ‘Hank’.”

Aurora nodded. “That’s right, come to
think of it. He did. But that doesn’t bother me as much as the
uniform.”

“What do you mean?” Keith
asked.

“The lieutenant’s uniform,” she
repeated. “I didn’t get a close look at the enlisted men, but the
lieutenant was wearing a patch that identified his unit as the
3C/4A—the Third Circuit, Fourth Asteroid Belt Run.”

“Yes?”

“That unit was disbanded just after I
left Fleet. A friend of mine used to be in the 3C/4A. There was a
big stink involving a merchant crew that tried to pull an extortion
scam on some colonists. The guilty parties were identified and
dealt with, and the other members of the circuit were reassigned to
other units. Then, in order to eliminate the stain on the Fleet’s
record for integrity, they wiped the 3C/4A off the active-service
ledger.”