Sidney's Comet (17 page)

Chapter Seven

B
ASIC DISINTEGRATION THEORY, FOR FURTHER READING AND DISCUSSION

1. Wherever possible, the product or a key component is constructed of a fragile material; 2. Ideally, the product should self-destruct, taking other products with it; 3. Never rely on one part to break down—systems should be designed so that several key components fall apart at once.

Monday, August 28, 2605

It took an hour for the priest to complete the blessings.

When Sidney rode an entry lift up the side of the HLLV passenger rocket with a group of clients and attendants, he thought about how old and dingy the rocket appeared. Dull silver flecks of EZ-plating hung from the great bird’s skin, barely reflecting sunlight, and numerous dents gave the ship an anachronistic appearance. Some rivets were missing. Others hung loose, ready to fall at any moment.

“Why do you suppose this ship hasn’t been replaced?” a man behind Sidney asked. Sidney turned his head to look at the speaker, a thin man in a green client’s smock.

“I was just wondering the same thing,” Sidney said, scratching one of his black, bushy eyebrows. “Something got bogged down in red tape, I guess.”

The lift came to a stop, and the attendants escorted their clients through an oval doorway into the ship’s worn interior. Like Sidney, some clients moto-shoed under their own power. Others had to be carried or pushed, and some rolled in shakily on moto-crutches.

As Sidney entered the rocket, an overwhelming stench burned his nostrils. The odors made him nauseous. They were an amplification of the unwashed crowd smells he had experienced since being taken into detention. Trying to breathe through his mouth, he glanced around the compartment while awaiting instructions.

All seats in the passenger module had been removed, and the grey creme painted walls had a wide, dark green stripe along the bottom. An attendant told Sidney to sit on the floor against one wall beneath a tiny porthole. Sidney brushed away rust flakes from the dirty metal floor, then sat down cross-legged. The floor was cool under his thin smock. His twisted left arm ached.

“Put her over there,” a burly male attendant said. Sidney watched two white-uniformed attendants guide a saggingly heavy retardo client to her spot on the floor. Stringy brown hair almost covered her face. She sat facing Sidney with her knees hunched up, lolling her head from side to side and appearing to laugh uncontrollably without uttering a sound.

Sidney laughed too, then looked away to watch the attendants leave. Presently, he looked back at the woman. The smiling mouth changed now, almost imperceptibly, to a grimace. She seemed to be screaming out in silent pain, and it was no longer funny.

“Is there anything I can do?” Sidney asked her.

The woman did not reply. She continued to smile and grimace. Then she rocked forward and back, her hands clasped together about bruised and scabby shins.

All the clients were told to take seats on the floor, and Sidney felt the suffocating press of humanity all around him. The doomies were pushed and dragged into the compartment. They sat in an area near the door, still chained together and accompanied by Security Brigade guards. Other clients were directed to an elevator for placement in upper and lower passenger compartments.

It took perhaps an hour and a half to load the ship. By the time the heavy metal door rang closed, Sidney was not feeling at all well. The air was close and hot. His deformed arm twitched spasmodically. Stinging sweat trickled down his brow and into his eyes.

As the rocket engines surged, Sidney detected the licorice odor of G-gas filtering into the compartment. The rocket rumbled into the blue, nearly cloudless morning sky, and Sidney watched the skyline of New City through a large porthole on the opposite side of the compartment.

“This ship is so slow!” someone said. “How could they be concerned about G-forces?” A tittering of laughter lasted several seconds, then subsided.

Sidney closed his eyes. He tried to calm himself by recalling his scrapbooks and dreams of space travel. Javik’s words came back to him:
You and me on a big mission, Sid. We used to dream this day would come!

As the ship settled into flight, some of the attendants tried to cheer their clients by organizing singing commercials, and Sidney participated in a mediocre round of the “Shiny New Song.” It went:

Our land is full of pretty things,
Cars and homes and plastic rings;
Shiny New! All Shiny New!
Happy times for me and you!

The doomies refused to take part, and sat to one side talking in low, angry tones. Finally the attendants gave up their effort, and the clients slipped into silent thought, each to his own remorseful, self-pitying corner of consciousness.

Sidney had such feelings as well, but felt better when he realized his days of boredom as a G. W. seven-five oh working five hundred floors underground were gone forever.
I’m going to a zero-gravity region!
he
thought. Sidney’s ill feelings and twitchings subsided now, and he told himself that a positive attitude would make him feel better.

The retardo woman facing Sidney dozed off and leaned her head against a large, ruddy-faced blind man who sat next to her. The sightless man wore dark wraparound sunglasses and had a tuft of unkempt dark brown hair that appeared not to have been combed for days. A small mouth and high cheekbones appeared oriental to Sidney, although he could not determine the shape of the man’s eyes behind the sunglasses.

The blind man allowed the woman to slip her head onto his lap as she fell into a deeper sleep. Her grimace-smiles subsided in slumber, and soon she appeared more at peace. Sidney looked around to stare at the disjointed jerks and unusual mannerisms of crip-clients. And he listened to the haunting, guttural grunts of retardos. A tow-headed boy with only one arm sat to Sidney’s left, staring straight ahead.

Sidney rose to his knees with a bit of difficulty.
Not so easy with only one good arm,
he thought. He peered through a tiny porthole on the wall. The HLLV was traveling through a region of sparse cirrus clouds, and Sidney saw a fleet of Atheist sky mining ships working the area. They looked like giant potbellied beetles, with scores of anteater-like vacuum snouts swishing the air on all sides.

Sidney had studied the ships as a boy. He knew the snouts collected recyclable minerals and chemicals which were in the atmosphere as pollutants. He had always wondered how such a resource retrieval system could be practical, considering the E-Cell fuel such ships must consume.
They must be spy ships,
he thought,
working busy AmFed shipping lanes.

A great burst of noise and clatter came from the doomie area, and Sidney turned to see them jostling about, pulling and rattling their chains as they chanted rhythmically:

Crazy are we, no. . . .
The comet’s in the sky!
Fire will rain upon us—. . . .
And surely we will die!

“Get ’em!” a stocky Security Brigade sergeant yelled.

Black-uniformed guards and Bu-Med attendants rushed the doomies and overpowered them with numbers. Sedative injections were administered, and the doomies passed out in a heap on the floor.

Shortly afterward, the HLLV left Earth’s atmosphere and Sidney felt a momentary weightless sensation. It excited him when he was lifted a few centimeters off the floor before dropping back gently as the ship’s gravitational system began to whir.

His studies told him what would happen next. Soon they would reach the staging area for transfer to an Inter-Orbital Transport Vehicle. The HLLV would release its passenger module for pickup by the transport, a lighter craft that never touched planetary surfaces. It would take the group to the orbiting L
₅
city and therapy habitat of Saint Elba.

That afternoon, Tom Javik stood alone in a gold and white Space Patrol uniform at the base of the Shamrock Five. He glanced up at the shimmering black-and-silver Akron class cruiser, thought how fortunate he was to be assigned to it.

He watched Colonel Peebles short-step out of a computer-operated limousine parked at the edge
of the landing pad. A woman with hair cut boot-military length followed. The pair moto-shoed toward the waiting ship’s captain.

“Jeez!” Javik said in a low tone out of the side of his mouth. ‘That woman is UG-LY!” He smiled, picked food out of his teeth from a just-completed afternoon meal.

“This is Madame Bernet,” Colonel Peebles said as they arrived. “She will be Onboard Systems Coordinator for the mission.” Javik detected a sneer in the colonel’s expression.

“This wasn’t mentioned previously,” Javik said.

“Oh, wasn’t it?” Peebles said, feigning innocence. “It’s quite standard now. But then you wouldn’t know that . . . having been out of touch for two years.”

Disregarding the remark, Javik studied the Madame intently and saw a clear, lineless face with a sloping, weak chin and a bulbous nose. She was quite short, and seemed lost in a loose-fitting white-and-gold dress emblazoned with the Space Patrol crest. Her hands remained in pockets at each side, and her smile never touched her eyes.

Glad I didn’t stumble into this Madame’s pleasure dome,
Javik thought, attempting humor to allay the inexplicable fear he felt.

Madame Bernet saluted crisply. “Request permission to board, Lieutenant Javik.”

“Very military,” Javik said. A gust of wind blew his amber hair across his eyes. He pushed the hair back.

A look which Javik could only describe as murderous flashed across the Madame’s face. “Request permission—”

“Permission granted,” Javik said, scowling at the Madame.

As Madame Bernet short-stepped onto a boarding elevator, Javik turned to Peebles and said, “She’s a meckie. Nicely done, I might add.”

Peebles lowered his eyelids and asked: “What makes you say that?”

“The eyes. They never lie. The eyes are not human.”

“I see. And that is a professional opinion?” Peebles shifted uneasily on his feet as he watched the boarding elevator ascend.

“Yes. I assisted Bu-Industry several years ago in a meckie experiment where human-like meckies were given tasks onboard ship.”

“Re-e-e-ally?” Peebles said, a strange grin on his face.

“No matter how they were programmed, there always seemed to be an emergency they could not handle. Your Madame Bernet is a meckie,”

Peebles’s grin faded. “All right,” he said, irritably. “It is a meckie. But that really doesn’t make any difference on this mission. It will be coordinating the cappy work crews, tending to them so that you can operate the ship without distraction.”

“Show me the program trade,” Javik said, looking up to watch Madame Bernet roll off the entry platform and enter the ship.

“There won’t be time for that,” Peebles said. “It’s not accessible without special tools.”

“How convenient,” Javik said. He scowled as he moto-shoed around chrome thrust deflector fins to a spot beneath the Shamrock Five. There he inspected a trailer release mechanism.

I don’t like unknowns,
Javik thought, touching the cool metal surface.
But God I want to fly this gorgeous ship
. . .
and I promised Sidney
. . . .

Something troubled Javik about the meckie. But he put all such thoughts out of his mind.

An hour later, a six-armed Union Maid meckie discovered the bodies of General Munoz and Colonel Peebles at Munoz’s country condominium. Water covered the floor of the bedroom module, and the men were found in a lovers’ embrace on top of the waterbed.

Finding no life signs, the meckie automatically went to Emergency Mode. “Rule one-one-nine,” the meckie said in its halting tone while rolling into the hallway. “Report death of ministerial personnel directly to the President.”

Nineteen minutes later, the meckie stood in President Ogg’s sunny office giving its report. “Product failure,” the meckie said, waving its six mechanical arms demonstrably. “Minister Munoz died of electrocution when his water-filled mattress ruptured, causing liquid to come in contact with an electrical heating coil.”

“Who programmed you?” Ogg demanded, his blue green eyes flashing angrily. “Report the ministerial death only! A forensic team will determine the cause of death!”

The oval office fell into shadow momentarily as a small cloud passed in front of the sun.

“I was programmed by Bu-Tech,” the meckie said as the sun returned, “with input from Bu-Med enabling me to substantiate human death.”

“Well they went too far! It’s bad enough that they’ve got you cleaning AND playing doctor. Now you’re an entire police team too!”

The meckie did not respond. Its arms fell disconsolately to its sides.

“What else can you do?” Ogg asked angrily, rising out of his chair. His voice throbbed with emotion as he asked, “How many citizens are you putting out of work?”

“I am a complicated mechanism,” the meckie replied.

“Meckies!” Ogg gruffed. He rolled to the meckie’s side and mentoed to open the control box on its top. Scanning the switches inside he thought:
There it is.
He mentoed a combination of numbers to activate the meckie’s selective memory erasure feature.
No memory of the Munoz incident,
the President thought, wishing he could destroy the mechanical servant. He kicked it, causing a dull thud.

Billie Birdbright entered as the meckie left.

“I want a full confidential investigation into the cause of death of General Arturo Munoz,” Ogg said. “His body is at his country condominium . . . on Kingsgate Road near Lake Ovett.”

Surprised, the dimple-chinned Birdbright said, “Yes, Mr. President.”

“Send in an entire forensic team by autocopter fleet. I want a preliminary report before quitting time today!”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Not a minute later, Birdbright! You know how I feel about working after five o’clock!”

The Shamrock Five cleared Earth’s atmosphere minutes after takeoff. Javik checked the flight-clip and mentoed course coordinates to the ship’s mother computer. The sleek space cruiser rolled gently to starboard and accelerated in the vacuum of space.