Sidney's Comet (19 page)
Authors: Brian Herbert
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #science fiction
After the showers, Javik and Madame Bernet dressed in fresh Space Patrol uniforms they found in the dressing areas.
A tweed-suited Mayor Nancy Ogg greeted them in the hallway, accompanied by Sergeant Rountree. Javik passed the release authorization to Mayor Nancy Ogg and asked her to locate Sidney immediately.
“A cappy?” she said. “What do you want with a miserable cappy?”
“He’s to be captain of the ship,” Javik said with a bit of irritation. He stared down the bridge of his nose at the Mayor.
“What?” she said. “A cappy?” Dr. Hudson’s electronic letter was in the lapel pocket of her suit.
We’ll lose Malloy for a couple of days,
she thought.
It won’t be difficult.
“You’re to treat him quickly and release him to me.”
Mayor Nancy Ogg studied the release form intently. “General Munoz signed this?” She handed it to the security sergeant, adding, “We’ll have to do some checking, of course.”
“You weren’t notified?”
“No.”
“Christ! All right. Check all you want, but make it fast. If Malloy’s not treated and ready to go tomorrow, the comet intercept mission is off. And you probably know it isn’t headed toward any mining base.”
The Mayor’s dark brown eyes flashed angrily as if to say that Javik was acting impertinently to one of her status.
So you know that comet’s coming down our throat,
she thought.
Well you’ll go alone at the last minute—out of patriotic duty.
Mayor Nancy Ogg said nothing further about the Malloy matter, and turned her attention to Madame Bernet. “Who might you be?” she asked, sweetly.
The meckie identified itself, after which Javik explained, “Madame Bernet is a meckie, our Onboard Systems Coordinator for the mission.”
So THIS is the killer meckie,
Mayor Nancy Ogg thought.
It looks human, except for the eyes.
“This way, please,” the Mayor said, motioning toward a nearby conveyor transporter. A strip which moved slowly and noisily, the transporter carried pop-up metal chairs.
Javik started to roll toward the conveyor, but stopped as he saw Madame Bernet and Mayor Nancy Ogg hold back.
“After you,” the Mayor said to Madame Bernet in a syrupy, overly gracious tone.
I’m not going to turn my back on this
. . .
monster!
she thought.
Madame Bernet’s eyes flashed angry glances at the Mayor and at Sergeant Rountree. “Thank you,” the meckie said, smiling warily. It rolled by Javik.
Do they sense what I do about Madame Bernet?
Javik thought.
Or do they know something?
“Step aboard,” Mayor Nancy Ogg instructed as they all reached the transporter. “Disembark at Landing Platform One.”
Mayor Nancy Ogg watched the meckie and Javik take seats. Then she and Sergeant Rountree sat behind them. Mayor Nancy Ogg recalled seeing a decommissioned Atheist killer meckie once in the War Museum. She felt fascination and fear.
After a short ride on the conveyor transporter, they transferred to a monorail car destined for the habitat’s outer rim. They sat in triple-wide seats, with Mayor Nancy Ogg and her sergeant on one side, facing Javik and Madame Bernet.
“There aren’t many people moving about at this time of night,” the Mayor said, glancing around the car at four scattered attendants in other seats.
Javik smiled at her, caught her gaze.
She looked away.
She carries herself with an air of superiority,
he thought, feeling captivated by the Mayor’s almond-shaped brown eyes.
But I see a passionate woman beneath the facade.
Javik flicked a glance to his left, saw Madame Bernet staring bleakly out the window.
The monorail car jolted.
Sergeant Rountree looked across at Javik and said, “I’m sorry the ride is so rough. We’re working on the tracks, you know.”
Javik insisted it did not bother him. Then he looked at the Mayor and asked, “Forgive me for prying, Your Honor, but are you related to President Ogg?”
“My older brother,” she said, pinning her gaze on Madame Bernet. The meckie stared out the window at the blackness of the tunnel’s interior, apparently unaware of the Mayor’s interest.
“Fine, man,” Javik said.
“Yes,” Mayor Nancy Ogg thought.
But a bigot?
she thought.
“I’d vote for him tomorrow,” Javik said with a flirtatious smile in the Mayor’s direction, “but there are other more pressing matters requiring my attention.”
“I’m certain my brother understands,” she said stiffly.
Cool one,
Javik thought.
Too bad I don’t have time to soften her with my charms.
When the monorail car exited the spoke tube, it began to decelerate. Javik saw the lights of an arch-glass terminal building ahead, and beyond that the twinkling lights of a resting city.
They disembarked at the terminal. Sergeant Rountree led them along shadowy motopaths past a fruit tree orchard and into an area of apartment buildings surrounded by illuminated Japanese gardens.
“We’re just outside the habitat’s principal shopping district,” Mayor Nancy Ogg said as they negotiated an arched bridge.
“Very nice,” Javik said, noting carefully manicured dwarf shrubs and trees along each side of an illuminated stream.
“I’m terribly sorry about the temperature,” Sergeant Rountree said as they reached the end of the bridge and entered a narrow motopath. “We’ve had trouble with the solar heating system. It’s been four degrees on the cool side for a week.”
“There’s no need to apologize for everything,” Mayor Nancy Ogg said sternly, flashing an angry glance at her sergeant.
Sergeant Rountree did not meet the Mayor’s gaze; he mumbled something in an apologetic tone.
“Hardly noticed the temperature,” Javik said, amused at the confrontation.
They stopped at a fourplex building, where Mayor Nancy Ogg handed Javik and the meckie plastikeys. “Separate apartments have been prepared for each of you,” she said. “The apartment numbers are on the keys.”
Then she turned to leave and remarked, “I’ll send for you in the morning. We’ll breakfast together. Your ship will be recharged and ready to go by tomorrow afternoon.”
“I’d like to see Malloy right after breakfast,” Javik said with a tone of authority.
“We’ll see,” Mayor Nancy Ogg said.
After decontamination showers in the Hub, Sidney and the other clients were allowed to use the bathrooms and were provided with fresh clothing. As the fatigued group boarded a monorail car for the trip to the habitat’s outer rim, an attendant said, “Saint Elba’s night barrier is in place now, shielding the reflected rays of the sun. The barrier moves back and forth automatically, creating day and night in the habitat. We even have seasons!”
They disembarked at the arch-glass terminal building, and from there were herded unceremoniously into the back of an autotruck. The truck moved quickly through shopping and residential areas. Presently, Sidney saw the lights of a massive building which stretched laterally as far as he could see. In height the structure was perhaps one hundred stories, limited as it was by the thickness of the outer rim.
“Elba House,” an attendant said.
A few minutes later, the clients were lined up in the lobby of Elba House, awaiting admittance. Toward the front of one line, Sidney watched six desk attendants as they matched clients with counselors. Loudspeakered voices rang around the room as the attendants called for counselors. When Sidney’s turn came, he rolled to the desk.
“I’m supposed to get rush treatment,” Sidney said, leaning forward and speaking in a low tone to a beefy, flat-nosed male attendant. “I have a very important mission. . . . ” Sidney caught himself as he noticed the attendant sneering at him.
“Everybody here is on an important mission,” the attendant said. “Especially the mental cases!”
Two attendants seated nearby tittered.
The attendant grabbed Sidney’s right wrist and read the plasti-tag. “Malloy, S.,” he said. “Client number one-six-five-six-three-two-oh-two-nine.” The attendant checked his log-book, then spoke into a voice-amp: “Counselor, Ruth Bremer. Is Ruth Bremer present?”
A woman called out with military precision: “Present.”
Sidney turned to watch a slender woman with neatly trimmed dark brown hair moto-shoe to his side. She wore a plain white Bu-Med dress emblazoned with a triangular Bu-Med lapel crest. “I am Bremer,” she announced curtly.
Sidney studied his counselor as she leaned over the desk and mentoed an auto-pen to sign the custody form. The pen moved across the page without being held. Of a bit less than middling height, the counselor had hard features, with a protruding chin and a tiny nose. Sidney became conscious of how tired he felt. The excitement had begun to wear off.
“Take Malloy to one-four-six-five-eight in R Wing,” the attendant instructed.
Bremer nodded and grasped Sidney by his good arm. “A maximum security wing,” she confided as they rolled toward a double-wide door marked “
SUBWAY
.”
“Maximum security?” Sidney almost spat the words out. “I’m not dangerous!”
“They know that,” she said with a hint of condescension in her tone. “Anyone can see you’re not in chains.”
“Then why?”
“Orders, fellow,” she said stiffly. “I just do what I’m told.”
Pausing at a subway loading platform, they watched as a four-passenger mini-car approached. I’ll complete the necessary forms to get you out of there as soon as possible,” she promised.
“Thanks for that,” Sidney said. “But I’m supposed to—”
“Don’t thank me!” she scoffed. “That will cost you two work credits! I don’t fill out forms for nothing!”
“A Lieutenant Javik of the Space Patrol is going to ask for me tomorrow,” Sidney said, “I’ll be going with him.”
“Sure,” the counselor said. “I’ll put the whole staff on alert.”
“Thanks,” Sidney said. Then he caught her frigid gaze and realized she was insincere. Sidney fell into silent and troubled thought.
R Wing was a six-minute ride away. They took an elevator to the fourteenth floor and moto-shoed down a long, curving hall which was punctuated with signs. One sign appeared more frequently than others:
THANK ROSENBLOOM
FOR
FULL EMPLOYMENT
“This
is it,” Counselor Bremer finally announced, stopping at a maroon door. She read an attendance screen on the wall, added, “Your roommates are already in bed. Enter quietly and find a bunk. I’ll set up your therapy schedule in the morning.”
She mentoed the door. It slid open to one side, revealing a darkened room with bunk beds along the opposite wall and a table with two straight-backed chairs near the entry. A tiny barred window was high on one wall.
“I’ll hold the door open for two minutes to give you more light,” she said.
Sidney hesitated, then rolled across the threshold. But he felt a sudden wave of fear and turned to re-enter the hall. An unseen barrier in the doorway halted him abruptly.
“Ow!” he said, rubbing a bruised eyebrow. “What was that?”
“Thought barrier,” she replied stiffly. “Get to bed.
Now.”
“But why? . . .” Sidney remembered and said, “Oh. Maximum security.”
Counselor Bremer did not respond, stared at him coolly.
Sidney looked down at his twisted left arm, noted sadly that the elbow, wrist and fingers were lock-bent. Every muscle and tendon ached and appeared taut to the point of bursting. Angrily, he tried with all his energy to straighten the arm and hand. But it was to no avail. He stood there for a moment afterward breathing hard and glaring across the thought barrier at Counselor Bremer.
“You have forty-five seconds,” she said.
Sidney turned like a whipped meckie-pup and found an unoccupied upper bunk. He unsnapped his moto-shoes quickly, then laid his weary body upon an electric lift which had dropped silently from above. His body weight activated the lift, and it carried him to an upper bunk. Darkness fell across the room as Sidney rolled into bed, wearing a thin green Bu-Med smock like the one issued to him on Earth.
How long will my treatment take?
he thought.
Will Tom find me here?
“Bremer’s a tough one,” a husky voice whispered from below. “She’ll chew ya up and spit ya out.”
Sidney did not respond. He lay awake with his eyes open watching faint shadows cast upon the ceiling by the high wall window. Tired to the marrow, he tried to collect his thoughts. The room gradually filled with light snoring sounds. As Sidney’s thoughts ran together in a blur, he too drifted off to sleep.
* * *
Sayer Superior Lin-Ti resumed his place at the podium. Weary from three days away, he thought of the burdens of Ins position.
So much responsibility,
he thought.
I should delegate more
. . . .
He flipped to Chapter Nine.
Chapter Nine
T
HE CAPPY PROBLEM, FOR FURTHER READING AND DISCUSSION
February 16, 2341: Mandate of Retardation passed unanimously by the Council of Ten. The major tenets of this mandate held that “cappies” (“crips” and “retardos”) were to be sterilized, could not own real property and were to be committed to therapy orbiters.
Tuesday, August 29, 2605
In the few minutes before Garbage Day minus three began on Saint Elba with the opening of the habitat’s night shield, Sidney’s room remained in darkness. A nightmare captured his mind with a sense of reality that drenched his bed in perspiration—Sidney was imprisoned on a planet which rotated freely in a round cage. Spaceships entered and left through iron gates which clanked noisily in airless space as they opened and closed. He knew this was impossible, but his dream permitted no questions.
It was an unhappy place. Desperate prisoners plotted escape. . . .
“Escape . . . dawn . . . take the Hub. . .” Words echoed in Sidney’s consciousness and vanished like fine sand through burlap. He squirmed in his slumber, pushing blankets away to cool his body. Half awake now, he began to realize that some of the dream voices were real.
“The snoring!” an urgent voice husked. It’s stopped!”
“Is he awake?’ another asked.
Sidney froze. His heart pounded. He sensed someone very near, listening to his breathing. Sidney tried to feign sleep by taking loud, deep breaths.
Suddenly a strong hand grabbed his throat. “One squeal and you’re dead!” a man rasped. He pulled Sidney to the floor and held Sidney’s good right arm in a clamp grip.
“What did you hear?” another man asked. His voice was high-pitched, commanding.
“Nothing,” Sidney gasped, flailing his deformed arm helplessly. “I heard nothing!” Sidney looked beyond a shadow which hulked over him and saw faces half-illuminated by low light entering the room through the barred high wall window.
“Let’s tie and gag him,” one suggested.
“Maybe he’d like to throw in with us,” said another. It was the same husky voice that had spoken to Sidney in the darkness when he first arrived, warning him about Counselor Bremer. This was a potential friend.
“Don’t chance it,” the man with the high-pitched voice said.
“But he’s no threat to us,” the potential friend said. “This is so big no one can stop it.” But Sidney felt the grip of the man who held him tighten around his neck.
“Stone’s right,” the man with the high-pitched voice said. “We have hundreds set to break! And thousands will follow!”
Sidney breathed an audible sigh of relief as the grip loosened. The man released him, pushing him to the floor. Sidney rose to
lean on the elbow of his right arm and looked at the dark outline of the man they called Stone.
“You okay, fella?” Stone asked.
But before Sidney could answer, the man who had held him said. “He’s a crip. Look at his arm.”
“I can’t go with you,” Sidney said, thinking of his rendezvous with Javik. He counted five other men in the room, four kneeling around him and another standing near the door.
“Suit yourself,” the man with the high-pitched voice said. Sidney noticed that the man’s face seemed pale whenever he got a glimpse of a section of it, even in the low light.
These are doomies,
Sidney thought.
Before Sidney could gather the courage to phrase a question, a great clamor arose in the building. There was a loud thump in the room above, and from all around came the sounds of breaking glass and people shouting. The hall door slid open, casting bright light into the room. The noises grew closer now, and half-dressed men ran or moto-shoed by the door.
“It’s started!!’ Stone shouted, jumping to his feet. “The thought barriers are open!”
It was every man for himself. All except Sidney crowded to the door without another word, and then were gone.
Through the open door, Sidney watched with amazement as hordes of clients surged and pushed in their frantic flights to freedom. Sidney heard gunfire in the distance, and the incessant wail of sirens. He rose to his feet
A group of armed Security Brigade guards rolled by, followed by a cluster of Bu-Med attendants. “Halt!” the guards yelled. Gunfire rang through the hallway.
Then Sidney smelted smoke, and heard screams of panic from outside the door. “Fire!” someone called out. “Fire!” Sidney snapped on his moto-shoes, peeked into the hallway.
Mayor Nancy Ogg had not gone to bed after seeing Javik and Madame Bernet to their apartments for the night. Instead she returned to her own apartment and studied a checklist at the kitchen table. Gradually she fell asleep there, dropping her head to the tabletop.
When the night shield began to open at dawn, reflected sunlight filtered through the kitchen module’s greenhouse roof. The Mayor stirred, knocking papers to the floor. She sat up, stretched and yawned.
Busy day ahead,
she thought.
As the Mayor leaned over to retrieve her papers, she heard sirens whining in the distance.
* * *
As Sidney poked his head out of the doorway, he saw flames at both ends of the hall. Agonized screams filled the smoke-contaminated air. Several paces to his left on the floor, Sidney saw the bleeding bodies of two green-smocked clients. It was apparent that they had been shot.
Sidney coughed as he ventured a few meters into the hall. Common sense told him to go back in the room and close the door. At least that would delay the inevitable, and left open the possibility of rescue from a window.
“Into the flames, fleshcarrier!”
a tenor voice inside his head commanded.
“Down the hallway to your right!”
“To certain death?” Sidney asked, aloud.
“To POSSIBLE death,”
the voice said, laughing.
“Possible?”
“If you’re lucky, you’ll get out.”
Again, laughter.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Sidney said. He watched as many clients, attendants and guards gave up and sat in the middle of the floor to await death.
“
I will tell you this, curious fleshcarrier. It’s a matter of simple odds . . . as In a card game or at a roulette wheel.”
“How thick are the flames?”
“I do not MEASURE flames,”
the voice said haughtily.
“How does one MEASURE flames?”
Sidney shook his head negatively, but started to roll in the direction designated by the voice. Rolling slowly at first, he passed seated and standing people who cried out or prayed. Others were already dead, and lay in confused positions on the floor. Sidney picked up speed.
When he was only two meters from the dancing violet and orange flames, the heat had become almost unbearable. Suddenly the floor above the flames cracked and broke away. A great burst of cool white foam hit Sidney and the flames. He slipped and fell to the floor, his body and face covered in foam.
“This way!” a voice called from above.
Sidney wiped foam from his face and clothing. His eyes stung. He looked up to the floor above and saw a red-and-yellow-uniformed fireman drop a flexible metal ladder to him.
“Hurry!” the fireman urged.
Sidney struggled partway up the ladder, having difficulty on the flexible metal links due to his bad arm and slippery foam on his body. About halfway up, he stopped, breathing hard. “My arm!” Sidney gasped. “I can’t climb any farther!”
Through blurry, watery eyes, Sidney saw three firemen lift the ladder. They helped him off at the top, then dropped the ladder back for more people.
“You’re a lucky one,” a fireman said. “Over there,” he instructed, pointing toward a group of people who were gathered near a window, their shapes forming silhouettes against dawn light. “Get in the escape chute!”
Luck?
Sidney thought as he followed the fireman’s instructions.
Was it only a matter of odds?
When Sidney’s turn came, he slid down a spiraling escape chute to ground level.
Javik awoke to the piercing whine of sirens. From bed, he could see through the skylights of the bedroom module to the edge of the habitat’s outer rim far above. Beyond that, the sun reflected off the solar collector and peeked around the night shield, bathing the room in yellow light.
He went to the balcony and looked across a terraced Japanese hillside garden to a large building in the distance. Flames licked from the windows of middle floors. Black smoke billowed in the air. Emergency vehicles screamed, rolling at high speed toward the conflagration.
“Remain in your homes!” a loudspeaker truck boomed. “Keep all doors and windows shut! Emergency oxygen systems will not function if doors and windows are open!”
Javik went into the living room module and scanned its contents. The room had bright green plastic tables and side-chairs, with a green paisley short couch that matched the curtains. He rolled to a wall-mounted telephone in a pool of sunlight near the couch, mentoed a tele-cube. It rose from its cradle on the phone, hovered in the air in front of his face.
“Number please,” a pleasant female syntho-voice said.
“Get me Hub Control,” Javik commanded. “Hurry!”
“Sorry, sir. Those circuits are busy. Please try back in—”
“Damn!” Javik cursed. ‘Then get me Elba House.”
“Sorry, sir. Those circuits are busy too.”
Javik mento-slammed the circuit shut. The tele-cube floated back to its cradle.
Sidney will have to fend for himself,
he thought.
Right now I’ve got to take care of my ship.
Javik dressed quickly and met Madame Bernet in the hall. Fastening the top button of a white-and-gold uniform dress, Madame Bernet asked, “You saw the fire?”
“Yeah, and I can’t reach Hub Control! We’d better get to the ship! This whole orbiter may go up!” Javik wiped a hand through an uncombed shock of amber hair. The sleep-tormented hair did not smooth out.
Reaching the street in seconds, Javik and the meckie rolled hurriedly along a motopath in the direction of the habitat’s spoke tubes, hoping to catch a monorail for the Hub. He smelled smoke.
As they passed a small cluster of fruit trees, Javik stopped abruptly. “There!” he said excitedly, pointing toward the arch-glass monorail terminal building several hundred meters away. A mass of green-smocked clients, many of whom obviously had severe handicaps, streamed into the building. Some operated moto-crutches or rode in electric wheelchairs. Others ran or moto-shoed.
“A breakout!” Javik moaned. “How in the hell are we . . .”
Madame Bernet drew a long, gleaming knife from a concealed pocket in its dress, rasped: “We’ll force our way through!”
“You’re armed?” Javik short-stepped back several paces and pulled his own pistol.
“For
your
protection,” the meckie replied, gluing its gaze on Javik’s weapon.
“Sheathe that!” Javik barked, glancing at two clients who were picking pears on the opposite side of the grove. “I have a better idea!”
The meckie hesitated, then followed the command with obvious reluctance.
Javik bolstered his pistol and grabbed the meckie by one arm. “Come with me,” he said.
Madame Bernet did not reply, seemed to think for a moment before accompanying Javik. As they approached the clients, Javik saw that both were men, and he recognized the puffy facial features and vacuous expressions of mongolism. One of the clients, who was quite tall and fat, smiled as he extended a pear to Madame Bernet.
Perplexed, Madame Bernet glanced at Javik.
“Take it,” Javik said. “And smile.”
Madame Bernet obeyed, then looked confused as she stood there with the piece of fruit in her mechanical grasp.
Javik addressed the shorter client: “We need your smocks,” he said. “Okay?”
Unresponsive, the client stared back with wide open, childlike eyes. He extended a pear, which Javik accepted.
“They don’t understand,” Madame Bernet said, reaching into a deep pocket with her free hand. “My way now, Captain?”
“Wait,” Javik said. “I’m going to try one more thing first.” He removed a shiny coin from his tunic pocket and offered it to the shorter client. The mongoloid smiled, reached for the object. Javik pulled it back gently, touched the man’s smock and said, “Trade.” Then Javik offered him the coin again and pulled at the smock. “Trade,” he repeated.
On the fourth attempt, the client understood. He removed his smock and handed it to Javik in exchange for the coin. Madame Bernet followed the same procedure to obtain the other smock. Entirely naked now, the mongoloids stood smiling as they examined their shiny new treasures.
“I don’t see any guards yet,” Javik said, “but you can bet they’re around somewhere.” They threw on the green smocks over their own uniforms.
“Hide in the crowd,” Javik said. “We’ll get the smocks off when the Shamrock Five’s in sight.”
But when they reached the monorail terminal, the meckie stopped abruptly. “Go no farther,” it said tersely.
“What?” Javik said, turning to confront Madame Bernet.
“I sense . . . danger,” Madame Bernet said.
“You have a short-circuit,” Javik snapped. “This is the only way!”
But the meckie stood rigidly, with both hands thrust into the pockets of its smock.
“Do as you please,” Javik said. “I’ll go on without you!”
The meckie stared straight ahead at an indeterminate point in the distance. Its expression was resolute.
“Damned thing can’t respond,” Javik cursed as he rolled away. “Just like the Bu-Industry meckies. The minute an unusual situation arises . . .”
Javik reached the terminal building and pushed his way through a noisy crowd of clients. It smelled of human waste and perspiration inside, and Javik spent a long hour pressed against other bodies before he was able to board a railcar for a standing-room-only ride.
Minutes later, the car came to a stop in the Hub. To Javik’s surprise, he saw hundreds of black-uniformed security men standing outside next to long, clear glassplex units. Javik did not see a single client in the bunch. As the car squeaked to a stop, he realized the reason for this. The security men manually connected glassplex hall-tubes to each door of the monorail car, thus forcing all clients to follow a controlled exit path.