Space Eater (10 page)

The door closed and I weaved my way back to my own bare cell, head packed full of confusions about pain and people and C2H5OH. Door bolted, clothes off, mouth rinsed, light out. There I was again, alone in the dark with cold feet: but in other places I felt warmer than I had.

Nine

The morning of the last day might have been the worst wakening of my life, or it might not. My heartbeat sounded up in the head
thud thud thud
as if some lunatic surgeon had rerouted a few major arteries that way. The thin laboratory smell of Wui’s liberated spirits was still oozing through me and out of the pores, stale in my sweat and stale like some cathouse girl’s perfume from throat to nose (that must have been the gin, disgusting stuff). Cold water on the face; across the corridor to shower in more cold water that was gritty from the Tunnel well. Memory full of blank spots, rubble and craters. Fumes were still boiling up from my stomach or wherever as I went to breakfast, the drumbeat in my head playing a slow-march
thud thud thud
. As for the thought of food, I had what the textbook calls a strategic delayed committal situation. I hoped Wui, in particular, was feeling worse than me.

There was a new atmosphere in the mess. No one actually pointed the finger at the poor suckers who were going to be eaten by this machine with a circular gullet 1.926643 centimeters across (Ellan rather liked to quote the “precise figure,” which seemed to sum her up). Nobody even stared at us for any length of time, but there was a barrage of quick glances like sniper shots. At one table: Wui, Ellan, Rossa, myself. Some faces were missing from the room; Birch never ate with mere staff if he could help it, Ngabe (we guessed) felt the hangman shouldn’t breakfast with his subjects—not that that bothered the AP techs—and Patel was still happy on Ellan’s floor where she’d left him. Others were already down in the lab warming up the equipment. Might as well have stayed in bed myself, since I got there to be reminded that by doctor’s request I wasn’t allowed food.

“Technically you shouldn’t have had anything for twenty-four hours before the operation,” said Wui, poking lumpy porridge around his bowl. “Technically, mind you, I doubt that calling this ‘food’ would really stand up in a court of inquiry. What fun they could have with the case. ‘I put it to you that this is not porridge but radioactive mud from the eastern-NA disaster area.’ ‘Objection! R/A mud is sterile but Tunnel rations positively crawl with life ...’” He went on so brightly that I was sure he felt lousy; for once he didn’t actually eat much.

I was allowed one (1) large glass of water and Rossa the same. I couldn’t tell from her refrozen face whether she’d have eaten if there’d been anything to eat; but then I couldn’t tell whether I’d have been able to finish a plate of r/a mud (yes, there was a sort of likeness) either. Only Ellan seemed much as usual, eating steadily and chattering about mathematical affinities between AP minigates and singularity points, and a remote control exploration program she’d mentioned a couple of times before: it was all pretty impenetrable. “The
discoveries
we’ve made!” she said. “I know, I’ve expounded all this before; I only wish I could tell you more details—come back safely and perhaps I can. Provided, of course, they don’t shut down Tunnel. The shutdown proposal is the most incredible folly. The potential of the minigate alone might be sufficient to take us back to the so-called golden age of the twentieth century. If you only look at the general-relativistic implications...”

I finished my glass of water, whose chill squeezed me hard and painfully somewhere in the back of the brain.
Thud thud thud
. “I’ve heard a lot about implications,” I said. “The way they seem to figure it is, you can do just about anything you like with your minigate and it’s all wonderful until someone builds one wrong and gets a nullbomb instead, or until someone lets the far gateway drift into a sun and gets a beam that slices Earth apart, or if not a sun then maybe, what was it you were saying, a black hole...”

Ellan winced. “Yes, Ken. Let’s not dwell on that aspect of the matter. My position is that of the pure researcher who takes no moral standpoint on her discoveries; but yes, the hazards are too great for general release of data.”

Rossa leaned forward. “Tell me, Cathy, do you take a moral standpoint on the small formality we’re going through later today?”

Wui and Ellan looked at each other. “Just following orders,” he mumbled.

“The matter is one of expediency and we have chosen to accept the decisions of Central Command,”

said Ellan very stiffly: “I don’t know any other answer. Nor do I believe we should allow emotional or political factors into our thinking. It’s so important to maintain the pure, scientific viewpoint.” A pause, while she licked her lips. “I wouldn’t have volunteered for this. I do wish you luck.”

People were drifting out of the mess now, all of them giving us a backward look as they went. “1500

hours, isn’t it?” I said to fill an expanding silence. Wui looked at the wall clock and nodded. “Yes. 0820

now. At 1400 we have a three-minute look through the gate to check Corvus clock sync and programming. Scrub up for Ngabe half an hour later if all’s OK, as it damn well should be. Ken goes on the table at 1500 sharp and we open the door for him at 1530, a ten-minute connection.”

“Even that is
absurdly
expensive in power terms,” Ellan put in. “With raw materials it was often easier to fire items through the gate by explosives than hold it open to use the pusher piston and pour in energy to flatten the potential slope...”

“Gather ye budgets while ye may,” said Wui. “Tomorrow the closing order may arrive ... Thirty-second opening at 1600 to check FACTOTUM has decoupled the tank and connected number two. Rossa on the table 1700 and through half an hour after, if all goes well. This is the fullest schedule we’ve ever had for the AP lab, but there shouldn’t be any problems.”

“_How_ many regeneration tanks are there? I seem to remember someone remarking that you acquired two and broke one,” said Rossa.

“Ah,” said Wui, “but with great furtiveness and illicitness we’ve programmed FACTOTUM to mass produce tanks as required. Can’t synthesize that disgusting fluid, worse luck, but there’s plenty in stock.

We now have three tanks here, two built by FACTOTUM while we were testing it, and two out there manufactured on the spot. All in the interests of speedy transit, no taking it in turns.”

I made a bit of a face at the thought. “What about testing the ones we’ll be using?”

“You’re going to be the first person passing that way. You test ‘em ... Our test models work fine and they’re identical: one of the Security goons let himself be knocked about, you know they get bored down here and start fights. We put him in a tank and he came out good as new. Better than new. It seems he was terribly proud of an old scar down his cheek, nasty thing from eye to chin that he’d picked up way back. Now there’s nothing there for him to boast about, poor fellow. The tanks work fine.”

“The tanks
here
work fine,” I said not too loudly.

Wui grinned and slid off into something about a Central rep come to deliver an inspirational message to us. “Address before the battle, that sort of thing, stir your hearts to noble efforts.” And could we be back in good old room 17 by 0900?

“Couldn’t they send us a letter?” I said. Wui grinned. Yes and no.

“See you later,” he said. “Both of you: we might not get to talk again. This is a tip. You’ve had all the official briefings now; I just want to say that
should
you move to the contingency plan with the demonstration MT, it’s fantastically important that you monitor the demonstration personally from the Corvus station and nowhere else. That’s more than I should say. Bye for now—“

He moved away quickly. With time to kill, we went back to our rooms wondering: I drank some more water and tried to decide whether the stuff in the room tap tasted worse than in the mess, or maybe the other way around.

0900. Room 17. On the dais in front of the film screen they’d put a very expensive-looking desk in real polished wood, and behind it was a man in a very expensive-looking uniform that tweaked at a memory of mine. Again there was a ragged row of seats, Birch and Wui and Ellan and Ngabe and Rossa and me.

Patel came in after us, looking like a prime candidate for the tank, and there were a couple of stray rankers from Security and Comm. The man on the dais drummed his fingers silently on the desk, over and over again, staring above everyone’s heads into the dimness at the back of the room.

Birch stood up, face sagging with what looked like boredom. “Marshal Julius Taggart, Central Command executive planning chief.” He snapped his fingers, and the man on the dais twitched, stood up and started to talk. Yes, it was Taggart, half a square meter of ribbon on his chest—and he was supposed to be the guy who ran things up at Central and even talked back to Comp. This showed the top brass took Tunnel seriously. But there was something just slightly odd about his voice.

He said: “Citizens. It is a great honor to address you today on the eve of yet another of the difficult and often dangerous missions by means of which the UN Special Force maintains order in Europe and environs. I will not detain you long. I merely wish, on behalf of the Central Strategic Command group which I have the honor to lead, to express our warm appreciation for the constant dedication and commitment with which you, and other members of both the civil and military arms of the Force as it stands today, have carried out and will continue to carry out the necessary tasks, no matter how hazardous or complex, which help us maintain peace, law and order. Central Strategic Command finds itself in a proud and lonely, and often a difficult, position, in that we must plan in detail every aspect of the missions mounted under our aegis; be assured, my friends, that the largest electronic computer system remaining to us has processed the plan of action you are about to embark upon and has minimized hazard, maximized efficiency, in pursuit of that old goal of the greatest good of the greatest number. We have forged the plan of action and we have complete and unswerving faith in your ability to carry it out.

We have given you the tools and we know you can finish the job. Without your support and that of others like you, Central Strategic Command would at this moment in time be helpless against the rising seas of anarchy. Cit_graaaak_ -- “

He froze with the
graaaak
. He flickered, and so did his desk.

“—zens, the Central Strategic Command and the Special Force in its entirety salutes you. We know you will not fail. Go on to victory!

“Thank you for your attention.” The thing on the dais bowed very formally and sat down. Birch tried to get some applause going, and even squeezed some dregs from Patel and a slow-clapping Wui. I heard Ellan say something to Ngabe about a power load test. After that
graaaak
and flicker ... I should have guessed it when we got in here without having our nostrils fluoroscoped and fillings removed for security inspection. Taggart didn’t waste his time giving pep talks even to dynamite projects like Tunnel. Taggart simply had himself holographed, and more fool you if you thought it was the real thing. Now the image had settled back as before, the drumming fingers in an endless loop, synchronizing with the fading
thud
thud thud
somewhere behind my temples.
Hell
, I realized—

Rossa whispered it to me first. “I do really think he could have managed a personalized holo for something as important as we’re
supposed
to be. That has to be an all-purpose speech for whipping up enthusiasm anywhere, anytime, any mission.” A tiny snort that might have been a giggle choked off at birth. “Graaaak!”

I nodded hard and fast to show I’d thought that far too, but wished I hadn’t as the
thud thud thud
slipped into phase with the nods and my head told me it wanted to fall off. Every time I talked to Rossa I felt more and more that we were some sort of conspirators ... well, the system was screwing us, or was going to, for the greatest good of everybody except us (thanks for that line, Marshal). Maybe some conspiring would be a good idea if we could find anything to conspire about in this damnable fog of plotting.

More physical checkups followed. We were weighed and measured again while Ngabe grumbled some of the same grumbles. This time his medic/6 was about, fetching and carrying anything Ngabe wanted, but not apparently allowed to do anything of the work. He was a dim-looking man with small eyes, and when standing still he hummed something I couldn’t quite hear. We never got to know his name.

The midday meal was another glass of water. My stomach felt as though they’d connected it via one of their little MT gates to a supply of good hard vacuum. Rossa gnawed at her lower lip in between sips: I could tell that because she gnawed just to the point of pain, and little pinpoint pains were flashing on and off in my own lip. “You’re biting your lip,” I told her when I’d worked it out.

“So I am.” The lip bulged as she ran her tongue around the inside. “Sorry. I do this sometimes. At least my migraines don’t trouble me
too
much; I do hope they won’t trouble you either...”

Wui looked up from a plate of soya chunks that smelled a damn sight more tasty and attractive than the same dish yesterday and the day before and the day before that. “Did I hear a word or two that might be classified, my children?”

“No,” I said. “Tell me, Rossa, doesn’t it get a mite confusing with you and all those others in CommAux transmitting away. Should think I’d be picking up white noise from all those inputs.” What would a white noise of pain be like? Like napalm all over?

“I don’t know whether that part is classified ... no, I don’t see how they can tell you some of it and not the rest. The sensitizer is, well, personalized. We give RNA samples, and there’s a terribly creaky old organic-synth robot that replicates the stuff...”

“_I_ see. Your very own private coded dope, none other is genuine. Just for me and somebody else back home, here. I wonder who. That another classified thing,Mick y?Mick y?”