The Credulity Nexus (37 page)

He brought his
arm back up and started moving again. An electric spike of pain
drove itself into his shoulder. He gasped and hung onto the rungs
as his head swam. This would be a very bad time to lose
consciousness, even for a moment.

“
The only good thing about this damned
climb,” he shouted, through clenched teeth, “is that it's made my
headache seem like a dear old friend. How I long for the time when
that was all I had to worry about.”

“
Just shut up and climb,” Burleigh
shouted.

The big cop
had barely spoken and was well ahead of Rik, but his breathing was
ragged and clearly audible down the long, echoing tube they were
in. Rik hoped the big guy didn't fall off. He was pretty sure he
didn't have the strength to catch him, and that meant just getting
out of the way as he went past.

“
Rik?” It was Freymann again.

Something in
her voice made him stop again and look down. She wasn't climbing
any more, just hanging on to the ladder with an arm looped around
one rung.

“
I'm not going to make it to the top, Rik.
I can barely hold on, my arms are so weak.”

“
I'm coming down.”

“
No! Don't you dare.”

Rik had
started back but now he stopped again. What could he do, anyway? He
couldn't carry her. He barely had the strength to keep going
himself. Could he perhaps help tie her to the ladder so she could
rest for a while? He began the descent, but again she shouted
up.

“
If you take one more step down here, I
swear to God I'll shoot you.” He stopped and she went on in a
softer tone. “Just get up there and do whatever the hell you're
planning to do. I'll be fine. I'll see you on the way
down.”

He stared down
at her, trying to be sure she was telling the truth and she was
really OK. But the light in the shaft was dim, and he couldn't be
certain. Reluctantly, he turned away and began to climb again.
Above him, he could only just make out Burleigh's dark shape, but
the slow, regular clang of the man's boots on the rungs and the
heavy wheeze of his breathing were clear and steady.

Rik lowered
his head and reached up, quickly settling into his own laboured
pace.

-oOo-

By the time he
reached the top of the shaft, Rik was shattered. He crawled out
through a hatchway into a large, low-ceilinged shed, barely
glancing around at it before rolling onto his back on the concrete
floor. The floor against his back was wonderfully cold, although he
supposed that would soon turn into yet another source of
discomfort. His clothes were soaked with sweat, and each breath he
drew was a new pain. His heart hammered so hard it felt like it
would shake itself loose. His lungs just weren't big enough, it
seemed. They stretched themselves to their limits, but they just
couldn't find enough air to satisfy his exhausted, quivering
body.

“
Are you there?” he asked between breaths,
so tired he couldn't turn his head to look for the
lieutenant.

“
Yeah, I'm here. Take it easy. The ship is
still ten thousand klicks up.” Burleigh sounded bone weary,
too.

Rik lay still
and let his breathing slow down to a heavy pant. When he finally
made the effort to sit up, he cried out as the pain from his legs
and arms hit him.

The shed was
big. Big enough for a large number of troops to muster. There were
electric carts lined up along the walls, on charge, and racks of
weapons and riot gear. The entrance to the ramp was cordoned off,
and in the wall opposite were two vehicle-sized airlocks. Near them
was a traditional, hexagonal viewing dome set into one corner of
the thick concrete wall. There was another in the opposite corner
of the rectangular building so that between them, they gave a view
right around at the dusty grey terrain outside. Banks of controls
within each cupola would allow someone to operate remote vehicles
and equipment outside the building. If Rik was to get a signal out,
it would be best to be inside one of the cupolas.

He pushed
himself off the ground and onto his feet. For a while he stood,
swaying, not daring to move because he knew his trembling legs
wouldn't hold him if he tried walking. But time was running out.
Destruction was coming down out of the sky towards him, and there
was only one way to stop it.

“
Where do you think you're going?” Burleigh
asked.

Something in
the man's tone made Rik look around sharply. The big cop was
sitting on a crate, not five metres away. His expression was grim,
and the gun he had aimed at Rik's chest was a Colt .45.

Rik was too
tired to work out what was happening. For a moment, he just stood
and watched the lieutenant and his long-barrelled revolver. His
mind just couldn't take in the sudden shift in reality, so he set
off for the cupola again.

A shot
ricocheted off the concrete near Rik's feet.

Rik whirled to
face Burleigh, suddenly furious, angry not just at the lieutenant
for doing whatever the hell he was doing, but at the whole cursed
universe that had put him into this damned situation, and then
thrown every outrageous obstacle it could find at him to stop him
getting out of it.

His legs gave
way and he fell to the ground. Pain shot through his left shoulder,
which until that moment had been blessedly numb. His useless legs,
the pain in his shoulder, even the gritty floor that stung his
knees – all of them added to his anger.

“
What the fucking hell do you think you're
doing, you fucking moron?” he bellowed. “Don't you know what's
going on, here?”

Burleigh shook
his head; his eyes would not meet Rik's.

“
I can't let you do it, Rik. I guess you've
got some way of stopping the ship. Some sort of radio device, I'm
guessing, not tied into the Net, so you couldn't use it through
your cogplus. Something without a strong signal. Something that
probably fits in your pocket.” He watched Rik, perhaps hoping for a
confirmation. None came. “So I want you to take it out of your
pocket and hand it over to me now.”

Rik's brain
was slowly revving into gear, but he still couldn't make much sense
of what Burleigh was doing. “You know you'll die too?” he said, his
voice almost a sob as he fought against blind fury and frustration.
He was just talking out loud, trying to get his thoughts moving.
“What could they possibly give you...?”

“
They've got my parents, Rik. My mom and
dad.”

“
Your parents?” It didn't seem credible
that the hard-faced soldier pointing a gun at him had parents.
Surely men like Burleigh just sprang, fully-formed, from the
rock.

“
The trigger, or whatever it is,” Burleigh
said. “Hand it over.”

“
Why don't you just shoot me and take it?”
He struggled back onto his feet. He was damned if he'd sit there
and let anyone shoot him like a wounded animal.

“
I don't want to shoot you,
Rik.”

“
But you'll kill me and everyone else here?
Well, fuck you!” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the
cylinder. It was a small radio trigger, just as Burleigh had
guessed. It had a safety cap that had to be pushed off, and then
the little red button at the end would be ready to
press.

Rik had taken it from the armoury
aboard
The
Phenomenon of Man
when
he armed himself on the run back from Omega Point. The explosives
he found there that day had just been too tempting. He had taken
one of the remote detonators and primed it, inserted it into a
chunk of plastique and hid it away out of sight. There was enough
explosive in that room to blow the ship in half. It seemed like a
good precaution at the time. A bargaining chip, in case he needed
one. He hadn't supposed it might save his life.

All Rik had to
do was flip the cap and press that little red button. It would take
him – what? A second? One and a half? How long would it take
Burleigh to see what he was doing and squeeze off a shot? Half a
second? The maths didn't work out in Rik's favour. However, if it
came to it...

“
Tell me about your parents,” he
said.

“
What?”

“
Your parents. Where do they
live?”

“
Shut up, Rik.”

“
What about your father? Is he a big man
like you? I bet he's proud of his son, keeping the peace, helping
to build something out here. Was he a soldier too? Fought in the
Oil Wars, I bet.” Rik had little idea where he was going with this
but, to his amazement, he saw tears forming in Burleigh's eyes.
“You're a good man, Burleigh. I saw the way your troops looked at
you, the way they snapped to obey when you gave an order. They
respect you. They look up to you. Hell, they even like you. I could
see it.”

Burleigh's
anger flared. With an inarticulate roar, he advanced on Rik, gun
raised, rage burning behind his tears. “Give me the fucking
trigger!”

Rik stood his
ground. “Go to hell, Burleigh. If you want it, you've got to shoot
me. If you shoot me, you'd better pray I don't survive.”

Burleigh
stepped closer, pushing the cold barrel of the Colt hard against
Rik's temple. The cop's face was just inches from his own.

“
They're my parents!” he shouted. “There
are killers in their house. In their house! Just waiting for a
signal to shoot them both. What else can I do? Tell me! What the
fuck else can I do?”

There were
tears streaming down the cop's face now. The eyes that glared into
Rik's were filled with pain.

“
You can do the right thing, Burleigh. It's
all any of us can ever do. It's the only thing that keeps the
Lanhams and the Cordells of this world from having the whole damn
thing on a plate. People like you – and me – doing the right
thing.”

The anger
drained suddenly from Burleigh's face, leaving only pleading.
“Jesus, Rik.”

“
Even if Cordell, or whoever it is, let
them go – which he won't – what do you think they'd feel about all
the people who had to die to keep them alive? How do you think
they'd feel about their big, heroic son?”

Burleigh
stepped back with a yell, the gun quivering in his hand, his teeth
clenched in a grimace of rage and indecision, his eyes glaring at
Rik. Then, like his strings had been cut, he slumped. His eyes
closed and his arm fell. “The Wild West,” he said, following some
train of thought Rik could only guess at. He threw his gun across
the room. “It should have been simpler than this,” he said, but Rik
was no longer listening.

He sprinted
for the cupola, flipping the cap on the trigger as he went. His
legs gave way again, and he staggered and almost fell, but managed
to make it all the way on his feet. For a wild moment he scanned
the skies above him, looking for the bright pink exhaust of a
fusion torch, but there was nothing but blackness beyond the tinted
windows. He stabbed down at the button.

Lanham, riding
to his death in a borrowed body, listened to Mozart through the
cabin speakers. Even with his emotional centres tuned to zero,
there was a simple elegance of pattern and ratio to the music that
made the piece perfect for these last moments. If Mozart could have
been rescued from death, what music would he have written with the
whole resources of Omega Point to augment that brilliant mind?

It was a
question Lanham often asked himself. It bothered him that there
were no artists or academics in Omega Point. Artists and academics
died poor. Even Mozart had died poor. It was a sad fact that the
economics of the situation demanded that you needed to be rich to
live forever. In Omega Point, the home of the elite, transhumans
were all business people, gangsters, dictators...

He should
start a program of scholarships. A trust. A body like the Nobel
Prize Committee, which would seek out the greatest artists and
scientists and reward them with the offer of immortality. He
wondered idly whether he should transmit his resolve back to his
original, but it was unnecessary. If he had had the thought, then
so would that other Lanham. The one that was not about to die.

A loud thump
interrupted his reverie. It felt as though the ship had been hit
with a giant hammer. He looked at the displays. A hull breach? An
explosion? He had felt a brief acceleration, not along his planned
course, but sideways.

Another
explosion shook the ship, a more violent, destructive blast this
time. Immediately, everything turned to chaos. He was flung around
in his seat. Forces that would have smashed a human body threw him
in all directions before settling into a steady pressure. He was
spinning. A last glance at the instruments before the power died
showed him the ship was a wreck and tumbling off it's course. The
fusion drive sputtered out its last high-energy exhaust in all
directions, like a giant Catherine wheel.

He was in the
dark. Total blackness. Straining against his harness as the spin
tried to throw him out of his seat. There was no sound. The air had
gone, he supposed. No more Mozart.

He dug around
in his internal files and found a copy of the piece. The music
filled his mind again. Perfect. Beautiful. He hyped up his own
internal clock to triple speed so that he could play the piece more
quickly and it would still sound normal. That way, he would have
time to hear it all before he hit the ground.

The infirmary
in Heinlein was a busy place. The panic caused by the quarantine
had left quite a few injured – some of them with gunshot wounds. It
surprised Rik that Maria managed to find him in all the hubbub. It
wasn't as if the little hospital had lucies to spare for showing
visitors around.