All My Sins Remembered (25 page)

“I suppose you’re right.” He touched the thumb and grimaced. “Could we get some ice for this?”

“Sure. Let’s move into the kitchen.” He picked up both cups and led the way to the door; worked the latch with his little finger.

Applegate walked behind him, studying his thumb morosely. Suddenly he looked up. “Wait!”

Otto turned as he was opening the door, and out of the corner of his eye saw that someone was standing in the corridor.

Sister Caarla, white-faced, holding a pistol with both hands. When Applegate yelled, she fired, point-blank.

Otto’s “Hey!” was drowned out by the loud
snap
. Hot sting in his chest. He threw both cups of wine at her, in reflex; thrust his right hand in the pocket, slid the safety off, saw that she wasn’t going to fire any more. She’d dropped the gun and was trying to cram her fist into her mouth.

He looked down at his robe and saw the ugly spatter of blood on his chest. When he breathed, it gurgled and foamed. Two sucking chest wounds in one year, some kind of record. He leaned against the door jamb. Applegate grabbed his elbow and held him up. “I’m sorry—in all the excitement I forgot.”

“Oh, that’s all right.” He felt light-headed, detached. “Let me sit down.” He coughed politely into his hand; wiped a bright smear on his robe.

“Do—do you want me to give you last rites?”

“I’m not Catholic.” Otto started to laugh and stopped abruptly, coughing. “Why don’t you get me a doctor instead? Someone who knows how to work the doctor machine?”

Applegate ran down the hall. Sister Caarla was crying. “I didn’t mean to, I couldn’t hear through the door, you surprised me, he said you might be dangerous—”

“Christ and Buddha,” Otto mumbled. “Will you please shut up?”

8.

Asleep, awake, he remembered a few things:

Trying to tell Caarla not to let him lie down.

Falling over and choking.

Waking up with the doctor machine sealed over his thorax; Applegate and Desmond arguing about something.

A S’kang hovering over his face. A wall caving in, then reassembling itself, then caving in again.

Fuzzy image of the infirmary cell, rippling, turning hard-edged.

Applegate: “Are you awake, Joshua?”

Otto coughed and shook his head. The Joshua persona was gone; he was Otto McGavin, encased in alien plastic, a dull ache in his chest. “I guess so.”

“How do you feel?”

“I don’t know yet. All right. It was a new lung, good thing she missed my heart.” Coughing spasm.

“Caarla was hysterical. We had to give her a sedative.” Otto stopped coughing but didn’t say anything. “Will she be in trouble?”

After a while he answered. “No. You’ll both have to have your memories cropped. Desmond, too, I guess. But there won’t be any repercussions; you were just doing your job, too enthusiastically. You might even get a medal and not be able to remember what it was for.”

Otto groped beside the bed and found the button that raised his bed to a sitting position. “How long have I been out?”

“About half a day.” He checked his watch. “Fourteen hours.”

“Have you been in touch with your bureau?”

“Yes… but I didn’t tell them anything about you.”

“That was smart.” He straightened the tubes going into his arm and chest. “Well, let’s
go
back to the beginning. You joined the Magdalenists eleven years ago. Were you working for BERD?”

“Yes. I was a research assistant on Earth.”

“Why did they choose you?”

“I’d been a priest, a Jesuit. They shuffled some records to make it look like I was still in the order.”

“All right.” Otto rubbed his eyes. “This is what I don’t understand. My bureau has access to everything, I mean
everything
, in Confederación files. But they didn’t know about you, or Caarla, or Desmond. How is that possible?”

“I don’t think I should tell you.”

“Come on, now. You can either tell me everything or finish the job Caarla started. Or face brainwipe.”

Applegate looked at the floor and exhaled loudly. “Well, it’s simple. We only report verbally, straight to our department head. Our salaries were paid in advance, ten years’ worth, and hidden in an appropriation for a new building.”

Otto digested that. “Because you knew there was a Charter violation involved.”

“We suspected it.”

“And you’re accessories to it now.”

“I suppose.” He looked up, defiant. “It was worth it, though. No matter what happens to us.”

“You really think so.”

“We got what we came for,” he said. “We know now that they actually do change the planet’s orbit; we know that they do it by converting matter directly to energy.

“The preliminary figures are exciting. Brother Judson took core samples from the walls in the winter room, to test for permeability. Turns out that they can process more than two kilograms of mass per hour. That’s on the order of 10
¹⁷
joules.”

“I’m not a scientist. What does that mean?”

“About…” he gazed at the ceiling, “fifty million gigawatts. Fifty billion megawatts. Fifty trillion kilowatts. Enough to orbit a ten-ton shuttle, and then some.”

“That doesn’t sound like much, compared to moving a planet.”

“It’s enough—with a thousand of them working, they only have to do it a few minutes a day over the fifty-year dormancy.”

“If all of them can do it. Balaam’s says he can’t.”

“You can’t take anything they say at face value. They removed a lot of mass from that wall, as you found out.”

“What did you do about the wall?”

“Nothing permanent; we have the roof jacked up until we make a decision. Probably just let it collapse. We shouldn’t need the winter room any more.”

“You’re stopping the experiments, of course.”

“Well, that’s up to the bureau—obviously, Balaam’s is easier to communicate with after having been frozen and thawed out. That may be true of the others, too. If there’s no Charter violation, we’ll continue, but with proper equipment and a lot more funding.”

Otto cocked his head at Applegate. “No Charter violation? It’s
fatal!
Balaam’s said he was going to die.”

“That’s what it said. But we checked it out with the diagnostic machine, and there’s nothing wrong… the creature’s just disoriented. Delusional.”

“When is your bureau going to decide?”

“They didn’t say. They had to check with Earth.”

“Let me give you-a piece of advice.” Otto toyed with the tube leading into his chest. “Get on the side of the angels. There’s a clear-cut Article Three violation here. When the dust settles, a lot of people are going to wind up in a rubber room. Or in the tank, for brainwipe. You had better act outraged, whether you are or not.”

“You don’t understand—”

“I understand the Charter watchdog committee. And it won’t just be my testimony against you. Dr. Jones and, probably, all of her colleagues—including another TBII agent—and most of the people in this order.

“To exploit the S’kang, you’ll have to demonstrate that not only will you not be harming them, but that the exploitation will result in some long-term benefit to their culture. That will be some job.”

“You may underestimate my bureau.”

“Bureaus.” Otto laughed good-naturedly. “Let me pose for you a hypothetical situation.

“Suppose you went down the hill and searched just north of the middle of the landing strip, and found a government-is-sue high-powered ultraviolet laser buried there. Suppose you made an intuitive leap and decided that I had used that laser for TBII business, to kill that woman.”

“What are you—”

“I’m talking about bureaus. Suppose you reported this homicide to your bureau. Which of us would get off this planet alive?”

“You can’t threaten me.”

“I think I just have.”

Applegate stared at the tube. “I could reach over and—”

“You try it. I’ll tear off your head and beat you to death with it.” Henry flinched. “Seriously, you’d never—” A knock at the door interrupted him. Applegate unlocked it.

It was Desmond. “Henry, we’ve got a scrambled call from Epsilon Indii.” He looked at Otto. “You have a visitor. Sire.”

Applegate left and Balaam’s shuffled in.

“Hello, not-Joshua. Did they hurt you for trying to help me?”

“Not really. It was an accident. Besides, it doesn’t look like I helped you very much.”

“When you told me to go away I should have gone farther. Instinct is powerful, though; that’s the place I normally stop for winter.”

“I’m just sorry for you. I’ll be all right, and your friends should be safe. How long do you think you have?”

“I don’t know. This has never happened before. Years, probably. Ten, twenty, fifty… what’s the difference? What can you do in fifty years?”

“Well… for one thing, you could help the other S’kang. Would you come back to Earth with me?”

“Is there anything to eat there? I don’t think Earth insects would nourish me.”

“They’d have to arrange something. It’s no problem, though.”

“All right. It might be interesting; besides, I won’t have anyone to talk to here. Unless they wake up more.”

“They won’t do that. The S’kang are protected by the Charter.”

“As we always were.” The door opened quietly and Theo slipped in. “Prescott?” he whispered.

“Ay-firmative.”

“Leave us alone for a minute, please.” The S’kang went out and Theo eased the door shut. He sat down next to Otto’s bed, and sighed.

“Almost over, Colonel. Your identity’s spilled, but I don’t think there’s any harm done.”

“Applegate.”

“Of course. He called his supervisor on Indii. I monitored it and called our own people there. It’s taken care of… the only people who know who you are are in this building.”

“Applegate just got a call from Epsilon Indii.”

“Good. They’re on the job.”

“You had the supervisor killed?”

“Killed or held. I left it to their discretion.”

“‘Their discretion.’” Otto absorbed this, and added it to a nagging feeling. “Wait. You aren’t really a Class 2 operator; you aren’t Meade Johanssen.”

Theo laughed. “That’s right, Colonel… Otto. I’m Ozwald Jakobbson.”

“I’ve heard of you. You’ve been a prime, what, seven or eight years?”

“Eight. Most of them here. ”

“No way to get rank.”

“I don’t know. I’m an acting colonel.”

Otto shook his head. “This whole planet gives me an Alice-in-Wonderland feeling. Did they make you acting colonel so you could override me?”

“Well, I do have time-on-assignment.”

“Which takes precedence over time-in-grade; I’m aware of that—”

Applegate wandered in through the door, studying a sheet of paper. He looked up suddenly. “Who are you?”

Jakobbson’s hand was in his pocket. “Friend of Father Joshua’s. I didn’t know he was sick.”

Can’t tell the players without a program
, Otto thought. “Theo Kutcher, Father Applegate. Theo’s a Skinner Baptist from the archeologists. We’ve had some enjoyable arguments.”

A small noise, a click, came from Jakobbson’s pocket. Applegate didn’t seem to hear it.

“Did he tell you what happened?” Applegate said slowly.

“Yes. Terrible accident.” Jakobbson stepped to where he stood between Applegate and McGavin, at the edge of Otto’s bed. He reached behind himself, as if to scratch his back, and dropped two nose filters on Otto’s pillow.

Faint whiff of new-mown hay and rubber: pyrazine tetrachloride. Otto stuffed the filters in his nose.

“What was that?” Applegate leaned to look around Jakobbson. “What are you doing, Joshua?”

“Thought I had to sneeze.”

“Something’s going on here.” Applegate drew his pocket laser and trained it on Jakobbson. “How did you get in here?”

“Walked in.”

“That… smell…” Otto couldn’t see, but he heard the pistol hit the floor. Then the soft thump of Applegate’s heavy body. Jakobbson smiled and pulled out a remote detonator.

Otto was careful to breathe through his nose. “You put it in the central heating system?”

He nodded. “Main duct. I already took care of the archeologists. Everybody on the planet’s out for at least a day.”

“Paralyzed.”

“Yeah, the pyrazine was all I had. I’d rather they were unconscious.”

“What happens when they recover?”

“They’ll be light years away. So will we. And as many S’kang as we can cart onto the ship.”

“I’m a little behind. What ship?”

“It’s a passenger liner, two hundred places.” He checked his watch. “Be here in another two hours.”

“A commercial liner?”

“Yes, just out of drydock. Supposedly, it’s on a shakedown systems check. It’ll take us to an uninhabited rock that’s similar to this one. Drop us off and go back to Indii.”