Black Hull (10 page)

“Above the fresh ruffles of the surf,
bright striped urchins flay each other with sand. They have contrived a
conquest for shell shucks, and their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed
gaily digging and scattering. And in answer to their treble interjections the
sun beats lightning on the waves, the waves fold thunder on the sand; and could
they hear me I would tell them: O brilliant kids, frisk with your dog, fondle
your shells and sticks, bleached by time and the elements; but there is a line
you must not cross nor ever trust beyond it. Spry cordage of your bodies to
caresses. Too lichen-faithful from too wide a breast. The bottom of the sea is
cruel.”

She eyed him in confusion.

An A for effort.

“What does it mean?” she finally said.

“I have no idea. It’s about the ocean, I
think.”

“I’ve never seen a water ocean,” she
said.

“You should. They’re beautiful.” Mick
waited for a cue.

“Maybe I will,” she said, standing up.

“It’s cold on this planet—the ship is
cold,” he said.

“Cold?” she said, eyeing him
mercilessly. Her face wore the expression she’d had in gym, when she’d
dominated him upon the mat.

“Can you turn the heat up?”

She ignored his request, walking to him,
grabbing his back and pulling him into her. She put the strength of her body
into her mouth, sharing it with him, tugging him into the room. Mick’s hands
groped down to her legs, lifting her silken cloak. His exploration angered her,
and she grunted, throwing him down into the couch. Mick watched her transform, felt
the beast above him overtake his body: he melted into her as a violet blends
its odor with a rose. Harried breaths pushed steam as they offered up their
warmth. A cold green frost thickened upon the porthole: it was the eye of the
icy abyss surrounding them, single witness to their appetites.  

“Get up, it’s time to go,” Sera said.
Mick turned over, looked around, registered his reality. The feeling of
Christmas morning leaped up in his soul:

I’m going home today. Real home, before
Karen slipped away. 

“Come on, do you want to get out of here
or what?” Sera said indifferently.

“Hell yes.” He dressed himself and
followed her out into the barren gloom of the green-frosted wasteland.

They entered Melbot’s lair to a shocking
sight: On the ground was GR, lifeless.

“GR!”

“Woman, you don’t move,” came a voice
from the corner. “Give me your keys.”

Out from an alcove of black stepped a
thin man in a spacesuit. He pointed a death pistol at Mick and Sera.

“Do it now!” he shouted.

“I have money, I’ll give you money,” she
replied calmly.

“I know you have money, I know
everything,” he said, nervous and angry.

Damn XJ and GR. Shouldn’t have left them
here. He tapped them for information.

“Where’s Melbot and XJ?” asked Sera.

“As dead as you’ll be if you don’t give
me your light-class keys and plastic,” he said.

“Hey, relax,” Mick interjected. The
robber fired his pistol at Sera, rocking her to the ground. Her right arm
fizzed hot air, her spacesuit losing pressure fast.

“Would you rather die? I’ll get what I
want just the same.”

Behind his helmglass, Mick saw giant
sunken rings around empty eyes.
He’s emaciated, the fire of death in him.
He’s not bluffing.

“Give him the keys Sera,” Mick said, his
heart sinking.

So close to home. I can taste her mouth.
See Christopher and Mick’s bunk beds. Hear their whines as I shut out the light
for bedtime. 
 

And this punk is going to try to keep me
here, stranded in fourteen. Forever away from my boys. Give me just one second
with his back turned—please god, just one second.

“Here,” she said, sliding her keys and
her UCD plastic across the floor.

“Good,” he said. “Alright, don’t freeze,
ya hear?” He kept his gun trained on them from a distance, sidestepping to the
exit. He turned and walked backwards up the ramp into the neon snow,
disappearing from sight.

“What a god damned joke—a cosmic game of
fuck with Mick,” Mick said. He sat down, rubbed his temples, watched Sera get
to her feet. She grabbed a sticky patch from her belt and covered the hole in
her suit.

“Three minutes from dead,” she said.
“XJ!” She ran into the next room.

“Mick,” GR said, coming to life
suddenly.

“You’re alive,” Mick said.

“I was saving my power until you and
Sera returned.”

“What happened?”

“Melbot asked us all about the Magnadraw
and Hoila we sold to Carner. The next thing we knew, he stopped talking
altogether. Remotely paralyzed.”

“Stopped talking?”

“I think he was controlled by a virus.
That awful man appeared, he’d been listening to everything. He shot his EMP at
XJ. He missed me. He didn’t realize.”

“Did Melbot get the T-jump prepared?”
Mick asked.

“He almost did,” GR answered. “It’s
nearly ready for you.”

Can I leave?
Two voices
again:
Of course you’re going to leave. Who cares about these pathetic
fortune seekers? Someone will be along eventually, scoop them up. They can
start saving again. Scrimp, save, and get to Utopia. Earn it, like I earned my
jump.

“So no money, and no T-jump,” grumbled
Mick, anger devouring his hope.

Melbot was fried, a direct hit. No parts
for a resurrection. Sera, XJ, and GR, between all of them, couldn’t program a
T-jump. It was too specialized a program. GR thought he could learn by mixing
enough data from Melbot’s computer station. He guaranteed Mick a jump accuracy
of eighty-five percent. What’s a bungled T-jump do? Mick had asked. Cells to
smithereens.

“You’d think it’d be as easy as punching
in the time and place, but the math is quite aggressive,” GR said. “But I
promise to keep trying. I am confident I can figure it out. Once XJ’s
processing power is joined with mine—oh, there you are! Thank goodness you are
okay!”  

“He’s lucky it wasn’t a direct hit. He’d
be like Melbot over there—a scrap of junk,” Sera said, pulling her
quarter-.hum-mounted father back into the room. GR travelled up the ramp to the
icy surface.

Mick watched XJ stirring to life, his
gears whining, sounding their antiquity.
Who’s she kidding? He is a scrap of
junk. Who keeps a thousand-something year old piece of hardware around? Put his
.hum on a memory stick and shoot him into space.
Months of strange
friendship gave rise to a jolt of sympathy:
He saved your life, cut him a
break.

“How’d this happen?” Mick asked XJ.

“He was here already, waiting for us. He
must have known we were coming.”

“Sera—he took the Cozon!” GR said from
atop the ramp.

“Of course he did, what do you think he
took my keys for—the pantry? Let’s go, we’re wasting time on this ice cube,”
she said.

“In what ship?” Mick replied.

“Melbot’s intersystem cruiser.”

“An intersystem cruiser?”

“I got it running. Let’s go. Or you can
stay here and work on Melbot, and report to me if you get him awake and
talking.”

The hell I’m staying on this cold waste.
But an intersystem cruiser can only go a fraction of the Cozon’s speed—what’s
she thinking? And if we don’t get him before he leaves the Bessel system, we’re
screwed.

“You’re sure you can’t run the jump?”
Mick asked GR. Sera stared incredulously at him and walked out of the room. XJ
followed her.

“I am quite sure I could do it Mick, if
only we had the right amount of time,” GR said.

“What kind of time do you need?”

“One to six weeks I suppose. Of course,
that depends upon Melbot’s database.”

“No instant training for this program?”

“Not for a T-jump. Unless you are very
desperate. Then we could give it a try. In fact, I rate our chances at fourteen
percent right now, without accessing his databanks. But you know what happens
when a jump goes awry.”

No—you didn’t give me the details: Is
the skin turned inside out, the guts released in a fountain? Do I transcend
time and space, and return to the hydrogen whence I came, so that stars can be
fueled, and in their furnaces my carbon reformed, reincarnating me a billion
years from now? What is lost at the time a man’s body fails him? Either
something or nothing. What did the twentieth century doctor Duncan MacDougal
measure in his six patients, on average—twenty-one grams that evaporate at
death? That proved people have souls, didn’t it? No, that kind of testing was
stopped before it proved anything; it was immoral to test for souls. That’s why
the experiments had stopped. Is each human so audacious—pretentious—to call himself
unique in the universe?
A second voice spoke:
Shut up asshole.
Another
interrupted, Christopher’s:
Why don’t you stay home now, stay with us? Don’t
you love mommy anymore, and us?
A fourth:
Get your head out of your ass.
Troubleshoot. Keep moving.  

“Stay here. Work on it. I’ll be back,”
said Mick.

“But Sera—she will need me if she
departs,” GR replied.

“She won’t. There’s no catching the
Cozon in an intersystem ship. She needs to see it to believe it I guess. We’ll
be back before you do your first calculation. Get to work.”

XJ appeared from the hangar corridor.

“Sera asks if you are coming?” XJ said.

“Yea, presently.”

“Come along GR,” XJ said and led Mick
out of the room.

Mick turned and looked at GR.

“I’ll let her know you’re staying here.”

GR chirped in satisfaction, his desire
to engage the puzzle of the T-jump fulfilled.

Sera stood on the bay rail of the
cruiser. XJ and Mick boarded, but she didn’t follow them inside.

“Where’s GR?”

“He’s staying here to figure out the
T-jump,” Mick said.

“The hell he is,” she said, jumping down
from the ship rail. Mick turned, jumped after her. He grabbed her shoulder,
stopping her.

“I bring you the M and H, your ticket to
Utopia, and you think I’m going to let you stop that robot from getting me home?”
Mick stared hard with ruthless eyes, slow violence boiling behind them.

“You think he’s safe here alone? He’s
AM, maybe not like XJ, but he’ll be snatched up in a second when marauders
land. And they’ll come, as soon as it gets out that Melbot’s dead. One com
request goes unanswered, and they’ll be crawling all over this place.”

“No one will take him,” Mick said
fiercely. He spun her around to face him.

“What do you know?” she said, peeling
his fingers out of her shoulder, mirroring the ferocity of his stare.

“I know I’ve given you your god damned
dream, killed your savior droid for you, done whatever the hell you wanted me
to. Look—I’ll just as soon stay here with him if it means getting home. You go
find that son-of-a-bitch before he gets out of the system. I’ll keep GR safe.”

“And then you jump, and I’m not back,
and he’s gone—no, not happening.”

“Well back his fucking .hum up then.
These droids are pieces of shit anyway. All you need is their—” Sera’s gloved
fist smacked Mick’s head before he could finish, twisting his neck and creating
a hairline fracture in his helmglass above his left eye.

Mick grabbed her shoulder again, digging
his fingers deep into her suit, locking her in place.

“You don’t know anything. So you’re
either going to have to wait longer to go home, or kill me right now,” she
said. Her left hand slipped past her hip, brushed against her pistol.

“Then tell me! You say Utopia has
everyone, but you keep them around. You say you’ll know the difference. What
the hell aren’t you telling me?”