Cosmonaut Keep (21 page)

She shot me a suspicious look.

"This is Marx, right?"

"Wrong," I said. "It's John Stuart Mill."

"Same difference," she said. "Bloody liberals." Moody silence, then: "Anyway, that's all rubbish because we have space to expand into, forever!"

"What
expansion? There's no
profit
in space. Nobody's desperate enough to want to
live
there. That gang of libertarians who tried it couldn't stand it, couldn't stand each other -- "

"Yeah, yeah," she said. "I know about Hell-Five. But in the long run -- "

" 'In the long run,' " I said, quoting another suspect and defunct economist, " 'we are all
dead.'
"

Conversation kept us going for long stretches -- we ended up knowing a lot about each other, like pillow-talking lovers -- and between that, and sleep, and staring at the stars, there was the newsfeed.

Mary-Jo had exaggerated when she'd said that all hell was breaking loose in Red Europe. But there was no doubt that Driver's message had thrown a spanner in the works of the workers' states. The Party, the Federal Security Bureau, and the European Peoples' Army were maneuvering against each other in an unprecedentedly overt manner: military budgets queried, more MEPs and Party officials under suspicion or arrest, inquiries launched into FSB illegalities, rapid promotions and demotions and cashierings, military exercises proceeding without authorization, unscheduled call-ups of reservists (which, I guessed, added draft-evasion to my crimes).

At this rate it was only a matter of time before the populations, too, would have their say. Whether all hell really would break loose at that point was difficult to predict. Across Europe the peace movement, hitherto a moribund adjunct of official foreign policy, was already organizing mass demonstrations at which Webbly banners were well to the fore. That, at least, was something to count against the (also growing) "patriotic" anti-American demonstrations, which were, with brazen illegality, backed by factions of the Army. The ostensible occasion of these demonstrations was the constant drip of "discoveries" about U.S. links to the "English fascist terrorists" who'd been swept up after the codes had been cracked. Cameras tracked across incriminating caches of weapons.

"That's you guys' problem," Camila informed me confidently. "You're not allowed to have guns. That's why the Russkis walked all over you, and that's why you can't throw them out."

I stared at her, openmouthed.

"Where do you get that from?" I asked at last.
''Everybody
in Europe has guns. Since the revolution, anyway. The Russkis were shocked at the lack of preparedness when they came in, and they set about making damn sure it wouldn't happen again. Unless you're a conscientious objector -- you know, a Quaker or something -- it's
compulsory
to have a Markov and an AK and ammo at home. I was top of my class team in pistol shooting in
primary
school, I'll have you know. I did my one year's military service from the day after my eighteenth birthday. I could have kept up my training if I'd joined the CDR -- Civil Defense and Resistance -- but I never bothered. I'm still in the reserves, though."

It was her turn to stare. "So why don't you all just rise up and overthrow the commies?"

"Because hardly anybody bloody
wants
to, that's why! Look, the Party really does get elected! All we have to do is vote them out!"

Camila remained convinced it was all some kind of scam; that guns issued by the government didn't really count, and that elections with bans on rich people buying politicians couldn't be free.

Of Jadey there was no news at all.

"
Oh
-kay,"
said Camila, fifty hours after launch, "helmets on. Time to start work." She sounded much more eager than her earlier talk of tedium might have suggested. We were already far beyond the asteroid's orbital position, and about to start tacking -- sunward again -- to intersect it.

The viewplate went from black to white, with the sun -- I swear -- represented as an asterisk in the middle, the asteroid as a constantly changing string of numbers. It looked like one of those primitive ASCII games you find squirreled away, a programmers' in-joke, in the most obscure address-spaces of operating systems.

If the display was like a game, the actual approach it registered was another white-knuckle ride, more violent than the missile evasions. Camila exchanged clipped voice-only transmissions with the station between each abrupt change of course. It went on for hours and ended in free fall. With a flourish Camila toggled the viewplate control, and the asteroid sprang into full-color 3-D view, just as we'd all first seen it, as real as television. The station expanded in the view, its appearance changing from something tiny and intricate, like circuitry, to something huge and intricate, like a factory. At the same time, the general view shifted from traveling toward the asteroid to flying over it. The final fine adjustments became increasingly gentle, from the sensation of a jostling crowd, through a beggar's tug, to the suspicion of a pickpocket's pass.

With a last puff of the retro the
Blasphemous Geometries
settled into a clutch of grapples that clicked around the ship's edges. Banging and crunching noises followed.

"What's that?"

"Airlock connecting." She smiled. "Don't I get any thanks?"

I gave her a high-five. "Yeah, thanks!"

"Keep your helmet on for now," she said. She reached up for a switch. "Clearing shock-gel."

A bluish liquid sprayed in from nozzles at the sides of the view-plate, hosing our shoulders and -- as the space cleared -- other jets hissed on down our backs and sides. Camila pushed herself up, opening a space between herself and the couch, and I did likewise. The liquid shriveled the shock-gel to dry, rubbery strips, then evaporated in a flush of warm air.

"Wow." I waggled my legs, swiveled my pelvis. "That feels good."

The sudden physical freedom made me all the more anxious to escape the remaining restrictions. For the first time I actually did feel something like claustrophobia: the space around me was too small, and the air didn't satisfy my lungs.

We both looked as though covered with ragged bandages -- the robot from the mummy's tomb. Camila brushed at the sticky rags of dried shock-gel. They hung annoyingly in the air, drifting.

"Extractor fan in the next model!"

Something clunked and made grinding noises. Camila cocked her head, listening to the voice in her ear.

"That's it," she reported. "Airlock sealed." She waved me past her. "You go first. I get to turn off the lights."

With fingertips and toes I propelled myself backward along the narrow tube to the hatch. Just before my feet touched it, its cover plate slid smoothly aside. Even in the suit and helmet, I could feel the change in pressure, and the draft. Light shone up from beneath, or behind, my feet. I continued on in a direction that now felt like "down," though not from any effect of the asteroid's microgravity, of which I felt nothing. Down, then: down past the locking rings and down another long but wider tube, and then out.

For a moment I hung there, hands braced in the exit of the tube, feet just above the metal mesh floor. The receiving-bay with which the ship had docked was large, about three meters high below the airlock tube, twenty long, and ten wide. Crates and bits of equipment were tethered or taped to stanchions and I-beams. Fluorescent lighting flickered over the garish color-coding. Across from me was a heavy door in front of which a small, crop-haired man in multiple-mission-patched cotton fatigues floated, holding on to a crossbeam with one hand, the other resting on the butt of a standard-issue 9-millimeter Aerospatiale Officier stuck in a webbed waistband.

He let go of the pistol and gestured to me to remove my helmet. I let go of the airlock rim and did so, beginning to tumble over in the air. Camila emerged from the shaft, and did the same with more grace.

The place stank: rank, organic stenches of human and plant and animal combined with the harsher reek of hot metal, burnt plastic, old machine-oil. I almost gagged; Camila just wrinkled her nose. The man favored us with a wry smile.

"You'll get used to it," he said. He stuck out his right hand, empty. "My name is Paul Lemieux. Welcome to the Revolution."

Even looking up at him, one hand holding the mesh of the floor where I'd drifted, I could grasp his meaning -- if not, at that moment, his hand -- and think:

Oh shit!

11

____________

Manufacturing Plant

Here, at the top of the hill, the wind off the sea was unavoidable and constant. It gave airplanes a little extra lift as they bounded and jolted down the runway taking off, and permitted a lower approach speed as they landed -- also bounding and jolting. If the pilot cut too close to stalling speed, when the wind dropped so did the plane.

The wind moaned in the tall bamboo pylons, and made them flex, and made the airships sway at their moorings like bait on a trolling hook. Others, released from the moorings but tethered to the ground, strained and rippled. Gangs of workers used ropes and windlasses and main force to haul and steady the craft for the passengers and crew to get in or out. Tankers of water for ballast and kerosene for fuel (the former conveniently doubling as fire engines) hurried back and forth.

Gregor sat in the glassed-in waiting area and watched, fascinated by everything he saw. He hadn't visited the airport since he was a small boy, and it was somehow galling that all the exciting activity he remembered from childhood had ever since been within such easy reach.

Beside him sat Salasso, then Elizabeth -- each, like him, with a traveling-bag at their feet. Salasso's was small and made of something that looked like flexible aluminum; Gregor's was bulkier but not much heavier, of dinosaur hide. Elizabeth's was a laminated suitcase just within the weight limit. She had dressed rather well for the flight, in blouse and skirt and long leather coat. Gregor and the saur were in their usual working clothes, though in Gregor's case, at his mother's insistence, freshly cleaned.

Elizabeth saw him looking, and smiled.

"This is just great!" she said. "What an amazing place, and so close."

"Just what I was thinking myself," he said. He grinned. "Maybe the people who work here never visit the port."

Salasso said nothing. His thin mouth was turned down at the corners, and his shoulders sagged. His eyelids blinked and his nictitating membrane flickered more than usual. His long fingers dug into his bony knees.

"Will somebody please fill me a pipe?" he said.

"You don't want to fall ... asleep just now," Elizabeth chided.

"I do," said Salasso. "I wish I could. I wish you could
carry
me on board, unconscious. But I realize that would be undignified for all concerned. So please, fill me a pipe. I don't trust my own hands to do it, and I want to at least have it ready as soon as we board."

"Is smoking allowed? I wonder." Gregor asked, as Salasso passed him the pipe and pouch with a visibly shaking hand.

"Yes," said Salasso. "I checked that most carefully. Nothing but potent drugs could keep me calm through a journey on one of these devices."

"Ah, we should have hired a gravity skiff," said Gregor. "Now, why didn't I think of that?"

Salasso's eyes swiveled around, the pupil a deeper black within the black iris.

"
I
thought of that," he said. "But we couldn't afford the expense."

"To tell you the truth," said Gregor, "I never even imagined it was an option. Where can you hire them?"

"Oh, some saurs will do it, if you know who to ask. But usually only to other saurs. It is, as I said, expensive at the best of times, and at the moment it's completely out of the question because all the skiff owners on the planet are making a fortune down south, driving dinosaurs to the meat market."

"That must be quite a sight," Elizabeth said.

"It is. If a little distressing."

"They're just cattle," said Gregor.
"Big
cattle, yes."

Salasso shook his head. "I am not what your people would call sentimental," he said. "Few of my people are! But we all feel ... some respect, some kinship, with the noble if ignorant beasts on which we prey. Needs must -- We are a carnivorous kind, far more than you. But still -- we were hunters before we were herders, and before that, we were hunted. We retain some of our past nature."

"And you're saying we retain less?"

Salasso leaned back. "I am not saying that."

A warning frown from Elizabeth stopped Gregor's impulse to pursue the matter further. It didn't stop him from turning it over in his mind. It was generally accepted -- on what evidence, he wasn't sure -- that the saurs had been civilized for millions if not tens of millions of years. Even allowing for their longer lives, and greater intelligence, there was something anomalous and disturbing in the suggestion that they retained some traditions from the savage state.

And for humans, Nova Babylonia represented continuity and antiquity! Even the Keep and the harbor, pre-human though they were, stood shallow in the depth of evolutionary time which for the saurs was
history.

He finished filling the pipe and passed it back.

A bell sounded and a message flashed on the projection screen announcing the imminent departure of their flight. They picked up their bags and trekked out onto the field with the other fifty or so passengers, into the shadow of the hundred-meter-long semi-rigid dirigible. Salasso ascended the stairladder to the gondola without further demur, headed for the smoking section at the back, and had passed out before the craft had taken off.

"Well, so much for the supercivilized," Gregor remarked, after he and Elizabeth had stowed their bags and sat down on opposite sides of a window table a couple of rows forward of where Salasso sat slumped.

"I suppose to him it's like -- I don't know -- going out on the ocean on some ramshackle raft would be to us. And some humans have a fear of flying as well, you know."