Lifeline (12 page)

McLaris stared at the picture of ground zero.

“Who knows if the Soviets put the terrorist up to that or not? It sounds stupid to me. It seems more likely that some Third World country backed him, just to implicate the Soviets.”

The chief administrator shrugged. “As you can probably guess, the first things shot down were the Earth-orbiting stations. Since nobody knew which ones contained weapons, every Soviet ‘research station,’ every U.S. spacelab module and shuttle, the ESA space station, the
Heinlein,
even most of the big communications satellites—all went down.”

McLaris thought about the Soviet station sharing the L-5 point with
Orbitech 1.
“What about the
Kibalchich?
We haven’t heard anything from them.”

“As far as we can tell, they played no active part in the War, but the L-5 colonies are too far away to be in a strategic position. Your own colony would have been the prime target if they did have any weapons, I suppose. But we haven’t received any word from them except to keep the hell away. They aren’t participating in ConComm with the rest of the colonies.”

Tomkins looked pensive again. “We are now citizens of
Clavius Base
and will likely die here. The old political boundaries were wiped out in the nuclear exchange.” He blanked the holotank.

“We don’t know the current situation on Earth. Most of its communications capability is gone. We’ve got a few reports from amateurs, other broadcasts we picked up from scattered sources, but the puzzle has plenty of pieces missing. Even though it was only a limited exchange, we think the War may cause the deaths of about sixty percent of Earth’s population—that includes indirect deaths from long-term fallout. There’s no way to guess the fatalities that’ll result from starvation, lack of medical care, and housing.

“We can be certain the industrial base is effectively gone. All manufacturing has been knocked to its knees, and what’s left will no doubt be used exclusively for survival of the remaining people. The Earth has been knocked back into the nineteenth century: no electricity, clean drinking water, sewage treatment, or local communications.”

The chief administrator squeezed McLaris’s shoulder with a massive hand. “You realized it before anyone else, Duncan. You knew it immediately. Earth can’t possibly afford the technological effort to come up and rescue us. And with all those casualties in the War, how can the people left down there worry about a few thousand of us left stranded in space? No, our numbers are already written in their books. We’re on our own.” Tomkins bumped his plastic teacup, knocking it over. He scrambled to pick it up, but the cup was empty anyway.

In his mind, McLaris ran over the scenario. It wasn’t a role-playing game, it wasn’t a newsreel from World War II—it had actually happened to him, to everyone. Diane had been down there, in the middle of it.

He felt his calm expression melt away like candle wax, and he jerked his head around so that Tomkins would not see. Under the table he clenched his fist, trying to squeeze out some of his tension.

Orbitech 1
had discarded 10 percent of its people.

After an awkward pause Tomkins stood up. “Why don’t you get some more rest? After you’re all healed, come back to me. I’ve got some things you can help me with.”

The two men shook hands again before McLaris turned to leave. His slippers scritched on the polished floor as he shuffled back down the corridors toward the infirmary.

***

Chapter 15

ORBITECH 1—Day 12

He had always considered himself a benevolent director.

He cared for the people on
Orbitech 1.
Roha Ombalal went to see them; he listened to their concerns; he wanted them to think of him as a gentle leader, a “papa” for them all.

For more than a full day, though, he had isolated himself in his quarters, shivering, having nightmares about the reduction in force. He made sure his porthole remained sealed, terrified that accusing corpses would drift by and stare at him through the quartz. He kept seeing a finger—Brahms’s finger, but it might as well have been his own—pushing the explosive release button, over and over again.

Ombalal had made the tape. The entire colony had heard him explain the reasons, give the order. He wondered what his wife would think of him now.

What would she tell his two girls, his precious children? Ombalal stood in front of the mirror, trying to wipe away the horrified look on his face. His deep black hair seemed to have more silver strands in just the last few hours.

But he couldn’t hide any longer. He was the director of
Orbitech 1.
He had to show the people he still cared, he still thought of them. He had had to make a horrible, difficult decision … but sometimes even a “papa” was faced with painful choices like this.

A part of him cursed Curtis Brahms for forcing him to act so quickly. Brahms had been persuasive—and he did hold the ultimate authority, according to the Orbitechnologies Corporation. But no matter how much sense the RIF decision might have made, Ombalal hated Brahms for making him select that course of action. Now there could never be any turning back.

Ombalal dressed in his formal uniform with the insignia of
Orbitech 1
at his breast. The people would remember all the good things he had done, all the times he had chatted with them, kept his door open for anyone.

They would forgive him.

His throat felt dry. His hands were shaking. But he drew himself up with dignity. He would earn their respect.

In cafeteria complex five, people had already started muttering before Roha Ombalal entered.
Orbitech 1
had begun rationing immediately after the War; but this was their first day on further restricted rations. They stared at the small quantities of food as the fear sank in that they would get no more than this for a full day. The server stood behind the line, looking harried and frightened. Beside him stood one of the security men, but he looked just as disgruntled. They had been taking the brunt of the complaints, Ombalal realized. He felt sorry for both of them, but they would all have to deal with hard times from now until … whenever.

At least the people would survive, though—those who had died in the RIF had not made their sacrifice in vain.

When Ombalal stepped into the cafeteria complex, the temperature in the room seemed to drop.

Conversations stopped. Faces turned toward him with expressions molded into bleak despair or vengeful anger. Suddenly Ombalal felt a thread of fear, which he tried to push away. These were his people; he had been among them for years. But he had lost all their names—he couldn’t remember any of them! They seemed completely faceless, strangers to him.

Ombalal looked around. He drew himself up. His voice was soft. He meant it to be consoling, but instead it came out like the words of a frightened rabbit.

“I … I cannot tell you how sorry I am for the decision I have been forced to make. We must all stick together. Things will get better. I pray I never need to order such a thing again.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw someone move. A plastic beverage container bounced off his shoulder blade.

“Stop!” Everyone stood still for just a moment.

Then a woman stood at the table in front of him and dumped her tray of steaming beef-flavored noodles into his face. Ombalal let out a cry of pain and brushed them away from his eyes. All the while, he wanted to shout,
Don’t waste food like this!

A third person threw another beverage container, which struck him on the side of his head. He heard shouts. Where was the security man? Why didn’t he stop them?

But when Ombalal looked up, he saw the man standing with narrowed eyes and his arms crossed in front of his chest.

“Please—” he said, then choked.

Someone hit him on the temple with a serving tray. Ombalal fell to his knees. Astonishment reared up in him so fully that he had no room for fear.

He heard more shouting. Fists began pummeling him. He heard only the voices, felt the pain—he saw no faces. Part of him imagined that they were the faces of those hundred and fifty people he had ejected out the airlock.

In his mind, he watched himself give the order.

This was what it cost him. Ombalal squeezed his eyes shut and tried to keep from whimpering. The fight in him drained away. With a hand over his head to fend off the blows, he cried how sorry he was, over and over.

From behind the counter, the serving man brought out a tray of knives.

Curtis Brahms sat in his own office with the door sealed, allowing absolutely no one to enter. Outside he had stationed two guards, but he didn’t necessarily trust them, either.

He squeezed his eyes shut and saw the bright light of anger inside him. Roha Ombalal was so stupid! How could a man manage to live for so many years and understand so little of human nature? Even after the RIF, he had still considered all the people on
Orbitech 1
to be One Big Happy Family. Idiot!

Not that Brahms condoned what they had done to him, but in a way, Ombalal had asked for it. When you do stupid things in space, the universe makes sure to punish you for it!

Brahms had sat in anger for longer than an hour after the riot. Everything was falling apart—the chief administrator of
Clavius Base
had issued a pretentious statement, breaking all contact with
Orbitech 1.
In an apparently unrelated move, the Soviets on the
Kibalchich
had ceased all transmissions, leaving only a warning that they were not to be disturbed. The last centers of civilization seemed to be disintegrating.

Brahms couldn’t afford to remain silent anymore. He needed to stop even a hint of mutiny.
Orbitech 1
was his station now.

He activated the intercom, speaking simultaneously with the security crew and the maintenance staff. “I want cafeteria complex five scrubbed clean, all traces of the disturbance removed. But first, I want every square inch of the place documented. Lots of graphic stuff.” He drew in a deep breath, forcing back the anger.

“I want to show the blood. I want to show these people—everyone on this station—what they have done!”

Brahms snapped off the intercom, but continued grinding his teeth together, thinking of the people, the simmering mob, on his own station.

He realized that was the part that concerned him—keeping the people under control—since he was now the true director of
Orbitech 1.
No longer did he have to pander to Ombalal’s incompetence just to save face for the Orbitechnologies Corporation.

Another part of him, a tiny but insistent voice, kept Brahms wondering if that’s what he had really wanted all along.

***

Chapter 16

KIBALCHICH—Day 12

All the reckless I-won’t-care-until-tomorrow singing had stopped. Anna Tripolk wondered if she would ever hear it again. The others stood silent now, shifting uneasily. A few of them broke into forced jokes or flat conversation, but that quickly petered out. Tripolk smelled a haze of nervous sweat in the
Kibalchich’s
recycled air.

The big lab space had been converted into a giant infirmary and medical center. At another time, a better time, they had done delicate engineering work here—precision laser applications. None of that mattered anymore.

Tripolk raised her eyes as the line moved forward.
Standing in line again,
she thought.
Even to the end, we must stand in line for everything.
High above in the curved ceiling of the research station, she could look through the slitted windows. The suspended saucer-like mirror hung over the rotating torus of the
Kibalchich
like a giant silver dinner plate. The two lower decks were lit by yellowish artificial light, but Rurik had decided that this was best done in sunlight. Tripolk agreed with him.

The station’s walls were metal, cold, sterile—fabricated from Moon rock, but with no concessions made for the appearance of comfort. All the rooms had been enameled a dreary eggshell white—walls, floors, ceilings, doors. It hurt the eyes after a while.

A few months ago, one of the other researchers, Danskoy, had painted a broad mural along one wall in the recreation hall. It broke up the
Kibalchich’s
monotony in a startling way.

Danskoy had been sent home soon afterward. Tripolk couldn’t figure out how anybody Earthside had learned of it.

As the next man in line stepped forward, Tripolk took another clean syringe and filled it with the vile-looking yellow chemical. She smoothed her doctor’s uniform, tried to look professional and strong. She, of all people, had to show confidence now. The testing phase had ended; this was for real.

Tripolk didn’t want to look at the man shuffling up, but she did anyway. He had mouse-brown hair, cut too short to be attractive; two days’ growth of beard bristled on his chin. A week before that lack of attention to personal hygiene would never have been tolerated.

A name patch sewn to the man’s uniform said
Sheveremsky.
Tripolk had never bothered to learn the names of all five hundred people on the
Kibalchich.
She could have done it, of course, but it had not seemed a necessary effort … and her own work kept her busy enough.

Tripolk started to say something inane, something encouraging, out of habit, but the man cut her off. “Just get it over with. No speeches.” Sheveremsky stared at her. “We all know what we are doing.”

Tripolk clenched her teeth, resenting Sheveremsky’s attitude. Did he think she enjoyed this? The Party wasn’t paying her a bonus for it. It was nothing she wanted to do. She hated to be pushed into such a desperate situation. But this was their only hope, and necessary things had to be done.

“What do you want me to say, then?” She held the syringe in her hand and locked her eyes with Sheveremsky’s. “Do you want me to say everything will be all right? Yes? So—everything will be all right. Now, give me your arm.”

She grasped his bicep and jabbed the needle into his arm. Deep behind the man’s eyes, Tripolk could see a startled wince, but the man himself did not cringe.

The next person came up, a thin woman, silent and looking very frightened. Tripolk gave her the injection.

At the other end of the wide, echoing room, several people looked groggy and disoriented—the first visible effects of the drug. A team of de facto orderlies wheeled them out of the room before they could grow cold and still.

More workers came and went, each receiving an injection, not daring to let pride slip while in the presence of comrades.

Tripolk looked down at the medical cart beside her. She had known of a slaughterhouse just south of Moscow; as a child she had often thought of the lines of animals marching in ignorance to their deaths, trusting and unconcerned. Now, the
Kibalchich
seemed like that slaughterhouse to her: lines of workers in the vast infirmary, waiting for a pinprick to send them off on a single hopeless chance.

On the supply cart, she saw so many vials left, so many people. A film of tears flashed across her eyes and she looked down, not daring to meet anyone’s gaze. She drew a deep breath and tried to burn the moisture away with determination.

As the hours ticked by, the numbers of people in the infirmary room diminished. She knew this was going to require more than a day. She and two assistants had been working without a break, but the strain was growing. Tripolk found her hands shaking. The large chamber began to take on a funereal air.

When a tech named Orvinskad went into convulsions after receiving the injection, Tripolk found herself startled and scared.
That was not supposed to happen,
she thought.
It is supposed to be peaceful and painless.
But considering the circumstances, how pushed to the edge they all were, there were bound to be surprises.

Two men wrestled Orvinskad to the ground and held him still until the seizure left him drained and motionless. They hauled him out. After a few nervous moments, the remaining people fell into an uneasy quiet again, and shuffled forward to face Tripolk’s needle. She wished they would start singing again.

The war on Earth had put an abrupt end to her project, her life’s work. It had vanished, never to be completed. Tripolk felt like a starving man who’d had a fine roasted chicken snatched out of his grasp.

ARES 2 would be indefinitely postponed now. Tripolk might never see cosmonauts land on Mars. She had wanted to watch the live transmissions, to shake her fist in triumph and know that she, Anna Tripolk, had helped her people get there. But not anymore. Patriotic accomplishments for the pride and glory of the Soviet people had fallen by the wayside.

Mars—how she longed to go there. But that would never happen.

The first Soviet manned Mars mission, ARES 1, had been launched seven years previously, before Tripolk had become involved with the program. But that first mission had ended in disaster.

Though the flight time was long, Soviet cosmonauts had spent many times that duration alone in orbit in their own stations. No one expected the isolation to be a factor. But when the small crew of ARES 1 had reached interplanetary space, they had crumbled.

It seemed that in an Earth-orbiting station or in one of the Lagrange colonies, people still had a sense of perspective, a feeling of home. They could look out the window and see the Earth sitting there in space, filling a huge portion of their view. They could still see the Moon, accompanying them.

But in the deep space between Earth and Mars, the cosmonauts had no such landmark. Earth shrank to a bright blue-green light, with the Moon a much smaller dot beside it. Mars itself was only a reddish disk. Even the Sun itself grew smaller, while the blackness of space grew bigger. Everything seemed a yawning ocean of vacuum, infinity itself staring them in the face—with no place they could go to get away from it all.

Transmissions had grown sporadic and baffling, hard to interpret. The ARES 1 crew had severed communication. The captain’s final transmission, accompanied by nervous laughter from her crew mates, had said that they were abandoning their ship.…

But the Soviet Union still needed to put a manned mission on Mars—for their own glory, for international prestige. It was mankind’s next logical step, and the United States had never bothered even to make the attempt. The Soviet people would be the ones to push forward, to take that step.

Tripolk, a biophysicist, had thrown herself at the task. Somehow, the trip to Mars had to be shortened—either the distance, the actual flight time, or the time perceived by the cosmonauts. The mission planners could not screen candidates for the disorientation and pick psychologically stronger crew members; that held too few guarantees.

Tripolk had made great progress in the suspended animation process. She had found a workable solution, and had developed almost everything they needed. Only a few tests remained to prove its feasibility.

And then the War had put an end to everything.

Now, fewer and fewer people remained in the infirmary room. They came, Tripolk gave them an injection, and other workers took them out to the waiting area.
Waiting area,
she thought ironically.
What a ridiculously poetic way to think of it. We are going to be waiting a long time.

Tripolk realized with a kind of uneasy horror that she was doing this mechanically, by rote. Doing this to people, to human beings, had become run-of-the-mill? She was not even certain it would work for all of them! She tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. She drew a deep breath, and motioned for the next man to come forward.

Only seven remained now—herself, Commander Rurik, the political officer, Cagarin, and the four men who had acted as orderlies to cart away the groggy and listless men and women. Her assistants had given each other the injection an hour before and were now resting quietly, she hoped.

“Should we all go off to the big room now?” Rurik suggested.

Grekov, a big Ossetian—like Stalin—stood up. His hair was thick and full, but even so, his head looked too small for his broad shoulders. “If you please, Commander, Doctor,” he said in his heavily accented voice, “I don’t want to see them all … there. I would like mine here. Please.”

He thrust his arm toward Tripolk. The doctor gathered up the remaining ampoules, filled a hypodermic needle, and as gently as she could, injected Grekov.

“How long will it take for me to feel it?”

“It is different for everyone.” Tripolk shrugged. “You can feel it as soon as you want to. Don’t worry.”

Rurik paced back and forth. “Thank you all for what you have done. You are being very brave.”

Tripolk admired him more than ever before. She didn’t know how Rurik could be so stoic, so optimistic even now.

“Shall we go?” Rurik stood up, took a deep breath, and marched toward the door. Tripolk gathered the four remaining hypodermic needles and looked at the mess she had left behind—wrappers, empty ampoules, discarded needles, the stained and dirty cart. Cleaning up didn’t matter. In years, when the next generation of Soviet survivors finally made it back to the cold and silent
Kibalchich,
they would have to take Tripolk to task for the poor housekeeping. For now, she wouldn’t let it bother her rest. It was easier to think of it like that. Perhaps Rurik would clean it up or, better yet, he would have Cagarin do so.

Rurik and Cagarin each draped one of Grekov’s arms around their shoulders and helped the Ossetian walk out of the empty infirmary room. Tripolk followed, flanked by the remaining two orderlies.

They walked down the wide, barren-looking corridor. Overhead, the fluted windows let sunlight and starlight in. Many of the louvers had already been closed, sealing down the
Kibalchich
for its dormancy. The station was already looking like a tomb.

Rurik and Cagarin were going to be very lonely and very bored. They didn’t even seem to like each other in the first place. Anna Tripolk wished Rurik had allowed
her
to remain with him.

Down the hall they reached the other main lab room. The doors were propped open into their sockets, but the inside of the room had been dimmed to thick shadows. Tripolk felt thankful for that at least. The orderlies themselves had perhaps been spooked from looking at all the bodies lined row upon row, each in its neat enclosure. Rurik and Cagarin carefully laid Grekov’s body inside one of the empty cubicles, straightened his arms and legs, then inserted another needle into each brachial artery.

The two orderlies looked around themselves uneasily, then pulled crucifixes from their jumpsuits. Rurik glanced at them, but said nothing and turned away. Cagarin scowled and seemed about to snap at them, but Rurik grabbed his arm. Tripolk could see how hard he squeezed.

Tripolk removed her three hypodermic needles and looked at them in odd fascination. She blinked. “Are you ready?”

Sullenly, the first man put away his crucifix, then bared his arm. The other received his injection as well, and they went to lie down in their glass compartments. Tripolk waited for them to grow somewhat groggy, then hooked up the artificial circulatory system, jabbing needles inside their elbows.

Cagarin scowled and walked out, leaving Tripolk and Commander Rurik alone.

Tripolk had one hypodermic needle left, for herself. “You will take care of everything else?”

Rurik squeezed her shoulder. “You know I will.”

“And there is no way I can talk you into joining us?”

The commander pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Later. It must be later. You know that two of us must remain to watch the station.”

“But why Cagarin?” she asked, unable to suppress a whine in her voice. “Why not me?”

“He is the one I chose.” Rurik refused to raise his voice, which upset Tripolk.

“Are you sure you’re not just being a coward?” Tripolk surprised herself with this comment, and realized that she didn’t mean it—she was just trying to provoke Rurik into changing his mind.

“Anna. Let us not debate who is making the bravest choice. The answer is not clear-cut. I do what I must, and you do what you must. Only the future will tell how we are all remembered … if we are remembered at all.”

Rurik smiled a little, as if trying to lighten the air. “Without me, you would be the acting commander of this station.”

Tripolk forced a smile of her own. “And without me, you would be in charge of a station without a purpose!” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Mars was so close.”

Rurik pursed his lips. “Anna, the
Kibalchich
has strategic uses beyond mere scientific research. That point has not been lost on the military or State Security. You know as well as I that some of our ‘assistants’ are KGB.”

She smirked, annoyed to hear the reactionary paranoia she had encountered so often, but never from Rurik. “You and Cagarin will have to go under. There aren’t enough supplies to last even the two of you.”