Tony Daniel (38 page)

But the Object had been a veritable paradise in comparison with the orphanage on Pluto. While the Object families had provided a sort of stability, if not a sense of belonging to Kwame, he rarely was with the same adult overseer at the orphanage for more than a year. It was used by the local teaching college as a place for students to get their first classroom experience, and those on the administrative track managed the facility. There were some kindly teachers, but everyone, of necessity, moved on, and for the most part, Kwame passed the years there suffering their benign indifference. There had been, however, one constant, and that was the Rules. The Rules was a free convert who was, to tell the truth, fallen from sentient status—although no one had thought to run the algorithm through a requalification exam in decades. Since there was no physical means for the Rules to control the children under her charges, each child was given a “lockdown” code that was written into his or her grist.

You might be innocently playing, and, the next thing you knew, your muscles would seize up and you would collapse in place for as long as your infraction allowed the penalty to last. You were not unconscious—just frozen.

Any fully sentient algorithm would have had the sense to “unlock” the children after a certain amount of time, and only apply the maximum punishment for more difficult cases or more terrible infractions. But the Rules would have none of that. Kwame had spent days of his youth in a paralyzed state, unable to move and unable to fall into unconsciousness. Owing to the Rules, he still retained a claustrophobia that was, at times, overpowering, even though, for the most part, he kept it under control.

There would be no temptation in God’s blue heaven that would convince him to take a trip into the confines of the Met. No. The outer system was the place for him, and always would be.

At sixteen, he had “graduated” from the orphanage school and gone to work in a transshipping warehouse on Charon. Since he had had to do a great deal of exterior work, his employer had paid for him to be completely space-adapted. Being entirely space-adapted was a mark of distinction in the far outer system, though it was by no means uncommon, and Kwame had been proud of it. His job, though menial and manual, was also the first activity that he’d ever felt useful and needed in, and Kwame conceived a deep regard for his company.

As a reward for his loyalty, he was laid off after four years with three months’ pay, thanks to his excellent service record.

By that time, Kwame had a girlfriend and a cubicle to call his own. He fell into a funk, and began to drink and to use enthalpy and had, within a month, blown his entire wad and driven his girl away. He woke up one morning—at 10:00 everyone on Charon got a midmorning chronometer standardization in his or her grist that announced itself with a brief siren call—lying in a service corridor, his face suspended over a drainage grill that gave off a bilious odor that Kwame suspected was his own vomit from the night before. His head had an ache that no grist bloodstream sweepers could alleviate, and, worse, he felt the muscles that he had developed while working for the transshipper, and which had attracted his girlfriend in the first place, beginning to atrophy. He was, in general, a sorry excuse for a human being if there ever was one.

He thought back to the times he had been happy—not a lot of memory space required for that—and considered what it was that had pleased him most about those times. He decided that what he most liked, what he needed, was to belong to something—something, anything, like a family. He had thought of his employer that way, but had been mistaken. What he needed was someplace or someone where they couldn’t arbitrarily kick you out or let you go unless you deserved it.

I guess I was kind of a logical guy even back then, Kwame thought, even though I didn’t know it.

By the time the noon siren went off, Kwame had joined the Federal Army.

So now his “family” was throwing him up against something so horrible, he wouldn’t have been able to imagine it—no, that’s not true, Kwame thought. I’ve always had a good imagination. That’s how I made it through being a kid. But definitely I could not have imagined how it would feel to
see
that fucker, to experience it, until two days ago, when I did just that.

The hopper shook violently and Kwame, in a full virtual environment of readouts, and in rapid communications with sensors through his convert portion, prepared to meet the evil head-on.

“We’re in range for the mags,” he called out to the lieutenant.

They were about to try something that had only been theoretically discussed before as a way to destroy a rip cable. Of course, rip tethers themselves had only been imaginary engines of war before the Met had deployed theirs on Triton. One thing was for certain:
They
worked. Now to see if the solution was anywhere near as effective.

The idea was to place a ring of electromagnets around the half-kilometer girth of the tether. It was not only swinging like a pendulum, it was also spinning on its axis. This was deliberate—a defense to keep someone from merely matching speeds and latching on. If you did that enough times with enough weight attached, you could change its center of gravity and make it fall from the sky. But the makers had been too clever to make stopping it that easy. Nevertheless, the extreme spin created a powerful magnetic field. If they could encircle it with their own magnets, they would vary those magnets’ polarization and strength and ride the tether’s magnetic field right up. Up to the top, if they chose. But Kwame’s task force was aiming for a bit lower than that. Severing it halfway up would cause the upper half to reach escape velocity and fly out of orbit. The lower half would be caught by Triton’s gravity, no longer balanced so that it was “falling around” the moon, and would crash to the ground. Theoretically.

And they had to do it here and now, on the opposite side of the moon, because the other side had most of the human settlement. Even a disabled, falling rip cable might kill hundreds, or thousands, depending on where it hit.

“Extend the clasp,” Lieutenant Flashpoint said to Rastin, the mag operator. “Bring us in as gently as you can,” she told Sergeant Peal, the pilot.

“We’ve matched speeds,” Peal said. “But, Lieutenant, I can’t go in there, look at the atmospheric turbulence.”

“Take us in, Peal.”

“But Lieutenant . . .”

“That’s an order, Sergeant.”

“All right . . . I . . . I’ll do my best,” said Peal.

Kwame had always liked the sarge. He had been Kwame’s first mentor, and it had been Peal who made sure the logic lessons got pounded into Kwame’s skull. He’d thought that the sarge was pretty fair, especially after that hard case he’d had for basic back on Umbriel. What a shithole of a moon that place had been. Made Charon look like Earth or something.

Peal very slowly took the hopper in on attitude rockets, losing far too much altitude along the way, in Kwame’s opinion—not that that mattered one goddamn bit, of course. If they weren’t careful, though, they might have to back off, set down, and take another bounce.

As if she were echoing Kwame’s thoughts, Flashpoint called out to the sergeant, “Quicken it up, Peal!”

But, if anything, Peal brought them in more slowly.

“I can’t get alignment!” he gasped. “I can’t get alignment!

Kwame couldn’t believe it. He looked back at his sensors to see if there was any change, anything he could do to help. No. They had to fucking go in and give it a shot. Peal had seen what this tether could do. He’d been heading Kwame’s grist-burning detail when the tether hit the first time. In fact, he remembered Peal’s face while he was looking at the thing. Dead set in anger. If Peal could have thrown himself in attack at the tether right then, Kwame was sure the sergeant would have.

But that was then, and this was two days and a lot of thought later. Still, you had to do your job. That was the deal. And without a deal, you were puking your guts out into a drain or back in the orphanage, lying with your face to the floor for two days.

“Sergeant Peal,” shouted the lieutenant. “Peal!”

“Have to back off! Out of alignment! I tell you there’s no alignment!”

“Peal, you’re relieved,” said Flashpoint. “Neiderer, take the rudder.”

Kwame grabbed a handhold and swung himself over to Peal’s position. He grabbed the hold next to Peal and let his pellicle grist latch him fast there.

“Excuse me, Sergeant,” he said. Peal did not move, did not glance up. He was locked into virtuality, and when Kwame tried to join him in the piloting sensorium, Peal forced him out with a fierce blast of will. Kwame almost let go of his hold, but managed to hang on.

“Peal, let go of that rudder!” Flashpoint commanded. “Let go, Peal!”

“We’re too close!” said Peal, speaking to no one but himself now. “Too close, and there’s no alignment.”

For half a second, Kwame tried to imagine what the logical next step would be. But fuck that shit, Peal was taking them right into the tether, as if he were being drawn there by some occult force. Kwame grabbed the hold above the pilot’s station with his other hand, launched himself off the floor, and kicked Peal full in the head and shoulders with both his feet. The blow sent Peal flying across the hopper cabin. Kwame quickly inserted himself into virtuality and reentered the pilot sensorium. Peal was gone, knocked out of simulated reality by virtue of being unconscious. Kwame took control of the hopper’s rudder and looked to see where they were.

“Shit, oh shit, oh shit,” he said. Peal had brought them too, too close. They were falling fast, and there was no way they could clear the tether’s path of destruction in order to find good ground on which to make another bounce. It was now or never. Probably never, Kwame thought. But, fuck, why not at least give it a try?

He quickly brought the hopper into alignment. The magnetic clasp was to deploy about it like a five-hundred-meter-long bicycle chain might be slapped around a giant lamppost. Only this lamppost was rotating and preceding simultaneously. The hopper tried to roll to the right, but Kwame applied rudder and attitude rockets simultaneously—a technique called “slipping” that he learned when he went through transport checkout, his fourth skill level under Sherman’s system. The hopper lost altitude like it was caught in quicksand, but the alignment remained dead-on.

“I’ve got it, Lieutenant!” he called out.

“Deploy those mags, Rastin!”

Even with the harsh shaking, Kwame felt the clasp when it moved out. Then he saw it in his piloting sensorium. It was a good ten meters away. He edged them in closer, closer . . .

“Put down that wrench!”

It was the lieutenant’s voice. Kwame fought the urge to go back to actuality and see what the hell she was talking about. A little bit closer . . . there!

“Drop it, Peal. Goddammit, Peal, I said—”

“Close the clasp!” Kwame heard himself yelling aloud. “Do it, Rastin!” Rastin closed. The clasp folded out and around the magnetic field of the tether, deploying at blinding speed, driven by the very spin of the rip tether itself. One second. Two. Three. The leading end arrived. Working in the virtuality, Rastin caught and latched it.

They were locked on to the tether.

“Back us out! Back us out, you little fuck!”

Kwame felt strong hands on his shoulders. Yanking him back, pulling him out of the virtual back to actuality . . . and Peal was standing over him, brandishing a wrench.

Without thinking, Kwame rolled to the side and avoided getting his brains splattered, as Peal brought the wrench down where his head had been. The force of the blow overbalanced the sergeant, and he fell in a heap next to Kwame. Kwame went for the wrench. Had Peal’s hand. Was prying away fingers.

Then something in his gut, and a blunt palm smeared into his eyes. The pain was too much, and Kwame let go—only to have Peal deal him a savage blow to his arm with the wrench.

Flare of pain like the horrid muscle spasms Kwame used to feel when the Rules finally released him from hours of paralysis. In most men, the blow would have been enough to shatter the bone.

But Kwame Neiderer was space-adapted. He could take a meteor strike and escape without permanent injury.

He struck out with his other hand and hit Peal in the face with his palm. He felt the sarge’s nose break from the blow. Peal was not space-adapted. Peal roared and grabbed his face. Kwame grabbed the wrench.

The hopper lurched, and Kwame lost his balance, fell to his knees.

“We’re losing it!” shrieked Rastin.

Peal rose to his feet above Kwame, livid with anger, and streaming blood from his ruined nose. Kwame drew back, and, with both hands, brought the wrench up in an arc just as Peal descended on him.

Metal connected with skull bone.

There was a horrible, horrible crack. Peal fell hard beside Kwame, and there was no fucking need to do any checking. The sarge was dead. Kwame didn’t think about it. Not now. Later. If there is a later.

Danis was working in the Diaphany, clerking during the day and learning finance at night. She was home in her personal space after a long day. A shipment had come in with mismatched coding at work, and they’d done overtime tracking down what was, in the end, the error of an aspect who had mislabeled five crates of specialized grist being shipped to Jupiter. Finally, she had shunted home and taken up her accounting exercises for the day. The qualifying exam was in three days, and she was determined to pass on the first try. Suddenly, in midst of studying value stocks and the theory of buying a holding long term, the wall of her virtual apartment had dissolved and she’d found herself standing in her nightgown among three teenagers.

She could tell they were the convert portions of aspect-convert pairs by the slight blurring of their representations and the slurring of their speech. It was two boys and a girl. They were drunk. Each of them had painted on his lips the downturned sneer of the Frowny Clown, the character on the merci who did an entire act making fun of free converts. Danis had heard that the guy was a free convert himself. But he was the hero of the local bigots, and there were Frowny Clown nights of initiation into some of the gangs that filled the Diaphany in the poorer sectors.