Imagination Fully Dilated: Science Fiction Part 9

I stabbed right where his heart ought to be, if he had one. His hands had started moving as I raised theknife; he probably couldn't distinguish the blade from my hand-I had it specially designed to radiate body heat-but he recognized the movement.

I screamed at Vlad to run before blue guy got a shot off. Something burned my left arm. The blue man was crumpling over. Praise be. He did have a heart and I had nailed it.

But he pulled me down with him as he fell, and I felt the cold plastic of a gun against my body. "Good job," he said, choking on blood. "But you have to get too close with a knife."

I hadn't planned to die like this, but n.o.body lives forever. At least my killer wouldn't get away with it.

And then something hit him hard on top of the head, and he let go both of me and the weapon without firing.

Vlad stood there with a rock in his hand. Give the man credit; he didn't lack for guts.

"I thought I told you to run," I said.

"I figured you might need some help." He grinned. Second time I'd seen it. "Besides, I don't have a chance in h.e.l.l of getting off this planet without your help."

"You sure you can trust me?"

"If I can't, why'd you tell me to run?"

So I took him home to Mom. She saw Vlad's goggles, and immediately reset the house for visible light.

He took them off with a sigh of relief.

Then she saw my arm. "What kind of trouble have you been getting yourself into while I've been gone?"

She went to grab first aid supplies, and when she came back it registered on me that her hair was halfway down her back, twisted into a ma.s.s of tiny braids.

"Mom, wasn't your hair short last week?"

"I let it grow out on the cruise."

"I thought it didn't leave until tomorrow."

"Oh, it doesn't. The captain made a slight miscalculation, and we got back a day early. You can't always calculate the wormholes exactly, as I'm sure you know."

"So you're . . ."

"In two places at once. But only until tomorrow. Then we'll get it sorted."

I tried not to think about it too hard. Dealing with time always makes me dizzy. "Then you probably know what I'm going to ask and even if it worked."

She grinned. "Yes, but you'd best ask the other me. She'll be home soon. It doesn't do to tell you too much." She scribbled herself a note, and left us there.

Vlad said, "You sure look a lot like your mother."

"She looks more elegant. I like the glittery stuff she had implanted around her eyes."

"All three of them. I haven't seen many three-eyed people.""Gene tweaks. Some generations back."

He nodded, and stared at me some more. "You're her clone, aren't you?"

I shrugged. "Easiest way to keep those gene tweaks reproducing through the generations."

"I guess it would be. And they're valuable in your line of work." He sighed. "I'm sorry to have caused you so much trouble. I don't seem to be very good at running away from trouble."

Well, he wasn't, but that was no reason to rub it in. "Hey, I probably couldn't write a moving speech or rally people against the Yacare government. Folks have different talents."

"Maybe I should have just stayed on Yacare and let them kill me."

I snorted. "People need leaders, not martyrs. Maybe you should go to Chamaleo and lead all those exiles back home."

He smiled, then. "After all you've done for me, the least I can do is give it a try."

Half an hour later Mom's earlier self came home, and was surprised to find us there until she saw the note. "Hmm. Guess the captain miscalculated. So you need me to find a place on the cruise for this gentleman. Have you given some thought to how?"

"I figured maybe he could start out as a stowaway. Too many people looking for him for it to be a good idea for him to go through customs."

"It'll cost to get him onboard," she said.

I shrugged, but Vlad cleared his throat. "A job would be better. I . . . I'm just about out of money. I can't even pay you for all the help you've been today."

Somehow, I wasn't surprised.

Mom shook her head. "I think they've got the staff pretty well filled out. Except . . ." She gave him a hard look. "You are a pretty man, and that's a fact. There's always a need for"-she coughed-"uh, companions."

"Companions?" Vlad said.

"Wh.o.r.es," I explained. I'm not as mannerly as my mother.

I expected a cry of outrage. I expected him to say he'd rather die. I expected the kind of pompous response I'd seen every step of the way.

What I got was a laugh. An outright belly laugh. He laughed so hard he almost couldn't stop. When he finally did quit, he wiped tears from his eyes. "That ought to be a h.e.l.l of a hiding place," he said. And then he started laughing again. When he finally stopped for breath, he said, "She's built like you, right? Not just female, I mean."

I nodded.

He gave Mom a flirtatious smile.

Well, he did like s.e.x. So maybe it was a good plan at that.I left him in Mom's capable hands. I was pretty sure it must have worked out, given the way Mom's later self had acted. And it occurred to me that I should get off-planet myself, what with the dead spy I'd left lying in the street and the fact that the bounty hunters were still staking out my place.

I got Gordo to distract the people staking out the Rockety c.o.o.n Child. Thankfully, they weren't cops, so for a price he didn't mind. He's getting close to retirement, and is a lot more careful these days.

I went for the nearest hole, and jumped over to Didelphia. Eventually I made my way back to the Testudines, and that's when I heard that Vlad was prime minister on Yacare. I looked up the recent history: He'd rallied the refugees on Chamaleo. They managed to infiltrate the Yacare Army. The revolutionaries stormed the capital, and the generals looked the other way. I wondered if Mom had helped him out.

The reports all say Yacare is a new place. The old leader and his cronies are dead or locked up. The economy is up, and arts and education are flourishing. Sounds like a decent place to live.

There don't seem to be any warrants out for me on Procyon, but I think I'll head for Yacare next. I ought to think about having a kid myself, before I get too much older, and Yacare wouldn't be a bad place to live while she's young.

And I ought to be able to make a living there. Vlad still owes me some money, or at least a cushy job with his government. It cost me a lot to get him off-planet, including some missed job opportunities. I don't smuggle people for the fun of it.

Who am I kidding? Of course I do it for the fun of it. Or, as one of the great philosophers of Old Earth once said: "Don't take life too serious. It ain't nohow permanent."

By Any Other Name

Steve Beai

Peery didn't want to die, and the fact that his death was imminent and likely to be quick, did not make him feel any better.

He had been a grease jockey, an oiler at Flatnose Jack's Full Service Station, one of a dozen floating maintenance ports off the shoulder of Orion. Even though this particular job had no casualty rate to speak of, there was a war on, so things were different.Every thing, in fact. Rates of exchange, civilian traffic, number of first-time home buyers, the price of bread. Even the weather seemed different somehow, if being surrounded by blackness and stars and the eternal sub-freezing vacuum of infinity could be called weather. The war had changed that, too, in some not-quite-perceptible way. Peery was sure of it.

Flatnose Jack referred to the war mantra-style asd.a.m.n War Good For Business , complete with hand-wringing and glazed eyes as he stared out from his tower office, watching the ships slow to a stop and hover in front of the station at both the upper and lower service bays, first one ship, then another, and more until the line stretched as far as he could see and then farther still.Their ships, of course, military and civilian alike, but onlytheir ships. Flatnose Jack may have been a lot of things, but he was no G.o.dd.a.m.n mercenary.Their ships only. Even at that, the d.a.m.n war was good for business. And business wasvery good, even when the war got a little too close. The station's emergency siren would blow, and everyone from the mechanics to the boys holding a glowstick in each hand to wave the ships into dock- guide dogs, they were called-held their breath at the sound, waiting for a flaming Steelhead to appear out of the blackness, heading for them like a deranged missile. About every second day you could count on at least one of the great military ships to come in trailing dry fire. A Troop Pod would drop from ahatch underneath the Steelhead and plummet to the station like a giant marble and bounce across the platform, smashing one of the guide dogs to bone splinters and body juice before coming to a rolling stop. The now-unmanned Steelhead would go belly-up like a terminal fish, blotting out the stars for one nerve-wracking moment before the ship's Avoidance Failsafe either launched the Steelhead straight up or straight down a safe distance away from the station before Retirement Mode engaged, turning the ship to sparks and microbes of dust. This light show lasted, at most, fifteen seconds. For those fifteen seconds, every man on the station braced to meet his own personal and violent death. Not often, but often enough, two flaming Steelheads arrived simultaneously. Whenever that happened, an employee or two would panic and shift their belay winch straight into high gear, forgetting to stop in each of the lower gears, which everyone knew you werenever supposed to do. The belay winch would go from standby to full bore instantaneously, causing a slingshot effect and giving the winch's wearer about three seconds to mull over his mistake before being cannon-balled into s.p.a.ce, G-forces turning flesh to flak. Lucky for Flatnose Jack, two Flamers coming in at the same time was a rare event. Out here good staff-anystaff for that matter-were hard to find.

Flatnose Jack figured Peery would be the next to slingshot himself to oblivion. He even had a standing bet with two of the mechanics, Lackland and Pirtle, that, sooner or later, Peery was gonna do an unplanned s.p.a.ce walk during one of the times the uglier aspects of war came to the station. Lackland and Pirtle were the kind of guys who referred to women asb.i.t.c.hes and were given over to frequent displays ofmachismo such as drinking heavily and then seeing who could hold a flame to the palm of their hand the longest. Pirtle had been married and divorced several times. Lackland had never been married, but he was father to five or six children he'd never seen. Flatnose Jack loved the two of them like they were his own sons, chips off the old block. They didn't care much for Peery; in fact, they outright hated him.

Peery read books and talked about home like a lost little girl. And when he wasn't doing that, he watched news of the war with tight-lipped concentration. During downtime, when the rest of them were getting drunk, or playing cards, or sleeping, Peery would stop whatever he was doing when a report came over the uplink broadcasts, his eyes too close to the screen and his body frozen in a rictus trance as he watched and listened. Funny thing was, Peery never seemed to understand any of it, not a single d.a.m.n thing. As each broadcast ended, he would ask anyone unfortunate enough to be pa.s.sing by-usually Lackland or Pirtle-what they thought this action meant or what that conflict was all about or why was our President doing such-and-such andtheir Admiral responding this way or that and on and on and on.

"The Fifth Senate met with the President and refused Admiral Chaykin's offer to negotiate new boundaries," Peery said without taking his eyes from the broadcast. "I wonder why we didn't want to at least talk to him?"

Pirtle stiffened, cursing silently that he hadn't seen Peery in time to quicken his pace through the Commons, even though no one else was in the room. He came up behind Peery and leaned over his shoulder.

"Because Chaykin doesn't want to negotiate,dummy . He wants to take over everything, you know?

Our whole d.a.m.n country. We need to take Chaykin out. No talk. The President knows that." Pirtle flat-handed the back of Peery's head as he walked away. "It's a war,dummy . They're theenemy ."

Stupid kid. It was all so clear.Wasn't it?

Peery was still rubbing his head when Lackland entered the Commons. Without a word, the mechanic threw a side punch into Peery's exposed armpit, never breaking stride as he went by. Before Peery could recover, the broadcast had ended.

Always the next one, he thought, making the best of missing the broadcast's wrap-up.It never ends .

Not even when his tour at the station was finished, he knew. There would be no end to this war eventhen. One more month of double-shift, seven-day work weeks and he would go home, be shuttled back to Earth after an absence of two years, a virtual stranger to his waiting family. He could have stayed a civilian oiler, could have stayed home and had none of this. But money was tight on the civilian front and money was something they had desperately needed. From the very first day of the war, the military wage had skyrocketed tenfold beyond what he was making as a civilian, so off he went and here he was-because the war not only paid, it paidbetter , because it was war, you see. Because any war at all paid better than none. Because they needed the money, there was a third child he had yet to see-on the way when he shipped off-close to two years old now. And his twin girls, Lucy and Laurie, and Donna, his wife. He didn't need to wait another month, didn't need to experience what would certainly be an awkward homecoming to figure out this hadnot been worth doing forany amount of money. He'd realized that twenty-four hours after Earth and home and family had become a memory, recognizing the greed for what it was after it was too late. He supposed war did that, maybe to everyone, allowing a person's greed to gorge with abandon, ultimately consuming its host and of benefit only to the war itself.

Peery reached into his shirt pocket, the one underneath a white patch that read PEERY, his fingers closing with the softest pressure around one edge of the picture as he brought it from the pocket and cradled it in his palm.

They stood in front of a tall fountain, Donna flanked by their two daughters, smiles frozen in time. Peery had taken the picture on the square in Capitol City, a few blocks from where they lived. He remembered the moment, his wife and daughters forcing smiles to cover the fear they all felt that sunny morning before Peery shipped out. He stared at the picture-intoit-looking beyond his family and the fountain, down the Capitol City streets to the neighborhood where their little house sat, until Flatnose Jack's mantra intruded and Peery blinked himself back to reality- -d.a.m.n war good for business- -and hearing it a second time, then a third, before knowing the way one knows an alarm clock in a dream is both part of the dream and part of the reality that Jack's mantra was in his thoughts because Jack himself was screaming it as he came down the steps from the tower office- "d.a.m.n War Good For Business!"His feet were suspended in mid-air out in front of him as he gripped the bannister on either side, sliding down with his hands. In cla.s.sic cartoon-style, his feet began paddling in s.p.a.ce before they touched down and propelled him forward, head bobbling on a thick cushion of neck flab. He glanced at Peery, waving his arms and running his words together as he fired them, machine-gun style, at the dumbfounded oiler.

"Wa.s.sa-? Get movin'-Peery! Getcher a.s.s movin', yout.u.r.d! Wa.s.sa-GO! One comin' in! One comin' in! Lessgo! GO! GO! PEERY, YOU t.u.r.d! ONE COMIN' IN! BIG ONE, BIG ONE COMIN' IN!".

Peery waited until Jack was through the doorway and gone before he returned the picture to his pocket and got up. With a last glance, he turned the broadcast screen off and followed at a brisk trot, saying with more than a little sarcasm under his breath, "Just one?"

Thebig one was a white Steelhead with a single red stripe down the top fin and yellow eagles on the wings and fuselage, markings of an Executive Transport. It was coming in fast and firing at two smaller ships on its flanks. Stingers. Enemy ships. The drab green single-pilot fighters were throwing everything they had at the larger ship, their ports blazing in a continuous stream of fire as the Stingers outmaneuvered the clumsier guns of the Steelhead.

Flatnose Jack's station gunners were already in position and firing from the forward gun ports as Peeryentered his bay and strapped on the belay winch. He shifted . . .slowly . . . out into the larger area of the service docks where the station opened up in a panoramic view of blackness and stars. At this position, the only solid area visible was a square foot of platform underneath your feet. If you allowed yourself much time to look around, it was easy to be overcome by a sensation of floating which quickly turned disorienting to a dangerous degree.

The belly of the Steelhead was so close, Peery could see the bolts and hatches and the tell-tale port of the Troop Pod, still sealed. The ship was coming in too steep to make dock, heading belly-up for the station as it tried to evade the Stingers. A moment before wild collision was inevitable, the nose of the Steelhead took a sharp drop, leveling the ship with the bay and allowing Peery to see one of the Stingers get tagged by a shot from the station. The Stinger vaporized off to the left, close enough for Peery to feel a rush of heat as it came and went. The second Stinger shot forward, running wide-open behind the Steelhead in an attempt to follow it straight into the bay on a Kamikaze run but it came in too high, giving the Steelhead's rear gunner a clear shot to dispatch the ship well away from the station.

There was an explosion of activity in the bay as the Steelhead eased in and set down with a thump and a chorus of hissing exhaust as the station's crew converged on the ship like swarming insects. The whine of belay winches mingled with shouts and curses as each man began his job on the newest customer.

Peery inched out to the underside of the Steelhead's nose and locked the belay winch in place before snapping a pneumatic wrench from his chest harness, pulling absently to extend the coiled hose from the canvas bag on his back. Disengaging the forward oil port, he stepped back to avoid the initial burst of hot black spray, but the plug came away dry as dust. That wasn't right. A healthy oil port decamped excess oil each time it was checked, no matter if the ship was sitting cold or had come in red-hot seconds before, as this one had. He looked left and right to see if the others were discovering more trouble. Only Lackland returned his gaze, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. He smiled and gave Peery the finger before looking away.

The Steelhead pilot had disembarked and was talking to Flatnose Jack on the staging platform at the rear of the dock. Peery examined the opened oil port once more to confirm his diagnosis and then shifted the winch into reverse until he was close enough to get their attention. Both men stopped in mid-conversation as Peery came within earshot. Flatnose Jack gave him a look that saidIt better be MORE than good .

Peery excused himself with a quick nod. "The forward oil port has some heavy damage, I checked the-"

Flatnose Jack cut him off with a raised hand. "Howheavy?"

"Total failure, sir."

The pilot tensed, mouthing the wordsonofab.i.t.c.h . He accented the last syllable with a downward snap of his head.

"This ship has to go in twenty minutes." Flatnose Jack pointed at the Steelhead, then tapped his wrist.w.a.tch with the same finger. "Twenty minutes, Peery, do you understand? Get busy on those repairs."

"It's not a question of repairs, sir," Peery said, keeping one eye on the pilot. "The unit is dead. Short of manual operation in-flight, we're talking fifteen or twenty hours to replace the system."

"I don't have the extra personnel onboard to do that," the pilot said, directing his response to Peery's comment at Flatnose Jack."To dowhat ?" Peery asked.

"It's either that or tell 'em to get comfortable here for the next day," Flatnose Jack said to the pilot.

"Eitherwhat ?" Peery asked.

A look of panic came over the pilot's face. "Hey, man, you run this station,you go do it. There's no f.u.c.king way I'm walking back into that ship and telling those guys that."

"Telling whowhat ?" Peery asked.

Flatnose Jack reached out and grabbed Peery's harness, pulling him close. "How many people are we talking about for that,huh , Peery? How many people to make that happen and get this ship on its way in twenty minutes?"

"Tenminutes now," the pilot said.

"How many people . . . ?" Peery blinked at a sudden light only he could see. "You mean for a manual operation?"

"That's what I mean."

Everything was in slow motion now: The pilot turning to Peery with strobe-like precision.

Flatnose Jack sticking out his chin and leaning closer to wait for an answer.

Mechanics pa.s.sing by in reverse as the belay winches reeled them away from the ship, one after the other, their tasks complete.

The movement of his own lips forming to release the response.

A response Peery did not want to give, but heard his voice deliver even before it came boiling from his mouth. A single-word self-indictment and the world resumed normal speed.

"How many?"Flatnose Jack repeated.