Escape Velocity Read online

  Escape Velocity

  by Christopher Stasheff

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  1

  She was a girl. Dar knew it the moment he saw her.

  That wasn't as easy as it sounds. Really. Considering that she was shaved bald and was wearing a baggy gray flannel coverall, Dar was doing pretty well to identify her as human, let alone female. It would've been a much better bet that she was a department-store mannequin in one of those bags that are put on them between outfits, to protect them in case somebody with a plastic fetish comes along.

  But she moved. That's how Dar knew she was human.

  And he was just in from a six-week trading tour and was just about to go out on another one (Cholly, the boss, was shorthanded this month; one of his traders had been caught shaving percentage points with Occam's Razor). Which meant, since the Wolmar natives didn't allow their womenfolk to meet strangers, that for the last six weeks Dar had seen things that were human, and things that were female, but never both at the same time; so he was in a prime state to recognize a girl if one happened along.

  This one didn't “happen”—she strode. She nearly swaggered, and she stepped down so hard that Dar suspected she was fighting to keep her hips from rolling. It sort of went with the gray jumpsuit, bald head, and lack of makeup.

  She sat down on a bar stool, and waited. And waited. And waited.

  The reason she waited so long was that Cholly was alone behind the bar today and was discussing the nature of reality with a corporal; he wasn't about to give up a chance at a soldier.

  Not that the girl seemed to mind. She was ostentatiously not looking at the two privates at the other end of the bar, but her ears fairly twitched in their direction.

  “He niver had a chance,” the gray-haired one burbled around his cigar. “He but scarcely looked up, and whap! I had him!”

  “Took him out good and proper, hey?” The blond grinned.

  “Out! I should say! So far out he an't niver coming back! Mark my words, he'll buy the farm! Buy it for me yet, he will!”

  The girl's lips pinched tight, and her throat swelled the way someone's does when they can't hold it in anymore and it's just got to bust loose; and Dar figured he'd better catch it, 'cause the soldiers wouldn't understand.

  But Dar would. After six weeks without women, he was ready to understand anything, provided it came from a female.

  So he sidled up to lean on the bar, neatly intersecting her line of sight, smiled with all the sincerity he could dredge up, and chirped, “Service is really slow around here, isn't it?”

  She got that blank look of total surprise for a minute; then her lip curled, and she spat, “Yes, unless you're looking for death! You seem to dish it up awfully fast around here, just because you're wearing a uniform!”

  “ ‘Uniform'?” Dar looked down at his heavy green coveralls and mackinaw, then glanced over at the two soldiers, who were looking surprised and thinking about feeling offended. He turned back to the girl, and said quickly. “ ’Fraid I don't follow you, miz. Hasn't been a killing around here all year.”

  “Sure,” she retorted, “it's January seventh. And what were those two bums over there talking about, if it wasn't murder?”

  She had to point. She just had to. Making sure Dar couldn't pretend she'd been talking about two CPOs walking by in the street, no doubt. To make it worse, judging by their accents, the two privates were from New Perth, where “bum” had a very specific meaning that had absolutely nothing to do with unemployment.

  The older private opened his mouth for a bellow, but Dar cut in quicker. “Points, miz. You can believe me or not, but they were talking about points.”

  She looked doubtful for a fraction of a second, but only a fraction. Then her face firmed up again with the look of someone who's absolutely sure that she's right, especially if she's wrong. She demanded, “Why should I believe you? What are you, if you aren't a soldier?”

  Dar screwed up his hopes and tried to look casual. “Well, I used to be a pilot . . .”

  “Am I supposed to be impressed?” she said sourly.

  “They told me girls would be, when I enlisted.” Dar sighed. “It's got to work sometime.”

  “I thought this planet was an Army prison.”

  “It is. The Army has ships too.”

  “Why?” She frowned. “Doesn't it trust the Navy to do its shipping?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You say that with authority. What kind of ship did you pilot—a barge?”

  “A space tug,” Dar admitted.

  She nodded. “What are you now?”

  Dar shrugged, and tried to look meek. “A trader.”

  “A trader?” She spoke with such gleeful indignation that even Cholly looked up—for a second, anyway. “So you're one of the vampires who're victimizing the poor, helpless natives!”

  “Helpless!” the old private snorted—well, roared, really; and Dar scratched his head and said, “Um, 'fraid you've got your cables crossed, miz. I wouldn't exactly say who's doing the victimizing.”

  “Well, I would!” she stormed. “Stampeding out here, victimizing these poor people, trying to take over their land and destroy their culture—it's always the same! It's all part of a pattern, a pattern as old as Cortez, and it just goes on and on and on! ‘Don't give a damn what the people want; give 'em technology! Don't give a damn whether or not their religion's perfectly adequate for 'em—give 'em the Bible! Don't ask whether or not they own the place—herd 'em onto reservations! Or make slaves of 'em!' Oh, I've heard about it, I've read about it! It's just starting here, but you wait and see! It's genocide, that's what it is! It's the worst kind of imperialism! And all being practiced by the wonderful, loyal soldiers of our miraculously democratic Interstellar Dominion Electorates! Imperialists!” And she spat.

  The two soldiers swelled up like weather balloons, and the weather was going to be bad, so Cholly yanked himself out of his talk and hurried down to the end of the bar to put in a soothing word or two. As he passed Dar, he muttered, “Now, then, lad, whut've I told ye? Reason, don'cha know, now, Dar, reason! Try it, there's a good fellow, just try it! An' you'll see. Sweet reason, now, Dar!” And he hurried on down to the end of the bar.

  Dar thought he'd been trying reason already, and so far it hadn't been turning out sweetly; but he took a deep breath, and set himself to try it again. “Now, then, miz. Uh, first off, I'd say we didn't exactly stampede out here. More like a roundup, actually.”

  She frowned. “What're you talking about? . . . Oh. You mean because this is a military prison planet.”

  “Well, something of that sort, yes.”

  She shrugged. “Makes no difference. Whether you wanted to come here or not, you're here—and they're shipping you in by the thousands.”

  “Well, more like the hundreds, really.” Dar scratched behind his ear. “We get in maybe two hundred, three hundred, ah . . .”

  “Colonists,” she said sternly.

  “. . . prisoners,” Dar finished. “Per year. Personally, I'd rather think of myself as a ‘recruit.’ ”

  “Doesn't make any difference,” she snapped. “It's what you do after you get here that counts. You go out there, making war on those poor, innocent natives . . . and you traders go cheating them blind. Oh, I've heard what you're up to.”

  “Oh, you have?” Dar perked up. “Hey, we're gettin' famous! Where'd you
hear about us, huh?”

  She shrugged impatiently. “What does it matter?”

  “A lot, to me. To most of us, for that matter. When you're stuck way out here on the fringe of the Terran Sphere, you start caring a lot about whether or not people've ever heard about your planet. ’Be nice to feel even that important.”

  “Mm.” Her face softened a moment, in a thoughtful frown. “Well . . . I'm afraid this won't help much. I used to be a clerk back on Terra, in the records section of the Bureau of Otherworldly Activities—and a report about Wolmar came through occasionally.”

  “Oh.” Dar could almost feel himself sag. “Just official reports?”

  She nodded, with a vestige of sympathy. “That's right. Nobody ever saw them except bureaucrats. And the computer, of course.”

  “Of course.” Dar heaved a sigh and straightened his shoulders. “Well! That's better than nothing . . . I suppose. What'd they say about us?”

  “Enough.” She smiled vindictively. “Enough so that I know this is a prison planet for criminal soldiers, governed by a sadomasochistic general; that scarcely a day passes when you don't have a war going on. . . .”

  “Holidays,” Dar murmured, “and Sundays.”

  “ ‘Scarcely,’ I said! And that you've got an extremely profitable trade going with the natives for some sort of vegetable drug, in return for which you give them bits of cut glass and surplus spare parts that you order through the quartermaster.”

  “That's all?” Dar asked, crestfallen.

  “All!” She stared, scandalized. “Isn't that enough? What did you want—a list of war crimes?”

  “Oh . . .” Dar gestured vaguely. “Maybe some of the nice things—like this tavern, and plenty of leave, and . . .”

  “Military corruptness. Slackness of discipline.” She snorted. “Sure. Maybe if I'd stayed with the Bureau, a piece of whitewash would've crossed my desk.”

  “If you'd stayed with them?” Dar looked up. “You're not with BOA anymore?”

  She frowned. “If I were working for the Bureau, would I be here?”

  Dar just looked at her for a long moment.

  Then he shook himself and said, “Miz, the only reason I can think of why you would be here is because BOA sent you. Who could want to come here?”

  “Me,” she said, with a sardonic smile. “Use your head. Could I dress like this if I worked for the government?”

  Dar's face went blank. Then he shrugged. “I dunno. Could you?”

  “Of course not,” she snapped. “I'd have to have a coiffured hairdo, and plaster myself with skintight see-throughs and spider heels. I had to, for five years.”

  “Oh. You didn't like it?”

  “Would you like to have to display yourself everyday so a crowd of the opposite sex could gawk at you?”

  Dar started a slow grin.

  “Well, I didn't!” she snapped, reddening.

  “And that's why you quit?”

  “More than that,” she said grimly. “I got fed up with the whole conformist ragout, so I aced out instead.”

  “ ‘Aced out’?” Dar was totally lost.

  “Aced out! Quit! Got out of all of it!” she shouted. “I turned into a Hume!”

  “What's a ‘Hume’?”

  She stared, scandalized. “You really are away from it all out here, aren't you?”

  “I've kinda been trying to hint about something along those lines, yes. We get the news whenever a freighter lands, about three times a year. So until they invent faster-than-light radio, we're not going to know what's happening on Terra until a couple of years after it's happened.”

  She shook her head in exasperation. “Talk about primitive! All right . . . a Hume is me—a nonconformist. We wear loose gray coveralls like this to hide our bodies from all those lascivious, leering eyes. We shave our heads, so we don't have to do up a pompadour everyday. And we don't submit to those prisons society calls ‘jobs’; we'd rather be poor. We've put in our time, we've got some savings, and between that, our GNP share, and whatever we can pick up at odd jobs, we manage to keep going. We do what we want, not what the I.D.E. wants. That's what's a Hume.”

  Dar nodded, lips pursed and eyes slightly glazed. “Uh. But you don't conform. Right.”

  “I didn't say that, gnappie! I said we're nonconformists.”

  “Uh—right.” Dar nodded. “I see the difference—or I'll try to.”

  She turned on him, but Cholly got there first. “Do thet, lad! Do thet, and you'll make me proud of you! But you see, you have to know the history of it, don't you? Of course you do; can't understand nothing wot's happening in human society if you don't know the history of it. The first who was called ‘Nonconformists,’ see, they started showing up toward the end of the 1500s, now. Shakespeare wrote one of 'em into Twelfth Night, called him ‘Malvolio.' Puritans, they was, and Calvinists, and Baptists, too, and Anabaptists, all manner of Protestant sects what wasn't Church of England. And the Anglicans, they lumped 'em all together and called 'em ‘Nonconformists’ (the name got put on 'em from the outside, you see, the way it always does) 'cause they didn't conform to the Established Church (what was C. of E., of course). Yet if you sees the pictures of 'em, like Cromwell's Roundheads, why! they're like to one another as bottles in a case! Within their opposition-culture, you sees, they conformed much more tightly than your C. of E.s—and so it has been, ever since. When you call 'em ‘nonconformists,’ it doesn't mean they don't conform to the standards of their group, but that their group don't conform to the majority culture—and that's why any opposition-culture's called ‘nonconformist.’ Now then, Sergeant . . .” And he was off again, back to the reality case.

  The Hume stared after him, then nodded thickly. “He's right, come to think of it . . .” She gave herself a shake, and scowled at Dar. “What was that—a bartender, or a professor?”

  “Cholly,” Dar said, by way of explanation. “My boss.”

  The Hume frowned. “You mean you work here? WHOA!”

  Dar saw the indignation rise up in her, and grinned. “That's right. He's the owner, president, and manager of operations for the Wolmar Pharmaceutical Trading Company, Inc.”

  “The boss drug-runner?” she cried, scandalized. “The robber baron? The capitalist slave-master?”

  “Not really. More like the bookkeeper for a cooperative.”

  She reared up in righteous wrath, opening her mouth for a crushing witticism—but couldn't think of any, and had to content herself with a look of withering scorn.

  Dar obligingly did his best to wither.

  She turned away to slug back a swallow from her glass—then stared, suddenly realizing that she had a glass.

  Dar glanced at Cholly, who looked up, winked, nodded, and turned back to discussing the weightier aspects of kicking a cobble.

  The Hume seemed to deflate a little. She sighed, shrugged, and took another drink. “Hospitable, anyway . . .” She turned and looked up at Dar “Besides, can you deny it?”

  Dar ducked his head—down, around, and back up in hopes of a sequitur. “Deny what?”

  “All of it! Everything I've said about this place! It's all true, isn't it? Starting with your General Governor!”

  “Oh. Well, I can deny that General Shacklar's a sadist.”

  “But he is a masochist?”

  Dar nodded. “But he's very well-adjusted. As to the rest of it . . . well, no, I can't deny it, really; but I would say you've gotten the wrong emphasis.”

  “I'm open to reason,” the Hume said, fairly bristling. “Explain it to me.”

  Dar shook his head. “Can't explain it, really. You've got to experience it, see it with your own eyes.”

  “Yes. Of course.” She rolled her eyes up. “And how, may I ask, am I supposed to manage that?”

  “Uhhhh . . .” Dar's mind raced, frantically calculating probable risks versus probable benefits. It totaled up to 50-50, so he smiled and said, “Well, as it happens, I'm going out on another trading mission. You're welcom
e to come along. I can't guarantee your safety, of course—but it's really pretty tame.”

  The Hume stared, and Dar could almost see her suddenly pulling back, withdrawing into a thickened shell. But something clicked, and her eyes turned defiant again. “All right.” She gulped the rest of her drink and slammed the glass back down on the bar. “Sure.” She stood up, hooking her thumbs in her pockets. “Ready to go. Where's your pack mule?”

  Dar grinned. “It's a little more civilized than that—but it's just out back. Shall we?” And he bowed her toward the door.

  She spared him a last withering glance, and marched past him. Dar smiled, and followed.

  As they passed Cholly and the sergeant, the bartender was saying earnestly, “So Descartes felt he had to prove it all, don't you see—everything, from the ground up. No assumptions, none.”

  “Ayuh. Ah kin see thet.” The sergeant nodded, frowning. “If'n he assumed anything, and thet one thing turned out to be wrong, everything else he'd figgered out'd be wrong, too.”

  “Right, right!” Cholly nodded emphatically. “So he stopped right there, don't you see, took out a hotel room, and swore he'd not stir till he'd found some one thing he could prove, some one way to be sure he existed. And he thought and he thought, and it finally hit him.”

  “Whut dud?”

  “He was thinking! And if'n he wuz thinking, there had to be someone there to do the thinking! And that someone was him, of course—so the simple fact that he was thinking proved he existed!”

  “Ay-y-y-y-uh!” The sergeant's face lit with the glow of enlightenment, and the Hume stopped in the doorway, turning back to watch, hushed, almost reverent.

  Cholly nodded, glowing, victorious. “So he laid it out, right then and there, and set it down on paper, where he could read it. Cogito, ergo sum, he wrote—for he wrote in Latin, don't you see, all them philosphers did, back then—Cogito, ergo sum; and it means ‘I think; therefore: I exist.’ ”

  “Ay-y-y-y-uh. Ayuh, I see.” The sergeant scratched his head, then looked up at Cholly again. “Well, then—that's whut makes us human, ain't it? Thinking, I mean.”

  The Hume drew in a long, shuddering breath, then looked up at Dar. “What is this—a tavern, or a college?”