Universe 1 - [Anthology] Read online

  Elias said, “It’s not right. I—”

  “Shut up,” Paul said. (The white ghost held the key—)

  “If you had helped—”

  “Forget that.” Thoughts swirled in his head.Jesus, analyzingdreams, am I? It’ll be Tarot cards next. “Listen, follow through on what you planned. Send your men out. Put a lot at the tube.”

  “I don’t-”

  “Move.” Paul stood up, rubbed his eyes and began dressing. “What time is it?” He found his wrist watch. “Oh, middle of the night. Fine.” Elias shuffled his feet, started to say something and then left.

  Paul waited a moment, mechanically planning. The dream still bothered him—which was in itself unusual— but he was beginning to feel confident again. The white ghost was Randall. But then, he knew that anyway.

  * * * *

  “Grandfather,” Paul said softly.

  “Uh?” A soft neon clicked on. Randall was stretched diagonally across the bed, eyes clouded from sleep.

  “Get up. Elias has made his move.”

  “What?”

  “He’s got most of the important points already. Come on.” He helped the old man out of bed and into a pullover. Randall took a long time to awaken.

  Paul kept him moving with a stream of explanation and prodding, detailing the probable situation. Randall moved slowly, fumbling with his boots, stumbling, unable to believe what was happening.

  “A coded signal,” he mumbled, tying shoelaces. “I sent it to Earth, asking for a step-up in the rendezvous. They agreed; knew I could still think clear. Elias might do something, cause some trouble. But I never—”

  “It’s not over yet,” Paul said. He’d never seen his grandfather like this—so weak and so old. “The picture isn’t as bad as I’ve painted it. But we’ve got to move.”

  They moved, down Randall’s personal elevator, silence clinging to both. Randall chewed his lips, muttering, waving hands awkwardly in the air. Paul used his mind, running over moves, checking, estimating the timing. The elevator stopped.

  “Why here?” Randall said. His eyes darted fearfully. A small room; confined. Hard to breathe.

  “We’re close to the tube lock. And your suit is kept” —the door slid open—”here. Get into it. Where’s a standard issue?”

  Randall motioned at a paneled case on the other side of the room. He cracked the seal on his own suit case and began to pull it on. Paul took the standard suit and began adjusting it to fit his height and size. His personal suit was in a storage vault near the air lock. After a moment, he stopped.

  “I can’t do much in a suit like this. I’ll—”

  As he started to turn, Randall dropped a hand on his arm. “What’s the point of all this?”

  Paul looked down at his grandfather, seeing age shiver inside tired eyes. Guilt erupted inside him, but he fought it. The universe was too large to encompass emotions. “We’re going to decompress the rooms with Elias’s men in them.”

  “That’s . . . murder.”

  “Only if they refuse to give up. We’ll take the pressure down very low, but they’ll live. I’d never kill anybody. You ought to know that.”

  “I ought to,” Randall said. He paused. “But couldn’t I talk to them? I’ve always been able to control them before.”

  “No,” Paul said. “It’s never been this bad before.”

  Randall nodded. “But why suits for us?”

  “Somebody’s got to go in and get them, even if they give up. That’ll be me. If anything goes wrong, I’ll signal over radio, and you can pull the cork on the room. I’ll live. If necessary, you can come in to get me.”

  “That’s a good plan,” Randall said. “I wish I’d—”

  “Hurry!”

  “Yes, right.” Randall fitted the suit yoke over his shoulders.

  “I’m going out to the lock,” Paul said. “I’ll get my suit and be back. Stay here.”

  “But-”

  The closing door sliced off Randall’s protest. Paul propelled himself down the corridor, scarcely touching the walls in a long, loping run. Once, he looked behind him, certain that he’d heard an awkward step tracing his own. But the corridor was empty.

  He stopped at the entrance to the lock area. Had Elias’s men moved into position yet? There was only one way to find out. He’d have to walk right in.

  Opening the hatch, he poked his head through the hole and looked around. Two short-muzzled pistols were being pointed at him by men he recognized from the meeting yesterday. He grinned. The men stared at him a long moment, then lowered their weapons.

  “Got some cord?” Paul said. The two men looked at each other. They clearly didn’t work around the lock. “Never mind.” Paul bounced over to a temporary storage chest, rummaged around, and found some nylon securing threads.

  “Be back. Don’t shoot me.” He went back to Randall’s private suiting room.

  He opened the door to the room, keeping the cord out of sight, and found Randall looking at him through the view slot of his suit. Randall said something, and then realized Paul could not hear him. He reached for his decompression valve. Paul kicked away from the wall and slammed into Randall’s side, throwing the old man against the wall.

  Before Randall could regain his feet, stumbling awkwardly, unaccustomed to a suit after all this time inside, Paul was behind him and had pinned the clamp locks in the suit’s wrists to each other. Randall could free them from inside if he remembered how, but Paul counted on his not remembering immediately.

  He was right. Randall struggled to bring his arms around, but they were bound together behind his back. Paul slipped the nylon threads around Randall’s arms. He criss-crossed them through Randall’s legs, shouldering the man about as though he were a large toy, and in a moment had him completely bound.

  There was no time for niceties. He scooped up Randall and thrust him out into the corridor. The old man must be getting a hell of a banging, Paul thought, but the suit would keep him from breaking any bones.

  He propelled them both down the curving gray hall, breathing rapidly.White ghost. Black ghost. Grappling. The walls of the corridor seemed to close in upon him, and he moved faster, nearly stumbling in his haste. This is my grandfather who lies like a wet sack over my shoulder, he thought. My flesh; my blood. The man who raised me from nothing and made me into the kind of animal who could turn on his own. Mad laughter caught in his throat, and he slammed into the hatch.

  He paused for a moment, catching his breath, counting to ten and reciting some Greek. Then he entered the room.

  The two men stared at the bundle he carried; even through the view slot, they could see it was Randall.

  “How—?” one of them said.

  “Shut up,” Paul said. “And hold this for me.” He handed Randall to the men. He had to hurry; Elias would probably be here in a few moments. There wasn’t any time to waste, but . . . Forget that, he told himself. He’s just a man. You owe him nothing; it’s his life or yours. He’s old; you’re young.

  He had no trouble finding his personal suit. He slipped into it, and headed back to the central receiving area. Elias was waiting for him, standing over Randall.

  “Elias,” Paul said. “Send those men for a cradle of oxy bottles.” Elias had brought two more men with him; Paul wanted them out of the way. “Now.”

  “What do you—?”

  “Now!”

  “Well, all right. Zabronski, Kanyen, do like he says.”

  The two trotted off. Elias pointed at Randall. “What—?”

  “He’s too much of a symbol. The older people will follow him anywhere. You don’t want that, do you?”

  “No. I-”

  “Good. Then we’re going to put him out of reach. I’ll take him out with air and food and leave him on the surface of the ice. I’ll hide him in a little valley somewhere, bound, with enough freedom of movement to replace his bottles and feed himself.”

  Elias frowned uncertainly. “This seems a bit drastic. Couldn’t we�
��?”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “No.” Elias shrugged. “He’s your grandfather.”

  And that, Paul thought, was the key. “Open Randall’s suit. I want him to hear us.”

  Elias did as directed. Randall’s suit was orange-red, and he looked like a fat, grotesque lobster lying in the main bay of the airlock.

  “Paul,” he said, his voice soft, muffled.

  “Randall, I-”

  “Listen to my instructions,” Elias said. “I am about to cast—”

  “I don’t have to listen to you.” Seeing Elias had brought back Randall’s strength. “If you kill me, you’ll let anarchy loose on this world.”

  “Anarchy,” Paul said. “And what’s wrong with that?” The two men returned, wheeling a rolling cradle of bottles. They’d been listening: a case of food and water squeeze bottles rode on top.

  Randall was glaring at Paul. “I don’t understand,” he began. “My own grandson. Paul, we could have—”

  “I’m sorry,” Paul said. “But it was meant to happen this way. I think you knew that all along.”

  Randall started to speak, but only nodded lamely.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder why you were chosen to be First on Zephyr when the Libs had a majority?” Paul said.

  Elias looked strangely at Paul, and Randall again nodded. The other men stood silently, not following a word of the conversation.

  “I think I know,” Paul continued. “They had to throw a sop to the planners and bureaucrats and pencil-pushers, and you were it. But they knew you wouldn’t matter, because they were right, in their way, about politics.”

  “They were criminals,” Randall said, his voice far away, as if speaking from another time. “All of them.”

  “Probably so, before it was finished. By now, I’m a criminal, too. All men of action are criminals to somebody. The Libs wanted this trans-Pluto shot, but not for science or glory. They thought you’d be dead; they didn’t reckon with low-gee and how long it can prolong life. Theydid know that freedom of the kind they dreamed about couldn’t continue in that sardine can Earth was getting to be.”

  “Ah,” said Elias. Paul glanced at him. Perhaps he’s smarter than he seems,Paul thought. I’d better hurry this. A man who is dying deserves to know the truth.

  “The Libs sent Zephyr out, a small community, independent of Earth. They knew we wouldn’t want to come back after the trip was over. As long as Zephyr was out beyond range of Earth’s fast carriers, she was free. When she runs dry of nitrogen and oxygen, we’ll find another comet out there, beyond the tenth planet. We saw enough on our first pass—next time we’ll know what to look for. And as long as Zephyr is free, somewhere,men are free.”

  “If Earth should destroy itself,” Elias said slowly, “we can go back to replenish it.”

  Paul could see Elias already working out a role for himself in this new, unplanned drama. He would polish it, get the lines down right, and pretty soon believe it had been his idea all along. And convince the others, too.

  But Randall didn’t see it that way. Lying on the floor, his eyes closed, he began to laugh softly.

  “What’s funny?” Elias said, irritation flooding his face.

  “You are,” Randall said. “And Paul. You and your splendid plans. Going to replenish the Earth, are you? Well, haven’t you forgotten something? You’re not going to be in any position to replenish anything. After Zephyr passes the sun, neither of you will be anything more than a burnt corpse.”

  Fear replaced the anger on Elias’s face. He turned on Paul. “What-?”

  Paul shook his head. “It’s no problem. I catalogued the solids cruising in the same orbit as Zephyr, the junk that’s followed us all the way around our ellipse. If we use every shuttle and work them constantly, we can collect enough to make a shield of rock. There might even be time to polish the surface, just to be sure we’re safe. A hemisphere a few meters thick should do it.”

  Randall laughed again, a bitter laugh. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

  “Just about,” Paul said. He looked at his grandfather for a long moment, eyes meeting eyes, then turned to Elias. “Seal Randall’s suit,” he said. “We’ve wasted enough time.”

  * * * *

  He waited: floating.

  “Can you reach the bottles and make the attachment?” Paul called down to Randall. They were connected by a talk pipe of metal that carried sounds between suits.

  “I can.”

  “Well, let’s hope Earth doesn’t take too long to turn her ships back.”

  There was a pause. Then Randall said, “It’s cold out here, Paul.” His voice throbbed with the pain of antiquity. “So cold.”

  “You have extra power packs,” Paul said. “Use them.”

  The milky light of early dawn on Zephyr’s surface was filtering through the ice, refracted around the edge of the mantle and surfacing here. There was a somber orange to it that made Randall’s suit stand out even more in the shallow hollow Paul had found for him. Down there, resting, the old man looked fragile, and very much alone. Like mankind in the universe, Paul thought. A tiny speck in the dark hollow.

  “I’ll die,” Randall said. “You know I’ll die. Look at me and say you don’t know it.”

  Paul looked at his grandfather. “I know it’s probable.”

  The void stood poised above them both, a vast empty devouring cloud.

  “You’re murdering me,” Randall said. “And for what? For acause. For a stupid, silly pointless cause.”

  “Not for a cause,” Paul said, for there were no causes in his life. “For me. For my freedom.”

  Above, hard stars twisting in the void, shrouded by the brightness of the coma, turned slowly. In a moment, Earth would be visible, bright beacon of Man.

  It calls not to me, Paul thought. Let it call to Randall.

  “Paul-! Please-!”

  I loved him once, Paul thought, and I’ve never loved anyone else. I worshipped his feet, kissed his every word. And now I’ve killed him.

  Paul lifted the talk pipe away from Randall and attached it to the side of the shuttle. He stared down at the lone figure on the ice for a moment, then started the shuttle’s jet. He did not wave. He did not look back.

  The hollow that held Randall was twenty-five kilometers from the tube, but the trip was short. He flew over raw knives of dark ice, into the dawn. Paul clicked on his suit radio and called the lock.

  “All secured,” Paul said, his tone controlled. “Coming in.”

  There was a brief reply, from Elias.

  Everything, from the start, had depended upon rushing Elias, keeping him moving, not letting him think. Randall wasn’t the major obstacle, but he could have been if he’d stayed in Zephyr. It was Elias who would decide it all.

  Paul moved the shuttle and dropped down the tube. The light around him dimmed and wavered, casting pale replicas of the shuttle’s shadow.Black ghost, falling.

  Paul remembered one line from the babble Randall had shouted on the trip out:

  Do you really want to live under Elias?

  Elias was the key. Once Paul gave him the idea of putting Randall in cold storage on the surface, what was more natural than the next step? Paul hadn’t given a damn about the kindergarten politics Elias had played . . . but now things were different. And Paul was the only rival Elias had. Now, like it or not, he had to play the game.

  He eased back on the jets and braked. The running lights had come on automatically and he maneuvered the shuttle into its berth. He felt a bit giddy in free fall; not enough breakfast. And what would he be doing now, Paul wondered, if Zanzee had slept with him last night, and he’d thrown Elias out when he’d come with the message? Paul grinned to himself, then laughed aloud. He didn’t know. Events made the man. (And the murderer?)

  He kicked off and approached the personnel air lock. The operational lights were normal; everything looked the same.

  But if Elias seized his chance, he could seal
Paul out forever, make him, too, a prisoner. In a moment, Paul saw it: he and Randall together and dying, with madness approaching, and hunger and thirst, and the terrible cold.

  For an instant he cursed himself and his irrationality. He had done the job himself because—at last, he thought, are you going to admit it to yourself?—because Randall was his own blood. He could not send one of his own down that last dark path, alone. The act, in finality, had to be his.

  Paul could have assigned this to another. He should be—now—with Elias, waiting for some lieutenant to return from the cold.