He was more in his element at the duty-free store. We allotted a hundred kilos for trade goods, things in demand in Novysibirsk that can’t be made there. Caviar, single-malt Scotch whisky, pheromone enhancers. It was obvious from the clerk’s innuendo that we could have bought narcotics. Neither Dallas nor I was interested in spreading that kind of wealth. (For the last few months I’ve carried a spike of fifty-grief in my purse, though, in case the final days become unbearable.)
It took several hours to get the ship loaded, and we were getting tired. But we decided to go on with the test, then park it and allow ourselves a good night’s sleep at the Hilton. It would be a long time before we had starched sheets and room service again.
I asked Dallas whether he would like to stay dirtside while I tested it out. He gave it a moment of hard thought, and looked wistfully over at the Hilton. “No. If something happens, it happens to both of us.” A reassuring sentiment.
So we sealed it up and I was given clearance and rolled over to the east-west runway. There was no queue, but we had to wait for an empty window. Several police floaters crossed our path in formation, which gave me a little twinge of apprehension, and then we got the count, at twelve seconds. I keyed in Goofy, the name Dallas had given the incompetent AI interface, and indeed it was up to the job of sending us off at the right microsecond.
Five gees is uncomfortable, but it saves fuel. After about three minutes we had orbit insertion and tapered down to weightlessness. On the starboard horizon the parched desert was just giving way to the green-and-glitter oasis of Greater Dallas. Dallas looked down at his namesake and his greenish pallor turned to a healthier paleness. “Everything seems to work okay?”
The instruments didn’t show anything wrong, but then a lot of them were just warning lights: if this light goes on, learn to breathe vacuum. “It held maximum acceleration well. We’ll try an orbit change once we get on the other side.” I slid back the plate exposing the keyboard on the right armrest and tapped out some numbers. Then I turned on Goofy.
“May I be of service?” it hissed.
“Yes. When we pass anti-Sands I want a circular orbit, our apogee raised a thousand kays. Period of acceleration timed so that half the increase is done before anti-Sands, and half after we pass it. Confirm and clear.”
“Confirmed, but may I ask what our destination is?”
“No, you may not.”
“Knowing our destination would allow me to refine your calculations and save fuel.”
“Confirm and clear.”
“I said confirmed.” There was a slight pause. “We are cleared with White Sands. Acceleration to commence in forty-eight minutes.”
I turned it off. “Cheeky bastard,” Dallas said. I called a human at White Sands and verified that we’d been given clearance. It would be wonderful to have a midair collision because your ship’s navigation system suffered a personality problem.
“I’m going back to check the stores,” I said, unbuckling. A warning light went on, which startled me. Then I realized it was telling me that I had unbuckled. Warning! The pilot has abandoned her post! “Get you anything?”
“A beer, yeah.” I stretched, glad to be in free fall again, and used the headrest of the couch to push off back to the pantry.
Dallas had done a good job of packing; everything was still stacked neatly. A loose piece of equipment falling a meter or two at five gees could do a lot of damage, even if nothing in your cargo was intrinsically dangerous. Ours included shatterguns and a crowdpleaser.
We’d taken on a fourth of our drinking water as beer and wine. It would all be recycled pee by the time we got to Ceres, anyhow. There were several brands, color-coded in rectangular boxes in the cooler. “Green one, or what?”
“Green’s fine.” I carried it up to him and almost warned him not to open it right away, but decided that would be patronizing, and braced myself for the mess. Five gees, after all. He parked it in the air in front of him, though, and let it settle.
God forgive me the sin of pride. Dallas acts like a neophyte in blast phase, but he does have thousands of hours in space. Some remarkably brave hours, like going to Mars before it was open. Chasing down the will-o’-wisps in Plato and the Alpine Valley; that must have been back when Downside was just a supply dump.
“See what’s on the news?”
“Sure.” I asked the cube for the news, and when it queried for a subject, Dallas said, “Stileman Foundation.” We were in for a shock.
“An important news item associated with the Stileman Foundation broke little more than an hour ago. A prominent immortal, Dallas Barr, has gone on a murderous rampage, apparently because of a brain disease brought on by aging.…”
Dallas looked at me and nodded with a grim expression.
“Murdered by the mad immortal are fellow immortals Eric Lundley and Lamont Randolph, both of Australia; Krsto Vozac of Yugoslavia; and Sally Murchison, a private detective in the Conch Republic. Also feared dead is the Italian immortal Maria Marconi.
“In all likelihood, Barr had his physical appearance radically changed in the Conch Republic, so the accompanying picture may be of little value. Do not attempt to apprehend him. He is heavily armed and has killed friend and stranger alike.”
“Depth,” Dallas said quietly.
“The first murder, which occurred in Sydney last Thursday, was contrived to look like an accident, or suicide. Barr had met Lamont Randolph at a party a few days before and evidently developed an intense dislike for him. Barr dropped in on him for an evening ‘social call,’ and while they were having drinks on the balcony of his penthouse, Barr pushed Randolph to his death on the pavement a hundred meters below.
“The next day, after a social gathering of immortals in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia (which, ironically, had been organized partly by Randolph), Barr struck again, murdering his longtime friend and business partner Eric Lundley, as well as a water taxi driver, both with point-blank pistol fire. Then he sank the taxi and evidently swam for shore.
“According to at least one witness, there was another passenger in the taxi, the beautiful Italian immortal Maria Marconi.” A picture of what I used to look like appeared on the screen. “Yugoslavian authorities are still searching for her body, which may have been displaced dozens of kilometers by ocean currents.”
“Tonight she sleeps with the fishes,” Dallas said with what I think was supposed to be an Italian accent.
“Don’t be ghastly.”
“They must all be in on it. More.”
The screen showed a picture of an intense-looking, attractive black woman. “Interpol traced Barr to the anarchic Conch Republic, and contracted the services there of Sally Murchison, a private detective. She tracked Barr to a midtown motel, but he was either waiting for her or had set a trap. She entered and was immediately blown to pieces by the blast from a shattergun.
“It seems unlikely that Barr remained in the Conch Republic after this murder. He arranged to make it look as if he had himself perished in the blast, and apparently slipped off the island the night of December first. He could be anywhere in the world by now and, as noted earlier, could look like anyone. But according to the Stileman Foundation, he has at most only a few weeks to live, the victim of entropic brain dysfunction.”
Dallas reached over and pushed the D-select button. “Depth on entropic brain dysfunction.”
“Entropic brain dysfunction, EBD, was originally thought to be the only limit on the effectiveness of the Stileman immortality process. It is not possible for the body to produce new nervous tissue, new brain cells, after infancy, and various environmental factors cause constant destruction of these cells.
“Some of these factors have to do with individual behavior, or misbehavior—drinking alcohol and taking certain narcotics, especially grief and dizney—but other factors are inevitably a part of living, such as exposure to radiation from natural causes, industrial sources, and residue from the Khomeini Wars.
“Part of the Stile
man Process works directly on EBD by somehow increasing the efficiency of the cerebral cortex. Exactly how this is done is a closely guarded secret.
“Until recently, it was believed that the process would be effective for at least a thousand years, and this may still be true in the majority of cases. But in the past month it has failed in two of the oldest Stileman immortals, and Stileman scientists are working overtime, trying to uncover some factor in the heredity or medical history of these two men that would make them anomalies. Both had been physically active, even athletic, for over a century; both had suffered several concussions. Both were Anglo-Saxon males with no previous history of mental problems.
“The first victim, Lord Geoffrey Lorne-Smythe, suffered a fate similar to normal senility, though it progressed much faster than it would in a normal person. The second, Dallas Barr, has become psychotic, accusing the Stileman Foundation of trying to kill him while he himself circles the world on a murderous rampage.” The end-of-level pattern came on the screen.
“Better watch out,” Dallas said. “You’re circling the world with me.”
“I wonder what Lorne-Smythe did to oppose them. How they induced the senility.”
“God knows. What I’m afraid of is it’s something they did during his last time at the clinic; maybe they did it to me, too. Briskin said I didn’t have anything to worry about if I stuck with the Steering Committee. Maybe I’m harboring some sort of medical time bomb, and only they have the antidote.”
“In which case, there isn’t any sense in worrying about it.”
He shrugged. “Yeah. I guess this means no Hilton.”
“No.” I bit my lip and tried to control the tremor in my voice. I had seen Earth for the last time. “We’d better compute an orbit.” I turned on the machine. “Cancel the last correction. We want to go to Novysibirsk.”
“Why?”
I sat there with my mouth open for a moment. “Business,” Dallas said.
“It is impossible to go anywhere in Novysibirsk and return on the fuel you have. You’ll have to buy DT-3 in Novysibirsk, where it is very expensive.”
“We’ll go anyway,” I said. “Which is closer, Ceres or Mir?”
“Mir is closer. But you can get to Ceres on less fuel, by slingshotting Mars.”
“Show me the plot.”
A diagram appeared on the screen. “These elements are computed assuming you will first rise to HEO and refuel.”
“No.” Trying to pay cash for fuel at the HEO dump would be as good as announcing our identity. “Circularize this orbit and we will leave from here. Give Sands our—”
“You must not do that,” the machine scolded. “DT-3 costs $1453 per liter in HEO and $2500 in Ceres.”
“Execute the command,” I said. “Tell Sands that our destination is Mars. Verify.”
It seemed to take a long time. “Verified. Under protest. Acceleration will commence in nineteen minutes.”
“What does ‘under protest’ mean?” Dallas said.
“Only that my flight log affirms that I gave you the proper advice, and you ignored it.”
Dallas glared at it. “You could be replaced by an abacus.”
“I could not.” It turned itself off.
He carefully punched the beer open. “Gonna be a long one.”
Leave LEO
3 Dec 80 Greenwich
Rendezvous Mars
15 Dec 80
Arrive Ceres
7 fan 81 (8 yanvár Novysibirsk)
The first flight to Ceres took seven years, there and back, and lost four crew members to murder and suicide. Maria and Dallas discussed this in a lighthearted way at the beginning of their six-week trip. They were looking forward to the intimacy and isolation, and when they wanted time alone, they could draw a curtain between the two acceleration couches and meditate upon the unmoving stars. There would be no shortage of things to do, even though the ship was fully automated, since they could tie into public data links for millions of uncopyrighted books and movies (no credit account to pay for anything new). If either of them had any fears of not enjoying six weeks locked up in a padded mausoleum sharing another person’s body odors, they didn’t voice those fears.
In fact, they wouldn’t have time to be bored, or annoyed, or fly off the handle. Things would all too soon become interesting.
Dallas
Fireball was a pretty quiet ship under half-gee acceleration, just a faint hiss and a few creaks and ticks to keep you nervous. We cranked for over five hours, most of which time I gratefully slept. Woke up fast when acceleration stopped, of course. It’s exactly the sensation of falling out of bed. And off a cliff.
Maria reached over and grabbed my arm, which was probably waving around somewhat as I plummeted to my doom. “Wake up, Dallas. It’s only zerogee.” She unbuckled and did a stretch-and-tumble. “Race you to the head.” I decided to be gallant and let her go. Five hours is a long time for a woman. But it’s a long time for a beer drinker, too.
The toilet’s gimballed so you can use it during acceleration, and there are handholds leading to the head, but it looked like you would have to be a gymnast to get into and out of the acceleration couch. And I supposed Maria didn’t want to be away from the controls during blast. I didn’t want her to be.
Waiting, I toggled the viewscreen to look aft and was startled at how small Earth seemed so soon, only a little bigger than the crescent Moon does dirtside. Shouldn’t have been surprised, but I hadn’t been out this far in twenty years. The Moon was a dull fingernail clipping almost lost in the Sun’s glare.
I unbuckled and tried out my “space legs,” as they say, though legs in zerogee are about as useful as your appendix. The cabin was small enough to be easy to get around in, and the Naugahyde padding on the walls was loose and tacky enough to give you a good grip for starting and stopping. Tacky in both senses of the word. I knew that we would grow to hate beige.
I took my turn at the head, forgetting the Stiktite slippers and so demonstrating one of Newton’s laws in a disconcerting way. Zerogee’s easier than a rotating environment, though. The head at LEO Cyanamid used to have a red X to the right of the urinal with a sign saying AIM HERE, STUPID.
“Why don’t you bring back some wine,” Maria said. “Let’s celebrate.” I selected a package of white Burgundy, Montagny ’78. Good year but a bad container. Did they age it in the plastic, or had it been transferred from a glass bottle? I didn’t want to know.
I squeezed a bubble out and we drank it with straws, the way we had in adastra. It wasn’t bad. “So far so good,” I said.
“We’re still in one piece. I should check and see if the piece is where it’s supposed to be.” She turned on the computer.
“May I be of service?”
“I want to take two position checks, with respect to the Sun and two stars. Give me—”
“That will not be necessary. We are on course.”
“I need the practice. Let me have first Aldebaran, then Spica, then the Sun.” While she was getting Eric from the storage locker between us, a star field appeared on the viewscreen, dominated by a bright orange one in the center. Various numbers and acronyms glowed at the bottom of the screen. I could recognize VWRTSOL and AWRTSOL as being velocity and angle with respect to the Sun, and time and elapsed time were clear. The rest I would have to figure out.
She plugged him in, and Eric’s face appeared in a small superimposed square. “Space, eh? Moving fast, that’s good.”
“We want to do a redundancy check on the ship’s computer,” she said. “Can you verify whether we’re on the proper course?”
“Only to a certain extent. I don’t have any independent sensory input. So all I can do is take the same numbers it starts with and see whether I come up with the same results.”
“That’s enough. We’re more worried about the logic than the data.” She and Eric talked arcsines and such to each other for a while. I worked on the bubble of Burgundy. From each according to his abilities,
to each according to his needs.
Maria looked up and there was a slight edge in her voice. “Could you do this if something happened to me?”
“Oh yeah. I’d have to punch up a handbook. It’s been a long time.” I brushed away some mental cobwebs. “Let me see … you get the angles between your direction of travel and two stars, and then a sun vector, distance and speed. Couldn’t do it without a computer, though.”
“Not many people could.”
“Good to seven nines,” Eric said. “You’ll want to correct at least once before the Mars swingby, of course, but this will definitely get you there.”
I punched up the news and there was no essential change. Still after me, but only on the Earth. The newsie said that I could stay in the Conch Republic indefinitely, if the identity laundering had been done well. Typical ’phem fallacy, “indefinitely.” If I wanted to live more than ten years, I had to go to either Sydney or London—where they’d know who I really was ninety seconds after the first blood sample.
“I wonder,” Maria said. “If they actually are still looking for a single person, then traveling together is a sort of camouflage.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. Since they managed to track us to the Conch Republic, they probably know I wasn’t alone on the airship. They have their own reasons for keeping you a secret.”
She nodded slowly. “I suppose it would be harder for them to characterize you as a homicidal maniac if you have a willing companion.” She reached back and unclasped a barrette, then plumped her hair out into a golden halo, smiled. “God knows I’m willing.”
Space travel is both the fastest and slowest form of locomotion in human history. For most of the next eleven days, the Earth was a blue star behind them and Mars was a red star in front, and the only change in the scenery was that one gradually got dimmer while the other gradually got brighter. If you measured it, you could have told that the Sun’s filter-darkened disc was diminishing, too. Otherwise, everything stayed the same. The unblinking stars, more or less eternal.