Shadowline Page 15

  “Of course, Commander. Miss? Will you take a seat? We can get the paperwork started.”

  “It’s that easy?” she asked Perchevski.

  The desk man replied, “You’ll be sleeping on the moon tomorrow night, Miss. Oh. Commander. You’re leaving?”

  “I have an eleven-thirty to Montreal.”

  Greta looked at him in silent appeal.

  “Will you sponsor, Commander?”

  He knew he shouldn’t. It meant accepting legal and quasi-parental responsibility. The Admiral would be furious . . . “Of course. Where do I print?” He offered his thumb.

  “Here. Thank you.” Something buzzed. The desk man glanced to one side, read something from a screen Perchevski could not see. “Oh-oh.” He thumbed a print-lock. A drawer popped open. He handed Perchevski a ring.

  “Why?” It was a call ring. It would let him know if the Bureau wanted him on the hurry up. It would give them a means of following his movements, too.

  “Word from the head office. Ready, Miss Helsung?”

  “Greta, I’ll see you in Academy.” He wrote a number on a scrap of paper. “Keep this. Call it when you get your barracks assignment.” He started to leave again.

  “Commander?”

  He turned. Soft young arms flung around his neck. Tears seeped through his uniform. “Thank you.”

  “Greta,” he whispered, “don’t be scared. They’ll be good to you.”

  They would. She would be treated like a princess till her studies began.

  “Good-bye. Be good.”

  Four of the tour youths caught him outside. He had to break one’s arm before they got the message. He was nearly late for his flight. He had to wait to shift to civilian clothing till after he had boarded the airbus.

  North American Central Directorate showed his mother living at the same St. Louis Zone address. He went without calling first, afraid she might find some excuse for not seeing him. Though their intentions were friendly enough, their few visits had been tempestuous. She could never forgive him for “turning on his own kind.”

  The passage down the last light canyon was like a journey home along an old route of despair.

  The playgrounds of his childhood had not changed. Trash still heaped them. Kid gangs still roamed them. Crudely written, frequently misspelled obscenities obscured the unyielding plastic walls. Future archaeologists might someday go carefully through layer after layer of spray paint, reconstructing the aberrations of generations of uneducated minds.

  He labored to convince himself that this was not the totality of Old Earth.

  “Some of it’s worse,” he murmured. Then he castigated himself for his bigotry.

  Sure, most Terran humanity lived like animals. But not all. There were enclaves where some pride, some care, some ambition remained. There were native industries. Earth produced most of its own food and necessities. And there were artists, writers, and men of vision . . . They just got lost in the barbarian horde. They formed an unnaturally small percentage of the population.

  Not only had risk-taking been drained from the gene pool, so had a lot of talent and intelligence.

  The average I.Q. on Old Earth ran twenty points below Confederation mean.

  Perchevski overtipped his driver. It was enough to convince the man that he had conveyed some criminal kingpin. Crime was one profession where a man could still win some respect.

  His codes still opened the building’s doors. After all these years. He was amazed.

  It was another symptom of what had become of his motherworld. Terror had become so ubiquitous that no one tried very hard to resist anymore.

  His mother was drunk. She snapped, “You’re not Harold. Who the hell are you? Where’s Harold? Nobody comes here but Harold.”

  He looked past her into the space where he had spent most of his childhood. Three meters by four, it was divided into three tiny rooms. It had seemed bigger back then, even with his father living at home.

  He said nothing.

  “Look, brother . . . Holy Christ! It’s you. What the hell are you doing here?” She sounded angry. “Don’t stand there looking. Get in here before somebody burns us.”

  He slipped past her, plopped himself down on the same little couch that had been his boyhood bed.

  The apartment had not changed. Only his mother had. For the worse.

  It was more than age and unrelenting poverty. It was a sliding downhill from the inside.

  She had begun to go to fat. Her personal habits had slipped. Her hair had not been combed in days . . .

  “Let me clean up. I just got outta bed.” She vanished behind the movable screen that made a bedroom wall. “What have you been doing?” she asked.

  “Better I should ask you. I sent letters.” And hard Outworlds currency. Neither had drawn any response.

  “I never seem to get around to answering.”

  At least she did not make outrageous excuses, like not being able to pay a writer. He knew she took his missives to a reader. She cared that much. But not enough to reply.

  “I did write twice. Once right after you were here last time, and two or three years ago, after your father was killed in the Tanner Revolt. I didn’t care anymore, but I thought you might.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “As a stone. He got hung up in the Revanchist Crusade. They were getting pretty big. Then most of them got themselves killed attacking Security Fortress.”

  “I didn’t get the letter. I didn’t know.” He had never heard of the Tanner Revolt or Revanchist Crusade. He asked about them.

  “They were going to turn things around. Bring back the golden age, or something. Unite Earth and make it the center of the galaxy. A lot of people think you Loonies were behind it. They say the whole Archaicist tiling was started by your meddling.”

  Archaicism had had its infancy on Old Earth concurrent with his own. If it had been more social engineering, the plan had backfired. The motherworld had not been awakened by the glory that was. It had merely found a new way to escape the reality of now.

  The romantic pasts were popular. Men liked playing empires. Women liked glamour.

  Men died when groups like Stahlhelm, SS Totenkopf, or Black September ganged up on Irgun or Stern . . . The smallest and most obscurely referenced groups were the most dangerous.

  The ladies seemed to prefer Regency Balls, French Courts, and seraglio situations.

  A search for uniqueness combined with the need for belonging had driven people to probe the remotest corners of Earth’s history.

  During his flight he had watched a live newscast of a raid on Mexico’s Aztec Revivatist Cult. The police attackers had battled their way into the temple too late to save the sacrifices.

  Perchevski’s mother returned. She wore an outfit that looked ridiculous on a woman her age. The blouse was see-through. The skirt fell only to mid-thigh. He concealed his consternation. No doubt this was her best.

  “I don’t get into that kind of thing. Not my line. I do know a few guys who make a hobby of trying to save this dump from itself.”

  She did not like his attitude. “What are you calling yourself this time?”

  “Perchevski. Cornelius Perchevski.” He stared at her, and saw Greta forty years from now. Unless . . . If the kid enlisted, he would feel his own life-choice was justified. He would have rescued someone from becoming this . . .

  “What are you into?” he asked. “I don’t recognize the period.”

  “Beatles and Twiggy.”

  “Eh?”

  “Twentieth century. Seventh decade. Anglo-American, with the beginning in England. One of the light periods.”

  “Youth and no philosophy? I gathered that much, though I’m not familiar with it.”

  “It’s all the rage now. It’s so very outré. So clish-clash with itself. So schizophrenic. You speak English, don’t you?”

  “We have to learn. Most of the First Expansion worlds have some memory of it.”

  “Why don’t you
stop all that foolishness? All those ugly Outsiders . . . You could do well teaching English here. Everybody wants to learn.”

  Here we go, he thought. She’s picking up where she left off eight years ago. It’ll only get worse. Why did I come here? To punish myself for getting out of this hell-hole?

  She recognized the look on his face. “It’s news time. Let’s see what’s happening.” She whistled a few bars of a tune he did not recognize.

  The editing was unbelievable. This Archaicist group had done this. That one had done that. The Bay Bombers had beaten the Rat Pack 21-19. There wasn’t a word about von Drachau, or anything else offworld, except mention of a Russian basketball team trouncing the touring team from Novgorod.

  “Big deal,” he muttered. “Novgorod’s gravity is seventy-three percent of Earth normal. They’d have to play midgets for it to be fair.”

  His mother flared up. She hated foreigners almost as much as she hated Outworlders, but the Russians were, at least, good Old Earthers who had had the sense to stay on the mother-world . . .

  He tuned her out, again wondering if he had a masochistic streak.

  Would she try to understand if he explained how much in the middle he was? That Outworlders disliked Old Earthers just as much as she loathed them? That he had to reconcile those attitudes both within himself and with everyone he met?

  He did not think she would help. He knew her cure. Give it up. Come back home. To squalor and hopelessness . . .

  “Mother, I am what I am. I won’t change. You’re wasting your time when you try. Why don’t we go out somewhere? This place is depressing.”

  “What’s wrong with it? Yes. All right. It’s a little old. And I have the extra credit over S.I. basic to move. But it’s so big . . . I like having all this room to knock around in. I wouldn’t have that in a new place.”

  Perchevski groaned to himself. Now came the Mama Marx self-criticism session during which she would confess all her failings as a Social Insuree. Then she would segue into her shortcoming as a mother, ultimately taking upon herself all responsibility for his having gone wrong.

  He shook his head sadly. In eight years she should have found a new song. “Come on, Mother. We did this last time. Let’s go somewhere. Let’s see something. Let’s do something.”

  She dithered. She fussed. It was getting dark out. Only rich Old Earthers, who could afford the armor, went out after the sun went down.

  “Here,” he said, opening his bag. “I’ve got my own house now. I brought some holos to show you.”

  The pictures finally penetrated her façade.

  “Tommy! It’s beautiful! Magnificent. You really are doing all right, aren’t you?”

  “Good enough.”

  “But you’re not happy. A mother can tell.”

  Holy shit, he thought. I’m grown up twice over. I don’t need that. “You could live there if you wanted.”

  She became suspicious immediately. “It’s not in some foreign place, is it? Those mountains don’t look like the Rockies or Sierras.”

  “It’s on a world called Refuge.”

  “Omigod! Don’t do that! Don’t talk that way. My heart . . . Did I tell you that the medics say I have a weak heart?”

  “Every time you’ve ever needed an excuse for . . . ” He stopped himself. He refused to start the fight.

  “Let’s don’t fight, Tommy. We should be friends. Oh. Speaking of friends. Patrick was killed just last week. He went out after dark. It was so sad. Nobody can figure out what made him do it.”

  “Patrick?”

  “That red-haired boy you were friends with the year before you . . . You enlisted. I think his last name was Medich. He was living with his mother.”

  He didn’t remember a Patrick, red-haired, Medich, or otherwise.

  He did not belong here. Even the memories were gone. He had changed. The kid who had lived with this woman was dead. He was an impostor pretending to be her son.

  She was bravely playing the game, trying to be his mother. He was sure there were other things she would rather be doing. Hadn’t she been expecting a Harold?

  Maybe that was why they tried to keep people from going. They became somebody else while they were gone.

  “Mother . . . ” His throat clamped down on the word.

  “Yes?”

  “I . . . I think I’d better go. I don’t know what I came looking for. It’s not here. It’s not you. It’s probably something that doesn’t exist.” The words came rumbling out, one trampling the heels of the next. “I’m not making you happy being here. So I’d better just go back.”

  He tried to read her face. Disappointment fought relief there, he thought.

  “I’m an Old Earther when I’m out there, Mother. But I’m not when I come back here. I can see that when I’m here. I guess I should just stop remembering this place as home.”

  “It is your home.”

  “No. Not anymore. It’s just the world where I was born. And this is just a place where I lived.”

  “And I’m just somebody you knew back when?”

  “No. You’re Mother. You’ll always be that.”

  Silence existed between them for more than a minute.

  Perchevski finally said, “Won’t you even consider coming to my place?”

  “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I belong where I am, being what I am. Useless as that is.”

  “Mother . . . You don’t have to get old out there. We have a rejuvenation process . . . ”

  She showed genuine interest when she asked, “You’ve recovered the secrets of the immortality labs?”

  “No. They’re gone forever. All this process does is renew the body. It can’t stop nerve degeneration. It’s been around for centuries.”

  “How come nobody’s heard about it?”

  “Here? With Earth overpopulated and everybody doing their damnedest to make more babies? Some people probably know, though. Some maybe even benefit. It’s not a big secret. But nobody here ever listens about Outside. Everybody here is part of this big conspiracy of blindness.”

  “That’s not fair . . . ”

  “It’s my world. I have the birthright, if I want, to point a finger and call names. Are you going to come with me?” He had begun to think about Greta. That was making him mad.

  “No.”

  “I’ll leave in the morning, then. There’s no sense us carving each other up with knives of love.”

  “How poetic!” She sighed. “Darling, Tommy. Keep writing. I know I almost never answer, but the letters . . . They help. I like to hear about those places.”

  Perchevski smiled. “It must be in the genes. Thanks. Of course I’ll write. You’re my number-one lady.”

  Thirteen: 3048 AD

  Operation Dragon, Danion

  BenRabi muttered: “ ‘Aljo! Aljo! Hens ilyas! Ilyas im gialo bar! . . . ’ ” Over a joint with stripped threads.

  “What the hell?” Mouse asked.

  “A nonsense poem. By Potty Welkin. From Shadows in a Dominion Blue. Goes:

  “ ‘Nuné! Nuné! Scutarrac . . . ’ ”

  “Never heard of it. Think we ought to cut new threads?”

  “Let’s put in a new fitting. It was a political protest thing. Not one of his biggies. It was a satire on Confederation. The poem was his idea of what a political speech sounded like.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “It’s just the way I feel this morning. Like a poem without sense or rhyme that everybody’s trying to figure out. Including me. There. That’s got it. What do we do next?”

  Beyond Mouse, Amy consulted her clipboard. She had been staring at him with questioning eyes. “A cracked nipple in a lox line about a kilometer from here.”

  “Uhn.” BenRabi tossed his tool kit into the electric truck, sat down with his legs dangling off the bed. Mouse joined him. Amy took off with a lurch that bounced spare fittings all over the truckbed. She had been angry and uncommunicative all week.

  Moy
she had been as wary himself, as unsure. He thought she was upset because he had not tried to seduce her.

  Mouse had let it be for three days. Now, whispering, he asked, “What happened between you two?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, Moyshe. I know you better than that.”

  “Nothing. Really. That’s the trouble.” He shrugged, tried to change the subject. “I still can’t believe we’re inside a ship. I keep feeling we’re back in the tunnels at Luna Command.”

  “What did you mean by that poem?”

  “What I said. People keep trying to figure me out. So they can use me.”

  The ship was a lot like Luna Command, with long passageways connecting the several areas that had to be big to function.

  “I don’t understand,” Mouse said.

  “Who does? No, wait. Look. Here’s Skullface, trying to get me to cross over . . . ”

  “So? He tried me too. He’s trying everybody. Looks like part of their plan. I just told him I couldn’t meet his price. I don’t know anything that would be any good to him anyway. So what’s the big deal? It’s all part of the floor show. We’ve been through it before.”

  But there’s something different this time, benRabi thought. I’ve never been tempted before. “Why was she hustling me?” He jerked his head toward Amy.

  Mouse laughed wearily, lowered his head, shook it sadly. “Moyshe, Moyshe, Moyshe. Does it have to be a plot? Did the Sangaree woman burn you that bad? Maybe she likes you. They’re not all vampires.”

  “But they’ll all get you hurt,” benRabi mumbled.

  “What? Oh. You ever stop to think maybe she feels the same way?”

  BenRabi paused. Mouse could be right. Mouse knew how to read women, and it paralleled his own impression. He wished he could assume a more casual, no-commitment attitude in his personal relationships. Mouse managed, and left the girls happy.

  “Speaking of women. And her.” The Sangaree woman gave them a bright gunmetal smile and mocking wave as they glided past her work party, “What to do?” She had been less obnoxious since Mouse’s recreation-day demonstration, but had not abandoned her plot.

  “Just wait. We’re making her nervous. You think old Skullface knows about her? We might make a few points by stopping her when she moves.”