Voice of the Whirlwind (17 page)

After four weeks he was happy to have scraped the stuff off. The same pictures day after day would have grown both tedious and frustrating. He began to understand why the previous occupant had kept pasting up new photos.

Steward thought about SuTopo’s bonsai, Fischer’s picture of Everest. The bonsai trees were representative of what SuTopo wanted, what he longed for—his family, his past, his memories…. Everest, to Fischer, was also an object of desire. Steward wondered what object would serve best in his own quarters, would serve to define his own longings.

He had no photo of Natalie, no reminders of his previous life. Ashraf had discouraged anything of the sort. He wished he had a picture of her, reminding him of what he’d lost, what he wanted to regain.

But there was another image that persisted, a video screen, flickering with interference pattern, and behind it, a face, a voice that was his own, a knowledge that was beyond him but that was approaching, coming closer with every second the
Born
continued its approach to the Belt… the face that was clarifying as Vesta approached, the hollow asteroid where the Alpha had gone in search of Colonel de Prey.

*

He called up the computer for its maps and history of Vesta. The amount of data surprised him—there were detailed maps, with recent updates that included such information as major power, water, air, and communications mains, location of environmental seals and security zones, details of security procedures, and local laws. It was far more reminiscent of an Icehawks briefing than a travel brochure, and Steward’s respect for Taler’s intelligence service increased.

Vesta had been pioneered by Far Ranger, who had first burrowed into the place as part of its mining operation and then turned it into a major Belt habitat. At one time, eighty thousand individuals lived in its interior. That number had been reduced by about a third after the Artifact War, when Brighter Suns was created in the wake of the collapse of the Outward Policorps, and the population was evicted from half the habitat while the Powers were brought in behind a wall of security and biologic shields.

The center of the sprawling hollowed-out section was given to docking bays and ship maintenance, power generation, and various forms of industry, primarily production and refining of metal and crystal. Much of the work, particularly the power production and smelting, had been moved to the surface of the asteroid. There was a large colony of 6,000 second-stage colonists living only in Vesta’s microgravity and involved in industrial production of free-gravity items. The standard human population was concentrated in one area of the colony, living in three vast centrifuges that provided Earthlike gravity.

Mining was still going on—Vesta was a big asteroid, with a diameter of more than 300 kilometers, and only a small part was occupied. But mining had become secondary to import-export: With half the trade with the Powers funneling through Vesta, the place had become the busiest trading station in the Belt.

Of the Powers, little was known or said. Access to their areas was strictly controlled through three airlocks: two for personnel, one for goods. Security was tight all over Vesta, every public area was under the supervision of security AIs, and with the wealth that trade with the Powers was providing, Brighter Suns could afford the best in police personnel. Brighter Suns policorporate warriors were the equal of any in human space, and their duties were clear: Everything was secondary to the security and well-being of the Powers and the trade they represented. All internal communications were monitored, and access to outside communication was strictly controlled. There were several layers in the security bureaucracy, but the highest was called the Renseignement General, which meant simply General Information and which made Steward smile, remembering the spy romances of his childhood. The business arm of the RG was the Pulsar Division, an elite counterintelligence unit. The
Born
’s
computer actually had a flow chart of the Pulsar unit’s organization.

There was another, more shadowy group that handled outside intelligence and industrial espionage. They were called Group Seven. The comp had no organizational charts, no information on them save that of their existence.

Brighter Suns was a policorp created by other policorps for the express purpose of carrying on commerce with the Powers, controlling access to the aliens so that no new trade war could result. Brighter Suns held sovereignty over no territory other than Vesta—its charter forbade it—but it was one of the wealthiest policorps in existence and had one of the largest trading fleets. There were more Brighter Suns employees off Vesta than on it, occupying trading stations and docking ports throughout the rest of human space.

Colonel de Prey had lived here, Steward knew, in the employ of Brighter Suns. The Alpha had found him and probably killed him, and then had been killed here or later by Curzon. This was a piece of Vesta’s history that had not been picked up by Taler’s computers.

Steward thought about it all and tried to plan a course of action, then gave up on it. Even with all the information here, there wasn’t enough available about the things he needed to know. He was going to have to begin searching data files on Vesta before he could make any further decisions.

And Griffith’s scheme? With communications being monitored, it was riskier here than elsewhere. He wasn’t going to start accessing chess programs until the end of the stay here, when it would no longer matter if he were brought under suspicion.

He didn’t want to be greedy.

*

Then came the deceleration burn, lasting another three days, marked by the four-hour shifts split between Reese and Steward that left them both exhausted and floating limp in their webbing, grateful for the return to weightlessness. Steward had been planning to charge off the ship as soon as he could, but he found he didn’t have the strength for it, and floated up to his cabin to go to sleep. Reese followed him, heading for her own quarters. They found SuTopo waiting for them, hanging upside down outside Steward’s cabin door, his pitji still firmly on his head.

“If you’ll give me your passports,” SuTopo said, “I’ll clear us all through customs.”

“Thanks.”

“You’ll also need to report to Cairo to give a blood sample. They’re fanatical about contamination here, and they need samples from all of us before they’ll let anyone onstation.”

“You’d think they’d just keep my records on file from last time,” Reese muttered.

Steward’s Starbright passport was a black plastic wafer with the policorporate sigil on it, contained a permanent-lattice thread with his official identification, finger and retinal prints, and any unique medical history that emergency doctors might need to know. Apparently it didn’t have whatever information Brighter Suns needed from his blood. Steward took the passport from his cabin and gave it to SuTopo.

“Have a good leave,” Steward said.

“You’ll leave the ship before I will, I think,” SuTopo said as he put Steward’s passport in his pocket and closed the Velcro flap over it. “I’m supervising the unloading.”

“Sorry,” Steward said, trying hard to raise some genuine sympathy. He swam to the sick bay with Reese, where Cairo stuck a needle in his arm and efficiently removed some blood, then he floated back to his rack and raised the harness webbing.

He closed his eyes. Engine analogs pulsed on the back of his lids. Sleep came in less than a hundred breaths.

*

He slept about seven hours, showered, pulled on his Jack Totem T-shirt, cords, and jeans jacket, and, before he left, checked his messages—he wasn’t going to make that mistake again. There was a garbled message from Fischer, obscured by a lot of clatter and laughter in the background, about a good party at a place called the Time Zero, and nothing else. He floated forward to the personnel tube that led to the Vesta airlock.

His passport had already presumably cleared him through customs, so he pressed his thumb to the plate with the Brighter Suns logo on it and the airlock opened. He stepped in, pressed the button that let the lock mechanism know he was inside, and watched the door behind him hiss shut. Lights ran green above the inner door, it opened, and he floated into a noisy concourse sheathed in dark alloy, where cargo was being moved in vast weightless packets to the sound of blatting warning horns and the muted hiss of control jets.

Steward glanced at the holos that pointed him in the direction of human-occupied Vesta, then pushed off from the airlock door toward a tunnel entrance a hundred meters distant.

As he drifted slowly across, Steward heard a hissing behind and to one side, and saw two men floating toward him. They each wore roomy, dark quilted jackets buttoned up to the throat, and each carried a small hand-held gas jet to help him maneuver in the weightless cavern. One had a hand stuffed in his jacket pocket. They were watching him with mild, uninterested eyes.

They were moving on a collision course, but Steward wasn’t worried—the others could control their movements, and he knew they saw him. But as they drifted closer, he saw that the bulky jackets, though in a civilian style, were the kind worn by military and security people, with interior pockets that could be filled with alloy and ceramic inserts to deflect bullets.

Adrenaline gates surged open and he could feel a shift in his perceptions, in his body, as nerves and mind slammed into overdrive. These people were after him. He could waste time trying to think of a reason, but thinking was pointless in view of the fact that they were already here.

He looked around, scanning the vast room. There was no one near him, and the two men were growing ever closer. He could flail about in hopes of altering his trajectory, but the two jacketed men could alter their course at will, and had the advantage as long as they were in a weightless environment. Steward was going to have to survive the first impact and then get his back against a bulkhead. Then he might stand a chance.

Steward looked back at the two men. They were within ten meters now, and he could tell from their expressions that they knew he was aware of them. Their eyes flickered, calculating trajectories, angles. Steward cocked his arms and legs, waiting. They drifted closer in silent slow motion, unhurried.

He tried to kick the first one, hoping to connect and push them apart, but the man was ready and Steward kicked only air. The other seized his cuff, and then took his hidden hand out of his pocket. His fist was encased in a black zap glove, and Steward could feel panic begin to rise deep inside him. He kicked his foot again and managed to get his cuff free, but he could see the triumphant, tight-lipped smile as the man drifted closer, as he raised his fist and punched out against Steward’s knee.

Laser light burned in Steward’s brain as his every neuron misfired, as he stiffened from the electric shock and air burst from his lungs in a single shrieking exhalation. Tears stung his eyes. He tried to shout, to move, but his body had gone limp as his nerves wailed in shock, and nothing in him would respond save his own rising fear. The two men had seized him now, were drifting with him toward the tunnel.

One of them had a hypo in his hand. He looked at Steward and grinned. “Bye-bye, asshole,” he said. Steward felt the pain of the needle driving through his corduroy jeans into his thigh, and the burn as the drug was injected.

He wanted to ask them why, at the end, but decided not to. He concluded he’d just as soon not know.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Steward panted through a mouth that was swollen and dry. He tried to lick his lips, but there was no moisture there at all. It seemed to him that he could feel his tongue splitting as he moved it. There was a ferocious pain behind his eyes. The nape of his neck felt moist. Cautiously he cracked his eyelids open.

This was, in fact, worse than he anticipated. He was in a metal cube about three meters square, the walls dull silver alloy with dark mottling. One wall featured a door with a slot for food, heavily screened ventilators, and a pair of bright floodlights, also behind screens, that were incapable of being controlled from Steward’s side of the door. He was stretched on a too-short foam mattress encased in a dark plastic cover and lying on the floor. Two blankets were thrown over him. There was no furniture except for a combination sink/toilet. He was naked.

He felt very heavy. This was a high-g room, about one point three, designed to wear him down.

He was probably being monitored. The dryness in his mouth was painful. He juggled the two ideas for a while, wondering whether he cared if they knew he was awake, then decided there was no point in being quiet. He stood carefully, his spine and knees popping. There was a wet area on the plastic mattress cover where he’d sweated out the drug. He saw two round burn marks on the flesh above one knee where the zap glove’s electrodes had hit him. Breathing seemed to take a lot of effort. Maybe the oxygen content of the air had been lowered, again to wear him down. Steward moved to the sink to rinse his mouth.

He was very thirsty. He held his mouth to the tap and drank for a long time. The water was flat and tasteless, fresh from the recycler.

Water dripped on his chest as he straightened. He wiped it off with his hand. G dragged at his legs, his spine, his kidneys. Steward moved back to his mattress and began to stretch out, getting the kinks out of his spine, his body. Tried to compose his mind, build his mental armor.

He finished his stretches without interruption. He was feeling better, the headache ebbing.

What the hell, he thought. He pushed the mattress and blankets aside and began to do calisthenics. He could think of little else to do.

About the sixtieth high-g push-up he began to reconsider, but it was too late and he wasn’t going to give his watchers the satisfaction of seeing him give up. So he pumped out another forty, trying hard to keep his form perfect, and then stood up for a few rounds of squat jumps.

“Prisoner Steward.” A toneless male voice that came from behind one of the screens on his door. “Get on your knees, facing away from the door. Put your hands behind your back.”