Outland (6 page)

They started pounding on the door and shouting.

From inside, Cane noticed the movements and smiled placidly back at them. He'd turned the airlock speaker off, preventing their frantic yells from reaching him. Not that anything they could have said would have made a difference. He might have listened, but he wouldn't have heard.

The other miners continued to beat on the door and port. The muffled shouts and pounding penetrated the lock to the point where Cane decided it might be nice if he responded. So he grinned at them and waved.

A buzzer sounded, heralding the arrival of the elevator. The thick door slid open and Cane stepped leisurely inside. He bestowed a final smile on the distorted faces gesticulating at him from behind the port. The smile was temporarily interrupted while the lift door slid shut, became visible once more through the elevator's port.

Inside, Cane studied the panel a moment before finally selecting a button and pushing it in. Nice button, he thought. Nice elevator, too.

From the other side of the airlock hatch the miners watched helplessly as Cane's face sank out of view. The elevator was on its way down. There wasn't a damn thing they could do about it, since the call controls were inside the airlock and that had been sealed from the inside.

One of them had the bright idea of calling Energy Central in the hope of having the elevator's power cut off. A friend reluctantly reminded him that the lifts were independently powered to provide service in case of emergency. The irony of that passed all of them.

"Damn, I'm beat," the tall driller declared, his voice echoing through his buddies' suit speakers. His hand came up and brushed lightly over his helmet faceplate. "Wish they'd figure out a way to let you wipe your nose in these things."

"That'll be the day," another tired worker snorted. "It'd mean they'd have to add another servo arm inside. Be glad they designed 'em to give you food and water."

"Food?" Another worker let out a derisive guffaw. "You call the mush they let you suck through these face tubes
food?
"

They shuffled about, impatient to be on their way upward. Their shifts had ended some ten minutes ago. Each moment spent in their suits was a moment lost, another minute of real life wasted. A minute when they could be eating
real
food, relaxing in the real air of the rec room or Club instead of standing around smelling their own recycled sweat.

So they waited resentfully while the elevator dropped patiently down to pick them up. The counter light set in the wall next to the elevator door marked its progress. Lights flashed on as the lift passed through ATMOSPHERE, travelled past GROUND LEVEL, DECOMPRESSION, NO ATMOSPHERE and thence to FIRST LEVEL, SUB ONE, SUB TWO, SUB THREE. It slowed and at last the SUB FOUR light winked beckoningly at them.

The elevator came to a halt. Red paint or something had been smeared across the port. Somebody's idea of a gag. The door slid aside

When what was inside became visible, the waiting cluster of workers forgot their initial impatience and made time to be sick . . .

O'Niel was tired. It was amazing how exhausting ensuring the security of a small isolated community like the mine could make one.

Keeping a place like Io running smoothly was like riding a rollercoaster carrying a thermos full of nitro. You had to be able to anticipate the bumps and dips and react to them before you reached them. If you didn't they could swing you the wrong way and blow you right off the track.

So he apologized to no one including himself for feeling tired. He expected that. But at last the day's work was done and he could go off shift.

The door to the apartment slid aside, admitting him. He glanced around in the subdued light—everything appeared undisturbed. It was quiet, peaceful in the apartment. His haven. He welcomed it.

As he strode in and the door shut obediently behind him his brow furrowed. It was very quiet.

"Paul?" There was no joyful, high-pitched response, no glad cry of "daddy!" The only sound in the apartment came from the almost imperceptible whisper of the air cycler.

"Hey, Paulie?" He hesitated, called, "Carol?"

He waited for a long moment, now hoping for rather than expecting a response. A quick check showed that there was no one hiding in the bedroom, either. Well, hell, maybe they'd gone off to visit someone. He remembered the invitation extended by the older woman during his formal introduction to the mine hierarchy . . . Spector, Ms. Spector it'd been. Perhaps she'd given Carol a call and she and Paul had gone off to make some friends. No children, though. Outpost colonies like lo didn't favor children.

That thought started him worrying.

They could be anywhere. Maybe Carol had simply taken Paul shopping. There were very few concessionaires on Io, like the private bakery, but they always offered a welcome diversion to miners and administrators alike. Sure, they'd gone shopping, he decided. He could hardly blame them.

Meanwhile, he might as well check in case something had come in while he'd been out He returned to the living room area, gave it one final look to make sure they weren't hiding in wait to surprise him, then approached the video monitor and activated the computer board. He stood and punched in his code.

PROCEED

He typed without looking at the keyboard.

O'NIEL, W.T. MESSAGES?

O'NIEL, W.T. AFFIRMATIVE, the machine declared.

He flicked the transmit switch and the screen came to life. The first face to appear was Carol's, which he'd hoped for. He knew she wouldn't go off before he came home without letting him know what she was up to.

Her expression threw him, however. She seemed on the brink of crying, sniffling, constantly looking away from the pickup, fighting back something struggling to get out.

"I . . . I'm trying to keep my composure," she told him, "and like everything else I do . . . I think I'm messing this up." She took a deep breath and the half on her face twisted even further.

"I despise these message things. They make this kind of thing too easy. It's just that . . . I'm just such a coward. You know that. I couldn't stand there in person face to face with you and say what I'm about to say. What I've got to say. I just couldn't.

"If you were in front of me right now, I would change my mind and I don't want to change my mind." There was another pause while she sniffled into a tissue.

O'Niel felt behind him for the chair, pulled it in under and sat down slowly. His eyes never left the screen. What was it Montone had told him? Something he'd hardly paid any attention to, wasn't it?

"You'll get used to it . . . we all do." Yeah, that's what the sergeant had said. He'd ignored it. Those things happened to somebody else, not to him.

"I love you," Carol's distant voice was saying. "Please know that." Another uncomfortable pause while she dabbed at her eyes with the tissue. "I hadn't planned this. I really hadn't." She leaned toward him.

"Look at me. I'm asking for approval. My analysis tapes say I constantly crave approval, and look at me." She blew her nose, looked around, skyward, down at her feet, not really seeing anything, hardly daring to face him even via the mask provided by the video lens.

"Oh God . . . I just can't take it anymore. That's really what it comes down to. We've gone over this so many times before. We've had the same crying from me and the same assurances from you that the next place will be different. Well, this is the next place and it isn't different, Bill. It's never different. It can't be, except to be worse." Her eyes turned back to ward the pickup and she was staring hard at him once again.

"So something snapped in me yesterday. I couldn't bear to watch Paulie clattering around still another bleak place. He has no friends. Ever since he was born he's been trucked off from one cesspool to the next, a year or two at a time. He's a child, and he's never set foot on Earth. Never. He reads and looks at pictures of Earth all day long, and then he hides them from you, blanking the recall code, so your feelings won't be hurt."

She smiled bleakly. "You know what he talks about all the time? Trees. Not Africa or sports or rockets or games. Trees. He's never seen a goddamn tree, Bill.

"But he's like his father. No matter how bad he's feeling, no matter how bad it gets for him, he never complains. He's not like his mother, God knows."

O'Niel leaned forward, rested his chin on his folded hands, his face lit by the glow from the screen. His muscles were all tight, belying his relaxed posture.

"Don't you see," Carol went on, "he deserves a childhood. A real childhood, before he grows up. He deserves a chance to breathe air.
Real
outside unrecycled air, someplace where you won't broil or freeze or explode. Air that smells like life, not like ventilation unit lubricant.

"You think it's all worth it. You think that you go where they send you. You keep the good old peace and do the good old job. Well, I'm not as fortunate as you. I don't have your abiding faith in whatever-it-is." The long restrained bitterness was finally creeping into her voice.

"I can't see that, Bill. I can't see anything except one God-forsaken mining town that looks just like every other one. The Company is the
same
, the greedy people are the
same
, the violence is the
same
. I'm just not as good as you are. I don't think it's all worth it."

O'Niel's teeth had tightened against each other, until the small muscles in his jaw had started to twitch.

Carol was not quite finished. Her tone softened a little. "So . . . so I'm taking Paulie back home. Back to the home he's never had, back to the home he deserves. A
real
home.

"I love you, Bill. You don't deserve this. You deserve the best. I just have to go, my love. I'll get back in touch in a few days."

She stared straight into the pickup, evidently trying to add something else. She couldn't get it out. Her eyes were blurred and the tears had started dribbling listlessly down her cheeks. She swallowed, tried vainly to smile, and finally gave up, ending it with a pathetic little shrug, the mute gesture a poor substitute for the words she'd searched for unsuccessfully.

The screen blanked. Writing appeared, coldly indifferent.

END MESSAGES O'NIEL, W.T.

It blinked on and off, signaling silently. O'Niel ignored it, made no move to switch the screen off. He just sat there, gazing at the steadily blinking letters, his eyes staring but not seeing . . .

Montone was running the regular morning roll call and check. The roll call really wasn't necessary, more formality than anything else. If someone was absent from duty; it was simple enough to check out their whereabouts as there weren't many other places to go.

O'Niel sat off by himself at the back of the squad room, partially taking note of what was being said and mostly someplace else.

"Okay," the sergeant was saying briskly, "what do we have?" He studied his acrylic board, then looked up toward one of the junior officers. "Ballard, what's happened with the Purser's Area? That was your job, wasn't it?"

The younger man nodded. "We've had a monitor on the whole section for thirty-six hours. It's been quiet as a church. Foot patrol turned up nothing either. No fingerprints when we went through and photographed, no skin oil residue around the jimmy marks, no body odor pickup. Nothing."

"Suits me fine," was Montone's opinion. "Keep the monitor on it for two weeks and discontinue the foot patrol. Maybe whoever did it has been scared off by all the attention. You sure the monitor's well hidden?"

Ballard nodded once more. "It'd take somebody with instrumentation to find it. I set it up myself."

"Good." O'Niel was chewing on a stylus, paying no attention to what was being said. Montone looked away from the Marshal, turning his attention to a more serious item.

"Nelson, what about the detonators?"

"They were found," the deputy in question informed him.

"Where?"

"I don't know." He looked unconcerned. "The shift foreman for the level they disappeared from reported that they'd been found . . . and said not to bother about it any more."

"Nelson, we're talking about nuclear detonators. You don't lose them and then find them. You lose your comb and then find it. But not detonators. I'm glad they've turned up, but that's not good enough.

"I want to know where they were found, who found them, and if there was anyone else around when they were found. You get my drift?" He stared meaningfully at the deputy.

"Yes, sergeant." Nelson's alertness. level had abruptly risen fifty percent.

"Good for you, Nelson." Montone's gaze went back to the board. "What about the Club?"

"Nothing unusual." The deputy pushed at her hair, looked throughtful. "The usual junk. Oh yeah, Sheppard asked us for a couple more people for the late shift. You know, just to keep the boys and girls in line after a few belts. Seems they've been getting a smidgen rowdier than usual and he thought a show of force would be enough to get the troublemakers to tone it down."

"He can have them," said Montone agreeably. His attention shifted to the next in line. "Slater, what about the incident in the mine elevator?"

"Nothing much to tell, Sarge." The deputy made a face. "Some cupcake named Cane decided he wanted to go for a walk without an environment suit. They're still sponging him off the elevator wails. Couple of the off-shift people who greeted the remains got green enough to have to go on Sick Leave. Legit, according to the medics. Can't say I blame 'em. Helluva thing to run into unexpectedly."

Slater said it all matter-of-factly, without emotion, yet still managed something none of his colleagues had succeeded in doing: he woke up O'Niel.

The Marshal's gaze returned from the distant something it had been focused on to settle fixedly on the deputy. Other than that there was nothing to hint that he'd even heard the questioning.

"Any details?" Montone wanted to know.

"Not much." Slater consulted his memory. "He was alone. Nobody was near enough to have thrown him in. A bunch of the guys tried to get into the airlock after him, but he'd sealed it from inside. They were close enough that they would have seen anybody if he'd been pushed.