Polaris (41 page)

“But he seemed to have forgotten where we were. He snarled at me and pushed me down. Then he turned to walk away and he tripped over something, a rock, a root, something.” Her voice caught. “He lost his balance.” Her voice shook and trailed off, and she stood a long time without moving. “I watched him flailing on the edge, watched him fall. And I never moved to help him.”

“I'm sorry, Maddy.”

“Yeah. I'm sorry, too. We're all sorry.”

I wondered whether tears were running down her cheeks. It sounded like it. Tears in a pressure suit are a major problem.

“Once,” she said, “at Huntington, he met somebody else. And married her.”

I watched her lower the pistol a few degrees, and I thought maybe it was over. That she'd seen what she had become, but when I took a step toward her, it came back up. I thought about trying to charge her, get to her while she was distracted, but the barrel never wavered.

I asked what had happened to the other wife.

“Jasmine. Who the hell would name their kid
Jasmine
?” She was breathing heavily. “He didn't like her anyhow. The marriage didn't work.”

“What happened?”

“Chek came one night, and we just spirited him away. Jasmine never knew what happened. One day her husband was there, the next he was gone.”

The muzzle looked very large. Keep her talking, I thought. “Why was he getting flashbacks? I thought personality change was permanent.”

“It's not supposed to happen. But Boland says, you put somebody under stress, and sometimes it does.”

“Tell me about Shawn Walker.”

“Walker was a son of a bitch.”

“What did he do? Threaten to tell what he knew?”

“He didn't really understand what it was about, didn't realize it was for him as well as for everybody else. All he saw was that he had a chance to make a killing. He knew we'd pay to keep him quiet. So he kept pushing. Pushed until we'd had enough.”

“Did Taliaferro help with that?”

“No.” All I could see was the pressure suit and the helmet. Her face was completely in shadow. “He didn't have the stomach for it. Jess wanted him dead, just as I did, but he didn't like the idea of having to do it.”

“So you took care of it.”

“Listen. I don't need any moral lectures from
you
. You buy and sell the past. Make your money. You don't care whether everything goes into private collections, whether people hoard it so they can sell it off down
the line. All you care about is turning a profit. I did what had to be done. And I can tell you I'd have preferred to see you walk away from all this. But you just didn't know when to let go.”

I could feel the scrambler lying against my thigh. But it was down in a cargo pocket. It might as well have been in the
Belle-Marie
. “As soon as the
Sentinel
and the
Rensilaer
started back,” I said, “you sent your last message.”

“Yes.”

“And then you brought the
Polaris
here.”

“Of course. We left in the late afternoon, ship's time, and we were here early next morning. I even spent a couple of nights here before going back.”

“Why'd you do it, Maddy?”

“Why'd I do what?”

“The whole
Polaris
thing. You were giving up who you were. Going into hiding for a lifetime. Was it that they promised to make you young again?”

She kept the lamp pointed at my eyes. “I think it's time to end this. It's getting up to an hour and a half since you came down here, and your buddy will be getting antsy. I want to be out at the airlock when she shows up. To say hello.”

“You were listening—”

“Of course I was.”

“So you're going to have to kill two more people.”

“As soon as she sticks her face in the hatch. I'll make it quick. Like you. She won't even know I'm there.” Her finger tightened on the trigger. “Good-bye, Alex,” she said. “Nothing personal.”

Reach out, Herman. Touch the stars. But not with your mind. Anyone can do that. Touch them with your hand.

—Silas Chom,
speaking to Herman Armstrong, in
The Big Downtown,
a drama celebrating the invention of the Armstrong Drive.

“Chase, where are you?”

“She can't hear you down here, Alex.”

It must have been a nervous moment for him, but I had her in my sights and could have taken her out at any time. She was standing in the doorway, half-in, half-out, paying no attention anywhere except to Alex. Completely fooled by a scripted conversation. The plan, of course, was to let her talk as long as she wanted. But obviously not to let her shoot anybody.

I suspected she would not give up meekly, and she had the pistol. If I told her to put it down, she could keep it trained on him, and we'd have a standoff. So I decided to go the safe route. Shoot first, talk to her later.

I aimed and fired. Scramblers, of course, are not lethal. There are some people who say that's their drawback. Maddy gasped, and her lights went out. The pistol drifted away from her, and she just hung there, locked to the deck by her grip shoes.

Alex took a deep breath. “Chase,” he said, “where've you been?”

“Been right here,” I said. “The whole time.” I pushed past the woman into the room. She swayed.

“I was afraid maybe you got lost.”

I took her pistol and put it in my belt. Then I slipped the scrambler into a pocket. “I was behind you the whole way, Big Guy.”

“I'm glad.”

I put my lamp up close to her helmet. “Is it really Maddy? How can it be?” I was looking at Teri Barber.

“Yeah, it is.”

“Incredible. I hope I look that good at a hundred.”

“She's not quite that old.”

We stood quietly, trying to absorb the reality of the moment. “How did you know?”

“I didn't, for certain. But I couldn't think of any scenario that would account for three women, Barber, Shanley, and Maddy, who looked so much alike. And the fact that Kiernan looked like Taliaferro, and Eddie Crisp resembled a young Dunninger. Even parents and their kids don't look that much alike.”

“They could have been clones.”

“Not this bunch. Maddy, maybe. The others? There was no record of any clones. And anyhow, they were population-control types. Opposed on principle to cloning except in special cases.” He shook his head. “I couldn't imagine any reason for them to do that.”

“So you decided Dunninger had already achieved his breakthrough—”

“—And that it did more than extend life. It restored damage caused by the ageing process. Yes.”

“So they're all alive? Except Dunninger?”

“And Taliaferro. Yes, I think so.”

“And they're at Morton College,” I said.

“Very good, Chase. I don't know whether they actually spend time there or not. But I don't think there's any question that's their base.”

“Margolis? Is he one of them? He didn't look like anybody.”

“I don't think so. I think he's just hired help.”

I was shining my light around the room. Taking my first good look at the place we'd been searching for. “Taliaferro,” I said. “What happened to him? I mean, why'd he disappear?”

“He benefited from Dunninger's discovery, like the rest of them.
Except a couple of years passed before they administered it to him. I assume Mendoza was handling that.”

“Why would they wait?”

“Probably because they wanted to keep Taliaferro in charge at Survey. Once he became like them, his ageing process would go into reverse. He'd start getting younger every day.”

It was hard to swallow. “Alex,” I said, “I always understood age reversal was impossible.”

“That's what the experts say. Obviously, Dunninger, and maybe Mendoza, figured out a way.”

I tied the generator into one of the circuits and adjusted the voltage. Alex hit the switch, and the lights came on. He took the key out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Do the honors,” he said.

We went into the corridor, picked a closed door at random, aimed the remote, and pressed the
 button. Nothing happened, and we moved to the next door. “It's here somewhere,” said Alex.

It was at the far end of the hall. I will never forget watching a guide light activate while the door tried to swing inward, but it wouldn't because it was wedged tight so Alex gave it a kick. That broke it open and a table lamp came on. Maddy's apartment. “Congratulations,” I said.

“Yes.” He was wearing a large smile. “We do seem to have done it, don't we?”

“And the rest of them stayed in these other units,” I said.

Alex nodded. “I wonder what the mood was like.”

I could hear Maddy breathing over her open channel. “So what's next?” I asked.

“We take Maddy back and figure out what we're going to do with her. And then we'll have a conversation with Everson.”

“You think he'll agree to that?”

“Oh, yes,” Alex said. “In fact, I'll be surprised if he's not in touch as soon as he hears we're back.”

“Do we need to do anything else here?”

“No. I think we should be heading out.”

I looked down the corridor. Some of the lights were on, lending an
appearance that was less romantic than it had been, and more dilapidated. I wondered what it had been like in its glory days, when the place was alive and the Kang were on the premises. What would a functioning AI from that era be worth? Which called to mind Alex's idea about tracking ancient radio signals.

Ah, well. Let's stay with the business at hand.

I could no longer hear Maddy breathing. She'd turned off the link. I slipped away from Alex and retreated down the corridor to the room in which we'd left her.

She was gone.

I let Alex know and checked the lobby. There was no sign of her.

“You've got her pistol?” asked Alex.

“Yes.”

“Then it doesn't matter.”

The scrambler should have put her down for thirty minutes or so. We'd been gone less than ten. “Maybe her body is more resistant than normal,” he said.

Oh, damn. I should have realized. “It's the pressure suit. It would have shielded her.”

Alex made an irritated noise deep in his throat. “Well, we got what we came for. Let's head out.”

“And quickly,” I said.

He picked up on my sense of urgency, asked no questions, and we hustled out of the lobby and back down the passageway. It was about three kilometers out to the airlock. That was not good news. I assumed that since we hadn't seen Maddy's ship, she'd been able to get the docking area working, and that was where she was moored. Docking areas are always close to the living spaces. She would get to her ship long before we could reach ours. It didn't help that Alex wasn't the quickest creature on two feet.

“I'm going ahead,” I told him. “We need to secure
Belle.
” I charged through the tunnel, wishing I'd kept in better shape.

Noncombat vessels aren't armed, in the normal sense of the word. But they do carry the HCS, with its particle beam deflectors. The system is
activated automatically when a rock approaches on a threatening vector, as had happened to us at Terranova. But it had parameters, preventing it from firing at an approaching vessel. There was, however, nothing to stop Maddy from rewriting the parameters. She'd have to do that physically, have to poke the change in. That was a safety feature, to avoid inadvertent firing at the wrong target. But she'd only need a couple of minutes. Once she'd done that, she could blast
Belle
and leave us stranded.

It's hard to run in a pressure suit. In zero gee. In a tunnel. Every time the tunnel turned, I hoped maybe I'd see her ahead, but I knew that wasn't likely. And sure enough the passageway stayed dark and empty. Finally, gasping for breath, I was tumbling through the airlock, and there was the lander, about fifty meters overhead, above a field of elevated power collectors. I opened a channel to Belle.

“Hello, Chase,”
she said.

“Belle, are you okay?”

“I'm fine, thank you. How are
you
doing?”

“Never mind that. Do you see any other ship?”

“Yes. There's one approaching from the port quarter.”

I looked and saw a cluster of lights above the horizon. Growing brighter. I'd been wrong. She hadn't docked, but had succeeded in keeping her ship hidden among the orbiting debris. Now it was coming to pick her up.

The AI in the lander had been named
Gabe,
after Alex's uncle. “Gabe,” I said, “I need the lander. Bring it in close.”

The station hatch was in a narrow gully, but the primary hazard to the spacecraft was the field of antennas surrounding it. Gabe eased the lander down among them.

“Could you hustle it up a bit, please?”

“The terrain in which you are located—”

“—I know that, Gabe. But we don't have time at the moment for safety first.”

He made a noise that sounded like disapproval but brought the lander in quickly. I got in, and we made for the oncoming ship.

The gas giant floated on the opposite side of the sky. It was sludge brown, with no features whatever except a disturbance of some sort in the northern hemisphere. Probably a storm. I could see several inner moons, all crescents.

The planet and its satellites cast an eerie glow across the chopped surface of the asteroid. I saw Maddy, standing atop a ridge, watching her ship approach. I could make out Bollinger thrusters, and a boxy bridge. It was a Chesapeake, probably a 190. A yacht, really, a dual hull, reduced-mass luxury runabout designed exclusively to travel among ports. It wasn't intended for use elsewhere. Which was why Maddy had to bring it in close to board: It had no lander. Her back was turned to me, and she was utterly exposed. Whatever she might have been sixty years ago, she was homicidal now. I'd left the lander's hatch open, and I thought seriously about using her own pistol to take her out. To finish it. The scrambler wouldn't be adequate at this range, and if I tried to move in close enough to use it, she'd spot me. And the truth was I didn't know whether she had a second weapon available. I didn't want to take any more risks. Or maybe I just wanted to kill her and be done with it. I don't know.

In any case I got as far as leaning out the hatch and drawing a bead on her. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I remembered lecturing Alex years before during the Sim business when he had a helpless Mute ship in his sights and was about to pull the trigger on them.

So I let her be. Instead, I arced around and came in over the Chesapeake. The area where Maddy was waiting was well off to one side of a collector array. It was relatively flat, and there was room for the Chesapeake to descend.

Its thrusters were firing, moving it in closer to Maddy, lining it up, and slowing it almost to a stop. The ship's hatch began to open.

At that moment she spotted me. But I wasn't interested in her just then. I was looking for the HCS, specifically the controller, the black box, without which the particle beams were useless. I spotted it as the ship snuggled in beside her. It was red and white, located on the hull just forward of the bridge.

Alex's voice broke over the link:
“Chase, where are you?”

“Back in a minute,” I said. “Keep in mind she's listening.”

He spoke again, but this time not to me:
“Maddy, give it up. Come back with us. You need help.”

The Chesapeake drew abreast of Maddy, and she scrambled inside. But that was okay. I was within can't-miss range. I leaned out the hatch, aimed at the black box, and pulled the trigger. “Bang,” I said.

It was an easy shot. The weapon bucked, there was a satisfying flare, and the black box disappeared in a belch of smoke.