Authors: Nancy Kress
“But—”
He took her by the shoulders and almost shook her with his intensity. “Ah-man-dah! Is comlink at Blumberg home system! Is from your father!”
THIRTY-ONE
SPACE TUNNEL #1
C
apelo was crashing from the systemic-accelerator spike he’d given himself.
Kaufman couldn’t spare much attention for the physicist. He concentrated on his displays, on pushing the XXPell3 as much as he dared without further damaging her three passengers, on planning ahead. Armed with Marjorie Barella’s precious SCI code, Kaufman could get through the final tunnel to Sol. Probably. But then what? Was he really going to tell Admiral Pierce’s military forces on the other side of Space Tunnel #1 that the tunnel was going to close? If he did, he would have to tell the entire story, including that Admiral Pierce had hidden Tom Capelo and the Protector Artifact—which had supposedly been protecting the Solar System—on the
Murasaki
, in World System. And that Pierce had then taken the Protector Artifact to Q System and set off the closing of the tunnels by risking the fabric of spacetime itself.
Kaufman might as well sign death warrants for himself, Capelo, and Marbet as tell those particular truths.
But if he didn’t tell the military his improbable saga, how did he explain the SCI code in the hands of a retired army colonel? Or the tunnels’ closing? How much to explain and to whom?
And then he realized what of course he should have known all along, and would have known if he hadn’t been so exhausted: None of those decisions would be his to make.
“Tom, you said the tunnels are closing at a variable rate. Can you plot it yet? How long before Tunnel number one is affected? Do you know?”
“Yes. I … think. Ten hours. I think.”
Ten hours. It would only take them maybe one hour to reach the Solar System. Plenty of time. But then what?
Something fell to the floor behind him. He glanced briefly backward: Capelo’s handheld.
Capelo looked terrible. The drug crash combined with his injuries combined with tension and effort and fear. His face was actually gray, the first time Kaufman had truly witnessed that trite description. Capelo’s head and arms trembled, and so did his voice.
“Marbet … another … patch…”
“No,” she said.
“Yes! Must … work…”
“It’ll kill you, Tom. No, you can’t have it.”
“Bitch … no, I don’t mean … let me record message. My daughters. Please!”
Kaufman knew she wouldn’t refuse. He piloted the flyer toward Space Tunnel #1, sending ahead his SCI code and request to proceed.
Tunnel #1
. Almost home.
“Can’t … without … a patch…”
Marbet said, “You don’t have any choice, Tom. I’m not giving you another one. Record it, and as soon as we’re through Lyle will send it encrypted to Mars. Do it, damn it.”
Kaufman heard anger strengthen Capelo’s voice as he began to record. Sensitives were accomplished manipulators … Tom hadn’t had a chance against Marbet. Then Kaufman forgot them both. The returning message from Tunnel #1 reached the flyer.
“Flyer XXPell3, SCI code received. Proceed at once through Space Tunnel number one.”
Space Tunnel #1 was formidably guarded, an entire fleet on action alert. But the SCI code sent Kaufman past the fleet, straight to the head of the queue and through the tunnel. It was so easy, when everything up to this point had been so hard.
They were back in the Solar System, with nine hours—if Tom was right—until the tunnel closed for good. And once again nothing was going to be easy.
“Identify self, flyer,” said the tunnel guard on the comlink. Blips appeared all over Kaufman’s displays. This side of the gateway to Sol was also fortified with a tunnel fleet. This was the home world. If he made a wrong move, they’d vaporize him, with or without SCI clearance. Even for Stefanak that had been SOP, and Piercer was three times as showy in “guarding the cradle of humanity.”
“Flyer XXPell3, Colonel Lyle Kaufman. Emergency information from Artemis and Han Systems, priority one, Special Compartmented Information. Sending SCI code now.”
Behind him Marbet said softly, “Send this data, too, Lyle. It’s Tom’s message to Amanda and Sudie, encrypted. I uploaded it.”
“I can’t without explaining that—”
“I think Tom’s dying, Lyle.”
“Oh, hell.” He sent the message; the computer beamed it according to the address. It couldn’t matter now. With truth drugs, none of them were going to be able to hide anything that had happened. Why hadn’t he realized that before?
A different voice came over the comlink. “Flyer XXPell3, SCI code received. Your flyer is unregistered, and your personal identification number does not match military records. Deactivate weapons and prepare for immediate boarding.”
“In compliance,” Kaufman said. “Please arrange debriefing by fleet commander in secure area. I have SCI information about the war for his ears only. Also, we have a man here in need of immediate medical attention. He’s Dr. Thomas Capelo”
No reaction. “Prepare for immediate boarding,” was all the answer Kaufman got, which meant it would be a while before he was let anywhere near fleet commander. If ever. He would be checked for every conceivable sort of weapon, including biological, on a secure medcraft that could be sacrificed, with all hands if necessary, if he were found to be carrying anything dangerous. Probably he’d get a Pandya Dose concurrently with that. SCI clearance was one thing, but Kaufman’s appearing in an obsolete flyer that hadn’t existed for a decade, from a part of the galaxy with no record of him, carrying information he shouldn’t have, and beaming an unauthorized encrypted message toward Mars … those were quite other things. The SADC would take no chances with him. There was a war on.
He turned to Marbet and Capelo. With cutting off the engine, the flyer had returned to weightlessness. She had found the storage area and pulled out three old-fashioned s-suits, but couldn’t put hers on.
“Marbet?” Kaufman said. For the first time, he noticed that she had put a pain patch on her own neck.
She managed to smile at him. ‘‘I can’t bend enough to get my suit on. A rib, I think. And for Tom it’s hopeless.”
Ignoring his own painful rib, Kaufman unstrapped, floated over to Capelo and pulled up his eyelids. The pupils were neither fixed nor dilated. ‘Tom’s still with us. Look in the compartment below … no, not that one, the one below it—are there any blankets?”
“Yes,” Marbet said gratefully. She pulled out three of the thin thermal blankets. She and Kaufman wrapped them on, covering up their nakedness, and Kaufman managed to get one enough under Capelo’s seat harness to at least cover the injured man’s genitals.
Marbet said quietly, “What are they going to do, Lyle?”
He looked at her admiringly. She was always brave, always able to face the situation. “Truth drugs. After that, I don’t know.”
She nodded. “I love you, Lyle.”
It was the last thing on his military mind, but he said it back to her, very low, just before he felt the slight bump that meant the medcraft had drawn the XXPell3 alongside for boarding. Doctors, soldiers, weapons specialists, intelligence personnel, to invade every crevice of Kaufman’s ship, body, and mind.
Welcome home.
* * *
Suited soldiers took Kaufman, Marbet, and Capelo off the flyer. No one asked him anything, which didn’t surprise Kaufman. Correct procedure. Nor did Kaufman volunteer any information. By the time they were done with him, he figured, the news would have come from the far systems that the tunnels were closing. After all, Sol had nine hours yet (maybe). That would lend truth to Kaufman’s story. So the only thing Kaufman said to the boarding crew was addressed to the doctor bending over Tom Capelo. “Will he make it, Captain?”
“Yes,” she said, surprising him. Not even an ass-covering qualifier. He looked at her with respect.
They separated him from Marbet and Capelo, strapped him onto a roboguerney, and put him out. Kaufman felt the light patch touch his neck. His last thought was to wonder whether he would wake up in time for the closing of Space Tunnel #1, humanity’s portal to the stars.
A long, blank, featureless time, Conscious and yet not. He knew what he was saying, what was being done to him, what questions he was answering, but he knew these things as in a dream, when everything happens both to you and to another self who is not exactly you. Kaufman floated in that white, dreamlike country, and talked, and knew that he was talking, and could not stop. He knew the machines were nibbling at him, sampling blood and tissue and even sperm for biologicals, but they nibbled at someone else. Who was nonetheless him. He felt his broken rib being bound and treated, but it was only partially his rib and he felt only partly proprietary about it. Partial ownership, partial bodily violation, partial outrage. Only compliance was complete.
When they were done, they knew everything that had happened to him since he left Mars. They also knew that it was the truth.
It was out of his hands now. Or, maybe, it had always been out of his hands, although that was no way for a soldier to think.
Lyle Kaufman came out of the truth-drug trance eventually. He lay strapped down, in a blank room on some ship. No one was with him. No one had further need of him; he had been emptied, of everything useful. The hollow vessel itself was now unimportant, until someone somewhere had to make a decision about what to do with him.
He was pretty sure what that decision would have to be. For, everyone who knew the true story.
Kaufman was suddenly glad he’d sent Capelo’s message. Pierce’s encrypters would crack it, of course, eventually. But by that time Capelo would have said good-bye to his daughters.
THIRTY-TWO
THARSIS PLAIN, MARS
A
manda stared through her faceplate at Konstantin. Was he joking? No, he wasn’t cruel, and anyway it wasn’t funny …
her father
…
Konstantin was manually coding his transmitter. “I to make message to come by your receiver, Ah-man-dah … is very long! No, is
two
data sections at different encryptions … I don’t understand…”
Amanda certainly didn’t understand, but if she had, all understanding would have fled. Her father’s voice sounded in her ears.
“Amanda and Sudie and Carol, this is Tom. Daddy. I’m home, sweeties, I’m back in the Solar System.”
“Daddy!” Amanda cried aloud, and didn’t even know she’d spoken. But there was something wrong with his voice, it was weak and hesitant, like he was sick.
“I don’t know if I can get to Mars or Earth to see you. Admiral Pierce is not going to like what I’ve been doing, and I don’t know what will happen to me. He tried to set off both artifacts at prime thirteen near the Faller home world, and as a result the space tunnels are all closing up. About five hours after you get this, Tunnel Number One will be gone forever. I’m on the Sol side of the tunnel, but I’m injured pretty bad and anyway Pierce isn’t going to let … but listen to me, that’s not what want you to remember. Instead remember that I love all three of you, and always will, forever and ever.”
His voice had faded to a whisper.
“Carol or Kristen, destroy the hardware you receive this message on, and never tell anyone you received it. I don’t want you in danger, too. Do you understand?
Never
. Good-bye for now…”
“No!” Amanda cried. “No!”
Konstantin said, “Dr. Capelo to think he will to die—why? Makes not sense.”
“Because Admiral Pierce will kill him!” Amanda cried hysterically. “Admiral Pierce isn’t the good guy you think! He’ll kill Daddy!”
Konstantin tried to grab Amanda. She batted him away and started to run wildly, not knowing where, not caring. Admiral Pierce would kill her father … It became a certainty to her, a horrifying fact … oh please dear God no,
Dei volente
…
Konstantin caught her, held her tight against him. “Not to run, Ah-man-dah! Since you to fell, your suit will to tear!”
“I don’t care! I want to die, too! Let me go, oh let me go no no no Daddy.…”
He held her firmly, her struggles barely seeming to register on him. At last he said, “Two messages. Listen to other message, Ah-man-dah!”
“Kristen, Martin, this is Marbet Grant,” came over Amanda’s receiver, and she stopped struggling and held still. “I’m with Tom. Attached is an encrypted file of everything that has happened out here, including Admiral Tierce’s heroic actions. I’m sending this the minute we get through Tunnel number one. Or rather, I’m making Lyle send it without knowing he is. He’s got a lot to contend with right now…” Marbet’s voice faltered, caught itself.
“It’s vitally important you retransmit this message immediately, to every major news media on Mars and Earth. You probably don’t’ have more than an hour. Maybe less. Retransmit my words and
only my words
from this message. People should know that Admiral Pierce stopped the Fallers from destroying the fabric of space. He’s a great hero.
Multiply transmit this right now.
There may be additional messages to Mars from the tunnel to follow this one, and they won’t be the truth. I doubt those will be more than a half hour behind this. Retransmit now!”
Konstantin said, “Admiral Pierce …
she
say he is hero! But Dr. Capelo say Pierce will to kill your father!”
“Yes!”
“Not to make sense, this!”
“Yes, it does!” Amanda cried. “Marbet is saying that because … I don’t know why! But Daddy’s telling the truth! Admiral Pierce is going to kill him!”
“Admiral is not by Solar System. Remember?”
And suddenly Amanda did. Aunt Kristen drying her hands on the kitchen towel and then going back to the kitchen to prepare dinner, just a few hours ago. Amanda following Aunt Kristen in, irritated that Konstantin never offered to help in the kitchen. He sat listening to the news, and Amanda half listened as she set the table, heated some vegetable oil, washed a head of genemod lettuce. A news avatar had said that Admiral Pierce had made … what?
“An unprecedented visit outside the Solar System, due to the current military emergency. It is speculated that the admiral will lead a secret campaign with military fleets on the other side of Space Tunnel Number One, and perhaps beyond other tunnels as well…”