The Prison in Antares (28 page)

Finally Snake approached Pretorius while he was in the galley, trying to decide which type of Antarean food would upset his stomach less.

“Gotta talk to you, Nate,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“It's about Felix,” continued Snake. “He's not turning into any nosegay. I think we're gonna have to dump him.”

“Dump him where?” asked Pretorius, frowning.

“No particular place. Jettison him the way you did Circe.”

“That was at the beginning of the assignment, and there was no way we could handle the body until we got back home. But we're only maybe three days from Deluros.”

“At least move him out of the cabin he's in and down to storage.”

“OK, I'll have Kramin give me a hand.”

“We should have drafted that bastard ourselves,” said Snake. “He works harder than anyone else onboard.” Then she smiled and added, “Except me, of course.”

Pretorius chose a meal, took one bite of it and dumped it, and settled for the Antarean equivalent of coffee, which was neither warm nor caffeinated, but at least had a flavor that wasn't too off-putting. He carried his cup back to the main deck and sat down.

“Take a break,” he told Pandora. “I'll take over for a few hours.”

“Thanks,” she said, getting to her feet. “I could use one.”

“Anything I should be watching?”

“Small ship about eighty thousand miles off the port bow,” she replied. “No armaments that I can tell.” She looked at her screen again, then smiled. “He's gone. Must be a wormhole over that way that's either not in this ship's memory, or at least that I can't read.”

Pretorius sat down at the controls and sipped his not-quite-coffee. A few minutes later Kramin emerged from his cabin.

“Just the man—well, the Antarean—I was hoping for,” said Pretorius.

“Is anything wrong?” asked Kramin.

“My friend Felix is becoming offensive,” explained Pretorius. “You and I will move him from his cot down into the storage department.”

“Why not just cast him adrift?” suggested Kramin. “He won't know the difference.”

“No,” agreed Pretorius. “But
I
will.” He got to his feet. “Come on.”

It took them a few minutes to move Ortega's body to the storage area in the ship's belly.

“I've been meaning to ask, if it's not a sore point,” began Kramin, looking at Ortega's artificial arm and legs, “but who did that do him?”

“He lost one leg in the Battle of Tomaris III, the other one when he stepped on a mine on Windfall, and the arm got cut up pretty badly in personal combat during the Siege of Mariposa.”

“And yet he kept reenlisting,” marveled Kramin.

“He believed in his cause,” answered Pretorius. “Just as you believe in yours.”

“Me?” repeated Kramin.

“They beat the crap out of you on a regular basis, and yet here you are helping their enemies when you could have gone free.”

Kramin uttered a hoarse laugh. “What would be the point of going free on Antares Six?”

“You could have asked me to set you down on another world,” said Pretorius. “You still could.”

“Let's get Edgar home first, and then I'll worry about it.”

“Was it as rough as I think it was?” asked Pretorius.

“Probably,” answered Kramin. “I'd prefer not to talk about it.”

“Sorry,” said Pretorius. “We're through here. Let's get back up to the main deck.”

A moment later Pretorius was back at the control panel while Kramin returned to his cabin. He checked to make sure the ship Pandora had been tracking really had vanished into a wormhole, determined that there were no more ships, military or otherwise, within range, and finally looked up to find Irish standing next to him.

“Yes?” he said.

“I've had three four-hour sessions with Edgar,” she replied, “and while he's in poor shape physically, he's got a truly remarkable mind. It's as strong as ever, and I'll stake such reputation as I have that he told them nothing.”

“And he's definitely the real thing this time?”

She nodded. “Definitely.”

“So we're not only bringing him back, but we're also coming home with a turncoat who should be able to tell them quite a bit when he's debriefed.”

Irish shifted her weight uncomfortably. “I've been meaning to ask you about him,” she said.

“About Kramin?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, shoot,” said Pretorius.

There was a pause as she chose her words carefully. “Do you find it a little odd that he chose to come with us?”

“The alternative was staying in the damned jail or being shot as an escapee.”

Irish shook her head. “We'd have let him off on some other Coalition or neutral world. Hell, we still could.”

“You're condemning loyalty to a friend,” said Pretorius.

“Am I?” she replied.

Pretorius was silent for almost a full minute. Finally he spoke. “He
did
know exactly how to lead us out of there, which fork to take. And he's in pretty good shape considering all the pain and punishment he claims to have suffered. Still, that's pretty far-fetched.”

“I'm just sharing my observations,” said Irish. “I'm not accusing him of anything . . .
yet.
”

“We'd better find out before we're inside the Democracy,” said Pretorius. “He's in his cabin. Tell him I want to see him up here.”

She nodded her head and went off to get Kramin, who emerged a moment later and accompanied Irish back to the bridge.

“I'm sorry to bother you,” said Pretorius, “but we've got a little situation on our hands.”

“Situation?” repeated Kramin.

“It seems the Democracy is not allowing any more Antareans to enter it. I've contacted them and vouched for you, and I know I can get Irish and Pandora and Snake to vouch for you too, but they were pretty adamant. So I think, for safety's sake, I'm going to drop you off on a neutral planet. We're entering the zone in a couple of hours. Is there any particular planet you'd like?”

“I thank you for your concern,” replied Kramin, “but Edgar is my friend. I'll take my chances.”

“I realize you may have burned your bridges insofar as the Coalition is concerned—”

“I'm a convicted murderer and traitor, as well as an escaped prisoner,” said Kramin. “You should welcome me with open arms.”

“The Democracy doesn't want an Antarean murderer and the Coalition doesn't want a traitor,” said Pretorius. “That's why a neutral world makes the most sense.”

“No! I will not desert my friend!”

“All right,” said Pretorius. “We'll set down on Cordoba IV. They're neutral, they have an atmosphere and gravity that can support us both, and they have a hospital where both of you can get treatment. That should be acceptable to all involved parties.”

“He is a human!” protested Kramin. “He needs human doctors.”

“There are probably some on Cordoba.”

“He is too important to take that risk. You should take him only to the finest specialists in the Deluros system!”

“And you were counting on that, weren't you?” said Irish.

Kramin was motionless for an instant. Then he uttered a savage, inarticulate scream and dove for her, but Pretorius already had his screecher out, and a wall of solid sound crashed into the Antarean's head, knocking him sideways into a wall. Before he could get to his feet Snake had her burner out and delivered the fatal shot.

Pretorius walked over and stared at the corpse, then turned to Irish.

“I owe you,” he said. “I actually bought into that act.”

“He was good at his job.”

“He wasn't the only one,” replied Pretorius. “I'm glad you're with us.

“So should we cart him down to the storage area?” asked Snake.

“I hate to have Felix share a room with him,” said Pretorius. “But yes. We can't leave him up here, and maybe they can learn something more from him where we're going.”

“Let's just get there quick,” said Snake. Pretorius looked at her questioningly. “You're the guy who never loses a team member,” she concluded bitterly. “When they start handing out medals, just make sure they give one to Felix and another to Circe.”

EPILOGUE

Two months had passed. Nmumba had been nursed back to acceptable if not glowing health, and was once again working in his laboratory. Ortega had been buried in his family's plot, and the others had put their lives in some semblance of order when Pretorius was summoned to Wilbur Cooper's office.

“I want to congratulate you once again, my boy!” said Cooper enthusiastically. “That was a Grade-A piece of work, though by this time I suppose no one should be surprised by the results you get. Just a tremendous job!”

“May I speak frankly, sir?” said Pretorius.

“Absolutely!”

“Then cut the bullshit and tell me why you really sent for me.”

“All right,” said Cooper, his demeanor suddenly businesslike. “How soon can you and your Dead Enders be ready for another assignment—a very urgent one?”

“It depends on what the problem is,” said Pretorius.

“Do you remember the Michkag clone, the ringer you installed in Orion last year?”

Pretorius frowned. “They discovered what he was and killed him.”

“Nice guess,” said Cooper. “I only wish it was right.”

“Oh?” said Pretorius, arching an eyebrow.

“The bastard has turned!”

“Turned?”

“He decided he
likes
being a general,” growled Cooper, “and he's not going to help us defeat his own race. He's a brilliant strategist, and thanks to being raised here he knows more about how we think and react than any other alien in the whole Coalition. It turns out he's been feeding us false data for months. He's currently the best-protected being, human or alien, in the whole Coalition. You and your Dead Enders are going to have to kill him before he costs us this goddamned war!”

“Where is he?” asked Pretorius.

Cooper waved his hand in a gesture that encompassed roughly half the galaxy. “Out there somewhere,” he said.

APPENDIX 1

THE ORIGIN OF THE BIRTHRIGHT UNIVERSE

It happened in the 1970s. Carol and I were watching a truly awful movie at a local theater, and about halfway through it I muttered, “Why am I wasting my time here when I could be doing something really interesting, like, say, writing the entire history of the human race from now until its extinction?” And she whispered back, “So why don't you?” We got up immediately, walked out of the theater, and that night I outlined a novel called
Birthright: The Book of Man
, which would tell the story of the human race from its attainment of faster-than-light flight until its death eighteen thousand years from now.

It was a long book to write. I divided the future into five political eras—Republic, Democracy, Oligarchy, Monarchy, and Anarchy—and wrote twenty-six connected stories (“demonstrations,”
Analog
called them, and rightly so), displaying every facet of the human race, both admirable and not so admirable. Since each is set a few centuries from the last, there are no continuing characters in the book (unless you consider Man, with a capital M, the main character, in which case you could make an argument—or at least,
I
could—that it's really a character study).

I sold it to Signet, along with another novel titled
The Soul Eater
. My editor there, Sheila Gilbert, loved the “Birthright Universe” and asked me if I would be willing to make a few changes to
The Soul Eater
so that it was set in that future. I agreed, and the changes actually took less than a day. She made the same request—in advance, this time—for the four-book Tales of the Galactic Midway series, the four-book Tales of the Velvet Comet series, and
Walpurgis III
. Looking back, I see that only two of the thirteen novels I wrote for Signet were
not
set there.

When I moved to Tor Books, my editor there, Beth Meacham, had a fondness for the Birthright Universe, and most of my books for her—not all, but most—were set in it:
Santiago, Ivory, The Dark Lady, Paradise, Purgatory, Inferno, A Miracle of Rare Design
, A Hunger in the Soul, The Outpost,
and
The Return of Santiago
.

When Ace agreed to buy
Soothsayer, Oracle,
and
Prophet
from me, my editor, Ginjer Buchanan, assumed that of course they'd be set in the Birthright Universe—and of course they were, because as I learned a little more about my eighteen-thousand-year, two-million-world future, I felt a lot more comfortable writing about it.

In fact, I started setting short stories in the Birthright Universe. Two of my Hugo winners—“Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge” and “The 43 Antarean Dynasties”—are set there, and so are perhaps fifteen others.

When Bantam agreed to take the
Widowmaker
trilogy from me, it was a foregone conclusion that Janna Silverstein, who purchased the books (but moved to another company before they came out) would want them to take place in the Birthright Universe. She did indeed request it, and I did indeed agree.

A decade later I sold another
Widowmaker
book to Meisha Merlin, set—where else?—in the Birthright Universe.

And when it came time to suggest an initial series of books to Lou Anders for the brand-new Pyr line of science fiction, I don't think I ever considered any ideas or stories that
weren't
set in the Birthright Universe. He bought the five
Starship
books, and after some fantasies and Weird Western excursions, he—and his successor, the wonderful Rene Sears—commissioned the Dead Enders series to be set there as well.

I've gotten so much of my career from the Birthright Universe that I wish I could remember the name of that turkey we walked out of all those years ago so I could write the producers and thank them.