Empire's End (42 page)

On the screen he saw Murph’s suited hands do his bidding. He was crammed into a space between the drive unit and a bulkhead. “Got it,” Murph said.

“Good. You’ll find a tool that matches in your beltpack. But before you open the cover… make sure you set up the shield.”

“Damn straight,” Murph said as he went to work.

“No sense worrying about cancer,” Vasoovan twittered. “None of us are going to live that long.”

“Humorous,” Ruth said. “
How
jolly you keep us all.”

Kea ignored the start-up of another bickering match. He fell back into the cot. “Get me some soup,” he said. Ruth turned a deadly look on him.

“You had your ration,” Vasoovan said.

“Soup.” Kea said. He was sick. He needed more. End discussion. Kea looked up at Murph working in the drive room. When the cover was off, the next step should go pretty easy. Hunger knotted under his ribs again. As sharp as if they were broken clean. Instead of cracked.

He lifted himself up to look for Ruth, his back barely supporting him. She was still sitting in the chair. Vasoovan was watching, enjoying herself. “Who are you to give people orders?” Ruth snarled. “Who are you to break rules and eat and drink more than the rest of us?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kea said. “Do it—or they’ll make you.” Hysterical twitter. “No eat. No work. Guy drives a hard bargain.”

All four of Vasoovan’s eyestalks turned on Ruth. “Get him what he wants,” she said. “Or we’ll put you in the soup with Fazlur.” Ruth did as she was told.

Kea settled in to wait. Murph should be ready for the next little step in about four hours. Then Kea would trade yet another bit of knowledge for nourishment. And another. Until it was done. Two more weeks, he thought. And then we shall see what we shall see.

Fazlur had died three days earlier. He’d tossed and groaned for an eternity, never quite conscious, nor quite out enough to not feel pain. No one had moved to help him, much less feed him or bring him drink. Kea hadn’t spoken up for Fazlur. Why bother? They would have refused him help. Kea’s bargain would not be stretched to include Fazlur. Murph, Vasoovan, and Ruth were the strong here. Kea was helpless until his injuries healed.

Besides, in Vasoovan’s predator logic of survival, Fazlur was the most expendable. “We get lucky and make it,” Vasoovan had said, “we don’t need him. Not alive. We got his proof. His absolute proof. All in his data file.”

“I just wish he would get it over with,” Ruth had said. “I can’t stand his infernal groaning. He used to sound like that sometimes when we made love. A pig.” Kea had turned away from them. To his own thoughts. And sleep.

Sometime later, Kea had come to semiconsciousness. Fazlur was groaning. The others made the noises of sleep. Then he heard movement. A softer patter of feet. The smell of sweet perfume. The groaning stopped. Abrupt. Then the soft pad of feet.

They found Fazlur dead the next day.

“Run him through the reclaimer,” Vasoovan had twittered. “Add him to the soup.” He was referring to the sort of nutrition stew produced by their own waste and the dwindling supply of plant protein being produced in the damaged hydroponic room.

“Why not?” Ruth had said. “Make some use out of him. It seems so fitting, somehow.”

Kea had watched them lug the corpse out of the room. Hunger gnawed at him again. He heard light footsteps. Ruth’s perfume. He took the mug from her without looking up. He drank. There was no taste at all.

Poor Fazlur.

The curtain between universes hung before them, beckoning. If things had worked out differently, Kea supposed it would have been called Fazlur’s Discontinuity. He looked about the room. Vasoovan. Murph. Ruth. No one here would give Fazlur a drop of the credit. As for himself… well, he had ideas of his own. Just formulating.

“We’re ready,” Vasoovan said.

Kea struggled up. Some life was returning to his bound-up arm. He was getting stronger. Barely. “One thing more,” Kea announced, “before we go through.”

They turned to him, alarmed.

“Don’t worry. The drive unit’s fine,” he said. “But what I want you all to remember when we get to the other side is that it’s five months home.”

“Yeah? So?” From Murph.

“So now that everything’s working okay, some of you might get the idea you don’t need me anymore. That the chief engineer is expendable—like the chief scientist.” No protests. No offended denials. Only silence. “I took out insurance to keep us friends,” Kea continued. “I fixed the drive unit, okay. But I slipped Murph a little extra task to do. An extra step.”

“Like what?” Murph demanded angrily.

“Like I rigged the unit to go down in a couple of months. And when it goes busto, my dear companions in adversity… you’re going to need me again. I guarantee it”

Kea fell back into the cot. “Now, go, dammit!” They went.

They found the air leak a week later.

“It’s not my fault, Murph!”

“You were supposed to check, dammit!”

“I checked. Not my fault, if I missed something. I’m no engineer.” Two of her eyestalks turned to peer at Kea’s figure, prone on the cot. His duties had been shared out among them. Kea stayed silent.

“Let’s not get into this bickering again,” Ruth said. “The leak’s plugged. Fine. Now, the question is, Do we have enough?”

“Not a chance,” Murph said. “Not with most of the five months to go. And—” He broke off. A long silence.

Then Vasoovan finished it: “And four of us breathing.”

There it was. Kea had been waiting.

“Yeah,” Murph said.

“Yes… I can see that,” Ruth said.

They all turned to look at Kea. Eight eyes upon three living forms peering at his own, air-consuming self.

“It’d be close,” Murph said. “Still be maybe a month short.”

“By then,” Ruth said, “we might find other means…”

“What about the drive unit?” Murph said. “The little trick he played on me?”

“I think he lied,” Ruth said.

Kea smiled at them. A big, broad smile. A smile right up from the warrens of Maui.

“Yeah, and maybe he didn’t,” Vasoovan said. The eight eyes turned away. But Kea remained watchful.

“What’ll we do?” Murph asked.

“Simple,” Vasoovan said. “We gotta have Kea. We gotta have you. And we gotta have me. I’m the nav—”

Kea didn’t know where the hatchet came from. It was painted the slick red of emergency tool gear. The handle was short. The blade blunt. Ruth brought it down between the four eyestalks. She was a small woman, barely coming to Kea’s chin. But she swung with the force of survival. The hatchet buried itself in the Osiran’s brain globe. The haft protruded back—giving Vasoovan a protuberance that looked like a long human nose. Pink goo blobbed out and dripped to the floor. The tentacles shuddered, then were still.

Ruth stepped back. She looked Murph full-on. “Well?‘ she said

“She kinda got on my nerves, anyway,” Murph said. “All that twittering.”

“The rations are getting low,” Ruth said. “I noticed. Let’s make some soup.”

He dreamed of kings. Of empires.

Menes was the first. A crafty old devil who welded upper and lower Egypt into the first empire. He ruled for sixty years. And was killed by a hippopotamus.

The Persians bowed before Alexander’s sword. He died in a swamp. Kublai Khan got it right. He quelled the mighty Chinese. And died of old age.

The Romans pushed the bounds of the known world and beyond. They fell to thieves on horseback.

Elizabeth was fine. The best of them all. She was the dazzling acrobat of the monarchs. Kea sometimes wondered why she hadn’t killed her sister sooner. Instead she bore the threat of deadly plot after deadly plot The romantics said it was deep, sisterly feeling. Kea believed it was simply because Elizabeth hadn’t thought it was time.

He had learned much from these people during those long hours of offwatch reading. His interest was not casual. The nature of the powerful had confounded him. He had been smacked on his ignorant blind side. Kea was determined to understand. So he had gone at it like an engineer. Taking each monarch and his kingdom apart. Putting it back together again. Piece by piece. Sometimes rearranging those pieces to see how it might have turned out. An empire, he had discovered, could take several forms. It could be crown and throne. Altar and blood sacrifice. An army standard with its accompanying secret police. A presidential seal resting on stolen votes. A company logo above a penthouse suite. But they all had one thing in common: an idea. An idea of a perfect life. Real, or promised. And for the idea to work, it had to satisfy from top to bottom. Starving masses do not praise their monarch’s name on Feast Day.

In one of the folktales he had read, one of the ancient kings went among his subjects in disguise so he could learn firsthand how to sweeten their disposition. The king’s name was Raschid. In the real world, the ward bosses, commissars, and priests fetched food and comfort up tenement stairs to sell for votes. The Robin Hoods—Huey Long, Jess Unruh, Boris Yeltsin— stole from weakened kings to create their own power bases.

Dictators preferred triage. Kea thought of it as rule by the three G’s: genocide, gulags, and gendarmes.

Still… No matter the form of the empire, or the means to maintain its rule, all of it circled back to the idea that was in the heart of the king who founded the empire.

And Kea had AM2.

His arm hurt. This was good. Like the pain before. He would be able to use it soon—though he had kept this from Murph and Ruth. He had a fever. An infection. A boil on his belly the size of a saucer. He’d have to hide that, too.

Kea heard whispers in the darkened room:

“C’mon, honey. I’m hurtin‘.”

“Get away from me.”

“We done it before. What’s another hunk?”

“Yoü reneged on your bargain. You lied.”

“I couldn’t help it, honey. I was hungry. Real bad hungry. I’ll give you halvsies in the morning. Swear it.”

“Get it now,” Ruth said. “Give it to me, now.”

Silence.

Ruth laughed. “What’s the matter… Daddy doesn’t want to play slap-belly anymore. What’s this.
Tsk tsk. It’s
hungry. But Daddy’s going to be selfish, isn’t he?”

Murph made no response.

Then Kea heard Ruth gasp. And for one… two… three heartbeats, a violent, muffled struggle. Then a distinctive crack.

Kea felt a knot in his gut untighten. A sudden release of pressure. A terrible odor rose up from the burst boil. Then sudden chills. And sweat. Good.

The fever had broken…

He awoke with Murph standing over him. “You’re lookin‘ better,” he said.

Kea didn’t answer. And he didn’t look around the room for Ruth.

Murph stretched. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Want some soup?”

“Yeah,” Kea said. “I’m hungry, too.”

“It’s gonna take longer than we thought,” Murph said.

“I can see that,” Kea answered. He was looking at the latest computations on the screen.

“Damned Vasoovan,” Murph said. “Lousy nav officer. Good thing you spotted her screwup and set us right.”

“Real lucky,” Kea said. He hobbled back to his cot and eased himself down.

“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” Murph said. “Maybe we’ll get picked up when we first get inta range and they hear our SOS.”

“That could happen,” Kea said.

“Only one bug in that chowpak,” Murph said. “And that’s if we lose a buncha time puttin‘ that little trick of yours straight. When it blows.” He grinned. “How long did you say it would take to fix again?”

“I didn’t,” Kea said.

Murph looked at him. “Naw. You didn’t… did you?”

Kea clamped his bound arm tighter and felt the edge of the filed-down plas spoon. An old, familiar boyhood friend. Murph came closer to him peering down with bloodshot eyes. Flesh hung loosely from his big jock’s frame. His cheeks were hollow, face pale as death. “You don’t look too worried,” he said. “About the delay and all. ‘Specially with your delay on top.”

“We’ll make it,” Kea said.

“I’m not what you call clever,” Murph said. “I know that about myself. And it don’t bother me. I leave clever to guys like you. More power to ya, I say.”

He moved to the edge of the cot. Kea could see roped muscles play through the sagging flesh of his neck. He scratched his bound arm. Slipped the knots free.

“ ‘Course I woulda thought of lyin’,” Murph said. “I’m clever enough for that. Don’t make captain in this man’s company if you ain’t quick on your feet.”

“I guess you don’t,” Kea said. He scratched again. The spoon slipped upward.

“Naw. You don’t,” Murph repeated. Kea saw Murph make the decision. Saw the click in those cunning eyes.

Kea came off the cot, right hand striking up to the chin, left hand—the bound arm—free, the spoon thrusting. It took Murph in the windpipe. Kea saw the eyes widen. Felt the flesh give. The sharp rush of air. He collapsed back as Murph flopped to the floor. A hand beat against his leg. He heard the whistling horror of Murph expelling his life.

Stillness.

Kea moved his foot. It thumped against Murph’s body. There was no reaction. Kea let the weakness take him. All tension drained away. He would rest now. Later, he could get up and re-check the course. Let his eyes run over the readings of happy machinery at work.

Then he would make some soup.

There was plenty to eat and drink, now. Plenty of air to breathe. It would have been a lot closer, though, if Murph hadn’t figured out that he had lied.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

New
York City, A.D. 2194

MANKIND WAS A little low on heroes when Kea Richards, sole survivor of the
Destiny I
, returned from Base Ten to Earth. Kea was not sure how the hero card would help him with this ultimate edge he had happened on, but he was canny enough to not let it go unplayed. He had worked out the tale he would spin on the long journey home. He told the truth about the cause of the disaster. A collision with a meteroite. He merely left out it had occurred in another universe. And he certainly didn’t tell them about the AM2.

Richards came on humble. He played up the image of an ordinary, hardworking space engineer who had been able to snatch victory from the jaws. He also made much of the “fact” that when those fearless scientists and self-sacrificing space crew members around him died, generally with Expressed Noble Sentiments As Their Last, it was his great good fortune that his formal education at Cal Tech, even though it had been interrupted by financial problems, was remembered and applied directly to the various emergencies.