Lifeline (7 page)

Chapter 9

CLAVIUS BASE—Day 8

The nightmares gave way to consciousness. Duncan McLaris opened his eyes, hoping it had all been part of the dream.

Without moving, he let his body send him messages. He found himself stretched out on a comfortable pallet … a bed. He smelled a chemical taint, some kind of disinfectant, and a dusty charcoal smell that hung over everything. McLaris blinked and focused his vision on the clean walls, the white sheets on his bed, the various apparatus in the room … the other empty beds. Infirmary.

The
Miranda
had crashed! Memories flooded into his head. He caught glimpses of Stephanie Garland fighting the controls, the lunar surface careening toward them. Stephanie Garland … shredded by the shrapnel of the cockpit. And Jessie—oh no, Jessie! He saw a vision of a faceless space suit with a cracked helmet, air hissing out into the vacuum. Jessie!

The figure lurching into view was a narrow-shouldered Asian woman. Her hair had been smoothed to perfection, like a black silk cap; she wore a white coat and the trappings of a doctor. She narrowed her almond eyes at him.

“You were the only survivor, Mr. McLaris. I thought you’d like to know.” Her dark eyes were like cold lava glass.

McLaris worked his mouth, but no words came out. He saw flashbacks of the ruined
Miranda
—Jessie’s faceplate smashed … unconsciousness … pain. Then the rover vehicle, and the space-suited man pulling him out of the wreckage. He had been wearing an
Orbitech 2
suit. Clancy—that was his name.

The doctor busied herself rearranging the gleaming medical instruments in a tray. Finally, she removed a hypodermic needle. “I hope you’re satisfied.”

McLaris looked at the needle, uneasy, but decided not to ask any questions. He found himself floating, unable to comprehend the doctor’s anger, or to respond as intelligently as he wanted to. He felt his body filled with a haze of pain, but it was a distant ache, not sharp and distracting—only enough to tell him that his bloodstream had been pumped with enough painkillers to blunt his awareness.

The doctor maintained her silence. She seemed to be seething inside but not letting much of it show. By the time she turned to leave, McLaris already felt the fuzzy effects of the tranquilizer seep into his head. He noticed a hollow emptiness, horror growing inside his stomach at what the doctor had said.

Jessie was dead. Jessie … dead.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and tears started to flow, just as unwilling sleep took him.

DAY 9

The sounds around him seemed hushed, snickering in the darkness. McLaris had been awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, or closing his eyes and counting how many times his chest rose and fell. He was alive. He had survived. Was this worth the effort? Now they had a scapegoat to blame everything on.

McLaris winced and felt the sweat itch beneath him on the infirmary bed. As the sheets went from being too hot to too cold, he cast them away from his body or pulled them up to his chin. The pain from his injuries—relatively minor, all of them—had subsided into quiet throbbing. Within a day the doctor, Kim Berenger, had taken him off the painkillers, and now McLaris felt his mind sharpening again, his full capabilities returning.

He liked it better when everything wasn’t so harsh and clear. The low lunar gravity showed no mitigating effect on the weight of his conscience.

Nobody had taught how to deal with this in management training classes.
I didn’t do it for me
—
I did it for her,
he thought. But he couldn’t explain that to Jessie now. What was it for, after all? His own excuses were pathetic.

You’re a survivor, Duncan McLaris! Isn’t it great to be alive?

During the day, some people in
Clavius Base
uniforms had come to stare at him. When the nurses brought him medication or rationed food, they acted cold to him. And Dr. Berenger’s frigid bedside manner would have been better suited for a morgue.

“You don’t know what Brahms is like,” he croaked once in a hoarse whisper. “I know what he’s going to do. You’ll see. Everything I did will be justified.”

Berenger just stared at him.

McLaris could blame nobody but himself.
He
had made a terrible mistake, the wrong choice, acted without thinking. He lay pondering how he could take it and turn it into something he could live with.

He closed his eyes and thought about breathing again. Inhale. Exhale. Deeper, and deeper. He felt the air go in and out of his lungs. He sensed the blood flow through his veins and arteries, detected the faint vibrations of his heartbeat … and the spinning wheels in his brain.

Diane was gone, either killed in the War or forever separated from McLaris anyway. He could never get back to Earth.

And Jessie was dead.
I am being brave, Diddy!
He was supposed to take care of her. He had promised Diane.

McLaris tried not to think about it.

Day 10

He got out of bed for the first time, stretching his aching muscles, standing—with only a seventh of Earth-normal weight—on trembling legs. McLaris’s body felt like a massive bruise, but the hurt seemed refreshing after the painkiller limbo.

McLaris rubbed the heavy stubble on his chin—about five days’ worth—and wondered if he should attempt to shave, to make himself more presentable. He decided against it. He wanted to keep the beard; he didn’t think he’d want to feel clean and slick for a long time. He stepped away from the bed, giddy and disoriented in the low lunar gravity. He looked toward the narrow slit window at ceiling height. A sudden memory sliced through him:
What star is that, Diddy?

The voice in his memory echoed so clearly that he caught himself from turning to see if Jessie stood by him again.

McLaris had delighted in watching her learn things, in seeing the amazed look on her face when she discovered something new. She always wanted him to explain things to her.

Explain things, such as how a competent division leader and a skilled pilot could manage to crash a shuttle and kill a little girl?

He heard someone else enter the room, but forced himself not to turn around. It was probably someone he didn’t want to see anyway. He tried to catch a reflection in the window, but couldn’t see the door from where he stood.

“Mr. McLaris, I am to inform you that Chief Administrator Tomkins wants to see you.” The soft, controlled voice belonged to Kim Berenger. “Whenever you think you can face him.”

For a moment, the name meant nothing to McLaris, but then he remembered—Philip Tomkins was the head of
Clavius Base.
Well, he had known it was going to happen sooner or later. He let out a long sigh.

“Dr. Berenger,” he said, turning to face the woman. McLaris knew from his reflection how haggard he looked—the half-grown beard, the red eyes. “I was wondering if we might have some kind of—” he searched for a better word, a euphemism, “—service, for my daughter? And for Stephanie Garland?”

Berenger’s face remained expressionless. “We decided it was unwise to wait for you to heal. Your daughter and the pilot were interred in a cairn outside after the first day. Chief Administrator Tomkins himself gave a little eulogy.”

McLaris drew himself up in sudden anger. The doctor ignored him, instead acknowledging the medical record with her thumbprint. He fixed a haunted gaze at her. “You decided not to wait? What possible difference—”

“Dr. Tomkins insisted on holotaping the service for you. We can rig up a tank and let you watch it at your leisure.”

McLaris made his way back to the bed, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of him. He collapsed on the sheets.

“I had reasons for what I did,” he muttered.

Guilt rose up in front of him like a mirror, an echo chamber to reflect his thoughts back at him.
Yes, it’s my fault. Yes, I killed my daughter.

Each time he admitted it to himself, he thought the words louder, more forcefully. Reality began to eat its way through the haze of shock and disbelief.
Tomkins wants to see you. Whenever you think you can face him.

McLaris knew how to handle his own problems. He needed a focus—something to work toward, some goal to achieve. With that as a crutch, he could see himself through this. He lay back on the sheets, the pain in his body insignificant compared to the pain in his mind.

Yes, it’s my fault. Yes, I killed my daughter. But no, I didn’t intend for it to happen. And, no, I didn’t do it for selfish reasons. I did it with the best of intentions. For Jessie.

He would come out of this experience galvanized, a stronger person.

He would make it up to Jessie … somehow.

***

Chapter 10

KIBALCHICH—Day 10

All the tension on the Soviet research station
Kibalchich
had been covered up with an artificial levity, a sense of camaraderie. They held an “end of the world” party to say good-bye to everything that had been lost on Earth—all their friends, all their pasts.

Commander Stepan Rurik leaned back against the wall in the rec room. People came up to talk to him, and he responded with as much interest and encouragement as he could muster. But he focused his attention on the group in general, trying to interpret how they would react.

A day from now all of them were going to leap over a cliff blindfolded, trusting in the skills of their biochemist, Anna Tripolk. They might as well be committing suicide.

Brilliant Anna, lovely Anna—she was so hard and so driven, completely focused on her own goal, and yet so naïve about other things. That was part of her charm for Rurik.

Together, all the people had gathered to talk, to party, to reminisce, to say good-bye to each other. They had drunk up all the remaining alcohol in the stores, then bottle after bottle of illegally brewed vodka and substitute dark beer.

Tired of standing by the walls, Commander Rurik strode out into the crowd, smiling and clapping his crew on the shoulders. He filled the room with his presence, his charisma. The party suddenly seemed sincere. Rurik had brought with him two dark bottles of brandy.

“Georgian brandy? How did you get that up here?” one of the women asked.

“Not Georgian brandy. Real French brandy.” Rurik smiled and lowered his voice. “And don’t worry about how I got it up here.”

Pouring right and left with both bottles, Rurik offered tastes of his brandy until it was all gone—too quickly for most of the people.

As the alcohol seeped into their bodies, restraint dissolved away. After all, they didn’t need to be in good shape for duty the next day.

The people began talking in louder voices, some growing brash and daring, saying things they had never risked speaking before. Some bemoaned the loss of the Grand Experiment of
glasnost
and
perestroika
and complained about the harsh backlash, but the Soviet return to conservative isolationism had never quite succeeded because the world economy was too tightly woven.

A few people scowled at the political criticisms, but Rurik knew what types of men and women they really were. He had pegged them long ago. They didn’t worry him anymore.

The people sat around in small groups. One woman put on a disc of Stravinsky’s
Firebird Suite,
booming the music into the conversation.

Off in a corner, some people compared snapshots in pocket holocubes; others swapped stories, argued over who had the most beautiful spouse or children. But each person looked terribly frightened, and trying to keep distracted from the fear—though it always seemed to keep coming back.

Anna Tripolk joined in conversations herself but drifted from group to group, as if unwilling to become too deeply involved. Rurik watched her, and she kept looking up to meet his eyes. She smiled, looking twenty years younger in a single flash. Anna felt for him, he knew, and he showed her all the affection he could. Rurik was certain he did not love her, though she did prove an interesting secret companion during the night periods.

Tripolk looked lost and empty away from her research. She couldn’t seem to find the heart for the feigned cheer the others somehow managed. Rurik knew she felt more saddened at the loss of her life’s work than from anything else.

Her life’s work.

These last few weeks had destroyed most of their dreams, strained them to the breaking point.

The last coded orders had come up more than a week before, in the heat of battle, when Earth’s house of cards was toppling down. The
Kibalchich’s
political officer, Cagarin, had insisted on viewing the orders with Rurik. And because of Cagarin’s connections, Rurik could not turn him down.

“You must destroy
Orbitech 1”
Cagarin kept harping on him, repeating the insane orders. “Or must I do it for you? My authority supersedes your own.”

Rurik had had enough of the man. “You are just a minor administrative functionary. Your eleven cronies here are equally nondescript. Do not try to threaten me, Cagarin. Your basis for power has vanished like everything else. I am commander here!”

But Cagarin refused to play along. He raised his thick eyebrows. “Do you wish me to relieve you of your command?”

Rurik sighed, crossing his arms over his chest as if he were speaking to a misbehaving child. “The orders did not specify
when
I was to act. I plan to carry them out—but only when all the other people on the
Kibalchich
are out of the way.”

He paused, staring at the other man. “Have you not thought what the others might do when they learn of the orders against
Orbitech 1?
These are scientists, not military troops! Would you like to watch them all revolt? You would bear the brunt of their anger, I fear.” He raised an eyebrow, but Cagarin remained silent. “Give me time. It is too late for immediate vengeance. We will carry out the instructions, but when I say the time is right.”

Cagarin thrust out his lips in a pouting expression. “I will remain awake with you.”

Rurik made a condescending smile. “If that is the penance I must endure.… We are supposed to have two monitors anyway.”

Now, at their end of the world party, six workers had gone to the zero-G command center at the hub of the
Kibalchich’s
torus. Inside, they had turned the largest external dish antenna toward Earth and begun making calls.

One of the communications engineers tapped into the microwave transmission bands, and together they spent hours trying to call friends they had known. No one answered. They called numbers at random. They laughed and drank and tried again, but the joke had worn thin by the time they finally broke through to a still-functioning recording in French. No one had the slightest idea what it said.

“Someone must still be alive! We know the War could not have been completely devastating.”

Rurik answered tiredly, “The electromagnetic pulse from the detonations would be sufficient to destroy most communications substations. Perhaps the equipment is out of commission. But some will still be intact. Have faith.”

They continued without success. None of the lines seemed to be working, or else no one felt like answering. “Just like the phone system back in Vladivostok!” one of the men muttered.

They proposed a toast to their commander, but found they had run out of things to drink. Bumping and floating, they made their way to the lift platforms that would carry them back out to the main torus. Rurik moved to follow them.

Turning back, he looked around the command center, where he spent so much of his time. A cylindrical holotank filled the center of the room, surrounding the station axis.

Switching off the vision recorder, Rurik recorded a terse warning in the holotank. In a day or so, when the station was quiet and deserted, he would broadcast the message to the three other colonies on their own ConComm channels, then he would shut down the unit on this end.

“We of the
Kibalchich
hereby sever all ties with other survivors on Earth’s space colonies. Do not attempt to contact us; we wish to remain isolated.”

It sounded childish and silly to Rurik, but he knew Cagarin would approve. It would keep the other colonies away for a while, at least, and it would give him time alone.

Plenty of time to do what he had to do.

***