Sidney's Comet (9 page)

Onesayer scowled, glared out the window. Presently he said, “Uncle Rosy is a complex man, at once a great economist and a man of the cloth. What you heard is true, but this was not supposed to be mentioned on Pleasant Reef.”

“I will give you the name of the woman.”

“Good. The Master prefers to tell that story himself.”
I don’t really care about this,
Onesayer thought.
Let Uncle Rosy’s whole damned system fall into disarray.

“I did not know,” Lastsayer said.

“Act as if you are not familiar with the story when the Master relates it to you.”

“Yes, Onesayer.”

“The cardinals were a stubborn lot, Lastsayer, and became extremely upset at Uncle Rosy’s suggestion. Our Master decided to back down upon seeing their reaction, fearful that he might upset the delicate truce.”

“Thank you for telling me this.”

“You have an alert mind, Lastsayer. I like that.”

Lastsayer Steven did not respond. He watched the other heliwagon take off. Their craft began to descend.

“Symbolism is very important, Lastsayer. Tragically, the cross Uncle Rosy’s meckie holds may have led to the Holy War of twenty-three-twenty-six.”
Another of the Master’s errors,
Onesayer thought.

Lastsayer’s green eyes flashed intently. “How is that?” he asked.

“As you know, the first Council of Ten was formed in the negotiations between Uncle Rosy, the scientists and the cardinals.”

“I know: equal input from the cardinals and the scientists. But that was formed seven years before Uncle Rosy withdrew to the Black Box.”

“Correct. After Uncle Rosy’s withdrawal in twenty-three eighteen, a popular movement fanned by Cardinal John of Atlantic City and other Christian zealots demanded a holy war against all other religions. They said the cross held by Uncle Rosy was a sign of approval from the Master.”

“I was not aware of that,” Lastsayer said, watching the glassite roof of the Black Box grow closer while their craft descended. “Did Uncle Rosy approve, considering his feelings about a universal, rather than a Christian, God?”

“Uncle Rosy has always been torn between religious and economic issues. He likes to say economic considerations are more important. . . . ”

“But you are not so certain?”

“I too have much to learn.”

Lastsayer thought he heard bitterness in the other man’s tone. He thought for a moment, then said: “Should Uncle Rosy have stepped in
before
the holy war started? I mean no disrespect.”

“He wanted to give the AmFeds free reign, except in the case of a government overthrow attempt. He did not wish to meddle too much, but when he saw the destruction being caused by AmFed bombs . . .” Onesayer fell silent. Dust swirled on the rooftop from the wind of the helirotors.

“He saw the economic futility of destroying foreign markets,” Lastsayer said. “That would have put millions of AmFeds out of work!”

Onesayer sighed. ‘The AmFeds became so emotional over their holy war that they forgot about economics entirely.”

“So the Master intervened, with you as emissary. Sayer Superior told me of your important role.”

The heliwagon jolted as it landed.

A smile moved across Onesayer’s large mouth. “I merely delivered a written bull to the Council of Ten reminding them of their economic responsibilities,” he said. “I did not speak a word to them, of course. We are not permitted to address common people.”

“The bull spoke of the Principle of Economic Captivity, I presume,” Lastsayer said. He heard the heliwagon’s engines begin to whine down.

“Yes,” Onesayer said. Their safety harnesses snapped off automatically. He placed a hand on the front of each armrest. “The bull also specified that three nations would be established on Earth . . . the American Federation of Freeness, Afrikari and the Union of Atheist States. In its public version, this became known as the Treaty of Rabat. It survives to this day. Christian, pagan and atheist.” Lastsayer pursed his lips thoughtfully. He rose when Onesayer did, added, “What a great man the Master is! I look forward to my first session with him!” Onesayer led the way down the aisle, said with a turn of his hooded head to throw words over one shoulder: “You will never see his face, of course. No one has, since he entered the Black Box.”

“Oh, but just to be near him. The thrill of it!”

Onesayer nodded as he rolled onto an exit ramp, recalling a time long before when he had felt the same way.

Sidney turned sleepily in bed, throwing one arm over a rubber-skinned pleasie-meckie that lay beside him. “Carla,” he whispered in an awakening haze, “I love you, Carla.”

His eyes popped open, and when he became aware of reality, Sidney cursed at his misfortune. He pushed the meckie away.

The naked pleasie-meckie had fine-toned muscles like Carla’s, with an aquiline nose and shoulder-length, golden-brown hair.

Sidney mentoed it to life.
Away,
he commanded tersely.
Return to your station.

Obediently, the pleasie-meckie rose and dressed quickly in undergarments which lay in disarray on the floor. Then, as Sidney watched, it rolled into the closet and took a standing position to one side. He turned away, stared at the spray-textured ceiling. Sidney heard rustling in the closet for several moments. Then the meckie closed the closet door and Sidney was left alone.

He stretched and yawned. As usual, it was late morning when he awakened, and Sidney could see synthetic sunlight through the open doorway of the bathroom module. Moments later, he stood naked from the waist up at a grooming machine in the bathroom.

The tiny modular room was warm and cheerful, with a planter box of plastic marigolds along one wall beneath a sun-lite panel. White synthetic light from the panel warmed his left side.

Thinking about his strange space dream of the night before and of the haunting, recurring voices, Sidney waited while an electric shaver at the end of a right-handed meckie-arm trimmed the stubble off his face. The U-shaped grooming machine, Sidney’s height overall, peered back at him with its mirror face between seeing-eye meckie-arms on each side. An array of brightly colored buttons above the machine’s sink could be mento- or hand-activated. Gold lettering across the top of the mirror proclaimed: “
UNCLE ROSY LOVES US
.”

Sidney turned his face to one side when the shave was finished, trying to find a better angle in the mirror. This made his ears seem to protrude less, but the pug nose looked worse. He sighed, wondered sadly,
Why can’t I be better looking? I’m not even average!

The meckie-arms took Lemon Delight Shaving Lotion from a dispenser next to the mirror and patted Sidney’s face. The lotion stung; his eyes watered. Sidney always resented mechanical grooming, but held up his arms cooperatively while deodorant spray was pumped all over his pear-shaped torso.

In the next grooming maneuver, Sidney knew he had to be careful. He watched with trepidation as the left meckie-arm grasped a toothbrush and took on a load of Shiny Bright Toothpaste from a wall dispenser. A smiling picture of President Ogg looked back at Sidney from the dispenser with a message printed across perfectly even, sparkling white teeth: “
VOTE FOR OGG
.”

The toothbrush darted into Sidney’s open mouth and surge-scrubbed every tooth. Several times recently, not paying sufficient attention, Sidney had failed to open his mouth. The disastrous result: sticky white paste rubbed all over his nose and chin.
Not this time,
he told himself. The meckie finished with an automatic rinse, gargle, face wash and set of Sidney’s curly black hair, all accomplished without strangling, drenching or costing him the loss of any hair.

After breakfast, Sidney moto-shoed across his small condominium unit to the living room module. This too was a cheerful room, despite the location of Sidney’s unit at the building core where it could not receive natural light. Bright splashes of gold and orange washed furnishings and walls with color. An orange, plastic-encased videodome dominated the room’s center, directly beneath a ceiling-mounted sun-lite panel.

He rolled past the videodome, pausing in front of a wall decorated with a gold and black checkerboard design. Concentrating upon one of the squares, he mentoed an unseen combination dial and heard the click of tumblers as he projected each number. The square slid away, revealing a lighted wallsafe filled with leatherbound scrapbooks and an assortment of personal treasures. He selected two volumes and an old-style pen, went with them to the couch.

Sidney sat down pensively, stacked both volumes on the coffee table and opened the cover of the top one slowly. A handwritten title had been scrawled across the yellowing first page in large, childish script:

MY PILOT LOG, VOLUME ONE

Property of Captain Sidney Malloy American Federation Space Patrol

He turned the page, read his fantasy: “I joined the Space Patrol as a lad often, assuming the duties of cabin boy on the Star Class Destroyer AFSP Nathan Rogers. Within six months, my leadership abilities became so apparent that I was promoted to Captain and given command of the ship.”

He looked away, smiling as he thought,
Did I really write this?

Sidney continued reading: “My first assignment: seek and recapture the escaped arch-criminal Jed Laredo. Laredo is wanted for detonating a powerful ice bomb following his escape from the asteroid colony at LaGrange Six. Twelve-thousand inhabitants perished in the explosion. He is believed to be hiding near an abandoned mining base at Agarratown on the Celtian planet of Redondo. . . . ”

He flipped the ensuing pilot log pages, read the successful and heroic conclusion of his fantasy mission. Other fantasies followed, entered meticulously beside blueprints and specifications on a variety of spacecraft.

In one sense, the space scrapbooks seemed childish to him now, but still he felt the longings he had experienced as a youth. The exploits were not real . . . he had always known this . . . but the adventures contained a spirit of hope . . . a certain innocence and naiveté concerning his future. This morning, as he prepared to write about his confused ego pleasure dream of the prior evening, Sidney still had hope . . . but it was not so bright and untarnished as it once had been.

He sighed, placed Volume One to one side and opened the next scrapbook, his fourteenth. Flipping to a blank page, he began writing: “While patrolling the Signus XX-4 Quadrant in the Summer of 2605, I received urgent word . . .”

How can I get this down?
he wondered, rubbing the pen thoughtfully against his lower lip.
Those strange, maddening voices. . . .

Interrupted by the doorchime, Sidney mentoed his new singing wrist digital. A sultry female voice sang to him cheerfully in a sing-song tone: “A.M., ten-forty-one-point-three-four.”

Wonder who’s there?
he thought, welcoming the interruption. He replaced the volumes in the wallsafe and reseated the panel.

As Sidney opened the hall door, Bob Hodges, his tall and thickly-muscled downstairs neighbor, rolled in without an invitation. “Hi Sid,” he said cheerily. “How ya doin’?” Hodges was puppy-friendly, thoughtless but well-meaning.

Sidney regrouped his thoughts and returned the greeting. Then he led the way down a woodgrain linoleum hallway to the living room module.

“How about a little video?” Hodges asked, seeing the videodome as they entered the room.

Sidney grunted in affirmation, rolled directly into the videodome without another thought and sat in his favorite bucket seat, one of four inside. He sank into the videodome chair, consumed by the billowing softness of authentic Corinthian vinyl. Mentoing a channel selector to the left of his seat, Sidney watched a green button on the selector depress.

“Have to make sure you watch enough home video,” Hodges said, laughing. “Hear you had a recent visit from those folks at the Anti-Cheapness League.”

Sidney heard the videodome door slide shut. An overhead light dimmed. “It was nothing,” he answered matter-of-factly. ‘They were investigating a faulty videodome report. Someone did a line test seconds after one of my dome circuits blew. With no repair order in on my set, they were concerned that it might have been down for several days.”

“Oh,” Hodges said. “No big deal.”

“Naw. I gave them details on the video programs I’d been watching before the blowout, signed their form and they left.” Sidney mentoed channel forty-seven on the selector.

Sidney watched three-dimensional screens all around light up, giving viewers the illusion of being seated in a crowded auditorium. People chattered at nearby seats, and Sidney made out details of their conversations.

“Jimmy Earl is next,” a young man in the crowd said, “with the latest from Rok-More. Then the Mister Sugar Follies.”

“How exciting!” a woman in a fur coat said.

Spotlighted at center stage, a man in a white sequin Western outfit spoke excitedly into a handheld microphone. “The latest from Rok-More Records!” he said, waving an arm to his rear toward a mini-stage containing a spotlighted record cube display. “Donna Butler’s in the Happy Shopping Ground, folks, but her songs will never die! Supplies are limited, so order ‘Donna’s Greatest Hits’ now! As a bonus for those of you in our home video audience, I’ll throw in this delightful little ‘Heart of Gold’ pendant.” He held the pendant up, added in a voice grown suddenly tender, “Donna’s signature is on the back, folks. Won’t you pledge your undying love for Donna? Order now!”

The audience auto-clapped and cheered as a product number appeared on a sign above the record cube display. Sidney felt a chill in his spine from the patriotism of the moment, and mentoed the number into a Tele-Charge board that was connected to an arm of his chair. He signed the board with a transmitting pen, noting that Hodges was doing the same.

With glazed eyes, Sidney watched the Mister Sugar Follies now, a group of twelve men clad in blue-and-white soft drink cans. After an explanation by one that they were permitted to expend energy since it was Job-Supportive, the men danced stiffly in a row like tin dolls to a twangy tune. As they kicked their feet in near unison, Sidney noticed his throat gone dry. The subliminal receiver in his brain had been activated.