The Blue Marble Gambit (6 page)

Blue
external lights flashed in warning, then the gravity generators cut off with a
hollow thunk. And just like that,
we were falling.

"Oop,"
Trina said as we rose.

Starting
up engines in the lock was strictly verboten; we waited while our mooring post
tugged us to the edge of the lock and hurled us outward. The engines started up with an almost
silent hum.

"Ready?"
I asked Trina.

"Time's
awasting."

I
goosed the throttle, jetting us forward.

The
nav screen projected a series of large squares on the viewscreen; all I had to
do was aim through these. I
steadily advanced the throttle, accelerating. Once we got past .3c I turned it over to
the autopilot and told Ned to let me know of anything amiss, then settled back.

Trina
turned to me; it was our first quiet moment together. “Would you tell me something?"

"I
might."

"It's
a little bit personal." Her giant Afro bobbed.

"I
might anyway."

"Is
your name really Court diz Aster?"

I
looked across at her. Tanned and
lithe on her leather couch, her now flame-red hair arrayed around her, her
space black jumpsuit delightfully snug, except for where it was suggestively
loose, I almost wanted to ask if her name was really Trina Nova. But of course it was. “What's wrong with it?"

"It
just sounds funny, that's all."

"No
idea what you're talking about," I said, shaking my head.

She
was looking at me curiously, one eye gold and one green. “Court," she purred, "tell me
about the Fist."

I
tabbed the view scale down and twisted the compensators to full gain, then
asked her why I should tell her about the Fist when she was in it. What was this, a test?

"Well,
actually, since I'm just on loan to the Fist, Admiral Fairchile said I didn't
really need the background."

I
stopped in the middle of calibrating a startant. “He did? He said that?"

"He
most certainly did. In fact, it
seemed like he didn't want to tell me."

That
alone was reason enough for me, on general principle. Besides, now that I thought about it,
certain types of behavior that were standard in a Fist mission might be very
upsetting to a more conventionally-minded human. It was time to find out how Trina would
react.

“Alright. The Fist is a small nucleus of highly
trained, alpha-innovation agents. You can't apply for it; you have to be tapped. The key membership requirements are
individual initiative, analytical abilities, physical skills, and luck."

"Luck?"

"Call
it what you will - quantum intuition, gap logic, anti-causative analyses,
parallel-field deduction, or just plain luck. It's real, and you need it. You also need a healthy skepticism, plus
a disregard for most social mores and customs."

The
nav deck beeped for attention; I scanned the readouts and, with Ned's silently
nodding concurrence, gave the authorization for the first TL jump. The ship bumped.

“Suck
it, Einstein!" all three of us shouted. The ritual statement of going TL,
derived from the flat-earther scientist who paralyzed a century and a half of human
scientists with the proclamation that it couldn't be done, until a pair of
precocious and unimpressed eighteen-year old Siamese twins who were actually from
Siam proved him wrong. For weeks
angry mobs of lab-coated physicists had roamed university campuses, tearing down
statues and attacking busts.

"What
an odd collection of qualities," Trina mused, her skin flushing a deep
metallic purple. “Earth society now
emphasizes conformity. There must
be very few recruits for the Fist."

"A
tiny number," I agreed. Outside, the stars began to inch and creep, like animated dust
motes. All those ancient theories
about wormholes and hyperspace and the colored smear of TL flight: all
wrong. Translight was just like
normal flight, only faster.

Trina
seemed momentarily distracted by the view sliding past. Then a quizzical expression creased her
brow. “Wait. A 'disregard for social customs,' you
said. It sounds as if you're
describing outcasts."

"You're
on the right track," I said as I watched the nav computer adjust our
course to sweep around an uncharted binary sun. I imagined those two burning spheres
swinging a red cape in a graceful arc, leading us past. Ole! A pase for the Blue Bean!

Trina's
brow furrow deepened and she shook her head. “But you make the Fist sound like a
bunch of misfits."

"Not
exactly misfits," I hinted, as we fell sunward. I edged our course closer, just for fun.

"Not
outcasts, not misfits. You're
playing games! What then?" Her
foot stamped, and her skin flushed a deep and angry red. I wondered if this was real or more
cosmetic nano.

"Somewhere
in between?" Speaking of that, could we go between the binary suns? I checked the numbers and saw they were
too close together. We'd be the
meat in a solar fusion sandwich.

"You're
making me mad," she warned coolly.

"Oh
gosh no. Alright." She was
going to find out anyway, eventually. “The Fist is comprised of what you might call, ah, well,
criminals."

She
paused, as utterly surprised as a fish finding a tasty treat to be a murderous
hook. “Criminals?"

"Well,
ex-criminals, sort of."

"Reformed
criminals, you mean?" she asked. A thin ray of hope shone plaintively through the dark cloud of her
words. As if the only good criminal
was a reformed criminal. Ha.

"No,
reformed criminals would be as useless as a bicycle in space. I mean caught criminals. A special few whose unique talents are
redirected to be more useful to humanity."

She
was still thinking too conventionally; she couldn't help it, as a product of
Earth culture. Sheep naturally
follow the herd. They never imagine
hanging a sharp left at the bluff and striking out to see what lies beyond that
hill, unrutted by thousands of hooves.

Trina
asked, "In exchange for freedom?"

Far
ahead an Etzan-type spacedar illuminated, in the search band. We were far outside detection range but
I steered a wide berth.

"No,"
I said ruefully. “Not at all.
In exchange for no
jail.
Which is a far cry
from freedom. At least as I
understand the concept."

Trina
leaned back, an odd light in her eyes. Crime was a distant and unpleasant notion for most humans these days;
Earth and Mars were safe and sane, carefully insulated, safety-packaged, and
sterile. She raced up to the brink
of a conclusion and hurled herself off the edge. “So there are murderers and rapists and
thieves-"

I
silenced her with a raised hand before she could any further besmirch with
negative associations the good names of high-class criminals everywhere. “No no and most of all no. Well, actually, yes to the last. Out of Earth's billions, the Fist is a
nucleus of just fifty agents, none of whom were brutal predators. We performed a service for humanity, and
now, especially, we still do. We
work for humanity."

"You
performed a service for humanity?" she smirked, as if I'd announced hives
and boils to be beauty marks. “By
robbing and stealing?"

"An
unenlightened, microcosmic viewpoint. We were examples of individuality and independence.
Vital for the human
collective unconscious.
Wolves keeping the caribou sharp.
Sharks thinning the
school.
Without us, the
whole species could slide. The gene
pool would fill with useless detritus and clog up."

"Ho
ho," she said. “Gene pool
cleaners.
Very
funny.
Space the babble, and
tell me: why does the Fist save you anachronistic fiends-"

I
flinched, slightly.

"-
from
prison?"

The
Etzan spacedar fell astern.
So far, so good.
That, of course, is what the man who fell off the thousand-story
building was heard to say as he passed the five-hundredth floor.

I
smiled and smoothed my orange hair. I'd never gone for the
new-wave
, hipster shades
of blond or brown. Tried and true,
old-fashioned, even; that was
me
. “Because no one else can do what we
do."

"Ridiculous!"

I shook my head in sadness at seeing that,
like most humans, she had been conditioned to consider the criminal mind
despicable and deviant. I
double-checked the nav display and the prox screens,
then
turned to her.

"Not
at all. When Earth first made
Contact, the planet was almost as stale and authoritarian as it is now. But the universe isn't called the
jungleverse for no reason - it's a mad scramble, without ethics or rules or
etiquette. Every planet, every
race, must safeguard its interests; every planet, every race does. But our first agents were far too imbued
with crippling senses of right and wrong and fair play. Before sneaking onto an alien planet,
they'd try to get a visa. Stealing
technology was impossible - they'd try to get export permits and buy it
legally. They were suffocated by
their own warped and self-imposed perceptions of the rule of law. You can't survive that way."

Trina
fixed me with her golden eye. Her
green eye was on the instrument panel. “So you don't believe in right and wrong?"

"Let's
just say I have a modified sense of those concepts. Being right and dead doesn't do you any
good.

She
turned two new eyes on me. Well,
the same gold and green eyes, but with a new expression. "How did
you
get into the Fist?”

I told her, very briefly, about my experiment with modern piracy. Flitting about in a space kayak. Hiding out in a stray asteroid. Dodging a system-wide hunt by EarthCop.

She
sat back and her skin flicked to a natural golden glow. "That was
you
? Skybeard?
The Space Pirate??
You're not dead!”

"No. The battle
was faked. A public demise is
another requirement for Fist Agents, sometimes known as Fingers. Earth is too law and order; the populace
wouldn't stand for the knowledge that the best and brightest criminal minds of
the last century have not only avoided punishment, but have actually been
rewarded for their nefarious talents."

I was watching her carefully for her reaction. Would she
scream? Refuse to go along? Demand to file a protest? Start a petition? Found a
support group?

That
gold green gaze held me in its sights. Her skin was in a slow swirl
;
her hair slowly
turning a deep red. Her eyes
glittered. Piracy was having an
effect on her, but not the one I'd feared. I began to think of plunder.

"How
good were you?
As a pirate?
I read the stories, but I
mean how good were you really?"

"I
was . .
. Adequate
." No need to brag, but I was a shade better than
adequate.

"How'd
you get caught?"

"Why
would you think I got caught?"

"You're
here."

"You
don't think I voluntarily came in, for the good of my fellow man?"

"No."

"Ah. Fair enough. Well, I didn't get caught, exactly. I was tricked." I explained that by
the time I'd hit my third ship, EarthCop was in an uproar; at the time there
hadn't been a real criminal in centuries. Soon I had accumulated a series of convictions, all of them happily in
absentia. I continued prowling and
looting, never once harming a single human while focusing on those ships that
advertised themselves as pirate-proof - 'diz Astor proof,' as they called it.

Trina
licked her lips at me. They bore an
intriguing zebra pattern.

"Go
on," she whispered.

I'd
been on the vids every night; there was even a children's show based on
me. My actions gained attention
elsewhere, too, though I didn't know it. The Fist. At first, as a
courtesy, they worked with EarthCop to arrange a series of simple traps. These were tests; had I been captured, I
would have been left to the Justice system, to the inevitable brain-wipe and
reprogramming or imprisonment.

But
I didn't fall into those gradually more sophisticated traps, and finally -
unknowingly - passed the tests. The
Fist then decided it wanted me, designed better snares, and found to its
surprise and chagrin that even with its best efforts it couldn't catch me.

That
was unprecedented, and it made the Fist really want me. So they sent me a message. They could have reached me by a variety
of electronic means - although no one knew where my secret base was, or where I
was at any given moment, an open transmission would have reached me. But instead they chose a more elegant
means, one more in keeping with my anachronistic tendencies.

They
sent me a letter.
On real paper.

Addressed
in a flowing calligraphy, I found it in the haul I pulled from the
interplanetary liner
Armstrong's Article
.
It was signed by my
own dear old uncle Admiral Beaugeste Fairchile
, and it started off by
congratulating me for my piracy, then proposed a meeting under a flag of truce
and guaranteed by his personal honor.