Red Planet Blues

THIRTY-THREE

Berling?” I said, looking at the transfer framed in the airlock doorway. “Stuart Berling?”

He scowled. “Lomax? What the hell are you doing here?” But then his gaze shifted to Willem Van Dyke, and his brown eyes went wide. “My God,” he said shaking his handsome head. “My God, it’s true. You haven’t aged a day.”

“Do I know you?” Van Dyke replied. He gave no hint that he recognized the famous face in front of him, and, indeed, if he’d spent most of the last three decades on ice, he probably didn’t.

“I’m Stu Berling,” the transfer said.

Van Dyke spread his arms slightly. “Should I know you?”

“I was on the—on this damned ship.”

“When?”

“Thirty years ago. The last time it sailed under the name—” He swallowed, then managed to get it out: “B. Traven.”

“Oh,” said Van Dyke, softly.

“I’d had questions about that for decades,” said Berling. “But now I’ve got money—and money buys answers. A guy at InnerSystem’s office here in New Klondike told me you were aboard. I couldn’t believe it—couldn’t believe you were still part of the crew after all these years.”

“I don’t know who you are,” said Van Dyke.

“I’m the one who woke you. During the flight. All those years ago.”

“No, you’re not.”

Berling seemed pissed that this was being disputed. “I am, damn you.”

“I don’t know what that geeky kid—he was just eighteen or nineteen—grew up to look like, but you’re not him. You’re a damn transfer, a nothing.”

Berling’s tone was venomous. “I’m more of a man than you ever were. It was four days before I was able to get past that madman, get to your hibernation chamber, wake you up. And you didn’t do a thing to stop him.”

“There was nothing I could do,” said Van Dyke. “He had guns; I was unarmed.”

“You were the backup bowman,” snapped Berling. “You were the only other crew member. You should have stopped him.”

“I tried,” said Van Dyke. “That kid saw me try.”

“You had smuggled land mines aboard,” said Berling.

“The official report said it was Hogart Pierce, the primary bowman, who had done that.”

“Pierce was dead,” said Berling. He gestured behind himself. “They shot him as he came out that airlock here on Mars. When they found the land mines, they said he’d been smuggling them for some client here. But it wasn’t him; it was you.”

Van Dyke looked like he was going to utter a reflexive denial, so before he could, I asked Berling, “How’d you figure it out?”

“Like I said, money unlocks things. I started digging into this.” He pointed at the scrawny man, but looked at me. “Van Dyke had come to Mars once before that hellish journey, did you know that?”

“On Weingarten and O’Reilly’s second expedition,” I said.

Berling nodded. “And why didn’t he come back on the third?”

“He’d had a falling-out with Weingarten and O’Reilly,” I said, “over how to split profits, and—ah. As you greased enough palms to dig into Van Dyke’s past, you discovered—what? That he was a munitions expert? Former bomb-disposal guy?”

“Black-market arms dealer,” said Berling.

Van Dyke sneered, apparently offended by the term. “My expertise was in putting high-powered buyers in touch with those who had things of great value to sell. That’s why Simon and Denny brought me aboard… literally.”

“But then they double-crossed you,” I said. “Or you double-crossed them.”

Van Dyke said nothing.

“And, my God,” I said, taking a half step backward. “You—God, yes, of course! You sabotaged their ascent stage on the third expedition. You couldn’t have used the same model of land mine to do it—those were introduced after that ship left Earth. But an earlier model would have worked just as well—or some other explosive you had access to, as an arms dealer. You killed Simon Weingarten.”

“And Denny O’Reilly,” said Berling.

“No,” I said, “but only because Weingarten marooned O’Reilly here.” Berling looked surprised at this bit of news, but before he could speak, I went on. “So you’re a murderer,” I said to Van Dyke. “No wonder you’re in no hurry to meet your maker.”

“You could have halted the insanity,” Berling said, also to Van Dyke. Pickover, wisely, was staying out of all this.

“No, I couldn’t!” Van Dyke shouted at him. “The land mines were locked in a cargo hold; there was no way to get at them during the flight.”

“You could have detonated them by remote control,” said Berling.

“That would have blown up the ship!”

“It would have stopped him.”

“It would have killed us all.”

“It would have stopped him.” Berling was reaching his boiling point; he looked like he was going to explode.

“Stuart…” I said gently.

He wheeled on me. “That madman abused us. He tortured us. And Van Dyke could have stopped it. He could have stopped him. Instead it went on for another two months. Two months before we reached Mars, two months of horrific abuse.”

“I’m sorry,” Van Dyke said.

“Sorry!” shouted Berling. “That’s not enough. I can’t go home. I can’t go back to Earth. I’m rich now—but there’s nothing to spend it on here. I could never lock myself aboard another spaceship for months. And it’s your fault.” He didn’t take a deep breath; he couldn’t. But he did stop and look around—and then he shuddered. “Right over there—right down that hallway? See? That’s where he first… where he first…”

“Stuart,” I said again, as gently as I could. “It was thirty years ago.”

“It’s not thirty years for me! I relive it over and over again.”

“I am sorry,” Van Dyke said again. “There really was nothing I could do, and—”

Berling moved with a transfer’s speed, and with the same violent temper I’d experienced from him at Ye Olde Fossil Shoppe. He leapt forward, landing less than half a meter from Van Dyke, and he rammed Van Dyke back against the wall—hard.

Maybe a healthy man could have taken it. And, of course, if this Van Dyke had been one of his transfer copies, he’d have survived it easily. But he wasn’t—and he didn’t. Berling’s open palm crushed Van Dyke’s chest. Berling took a step back, a look of horror on his face—as dramatic as a transfer’s expression could get. “Oh, God…” he said.

Van Dyke crumpled to the floor. I rushed in and felt for a pulse. “His heart’s stopped.”

“Oh, God…” Berling said again, very softly.

I stretched Van Dyke out on his back and placed hands over his sternum to start chest compressions, but—

But his sternum was caved in and it felt as though the heart beneath it had been crushed. There was nothing to lose by this point, and so I did the compressions, but I could feel bone breaking further and an appalling squishiness beneath it all.

“Oh, God…” Berling said for a third time. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t want…” His jaw dropped. “I—I just wanted to talk to him.”

“You killed that man,” said Rory, speaking at last, his voice faint.

“I—I’m sorry. I—”

Rory did a series of body and facial movements that I guess were akin to taking a deep breath; he was clearly composing himself, and thinking about what to say. “All right, okay, I understand that you were a victim of abuse, but… but he wasn’t the abuser, and…” He paused and shook his mechanical head slightly. “I’m sorry, you poor blighter, but you must know that even the NKPD won’t be able to turn a blind eye to your killing him. InnerSystem is a division of Slapcoff Interplanetary; they’ll demand to know what happened to their crew member, and the police will have to investigate.”

Berling spun on his heel. I’d seen biologicals take hostages before: they often put an arm around someone’s neck from behind—but even a broken neck could be repaired on a transfer. Instead, Berling had reached around from behind to clasp Pickover’s forehead. His other arm had grabbed one of Rory’s own just below the elbow. He propelled the paleontologist into the airlock.

“Don’t take him,” I said. “Take me. I’m the better hostage—you can easily overpower me.”

“No dice,” said Berling. “The police have that disruptor thing. They won’t dare use it on me so long as I’m next to this guy.”

“Alex…” said Rory, pleadingly.

Berling squeezed, and I saw indentations, like the beginning of finger holes for a bowling ball, appear in Rory’s forehead. “Shut up!” snapped Berling. Rory did so. Berling released his grip on Rory’s arm just long enough to pull the inner airlock door closed. There were a couple of minutes until the cycling process would finish, so I went down on one knee next to Van Dyke to see if there was anything at all that could be done, but he was gone.

I put on my fishbowl. The light above the airlock door turned green: Berling and Pickover had exited and were presumably now making their way down the ramp to the ground. Neither of them needed to eat or drink, and they could go months without charging up; my guess was that Berling would drag Rory out into the Martian desert. Of course, Rory still had a tracking chip in him, unbeknownst to Berling. But it would be better to stop them on the open planitia, rather than let them get somewhere that could be defended.

I cycled through the airlock as quickly as I could, and—

And whatever combinations of people Mac had chosen to get him and the meese out of the Kathryn Denning hadn’t worked as intended. Berling and Rory were halfway down the ramp that led from the airlock to the ground, Berling still holding Rory’s arm and clutching his skull. One of the meese was sprawled face down about twenty meters to the right—Mac had apparently used the disruptor on him—and the other moose and Mac were facing off against each other about forty meters farther along.