The Aftermath

ASTEROID 67-046: THE ARTIFACT

Tamara Vishinsky absolutely refused to see the artifact again. All the way out to the asteroid Tamara had been Alex Humphries’s willing bed partner. She knew that what the artifact had showed her the first time was the absolute truth: her way to wealth and power lay in her ability to manipulate wealthy and powerful men. It was her path to comfort, to safety. Her way to escape poverty and danger.

During the days of their full-g flight to the Belt she had noticed Yuan regarding her with amused tolerance. Fool! she thought. All he wants from Humphries is to open his stupid restaurant in Shanghai. I want more. Much more. And I’ll get it.

But once their ship established orbit around the asteroid Tamara knew she could not face the artifact again. She remembered the pain of its revelation, the aching remorse of reliving her miserable childhood. Not again, she told herself. Never again.

Alex Humphries seemed keenly eager as they rode the shuttle-craft down to the asteroid’s surface, his cold gray eyes glittering with anticipation.

“This could be the most powerful force the human race has ever encountered,” he said, as much to himself as to her. “I’m going to link to capabilities no one’s ever even dreamed of.”

Sitting beside him in the padded shuttlecraft seat, Tamara suddenly realized that if he was right, if the artifact empowered Humphries they way he anticipated, she would lose him forever. Her safety, her future, would vanish.

“Do you think it’s really a good idea to expose yourself to the artifact?” she asked, in a whisper. “I mean, look what it did to your father.”

Alex Humphries was silent for a moment. Then, “All right. You go look at it first.”

“Not me!” she blurted. “It was too painful the first time.”

“And you’re afraid it will be painful for me?”

“Disabling. It crippled your father, didn’t it?”

“Temporarily.”

“Don’t risk it. Let Yuan go in. He wants to see it again.”

Humphries fell silent again for several long moments. At last he asked, “That first time you came here: why did you kill Commander Bolestos?”

She blinked with surprise. “He … I didn’t think…”

“He was in your way,” Humphries said softly. “Is that it?”

Scrambling in her mind to find an excuse, she finally admitted, “Yes, that was the reason. I had to get past him to see the artifact.”

“And once you saw it, the experience didn’t change you at all, did it?”

“Not really, but it might hurt you, Alex.”

He smiled at her and patted her knee. “We’ll see. We’ll see.”

A full security team was waiting for them at the glassteel dome that protected the opening of the tunnel that led deep into the asteroid’s interior. Humphries ordered them to stay at the dome.

“Captain Yuan knows the way down,” he told the chief security officer. The man stepped aside as Humphries strode to the tunnel entrance.

Turning, Humphries said to Tamara, “You can stay up here. You don’t want to see the artifact again, do you?”

Looking uncertain, Tamara stammered, “No… I… but, but don’t you want me to go with you?”

“No,” Humphries said, cold as honed steel. “You stay here.” He pointed to the chief of the security detail. “Captain Bolestos will take care of you.”

“Bolestos?”

The young security officer pulled his laser pistol from its holster.

“The son of the former commander here,” Humphries said.

Wide-eyed, Yuan looked from Humphries to Tamara to the grim-faced security captain with his drawn pistol.

“Alex!” Tamara called to Humphries. “Don’t leave me! Please!”

“Come on,” Humphries said to Yuan, turning his back on her. “You come with me.”

Slowly, fearfully, Yuan followed Humphries into the down-sloping tunnel. For several minutes neither man said a word. Then a scream echoed off the tunnel’s rock walls.

“What was that?” Yuan shouted, knowing the answer, dreading it.

Humphries didn’t even turn his head. “Justice,” he said. And he continued down the tunnel.

They ducked their heads where the tunnel was low, then found themselves in the grotto just outside the artifacts chamber. The rocks glowed with cool light. The ceiling vaulted above them. The partition that closed off the artifact’s chamber was wide open.

Humphries licked his lips. “Me first.”

“Fine,” Yuan said.

Humphries looked surprised for an instant, then his eyes went hard. “You’re afraid of it?”

“No. I want to see it again.”

“Then …?”

“I can wait,” Yuan replied.

Humphries nodded. “All right. Wait here.”

He stepped across the faint groove in the dusty floor that marked where the partition rested when it was closed. The walls of the tunnel glowed coolly, bathing him in a golden glow. He felt his pulse thumping in his ears. A whiff of an odd scent tickled his nostrils; something that he vaguely remembered…

Hesitating, Humphries turned and saw Yuan standing back there, watching him. Tamara was afraid of the artifact, he said to himself. What did it do to her to make her so fearful? Could it harm me? The thought sent a shudder of alarm through him. It drove my father insane—temporarily. What will it do to me?

His pulse thundering now, Humphries stepped farther into the chamber. The light was bright but warm, like sunlight on a tropical beach. He did not notice the partition sliding smoothly, silently down the chamber’s entrance, closing him inside.

Turning the corner in the stone tunnel he stood face-to-face with the artifact.

Nothing. The chamber seemed empty. Humphries felt his-brows knit with puzzlement, then anger. To come all this way… Were they lying to me? Is this all some elaborate fraud?

The odor he had noticed seemed slightly stronger here. It brought back a memory from his childhood: Christmas morning with the huge tree and all the decorations and the brightly colored packages beneath it.

Then he noticed a tiny glow on the far wall of the rocky grotto, nothing more than a candle’s flickering. But as he watched the glow brightened, grew until it was like a lamp shining in his eyes, a spotlight, a miniature sun blazing its intensity. Humphries threw an arm over his eyes; the light was painful, searing, yet he could not take his eyes from it.

And within the light, shadows. Something formless shifting, moving, slowly taking shape. It was his father. Three-year-old Alex saw his father looming above him, reaching for him, cradling him in his arms. Young Alex felt the warmth and happiness of his father’s love. For a moment.

Other people crowded around Martin Humphries, separating Alex from his father. Alex was a teenager now and his father was distant, aloof. He watched as his father drifted farther and farther away from him. And changed.

Martin Humphries grew larger. The figures around him shrank until they were dwarves, midgets, vermin scurrying beneath his father’s feet. Martin Humphries pointed at one and the figure exploded in a flash of flame. Alex felt pain, like a red-hot iron pushing through his guts.

His father was becoming grotesque, hideous, larger and larger as he turned into a ravening monster, terrifying everyone his fiendish eyes fell upon. Martin Humphries laughed like Satan enjoying the torment of damned souls, and suddenly Alex realized that this wasn’t his father, it was him, Alex, who had become the monster.

He sank to his knees, unable to tear his eyes away from the vision of torture and pain. Is this what my father saw? he asked himself. Is this what my life will become?

He saw the cyborg, Dorn, and the aged Elverda Apacheta: hostages in his power maneuvers against his father. Marionettes, their strings in his own hands. And he saw Tamara: beautiful, cunning, ruthless Tamara staring at him with the eyes of a needful child. She reached toward him with both hands but Humphries saw her cut down by the hand of death. His own hand. Dripping with her blood.

On his hands and knees, Alex Humphries tried to crawl away from the damning, accusing visions. But he couldn’t move. He could not will his body to obey the commands of his fevered mind. He cried out in anguish, then collapsed onto the stone floor, sobbing.

The vision faded slowly, leaving Alex on the grotto floor, soaked with perspiration, trembling with fear. And understanding.

The artifact didn’t drive my father insane, he realized. Dad was insane. The artifact merely brought his madness out into the open, showed it to himself. It’s taken years for him to recover from that revelation.

Slowly, painfully, Alex scrabbled to the rock wall and pulled himself to his feet.

And I’m heading into the same abyss as he did. I’m becoming my father! Alex squeezed his eyes shut. No! That’s not me, he said to himself. That’s not me. But a voice in his head told him, That will be you. Eventually. Inevitably.

His sweat-soaked shirt sticking to his skin, Alex pulled himself to his feet and staggered out of the grotto. The metal partition slid upward, releasing him.

“That’s not me,” he whispered to himself. “And it never will be.”

Yuan rushed to him.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “The partition closed. You were sealed in there for more than an hour.”

“An hour?”

“More. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Alex said shakily, fighting off the urge to collapse into Yuan’s arms. He forced himself to stand steadily on his own feet. “It was…” He tried to smile. “It was pretty intense.”

He leaned his back against the rough rock wall and slid down to a sitting position. I should have waited, he said to himself. I shouldn’t have turned her over to Bolestos so soon.

Then he noticed Yuan looking at the beckoning glow beyond the open partition.

“Can I go in now?” Yuan asked.

Alex waved a weak hand at him. “Sure. Go ahead.”

Yuan bounded through the open partition and disappeared into the artifact’s inner chamber.

He wants to see it again, Alex thought. He’s not afraid of it because he has nothing to be afraid of. I do. I’m heading along a path that will make me exactly like my father.

“I’ve got to change,” Alex murmured. “Let my father run the corporation if he wants to. There are better things for me to do.”

Yuan came back out of the artifact’s grotto in what seemed like a few minutes, grinning hugely, happy with what he saw.

“When we get back to Selene,” Alex said, his voice weak, strained as if he’d just run ten kilometers, “you go build your restaurant. I’m quitting Humphries Space Systems.”

“Quitting?” He seemed shocked.

With a faint smile, Humphries said, “I’ve got better things to do.”

“What better things?”

“There’s still a lot of rebuilding that needs to be done on Earth. There’re millions of people who need help, need a chance to pull themselves out of poverty and misery.”

Yuan looked puzzled. “You want to help them?”

Alex’s smile grew stronger. “If I can,” he said. “It’s better to build than to destroy.”

CHRYSALIS II

Theo said his goodbyes to his family at their quarters in Chrysalis II. His mother and sister teared up as they embraced him. He promised to stay in touch and they both said they would message him every week, once he arrived at Jupiter station. His father shook his hand solemnly, his face frozen into immobility.

Before he himself started sniffling, Theo slung his slim travel bag over his shoulder and left them there, striding down the passageway to the docking port where Hyades was set to depart for Jupiter.

There were forms to fill out before they would allow him to board the fusion torch ship. Theo tapped out his information blindly, automatically, wanting to get aboard the ship as quickly as he could, wanting to stay with his family at the same time.

Can’t have both, he told himself as he pecked away at the keyboard. At last the security program was satisfied and granted him clearance to board Hyades.

As Theo stepped through the spongy access tunnel connecting the ship to the habitat he saw that there was a ship’s officer at the open hatch, checking credentials with a handheld scanner. And another man, just in front of the hatch. His father.

“How’d you get here ahead of me?” Theo asked, astonished.

Victor grinned at his son. “The old man can still outrun you,” he said. Then he added, “I didn’t have to go through all the busy-work you had to fill out. I saw you at the console, tapping away.”

Theo nodded. “I… I guess I ought to get aboard, Dad.”

“I know,” Victor said. “I just wanted to… well, I just want you to know that I respect you, Theo. You saved your mother and sister. You’ve grown into a real man.”

Blinking at the tears that sprang up in his eyes, Theo stood there dumbfounded, not knowing what to say.

Victor wrapped his strong arms around Theo, who dropped his travel bag and embraced his father.

“I love you, son.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

“Good luck. Good voyage.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

He picked up the bag and hurried past the waiting officer and through the hatch. Turning, Theo waved once to his father, then stepped through the inner hatch into the ship’s main passageway.

Dorn was standing there, arms folded across his chest.

“Welcome aboard,” he said gravely.

“Thanks,” said Theo, brushing at his eyes.

“Today we begin our new lives,” said Dorn.

“Yeah. Guess we do.”

With a hint of a smile, Dorn said, “I have a message for you from the ship’s medical officer.”

“Altai?”

“Altai Madagascar. She wants to see you in the infirmary as soon as you’ve stowed your bag in your quarters.”

Theo broke into a happy smile. A new life, he said to himself, looking forward to it.