The Outcasts of Heaven Belt

Ranger (Discan space) + 2.70 megaseconds

Discus, a banded carnelian the size of a fist, set in a silver plane: The rings, almost edge-on, were a film of molten light streaked with lines of jet, spreading toward them on the screen. Wadie drifted in the center of the control room, keeping his thoughts focused on the silhouette that broke the foreground of splendor: Snows-of-Salvation, orbiting thirty Discus radii out, beyond the steep gradient depths of the gravity well. Snows-of-Salvation, that had been Bangkok on the prewar navigation charts, the major distillery for the Rings. It was one of five, but it outproduced the rest by better than ten to one; in part because its operations were powered by a nuclear battery constructed in the Demarchy, in part because it could send out shipments using a linear accelerator, also from the Demarchy but infinitely more useful here where transport distances were short. The Ringers’ own primitive oxyhydrogen rockets made hopelessly inefficient tankers.

He remembered Snows-of-Salvation as it had been when he arrived with the Demarchy engineers: endless grayness honeycombing the ice and stone; a chill that crept into a man’s bones until he couldn’t remember warmth; a small gray population, a people renting space in purgatory. A people fanatical to the point of insanity, in the eyes of the Demarchy. He had been sent to keep demarch and Ringer from each others’ throats—sent because no one better qualified had been willing to go. He had stayed to see that two incompatible and suspicious groups never forgot their common goal of increasing the supply of volatiles. And in the fifty megaseconds he had spent in his grim and lonely exile, he had come to know a number of men he could only call friends and had seen more of the Ringers’ Grand Harmony than any other demarch. He had come to understand the chronically marginal life that existed for the Ringers everywhere; to see, almost painfully, what made them endure their oppressive collectivist ideology: the knowledge that they must always pull together or they would not survive…

The captain’s voice drew him back. His eyes fixed on her where she hung before the viewscreen, her hair floating softly, free from gravity, her shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow. He stared, the present an overlay on the past. The clean, colored warmth of the control room drove out a dreary poverty that made Morningside’s plainness suddenly seem frivolous.

Morningside… could he ever have come to see its people as clearly as he had seen the Ringers? How long did it take to feel at ease with a people who offended your sense of propriety in every way imaginable? Whose behavior slipped through your attempts to categorize it the way water slipped between your fingers… Four kilosecs ago he had come to the upper level to get himself some food and had found the captain and Welkin already in the dining hall and Bird Alyn playing her guitar. They had all been singing; as though in four thousand seconds they were not going to commit an act of piracy or face one more trial whose outcome meant freedom and life for all of them…

Or perhaps, he had realized suddenly, they sang because they were much too aware and afraid of that fact. Not what you sing, or how, Welkin had said, but how it makes you feel. Suddenly aware of his own part in that coming trial, he had been drawn across the room to join them by something stronger than curiosity… only to have Betha Torgussen’s face close and lose its warmth as she saw him; only to have her rise from the table, breaking the pattern of song, and abruptly leave the room.

“… I can’t believe this reading, Pappy. They should be frying down there, but they’re not. There’s no magnetosphere, no trapped radiation field… Do you know anything about this, Abdhiamal?” The captain glanced over her shoulder at him, not quite meeting his eyes.

He looked past her at the screen. “This is Heaven, after all, Captain. Discus’s radiation fields are strong enough, but they don’t reach much higher than the rings. That was one of the things that brought us to this system—the rocks and snowballs around Discus are accessible as they never were around Old Jupiter.”

He caught her eyes. “You don’t seem very concerned about whether we were fryin’?”

“We make good shielding on Morningside, or we’d have fried long ago.” She broke away, as she always did, now; looked up at Bird Alyn hanging near the ceiling above her head. “Bird Alyn, find the local talk frequency for me.” Her voice was calm.

Bird Alyn nodded, braced against the ceiling, and swooped down to the panel to catch up an earjack.

“Where’s Shadow Jack?” Welkin asked.

Bird Alyn stared at the panel, said something inaudibly.

“What?”

“…don’t know… said… didn’t think he could face…” She shrugged. The room filled with static as she switched on the receiver. The static slurred abruptly into words. The words sharpened as Bird Alyn locked them in. “Here…”

“What are they broadcasting?”

“They’re talkin’ to a ship, I think; a tanker. I heard ‘hydrogen.’ ”

“Good—then let’s rudely interrupt them.” The captain reached for the broadcast button. “You’re sure they’ll know who we are, Abdhiamal?”

“I’m sure. Even the Ringers have had time to spread word of what happened to that ship by now. And if their propaganda is as extreme as it usually is, they’ll expect you to be a butcher. They’ll—respect your threat.”

“All right.” She wet her lips, pushed the button. “Snows-of-Salvation, Snows-of-Salvation, come in please…”

The speaker shrilled irritation; Bird Alyn jerked the earjack away from her head.

“Who is that? Get the hell off this freq! there’s a mixed-load dockin’ in progress here! Do you—”

The captain’s hand on the button cut him off. “Tell them to hold off, we have something more important to say to you.”

“Who is this?”

“This is…” She hesitated. “…the ship your Navy attacked two megaseconds ago… the ship from Outside.” She released the button.

No answer came.

“You’ve impressed them.” Wadie smiled, humorlessly.

A different voice came through, a voice that was strangely familiar to him, ordering the unseen tanker into a holding orbit. Welkin reached across the comm panel, by Bird Alyn’s shoulder, and a new segment of the screen erupted into a blizzard of static snow. “We’re receiving wideband.” He typed a sequence on the console; abruptly the screen showed a squeezed triple image. He punched in a correction, and a single black-and-white’ picture reformed. They saw a pinched face squinting from behind wire-rimmed spectacles: a middle-aged man in a heavy, quilted jacket and a thick knit cap. “We’re transmitting compatible now, too,” Welkin said. The captain nodded, seeming to take the old man’s skill for granted.

“What is it you want here?” The familiar voice matched a familiar face, harsh with anger or fear. With anger… Djem Nakamore was too stubborn and dogmatic to acknowledge anything else. Wadie pushed out of his line of sight as Nakamore glared at Betha Torgussen.

Her face hardened, staring Nakamore down. “We want one thousand tons of processed hydrogen, sent out on the trajectory I give you to our ship. If you fail to do this, I’ll destroy your distillery, and you’ll all die.” The hardness seemed to come easily; Wadie felt surprise.

He watched their expressions change, the two strangers in the background showing real fear. Nakamore stiffened upright, drifting off-center on the screen.

“You won’t destroy us. Even the Demarchy would want you dead if you did that.”

“We’re not from your system; you’re nothing to us. The Demarchy is nothing. I hope you all go to hell together for what you’ve done to us; but Snows-of-Salvation will get there first unless you obey my orders.”

“…they meant it…” a blurred voice said in the background. Nakamore turned away abruptly, cutting off sound. He spoke to the others, their eyes still flickering to the screen, faces tense, their breath frosting in the cold air as they spoke. Nakamore turned back to the panel, out of sight below him, and punched the sound on. “We don’t have a thousand tons of hydrogen on hand. We never have that much, and we just sent out a big shipment.”

Wadie shook his head. “They’d never let the supply get that low. The output is nearly three thousand tons per megasec, and they have at least four times that as backlog in case the distillery goes off-line for repairs.”

The captain twisted to look at him, cutting off sound in return. “You’re that familiar with their operation?”

He nodded. “I told you—I spent almost fifty million seconds down there. I saw that distillery put together and saw it go into operation. I know what it can do. And I know that man…” He remembered Djem Nakamore’s face, the bald head reddened by the light from a primitive methane-burning stove; remembered the amused face of Djem’s visiting half-brother, Raul. He heard the hiss as water sweated from the ceiling to drop and steam on the stove’s greasy surface, as he waited while Djem pondered his next painfully predictable move that would lose him his hundredth, or his thousandth, game of chess to Wadie Abdhiamal. Stubborn, didactic, and unimaginative… honest, forthright, and dedicated to his duty. No match, as Djem had told him, often enough and without resentment, for Wadie’s own quick and devious mind—yet too stubborn not to go on trying to win. Wadie adjusted the earflaps of his heavy hat, put out a hand to move his queen, Checkmate.… “I know that man. Push him; he’s not—devious enough to know whether you’re bluffin’. And he’ll do anything to keep that distillery intact.” He realized suddenly that it could have been Raul instead who faced them now and was glad, for all their sakes, that it was not. He looked away as he spoke, avoiding the bright image on the screen and Betha Torgussen’s eyes.

The captain frowned slightly, then turned back to Nakamore on the screen. “I don’t accept that. You have twenty-five thousand seconds to give us the hydrogen or be destroyed.”

“That’s impossible!… It would take at least a hundred thousand seconds.”

“Lie,” Wadie said softly, shook his head again. “He’s stalling; Central Harmony keeps plenty of naval units in this volume, and he’s hopin’ some of ’em will get here in time.”

Nodding, she repeated flatly, “You have twenty-five kiloseconds. I know you have a high-performance linear accelerator down there. Use it. I don’t want any manned vehicles to approach us. Copy coordinates…” She spoke the numbers carefully.

As she finished speaking Nakamore looked past her, angry and beaten, but little of it showing on his face. “Are you there givin’ her the answers, Wadie?”

Wadie hung motionless… speechless. He pushed away from the panel at last, out into Nakamore’s view.

“Yeah, Djem, it’s me.”

“We picked up the broadcast debates from the Demarchy—how they’ve outlawed you. I figured maybe you’d…” Nakamore’s face set, with the righteous anger of a man to whom loyalty was everything; with the pain of a man betrayed by a friend. “We were fools not to see what you and your… starship aliens would try. Why stop with a thousand tons of hydrogen? Why not take it all?”

“One thousand tons of hydrogen is all we need, Djem. And we need it bad, or I wouldn’t put you through this.” Without fuel, the starship was trapped, prey to the first group quick enough to take it. And then the Grand Harmony, the Demarchy, and everyone else would be the prey. Then the threats would be no bluff. This was for the best; this was the only choice he could possible make, the only sane choice.

If he could only… He started, “Djem, I—” But no words would come.

Nakamore waited, his black eyes pitiless. At last he leaned forward, reaching for the unseen panel.

“Traitor.” His face disappeared; and with it the last chance of asylum for a banished man. Discus alone lay on the screen.

The captain sat gazing fixedly at the screen, her mouth pressed together, a brittle golden figurine. Welkin glanced at Wadie, apologetic but saying nothing, saving him from the embarrassment of a witty response that wouldn’t come.

“…think they’ll do it?” Bird Alyn pulled at the flapping end of her belt. “What if they don’t?”

“They will.” He found his voice, and his composure. “In fifty million seconds, Djem Nakamore never won a game of chess from me.”

“You were perfect, Betha.” Welkin turned back, his faded eyes searching the captain’s downturned face.

“Eric couldn’t have put it more convincingly.”

“If Eric were alive, we wouldn’t be doing this.”

Wadie nodded, relieved. “I almost believed you meant every word of that, myself.”

She struck a match. “What makes you think I didn’t, Abdhiamal?” She lit her pipe, facing him with the same hardness that had faced down Snows-of-Salvation. “What have the Ringers done for us lately?”

“Indeed.” He bowed grimly, looked back at Welkin. “I’ve learned my lesson—I’ll never insult another engineer.” He pushed off toward the door.

Betha watched him disappear down the stairwell, shaken with the coldness that left her words of apology stillborn.

“Betha… would you… are you really goin’ to… destroy the distillery?” Bird Alyn whispered unhappily.

Bertha met the frightened face. “No, of course not, Bird Alyn I wouldn’t do that. I’m not really a—a butcher.”

Bird Alyn nodded, blinking, maneuvered backward and started for the door.

Clewell rubbed his beard. “Then why act like one, Betha? That was a little too convincing for me, too. Or isn’t it an act any more?”

Shame warmed her face, drove the coldness from her. “You know it is, Pappy! But that damned Abdhiamal—”

Clewell lifted his head slightly, unfastened his seat-belt. “He’s not such a bad sort… for a ‘damned fop.’ He’s held up pretty well under one gee… under everything he’s been through.” Meaning that she hadn’t made things any easier.

“He’s a phony; he’s lucky he didn’t cripple himself.” She looked away irritably.

“He’s a proud man, Betha. He might not call it that… but anybody who can stand straight and smile while gravity’s pulling him apart—or loyalty is—has my admiration. In a way, he reminds me of—”

“He’s not at all like Eric.”

His eyebrows rose. “That wasn’t what I was going to say. He reminds me of you.” He held up a hand, cutting off her indignation. “But now that you mention it, there is something about him… a manner, maybe; even a physical resemblance. Maybe it’s why I like him in spite of myself; maybe it’s what bothers you. Something does.”

“Oh, Pappy…” She lifted her hand, pressing her rings against her mouth. “It is true. Every time I look at him, anything he does, he reminds me—But he’s not Eric. He’s not one of us, he’s one of them. How can I feel this way? How can I stop wanting… wanting…” She reached out; Clewell’s firm, weathered hand closed over her wrist.

He smoothed her drifting hair. “I don’t know. I don’t know the answer, Betha.” He sighed. “I don’t know why they claim age is wisdom. Age is just getting old.”

Shadow Jack moved restlessly, trapped in the too-empty box of the room where he slept, haunted by the ghost of a stranger: manuals on economics, a nonsense song lyric, a hand-knit sweater suspended in midair—a dead man’s presence scattered through drawers and cupboards in the clutter of a life’s detritus. Rusty clung to his shoulders, her mute acceptance easing the shame of his exile. He stroked her mindlessly, hearing only the ticking of the clock; meaningless divisions marking the endless seconds. He wondered whether they would get what they wanted from the Ringers, wondered how he could face Betha Torgussen again… wondered how he would face the rest of his life.

Rusty’s small, inhuman face rose from his shoulder, her ears flicking. “Bird Alyn?” He pushed to the doorway, saw Wadie Abdhiamal disappear into another room. He heard Abdhiamal’s voice, almost inaudible: “Damn that woman! She’d spit in the eye of God.”

Shadow Jack moved along the hall, stopped at Abdhiamal’s doorway, staring, “What’s the matter, she spit in your eye?”

Abdhiamal twisted, a split-second’s exasperation on his face. He smoothed his work shirt absently, smoother his expression. “Yeah… somethin’ like that”

“What happened up there? Did we get the hydrogen?”

“Probably… Why weren’t you in the control room?”

He grimaced. “I couldn’t do it. I—I called the captain a pervert.”

“You what?” Abdhiamal frowned in disbelief.

Shadow Jack caught the doorway to move on, desperation turned him back “Can… I talk to you… man to man?”

Abdhiamal gestured him into the room, no trace of amusement on his face. “Probably. What about?”

Shadow Jack cleared his throat; Rusty pushed off from his shoulder, rose like a lifting ship, and swam toward Abdhiamal. “How come you never married?”

Abdhiamal laughed, startled. “I don’t know.” He watched the cat, reached out to pull her down to his chest. “Maybe because I never met a woman who’d spit in the eye of God.”

Shadow Jack’s eyes widened; and looking at Abdhiamal, he wondered who was more surprised.

Abdhiamal laughed again, shrugged. “But somehow I doubt it.”

“I mean… you said before, that now you never would get married. I thought there was—some other reason.” He reached for the doorframe.

“There was.” He stopped, holding on.

“I’ve traveled a lot. That means I’ve been exposed to high radiation levels and potential genetic damage. We have ways of preservin’ sperm so men at least can travel and still raise healthy children. But with the bill of attainder, I’m legally dead now. They’ll destroy my account.” Abdhiamal took a deep breath.

“And I’ve been sterilized.”

Shadow Jack looked back, letting the words come. “I’d be happy if I was sterile!” He shook his head. “I didn’t mean… I didn’t mean it like that. But we can’t ever get married, Bird Alyn and me, because I’m not sterile and she’s not. We are defective. We shouldn’t ever have children, but we would…”

Abdhiamal scratched Rusty under the chin. “It’s a simple operation. Can’t they perform it on Lansing?”

“They could… but they won’t.” Misery hung on him like a weight. “If you’re a Materialist, you’re supposed to take responsibility for your own actions. You’re supposed to take the consequences, not expect anybody else to do it for you. Like my mother, when my sister was born an’ they said she was too defective… my mother had to put her Out… She wouldn’t let my father touch her any more.” He looked down at his hands. “But the medical technology’s bad anyhow. Sometimes I think they just don’t want to waste what’s left.”

Abdhiamal’s voice was gently professional. “How were you judged defective? You look sound to me.”

Shadow Jack’s hands tightened on metal. “Maybe I wasn’t defective, then. But my sister was. And they needed more outside workers, so they told me I had to work on the surface. That’s what you do if you’re marginally damaged, like Bird Alyn. That’s where I met her…” Where he had discovered what life must have been like once, lived in the beauty of gardens and not the bleakness of stone. And where he had discovered that his own life did not end because he had left the shielding walls of rock; that feeling did not, or belief, or hope. But he had spent too many megaseconds mending a tattered world-shroud, too many megaseconds in a contaminated ship… And there were no miracles to heal a crippled hand or mend a broken heart.

He struck the doorframe. “Everything goes wrong! I didn’t mean to call Betha… what I called her. But she had so many husbands; she even has children! When Bird Alyn and I can’t even have each other… it just made me crazy. Betha lost so much, and I said—I said that to her. She helped us after we tried to take her ship just like everybody else—”

“You did? And she let you get away with it?”

He nodded, feeling ridiculous. “All we had was a can opener… I guess she thought we were fools.”

“And—you said she has children?” Abdhiamal looked down at the wide leather band circling his wrist.

“Yeah. Goin’ into space is like… like doing anything else to them. It’s not the end of anything.” He bit his tongue, remembering that it had been for the crew of the Ranger.

“If she forgave you for trying to steal her ship, I expect she’ll forgive you for callin’ her a pervert. Sooner than she’ll forgive me for makin’ remarks about engineers.”

Shadow Jack frowned, not understanding.

Abdhiamal’s smile faded. “It seems you and I have more than one problem in common. Like every group in Heaven Belt shares the problems of every other one. And I’m not so sure any more that there’s an easy answer for any of us.”

Shadow Jack turned away, saw Bird Alyn watching him from the end of the hall. He met her eyes, hopelessness dragging him down like the chains of gravity. “There aren’t any answers at all. I should have known that. Sorry to take up your time, Abdhiamal.”

Wadie closed the door, still cradling the cat absently against his side. In his mind he saw the future on Lansing, grief and death among the gardens—and saw in Lansing the future of all Heaven… The future?

Silence pressed his ears, deafening him. The end. The Demarchy was only one more fading patch of snow. There was no answer. Nothing he could ever do—nothing he had ever done—would hold back Death. He had made himself believe that his work had some relevance and worth, that a kind of creation existed in his negotiations, a binding force to keep equilibrium with disintegration and decay. But he had been wrong. It had always been too late. He was a damned fop, living at the expense of everyone else . .

. and wasting his life on the self-delusion that he was somehow saving them all. Wasting his life: he had thrown away his last chance of ever having a life of his own, a home, a family, any real relationship. And all that he had ever done, been, or believed was meaningless. It had all been for nothing—and it would all be nothing in the end. Nothing.

Rusty squirmed in his grasp like an impatient child. As he released her his arm scraped the ventilator screen, his hand closed over a flat, palm-sized square trapped by the soft exit of air. He pulled it down, stared at it. A picture—a hologram—of a man and a woman, each holding a child, flooded in blazing light where they stood before an ugly, half-sunken dwelling. The woman was Betha Torgussen, her hair long, coiled on her head in braids. And the man, tall, with dark hair and a lean, sunburned face… Eric? Her voice came to him suddenly, from behind a shielding faceplate, in a train car on Mecca. I—I thought you were someone I knew. Wadie brushed the images with a finger, moving through them. Ghosts…

Betha Torgussen’s voice came to him out of a speaker on the wall, telling the crew that Nakamore had acquiesced.