The Outcasts of Heaven Belt

Toledo planetoid (Demarchy space) + 30 kiloseconds

Wadie Abdhiamal, negotiator for the Demarchy, stirred sluggishly, dragged up out of sleep by the chiming of the telephone. He turned the lights up enough to make out its form and switched it on. “Yes?”

He saw Lije MacWong’s mahogany face brighten on the screen, pushed himself up on an elbow in the bed.

“Sorry to wake you up, Wadie.”

He grinned. “I’ll bet you are.” MacWong enjoyed getting up early. Wadie glanced at the digital clock in the phone’s base. “Somebody need a negotiator at this time of night? Don’t the people ever sleep?”

“I hope they’re all sleepin’ now… Are you alone?”

Wadie glanced back over his shoulder at Kimoru’s brown, sleek side, her tumbled black hair. She sighed in her sleep. He looked back at MacWong’s image, judged from the disapproval in the pale-blue eyes that MacWong already knew the answer. Annoyed but not showing it, he said, “No, I’m not.”

“Pick up the receiver.”

Wadie obeyed, cutting off sound from the general speaker. He listened, silent, for the few seconds more it took MacWong to surprise him out of his sleep-fog. “Be down as soon as I can.”

He got out of bed, half-drifting in the scant gravity, and went into the bathroom to wash and shave.

When he returned he found Kimoru sitting up in bed, the pinioned comforter pulled up to her chin. She blinked reproachfully, her eyelids showing lavender.

“Wadie, darlin’,”—a hint of spite—”it’s not even morning! Whyever are you gettin’ up already; am I such a bore in bed?” A hint of desperation.

“Kimoru.” He moved across the comfortable confinement of the room to kiss her lingeringly. “That’s a hell of a thing to say to me. Duty called, I’ve got to leave… you know I hate to get up early. Particularly when you’re here. Get your beauty sleep; I’ll come back to take you out to breakfast—or lunch, if you prefer.” He fastened his shirt with one hand, touched her cheek with the other.

“Well, all right.” She slithered down under the cover. “But don’t be too late. You know I’ve got to charm a customer for dear old Chang and Company at fifty kilosecs.” She yawned. Her teeth were very bright, and sharp. “I don’t know why you don’t get a decent job. Only a government man would put up with a schedule like yours… or have to.”

Or a geisha—? He went on dressing, didn’t say it out loud; knowing that she didn’t have a choice, and that to remind her of it was unnecessary and tactless. A woman who had been sterilized for genetic defects had very few opportunities open to her, in a society that saw a woman as a potential mother above all else. If she was married to an understanding husband, one who was willing to let a contract mother provide him with heirs, she could continue to lead a normal life. But a woman divorced for sterility—or an unmarried sterile woman—had only two alternatives: to work at a menial, unpleasant job, exposed to radiation from the dirty postwar atomic batteries; or to work as a geisha, entertaining the clients of a corporation. It was prostitution; but it was accepted. A geisha had few rights and little prestige, but she did have security, comfortable surroundings, fine clothes, and enough money to support her when she passed her prime. It was a sterile existence, but physical sterility left her with little choice.

Knowing the alternatives, Wadie neither blamed nor censured. And it struck him frequently that in working for the government, he had picked a career that most people respected less than formal prostitution—and one that had left his private life as barren of real relationships as any geisha’s. He looked past his own reflection in the mirror, at Kimoru, already asleep again with one slender arm reaching out toward the empty half of the bed. He had no children, no wife. Most of the women he saw socially were women like Kimoru, geishas he met while negotiating disputes for the corporations that used them. He avoided them while he was on assignment, because he avoided anything that could remotely be considered a bribe. But in their free time the geishas liked to choose their own escort, and he had enough money to show them a good time.

But he rarely stayed in one place long enough to get to know any woman well; and the few normal women he had known at all had bored him with their endless insipid conversation, their endless coquetry.

Wadie brushed back his dark curling hair and settled the soft beret carefully on his head. He was a fastidious dresser, even at dawn. It was expected. He picked up a silver ring set with rubies, slipped it onto his thumb. It had been a gift of gratitude, from two people he had helped long megaseconds before, a husband-and-wife prospecting team. He remembered that woman again—a woman pilot, a sound, healthy woman who had chosen to be sterilized in order to go into space. No kind of woman at all, really; because no real woman would willingly reject a home and family. That woman had been a freak—stubborn, defensive, self-righteous; a woman out of her place, out of her depth. And yet her partner had married her. But he had been a kind of freak himself; a mediaman—a professional liar—with scruples. It was no wonder the two of them chose to spend the rest of their lives in the middle of nowhere, picking over salvage on mined worlds…

Wadie shook his head at the memory, looking into the mirror, into the past He wondered again, as he had wondered before, what bizarre chemistry had drawn them together, and still kept them together. And wondered briefly, almost enviously, why that chemistry had never worked on him. He shrugged on his loose forest-green jacket, buttoned the high collar above the embroidered silken geometries. Hell, he was eleven hundred and fifty megaseconds old—thirty-eight Old World years—most of them spent solving everyone else’s problems, living everyone else’s life instead of his own. If he hadn’t found a woman by now who would accept him on his own terms, or one who could make him forget everything else, he never would. He wasn’t getting any younger; if he wanted a child, he couldn’t afford to wait much longer. When he finished this new assignment he would hire a contract mother to bear his child and raise it while he was away. He glanced back one last time at sleeping Kimoru as he left the apartment, closing the door quietly.

Wadie yawned discreetly as he left the building’s shadow and started across the quiet square. It was barely daylight now; the glow of the fluorescent lamps brightened like dawn in the ceiling’s imitation sky, ten meters above his head. The magnetized soles of his polished boots clicked faintly on the polished metal of the square, added security in the slight spin-gravity of Toledo planetoid. The surface of the square curved along the inside hull of a massive, hollowed chunk of iron, a rich miner’s harvest and a solid home, but one that was beginning, ungraciously, to show its age. The silvery geometric filigree of pure mineral iron beneath his feet had been preserved once by a thin bonding film, but it was oxidizing now as the film wore away. He could trace rusty paths, dull reddish brown in the early light, leading his eyes across the square and under the tarnished rococo wall to the entrance of the government center. Symptoms of a deeper illness… something like panic choked him; from habit he took a long breath, and eased back from the edge, from admitting that the disease would be terminal. He went on toward the center, ordering the lace at his cuffs. Living well is the best defense, he thought sourly.

Lije MacWong was waiting for him inside. Officially Wadie worked for the citizens of the Demarchy; actually he worked for MacWong. MacWong, the People’s Choice: the Demarchy’s absolute democracy was an unpredictable water beneath the fragile ship of government, and it had drowned countless unwary representatives. But MacWong moved instinctively with the flow of popular opinion, sometimes even risked diverting that flow to suit his own vision of the people’s needs. He did the people’s business, and made them like it. Wadie wondered from time to time what MacWong’s secret was; and wondered whether he really wanted to know. “Peace ’n’ prosperity, Lije.”

MacWong glanced up as Wadie entered the office, ice-blue eyes placid in his dark face. “Peace ’n’ prosperity, Wadie.” He rose, returned a formal bow, and moved reluctantly away from his aquarium.

Wadie peered past him for a glimpse of the fish—three glittering golden things no larger than a finger, with tails of shining gossamer, moving sinuously through sea grasses in the green-lit water. The goldfish were the only nonhuman creatures he had ever seen, and for all he knew MacWong was still paying for them. He pulled off his hat, watched its soft mushroom roundness begin to flatten beside MacWong’s on the desk top. “With all due respect, I trust this news about a Mysterious Message from Outer Space is genuine, and I’m not here because you like to see me suffer.” He sank slowly into MacWong’s neocolonial desk chair, smoothed wrinkles from his jacket.

“Have a seat.” MacWong smiled tolerantly. “The ‘message’ is genuine. These aren’t home movies I’m goin’ to show you.” He leaned carefully against the corner of his desk, avoiding the fresco of silver animal heads, and flicked a switch on the communications inset. Nothing happened. “Dammit,” He picked up a platinum paperweight shaped like a springing cat and dropped it on the panel. The impact was unimpressive, but the Kleinfelter mural projection on the far wall faded, and was replaced by the image of a woman’s face. “I don’t know what I’ll do if this desk quits working. They don’t build ’em like they used to.” He set the paperweight gently back in place.

“They don’t build ’em at all, Lije.” Wadie traced the scrolled embroidery on his jacket front; his fingers froze as he looked up at the screen. “A hologram? Where’d you get that, MacWong?”

“We picked it out of the air, or space, anyhow, thirty kilosecs ago. It’s a genuine hologramic transmission; it took us ten kilosecs to figure that out. And it’s not beamed. Think of the power and bandwidth something like that requires! I don’t know anybody who can do that for the hell of it any more.”

“Not many that can do it at all—” He broke off, watching, listening, as the woman’s voice rose. Her skin was pale to the point of colorlessness, like her cropped, floating hair; her face was long and angular. She wore a faded shirt open at the neck, without jewelry. In her thirties, he judged, and making no attempt to cover it up; her plainness was almost painful. He put it out of his mind, concentrating on her voice. She spoke Anglo, but with an unfamiliar accent; the most common words seemed to take on extra syllables in her mouth.

“…please identify yourselves further. We were not aware of violating your space. We are not, repeat not, from your system; and we—” She was interrupted by a noise that barely recorded; Wadie saw her pale skin blush with anger, her eyes sharpen like cut sapphire. He glanced at MacWong.

“The Ringer navy,” MacWong said. “Their ’cast went the other way. This is all we picked up.”

The woman glanced offscreen, and spoke words that he couldn’t hear, insulting words, he guessed; but her voice was steady as she faced the screen again. “This is not a Belter ship, we are not ‘Demarchists,’ and we have committed no acts of ‘piracy.’ You have no authority over my ship; permission to board is denied. But if you will give us co-ords for your—”

Again she was interrupted; he watched tension grow, tightening her face. “We’re not armed—” And resolution: “But we deny your ‘right of seizure.’ Pappy, get us—” She turned away again, and her image was ripped apart by a burst of red static. For half a second more he saw her, and then the screen went white.

“Well?”

Wadie loosened his hands on the metal frame of the chair. “Did they destroy it? Is that all?”

MacWong shook his head. “The ship took a hit, but it got away from the Ringers—all but one of ’em. We monitored some of their followups; that alien ship is a ramscoop, and when one of the Ringer pursuit craft got too close she just used the exhaust to melt it into scrap. Maybe that indignant Viking Queen isn’t armed, but she’s dangerous.”

Wadie said nothing, waiting.

“We don’t know where the ship is now, or even why it’s here. But I have some ideas. She said it was from outside the system, and I believe that. Nobody in the Belt has anything that sophisticated any more. And a woman runnin’ it—particularly a woman who looks like that—”

“Maybe she’s an albino… maybe she’s from the Main Belt. The scavengers don’t care who goes into space; they’ve got no protection against radiation anyhow. Maybe they got very lucky on salvage.” And yet he knew that MacWong was right; that the woman and her accent were too alien.

MacWong looked at him. “Nobody gets that lucky. What’s wrong, Wadie, the miracle too much for you? This isn’t some mediaman’s fantasy, believe me. That’s a ship from Outside, the first contact we’ve had with the rest of humanity in over three gigasecs. And the course they set away from the Rings could be taking them to the old capital, Lansing. If that’s right, there can only be one reason why that ship is here: they don’t know about the Civil War. They’ve come to Heaven lookin’ for golden streets, and when they learn there aren’t any left we’ll never see ’em again. We can’t let that happen…”

“What good would one ship do us now?” He stared at the blank wall screen, against his will felt another question stubbornly taking form.

“That ship could do us all the good in the universe.” MacWong picked up his platinum cat “That ship is treasure, that ship is power… that ship could save us.”

Wadie nodded, admitting to himself that the ship’s immense fusion reactor alone could give the Demarchy the start to rebuild capital industry. And God only knew what other technology—functioning technology—they might have on board. Just the possession of a ship like that would change the Demarchy’s snow dealings with the Rings forever. They could even bypass Discus and the Ringers, set up distilleries of their own out on Sevin’s moons…

For as long as he could remember he had lived with signs of a society gradually coming apart at the seams, alone in the wasteland that civil war had made of Heaven Belt. Because of its peripheral location, the Demarchy had survived the Civil War relatively intact. But the Main Belt had been destroyed, and now the Demarchy’s only outside trade contact was with the Grand Harmony of the Discan Rings, and the Ringers were barely surviving. The Demarchy was slipping down with it, but because it had so much further to go, he had discovered that no one else seemed to realize the truth. They were blinded by the fierce, traditional self-interest that was the Demarchy’s strength—and perhaps, now, its fatal weakness.

He had become a negotiator, hoping to bind up his people’s self-inflicted wounds. He had believed that somehow the unifying element, the common bond of need that joined every human being, could be used as a force against disintegration and decay; that the Demarchy would continue, that they would find an answer. And with this ship… His imagination leaped, fell back as the question struck him down: Who would control a ship like that… and who could control the ones who did control it? “But as you said, that ship will go back home, once they see what’s left of Lansing.”

“Maybe.” MacWong nicked dust off of his cuff. “But Osuna thinks they might need to refuel first. It’s a long way home to anywhere from here. They’re not likely to go back to the Rings to get fuel, under the circumstances. Which means they might come to us; if they need processed hydrogen, there’s no place else to go. So I’m sendin’ out everyone I can spare. I want you at Mecca. The distilleries will make it a prime target, and you’re more experienced at dealing with— ‘aliens’—than anybody on the staff.”

Wadie accepted the tacit compliment, the tacit distaste, remembered fifty million seconds spent in the Grand Harmony of the Discan Rings, and things it had shown him that he had never expected to see. He stood up, reaching for his hat “What if they’re not in the mood for negotiation?”

“I don’t expect they will be. But that doesn’t matter; you’re paid to put them in the mood. Promise them anythin’, but keep them here, stall that ship, until we can take control of it.”

Wadie adjusted his beret, looked back from the mirroring wall. “What do you mean by ‘we,’ Lije? Just who is goin’ to control that ship? It won’t be the government, the people will see to that. And the first kid on the rock to own one—”

Mac Wong was not amused. “I sometimes wonder if you didn’t spend too much time with the Ringers, Abdhiamal. Dammit, Wadie, I’m not still questioning your loyalty, after two hundred megasecs. But there are still some who do; who think maybe you’d really like to see a centralized government here.” He stopped. “There’ll be a general meeting to settle the issue once we have the ship.” He leaned forward across the gargoyled desk. “The Demarchy has to have that ship, and no one but the Demarchy.”

“You’re the boss.” Wadie bowed.

“No.” MacWong straightened. “The Demarchy is the boss. We give the people what they think they want. Nothing else means anything. Forget that, and we’re out of a job—or worse. If I was you, I wouldn’t ever forget it.”

And knowing that MacWong never did, Wadie left the office.