The Spheres of Heaven

12: RECRUITING TULLY O’TOOLE

She knew something she was not willing to admit. Chan, walking the darkened tunnels beneath Mount Ararat at Deb’s side, kept glancing at her profile. A mirthless half-smile was on her lips. He could not see her eyes, hidden within the depths of the black hood, but whenever she turned her head his way her forehead was furrowed and her eyebrows lowered to a frown.

He wondered what surprises lay within the cloak. It was sure to be packed with hidden pockets and secret sewn-in compartments. Chan had been around Weapons-master Deb Bisson long enough to be ready for anything that popped out from the cloak’s inner recesses. He had seen tiny mutated snakes, smaller than a finger, spring from a cloak pocket on command and kill with a single drop of neurotoxic venom delivered from minute fangs. He had watched a thief, tracked by blue-green borer beetles released from a vial in the cloak and tuned to pheromones at the crime scene, run screaming to Deb and beg for mercy after the patient little insects found him, entered his body cavities as he slept, and slowly began to eat him away from inside. He had seen a monofilament thread, woven into the cloak’s hem, become in Deb’s hands first a defensive weapon that cut a swinging club in two, and then in the same continuing movement an edge so keen that the attacker was decapitated while he still believed that he was bludgeoning his helpless victim.

Deb had promised a surprise, but it was nothing in the cloak. Something new and extraordinary — and unpleasant — would be needed to astonish Chan. Deb knew that. No mere method of attack or defense would be enough. Even twenty years ago, responding to a joking challenge, she had listed eighty-two different poisons that resided within her cloak and could leave a victim dead, apparently of natural causes.

The tunnels under Mount Ararat were narrower as they went north. At first, Chan and Deb were able to walk side by side. Then it was one at a time, with Deb in front. Ten minutes later, the hood of her cloak brushed the ceiling and Chan had to crouch in order to avoid banging his head on the unfinished rock of the tunnel roof.

“Are you sure Tully lives out here?” he said, as the tunnel dwindled another five centimeters in height and width.

She turned, so that for the first time since they started out her angry brown eyes stared directly into his. “You think maybe you know better?” She moved back against the wall so that he could squeeze past her, and waved a hand along the tunnel. “Go ahead. Be my guest.”

“No, that’s all right.” Chan wished that he had kept his mouth shut. “I just didn’t expect Tully to be in a place like this. The greatest linguist I ever met—”

“The greatest anybody ever met. But what need has there been for linguists since the starways closed? The translating machines are enough for talk between humans.”

“Even so, Tully could have found a better place to live. Why would he choose to be out here?”

“Thirty seconds more, and you’ll find out. Just around the next corner.”

The tunnel was no wider than Chan’s shoulders, and he had to bend far forward or go down on his hands and knees. The light came from wan yellow tubes, nailed one every twenty meters or so on the rough-cut walls or ceiling. He swore as the tunnel made a sharp turn and he failed to stoop quite low enough. His head banged on one of the lights.

“Welcome to Europa, low-rent district,” Deb’s voice said from around the turn. “Are we having fun yet?”

“This is no worse than parts of the Gallimaufries. The difference is, the Gallimaufries used to be the worst place in the solar system. Earth set the standard for lousy living. But since the quarantine, everywhere is getting more and more like the worst parts of Earth.”

There was a silence from ahead, then Deb’s cold voice. “You don’t stop pushing, do you? I know we need the quarantine to end. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have walked a single step with you. So get off my back, and be ready to say hello to Tully O’Toole.”

Chan squeezed his way along to where Deb was standing in front of a door about four feet high. In the gloom beyond it, Chan saw a steep descending stairway.

“Down there.” Deb pointed. “You, not me.”

Chan hesitated. He had the feeling that something awful was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. “Are you sure Tully will be there?”

“If he’s not, I don’t know where he is.”

The stairs were so steep, the only safe way to go down was to turn and hold the steps above as though descending a ladder. Chan began to go down, counting as he went. By the eighth step, a curious smell hit his nostrils. Suddenly he knew the nature of Deb’s unpleasant surprise. The aroma was quite unmistakable and dreadfully familiar. He paused, wanting to climb back up and run far away.

He couldn’t do that. For Tully O’Toole’s sake, for old times sake, for Chan’s own sake, he had to learn how bad it was. He continued down. As he reached the bottom he took a deep breath and turned the corner leading into a more brightly lit room.

They were on the floor, about forty of them lying on thin mattresses. Each facial expression was different, from joyful bliss to dark, haunted agony. Their dress ranged from expensive and new to old, worn-out rags. A few were fat, most were skeletally thin. All had in common a dead gray tone to the skin and lines of tiny purple-black dots on bare arms and legs: the stigmata of Paradox, the milky alkaloid to which everyone in the room was a slave.

Chan was appalled, but he had seen too many Paradox dens to be shocked by the condition of the occupants. He scanned the rows of mattresses, seeking a familiar face. He had almost given up, ready to tell Deb Bisson back at the top of the stairs that they had made a wasted trip, when a tattered wreck right at his feet raised a hand and croaked, “Mercy me, what do I see? Do my eyes scan Chan the man?”

It was the singsong delivery of the words more than the voice. Chan stepped forward and sank to his knees. “Tully? Tully the Rhymer?”

“Less of that than I was. But yes, you have it right. The man you see, that is he.”

Chan reached out, gripped Tully O’Toole’s outstretched hand, and gently lifted until the other man was sitting upright on the mattress. The hand that gripped Chan’s was all bone, and the fingers felt fleshless. “How are you, Tully?”

It was an inane question, given O’Toole’s condition, but Tully laughed. “Oh, never too bad and never too sad. I’m not the man I once was, Chan, but who of us is? Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down. Nights get worse as they go on, the darkest hour before the dawn. We’re about halfway.”

At least Tully knew that it was night. Third-stage Paradox addiction robbed its victims of all sense of time and place. From the look of him, Tully O’Toole was coming off the high point for the night and heading downhill. By morning he would be running a fever and shivering. Before that he had better be safe in bed.

“Tully, I have something important to tell you. But you’ll have to wait another minute or two before I can say it. Will you wait? I’ll be right back.”

“Where would I be going? Take your time. I’ll sit tight, if it takes all night.”

“It won’t. Three minutes, no more.”

Chan hurried back up the steep stairs. Deb stood at the top, still and silent as a statue in her cowled cloak. She said, “Well, now you’ve seen for yourself. Ready to give up and leave me alone?”

“Deb, Tully can’t stay here like this. We have to get him away.”

“Where were you, all these past years? Do you think I haven’t tried? I love Tully. In the old days he was close to me as a brother. I’ve been here a dozen times, and I’ve begged and pleaded with him to take treatment. And got nowhere. He won’t listen. He can’t listen.”

“You don’t have to tell me that Paradox is hard to break. But there are ways to get through. I’m going back to talk to him.”

“Oh, sure. You think you’ll succeed where I failed.”

“I don’t think that. But I know how to try, better than most. Look, Deb, I want to ask a favor.”

“Whatever it is, no. I don’t owe you a favor — any favor.”

“It’s not a favor for me. It’s for Tully. If I can persuade him to leave this place, I have to head out at once to look for Chrissie and the Tarbush in the Oort Cloud. I’ll be gone only a few days, but Tully can’t be left on his own. Will you look after him until I come back?”

“I’d do anything to help Tully. But you don’t know what you’re asking. He’d be with me for a few hours, then he’d want the drug. Unless I chained him down I couldn’t stop him from getting it — and I’m not so sure that would work, either. He’d find a way.”

“He would if he was here on Mount Ararat. But if we left Europa — if you took him to Ceres—”

“I see. I take him to Ceres, so you get me to Ceres.” She flung the hood back from her head, and her eyes were blazing. “You bastard. You think you’re being so sneaky, but I read you easy. All you care about is getting a team together for your damned assignment.”

“That’s not true, Deb. I care about Tully. And don’t pretend you don’t care about the stars. You might fool yourself, but you don’t fool me. I’m going back to talk to Tully now. If I can get him to come with me and you’re still here when we come back, fine. I’ll ask you again. And if you won’t give it, I’ll find some other way to help him.”

Chan turned and stumbled back down the stairs without looking at Deb or waiting to hear her reply. In the smoky room at the bottom, Tully O’Toole lay like a dead man on his mattress.

“Tully?” Chan spoke softly. “I’m back. Can we talk now?”

“Sure, sure.” The answer was a weak whisper.

“Do you think you’ll be able to understand me?”

“Sure I can, Chan the man. This time of night I’m sharp and bright.” Tully struggled to sit up, and Chan bent and placed his arm around the other man’s back. As he lifted he could feel the separate vertebrae in the spine.

“I’ll get right to the point. Tully, we have a chance to lift the quarantine. Did you hear me? We can lift the quarantine. We can go to the stars . And I don’t just mean that humans can do it. We can do it, you and me and the old team.”

“Wha-what?” Tully’s pale blue eyes clouded and his thin features took on a puzzled frown. “I think maybe I’m not hearing right.”

“You’re hearing right. You’re not imagining. I know, it sounds too good to be true. But listen.”

Chan spoke slowly and carefully, giving details of his meeting with the Stellar Group, watching Tully’s face. Occasionally the thin man frowned or seemed to drift away, but after a few moments he would nod for Chan to go on. The final proof that he was following everything came when Chan said, “We need you, Tully. None of the translation machines can talk to aliens, they’re programmed for human languages. But you can do it.”

“I can’t do anything.”

“You’ll learn. It takes a genuine madman like Tully the Rhymer to talk to aliens. The rest of us wouldn’t know where to start, but we’ll be there to back you up. Me and Tarbush, and Deb and Chrissie, and Dapper Dan and the Bun. Together again.”

“Together again. The old team, it’s like a dream.” Tully’s blue eyes filled with tears. “Oh, God, Chan. If I could I would. But I’m no use any more. I can’t go.”

“You can go, Tully. But first you have to break the Paradox habit.”

“Do you think I don’t know that? I can’t do it. I’ve tried and tried. I close the door and fix the locks, and even throw the key away. But still I get out every day — and drink the milk of Paradox.”

He was bent over, weeping hopelessly. Chan patted the thin shoulder. “It will be different this time, Tully. You won’t be alone. You’ll have me to help you, and Deb and Danny Casement. And in a few more days, as soon as I can reach them, Chrissie and the Tarbush will be along, too.”

“Dapper Dan. Oh, how I’d love to see him again.” Tully was laughing and crying at the same time. “Him and his lady friends. Do you remember how he used to sell them pieces of the Yang diamond?”

“Tully, he’s still at it. When you see him, he’ll tell you about it. Come on now.” Chan had his arm around O’Toole, lifting him. “We have to do this in stages. First, we go to Deb Bisson’s place. Then you two go on to Ceres.”

“What about you?” Tully stood up, swaying for balance. “Where will you be?”

“I told you, I have to find Tarbush and Chrissie Winger. Then we’ll have the old team together, and be all set to go. We’ll be on our way to the stars, Tully. Come on. Deb Bisson’s waiting for us.”

He led the way to the steep stair and the two of them slowly climbed together, Chan providing extra lift when it was needed. He was afraid that Deb had left, until she stepped forward out of the shadows.

Tully O’Toole stumbled over to her and draped his tall, gaunt form around her.

“Deb, I don’t know how to thank you and Chan. When I came here tonight I felt sure I was done, a little while longer and I would be gone. But now there’s hope. We’ll get away from here, and head for the stars. We said we would, we said we could — and now we’ll do it.”

Deb patted him on the shoulder. “We will, Tully. We will. We have to go to your place first, to get your things, before we go to mine. You lead the way.”

As Tully started back along the corridor, feeling his way along the dark walls, she held Chan back for a moment and whispered, “While you’re gloating, just remember one thing. I’m not going to Ceres or anywhere else for you. I’m doing it for him .”

“I know that.” Chan tried to pull free. “You hate my guts. You don’t need to tell me again. As soon as I can make arrangements for you and Tully to go to Ceres, I’ll leave you and head for the Oort Cloud. I have to find Chrissie and the Tarbush.”

Deb still held him by the arm. “Good luck, then — for Tully’s sake. What do you think your chances are?”

“With you?” Chan pulled himself away. “Zero. With Chrissie and the Tarbush, excellent. I’ll find them, and I’ll bring them to Ceres.”

“Cocksure as ever.”

“It’s all relative, Deb. Compared with the past few hours, anything in the Oort Cloud has to be easy.”