Sailing Bright Eternity Read online

  Time to trot out the apology again. “Son, I’m sorry I got us into this—”

  “Look, I heard a rumor,” Ito said evenly.

  Nigel shook his head, bone-weary. He was feeling sour, defeated. “I’m not in the mood for rumors.”

  Matters had not worked out well between Ito and Nigel for quite a while now. His brilliantly mangled handling of the Chairwoman had not improved the festering tension—inevitable, he supposed—between him and his first son, now coming to manhood.

  Ito had bridled at the discipline imposed by the Chairwoman’s silent, impassive police. Rough handling. Abrupt dawn awakenings. Long days of scut work. Adequate meals that had to be eaten in a rush. Little privacy in the muggy, close apartment given them, sandwiched into a brawling tenement. No time off the grinding labor. No chance to get out of the curfew hours, the iron-hard lockup, the rigid lights-out. No access to any media, no contact with ordinary people other than to pick up their trash.

  Angelina and Benjamin had borne up well. Nigel and Nikka could take punishment, too, but their oldest son had snapped back at their police “escorts.” He had refused to clean up messes when toilet plumbing broke, swore at the police orders. So the placid police had most politely smacked him around, prodded him with neuro-stims, given him a “seize-up,” which locked his muscles in vibrating bands of rigid tension—all while faintly amused. It had not improved Ito’s mood.

  Not a future utopia, no.

  But the future, certainly. The city they glimpsed from the back alleys where they worked was strange and fabulous. As nearly as they could tell, the complex was stratified, with an upper crust that reveled in techno-wonders, a vast majority that lived ample lives, and a lower caste that did the grunt work. Not exactly a fresh idea.

  There were technologies Nikka and Nigel were sure had not existed anywhere in the esty in their era. The Grey Mech had slammed them into a future far from their comforts.

  Ito persisted. “This rumor, it said maybe the Chairwoman will listen to us again.”

  Nigel studied his son’s face, trying to think clearly despite the spreading ache in his lower back from stooping, and the silent blanket of fatigue that had spread over him. Still an hour left in this work day. “That’s not a rumor. Who told you?”

  Ito looked edgy as he swept back a greasy tangle of hair. “Tonogan. She wants to see you.”

  “You’ve been negotiating with her?”

  “Not really.”

  “Which means?”

  “Well, maybe some.”

  “The family has to speak with one voice, as you full well know.”

  Ito chewed his lip. “Well, you aren’t doing anything.”

  “I’m waiting her out.”

  “Her waiting’s easier than ours.”

  “She wants our property. It’s probably worth a lot more than you or I think.”

  Ito flared, mouth twisting. “How can we know what to think? We’re stuck down in basements and alleys all day, busting our humps, getting flat nothing—”

  Nigel sat on a trash can and kicked at a brown flask, still corked but empty. He had never thought of the far future as a place of ordinary junk and grit, much of which a medieval peasant would have instantly recognized.

  “Right,” he conceded, “it’s not playing out well. That Chairwoman—what a bland name for a tyrant!—seems bound by what passes for law here. She can’t simply take what she wants. There are procedures.”

  “I can’t see where we have any rights at all.”

  “This place seems to work through intimidation, rather than rights.”

  Ito chuckled dryly. “With a frosting of polite brutality, I bet.”

  Nigel nodded. The family was getting depressed and, quite so, the Chairwoman could exert arcane legalisms to keep them like this indefinitely.

  “Dad, you’re in over your head here. That fall you took last week was nasty and I can see you’re still limping—”

  “Scarcely felt it.”

  The slow, steady ache in his left leg never left him. Somehow he had not thought that the far future would still have pain in it, either. I saw too much rosy-visioned Walt Disney, he thought tartly. Would anybody in this whole cupped city recognize that ancient name? Of course not.

  “So I just took it on myself to talk a li’l to Tonogan—”

  “Without telling anyone. Breaching the family’s—”

  “You weren’t doing a goddamn thing to—”

  “That’s enough.”

  Tonogan had come into the alley without their noticing. She was sleekly dressed in gray-black, a thin club like a riding crop tapping on her thigh. Nigel gestured to Ito to be cautious.

  She said, “I gather from your son that you might be in a mood to renegotiate.”

  “You’re just in time,” Nigel said, sitting up straight. “I was about to leave for my exercise at the gymnasium.”

  “Very funny. Remember, I have your medical indices.”

  “Not much privacy in this place, is there?” Nigel inquired lightly of his son.

  She ignored this, adding, “Including fatigue factors.”

  “Quite. We really must thank you for a bracing round of workouts. We’re getting into terrific condition.”

  “You would be funny if your situation beed not so pathetic.”

  “Can’t say the same for you, alas.”

  Tonogan sat irritably on another trash can and said she would like to explain “certain things.” Nigel gave Ito a warning glance: be cautious.

  As she talked he became reasonably sure that they were setting him up. Not very subtly, either. Greed dulled even keen minds.

  He stalled, amused by her impatience. He had known an approach would come but had not suspected Ito as the channel. Still, Nikka had accurately predicted Tonogan’s pattern to him, fully a week before. Despite his worn face she would try a bit of coquetry first, perhaps offer him a drink. And here it came, from a thermos, cutting and heady. Then very earnestly, with much show of concern, she would warn him.

  “I know not if I can protect you from the Chairwoman.”

  “Who could?”

  “Nobody ever insulted her that way. Much less hitted her and lived.”

  “Surely she’s been spanked, at least by her mother. Probably by you, eh?” A slight loft of eyebrow; a little TwenCen kink, here; see if it translates across the cultural abyss.

  “Be serious!” A pretty scowl, not really convincing. “She could have killed you right there.”

  “She could have tried.”

  “She be a very dangerous woman. I can help you with her, though. I telled her later that you didn’t really mean it.”

  “But I did.”

  “You know not what you be doing!”

  “Tell her I want an apology.”

  “You be stranger, but that no excuse.” Her eyes jerked in a frenzy of expressiveness. Overacting, Nigel thought. A rather bad case. He yawned.

  “Listen, I talked to her, calmed her down. She sayed that she would accept some of your goods in trade for your life.”

  “Goods?”

  An elaborate shrug. “Some of your gadgets might be worth, well, a little.”

  “Ummm. That’s her final offer?”

  “Absolutely. You have a standard day to agree. Miss that and she shows no mercy.”

  “I see. Tell her I make the same offer.”

  “What?” Disbelief—genuine this time.

  “Give me some trinket and I won’t kill her.”

  “You be mad.”

  “That will come out even. I don’t kill her, she doesn’t kill me. We’ll call the trinkets even, too.”

  “Insults mean something here. I know not what made you float that ridiculous story about Earth, but wherever you be from, you cannot talk this way. And to hit the Chairwoman!”

  Tonogan was working herself into a lather and seemed even to believe what she was saying. Astonishing talk poured from her. Nigel never took quite enough account of the fact that people
believe in the most ridiculous things, simply because others did, too. Such as the absolute authority of a single fat woman in a baggy robe.

  Ito injected, “Dad, stop kidding around. This Chairwoman is the real authority here, never mind how she looks.”

  Nigel looked at his son and said mildly, “It’s what she says that makes me doubt her mental balance. Whatever political system they’ve got here, it’s awry.”

  Tonogan’s perfect yellow teeth massaged her lower lip and Nigel saw he had guessed right; even the Chairwoman’s minions thought she was askew. The moment passed and Tonogan said precisely, “I should not speak of such things, I suppose, but . . . she will torture you before you die, do you not realize that?”

  “Um.” He drew a long face. So things were even worse than he thought. He shook his head. Perhaps Ito’s caution had been good advice. Well, too late now.

  Tonogan added, “And all your friends.”

  “Family, actually. Go tell her.”

  “Your childs! She will—”

  “Go.” He pointed and she went.

  ELEVEN

  Sphincter Frequency

  They would come in with all sorts of high-tech stuff, of course. Unfathomable stuff. So he went low-tech.

  There were tinny, ceramic throwaway cans in hallways—people’s manners never improved—and he took a bag of them back to the family lair. With spoons stuck in them they were so dumb and so simple an alarm that they might work.

  Nikka volunteered doubtfully, “I could see about sealing the doors and windows better.”

  “Locks’re useful only against the slovenly.”

  “What if they try something when we’re working?”

  “We’re too spread out, in different labor crews.”

  “You think they’ll do something to the entire family? And here?”

  Nigel considered. “No, unless I misjudge that monstrosity of a woman. Something to humiliate me and sober the rest.”

  Nikka sat back, startled. Their tiny “dining” table was chipped and worn and her hands clasped each other with a tension her face never showed. He remembered that this sense of inner forces well marshaled was what had first drawn him to her, long ago. “They’ll beat you? In front of us?”

  As a matter of fact Nigel thought exactly that. Some methods simply could not be improved upon. This was a strange culture, true, but he was getting the feel of it. Still, to quiet her fears he said, “Too obvious.”

  “Some techtrick?”

  “Fellow on my work gang told me those white rods the police carry are acoustic projectors. The disk at the end focuses a wave at the resonant frequency of muscles.”

  Nikka shivered. She always hated the description of violence, though when necessity demanded, she could quite easily commit it. “Sounds awful.”

  “They usually tune it to the frequency of the sphincter.”

  She made a face. He laughed.

  They were tired all the time now. Not physically so much—before, they had all worked long orchard hours and danced late into the night—but from uncertainty and dejection. Their bedrooms were cramped, bare, and muggy with damp heat. The only sizable area was the living room, entered by a door off a fetid corridor. A depressing hovel.

  Probably a little call after they had fallen asleep, then. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, as Mozart, dead now over thirty thousand years, had put it. A little night music.

  Nigel did not see much of a way to get in other than the flimsy front door and the two windows on an air shaft. They were ten stories up the bare sheet metal shaft, an unlikely approach. Thugs were lazy, in his experience.

  The spoon trick would only give slight warning. What real defenses did they have? No weapons better than a kitchen knife.

  Against the protests of everyone he took to sleeping on a thin pallet beside the front door. The door swung open toward the pallet but the uneven floor matting stopped it before it could touch him.

  He did not mind sleeping that way, though he did miss Nikka’s soft embrace. The pallet was thick enough for his knobby joints and the perpetual murmur of arguments and kitchen racket from the air shaft was subdued there, away from the windows. He slept there for a week. Sleep came easier and deeper because he was getting more tired from the work and a growing hopelessness. He woke one night and thought somberly of where all this was going and then a clatter came nearby as a can and spoon made momentary music together. The door’s slight scrape had probably dragged him up from a fitful dream.

  He got up quickly. They would have infrared gear, but he was shielded by the door. He, on the other hand, had nothing and did not know where they were. He went flat against the door. No sound. They were probably hoping that nobody would rouse, so they could carry out their plan.

  They? Something told him there was only one other presence here. A slight whisk of breath from his right. That fit the humiliating beating scenario, all the worse for being imposed by a single thug. Probably the fellow would use stunners to immobilize the rest of the family.

  Where was he? In the long moment after the alarm nothing had moved. His heart thudded into its future at a startling pace while his breaths came—shallow, keep them shallow—in a measured six per minute. He strained into the blank darkness.

  Remember that you are old and a bit lacking in endurance. Quick work is the best.

  There—a sudden shadow, stepping fast. Nigel launched himself at the man’s back, hit—and slammed him forward.

  No point in trying for an injury. Arms around, quick. Don’t let him use his hands. A heavy thunk as something hit the floor. Maybe the stunner.

  Head down, butt him in the direction he had been going. Another step. Get some push in it. Another. The man’s legs were rummaging for purchase, wanting to stop. Mid-course correction here—veer left. Toward the rectangle of light. Nigel knew he could be flipped aside by some martial arts trick but if he kept the speed up—

  To the window, the soft glow showing this man to be big and grasping for something on his hip. Gun, probably.

  Very well—without pause, Nigel lifted with his arms. The man was trying to turn but momentum was inarguable. The body came off the floor and chunked into the windowsill.

  He was heavy and solid but his mass turned on the hinge of the windowsill. Nigel lost his grip on the man then and a fist hit him full in the mouth. He staggered back. Taste of blood. A second fist clipped him. The man was still on the window lip. A short ah as the flailing shadow realized that the window had been thoughtfully left open.

  Nigel lunged forward. The man was quick and hit him hard in the throat. All Nigel had was kinetics working for him. He did not let the punch stop him and crashed into the man. He clutched the windowsill to stop himself.

  The other could not. Toppling: over and out.

  Wilco, Roger, over and out. You never forgot the slang of youth. The body seemed to shrink in the gloom, diminishing as it tumbled. A thin scream came back, echoing on the sheet metal.

  A wet smack. Then nothing. In the cinder-red glow from the city curving to the horizon he saw shadows scurry away below.

  The backup team? Well, they seemed to have lost interest.

  He heard a scramble behind him as Ito slammed shut the door. Anyone who tried next would find a family armed with odd blunt instruments.

  He sighed. Satisfying. The view from here must be wonderful when there was enough light to see it. He had never been off the work gang when the timestone bristled with light, flooding the city with a torrent of heat and light. But then in reasonable light he would have never been able to play an old man’s trick. There were compensations. He felt the damp heat glow of the ruddy timestone on his cheeks and felt no remorse whatever. Maybe this was maturity. Odd, how much like callousness it would seem from the outside. Made one wonder about assessments of others.

  He thought about that, listening for noises in the inky lands below. No conclusions.

  There seldom were. Maybe that was maturity, too.

  TWELVE

/>   Grudging Respect

  On the way to their audience with the Chairwoman they glimpsed zones of the city. A temple housing a single hair from the beard of some prophet whose very name was lost. Meat grilled in the open with dust-and-flies marinade. A church made entirely of cloth. One of the side effects of religious sites, Nikka remarked, was that some were so ludicrous that the whole lot fell into disrepute by association. Tonogan, who escorted them, seemed affronted that they regarded such buildings as mere examples of eccentric architecture. Nigel remembered his mother’s similar reaction to his opinions on the ideas behind the Church of England.

  The Chairwoman was even less pleased. “I could look into the body found in your shaft, you know.”

  “Yes, I wish you would,” Nigel answered. “He screamed dreadfully. Woke up the neighbors. Anyone you knew?”

  “I would hardly—”

  “My son found some gear he apparently had.” Nigel held up a chunky instrument of enigmatic tiny black boxes.

  “I see not—”

  “Makes you wonder what it’s used for, doesn’t it?”

  In the peculiar custom of this place, their killing an agent of the Chairwoman afforded them some grudging respect, even some protection. People who mentioned the subject at all seemed to regard it as more like an audacious chess move than an act of violence, commending applause rather than revenge. The code also had ruled that the toughs sent to humiliate them were not physically augmented, as Tonogan was—a vestige of the TwenCen’s notion of a fair fight.

  Every era has its oddities, but Nikka had pointed out that a constant of urban populations was the glamorizing of marginally criminal acts. This bit of theory had made Nigel bold enough to taunt Tonogan when she had come to call. Their ploy had been naughty, but somehow admirable.

  The large purple woman settled on her divan and regarded them all disdainfully. “I will make you a reasonable offer on your property.”

  Nikka said, “We only need enough to take us away from here. We want to keep our buildings.”