Colony, page 15
It had been simple to break into the computerized inventory systems that handled all the colony’s goods and “liberate” the items he needed. David had learned to jiggle the computer systems when he had been first old enough to send Christmas presents. All his young friends had received extravagant gifts: whole tape libraries, a gossamer-winged soarplane, new clothes from Earth—all from a ten-year-old with no credit rating.
His only mistake had been to send Dr. Cobb a professional-sized astronomical telescope. Cobb blew the whistle on the young Santa Claus and David’s delighted friends had to return their “gifts.”
Where are those pals now? David asked himself as he studied the specifications of the fuel cells he had just carried into the basement storeroom. One by one his friends had drifted out of his life. He still saw them, some of them often. But they were leading their own lives now, and the old days of childhood and teenaged camaraderie were gone. They were out dating and getting married while I was being tested by the biomedics. David shook his head. His only real friend, these days, was the computer. Even Dr. Cobb had turned against him.
Evelyn was right, he thought. I am alone up here.
He put the specification sheet down and surveyed the booty he had laid out on the storeroom floor: the open cargo pod, a two-meter-long gray plastic cylinder lined with a thin layer of foam insulation; the spacesuit, with its bulbous, clear plastic helmet; the bulky green oxygen tanks; and the squat, square, featureless, white fuel cells.
Ten kilos of junk to fit into a five-kilo box. It was too much. He couldn’t fit it all into the cargo pod—not if he wanted to put himself into it, too.
He spent most of the night going over his calculations: oxygen consumed per hour, heat leakage through the pod’s insulation, electric power required for heating the suit and keeping the air pumps working.
The numbers swam up at him through a haze of exhaustion. David yawned and squinted at the computer’s screen, trying to see different numbers, better ones. But the little red-glowing digits wouldn’t change.
It won't fit.
Tiredly, he slumped back onto the plastic chair set against the storage shelves and stared at the uncompromising numbers. Go home and go to sleep, he told himself. You’re not going to change things by staying up all night and...
Sleep.
He remembered one of the tests the biomedics had put him through as a teenager—something about controlling his autonomic nervous system and decreasing his base metabolic rate. What had those doctors been joking about? Hindus... yogis, David recalled. Transcendental meditation, programmed into a computer!
He remembered it clearly now, suddenly wide awake. They had plugged him into a sort of EEG machine, but instead of recording the electrical signals of his brain’s activity, this machine superimposed the wave-state of a brain in deep, deep sleep. A trance. David remembered going out like a light almost as soon as they had put the electrodes onto his head. Later they had told him that he had slept for six hours, hardly breathing, and his heartbeat had slowed to less than thirty per minute.
Packing all his scattered equipment into the proper boxes, David put the gear onto shelves in the rear of the storeroom. He dragged the cargo pod over to the rear shelves and left it lying there on the floor. No one had bothered his stuff in several nights; no one had questioned it being there. Storerooms always accumulated junk that no one paid attention to.
David rode his electrobike back to his home, the motor purring at full throttle all the way through the dark, winding trails.
Once home, he pored through the computer files for hours until he tracked down the TM test program that the biomedics had used on him years earlier. It was all there: the technique, the computer program, the test results. If I can ride to the Moon in that kind of a TM trance, I wouldn’t need as much oxygen or heat. I could fit everything I need into the cargo pod.
Glancing up from his desk, David saw that daylight had broken. He went to his bed, clicked on his implanted communicator, and plugged into the trance-inducing program. It was still set for a six-hour duration.
For a moment he wondered if his implant would work as well as the electrodes they had stuck to his scalp.
But an instant later he was deeply asleep, barely breathing, as still as death.
~~~
Mom and Dad drove me to Browerville and we said our good-byes right there in front of Sanderson's Hardware Store while the bus driver waited for me to get aboard. Mom was real good, no tears or anything. That made me feel worse than if she'd blubbered all over me.
I'm dictating this in the airport here at Twin Cities. It's an old airport; they don't let anything big fly out of here because of all the houses and factories crowding in all around it My plane's gonna be an hour or more late because of the goddamned rain.
But my next stop is sunny Texas!
—The journal of William Palmquist
~~~
FOURTEEN
Jamil al-Hashimi detested the scenes he would have to face.
But as he paced the office on the first floor of his Baghdad home, he knew that there was no way to avoid the confrontations.
First he would have to get the architect out of his house. That should be easy. But then he would have to deal with Bahjat, and that would be painful, at the very least.
He puffed intently on a cigarette set into a long, slim ivory holder. Smoking was a vice that he indulged in only in private, and even then only when he was very tense. I’m doing it more and more often, he realized. As the game becomes more dangerous and reaches its critical stages, I lapse back into childish weakness.
Angrily, he pulled the half-finished cigarette from its holder and stubbed it out in the silver-inlaid ashtray on his desk. There were four other cigarette butts already in it.
Fool! al-Hashimi railed at himself. Weakling.
The phone rang. He reached across the desk and flipped the VOICE ONLY switch.
“Sir, Mr. McCormick is here.”
“One moment,” al-Hashimi said.
He went to the wall and turned the air blower up to maximum. As it hummingly sucked up the smoke hanging in the air, he took a can of air freshener from the cabinet nearby and sprayed a sweet rose scent through the room. Then he turned the air fans down to normal and returned to his desk.
“Send him in,” al-Hashimi said into the phone’s grille.
As the sheikh sat himself in the tall, plushly tooled chair behind his massive desk, Dennis McCormick came into the office and closed the heavy wooden door behind him. His red-bearded face had a strange expression on it. He sniffed and frowned at the cloying rose scent.
A pistol lay in the top drawer of al-Hashimi’s desk. Another rested in a hidden compartment built into the right arm of his chair. The sheikh restrained his impulse to take one of them and shoot the defiler on the spot.
“You asked to see me?” McCormick said, walking casually to the chair set before the desk. His nose twitched again.
I commanded your presence here, al-Hashimi thought. But he kept his face impassive and gestured to the chair before the infidel could sit in it uninvited.
McCormick looked completely healed of his wound. His face had a healthy glow to it. His red hair curled boyishly over his forehead and covered his chin with a neat little beard. He seemed relaxed and comfortable.
“You have enjoyed your stay in my house?” al-Hashimi asked, his voice flat and calm.
“Your hospitality has been more than generous.”
“Your wound has healed.”
“Not completely,” he answered, “but almost so.”
“And your work on the palace? It goes well?”
Dennis waggled one hand, almost like an Arab. “It’s a bit sticky, directing the crew by picturephone. But they’ve finished both towers and we’re laying the foundation for the central building now.”
“Very good,” said the sheikh. “I am pleased.”
McCormick smiled at him.
“You have met my daughter, haven’t you?”
The smile faded. “Yes,” he admitted. “I have.”
Al-Hashimi very carefully placed both his hands palms down on the desktop. “Mr. McCormick, hospitality imposes certain duties and obligations on a host. But there are also duties and obligations that the guest must observe.”
The architect looked troubled. “I haven’t been as good a guest as you have been a host.”
“I instructed my daughter to stay away from you. She disobeyed me. But you are a man, and you knew my wishes. The responsibility was yours.”
“I love your daughter, sir.”
Al-Hashimi said nothing.
“And she loves me.”
“She is a child, and a female child. She has no right to disregard my commands.”
“I want to marry her,” McCormick went on. “I’ve wanted to speak to you about it, but Bahjat said to wait.”
The dog is actually smiling about it!
“So I’m glad that you’ve brought it out into the open. Believe me, I don’t like sneaking around behind your back.”
“Enough!” Al-Hashimi slammed his hands against the desktop.
McCormick jumped as if it was he who had been slapped.
“There is no possibility under the Sun and Moon and stars that this illicit filth of yours can be justified by marriage. None! My daughter is the descendant of sheikhs, of warriors, and caliphs who trace their lineage back to the Son of the Prophet and even beyond that! She will not share her blood with an unknown, non-believing foreigner who cannot even control his passions well enough to observe the obligations of a guest.”
“But we love each other,” McCormick insisted.
“Nonsense.”
“There’s no way that you can stop us.”
“You will leave this house. She will be sent to Island One, where she should have gone weeks ago.”
“We can still meet—no matter where you send her, anywhere on Earth or beyond it. If she goes there, I’ll go, too.”
Al-Hashimi held the reply on his tongue in check.
Comprehension dawned on the red-bearded one. “Ah, I see. Once I’m out of your house I won’t live long enough to go to her.”
The sheikh said, “I am not threatening you.”
“But you kept me here for my safety. You told me that the thugs who tried to kill me would try again if I left your protection.”
“I have found those who were responsible. I have dealt with them. You need not fear for your safety any longer.”
“Needn’t I?”
“I am not an assassin,” al-Hashimi snapped. “If I wanted to kill you, I would do it here, now, myself.” It is no sin to lie to an infidel who has defiled your daughter.
McCormick rose slowly from his chair. “I’ll take you at your word, then. But you must take me at mine. I love your daughter and I want to marry her. No matter where you send her, I’ll go after her.”
“I would advise against such foolishness,” al-Hashimi said quietly, like a cobra rustling inside its reed basket.
“There’s nothing you can do to stop me, short of killing me.”
Al-Hashimi made himself smile. “You are a romantic fool, Architect. I can make you penniless with a single phone call. I can have you arrested and thrown into jail for months. You would be surprised at the amount of evidence our police can find when they want to: narcotics, counterfeit money, anti-government propaganda, illegal weapons.... You could stay in jail for years.”
“It won’t work,” McCormick said with a shake of his head. He turned and went to the door.
The sheikh watched him go and noted that he closed the door very carefully, without slamming it. He may be a romantic, but he knows how to control his temper.
It was after the evening meal that Bahjat stormed into his office.
Al-Hashimi looked up from the viewscreen of his computer terminal. With the touch of a finger he blanked the screen: the comparison of the cost of causing the ruinous rains in North America against the profits to be forthcoming from the Minnesota rectenna farm winked off.
For the first time in years, he looked at his daughter with fresh eyes. Yes, she is a woman now, a very beautiful woman. And a Very angry one.
Bahjat’s dark eyes were fiery, and her tiny frame radiated furious energy.
“You’ve sent him away!”
“Of course.”
“To be murdered!”
“He is perfectly safe. I have dealt with the would-be assassins.”
“ You have?”
“Yes.”
For an instant she seemed confused, standing there before his desk. How many times she had interrupted his work and climbed up into his lap! But not for years now. Al-Hashimi realized that for the past several years their meetings had grown rarer, and when they did speak to each other, it was usually to argue about her latest escapades. Sending her to Western schools was a mistake. I should have listened to her mother and sent her to the university here, where women are properly taught.
“Father, don’t send him away. I...”
“You love him. I know. And he loves you and wishes to marry you.”
“He told you that?” Her face lit up.
“Yes. And I told him that he was a fool. You are going to Island One, and I have already seen to it that he will not be permitted to follow you.”
“You can’t!”
“I already have.”
“I won’t go, Father. I want to be with him.”
Al-Hashimi shook his head. “That cannot be. He is an ungrateful goat. I know that you have made love with him.”
She took the accusation without flinching. “You’ve been spying on me.”
“I have tried to protect you.”
“From love?”
“From lusting monkeys who would despoil you.”
“You’re too late for that.”
“I know.”
“You were too late a year ago,” Bahjat said, her face a coppery mask of cold fury.
Al-Hashimi stared back at her. “A year ago?” he repeated dully.
“In Paris,” Bahjat said, twisting the knife, “the City of Romance.”
“Impossible! Irene was with you every moment.”
“Not every moment.”
The wicked smile on his daughter’s face convinced al-Hashimi that she was telling the truth. It was the same smile he himself wore when he had hit an enemy in a particularly painful spot.
“And since then?”
Bahjat shrugged.
So the Architect was not her first, nor her second, most likely. Al-Hashimi sank back in his desk chair and let his hands drop into his lap. Irene was probably having her own romance when she should have been guarding my daughter. We shall see how much she enjoys being guarded by some of the hungry tribesmen up in the hills. That should make her suitably penitent. If she lives through it.
Bahjat broke his silent planning. “Don’t be angry with him, please, Father. It wasn’t his fault. I bribed the servants to let me be with him.”
“Is there no one in my own household I can trust? Not even my own daughter?”
“I have always been an obedient daughter, except...”
“You have been a slut!” al-Hashimi exploded, all the anger in him boiling over. “A whore parading herself from bed to bed, man to man, behind my back! You don’t deserve the name you bear! You have betrayed me and dragged our name into the filth of the gutter!”
“Our proud name!” she spat back, never taking a backward step. “We live in splendor while the people go hungry. You serve the World Government that keeps our own people from being free. You direct a mighty corporation that sells energy to the rich and lets the poor die in the streets. Money is more important to you than honor, and power is more important than money!”
“We are a family of sheikhs!” al-Hashimi raged. “It is our duty to rule others!”
“Sheikhs?” Bahjat laughed. “City sheikhs. Money sheikhs. The only time you travel the Bedouin’s trail is when you are comfortably ensconced in your travel van. A sheikh? A corporation sheikh? A corporation sheikh in what you are.”
“I am a sheikh who shares control of the space colony at Island One, and that is where you are going. Tomorrow. With no further delays. Your latest lover, he of the red beard, will not be able to follow you there, I promise.”
Bahjat looked at him, a level gaze that locked onto his eyes and penetrated to his heart.
“If I go to Island One,” she asked, “will you promise that he won’t be harmed?”
“A man must bargain with his own daughter?”
“I will do as you wish if you promise that you will not hurt him.”
Al-Hashimi hesitated. Hunching forward in his chair, he reached for the ivory cigarette holder, then put it down again. “It was the Peoples’ Revolutionary Underground that tried to kill him. I am not responsible for their actions.”
“I can deal with the PRU,” Bahjat said evenly.
He looked up at her. “You?”
“Of course.”
“What do you mean?”
She seemed to stand taller, straighten “You have heard of Scheherazade? I am she.”
“You... are Scheherazade!” Al-Hashimi lifted his head to the heavens. “No... no, it cannot be! Not my own daughter!”
She came around the desk and knelt at his feet. “It is true, Father. But... if you spare the Architect, Scheherazade will disappear. I will become your obedient daughter once again.”
Looking down at her, his innards on fire, al-Hashimi gasped, “But you... with those PRU terrorists... not just one of them, but a leader! How could you? Why?”
Bahjat smiled sadly. “Perhaps I was angry with you for ignoring me and sending me away to school.”
“Oh, no... no.” He cradled her elfin face in his hands. “But you could have been killed. Half the police in Europe and the Middle East are trying to find you. The World Army...”
“I am safe now,” she said, resting her head on his lap. “Scheherazade no longer exists. She has given her life for the life of the Architect.”
