The Bluenose Limit

  John Steakley

  First published in Amazing Science Fiction, March 1981.

  This copy OCR-ed and manually spellchecked from the PDF formerly available at the now-defunct www.johnsteakley.com (Internet Archive snapshot here.)

  Illustrated by Gary Freeman.

  Prof said Landry died of hate, that self-hate kind that everybody (meaning everybody human) seemed to have. He said that’s also why so many laughed.

  Me, I don’t know. It could’ve been that. But it could’ve been because that was his last good shirt he was wearing.

  He tore it where everybody was always tearing them, on the Lower Belt. He was working point on our side of the slagline, trying to poke loose a clod that had gotten stuck on the runners in between Belts. It was jumpy duty trying to reach in between there, what with the Upper going one way carrying the orecubes and the Lower dragging the slag back the other and all the time watching that the tip of your slagpike didn’t get snatched into the gears. We were always a lot more scared of the Upper, since it was head-high and all and I imagine that’s what Landry was doing — watching out for his eyes — because he had his head sucked down so tight into his shoulders that he edged tummy-first into the Lower edge. A prong snagged his shirt and tore the whole front of it loose just like that.

  No big deal, really. We had all had that happen to us working point. And it wasn’t like he was hurt himself. It was just the shirt. I figured he would just cuss and kick like everybody else. But he didn’t. He went nuts.

  First he let out this scream you could hear from one end of the Beltline to the other, over the sound of scraping pikes, over the voices and the furnace — even over the rattling Belts themselves. Then he put boot on the Lower and hopped right up on the Upper, kicking cubes off and jabbing his pike into the beltfab.

  It was funny at first. Everybody stopped scraping and followed along beside him, laughing and cheering and yelling catcalls. The Prof, working pointback like always (because of his age), was closest and when he cupped his hands and yelled: “Ahab Landry strikesl” everybody laughed all the louder. Even Landry laughed at that, but I think it was just to make it look like he was less into it than he really was.

  Because he was serious. I could tell. He was all red-faced and puffing like mad, bounding along on the rollers and stabbing away like beltfab was his worst enemy. And I’ll be damned if he didn’t punch a hole clean through — a good six-inch gash.

  Everybody cheered like mad then. We screamed and clapped and held our pikes up over our heads and I figured that was that, Landry had made his point.

  But I guess he hadn’t. Because he didn’t even slow down. He just kept on poking and prodding. Made me nervous, watching him still at it like that.

  It got to Prof too, who yelled, “Well done, Landry! A clean kill and a clear victory!” while leading another round of applause and just generally trying to wind things up.

  I don’t think Landry even heard him. He kept stabbing away and punched another hole.

  “Hey, Landry! Going for a hotfoot?” yelled Bart from beside me white motioning towards the furnace with the pike. Everybody laughed. “Hothead, more like it,” popped Avery. “Gonna roast his ass if he don’t move it.” Most everybody laughed at that too.

  It was still fun then.

  About then you could feel the heat. We had already gotten that close. Landry felt it, too. But all it did was speed him up. He punched another hole alongside the others.

  We were starting to see his plan. He was trying to rip holes in a line so as to tear the whole Belt loose and jam it up when it went over the hump and across the furnace gears. But there wasn’t near enough time — everybody could see that. Hell, I was surprised that he’d done what he had. I guess I’d just assumed that since beltfab couldn’t burn, it couldn’t be ripped. Or maybe I just figured we couldn’t touch anything built by Blues.

  Prof was getting real edgy. “C’mon, Landry,” he said in a nervous voice, “enough already. Get off there!” But he was drowned out by a bunch of others yelling stuff like, “Ride ‘em, Landry!” and “Over the hump!” and still laughing.

  Landry was looking a tittle frantic, glancing back over his shoulder at the fire all the time. But he didn’t stop. He just made another hole.

  The heat was getting pretty intense. Other people were getting nervous, too. The guys shouting, “Jump!” outnumbered the ones shouting, “Ride ‘em!” But not by much.

  Jack appeared finally, cutting off my view for a second with that huge back of his. He shouldered everybody aside and stuck an arm up to Landry.

  “Time’s up, Landry,” he said firmly.

  Landry recognized that voice. He glanced down briefly. “Just a couple more,” he said.

  Jack was pissed. “One more like Hell! You got ten meters to the hump!”

  Landry glanced quickly back at the glow. “Catch me,” he said, still stabbing away.

  “Bullshit,” snapped Jack. “Jump now or burn.”

  “Catch me,” said Landry again, stabbing.

  “Nope. Now.”

  Landry sort of erupted. His face got even redder and his voice was so vicious it seemed to be ripping its way out of him.

  “Suit your damned self, then!” he snarled and ripped at a gash.

  Jack stared. Then Landry looked back down again, but different, like he was pleading and Something passed back and forth because Jack suddenly nodded. He even kind of smiled — like the old Jack. Then he trotted on ahead down the steps alongside the hump, scattering people with those big shoulders. He picked a good spot on the safety rail and waited. His face was blank.

  Everybody crowded down beside him into the heat, leaving him room to reach and all, but not wanting to miss a thing. Some of us were maybe too eager. But, dammit, it WAS exciting. And God knows, it was new.

  Landry, his face pouring flickering sweat, punched one more hole. That left him with only a couple of inches to go. He tensed for one more thrust.

  “Landry!!!” roared Jack, sounding final.

  That seemed to snap Landry out of it. He looked down, nodded, and dropped his pike right then, just as the Belt slid over the hump and down. Landry bent his knees… Jack’s giant hands reached up… Landry jumped…

  Only he didn’t.

  I couldn’t see for sure. Maybe a pant leg was snagged in the rip or maybe a boot. Whatever, he was stuck tight.

  Now I would’ve screamed like Hell and I think anybody might have, at that. But all Landry did was shake his head kinda disgusted-like and say: “Typical,” and then he was into that white-hot maw.

  Except for the fire-roar, there wasn’t a sound. We stood there, stunned. Sweating, and breathing through our mouths. Jack slowly put down his arms.

  Then Wallace, a real prick, said: “Just as well. Somebody woulda turned him in for doing it anyway.”

  I felt like hitting him, but I didn’t. Nobody did. We just went back to work.

  At 6:58, two minutes before quitting time, the Belt snapped.

  * * *

  Little Paulie was there at the schoolyard fence. “Hi, Hughie! How ya doin’, Hughie!” he yelled to show off for the other four-year-olds who’d probably get smacked for calling their fathers anything besides Dad or Pop. It made me feel good to see how such a small thing could please him so much and it was the least I could do. Or maybe the most, seeing as how I still hadn’t told him I wasn’t his real father. And wasn’t going to, either.

  When I picked him up, he snuffled his little face against my chest to get the most Cleaner smell out of my overalls.

  “I love Cleaner smell,” he said like always. “Don’t you, Hughie?” And, like always, I said I did. But I hated it. Like everything else Blue.

  We had to detour around Mall East on the way home. I couldn’t see why over the barriers and Blues never bother to give reasons. Had to walk all the way to Pitt East Square before doubling back.

  There was a Blue there.

  He sat in an open hover looking bored and watching the crowds padding by a couple of stories or so beneath him. Lots of the crowds were watching him back. Except for tapes and the like, most people had never actually seen one, even after five years.

  He was a big one, even for them. Eight and a half feet, easy. Call It eight or nine hundred pounds. And all of it that damned baby blue. I shivered a little when I saw him. It wasn’t just the size that spooked me, or the color. It wasn’t even them looking so human.

  Nope, what got to me was them being so goddamned pretty.

  I had once seen a whole hoverload touring the factory and there hadn’t been a single ugly in the bunch. All gorgeous, all bored, and all naked except for those little skirt-things of theirs. Like having the statues roaming around loose in the museum flexing at the tourists.

  It had scared Hell out of me. It still did.

  Paulie loved ’em, though. Said something about blue being a friendly color and brought out a whole slew of pix he had collected showing Blues playing with smiling human children. Paulie ate that up, sitting for hours looking at them spread out on the floor. Sometimes he would trade pix with other kids in deals too complicated for adults to understand.

  I hated the pix, of course. I had a particularly bad nightmare over the one showing five kids sitting astride each bicep.

  Paulie had fallen asleep on my shoulder. I knew he would’ve wanted me to wake him up for the sight of a real-live Blue. But I let him sleep. Didn’t even look myself when we passed underneath. Seemed to me we spent too

damn much time looking up to them as it was.

  Still, there was Paulie’s future to think about…

  Damn, but I hated to think of my boy as one of those little bluenose punks. But if he was going to have it any better than me, what choice was there? It was damn near unheard of to get anywhere without some Blue’s help. Oh, maybe if you were a genius of some kind or the son of one.

  Paulie wasn’t either. So, to find a decent place in the world, Paulie would need to please a Blue.

  To be a bluenose, sucking around ‘em and fawning over everything they said or did like house pets. Well, I hoped he’d turn out to be a successful one, at least. Bad enough having to crawl without getting anything out of it. About the only thing I had to be glad of was that I didn’t need to do that. I couldn’t go much further down, so why be a puppy?

  Of course, Prof said we were all bluenoses, not just those first traitors or the more current slime. Every day we stayed alive under their rule, he said, we’d each get a little more blue there. Said the next generation wouldn’t mind a bit. They won’t know any better and, besides, most of them will be too busy doing it to think about it.

  Well, maybe that’s good. Better for Paulie not to be ashamed of himself all the time like a lot of folks. And why shouldn’t he? Hell, he wasn’t even around Before, He had nothing to try and forget.

  But I did. I had to forget the world as it was, when men still ruled the Earth and I was a steelworker instead of a slob that scraped up slag dust for an automated robot.

  But little Paulie shouldn’t mind. He never knew an Earth without Blues. He’d get along. No choice.

  Just the same, I knew I hoped like Hell he would refuse. And felt ashamed for hoping it because Paulie was a good one who deserved more than slag. It wouldn’t be fair to let on to him about how I felt. It was a Blue’s Earth nowadays, like it or not.

  * * *

  Ann elbowed her way through the crowded tables and put the steaming plates down before me. Then she leaned over Paulie’s side of the booth to wake him up with what they call a butterfly kiss. Paulie, playing possum (and with me understrict oath of secrecy), jerked up at the first gentle touch of her eye lashes across his cheek and threw his arms around her neck.

  Ann shrieked: “You little ambusher!” and countered with his most dreaded nemesis: precision tickling. Never remotely equal to that, Paulie jumped away to the far side of the booth, giggling madly.

  “Can’t take it, huh?” she challenged, feinting a bit. Paulie shook his head warily, holding his arms to his sides to protect vrital areas. She rat down on the edge of the seat. “Miss me, Paulie?” she asked, continuing with the next stage of their greeting. Paulie shook his head curtly from side to side as always.

  Pouting, she asked: “Not even a little bit?” Paulie shook his head even harder,, but a grin had begun to peek out of the comer of his mouth.

  “Ann!!!” shouted the manager of the diner. All three of us cringed a little. Ann sighed and stood up, pushing the hair from her eyes. “Eat it all up, you,” she ordered Paulie. She only said: “Hi, Hughie,’’ to me, but as she did she rested her warm hand on my shoulder. I managed something back and then watched her fight through the smoke and noise to the next order. I could’ve watched her for days. Even in that filthy waitress uniform, she was beautiful. Sometimes I would imagine that Paulie’s mother had been something like Ann.

  * * *

  Willie and Ray from the slagdump crew sat down beside me at the bar and started bet-talk about tomorrow’s Games. Seemed that a Blue was supposed to attend in person. Each man had a different opinion about what that meant easy-moneywise.

  They ended up betting two credits, not on the results of events, but on whether or not a certain event (The Choice of Three) would be held at all.

  “Ain’t no way,” said Willie, “that anybody’d be dumb enough to sign up for that. Hell, if s bad enough facing three locals one after another. But trained Blueteamers? Shit.”

  “Somebody’ll chance it,” replied Ray. “The prize is just too tempting.”

  “What tempting? It’s same as always: ten credits if you live and your choice of opponents after. Same as any Sunday.”

  “But a Blue’s gonna be there, Willie. And he’ll have that slimey little bluenosing mayor sniffing around him. Even that pig mayor will have to fight a threewinner if he’s challenged. And who wouldn’t like to mash that little squat?”

  “Dammit, Ray. There ain’t gonna be no threewinner ’cause there ain’t nobody around can beat three Blueteamers back-to-back.”

  “Wait a minute. I didn’t say they’d win. I said they’d try, is all,”

  “Not even that.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Damn right.”

  I wondered if either one of those two experts had ever so much as considered actually entering the Games. Not likely. Not even single-duel, much less Choice of Three. I had thought about It once, years ago. Before Paulie. I entered single-duel, but chickened at the ramp. Did learn one thing, though; Willie and Ray were stupid to think it had anything to do with guts.

  It had to do with being too tired.

  Suddenly I remembered that Landry had told me he was going to fight tomorrow. I wondered if that’s what his “typical” was about.

  Our bunch started wandering in. I waved and talked a bit and drank, of course, getting the most of my one night a week. Paulie slept soundly in my arms, unaffected by the swirling Saturday night blabber.

  Later on, Prof, on the stool beside me, leaned forward against the bar and raised one finger in that actor way he’s got when spouting beer-talk. Meaning Blue-talk.

  “What could the President have done? He had no real power.”

  I don’t remember who he was talking to except that he was fat. “Huh?” he replied. “The President of the United States was the most powerful dude in the whole world!”

  “Then why,” asked Prof, “did the Blues kick him out to make do like the rest of us?”

  “ ’Cause he wouldn’t sell out to those Blue bastards like those other greedy bums. He was too straight to do that.”

  “Nonsense,” replied Prof pleasantly. “The fact is, the President had nothing to sell. Only the people with real clout — industries, unions, oil companies — could cash in on the Takeover.”

  “And they sure as shit did,” whined the fat man, “In one helluva big hurry.”

  “Too true,” said Prof, taking a long rip. “May syphilis strike them all.”

  “I still think the President told ’em no,” said fat, getting misty-eyed.

  “Then why didn’t they kill him like the others who refused?”

  “Uh… he was too big for that.”

  Prof laughed. “My dear fellow, no President of our choosing has been that big since the nineteeth century. No. The President was simply ignored. I doubt that he suspected much more than the rest of us suckers. Remember all those lovely Rose Garden toasts about the Brotherhood of the Stars? He was just as gullible as the rest of us. Even made that pitiful speech about sending air strikes if the Blueships didn’t stop landing.” Prof sighed. “I don’t think he realized even then that it was all over.”

  That was Prof’s basic Saturday night. His theory was that the Blues grabbed up the really powerful handful of men and women who actually ran the world. They snatched them months before anyone else ever heard of the Blues. Then they offered them the moon in return for aiding the inevitable, but not necessarily bloody, Blue Takeover. Prof figured the two meteors that struck about that time were really demonstrations of Blue muscle to help prove their point to the captives. Plus the obvious threat.

  “So,” Prof would say, “they sold us out, Hughie. They spread the word that the Blues were mankind’s big break, while dismantling our armies and communications systems. That’s how they took over so fast, Hughie. It’s the only way they could have. You can’t enslave an entire planet overnight without a lot of busy nights beforehand.”

  I said I still didn’t buy it. Those folks could’ve done something! They could’ve faked it on the ships, then spread the alarm when they got back to Earth. Prof would smile at this.

  “Why, Hughie. To ensure even more humans killed?”

 

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