Дэймон Найт - Orbit 3

“I can't rest," he answered, “while the black beast waits for me. ”

—Robert Payne, The Roaring Boys

His brother came home from the Moon in an economy coffin, on a night when the meteorological bureau decided on rain. Something went wrong, as it frequently did. The April mist turned to a black, blinding downpour.

Through the shed’s thick windows all peppered with rain, Cassius could just discern the vertical pillars of fire that grew thinner, thinner still, then flamed out. Rain hummed and slashed. It was a foul night for such a painful, intensely personal errand.

As the transport rocket settled into its concrete bed far out there, a dozen haul trucks raced from all directions toward its unfolding ramps. Then there seemed to be a collision. Headlamps tilted crazily. Men ran this way and that. A controller wigwagged his glowing red wands hysterically.

“Wild buncha cowboys,” grumbled the Freight Customs official. “Next? Hey, you.”

Parcels, crates, cylinders, drums were spilling down a dozen chutes from the rocket. Which was Timothy? Cassius turned from the window as the official called out again. He stepped up to the booth. The official’s uniform was damp, wool-stinking. His expression was cross. Cassius recalled hearing the man ahead of him argue loudly with the official. He felt he should have chosen another queue, but it was too late.

“Okay, buddy, what’s yours?”

“I’m picking up my brother,” Cassius said.

The official mugged his disgust. “Oh for Christ’s—the next shed is passenger, mister.”

Cassius said, “You don’t understand. My brother was —that is, he’s dead. His body is on the rocket.”

“Oh.” The official blinked. “Name?”

“Cassius Andrews. Here’s my News Guild card and my personal digit card if you need identification.”

“His name, his name.”

“The Reverend Timothy Andrews.” Cassius tried to scan the upside-down manifest on the counter. “Maybe the shipment is listed under the Ecumenical Brothers. They paid his stipend at the Moon camp. He was stabbed trying to break up a knife fight between two miners, and the Brothers arranged to ship his—”

Reading down the lines, the official waved his hand to cut off the talk. Cassius felt sheepish. What did the man care about details of a family death? Nothing, of course.

When at last the official had ticked off the proper box with a checkmark and raised his dull eyes to stare through the wicket, he was no longer merely bored. He was plainly resentful. Of my mentioning dead people on such a miserable night? Cassius wondered.

“Mister,” said the official, almost triumphantly, “whoever prepaid the body at Moonramp made a mistake. Underweighed by thirty-six pounds. There’s extra duty due. Dozen point five credits.”

Cassius fumbled inside his raincloak. “I’ll be glad to pay it.”

“You gotta see the adjustments manager. Three doors down. Next!”

The dismissal was so peremptory that Cassius, ordinarily a mild-tempered man, flushed. He was about to make a nasty retort. Then he recalled his own recurring dream. It tormented him twice or three times a week, regularly. He sighed and took the punched card from the official’s hand.

Nobody liked to be bothered with death. Especially not in such rotten, depressing weather. Cassius could understand how the official felt.

Out another window he noticed that the haul truck tangle had been straightened out. The various crates, parcels and containers were being picked up by vehicles operated by the big and small land freight companies. Cassius had made no arrangements for transportation. But he’d been told that an on-the-spot haul service was for hire. He intended to send Timothy’s body directly to the headquarters of the Brothers, where they had a chapel.

After the memorial service due all missionaries who died violent deaths—and many still did, in the lonely, rotgut-happy camps on the Moon and around Marsville Basin—Timothy would be interred with their mother and father in the family plot in Virginia. Timothy would have been, let’s see, two years younger than Cassius, who was forty-two.

The adjustments manager had another client. Cassius lingered in the hall. He tried to restrain his impatience, then his anger. He had the eerie feeling that official stupidity was conspiring against him to delay the obligatory reunion with his brother.

After spending twenty minutes in the corridor, Cassius finally got to see the adjustments manager. The idiot didn’t have the appropriate rate book at hand. That took another five minutes. Cassius paid the excess duty, watched while the manager thumbed his Hilton Bank card into a machine along with a triplicate invoice. At last he was given a pass to the pickup area.

He walked across the concrete in the slashing rain. He had already decided that he’d damn well write an expose of the mismanagement at Dulles Interplanetary and file it with the feature editor. God, there was enough bumbling bureaucracy here for ten exposés.

But the idea passed quickly.

Long ago Cassius had recognized and accepted his limitations. He seldom dreamed any more of writing the news story or series that would catapult him to fame.

There were eight hundred reporters on the Capitol World Truth. Out of these, a top dozen received around eighteen thousand credits per annum. They wrote all the expose pieces of the type Cassius was imagining. Cassius himself earned a meager twelve two, almost the Guild minimum. Years ago he’d been slotted by Hughgenine, his editor, as a competent man to handle a section of the vast Alexandria suburban news beat. The Parent and Teaching Machine Association was his bailiwick. Well, he said to himself, the expose was a good thought, anyway.

Dread came then.

The rain-soaked handler blinked at the receipt. “I seen it here a while ago, okay. But there ain’t many items left and I don’t see it now.”

Cassius stared around the open shed. “I was delayed in the terminal. It must be here. It’s a coffin.”

“I know, I seen it. We had a real mess out here tonight, mister. Some jerky new driver rammed into a couple of the other pickup rigs. Maybe Elmo knows. Hey, Elmo?”

Elmo was fat and officious. “Sure, I seen it. The driver picked it up.”

“What driver?” Cassius snapped.

“Just who the hell are you, mister?”

“The man’s brother.”

“Oh, okay. Keep your pants on.” Elmo thumbed his flash. He riffled his tickets. Then he extended the packet, less blustery. “Ain’t that the nuts? The part of the ticket showin’ the name of the carrier is torn off. Oh boy, things are sure screwed up tonight, man, oh man.”

Cassius raged and fumed and promised official vengeance for a full fifteen minutes. He turned out half the minor bureaucracy of the receiving department, to no good end. The coffin was gone.

Someone had stolen his brother’s corpse.

“It’s crazy!” he sputtered. Cowlike faces ringed him. “Who would steal a preacher’s body? It’s absolutely senseless.”

No one answered. Cassius looked past the rain-lashed men. They were strangely nervous. Perhaps because of a theft; the rain; the accident and mix-ups and their obliviousness to the pickup driver. Or perhaps they were quiet because the situation had been further complicated by death.

Out beyond the concrete beds where the Sino-Russian Line was preparing to launch its evening shipment, Cassius saw the multileveled tangle of roads leading from the field, rising to merge with the ten broad lanes of the Washington Belt. Up one of those ramps and onto that highway had gone an unknown truck, carrying a stolen corpse.

“Crazy,” Cassius said again. “You’ll hear about this.” He stalked off in the rain.