Гарднер Дозуа - The Good Old Stuff

He took off high-gain for Franchise Twelve and West Hem. Just as he had the log tied back into real time his caller bleeped. The screen stayed blank.

“Identify.”

“Been waitin’ on you, Gollem.” A slurred tenor; Gollem’s beard twitched.

“One freakin’ fine ship.” The voice chuckled. “Main-mouth by Coronis truly flash that ship.”

“Stay off Ragnarok if you want to keep your air,” Gollem told the phage-runner.

The voice giggled again. “My pamers truly grieve on that, ‘Spector.”

There was a click and he heard his own voice saying, “Topanga, baby, I can’t save you one more time.”

“Deal, ‘Spector, deal. Why we flash on war?”

“Blow your clobbing tapes,” Gollem said tiredly. “You can’t run me like you run Hara.”

“‘Panga,” the invisible Leo said reflectively. “Freakin’ fine old fox.

She tell I fix her wire fire?”

Gollem cut channel.

The phager must have made a circuit smoke to win her trust. Gollem’s stomach wept acid. So vulnerable. An old sick eagle dead in space and the rats have found her ....

They wouldn’t quit, either. Ragnarok had air, water, power.

Transmitters. Maybe they were using her caller, maybe she’d been telling the truth. They could take over. Shove her out through the lock ....

Gollem’s hand hovered over his console.

If he turned back now his log would blow it all. And for what? No, he decided. They’ll wait, they’ll sniff around first. They want to take me too. They want to see how much squeeze they have. Pray they don’t find out.

He had to get some power somewhere and jump Ragnarok out. How, how?

Like trying to hide Big Jup.

He noticed that he had punched the biomonitor into a sick yellow blob and hurled it across the cabin .... How much longer could he cool Coronis? Right on cue, his company hotline blatted. “Why aren’t you at Franchise Two, Gollem?”

It was mainmouth Quine himself. Gollem took a deep breath and repeated his course reversal plan, watching Quine’s little snout purse up.

“After this clear with me. Now hear this, Gollem,” Quine leaned back in his biotex, pink and plump. Coronis was no hardship station. “I don’t know what you think you’re into with Franchise Three but I want it stopped. The miners are yelling and our Company won’t tolerate it.”

Gollem shook his shaggy head like a dazed bull. Franchise Three? Oh yeah, the heavy metal-mining outfit.

“They’re overloading their tractor beams for hot extraction,” he told Quine. “It’s in my report. If they keep it up they’ll have one bloody hashup. And they won’t be covered because their contract annex specifies the load limits.”

Quine’s jowls twitched ominously. “Gollem. Again I warn you. It is not your role to interpret the contract to the policyholder. If the miners choose to get their ore out faster by abrogating their contract that’s their decision. Your job is to report the violation, not to annoy them with technicalities. Right now they are very angry with you. And I trust you don’t imagine that our Company”—reverent pause—“appreciates your initiative?”

Gollem made an inarticulate noise in his throat. He should be used to this. Coronis wanted its piece quickly and it wanted to avoid paying compensation when the thing blew. The miners got paid by the shuttle load and most of them couldn’t tell a contract annex from a flush vane.

By the time they found out they’d be dead.

“Another item.” Quine was watching him. “You may be getting some noise from Themis sector. They seemed to be all sweated up about a bit of rock.”

“You mean those Trojans?” Gollem was puzzled. “What’s there?”

“Have you been talking to Themis?”

“No.”

“Very well. You will not, repeat not, deviate from your patrol. You are on a very thin line with us, Gollem. If your log shows anything whatever in connection with Themis you’re out of the Company and there will be a lien against you for your overdrawn pension. And there will be no transport rights. Do I make myself clear?”

Gollem cut channel. When he could control his hands he punched Weather for the updated rogue orbits. Both rocks were now computed to node in sector Themis, but well clear of Themis main. He frowned. Who was hurting? His ephemeris showed only the new medbase in the general volume, listed as Nonaffiliated, no details. It seemed to be clear, too. If that polluted Hara ...

Gollem grunted. He understood now. Quine was hoping for some hassle in Themis which might persuade Ceres Control to reassign part of that sector to him. And the medbase wasn’t Company, it was expendable for publicity purposes. Truly fine, he thought. Much gees for Quine if it works.

He was coming into West Hem Chemicals. Before he could signal, his audio cut loose with curses from the cyborg chief. Gollem swerved to minimize his intrusion on their body lines and the chief cooled down enough to let him report that he had killed their bogy.

“It was an old field-sounder,” Gollem lied. Had they identified Rag-narok?

“Slope out. Go.” The old cyborg op couldn’t care less. He had electrode jacks all over his skull and his knuckles sprouted wires.

Much as Gollem loved metal, this was too much. He backed out as gingerly as he could. The men—or maybe the creatures—in there were wired into the controls of robot refining plants on all the nearby rocks, and he was hashing across their neural circuit. Wouldn’t be surprising if they fired on him one day.

His next stop was the new aggregation franchise in Eleven. It was a slow-orbit complex on the rim of the Kirkwood Gap, a touchy location to work.

If they started losing rocks they could spread chaos in the zone.

Aggregation meant power units, lots of them. Gollem began figuring Ragnarok’s parameters. His stomach also began to gripe him; the outfit that had leased Eleven had big plans for a self-sustaining colony on a slim budget.

They needed those units to bring in gas-rich rocks.

When he got inside Gollem saw they had other problems too.

“We’ve computed for two-sigma contingency,” the Eleven chief repeated tiredly. They were standing beside a display tank showing the projected paths of the rocks they intended to blast.

“Not enough,” Gollem told him. “Your convergence-point is smeared the hell all over. You lose a big one and it’ll plow right into Ten.”

“But Franchise Ten isn’t occupied,” the chief protested.

“Makes no difference. Why do you think you got this franchise cheap?

The Company’s delighted to have you aggregating this lode, they’re just waiting for you to lose one rock so they can cancel and resell your franchise. I can’t certify your operation unless you recompute.”

“But that means buying computer input from Ceres Main!” he yelped.

“We can’t afford it.”

“You should have looked at the instability factors before you signed,” Gollem said woodenly. He was wishing the chief didn’t have all his hair; it would be easier to do this to a skinhead.

“At least let me bring in the rocks we have armed,” the chief was pleading.

“How many one-gee units have you got out there?” Gollem pointed.

“Twenty-one.”

“I’ll take six of them and certify you. That’s cheaper than recomputing.”

The chief’s jaw sagged, clenched in a snarl.

“You polluted bastard!”

Suddenly there was a squeal behind them and the commo op tore off her earphones. The chief reached over and flicked on the speaker, filling the bubble with an all-band blare. For a minute Gollem thought it was a flare-front, and then he caught the human scream.

“MAYDAY! MA-A-Y-DAY-AAY! GO-OLLEE—” Oh no! Oh Jesus, no. He slammed down the speaker, the sweat starting out all over him.