Joan Vinge: Heaven Chronicles

Something in Siamang's voice made the pilot's surname into a double double-entendre. Dartagnan looked back at the pilot, stared, as suspicion became realization. My God, a woman—? He didn't say it aloud; was grateful, as her eyes snapped up, burning with hostility. He had never seen a female pilot, they were as much a rarity as a living animal. He realized belatedly that Siamang had not introduced him, apparently wasn't planning to. He wondered if Siamang had already forgotten his name. “Uh—my name's Chaim Dartagnan. My friends call me Red.” He raised a hand, gestured at the auburn friz of his hair above his own faded-brown skin.

The pilot categorized him with a look he had grown used to.

Siamang's easy laughter filled the uneasy space between them. “I didn't think mediamen had any friends.”

Dartagnan matched the laughter, added a careful note of self-deprecation. “I guess I should've said ‘acquaintances’.”

“Red, here, is up from the media ranks, Mythili. If he does a good job, Dad's going to hire him permanently. So be nice to him; you may have to be seeing a lot more of him.” He winked, and the pilot's expression changed slightly. Chaim estimated that the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. “How does it feel, Red, to be up here now, instead of down there with the rest of the coprophage-corps?”

Dartagnan laughed again, meaning it. “Real good, boss. Just fine. I plan to make a habit of it.”

“We're scheduled for departure in one kilosecond. Demarch Siamang,” the pilot said. “Maybe you ought to check your cabin to make sure all your belongings are aboard. Just down the passageway—” She pointed at the hole in the middle of the floor, ringed by an aluminum guardrail.

“Good idea.” Siamang pushed himself away from the panel, moving by her as he half-drifted toward the well. “Good to be aboard, Fukinuki …” His hand slid down over her buttocks in passing.

If looks could kill, we'd be dead men. Dartagnan studied the floor, waiting to be turned to stone.

“Well?”

He glanced up, not focusing.

“You have the crew's dormitory all to yourself. Do you want to check out your belongings or not?” She pointed again. She had moved out of range of the exit well.

He waved at his camera and sack of gear, at his own threadbare, unembellished jacket. “This's it; I travel light.” He grinned ingratiatingly at nothing, got no response. “You know … uh … I have the same problem with my name. Everybody's always asking me, ‘Where's the Three Musketeers?’” It was a subject of morbid fascination to him that the most stupid and illiterate of men seemed somehow to have heard of that obscure Old World novel.

“I don't know what you're talking about.” She drifted to the control panel, caught hold of a stabilizing strap, began to check readings.

“What's—”

“And before you ask, ‘What's a nice girl like me doing in a job like this?’ I'll tell you. It's because I want to be here. And yes, no, no, and no. Yes, I am sterile. No, I wasn't born that way. No, I'm not sorry I did it. And no, I did not get the job by agreeing to put out for my passengers—I got it because I'm a damn good pilot! … Any more questions, mediaman?”

“No … I guess that about covers them all.” He raised his hands, palms out in surrender. “But actually,” he lied, “I was only planning to ask if you'd mind my filming our departure on your screen.”

“I do mind. The control room's a restricted area as far as the passengers are concerned.”

“It's my job—”

“It's my job. Keep your lens out of it.”

He shrugged, and bowed, and stepped into the well.

Supplies and equipment had been stored in the crew's quarters, filling most of the space from ceiling to floor, wall to wall. Dartagnan found the one remaining bunk halfway up a wall and strapped himself onto it, comforted by the feeling of closeness, used to it. My God, is it really happening …? He shut his eyes, hands under his head; relaxed his body abruptly, thoroughly, like switching off a machine. Memories from the time when he had piloted his father's ship showed him the images he would have seen on this ship's viewscreen, as they rose almost silently, almost without sensation of movement, from Mecca's surface … His imagination expanded, for a vision of the entire Heaven system, circling in a sea of darkness:

The Heaven system consisted of a G-class star orbited by four planets. The two inner worlds, nameless, were essentially uninhabitable, one too hot, one too cold, with nearly nonexistent atmospheres. The two outer worlds were gas giants: Discus, a carnelian scarab set within twenty separate bands of sun-silvered dust and frozen gases; Sevin, dim green, and unreachable since the Civil War. Both of those worlds were also uninhabited.

But between Planet Two and Discus lay an asteroid belt, the Heaven Belt, which at one time had held a thriving human colony richer even than its parent Earth. But the Civil War had destroyed Heaven Belt, bringing death to nearly a hundred million people, most of its population; and now the Belt was for the most part a vast ruin, where the still-living preyed on the artifacts of the dead in order to keep on living. Among the small isolated pockets of humanity that still continued, the Demarchy had survived almost intact, due to its location. The Demarchy lay in the trojan asteroids, a 140,000-kilometer teardrop of planetoids trapped forever sixty degrees ahead of Discus in its orbital path. The Demarchy had been able to continue trade within itself, and with another surviving subculture, the inhabitants of the ice-bound debris that circled just beyond the rings of Discus proper. The Ringers supplied the volatiles—oxygen, hydrogen and hydrocarbons—necessary to life, as they had once supplied them to the whole of Heaven Belt. In return, the Demarchy provided the Rings with the pure minerals and refined ores that it had in plenty.

Even before the war, the corporations that dominated the Demarchy's economy and its trade had been primarily small and fragmented. The self-interested nature of the Demarchy's town-meeting style of government discouraged monopolies, and so the inherent competitiveness of capitalism had gone to an extreme. The same sophisticated communications network that kept the Demarchy's radical democracy functioning also provided a medium for the expression of corporate competition, and as a result the citizens of the Demarchy were dunned by a constant flow of news disguised by promotion, promotions disguised as news. The need for an ever-slicker, more compelling distortion of the truth had created a new ecological niche in Demarchy society, one that had been filled by the pen-for-hire, the mediaman, willing to say anything, sell anything, without question, for the highest bidder. Willing to do anything at all to impress a corporate head …

Dartagnan grew rigid unconsciously; pain knifed him in the stomach. He pressed his hands down over the pain, sighed, remembering the bribes, the lies, the haunting of offices and corridors, the long, long megaseconds it had taken to catch Old Man Siamang's ear at last, in a public washroom … the obsequious flattery it had taken to win an interview, and in his office, the careful camera angles, the fulsome praise. Sabu Siamang had been there, too, easy, gracious, charming, the complete gentleman. Dartagnan had used the same fawning approach on him, with mixed results. Sabu had asked his name, bemused, and asked, “What happened to the Three Musketeers?” Dartagnan had laughed too loudly.

Dartagnan winced mentally, opened his eyes, staring at the wall.… But Old Siamang had liked his work, had offered him this bizarre journey as a reward: ten megaseconds away from civilization, putting him out of touch with everything he needed to know. But if he did his job well, that wouldn't matter; when he returned to Mecca City he would be Siamang's man, and his life would be secure at last.