Joan Vinge: Heaven Chronicles

The sound of silence filled the black and silver vacuum of the Mecca docking field, echoed from the winking distillery towers, the phosphorescently-glowing storage sacks of gases, the insectoid forms of the looming cargo freighters. But it only filled the helmet of Chaim Dartagnan's suit by an effort of will, as his mind blocked the invidious clamor from the helmet's speakers:

“Demarch Siamang. Demarch Siamang—!”

“—true that you're going to—”

“What will you be bringing back?”

“—rescue the stranded—?”

“Hey, Dartagnan, c'mon, Red, give your of buddies a break!”

Dartagnan smiled and released the mooring rope to casually readjust his camera strap against his shoulder. Eat your hearts out, bastards. Any one of you'd break my neck to be here instead of me. He glanced back across the glaring, pitted gravel of the field. At the very front of the crowd beyond the gate he saw the elbowing desperation of his fellow mediamen, cameras draped across the barrier; the security guard shoved them back with what looked like relish. Independents all, crawling all over each other to get at the big story, or the unique pitch, that would win the attention of a corporate head and earn them a place in the ranks of a corporation's promotional crew. There but for the grace of Siamang and Sons go I. … He had won, by flattering the hell out of Old Man Siamang; won the chance to prove his reporting and image-hyping skills as the only mediaman along on this (he saw it in rhetoric) History-Making Journey, a Daring Rescue by a Siamang Scion, a Philanthropic Family's Mission of Mercy … my ass , Dartagnan thought. He saw the two corporate cameramen filming his passage, the colored armbands that made them Siamang's men. His stomach constricted over an unexpected pang of hope.

He glanced up, at the purity of blackness unmarred by atmosphere, at the stars. Somewhere below his feet, through kilometers of nearly solid rock, was the tiny, pale spinel of the sun Heaven. He would be seeing it again, soon enough—he focused on the looming grotesqueness tethered at the end of the mooring cable, bifurcated by the abrupt edge of the asteroid's horizon: the converted volatile freighter that would take them across the Main Belt and on in to Heaven's second planet, to pick up one man … and a treasure. The three jutting booms that kept its nuclear electric rockets suspended away from the living quarters clutched rigid cylinders instead of the usual flimsy volatiles sack; it carried a liquid fuel rocket for their descent to the planet's surface.

The rest of the party was clustering now beneath the ship. He pulled himself along the final length of cable, unslung his camera and checked its pressure seal, plugged the recording jack into his suit's radio. He began to film, identifying one figure from another by the intricately colored geometric patternings on their suits. There was Old Man Siamang, praising the nobility of a single human life, no effort should be too great to save this man—and a salvage find that could benefit all the people of the Demarchy.… Dartagnan shook his head, behind his shielding faceplate. The Demarchy was an absolute democracy, and its philosophy was every man for himself, unless he got in the way of too many others … or he happened to have something too many others wanted.

Chaim knew, because it was his business to know, that a prospector had gotten himself stranded on Planet Two when his landing craft broke down. The prospector's radioed distress calls had been monitored; and knowing, like everyone else, that no one would come after him unless it was worth their while, he had revealed that he had found a considerable cache of prewar salvage items, including computer software that could streamline any distillery's volatile processing.

The distilleries were among the few of the small, independent corporations of the Demarchy to have the resources to send a ship in after him, and his discovery provided them with the motivation. Siamang and Sons had as much motivation as anyone, but they also had one crucial additional asset: they alone had the rocket engines available for a landing craft. And so Siamang and Sons would be the first to reach Planet Two, making them most likely to get the rights to the prize as well.

Old Man Siamang had finished his speech, and the handful of representatives of other distilleries responded with all the sincerity their silent applause implied. Sabu Siamang, the old man's son and heir, added a few words, equally insincere. But great copy. Siamang was sending his own son on a journey into the unknown, a landing on a world with not only a substantial gravity well, but also the unpredictability of an atmosphere. Maybe there was no one else Old Siamang would trust: but Dartagnan had heard it rumored that there were other reasons why the old man might want the future corporate head to face a little reality and responsibility. Young Siamang said good-bye to his father—any resentment well disguised under a gracious respectfulness—and to his wife. Dartagnan felt surprised that a woman of her position had come out onto the surface, even for this short a time. Her voice was calm, self-assured, like her husband's. Chaim wondered whether she did it for appearances, or if she'd wanted to come. He felt another sharp, sudden emotion; ignored it, unsure even of what it was.

He filmed the ritual of cordial bowing, the leave-taking, the others going back across the field: filming and being filmed, he followed Sabu Siamang up into the waiting ship.

Dartagnan kicked free of his suit in the cramped alcove with the unconscious grace of a man who had spent his whole life on planetoids where gravity was almost nonexistent. He pulled himself through the doorway into the control room, took in the instrument panels: Siamang leaned lightly against one, probing carelessly among the rows of displays.

“Don't touch those! … please, Demarch Siamang.” The soft, almost girlish voice had a cutting edge of irritation, which dulled abruptly with remembered deference.

Dartagnan looked past Siamang in the dim half-light: saw the pilot, the third and final member of their expedition. Just a kid, he thought, startled: a slim boy in a dark, formless jumpsuit, with short sky-black hair: average height, his own height, maybe two meters. Epicanthic folds almost hooded the bad temper in the boy's dark, upturning eyes.

Siamang looked around, startled at the tone; an expression of not-quite-apology formed on his face. “Oh, sorry.” A broad expanse of smile showed against his dark skin, darker hair. Dartagnan irrelevantly remembered animal faces frescoed on an antique table. (He had never seen any real animal larger than an insect; they were extreme rarities since the Civil War.) Chaim was never sure of the color of Siamang's eyes, but only that they struck with the building intensity of a spotlight. He saw the pilot falter and look down. Siamang looked back at Dartagnan, relaxing. Chaim faced the blinding gaze easily, used to not-seeing a face. Siamang was in his mid-thirties, perhaps ten years older than Dartagnan himself, and the rich embroidery of his loose jacket, the precise tailoring of his tight breeches, the shine on his boots, were blinding in their own right. The well-dressed demarch … “You haven't met our pilot, have you? Mythili Fukinuki … Our token mediaman, Mythili—”