Vernor Vinge - A Deepness in the Sky

He was lying.He was lying.

Sammy took a deep breath and looked around the dingy room. Suddenly he felt as dangerous as some fleet scuttlebutt made him out to be.Godforgive me, but I will do anything to get the truth from this man. He looked back at Brother Song and attempted a friendly smile. It must not have come out quite right; the old man stepped back a pace. “A cemeterium is a place for people to die, is that right, Brother Song?”

“It is a place for all to live to the natural fullness of their time. We use all the money that people bring, to help all the people who come.” In the perverse Triland situation, Brother Song’s primitivism made a terrible kind of sense. He helped the sickest of the poorest as well as he could.

Sammy held up his hand. “I will donate one hundred years of budget to each of your order’s cemeteria… if you take me to Bidwel Ducanh.”

“I—” Brother Song took another step backwards, and sat down heavily. Somehow he knew that Sammy could make good on his offer. Maybe…. But then the old man looked up at Sammy and there was a desperate stubbornness in his stare. “No. Bidwel Ducanh died ten years ago.”

Sammy walked across the room and grasped the arms of the old man’s chair. He brought his face down close to the other’s. “You know these people I’ve brought with me. Do you doubt that if I give the word, they will take your cemeterium apart, piece by piece? Do you doubt that if we don’t find what I seek here, we’ll do the same to every cemeterium of your order, all over this world?”

It was clear that Brother Song did not doubt. He knew the Forestry Department. Yet for a moment Sammy was afraid that Song would stand up even to that.And I will then do what I must do. Abruptly, the old man seemed to crumple in on himself, weeping silently.

Sammy stood back from his chair. Some seconds passed. The old man stopped crying and struggled to his feet. He didn’t look at Sammy or gesture; he simply shuffled out of the room.

Sammy and his entourage followed. They walked single-file down a long corridor. There was horror here. It wasn’t in the dim and broken lighting or the water-stained ceiling panels or the filthy floor. Along the corridor, people sat on sofas or wheeled chairs. They sat, and stared… at nothing. At first, Sammy thought they were wearing head-up-displays, that their vision was far away, maybe in some consensual imagery. After all, a few of them were talking, a few of them were making constant, complicated gestures. Then he noticed that the signs on the walls were painted there. The plain, peeling wall material was simply all there was to see. And the withered people sitting in the hall had eyes that were naked and vacant.

Sammy walked close behind Brother Song. The monk was talking to himself, but the words made sense. He was talking about The Man: “Bidwel Ducanh was not a kindly man. He was not someone you could like, even at the beginning… especially at the beginning. He said he had been rich, but he brought us nothing. The first thirty years, when I was young, he worked harder than any of us. There was no job too dirty, no job too hard. But he had ill to say of everyone. He mocked everyone. He would sit by a patient through the last night of life, and then afterwards sneer.” Brother Song was speaking in the past tense, but after a few seconds Sammy realized that he was not trying to convince Sammy of anything. Song was not even talking to himself. It was as if he were speaking a wake for someone he knew would be dead very soon. “And then as the years passed, like all the rest of us, he could help less and less. He talked about his enemies, how they would kill him if they ever found him. He laughed when we promised to hide him. In the end, only his meanness survived—and that without speech.”

Brother Song stopped before a large door. The sign above it was brave and floral: TO THE SUNROOM .

“Ducanh will be the one watching the sunset.” But the monk did not open the door. He stood with his head bowed, not quite blocking the way.

Sammy started to walk around him, then stopped, and said, “The payment I mentioned: It will be deposited to your order’s account.” The old man didn’t look up at him. He spat on Sammy’s jacket and then walked back down the hall, pushing past the constables.

Sammy turned and pulled at the door’s mechanical latch.

“Sir?” It was the Commissioner of Urban Security. The cop-bureaucrat stepped close and spoke softly. “Um. We didn’t want this escort job, sir. This should have been your own people.”

Huh? “I agree, Commissioner. So why didn’t you let me bring them?”

“It wasn’t my decision. I think they figured that constables would be more discreet.” The cop looked away. “Look, Fleet Captain. We know you Qeng Ho carry grudges a long time.”

Sammy nodded, although that truth applied more to customer civilizations than to individuals.

The cop finally looked him in the eye. “Okay. We’ve cooperated. We made sure that nothing about your search could leak back to your… target. But we won’t do this guy for you. We’ll look the other way; we won’t stop you. But I won’t do him.”

“Ah.” Sammy tried to imagine just where in the moral pantheon this fellow would fit. “Well, Commissioner, staying out of my way is all that is required. I can take care of this myself.”

The cop gave a jerky nod. He stepped back, and didn’t follow when Sammy opened the door “to the sunroom.”

The air was chill and stale, an improvement over the rank humidity of the hallway. Sammy walked down a dark stairway. He was still indoors, but not by much. This had been an exterior entrance once, leading down to street level. Plastic sheeting walled it in now, creating some kind of sheltered patio.

What if he’s like the wretches in the hallway?They reminded him of people who lived beyond the capabilities of medical support. Or the victims of a mad experimentory. Their minds had died in pieces. That was a finish he had never seriously considered, but now…

Sammy reached the bottom of the stairs. Around the corner was the promise of daylight. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and stood quietly for a long moment.

Do it.Sammy walked forward, into a large room. It looked like part of the parking lot, but tented with semiopaque plastic sheets. There was no heating, and drafts thuttered past breaks in the plastic. A few heavily bundled forms were scattered in chairs across the open space. They sat facing in no particular direction; some were looking into the gray stone of the exterior wall.

All that barely registered on Sammy. At the far end of the room, a column of sunlight fell low and slanting through a break or transparency in the roof. A single person had contrived to sit in the middle of that light.

Sammy walked slowly across the room, his eyes never leaving the figure that sat in the red and gold light of sunset. The face had a racial similarity to the high Qeng Ho Families, but it was not the face that Sammy remembered. No matter. The Man would have changed his face long ago. Besides, Sammy had a DNA counter in his jacket, and a copy of The Man’s true DNA code.

He was bundled in blankets and wore a heavy knit cap. He didn’t move but he seemed to be watching something, watching the sunset.It’s him. The conviction came without rational thought, an emotional wave breaking over him.Maybe incomplete, but this is him.

Sammy took a loose chair and sat down facing the figure in the light. A hundred seconds passed. Two hundred. The last rays of sunset were fading. The Man’s stare was blank, but he reacted to the coolness on his face. His head moved, vaguely searching, and he seemed to notice his visitor. Sammy turned so his face was lit by the sunset sky. Something came into the other’s eyes, puzzlement, memories swimming up from the depths. Abruptly, The Man’s hands came out of his blankets and jerked clawlike at Sammy’s face.