Bob Shaw: Orbitsville

I’m a dead man , he kept thinking in detached wonderment. No matter what I do, no matter how my luck holds out in the next couple of hours… I’m a dead man. And my wife is a dead woman. And my son is a dead child. Even if the ion tide holds strong and fills my wings, we’re all dead - because there’s no place to hide. There’s only one other world, and Elizabeth’s ships will be waiting there…

A face turned towards him from the crowd, curiously, and Garamond realized he had made a sound. He smiled — recreating himself in his own image of a successful flickerwing captain, clothed in the black-and-silver which was symbolic of star oceans — and the face slid away, satisfied that it had made a mistake in locating the source of the despairing murmur. Garamond gnawed his lip while he covered the remaining distance to his transport which was stacked in one of the reserved magazines near the concourse. The sharp-eyed middle-aged driver saw him approaching, and had the vehicle brought up to ground level by the time Garamond reached the silo.

“Thanks.” Garamond answered the man’s salute, grateful for the small saving in time, and got inside the upholstered shell.

“I thought you’d be in a hurry, sir.” The driver’s eyes stared knowingly at him from the rear view mirror.

“Oh?” Garamond controlled a spasm of unreasonable fear — this was not the way his arrest would come about. He eyed the back of the driver’s neck which was ruddy, deeply creased and had a number of long-established blackheads.

“Yes, sir. All the Starflight commanders are in a hurry to reach the field today. The weather reports aren’t good, I hear.”

Garamond nodded and tried to look at ease as the vehicle surged forward with a barely perceptible whine from its magnetic engines. “I think I’ll catch the tide,” he said evenly. “At least, I hope so — my family are coming to see me off.”

The driver’s narrow face showed some surprise. “I thought you were going direct…”

“A slight change of plan — we’re calling for my wife and son. You remember the address?”

“Yes, sir. I have it here.”

“Good. Get there as quickly as you can.” With a casual movement Garamond broke the audio connection between the vehicle’s two compartments and picked up the nearest communicator set. He punched in his home code and held the instrument steady with his knees while he waited for the screen to come to life and show that his call had been accepted. Supposing Aileen and Chris had gone out? The boy had been upset — again Garamond remembered him shaking his fist instead of waving goodbye, expressing in the slight change of gesture all the emotions which racked his small frame — and Aileen could have taken him away for an afternoon of distraction and appeasement. If that were the case…

“Vance!” Aileen’s face crystallized in miniature between his hands. “I was sure you’d gone. Where are you?”

“I’m on my way back to the house, be there in ten minutes.”

“Back here? But…”

“Something has happened, Aileen. I’m bringing you and Chris with me to the field. Is he there?”

“He’s out on the patio. But, Vance , you never let us see you off.”

“I…” Garamond hesitated, and decided it could be better all round if his wife were to be kept in ignorance at this stage. “I’ve changed my mind about some things. Now, get Chris ready to leave the house as soon as I get there.”

Aileen raised her shoulders uncertainly. “Vance, do you think it’s the best thing for him? I mean you’ve been away from the house for three hours and he’s just begun to get over his first reactions — now you’re going to put him through it all again.”

“I told you something has come up.” How many pet dogs , Garamond asked himself, did I see around the Presidential suite this afternoon? Five? Six?

“What has come up?”

“I’ll explain later.” At what range can a dog scent a corpse? Liz’s brood of pets could be the biggest threat of all . “Please get Chris ready.“

Aileen shook her head slightly. “I’m sorry, Vance, but I don’t…”

“Aileen!” Garamond deliberately allowed an edge of panic to show in his voice, using it to penetrate the separate universe of normalcy in which his wife still existed. “I can’t explain it now, but you and Chris must be ready to come to the field with me within the next few minutes. Don’t argue any more, just do what I’m asking.”

He broke the connection and forced himself to sit back, wondering if he had already said too much for the benefit of any communications snoops who could be monitoring the public band. The car was travelling west on the main Akranes auto-link, surging irregularly as it jockeyed for position in the traffic. It occurred to Garamond that the driver’s performance was not as good as it had been on the way out to Starflight House, perhaps through lack of concentration. On an impulse he reconnected the vehicle’s intercom.

“…at his home,” the driver was saying. “Expect to reach North Field in about twenty minutes.”

Garamond cleared his throat. “What are you doing?”

“Reporting in, sir.”

“Why?” “Standing orders. All the fleet drivers keep Starflight Centradata informed about their movements.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Sir?”

“What did you say about my movements?”

The driver’s shoulders stirred uneasily, causing his Starflight sunburst emblems to blink redly with reflected light. “I just said you decided to pick up your family on the way to North Field.”

“Don’t make any further reports.”

“Sir?”

“As a captain in the Starflight Exploratory Arm I think I can make my way around this part of Iceland without a nursemaid.”

“I’m sorry, but…”

“Just drive the car.” Garamond fought to control the unreasoning anger he felt against the man in front. “And go faster.”

“Yes, sir.” The creases in the driver’s weatherbeaten neck deepened as he hunched over the wheel.

Garamond made himself sit quietly, with closed eyes, motionless except for a slight rubbing of his palms against his knees which failed completely to remove the perspiration. He tried to visualize what was happening back on the hill. Was the routine of Elizabeth’s court proceeding as on any other afternoon, with the boards and committees and tribunals deliberating in the pillared halls, and the President moving among them, complacently deflecting and vibrating the webstrands of empire with her very presence? Or had someone begun to notice Harald’s absence? And his own? He opened his eyes and gazed sombrely at the unrolling scenery outside the car. The umbra of commercial buildings which extended for several kilometres around Starflight House was giving way to the first of the company-owned residential developments. As an S.E.A. commander, Garamond had been entitled to one of the ‘choice’ locations, which in Starflight usage tended to mean closest to Elizabeth’s elevated palace. At quiet moments on the bridge of his ship Garamond had often thought about how the sheer massiveness of her power had locally deformed the structure of language in exactly the same way as a giant sun was able to twist space around itself so that captive worlds, though believing themselves to be travelling in straight lines, were held in orbit. In the present instance, however, he was satisfied with the physics of Elizabeth’s gravitation because it meant that his home was midway between Starflight House and the North Field, and he was losing the minimum of time in collecting his family.

Even before the vehicle had halted outside the pyramidical block of apartments, Garamond had the door open and was walking quickly to the elevator. He stepped out of it on the third floor, went to his own door and let himself in. The familiar, homely surroundings seemed to crowd in on him for an instant, creating a new sense of shock over the fact that life as he knew it had ended. For a moment he felt like a ghost, visiting scenes to which he was no longer relevant.