Joan Vinge: The Outcasts of Heaven Belt

MacWong shook his head. “The ship took a hit, but it got away from the Ringers—all but one of ’em. We monitored some of their followups; that alien ship is a ramscoop, and when one of the Ringer pursuit craft got too close she just used the exhaust to melt it into scrap. Maybe that indignant Viking Queen isn’t armed, but she’s dangerous.”

Wadie said nothing, waiting.

“We don’t know where the ship is now, or even why it’s here. But I have some ideas. She said it was from outside the system, and I believe that. Nobody in the Belt has anything that sophisticated any more. And a woman runnin’ it—particularly a woman who looks like that—”

“Maybe she’s an albino… maybe she’s from the Main Belt. The scavengers don’t care who goes into space; they’ve got no protection against radiation anyhow. Maybe they got very lucky on salvage.” And yet he knew that MacWong was right; that the woman and her accent were too alien.

MacWong looked at him. “Nobody gets that lucky. What’s wrong, Wadie, the miracle too much for you? This isn’t some mediaman’s fantasy, believe me. That’s a ship from Outside, the first contact we’ve had with the rest of humanity in over three gigasecs. And the course they set away from the Rings could be taking them to the old capital, Lansing. If that’s right, there can only be one reason why that ship is here: they don’t know about the Civil War. They’ve come to Heaven lookin’ for golden streets, and when they learn there aren’t any left we’ll never see ’em again. We can’t let that happen…”

“What good would one ship do us now?” He stared at the blank wall screen, against his will felt another question stubbornly taking form.

“ That ship could do us all the good in the universe.” MacWong picked up his platinum cat “That ship is treasure, that ship is power… that ship could save us.”

Wadie nodded, admitting to himself that the ship’s immense fusion reactor alone could give the Demarchy the start to rebuild capital industry. And God only knew what other technology—functioning technology—they might have on board. Just the possession of a ship like that would change the Demarchy’s snow dealings with the Rings forever. They could even bypass Discus and the Ringers, set up distilleries of their own out on Sevin’s moons…

For as long as he could remember he had lived with signs of a society gradually coming apart at the seams, alone in the wasteland that civil war had made of Heaven Belt. Because of its peripheral location, the Demarchy had survived the Civil War relatively intact. But the Main Belt had been destroyed, and now the Demarchy’s only outside trade contact was with the Grand Harmony of the Discan Rings, and the Ringers were barely surviving. The Demarchy was slipping down with it, but because it had so much further to go, he had discovered that no one else seemed to realize the truth. They were blinded by the fierce, traditional self-interest that was the Demarchy’s strength—and perhaps, now, its fatal weakness.

He had become a negotiator, hoping to bind up his people’s self-inflicted wounds. He had believed that somehow the unifying element, the common bond of need that joined every human being, could be used as a force against disintegration and decay; that the Demarchy would continue, that they would find an answer. And with this ship… His imagination leaped, fell back as the question struck him down: Who would control a ship like that… and who could control the ones who did control it? “But as you said, that ship will go back home, once they see what’s left of Lansing.”

“Maybe.” MacWong nicked dust off of his cuff. “But Osuna thinks they might need to refuel first. It’s a long way home to anywhere from here. They’re not likely to go back to the Rings to get fuel, under the circumstances. Which means they might come to us; if they need processed hydrogen, there’s no place else to go. So I’m sendin’ out everyone I can spare. I want you at Mecca. The distilleries will make it a prime target, and you’re more experienced at dealing with— ‘aliens’—than anybody on the staff.”

Wadie accepted the tacit compliment, the tacit distaste, remembered fifty million seconds spent in the Grand Harmony of the Discan Rings, and things it had shown him that he had never expected to see. He stood up, reaching for his hat “What if they’re not in the mood for negotiation?”

“I don’t expect they will be. But that doesn’t matter; you’re paid to put them in the mood. Promise them anythin’, but keep them here, stall that ship, until we can take control of it.”

Wadie adjusted his beret, looked back from the mirroring wall. “What do you mean by ‘we,’ Lije? Just who is goin’ to control that ship? It won’t be the government, the people will see to that. And the first kid on the rock to own one—”

Mac Wong was not amused. “I sometimes wonder if you didn’t spend too much time with the Ringers, Abdhiamal. Dammit, Wadie, I’m not still questioning your loyalty, after two hundred megasecs. But there are still some who do; who think maybe you’d really like to see a centralized government here.” He stopped. “There’ll be a general meeting to settle the issue once we have the ship.” He leaned forward across the gargoyled desk. “The Demarchy has to have that ship, and no one but the Demarchy.”

“You’re the boss.” Wadie bowed.

“No.” MacWong straightened. “The Demarchy is the boss. We give the people what they think they want. Nothing else means anything. Forget that, and we’re out of a job—or worse. If I was you, I wouldn’t ever forget it.”

And knowing that MacWong never did, Wadie left the office.

Betha left the hydroponics lab at last, began to climb up through the hollow silence of the central stairwell She could no longer remember how many times she had climbed these stairs in the past two days; the duties of a crew of seven were an endless treadmill of labor for a crew of two. She passed the machine shop on the fourth level, kept on, reached their sleeping quarters on the third. One more level above, across the well, the flashing red light over the sealed dayroom door caught her unwilling eyes. She stopped, wrenched out of her fatigue by a fresh rush of grief.

She stepped hurriedly through to the corridor that ringed the stairwell on the third level, that gave access to seven private rooms… and all that remained of five human beings who were lost to her forever. To her right, Lara’s room; everything in its place, mirroring the precision of Lara’s mind… Betha remembered the crisp directness of her voice across an examining table in the ship’s infirmary; her graying hair, the warm concern in her gray eyes that denied her clinical detachment. There was a padded stool in Lara’s room made from a cetoid vertebra; a Color Atlas of the Diseases of Fish, Amphibians, and Reptiles. She had been a medical researcher on Morningside, before their family had become a crew and she had become their doctor; but marine biology had been her hobby, her real love. And Sean, the smartass, had written a song, “Lara and the Leviathan,” that swallowed her up in verses about this “cetoid monster,” the Ranger…

Through the open doorway directly before her, Betha could see a tangle of electronics gear, Nikolai’s balalaika laid out on the sleeping bag on the platform of his bed. She pictured him, balding, bearded, brooding; with a voice like an echo escaping from a well… A patient, skillful teacher, an electronics expert—a repairman, at home, serving the entire Borealis moiety. She remembered him laughing, dodging the shoe she had thrown at Sean for calling her Ranger a whale…