Yet they had.
I could see something ahead, through the dense-packed rain-forest foliage. A light. Definitely artificial, I thought — perhaps the allies I was supposed to be meeting. I hoped that was the case anyway. I did not have many allies now. The few left in the orthodox power structure had managed to break me out of custody before the trial, but they had not been able to assist me in reaching sanctuary. Very probably those friends would be shot for their treason. So be it. They had made the necessary sacrifice. I had expected nothing less.
At first it had not even been a war.
The Brazilia and the Baghdad had arrived in orbit, confronted by the skeletal hulk of the old Santiago. For long months nothing had happened, the two allied ships maintaining a chill observational silence. Then they had launched a pair of shuttles on trajectories which would bring them down in the Peninsula’s northern latitudes. I had wished I could have saved a speck of antimatter in the old ship, just to fire up its engine for a moment, and to douse the shuttles with that killing lance. But I had never learned the trick of shutting down an antimatter reservoir.
The shuttles had come down, then made further flights back up to orbit, ferrying down sleepers.
More long months of waiting.
And then the attacks had begun: skirmish squads moving down from the north, striking against the Santiago’s nascent settlements. So what that there were barely three thousand people on the whole planet. It was enough for a small war… and it had been quiet at first, giving both sides time to dig in, consolidate… breed.
Not really a war at all.
But my own side were still trying to have me executed for war crimes. It was not that they were interested in peace with the enemy — too much had happened for that — but they certainly blamed me for bringing about the whole situation. They would kill me and then return to the fray.
Ungrateful sons of bitches. They had twisted everything now. They had even changed the name of the planet, as a kind of joke. Not Journey’s End any more.
Sky’s Edge.
Because of the edge I had given them to be the first to arrive.
I hated it. I knew what they meant by it: a sick acknowledgement of the necessary crime; a reminder of what had brought them here.
But the name was sticking.
Now I paused; not merely to catch my breath. I had never really liked the jungle. There were rumours of things in it — large things which slithered. But no one I trusted had ever seen one. Just stories then — that was all.
Just stories.
But I was still lost. The light I had seen earlier was gone now. It might have been obstructed by a thick patch of trees… or perhaps I’d imagined it all along. I looked around me. It was very dark, and everything looked the same. The sky was blackening overhead — 61 Cygni-B, normally the brightest star in the sky apart from Swan, was below the horizon — and the jungle would soon just be a darkening extension of that blackness.
Perhaps I was going to die here.
But then I thought I saw movement far ahead, a milky shape which I at first assumed was the same patch of light I’d seen earlier. But this milky shape was much closer — approaching me, in fact. It was man-shaped and it was stepping towards me through the overgrowth. It shone, as if imbued with its own inner luminosity.
I smiled. I recognised the shape now. I shouldn’t have been afraid. I should have remembered that I was never truly alone; that my guide would always appear to show me the way forward.
‘You didn’t think I’d forget you, did you?’ Clown said. ‘Come on. It’s not far now.’
Clown led me on.
It had not been my imagination; not completely. There was a light ahead, gleaming through the trees like spectral fog. My allies…
By the time I reached them Clown was no longer with me. He had faded away like a retinal burn. That was the last time I ever saw him — but he had done well to bring me this far. He had been the only trusted friend of my life, even though I knew that he was just a psychological figment, a subconscious entity projected into daylight, born from memories of the tutelary persona I had known in the nursery aboard the Santiago.
What did that matter?
‘Captain Haussmann!’ called my friends through the trees. ‘You made it! We were beginning to think the others hadn’t managed…’
‘Oh, they played their parts well,’ I said. ‘I imagine they’ve been arrested by now — if they haven’t already been shot.’
‘That’s the odd thing, sir. We are hearing reports of arrests — and they’re saying they’ve recaptured you.’
‘That wouldn’t make any sense, would it?’
But it would, I thought — if the man they thought they had recaptured only looked like me; if the man only looked like me because buried beneath the supple skin of his face was an armature of twenty additional muscles which allowed him to mimic almost anyone. He would talk and act like me too, as he had been conditioned over years to do so; trained to think of me as his God; his only desire to obey me selflessly. And the missing arm? Well, that was a dead giveaway, wasn’t it? The man they had arrested looked like Sky Haussmann and was missing an arm as well.
There couldn’t be any doubt that they had recaptured me. There’d be a trial, of sorts, during which the prisoner might appear incoherent — but what more would they expect from an eighty-year-old man? He was probably going senile. The best thing would be to make some kind of example of him; something as public as possible. Something no one was going to forget in a hurry, even if it bordered on the inhumane. A crucifixion might fit the bill.
‘This way, sir.’
There was a vehicle waiting in the pool of light, a tracked surface rover. They bundled me aboard it and then we sped through the forest trail. We drove through night for what felt like hours, always further and further away from anything resembling civilisation.
Eventually they brought me to a large clearing.
‘Is this it?’ I said.
They nodded in unison. I knew the plan by then, of course. The climate was against me now. It was not a time for heroes — they preferred to redefine them as war criminals. My allies had sheltered me until now, but they had not been able to stop my arrest. It had been all they could do to spring me from the makeshift detention centre in Nueva Iquique. Now that my double had been recaptured, I would have to disappear for a little while.
Here in the jungle they had devised a means to protect me for good; no matter how the fortunes of my allies in the main settlements waxed and waned. They had buried a fully-functioning sleeper berth here, with the power supply to keep it working for many decades. They thought there was a risk involved in using it, but they also thought I was really eighty years old. I figured the risk was a lot less than they imagined. By the time I was ready to wake up — I’d give it a century at the very least — my helpers would have access to much better technology. It wouldn’t be a problem to revive me. It probably wouldn’t even be a problem to repair my arm.
All I had to do was sleep until the right time. I would be tended across the decades by my allies — just as I had tended the sleepers who rode the Santiago.
But with infinitely more devotion.
They hitched the surface rover to something buried beneath overgrowth — a metal hook — and then pulled the vehicle forward, dragging aside a camouflaged door set into the clearing’s floor, revealing steps sinking down into a well-lit, clinically clean chamber.
Helped by two of my people, I was escorted down the stairs, until I reached the waiting sleeper-casket. It had been refurbished since it had carried someone from Sol system, and it would suit my needs excellently.
‘We’d best get you under as soon as possible,’ said my aide.
I smiled and nodded at the man, and then allowed him to slip a hypodermic into my arm.
Sleep came quickly. The last thing I remembered, just before it closed over me, was that when I woke up I would need a new name. Something that no one would ever connect to Sky Haussmann — but which, nonetheless,
