Dartagnan hobbled to the control plate, counting seconds in his mind. He could barely see her face, staring back at him, saw her mouth move silently:
He nodded, whispering, “Goodbye, Goody Two-Shoes. Good luck—” His hand trembled as he reached out to start the lock cycling.
He turned back with Siamang to the control panel, watched the viewscreen, waited. The seconds passed, the lock cycled. She appeared suddenly on the screen, stumbled as the wind gusted … fell, got up, fell again as she tried to run, trying to reach the sheltering dome, too far away. The shifting, slate-blue dust slipped under her feet; she fell again, tried to get up, couldn't. At last he saw her try to free the frozen valve one final time … and then unlatch her helmet. She raised her head, too far away for him to see her face; he dragged a breath into his own tortured lungs. She reached for her helmet again, frantically … crumpled forward into the dust, lay coiled like a fetus, lay still.
Dartagnan made himself look at Siamang; looked away again, sick. He sagged down into the pilot's seat, reached for the restraining straps. Siamang turned back from the screen, the obscenity of his pleasure fading to stunned disgust. “Get us out of this graveyard.” He moved past Chaim, toward his own padded couch; stopped, turned back. “By the way, this time it was premeditated murder. And you did it, Red. Keep that in mind.”
Dartagnan didn't answer, staring at the screen, looking down at the empty seat beside him.
He took the ship safely up through the atmosphere, learning that getting up off a planet's surface was much simpler than getting safely down. He rendezvoused, docked the shrunken landing module at last within the stretched, arachnoid fingers of the parent ship; he heard his father's voice directing, guiding, encouraging … knowing with a kind of certainty that after what he had seen and done on the world below, he couldn't make a mistake now.
On board the main ship again, he moved through the levels to the control room, found their flight coordinates already in the computer. Mechanically he took the ship out of orbit, barely conscious of what he did; as he turned away from the panel Siamang congratulated him, with apparent sincerity. Dartagnan pushed on past, wordlessly, and ducked into the aluminum-ringed well. He reached Mythili Fukinuki's cabin door, stopped himself, and with a sudden masochistic urge, opened it and went inside. He slid the door shut, drifted to the bed, pulling off his jacket, his shirt, one boot. He forced his aching body into the sleeping bag, settled softly, mumbling, “Good night. Goody Two-Shoes.…” And finally, thankfully, he slept.
When he woke again his face burned under his touch, his ankle was hot and swollen inside his boot. He went down into the commons, forced himself to eat, found a bottle of antibiotics and swallowed a handful of pills heedlessly. Then he went back to the cabin, locked the door, and slept again.
He repeated the cycle four more times, avoiding Siamang, before his fever broke and he remembered to check the ship's progress. He made minor alterations in their course, lingered at the screen for long seconds, searching the darkness for something he would never find. Then he tried to use the radio, and was deafened by a rush of static. He realized that Siamang had done something to the long-range antenna while he slept; there would be no more radio contact until they were back within Demarchy space. He checked the chronometer: Less than half a megasecond of flight time had elapsed; even without the added mass of the propellant tanks they had carried on the way out, more than three megaseconds still remained.
“How's our progress?”
He turned and found Siamang behind him. “Fine, as far as I can tell.” His own voice startled him, unexpected.
“And how's your conscience?”
Dartagnan laughed sharply, nervously. “What conscience?”
Siamang smiled. Dartagnan risked a look straight into his eyes. They were clear, the pupils undilated; he wondered whether that was good or bad. “I wondered whether you might be suffering the pangs of remorse; you're not looking too well.” Faint mockery, faint disapproval … faint suspicion.
Chaim scratched an unshaven cheek, cautiously expressionless. “Only the pangs of a fall down stairs.” He glanced down at his unbuttoned jacket, the cheap bedraggled lace on his half-tucked-in shirt. He looked back at Siamang, flawlessly in control, as always. He raised his hands. “I was just going to go clean myself up,” he muttered, and retreated.
Seconds sifted down through the hourglass of time; the ship moved through the darkness, slowly gaining speed. The casual persecution Siamang had inflicted on the trip out grew more calculated now, and more pervasive; until Dartagnan began to feel that Siamang only lived for his personal torment, a private demon sprung from his own private hell. He lived on soy milk, as the chronic tension exacerbated his ulcer; he began to lose sleep, as Siamang's probing found the hidden wounds of his guilt. He felt the armor of his hard-won, studied indifference wearing thin, and wondered how much more he could stand. And he wondered what pathology drove Siamang to methodically destroy the loyalty of the only “witness” in his own defense.…
Until suddenly Dartagnan saw that it was no pathology at all, but a coldly rational test. In spite of what he was, in spite of everything, Siamang didn't trust him … and unless Siamang was completely convinced of his cowed submission, and his totally amoral self-interest, there might be a third Tragic Accident before the end of this Odyssey of Lies and Death. They were safely on a homeward course; he was entirely expendable again. Three deaths might be hard to explain, but Siamang had the means to sway public opinion at any trial—as long as there was no one to testify against him.
His sudden comprehension of his danger steadied Dartagnan on the tightwire he walked above the abyss of his desperation: He would endure anything, do anything he had to do; there were only two things that mattered now—his own survival, and the reward that he would have earned a thousand times over.… Not a ship, not his freedom, but the knowledge that Siamang and Sons would pay. They would pay to bring Mythili Fukinuki back to the Demarchy; they would pay for Sekka-Olefin's death … they could never even begin to pay enough, for what they had done to Heaven's future.
And so he endured, ingratiating, obedient, and smiling—always smiling. He lived for the future, the present was a darkness behind his eyes; he was a man on a wire above the starry void between the past and their destination. And in the refuge of his cabin, he found the private world of Mythili Fukinuki, in a chest filled with books and papers. Ashamed at first, he rummaged through them, finding the precise impersonalities of astrogation manuals … and books on poetry and philosophy, not only recent but translations into the Anglo from all the varied cultures of their heritage on Earth. Passages were marked with parentheses, question marks, exclamations; her own thoughts held communion in the margins of the shining plastic pages or spilled over, filling notebooks.
He began to read, as she had read, to fill the empty stretch of time. He felt her presence in everything he read, in each small discovery; beyond anger or bitter grief, she gave him comfort, brought him strength.… And he understood at last that he had hated prospecting because he hated loneliness; that because of his resentment, being with his father had been the same as being alone. But he saw himself on his own ship, imagined Mythili Fukinuki as his partner—and knew he would need nothing more, need no one else, to be content.… A much-opened book of poems fell open again in his hands, and he saw her plain, back-slated writing in the margin:
He found a grease pencil in the sack of his belongings, and slowly, as though there was no strength left in his hand, wrote
But he realized then that if he was wrong, if he was as guilty as Siamang himself … if Mythili Fukinuki had died because of him, then even if he survived to give testimony, it would only be his own word against Siamang's, and that might not be enough. Siamang had influence; he had nothing—he had no proof, without Mythili. And if she was dead, he had to be certain that Siamang would never get away with it. Somehow he had to find a way to make Siamang incriminate himself. But his camera was ruined, the radio was out; he didn't even have a tape recorder on him … or did he?
He got up silently, and slipped out of the room.
They were well within Demarchy space; a hundred kiloseconds remained before they would dock at Mecca. Dartagnan made radio contact at last, as Siamang looked on, and set up a media conference for their arrival. A
