Screen later on that he let us use only a small amount every day, and we suffered, and so did he, and he got crazier as the sun worked on him, and there was less Screen all the time. He had it hidden, I think. We have not found it yet. We are still on quarter ration.”
Carpenter tried to imagine what that was like, sailing around under the ferocious sky of these tropical latitudes without body armor. The daily injections withheld, the unshielded skin of these people exposed to the full fury of the greenhouse climate—the defective ozone layer, the punishing sun. Could Kohlberg really have been so stupid, or so loony? But there was no getting around the raw pink patches on Kovalcik’s skin.
“You’d like us to let you have a supply of Screen, is that it?” he asked uneasily.
“No. We would not expect that of you. Sooner or later, we will find it where Kohlberg has hidden it.”
“Then what is it you do want?”
“Come,” Kovalcik said. “Now I show you the officers.”
The mutineers had stashed their prisoners in the ship’s infirmary, a stark, humid room far belowdeck with three double rows of bunks along the wall and some nonfunctioning medical mechs between them. Each of the bunks but one held a sweat-shiny man with a week’s growth of beard. They were conscious, but not very. Their wrists were tied.
“It is very disagreeable for us, keeping them like this,” Kovalcik said. “But what can we do? This is Captain Kohlberg.” Captain Kohlberg was heavy-set, Teutonic-looking, groggy-eyed. “He is calm now, but only because we sedate him,” Kovalcik explained. “We sedate all of them, fifty cc of omnipax every day. But it is a threat to their health, the constant sedation. And in any case, the drugs, we are running short. Another few days and then we will have none, and it will be harder to keep them restrained, and if they break free there will be war on this ship again.”
“I’m not sure if we have any omnipax on board,” Carpenter said. “Certainly not enough to do you much good for long.”
“That is not what we are asking either,” said Kovalcik.
“What
“These five men, they threaten everybody’s safety. They have forfeited the right to command. This I could show, with playbacks of the time of struggle on this ship. Take them.”
“What?”
Kovalcik gave him a look of sudden strange intensity, fierce, compelling, unsettling.
“Take them onto your ship. They must not stay here. These are crazy men. We must rid ourselves of them. We must be left to repair our ship in peace and do the work we are paid to do. It is a humanitarian thing, taking them. You are going back to San Francisco with the iceberg? Take them, these troublemakers. They will be no danger to you. They will be grateful for being rescued. But here they are like bombs that must sooner or later go off.”
Carpenter looked at her as if she were a bomb that had already gone off. Rennett had simply turned away, covering what sounded like a burst of hysterical laughter by forcing a coughing fit.
That was all he needed, making himself an accomplice in this thing, obligingly picking up a bunch of officers who had been pushed off their ship by mutineers. Kyocera-Merck men at that. Aid and succor to the great corporate enemy? The head Samurai Industries agent in Frisco would really love it when he came chugging into port with five K-M men on board. He’d especially want to hear that Carpenter had done it for humanitarian reasons.
Besides, he had no room for them. Where the fuck were these men going to sleep? On deck between the spigots? Should he pitch a tent on the iceberg, maybe? What about feeding them, for Christ’s sake? What about Screen? Everything was calibrated down to the last molecule.
“I don’t think you understand our situation,” Carpenter said carefully. “Aside from the legalities of the thing, we’ve got no space for extra personnel. We barely have enough room for ourselves.”
“It would be just for a short while, no? A week or two?”
“I tell you we’ve got every millimeter allotted. If God Himself wanted to come on board as a passenger, we’d have a tough time figuring out where to put Him. You want technical help patching your ship back together, we can try to provide that. We can even let you have some supplies. But taking five men aboard—”
Kovalcik’s eyes began to look a little wild. She was breathing very hard now. “You must do this for us! You must! Otherwise—”
She didn’t go on.
“Otherwise?” Carpenter prompted.
All he got from her was a bleak stare, no friendlier than the green-streaked ozone-crisp sky.
“What was that?”
“It is delirium,” said Kovalcik.
“Delirium?” Carpenter said.
Kovalcik’s eyes grew even chillier. Drawing an ultrasonic syringe from a cabinet in the wall, she slapped it against Kohlberg’s arm and pressed. There was a small buzzing sound. Kohlberg subsided into sleep. Snuffling snores rose from his bunk.
Kovalcik smiled. Now that the captain was unconscious again she seemed to be recovering her self-control. “He is a madman. You see what my skin is like. What his madness has done to me, has done to every one of us. If he got loose, if he put the voyage in jeopardy—yes, yes, we would kill him. We would kill them all. It would be only self-defense, you understand me? But it must not come to that.” Her voice was icy. You could air-condition an entire city with that voice. “You were not here during the trouble. You do not know what we went through. We will not go through it again. Take these men from us, Captain.”
She stepped back, folding her arms across her chest. The room was very quiet, suddenly, except for the pingings and thumpings from the ship’s interior, and an occasional snore out of Kohlberg. Kovalcik was completely calm again, the ferocity and iciness no longer visible. As though she were merely telling him: This is the situation, you have heard the story, the ball is now in your court, Captain Carpenter.
What a stinking squalid mess, Carpenter thought.
But he was greatly surprised to find, when he looked behind the irritation he felt at having been dragged into this, a curious sadness where he would have expected anger to be.
Despite everything he found himself flooded with surprising compassion for Kovalcik, for Kohlberg, for every one of them, for the whole damned fucking poisoned heat-blighted world they had all been born into. Who had asked for any of this—the heavy green sky, the fiery air, the daily need for Screen, the million frantic improvisations that made continued life on Earth possible? Not us. Our great-great-grandparents had, maybe, but not us. Only they’re not here to know what it’s like, and we are. They had rucked the world in one long merry carnival of rape, and then had tossed us the battered remains. And never even had known what they were doing. And wouldn’t have given a shit about it if they had.
Then the moment passed. What the hell could he do? Did Kovalcik think he was Jesus Christ? He had no room for these people. He had no extra Screen or food. And the basic thing was that this was none of his business. San Francisco was waiting for its iceberg. The berg was melting even as they dithered here. It was time to move along. Tell her anything, just get out of here.
“All right,” Carpenter said. “I see your problem. I’m not entirely sure I can help out, but I’ll do what I can. I’ll check our supplies and let you know what we’re able to do. Okay?” He looked at Rennett, who for a time seemed to have disappeared into some alternate dimension. Rennett had returned, now. She was staring at Carpenter in a coldly curious way, as though trying to see into his skull and read his mind. Her expression was challenging, truculent. She wanted to know how he was going to cope with this.
So did he, as a matter of fact.
Kovalcik said, “You will give me your answer this evening?”
“First thing in the morning,” said Carpenter. “Best I can do. Too late tonight for working it all out.”
“You will call me, then.”
“Yes. I’ll call you.”
To Rennett he said, “Come on. Let’s get back to the ship.”
