the chest wound, pain from the needles in my arms, and pain I couldn’t quite identify. It hurt to be me, to exist where I was, so I fought my way upwards, determined to break into the light, to tell them how I felt, to make the pain go away. And suddenly I was there, looking around, seeing Sasha, Riler, and the crates. It was disappointing somehow, and less than I had hoped for. Riler saw my movement and gestured with a fork. A meal pak sat balanced on his knee, and the smell made me salivate. “Welcome back. You’ve been out for nine hours.”
I rolled over and came to my knees. Sasha looked the same as she had before.
“No need to worry,” Riler said evenly. “She came to about three hours ago. Doc gave her something and she went to sleep.”
I nodded and felt a tremendous sense of relief. We were down but not necessarily out. Riler tossed a food pak in my direction. I caught it, pulled the tab, and felt the container warm my hands.
Suddenly I wanted to be in the asteroids, on Europa Station, or back on Earth. But they were a long way off and no more friendly than where I was. I opened the meal pak, tried the stew, and liked it. Riler nodded, and we ate in silence.
15
“…So, given the workers’ already ambivalent feelings about the company, it’s our opinion that the existence of a toxic waste dump deep in the heart of asteroid DXA-1411 should be kept secret until such time as morale improves or the planetoid can be abandoned.”
An excerpt from a “Board Eyes Only” memo on file at Trans-Solar HQ
The next couple of weeks passed with agonizing slowness. Although Sasha seemed to rally at first, an infection set in, and her condition worsened. What had been a clean wound produced a gray-green pus that looked horrible and smelled even worse. And as her health nose-dived, so did her spirits, leaving her in a passive, almost vegetablelike state.
Doc gave it everything he had, but the medical bag was little more than a glorified first aid kit and offered few drugs to choose from. He did manage to slow the rate of deterioration, however, for which I was extremely thankful.
The artificial days dragged by. Each brought with it an endless round of sponge baths, wound cleanings, and when the kid was conscious, hand feedings.
In the meantime Sasha came and went, said weird things, and held my hand in a grip of steel. There were times when her mother seemed to be present and times when she wasn’t. Whenever she was, the two of them had long, rambling conversations that almost always left Sasha in tears. Of course, what I heard was rather one-sided, and might have been totally inaccurate, but I got the impression of a mother who wasn’t around much and had high expectations. So high that her daughter would rather give up an eye than fail to please.
But there were other times too, like when Sasha opened her remaining eye, smiled and said, “I love you,” before slipping off to the dreamy-strange world she spent so much time in. I didn’t know who she saw at that particular moment, whether it was me or someone else, but I hoped it was me, and felt warmed by the possibility that it was.
The partnership with Riler went well and prevented the others from slitting our throats while we were asleep. Our supplies ran low after a while, and he watched Sasha while Joy and I journeyed to the other end of the barge for supplies. Supplies we shared with him.
And so it went until Riler’s calculations put us only a day or two out from the asteroids: a time when the tug crew might be expected to board. I was worried about the possibility of discovery, but Riler shook his head. “Come on, Max…think it through. The tug crew knows the score and are paid to ignore our presence. They have every reason to want us off the barge before they board.”
“Maybe,” I said doubtfully, “but the guy who put us aboard was worried.”
Riler shrugged. “Maybe he cut them out, put on an act, or who knows? Main thing is they aren’t gonna bother us.”
Riler’s words made sense, but so does brotherly love, and god knows there’s damned little of that floating around the solar system. Still, Riler was proved correct when a pair of space-armored heavies appeared and offered us the only deal we were likely to get. I noticed that while their pressure suits were relatively new, they looked old and worn. Both rigs were highly personalized and bore the painted-on equivalent of tattoos, bumper stickers, and graffiti.
The bigger of the two, a guy armed with twin blasters, and with the words “Miners do it deeper” emblazoned across his chest, spoke via his external suit speaker. His partner stood back a ways, her scatter gun covering the crowd, her jaw working a wad of gum. “My name’s Quint. Welcome to the ‘roids. Anyone that wants off this bucket should gather round. Anyone that wants to stay and enroll in a two-year, all-tuition paid course in ‘roid mining can take a nap.”
With the exception of Sasha, and some of the kids, we gathered round.
Quint had brown eyes, a fist-flattened nose, and a three-day beard. The unlit cigar roamed from one side of his mouth to the other, as if searching for the perfect spot to land. He nodded, as if to say that we’d made the right decision. “Good. Okay, here’s the deal…For two thousand dollars, or the equivalent in drugs, metals, or gems, we will haul you, plus twenty-five pounds of personal gear, to a Zebra-free landing in Deep Port. Kids under twelve travel half-price. Pets, robots, or personal gear over twenty-five pounds are subject to negotiation. We’ll take ’em if weight allows. If you don’t have the money, don’t waste my time. I’ve heard every hard-luck, I-got-screwed-life- sucks sob story in the solar system and simply don’t give a shit.”
As Quint spoke, his hands drifted towards the blasters at his sides. “Now, last but not least, don’t even think about trying to grease us. You may be armed with some nasty-assed hardware, and you may be the meanest sonofabitches that ever lifted off Mother Earth, but we’ve got a ship and you ain’t going nowhere without us. Got it?”
We had it, or I did anyway, and I assumed the others did too. A line formed as people hurried to pay. Most, if not all, of our fellow stowaways had anticipated the moment and set aside money or other valuables to pay for it. Neither Sasha nor I had been quite so provident, but our work aboard the Red Trader, plus the four thousand appropriated from the poppers, had given us a modest stash. I checked to make sure there was enough and got in line. There were pauses when the people in front of me offered trade goods rather than money, but the line jerked forward with reasonable regularity, and I found myself eyeball to eyeball with Quint. He squinted. “What the hell happened to your head?”
I shrugged. “What the hell happened to your nose?”
He grinned. “I stuck it into somebody else’s business. I do that from time to time. How many bods you planning to move?”
I gave thanks that Joy was hidden in my pocket, and said, “Two, but the second one is ill, and needs some help.”
Quint nodded agreeably. “No problem, long as you can pay the five-hundred-dollar surcharge.”
Five hundred seemed like a lot of extra money. I looked for signs of weakness. There weren’t any. I could pay the freight or work in the mines. The choice was mine. I peeled the bills off my quickly dwindling roll and handed them over. Quint nodded, and his cigar bobbed up and down when he spoke. “Where’s your friend?”
I pointed towards the spot where Sasha lay. “Over there.”
Quint murmured into his throat mike, and a pair of space-suited figures came on the double. They’d been out of sight until now, and wore riot guns slung across their chests. A ready reserve in case of trouble. They were identical twins, or had been until one of them ran face first into a piece of mining equipment and forever settled the question of which one was which.
Scarface was very gentle, as if she knew what pain was all about and treated Sasha like fragile china. The kid’s dressings were due for a change, and smelled horrible, but the twins gave no sign of it. They loaded Sasha into her stretcher and did their best to make her comfortable. That’s the funny thing about goodness: it can bubble up when you least expect it, and disappear just as quickly.
The kid was only half conscious and regarded me through bleary eyes. I patted her hand, promised everything would be all right, and hoped it was true.
