Nearing the north pole, almost weightless, I watch her fall back, Coriolis taking her stomach by the inner ears and twisting. And Mad Wizard speeds up where muscle counts. Death Angel grabs my leg to drag me down but I pull her up with it and we’re through the hatch.
“Where you going, Mad Wizard?” he yelled down the axial tube. “You think I can’t catch you?”
“You got her she’s mine!” the voice called back.
Virgil reached into his pouch and withdrew a stun grenade. Twisting into position as he hurtled down the circular passage, he heaved the activated ball of plastic explosive toward the fleeing man. “You want Death Angel? Take Nightsheet!” Virgil shouted. His own velocity added to that of his throw; the charge sailed past its target in a few seconds and kept going. Brennen watched it whiz past and desperately tumbled to stop his own forward momentum.
Virgil and the clone hit a solid wall of air. Like swallows in a hurricane they stopped, blasted backward by the explosion. In an instant, the force had spent itself and Virgil grabbed at a support brace.
“Delia!”
He saw her sprawled farther down the tube, her leg caught in a hatch recess. He clambered toward her.
“Wanderer, Hunter” Brennen’s nearing voice wheezed. Virgil spun around. A ripped, bruised body floated slowly past him, one leg broken and gyrating in bloody circles. Brennen glared at him with eyes demonically red from broken veins. Hoarsely, he asked: “Why you make the Black One cradle me?”
Virgil hovered face to face with the shattered industrialist for a moment. Brennen’s face, seen up close, revealed lines of worry, fear, and-finally-insanity. Virgil felt that if he could have watched that map over time, he might have some clue to his own future.
“Mad Wizard,” Virgil whispered. “You think you can be God just because you can die; I fixed you because you didn’t know your limitations.” Brennen continued to drift back toward the habitat’s main sphere. He raised his voice to reach the receding figure. “Wizard, Nightsheet takes people like you easy. Mad Wizard!” He turned back to the woman above him. “Come on.”
She breathed in shallow whimpers, her eyes closed.
Death Angel hangs by her foot, bent and purple in the hatch. Why is everyone so hurting, Death Angel? Even you.
He pulled her broken foot free and tugged her toward the docking bay. Setting her inside the nearest lock with full pressure, he looked for a space suit for her. When he found one, he cursed. Mad Wizard you went too crazy. Why’d you empty all the air tanks and break the rebreathers? Now I can’t get her through the vacuum. Or-wait.
Virgil remembered something from his past not his own.
The dead man did something once. Breathed his own suit air that lasted him long enough. She breathes so lightly in her marrow slumber.
He stuffed her into the pressure suit and made certain that it shrank down evenly. Sealing her up, he let her float while he connected his headgear, leaving hers open for the moment.
Airlock’s half blown. Must have been the dead man’s work, straight. How to get Mad Wizard away from me for good? Kill him? What if Nightsheet has other plans for him? Then send him to Master Snoop. Go now.
He raced back to the command area-passing the unconscious Brennen at the end of the axial tube-and powered up the habitat’s Valliardi Transfer. Typing in a command, he waited until the computer announced that a course had been calculated. He requested a ten-minute delay before transference and pressed the command entry button. For an instant he considered setting the fission bomb with a fifteen minute delay. Instead, he defused it and fastened it and his waist pack to the command seat.
There, Mad Wizard, he thought, heading back to the airlock, go back to Pluto and scare them. Maybe they’ll settle for taking you apart to find out why you survive transfers. They’ll get a wrong answer because you’re insane and I’m not not not not… well, not exactly.
“Not not not not not not not,” he muttered as he sealed the clone up completely and pulled her inside the airlock. He pointed his hand and fired the laser, blowing a finger-sized hole in the hatch. A hiss filled the room, bringing with it a wind that whistled through the outer door. He fired again. The wind blew stronger, the hiss grew louder. Both gradually decreased to stillness and silence. He opened the hatch and rushed his barely human cargo through the airless passageways. She only had the air inside her helmet to sustain her, but it was all she needed.
He strapped her into the seat next to him and powered up the shuttle. He locked down the hatch and pressurized the cockpit and only then opened her headgear.
Still breathing. Good. Death Angel, you fight your master well. One minute. We go.
He eased the spacecraft out of the docking bay and ran the engine up to full power for an instant. They drifted away from Bernal Brennen. The huge sphere and shaft receded slowly to less awe-inspiring dimensions. When it suddenly vanished, he blinked his eyes twice.
So that’s what a transfer looks like from the outside. Goodbye, Mad Wizard. Sate their curiosity in twelve years. Now I’m free.
He calculated approximate return coordinates to Circus and transferred.
Finally Death Angel is dying beside me. She heads down the corridor with me, but then she becomes Jenine, her body whole, forgiving me and asking me through the hole at the end of the corridor. Yes, Jenine, I’ll follow you. Don’t let me go back. Please-
“No!” The space he was in looked very much like the space he had left. Except that a tiny point of light slightly ahead and to starboard grew in brightness and diameter.
Why can’t I ever go beyond? What lies there? Light? Peace? New life? Circus flies up to me, Ben chattering through the roar that’s surrounding me now. I ease the shuttle inside the small hole in wall of steel and aluminum…
Then I pull her out and take her to our playroom…
Gently he removed the pressure suit to inspect her dirty, abused body. He cut her hair to shoulder length. He washed her and placed her into the boxdoc. Its silver surgeons mended her ankle and soothed her other ills, which the machine displayed on a scrim: intestinal parasites, squamous-cell skin cancers, respiratory disease, ulcers, and several different bloodstream infections.
“Virgil,” the computer said. “You have been here an hour and you have not told me what happened at Bernal Brennen.”
Ben, can’t you see I’ve got no time for your ciphers? “Brennen had her. I took her back and sent him to trans-Plutonian orbit where I figure the Belters will pick him up. Maybe they’ll find out why he could survive the transfer.” And divert Master Snoop away from me, maybe. “What did the dead man in me do while I was away?”
The computer took some time to consider the possible interpretations of the question before answering, “He was in therapy with Delia.”
“What sort?”“I recorded the proceedings.”“Play it back.”He watched and listened. So Jord’s afraid he’s nothing. Nothing but a dead man. Why is Death Angel talking about killing me? DuoHypno? Why did I fall for that? No! The dead man is fouling me up! Messing my resistance to Duodrugs. Hide? But I can’t hide. Not for sure anymore. Jackal? Jackass! Listened too long. Now I’m back. Back here. Baker.
He switched off the scrim and smiled. He glanced at the boxdoc, seeing the body inside, and asked, “When will she be ready?”