her as the first spasm threw the gun from her hands. He screamed at the computer: “What was it?”
“Two hundred cc s of sodium pentabarbitol administered intracardially. Detect no heart action, nervous system response dropping, respiration terminated. Brain death in—”
Ignoring the prognosis, he dragged her to the next room and threw her in the boxdoc. Mechanical scissors snipped away at the tape and metal claws withdrew the cotton while he unlocked the manacles. He closed the lid and watched the machine perform a cardio-pulmonary resuscitation sequence.
It’s no good—“Right? It’s no good.”
“The machine can keep blood circulating and oxygen reaching the brain to delay brain death, but she will not revive.”
Baker wiped the sweat from his face, breathed deeply, and asked, “How do I prepare her for cloning?”
Sitting in Con-One, Baker watched the lifeship drift away from the starboard bay. He turned off the scrim and tapped his fingers against the chair arm.
“Ready to transfer out and back,” the computer said. The transfer button lit up. Baker swallowed hard and pressed it.
Chapter Thirteen 2224
I have to do it again and again, just to get the right to die my own way, safe and sure that the door will open wide and Dad and Crys will be there and here it comes again. I know. I’m trying to come with you, but it keeps pulling me back. I’m sorry. Someday. Soon.
Look at me. That’s not my body so thin and white. Don’t push. I’m going back.
“Ready to transfer.” Baker pushed the button again.
Maybe I’m almost getting used to this. Or maybe Kinney is taking me over and making me as crazy as he. When he takes over completely, will I
die like this? Dropping forever toward the door, endlessly down a corridor-pit? There he falls again, Kinney, pushing Crys and Dad out of the way, begging me to follow him, telling me it’ll be all right, that he loves me as much as her and that was why he did it but I don’t believe him.
“What is your name?” the computer inquired.
“What? Oh. Jord Baker. Don’t you think that’s getting pretty useless? Both of us know about the other.”
“I need to keep track. You both have your... idiosyncrasies. Stand by for engine firing.” The tug of acceleration startled him, but he eased into the cushions and waited until weightlessness returned.
“Cloning tank and lifeship on visual,” it said. “Ready to be taken onboard. However—telemetry from the unit indicates a dysfunctional state.”
“What do you mean?” Baker unstrapped and retracted the control panels.
“The clone is apparently dead. All power to the cloning tank has been shut down—”
Baker sped to the docking bay, took the controls, and remote-piloted the lifeship back into Circus. He cycled the atmosphere and waited impatiently by the airlock.
“Come on.” Come on! The airlock slowly opened.
Pulling the cloning unit out of the ship, he opened the tank without inspecting it and peered inside at clean emptiness.
“Nothing! The unit must’ve failed right after we cast it off. Unless it went through a cleansing cycle—”
“The waste unit is empty. Now close the lid and look at it.”
Baker did so and read the frantic words knifed into the black plating.
WANDERER— I STOLE YOUR PRIZE
“What does that mean?”
“The ship that attacked us around Beta Hydri. The pilot called Virgil ‘Wanderer.’ ”
“How did he find us?” Baker tried to control the near-screech in his voice, digging his finger into the padded rim or the cloning tank.
“The pilot challenged us to appear here sometime in June, Twenty-Two Twenty-Three. According to best estimates, it is now January of Twenty-Two Twenty-Four.”
“Then why the hell did you go to Tau Ceti?”
“It was the next star on our tour—much closer to our sun type than Epsilon Eridani and also closer to similar star types Eighty-Two Eridani and Sigma Draconis.”
“You knew! And now he’s got Delia!”
“Free will doesn’t mean I have to consider every—” “Start looking for her. How big a Bernal sphere is it?”’
“How did you know it was a Bernal sphere?”
Baker paused, then said, “More memory overlap. He had all sorts of corpses in the control room, right?”
“Yes.”
“Have you found him?” Maybe if I can retrieve all of Kinney’s memories I won’t be consumed. Maybe I can pick him away bit by bit.
“He may be lying in wait for us,” the computer said. “I have all defenses online, lasers set in spiral tracking. A Bernal is such a large target, though, it would take a long time to wipe out every weapon or control center by purely random shots. He would be able to destroy us if he wanted to, merely by turning on his lasers before he transferred out to us.”
“Straight, so we’re dead. Now try and find him.”
“There is an object about four kilometers in length exactly twenty-three degrees ahead of the lifeship in the same orbit.”
“Prepare shuttle two for launching. I’m going to transfer over there and take a look.”
“Jord—we can always clone another—”
“He can’t have her! Brennen can’t—” The name shocked Baker. “Brennen? The madman is Brennen?”
“The other madman, yes.”
“I’m going in.” He loaded the shuttle with laser gloves, rifles, and packets of explosive. From the armory, he removed a small fission cylinder charge and secured it in the back of the shuttle.
“Weren’t you interested,” he asked, “in how Brennen can survive the Valliardi Transfer?”
“Perhaps he achieved a dysfunctional mental state similar to Virgil’s.”
“That’s what I intend to find out before I blow him to bits. Maybe I’ll learn how to handle Kinney. Now let’s move it!” He slithered into a pressure suit, jumped in the cockpit and strapped down to the pilot’s seat. In a few moments, the shuttle drifted away from Circus Galacticus.
“Your velocities are not yet matched, so I shall transfer you to a distance of ten thousand kilometers and you can move in from there.”
“Why don’t I fire my rockets here so I’ll be matched and drifting toward him already when I appear?”
“Fire them twenty-three degrees in from the tangent.”
He did so, brought the craft up to a safe speed, then shut down all systems but those of his own suit and those of the transfer unit. He pushed the button and vanished from space.
Now I meet Kinney face to face, in a way. If I can die just one more time I may be free to die on my own. Just one more fall, one more reach toward the door that never opens—
His breath rattled in his head. His fingers gripped the fore-mounted meteor laser. Far ahead of him, something glinted on and off with insistent regularity. Slowly it grew in apparent size. Baker watched for any sign of defensive action.
At the thousand kilometer mark, he hit the braking rockets, hoping their chemical flare would not be too noticeable. Here goes nothing.
The Bernal sphere revolved on its axis, but held no alignment on the star it orbited. Its solar mirrors and power panels lay in disarray, pointing in all directions. Baker let his shuttle drift slowly closer. At ten kilometers he carefully scanned the habitat for power usage.
Nothing. And it would take at least two minutes to power up a laser even if he had his solar panels aligned. We’d have been hit by now if he were planning to ambush us.
He hit full power and zeroed in on the docking port at the tip of the axial tower that supported the mirror array. From his experience with Fadeaway, he was now familiar with the layout of such habitats. He braked and drifted into the open hatchway. Loading a supply pack with explosives and the fission device, he donned a laser glove and slung a rifle over his shoulder.