There was to be no more oblivion for him from that direction. It wasn’t working anymore. Maybe drugs. Booze. Maybe—
He saw himself in an evac chute. The gates open, the air sucks out, he’s ejected naked into void—
He recoiled, actually curled up and clutched at himself at the thought.
Terry was—
Recoiled again from that one, too, and tried to think instead about a stiff drink, something to eat…
He sat on his haunches, naked, parts of him smeared with Vaseline, his face still damp with her pheromone perfume, his back throbbing with welts, and fought an urge to run to the nearest airlock and jet himself naked into space—
That’d be real freedom, for a moment.
“Dad?”
His gut constricted. A muscle in his back jumped. Fear washed through him, acrid and cold. Claire. Claire’s voice. He was more afraid of Claire, at this moment, than he’d been of his own ice-queen mother. He was afraid of his own daughter.
If she should see Hermione…
But her voice came from the grid in the front door. Hermione was going out by the service corridor. Claire wouldn’t see her.
He shouted, “Claire—I’ll be right out! I’m in the shower.” Then he pressed the door button and said, “seven-three,” into the grid. The door analyzed his voiceprint, confirmed it, and opened the front door for her. But left the door to his bedroom locked.
“I’ll be right out,” he shouted through the door to the living room. He went to the bathroom, let the ultrasound shower cleanse him, shivered with the tingling of it, felt a vague pleasure knowing that a composition by Stravinsky was worked into the sound waves; he couldn’t hear the composition at that frequency, but he could feel it.
Still, he wished he could have water. The technickis would get word of it, though, if he had a water system installed. One of them would have to install it, after all. Their commentators would editorialize about wasteful luxuries among Admin elitists. Admin washunmunener filzerbush, they’d say. Admin washes in money and our air filter’s broken.
Praeger, damn him, had had a water shower installed. The technickis had heard about it, every last one of them, an hour later.
Praeger. president of UNIC’s on-Colony board. The sick feeling in Rimpler’s gut returned when he thought of Praeger.
He stepped out of the shower, and it sank back into the tiled wall. He went to the mirror, punched 8 on the numbered row of buttons beneath the glass; the mirror reversed itself, showing him its shelved backside. He found the anesthetic spray and coated the welts on his back with it. Again with some regret. Then he dressed in Japanese house pajamas, airy blue silk, and found Claire in the living room. His stomach tightened as she said, “Hi, Dad,” with a friendly enough smile, nothing censorious in her eyes.
“How you doing, babe?” he said, bending to kiss her on the forehead. He hadn’t seen her for almost two weeks.
“Dad—I’m okay, but—”
He sat down across from her, thinking, She seems coiled up.
She wore a light, soft gray suit with a triple-flap skirt; her lips were pursed, her cheeks hollowed.
“You’re going to give me more details about the wonderful viddy interview you did—” He laughed breezily. “Forget it! It was a put-up job and by now everyone’s realized it.”
“Dad…”
And then he saw the tension in her posture and the knuckles white on her knees. He thought, Shit, it’s Praeger again.
“Dad, when you asked for a four-day in-house vacation—”
“You think it was bad timing? Right after your screw-up with the little technicki kid? I told you—”
“Dad!… No. But—I only just found out that you had a no-calls up. I mean, no one could figure out why you weren’t making a statement…”
“Well—sure. How could I have a vacation, a retreat, if everyone’s calling me with the Colony’s problems? There’s a dozen people happy to—”
“Dad…”
This time her voice actually broke. He stared. He hadn’t seen her show her humanity like that in years; not since Terry died.
“For God’s sake, Claire, out with it.”
“Dad, when you sealed the place off, you left it open for LSSE. Right?” There was accusation wrapped in the sarcastic twist she gave to “Right?”
He laughed nervously. “Well, of course!”
LSSE: Life-Support Emergency. There hadn’t been an LSSE. Impossible.
“Dad—there was an LSSE. I mean—this is the sort of thing that keeps happening with you.” She was in her bitchily maternal mode now. “Things are flying to hell around you and—Dad, there was a Bright Red. Full alert. And Praeger gave orders that you were not to be told. I mean, I don’t know that for sure but… he must have.”
He felt himself sinking. “What was it?” His voice a crust.
“Dad—”
“Will you stop saying that and just tell me!” His fear of her vanished. He was standing now, arms straight at his sides.
“The Russians have blockaded us. We’re in the war. The last supply ship was boarded. Captured! There hasn’t been another. No ships outgoing. They’re even jamming communications. We get through now and then—”
“Why didn’t you come to me before? I mean—how long has it been?”
“Three days. Dad, I couldn’t get through to see you till today. And you had your screen down. The riots—we couldn’t get through because of the riots.”
“Riots.”
“A man named Bonham has been asking for a general strike. There are four of these organizers really pushing it—a man named Joseph Bonham, a man named Samson Molt—”
“Oh, don’t tell me their names, tell Security, I’m not the local thought police. Shit.” He found he was staring at his decanters on the table. Wanting a drink and not having the courage even to reach across the table. Afraid the Colony was so fragile it would shiver apart if he moved. His shell, his armor. His insulation from Earth.
“These people are saying that now we’re cut off from Earth the techni-class has got to demand rights or they’ll be completely powerless when it comes to martial law.”
“There’s something to that.” He laughed bitterly. Now his hands moved of their own violation—squirting gin into a glass. He swallowed it and shuddered. “Praeger’ll want—martial law, want to completely subjugate the technickis because of the state of emergency.””
“You agree with these people?” More reproach than surprise.
He shrugged, took another drink. Laughed. “Riots!” Shaking his head in wonder. “I designed this thing…” He gestured vaguely at the walls, meaning the Colony itself. “And still it’s three days before I know we’re blockaded. And having riots.”
“Dad—Praeger didn’t want you to know.”
They looked at one another, and the implication hung in the air between them. She gave it verbal shape. “I think there’s going to be a coup. I think UNIC wants to take the colony over completely.”
• 06 •
FirStep floated in the sea of space, a city afloat in the void.
And Freezone floated in the Atlantic Ocean, a city afloat in the wash of international cultural confluence.
Freezone was anchored about a hundred miles north of Sidi Ifni, a drowsy city on the coast of Morocco in a warm, gentle current, and in a sector of the sea only rarely troubled by large storms. What storms arose here spent their fury on the maze of concrete wave-baffles Freezone Admin had spent years building up around the artificial island.