Moral and Orbital Decay Read online

  “Worked out well for the last guy,” Mort pointed out. “Still gets a birthday party every year. By the by, that’s only a few weeks off. I wouldn’t mind a hale, hearty twenty-five-year-old hooligan. Maybe someone guilty of racketeering or beating a fellow to death with his bare hands. Might be that a visit to Mars could kill two birds with one stone. Or… a living bird in the hand is better than two in the bush that you can kill with the same stone?”

  “You’re wandering.”

  Mort cleared his throat. “Point being, I’m willing to make this worth your while. I know loads that I’ve never taught you. Some you weren’t ready for. Most was just a matter of a couple centuries being insufficient to pass along what I’ve learned in mental millennia.”

  Esper didn’t grace Mort’s offer with a rejection. She was tired of the constant hammering. She understood the theory. If Mort could be a thorn in her side for long enough, eventually she’d have to relent for the sake of her sanity. It wasn’t a kindly gesture, but she understood Mort’s desperation. To his thinking, Esper’s mind wasn’t an escape pod; it was a prison barge.

  The other option, the one Esper was counting on, was that over time she’d learn to simply ignore him. Despite her wizardly prowess, Esper had done some digging in the omni—painstaking though it was—and discovered a man in a similar plight to hers.

  A twentieth-century mathematician named John Nash had learned to coexist with his mental prisoners. If Esper found the spare time, there was a flatvid biopic about the man that she very much wanted to show Mort.

  “Listen,” Esper snapped. “If you can behave yourself until we get off this station, I’ll consider taking Cedric aside and letting him know what’s become of you. He’s read that awful book of yours. He’s even got someone trapped inside him. I suppose he’ll be able to understand now.”

  “Yes…” Mort drawled. “I wonder how he got that little piece of literature.”

  “You bloody well know how. I was trying to get you reinstated to the Convocation. He was going to help clear your name.”

  “There they are,” Mort pointed out.

  Cedric and Carl walked side by side. Cedric peered into restaurant windows and down access corridors. Carl’s gaze wandered the overhead supports, though Esper suspected he was watching the station’s move more than he expected to find Rai Kub floating among the rafters.

  “Wait up,” Esper called after them.

  “Yo, Cotton Candy,” Carl greeted her with a glassy-eyed grin.

  Involuntarily, Esper glanced down at her sweatshirt, which wasn’t quite the right shade of pink for the comparison.

  “What are you doing here?” Cedric asked. “What happened to staying with Rodek?”

  “We called in backup,” Esper explained.

  Carl raised a finger and tapped his comm. “Knew that.”

  Cedric scowled. “Why didn’t you—?”

  “No time for bickering,” Esper cut in before a drunken Carl pissed off an unstable wizard capable of murder. “Any sign of Rai Kub?”

  “He is conspicuous in his absence,” Cedric confirmed.

  Carl sighed and thrust his hands in his jacket pockets. One missed but made it in on a second attempt. “We’ve asked around a little bit. Me being kinda lit, most people think we’re pranking them. Not like that’s the worst thing they could think.”

  Cedric harrumphed. “The worst they could think is that I’m responsible for you. No, we haven’t found Rai Kub, but I think I have a theory on what’s become of him.”

  They walked three abreast. Esper kept to the middle to receive updates from both men.

  “Ceddie thinks the Convo boys might have gotten to him. If they’ve got a ship, he might be locked up on board.”

  Esper scrunched up her face. “Why would they… Never mind. I get it. Hostage. Flaming poo in a paper bag, why can’t people just play fair?”

  “We don’t ever,” Carl pointed out. Even drunk, he still had a point.

  Cedric grabbed Esper and pulled her to the side of the corridor. With the ring shape of the station, they all curved slightly, and he took her to the inside of the ring, shielding the sight down the long stretch of exposed view.

  “What?” Esper whispered.

  Carl ambled along, oblivious to the two of them stopping.

  “Those two men up ahead. That’s them.”

  Esper had been caught up in the conversation and hadn’t paid close attention. She leaned out and saw the two wizards Roddy had pointed out earlier. The wily, four-handed mechanic had been right.

  “Should we warn Carl?” Esper asked.

  “No. We can’t risk ourselves,” Cedric replied. “He’ll be fine; they’ll likely ignore him. Let’s just duck inside this—”

  But the door to the adjacent hallucinogen fumatorium was locked. The establishment’s posted business hours were at odds with the current time. Esper considered magicking the door and breaking in, but with two wizards approaching, the odds of that act going unnoticed seemed slim.

  “Kiss me,” Esper whispered. It was a ploy that worked in all the holovids.

  Without further warning, Esper leaped into Cedric’s arms and wrapped her legs around his waist. Tall as she was, Cedric still loomed over her when standing by her side. With the added height, she was able to better block his face with her body.

  Cedric fell back against the fumatorium’s door with a startled grunt. For a split second, Esper worried that he either wouldn’t be willing to play along with the ploy or wouldn’t make a good show of it.

  Those concerns faded—along with most of Esper’s awareness of the world around her—when a pair of strong hands wrapped around her, pulling her close and holding her tight.

  Esper’s hands mussed Cedric’s hair. Her lips covered his. For the sake of a tiny bit of privacy, she spared a second to pull up the hood of her sweatshirt.

  She tasted the beer on his tongue. After an initial shock, she ceased to care. He was warm, greedy, powerful. What suggested as a distraction, Esper had offered as something more. What she had offered, Cedric took and sought to continue taking.

  A pair of voices passed behind them. Esper was only dimly aware that the owners of those voices weren’t trying to kill, capture, or—more importantly—interrupt them.

  Philosophers had long held that time was an illusion. Esper was familiar with how mutable it could be in Mortania and Esperville. But on Mobile Excavating Station YF-77, time wended its way past in standard fashion, simply ignored for the moment.

  Carl cleared his throat.

  Esper snapped back to reality. Cold water splashed on her dream. She opened her eyes and reluctantly released Cedric’s lips from between hers. Her chest was heaving, pressed against his. Cedric licked his lips as if to take in the last taste of hers.

  Clearing his throat, Cedric’s hands moved to Esper’s waist and gently returned her to the station’s floor.

  “They’re gone,” Carl observed.

  Esper pulled back her hood and tugged her sweatshirt smooth. “Well. That’s good. Can’t be too safe. Right?” Her whole body was warm, inside and out. She was damp all over, mostly from sweat.

  With a cautious glance down the corridor, Esper saw there were no wizards in view. She included Mort among the missing, for which she was grateful. Trapped in her head, Mort had shown himself to be aware of her actions whether she could see him or not, but she was happier not having to look him in the face just then.

  “We should continue,” Cedric said as he smoothed his hair back into place.

  “Nah,” Carl said, still lounging against the station wall with a bemused smirk. “We should probably chase down those two bozos hunting for you.”

  “Why?” Cedric asked.

  Carl took a deep breath. “Lemme preface this by promising that I’m not a 100 percent drunk here. But one of those two wizards were arguing with a very polite pocket with a stuunji accent.”

  # # #

  Roddy watched over Yomin’s shoulder. He wasn’t
sure what was going on since nothing over her shoulder had an interface that was remotely useful. All her feedback on the system hack progress would be showing up in her datalens. All the real work was getting done in Archie’s processors.

  That made Yomin one step short of useless, just a go-between for the robot and the station. Roddy, on the other hand, was supervising.

  “What’ve you got so far?” Roddy asked eagerly in response to a ‘hmm’ noise from Archie.

  “Well,” the robot replied. “We’ve got a station running eighteen-year-old software, and it’s two patches behind the latest factory recommended build. Maintenance requests are falling behind completions by a rate of roughly 1.2 per day, a trend that has been ongoing since the station’s initial service date. It makes me glad you don’t keep service logs for the Mobius.”

  “I do keep logs,” Roddy replied. “I just keep ‘em buried where only I can access ‘em. Now how about power outages? Where’ve our wizard friends been lately?”

  “Everywhere,” Yomin replied, eyes unfocused. “Unless these wizards have been here for months, they’re not causing them.”

  “Not all of them, you mean,” Roddy clarified. There were times when it really took an effort of will not to strangle techs who didn’t get how wizards worked. All the more galling was that Archie used to be one.

  “Fine,” Yomin conceded. “But I don’t know how to tell station failures from magic-induced ones.”

  Roddy scratched his chin. “Comm Amy. Get the chat logs. Find out the time Rai Kub last checked in or had any activity on his comm.”

  Muted through the maintenance door, the station’s public address speakers blared:

  “As YF-77 maneuvers to a lower orbit, visitors are invited to direct their attention to the lower commercial ring. Thrust reverse burn will commence in approximately five minutes. Concourses N through W will have the best views of Karafuto IV, which will be sunlit during our adjustment to lower orbit.”

  “And hurry,” Roddy added. Nobody said how long the orbital adjustment would take, but it couldn’t be that long. Five minutes plus adjustment time still wasn’t going to be much. If they could round up Rai Kub in the next few minutes, it would make for the perfect escape.

  “I already have the comm logs,” Yomin said. “You just want to rule out anything before the big guy’s last comm?”

  “Gimme a five- or ten-minute window after.”

  “I’m the one doing the work,” Archie pointed out. “You can address me directly.”

  Roddy looked the robot over, decked out like a refugee from a winter carnival and wearing an EV helm indoors. “In that getup? I can’t take you seriously.”

  # # #

  Esper led the way. Carl was taking up the rear, carrying her discarded sweatshirt. It wouldn’t do for the two wizards from the Convocation to connect her to the hooded, lovestruck girl they had seen only moments before. Plus, her undershirt left enough skin exposed for the station’s scienced-up air to cool her off.

  Cedric hung back but kept pace.

  The wizards were at the door of a holovid theater, peering through the glass of the off-hours establishment. Esper tried to ignore the fact that in a couple hours, the theater would be showing the new Mona and Glenn holo. She’d see it on some planet or another, preferably while they weren’t on the run or on the chase.

  “Hey,” Esper called out, sending Cedric scrambling for cover as the wizards turned. “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help getting the impression you two are lost or maybe looking for someone.”

  “We’re fine,” the one with the black beard replied curtly. “Thank you for your concern.”

  Esper had heard thankfulness before, and this wasn’t what it sounded like. This was a brush off.

  Changing tactics, Esper crossed her arms. “All right, boys. I’ll make you a deal. You share what you know; I’ll share what I do. If we bring him in, we split the reward fifty-fifty.”

  “We don’t know what you’re talking about,” the gray-bearded one responded imperiously. “Now, if you’ve nothing else pressing, I invite you to be on your way.”

  Esper held out a hand and conjured the Convocation’s thunderstruck C. “No holding out. Justice is more than a payday.”

  The black-bearded man turned to the other. “I thought we had exclusivity.”

  “I thought so, too,” his companion replied.

  “I don’t like this,” Black Beard muttered. He reached for the door, and the science-motivated portal sizzled. With a thin trail of smoke oozing from the lock, it slid open. Both wizards darted inside.

  “Help me!” a tiny voice wailed from the direction of the wizards.

  It might have been a trap. It might have been an ambush. Either way, Esper wasn’t leaving Rai Kub alone with those two magical thugs. If Cedric failed to back her up, fine. If he followed, all the better.

  The wizards parted ways at the foyer. Esper strained her ears and could still hear that squeak of a stuunji voice pleading for help from Gray Beard’s coat. He was the one she followed.

  Gray Beard ducked into the third theater of a four-theater complex. It wasn’t exactly a planetside facility, replete with space. Inside, Esper found a half dozen rows circling a central projector.

  “Give him back,” Esper ordered as Gray Beard dodged around the holo-projector, looking for cover. “I’m faster than you. Return Rai Kub safely, and you won’t have any trouble from me.”

  It wasn’t quite a lie. Additional pursuit of Cedric would trigger a whole new scenario under which Esper would be compelled to act. It wasn’t a lifetime guarantee of non-intervention. She would be willing to let them go on the stuunji-shrinking charge if only her friend was returned.

  “Who are you?” Black Beard demanded from behind her.

  Esper whirled to see that she was surrounded. They hadn’t split up so that one would escape, she realized. This was a tactical maneuver to box her in from both sides.

  A calm fell over Esper. She measured her breathing, preparing to hold reality in place while she beat some sense into two out-of-shape bookworms, one of them middle aged. “My name is Esper, and I’m a friend of both the wizard you’re hunting and the kindly stuunji you’re holding prisoner.”

  Black Beard turned to Gray Beard. “Mordecai’s illegal apprentice and lover. Of course!”

  “He would turn to her for aid, wouldn’t he?” Gray Beard mused.

  “Mort and I were just good friends,” Esper clarified.

  Mort coalesced and stalked behind the wizard holding Rai Kub. “These are mere peacocks fluffing their feathers at you. Even one on two, you’ve got the upper hand.”

  Esper agreed. But there was the complicating factor of Rai Kub’s safety. That was the primary benefit of taking hostages, after all. It made the hostage’s friends and would-be rescuers wary.

  As the two Convocation bounty-wizards closed in, Esper backed toward the holo-projector. When she ran out of room, she hopped up onto the projection pedestal. She had to think of a way to safely defuse this conflict, or find a way to end it decisively without harming Rai Kub.

  “Give the stuunji back to his crewmates, and I’ll turn myself over,” Cedric called out from the theater entrance.

  “Cedric, no!” Esper shouted.

  “Oh, ho!” Gray Beard called out. “So, the whelp of the Convocation’s greatest monster has a sliver of conscience in him.”

  “That was uncalled for,” Mort objected. “Esper, bloody that man’s nose. My honor is at stake.”

  “Set the stuunji down, and let this woman take custody of him,” Cedric said, strolling slowly into the room with his hands tucked in his sleeves. “Then I’m all yours.”

  Black Beard dug into a pocket and pulled out a silver circlet that didn’t appear as if it should have fit inside in the first place. “Put this on. Then we’ll have no reason to retain the rhinoceros thing.”

  Cedric caught the circlet when it was thrown his way.

  “Don’t let him!” Mort shouted at h
er. “That’ll put him into a sleep that he won’t wake up from until he’s at trial on Earth. The decorative spittoon in my quarters was made from eight of those blasted things.”

  For once, Esper was in complete agreement with Mort. “Cedric, I forbid you turning yourself over to these dark wizards who’d take an innocent prisoner.”

  Gray Beard reached inside his jacket and pulled out Rai Kub. It was inconceivable seeing him small enough to lay across Esper’s palm without hanging over the ends. “Your call. Decide quickly, or I might just squeeze.”

  “No!” Esper shouted.

  Esper’s words were lost in a rumble as the mining station shook. The low lights in the otherwise vacant theater went out, leaving them in total blackness. Esper dropped to her hands and knees to keep from falling off the pedestal.

  The next thing she saw was two wizards rising into the upper reaches of the theater, stiff and immobile, backs bent to the point where it looked like both might break from the strain. The light Esper saw them by came from a pair of fiery orbs cupped in Cedric’s hand. If Satan himself were a bowler—and Esper suspected he was—those are the balls the Prince of Darkness might have used.

  “Don’t do it!” Esper warned him, seeing all too clearly what was coming.

  “Do it!” Mort cheered. “A man’s never free who’s always on the run. They were going to take your life away. This is their justice coming home to roost.”

  With a feral roar, Cedric unleashed the fiery bowling balls. All Esper could do was shield herself from the gore that splattered down in a hot rain.

  In the darkness that followed, all Esper could hear was Cedric’s panting breath. Conjuring a light, she saw the younger Brown collapse against the theater wall, eyes wide in horror.

  Mort clapped slowly. “Well done. Well done, my boy. Although I would say that you probably hurt this poor orbital blacksmith shop more than was probably healthy for flying away afterward.”

  At least they had rescued Rai Kub from the…

  “Rai Kub!” Esper screamed. Where was he? The wizard who had been holding onto him had been blasted to a red film that coated the theater seats and made the floor sticky. But had he even been clutched in Gray Beard’s hand after the lights came back on?