Three
‘‘Next!’’ The bald Customs and Immigration clerk on the stool behind the podium had long since sweated through his uniform blouse. He shouted to be heard above the insect drone beyond the terminal’s open, steel-cage ceiling. Shuttles landed on DE 476 bang on the planet’s equator. Therefore, even at midnight, local, the temperature under roof as well as outside stagnated at an identical, breezeless ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit. The air was so thick that the flies didn’t buzz, they droned.
I held my place behind the yellow line, as I stared to my left, at the adjacent podium with a sign above it: NATIVES RETURNING TO DE 476, ONLY. The podium’s stool was empty and dust covered, as was its yellow line. Apparently, returning to DE 476 was an even lower priority for natives lucky enough to leave than visiting DE 476 was for everyone else.
The Human Union preliminarily graded new planets that were warm enough to liquify water, but cool enough to avoid boiling it away, ‘‘E,’’ for ‘‘Earthlike.’’ If the planet proved too distant, too deadly, or too different, it earned the prefix ‘‘D,’’ which officially stood for ‘‘Downgraded.’’ Downgraded Earthlike 476 was all three, and known to everyone but its tourism bureau as ‘‘Dead End.’’
The clerk periscoped his thin neck and swiveled his head around the empty arrivals auditorium. ‘‘I said next! Anybody here named Next?’’ He scowled at me over old-fashioned wire and glass spectacles, then waved me forward while he fanned himself with a sheet of folded paper. With my boot toe I nudged my duffle alongside his podium, then bent forward and pressed my eye against the retinal. After a heartbeat, the scanner chimed.
‘‘Gotcha. Stand back.’’ The clerk yawned into his fist. ‘‘For the comfort and safety of the next person in line, please use one of the tissues provided to wipe the receptacle. Thank you.’’
There was no next person in line. I wiped anyway. If a Legion hitch teaches a recruit anything, it’s hygiene and following orders.
The clerk eyed his screen. ‘‘Parker, Jazen. What the hell kind of name is Jazen?’’
I shrugged. ‘‘Yavet name.’’
‘‘Never heard of it.’’
C-drive and jump technology made the Human Union, all five hundred two planets of it, possible. But barely. Interstellar voyages took as long as sail-powered voyages took on the oceans of a garden-variety pre-industrial. Average citizens of the galaxy knew worlds beyond their own the way average Victorian Englishmen knew Borneo, which is to say as dark places run by savages.
‘‘I suppose. There’s bookoo jumps between Dead End and Yavet.’’
‘‘There’s bookoo jumps between Dead End and everywhere. You’re twenty-three?’’
‘‘Subjective. About twenty-four, in undilated time.’’ They say GI life is boredom punctuated by intervals of sheer terror. But aboard a troop transport moving between jumps at near light speed a month not only seemed to pass slower, it did. A Trueborn named Einstein proved it, they said, and that’s all the thought I’d ever given it.
‘‘So I see. Legionnaires spend lots of time near light speed.’’ He ran a finger along the screen. ‘‘Awarded Star of Marin with Leaves. You get that for doing good or for doing bad?’’ He frowned.
Worlds apart breed ignorance. Ignorance breeds misunderstanding. Misunderstanding breeds the need to do unto others before they do unto you. If it wasn’t for xenophobia, the Legion wouldn’t exist.
I shrugged again. ‘‘Depends.’’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘‘On what?’’
‘‘On which side you were on.’’
He grunted and frowned deeper. The Legion only broke things and hurt people for the greater good. It had said so right in my oath. But that didn’t make hired killers popular.
He sat back. ‘‘Purpose of visit? R and R, maybe?’’
A Legion honorable discharge earns twelve months amnesty from whatever a legionnaire might have done before. Even a Yavet Illegal like me, who was otherwise dead meat walking for any bounty hunter in the Union who tracked me down. There are two kinds of Yavet Illegals. The kind who cover their tracks, and dead ones.
So I hesitated before I answered. He drummed his fingers while he stared into his screen. Hell, my information was in every ’puter in the Union, anyway. During the four months left on my amnesty, neither this guy nor anybody else in government could rat me out to a bounty hunter for a finder’s fee. ‘‘I was discharged eight months ago.’’
He tapped his screen, yawned. ‘‘I can see that. It was a joke. Nobody takes R and R on Dead End.’’
‘‘I’m with the Cutler party.’’
He periscoped the empty hall again. ‘‘You got ’em in your duffle? That’s a joke, too.’’
I stretched a smile. ‘‘Got it.’’ I jerked my thumb back up the pedway. ‘‘Mr. Cutler and the others are behind me. They have checked luggage to claim. All I have is the duffle.’’ It wasn’t much to show for a life.
His keyboard rattled. ‘‘Ah. Cutler, Bartram.’’ Then the clerk raised his eyebrows and whistled. ‘‘Trueborn Earthman. Wa-didoo. Purpose of the Cutler Party visit, then?’’
‘‘Hunting.’’
He raised his eyebrows higher. ‘‘Hunting what?’’
‘‘Grezzen.’’
He stared, while sweat trickled down his cheek. Then he grinned. ‘‘No. Really. I have to type something in this blank.’’
‘‘Really.’’ I paused. ‘‘Is that a problem?’’
He swivelled on his stool, and pointed at the terminal wall. A pirate-black flag that hung there bore red script: ‘‘Libertarian Republic of Dead End: Live Free or Die.’’
Not bad. As a Yavi I appreciated physical and behavioral elbow room more than most. Maybe I’d come back.
He shook his head. ‘‘Nope. Libertarian republic means do what you want, unless you get in somebody else’s way. But most come for the live free, not the die.’’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘‘Have a pleasant stay. Move along.’’
I snapped my fingers. ‘‘Oh. Since I’m first through, I’m supposed to claim our oversize freight. Where—’’
He stared at his screen while he pointed over his left shoulder, at a lighted passage. ‘‘For the freight terminal, bear right at the plaque. Bang on the door. There’s only two of us here at night and he’s a heavy sleeper. The shuttle will taxi over there after the morning shift gets here and pumps out the crappers.’’ He held up the soggy single-paper sheet he had been fanning himself with. ‘‘You care for a fine dining brochure?’’
I smiled as I hefted my duffle. ‘‘I know. A joke.’’
He stared at me over his spectacles. ‘‘I don’t get it.’’
The roofed trench that led away from the arrivals hall stretched four hundred yards, as black beyond its barred ceiling as a tunnel through a coal seam. The open roof that arched above my head was fabricated of steel bars as thick as my thigh, spaced a foot apart. Spherical metal lanterns dangled from the overhead bars, the lantern flames sputtering oily smoke that sank to the passage floor like lead fog.
Dead End’s tourist site lauded the yesteryear charm of the local coal oil lamps. In fact, the only export component of Dead End’s GPP was boutique kerosene. The fine print said the kerosene fumes discouraged local insects. They didn’t discourage many. I swatted as I walked, but replacement squadrons swarmed in between the bars.
A hundred steam-bath yards down the passage, a fork distributed passengers left to ground transport, and straight ahead to freight pickup. I flopped my duffle down at a section where the bars wilted apart like limp spaghetti. Additional steel sections had been welded between the gaps. Freshly wire-brushed, the welds gleamed beneath the lanterns’ smoky flicker.
I rested my hands on my knees. Some kind of animal bellow echoed in the distance. Sweat dripped off my nose onto a platter-sized brass plaque bolted to the concrete floor below the repaired bars.
‘‘Thom Webb. Beloved father and husband. Slain by grezzen on this spot, May 4, 2108.’’
I eyed my ’puter. May 27, 2108.
I shouldered my duffle, double-timed the remaining three hundred yards to the freight terminal, then pounded the locked, armored door so hard that sweat spray exploded off my fists.