The Venus Belt Read online

Crack! The unfortunate assailant followed a ballistic curve across the room and landed in a fountaining of drinks and pretzels. Morrison blew on his battered knuckles, shaking out the sting, and sort of looked directly at me, sideways. “Pilgrim, I like a good...dust-up, but let’s—look out!”

  I whirled, by reflex whipping out my Rezin. The pale “sophisticated” lady, composure vanished with a snarl, was shoving something at my face. It snapped into focus—a tiny gun barrel, bullet glinting visibly deep inside the chamber. I slapped the gun aside, left-handed, she lunged, carried by momentum onto my extended blade.

  The weapon sank to the guards with a ghastly sucking noise, pommel jammed against my hip. Her eyes, an inch from mine, widened abruptly as if she were just waking up. She gave a tiny gasp, looked down at her midriff, the ultimate despair written on her face, stumbled backward off the blade, and crumpled, her life coursing onto the floor.

  Silence swept the room.

  I threw the knife aside, her little gun still in my other hand, and knelt beside her in a pool of smoking blood. Not a sound, not a movement. I felt for a pulse—nothing. She was gone. I’d killed a woman, and she was gone.

  A huge rough hand descended gently on my shoulder. “She walked right into it, Pilgrim, some kinda...suicide, I’d call it. C’mon, get up outa there.” He pried me away from the floor, hooked a chair with the toe of his boot, and slid it under me, carefully extracting the little pistol from my hand and laying it on the bar.

  I closed my eyes hard, and opened them again.

  Morrison stood slowly shaking his head, hands spread on his narrow waist, a finger curled and locked into the high side of his canvas-like gunbelt. The big, plain military automatic perched where his right hip pocket should have been, rendered tiny by his sheer, larger-than-life presence, its smoothly worn ivory stocks checked and yellowed by handling and hard use. “There ain’t much...point, but somebody call a Healer!”

  He thrust a tumbler into my hands. I sipped it absently—it burned.

  But the Healer was already there, along with security people, alerted by the fighting. He set his bag on a barstool, glanced around the rapidly emptying room, then knelt down by the body, confirming that’s what it was. He looked up at me. “Haven’t I seen you once already tonight?”

  I sat there, nodding dumbly, my hands beginning to shake. “Earlier th-this evening. Someone b-broke into my—”

  “So you said” answered the gorilla. He stood, glared down at my dripping knife lying on the bar beside the tiny autopistol, then back at the dead woman—girl, really, I could see that now—and gave me an expression I’d never had before from anyone on the right side of the law. “Call the Captain,” he instructed the bartender. “Something stinks in here.”

  Morrison started to speak, paused, twisting the thin gold circlet around his massive wrist. “I saw the whole...thing, bureaucrat.” Then he looked at me. “She’s the one shoved that borracho into ya, an’ started this whole...brannigan. Lookin’ t’backshoot ya’n all the excitement.” He stopped, running a large confident hand through his thinning, crewcut hair, then continued in that relaxed, inexorable, singsongy tone.

  “Pilgrim, you gonna play with that, or drink it? An’ don’t fret s’much. I mean t’see you vouched for with security, at Cap’n Spoonbill’s...convenience.”

  He stepped away, one knee bent slightly inward, a shoulder carried low, then paused and turned back to me. “Pilgrim, you’ll be all right. I like your...sand.” Then he limped out of my life and into the sunset.

  In whichever tower that was going on.

  ***

  Tuesday, March 2, 223 A.L.

  As played out as I was, sleeping soundly that night should have been a cinch, especially with the armed guards outside my stateroom door to protect me from the boogie-person. Though if I’d tried to leave, it might have looked like something else. Those suddenly widening eyes kept coming back to me, but the Healer had a pill for that.

  It almost worked, too.

  Next morning, they brought me back my Bowie knife, cleaned and polished, along with my victim’s tiny gun and holster. It was a Bauer .25, a nine-ounce stainless-steel seven-shot vest-pocket number, of practically no stopping-power.

  Made in the United States.

  Somehow, I’d been reprieved. With the grisly trophies came a message from the Captain to look him up as soon as I got dressed. I peeked outside my cabin. The guard was still there, but she smiled sympathetically and promised to escort me to the infirmary, which was where the brass seemed to be awaiting my pleasure. The sick bay’s down in the rectangular stern, as buried in the middle of the ship as anything can be, and not too far from all those crates for Mr., Ms., or Mrs. Tormount. Inside, Healer Pololo stood waiting, along with Koko and a grim-visaged fellow in Spartan black and gold.

  We sat down in the waiting room.

  “Mr. Bear,” the simian physician offered, “I owe you an apology. I simply figured that no wholly innocent party could be involved in two violent incidents in the same evening.”

  “Try running a liquor store on East Colfax Avenue sometime.”

  He removed his wire-rimmed glasses and gave them a self-conscious scrub. “Well, you know what I mean. Captain Spoonbill, this is Mr. Bear.”

  Sounded like feeding time at the zoo. Spoonbill was an imposing block of a man, conveying in attitude and bearing, rather than literal appearance, the same frozen unreachability as those statues on Easter Island. He shook my hand, striving for the neutral expression that served him for a smile.

  “Mr. Bear, concerning your detention last night...”

  “That’s okay, I’d already done my partying. I take it you’ve decided I’m ‘wholly innocent,’ too?” I wondered how they’d feel about smoking in here.

  “You have some powerful allies, it appears.” He nodded microscopically, indicating Koko who seemed unusually reserved in her brand-new rubbery-looking smartsuit. “Miss Featherstone-Haugh assures me the President will vouch for you unquestioningly. There’s also Mr. Morrison—I had a lot of trouble getting off the com with him last night, and several times this morning. He explained how the whole thing happened, though what it means...”

  “I’d like to know that, myself. But you’re not letting me off on character testimony, are you?”

  “Not a chance. Miss Featherstone-Haugh informs me you were a security guard in the United States, is that correct?” Was that approval in his eye or merely gas, as obstetricians like to claim?

  I stifled the usual insulting answer. “As close as you can describe it in the Confederacy. I was the fuzz, a pig, a flatfoot—working Homicide detail.”

  “Then,” the doctor interrupted, “you can view a deceased person without...”

  “Not too badly anyway.” I’d always been a little squeamish, one reason I hate murderers so much. “What’s all this working up to?” Koko looked distinctly uncomfortable as she squirmed on the plastic waiting-room chair. Pololo led us to a back room where a silent, supine form lay draped upon a cold titanium table. He folded back the sheet. Koko doubled over and ran from the room, making funny mewling noises. I gulped and took another step forward.

  “That’s her, all right. I never killed a woman before. Funny, it doesn’t feel too different, just sort of sad and stupid.”

  “More sad and stupid than you may realize,” answered the stonefaced Captain Spoonbill. “Tell him, Francis.”

  The doctor brushed aside a lock of the decedent’s hair. “Ever see something like this before?” Curved tightly against a shaved patch on the scalp was a small, leech-shaped transparent plastic object, filled with nanocircuitry. “Brain-bore,” the Healer enunciated with disgust. “Given the right drugs and commensurate skill, the perpetrator can create any reality of his choosing inside the victim’s mind, a twisted world by means of which the victim’s behavior can be manipulated. Maybe—maybe you Americans are right: in this case there ought to be a law.”

  “Forget that, Doc, it’s habit-forming.” I pe
eked beneath the little instrument where wires led into a nylon plug through the skull. “You mean this thing made her try to kill me?” And what was that discoloration on her thumb?

  “Not exactly,” said the Healer, covering the girl’s face again. He pulled a small flat tin from his sporran, hinged it open, and offered me a brown Dutch cigarillo. “She could have been experiencing anything subjectively—believing you were Clarence the Ripper incarnate, say, or avenging some fictional evil you did to her or someone she loved.” I lit his smoke and my own. “Nothing—no one—made her do it, only created some illusionary case of the horrors, some context under which it was a foregone conclusion that she’d try.”

  And I thought I’d heard of everything that was sickening.

  “Seems I’m acquiring a sort of fan club,” I observed, “with real clubs. First the attack in my stateroom, now this. I’d be superhuman if I could avoid jumping to the conclusion there’s some connection.” I reached beneath the sheeting to examine the cold dead hand again. A minute drop of dried blood glinted blackly on the thumbnail.

  The physician gave me an odd look. “You’re the detective, but what connection could there be between a Soviet human female and a gorilla?”

  “What?”

  “That’s what the samples from your cabin say: a gorilla, also probably female, judging by cosmetic residue on the hair samples. And this poor child was Russian or I’ll throw my brand-new dental references out and sue the dealer who brought them through the Broach.” He started looking absently for a place to flick his ashes, settled on an unused bedpan. “Look, if you ever get to the bottom of this...I’d love getting my hands on a brain-tapper, Hippocrates forgive me.”

  “For my part,” said the Captain, “and without prejudice, Mr. Bear, I’ll be satisfied just to dock at Gunter’s Landing, where you can take your mystery—and the violence that attends it—off my ship!”

  This didn’t seem the time to mention the booby-trapped Webley or the near-miss belowdecks. And, thinking of another nearby Miss, I wondered how Koko was.

  ***

  Upstairs, I tried organizing my recent escapades—with an accent on “escape”—for the daily call home. I don’t know how other couples handle it—actually, my first wife and I never talked about things that mattered—but Clarissa and I never hold back. It’s made for a wonderful life so far, with a few unpleasant minutes, followed by some supremely satisfying ones. Hours, even.

  But there was that bit of extra evidence I’d noticed in the infirmary: wood is still rare enough out here in space that every scrap is eagerly received. Back home, they make packing boxes of plastic, but goods exported to the asteroids go timber-wrapped by specific request and as an extra selling-point. There’d been a three-quarter-inch splinter underneath the Russian girl’s left thumbnail. Must’ve hurt like the dickens (or did it, with the brain-bore?). It hadn’t been there quite long enough to fester, just long enough to give me an idea who’d levered that crate onto my head.

  So how was I gonna tell my wife the Healer how badly Confederate forensics need an overhaul? Luckily, I had another call to make first—that little Bauer autopistol and the Woodsman Olongo was attacked with: obsolete U.S.-type weapons, collector-rare in the Confederacy. Why were they showing up over here?

  Koko seemed to have other things to do. I was just as happy: it was getting to be perilous in my vicinity, and I still have a few Neanderthal opinions concerning womenfolk and danger, even when the girls’re covered with fur and have ten times my strength. I shooed her off to a smartsuit lesson, promising to catch up later, and grabbed the com.

  The lag was terrible now, but Captain Spoonbill grudgingly surrendered his strongest beam for a solid hour, at only nominally rapacious rates. Talking through a Broach is complicated by the weird influence it has on radiation, gravity, the very fabric of reality. Try sending regular radio or lasergram through; they wind up, well, twisted, requiring special equipment to hammer them back into sense. I hired the appropriate gadgetry via Laporte Interworld, and punched up a certain broom closet in the good old U.S.A.

  “Jenny?” The picture was an informationless gray pudding. “I got a problem you could help me with.” I waited through the lightspeed lag, trying to figure out which Jenny I was talking to.

  “If I can, Win, but I’ve got a problem of my own right now...”

  “The Fraser campaign—but this—” I stopped; she was still talking.

  “We’ve been ransacked! They broke in last night, tore the place apart, and set fire to what was left. Even with Confederate fire-control systems...”

  “Jenny, something weird is going on all over. Attempted murders, break-ins, disappearances—we’ve got enemies, and I’m beginning to think they’re organized.” She didn’t much like the details I gave her, but then neither did I.

  Finally: “If I get any useful information on those weapons, I’ll relay it through Clarissa once you’re out on Ceres.”

  “Right. She’s got a little digging to do—no pun intended—to find out if Olongo’s burglar was brain-bored.” A little more expensive gab and we rang off. The delay connecting with home was somewhat longer than could be accounted for by Dr. Einstein. An elderly chimp materialized: Captain Forsyth, dirty and disheveled.

  “That you, Win? Brace yourself, son, there’s bad news: someone broke into your house last night. Place is a wreck, though nothing I can tell is missing, except—hold on, son—Clarissa. Win, I can’t find her anywhere. For what it’s worth, there are no signs of, well, of blood or anything. I’m doing all I can to track her down, and— You listening, son? You haven’t said a word.”

  What the bloody steaming hell could I say? Ayn Rand and Harry Browne and Robert Ringer can go on Looking Out for Number One: my only reason for living had suddenly evaporated.

  Clarissa!

  What else could possibly go wrong now?

  6: The Mind in the Pyramid

  Friday, March 12, 223 A.L.

  We arrived at Ceres just in time for Lucy’s funeral. Concerning the remainder of the voyage, perhaps the less said the better. Maybe Lucy and Ed were the best friends I’d ever had, but Clarissa—well, she was Clarissa. I was going straight home, if possible at something better than the one-tenth gee Bonaventura had tapered down to in the last few days—a stasis-tank aboard a three- or four-gee unmanned freight drone—I didn’t care.

  Letting others steer me by the elbow, I wandered past the next ten days half-conscious, groping dazedly through the motions. Koko insisted I learn to wear a smartsuit; I argued feebly I wasn’t planning to hang around where I could use one; she told me to shut up and march to class. Amazingly, despite a soul-draining ache that never left me, I found the classes mildly interesting, enjoyed myself enough to feel guilty about it, and came to hate that moment each day when the practice sessions ended and I had to go back to my lonely, haunted cabin.

  Smartsuits bear about the same relationship to space armor that modern scuba equipment has to cumbersome nineteenth-century hard-hat diving rigs. Everybody’s seen them on the Telecom, a rubbery, one-piece second skin, varying in thickness from a quarter to a half an inch, seemingly a frail barrier against the savage rigors of interplanetary space. But space had better look to its laurels—a smartsuit makes that hostile void as comfortable as an area mapmakers once labeled the Great American Desert: Colorado.

  Despite appearances, the garment functions primarily as an elaborate and powerful computer. Of all the nanoelectronic miracles available to third-century Confederate civilization, it is the supreme achievement. Each square millijefferson within its multilayered fabric measures the wearer’s well-being, making appropriate corrections to air flow, humidity, temperature, half a dozen other nuances clear down to the molecular level. Each square millijeff outside selectively absorbs or reflects a hundred different forms of energy, powering the suit and protecting its owner. I guess what finally convinced me was the fact that, as a long-standing tradition, a smartsuit was included in the price of my tick
et to Ceres. Seemed like a waste not to try it out. I picked it up at the tailor’s and hurried aft to meet my apprentice.

  “Mr. Bear!” The instructor minced over, limply waggling his simian wrist-talker as a dozen students milled around the airlock, waiting just outside an empty cargo bay evacuated for instruction. “I see you’ve finally acquired your smartsuit. Now, until you’re caught up with the rest of us, darling Koko here will help make sure you’re properly fitted.”

  Darling Koko curtsied, twisting a fingertip in a nonexistent dimple.

  I carried my suit over my back by its hanger, like a deep-space Frank Sinatra. Heeling my cigar out on the deck, I looked around for a dressing room to change in. “Okay, but won’t that cost her instruction time?”

  “It’s all right, Boss.” Suited up, she resembled a life-size silvery-gray Buddha. “I’ve been getting extra practice after hours with Francis—I mean, Dr. Pololo.” You can’t tell if a gorilla’s blushing, but she lowered her big brown eyes and shuffled a rubber-shod toe.

  The instructor smirked exaggerated tolerance: “Don’t worry, dear, you’re making amazing progress, really, ‘extra practice,’ or not.” He inhaled a perfumed cigarette and blew a sultry puff in my direction.

  I shrugged, trying to look as unreconstructably masculine as possible. “You’re the teacher. But I think there’s something wrong with this suit.” I pulled it off the hanger. “I’ve heard of underwear for the deaf, but this is ridiculous—shouldn’t it have a transparent face-plate or something, so I can see where I’m going?”

  The chimpanzee grimaced with exasperation, then reached for the hood folded down on his chest. Unlike Koko’s suit and mine, his was lavishly decorated in bright lavender and yellow swirls. He stretched the hood up over his face and fastened it at the nape, looking, minus some kind of cutout for his mug, just like a featureless psychedelic story dummy. “You see, the surface nanoprocessors pick up wave fronts, assemble and present them on the inside of the hood.” He pushed buttons on one of the complicated keyboards running down each forearm. “Now I can see as well as you can. Better, because I’m making use of lovely ultraviolet, infrared and sound waves, x-rays, radio, you name it.”