Three - Carbon Crazies
Spritzer Rich was the diaristamong the crew. He wrote nothing down, but stored visual and audiomaterial in his head. He'd collect data from the central computerinto which every member of their little family was at some timeplugged: Captain Jones through her pilot's station, Luke Faroukeduring his regular trysts with comp's menu-memory...
He kept a separate channel formovies. His favourite at present was The Great Escape, with SteveMcQueen, and he'd fashioned himself a baseball glove out of coppersheeting, the ball steel and lethal.
He alone knew the truth aboutErnie; and he was silent, keeping a resentful distance, a repairman'saloofness between Rich and Jones, Spritzer and the Droover sisters,Abdul, Frank Marsh and Monica Hat, this new engineer, who he secretlyenvied.
‘Pitcher,’he said. ‘The engine should belong to you. Ernie knew his business,but you could make her interiors dance, her bubbles into more thanspectres, insubstantial girls whose hearts are as bloodless as theireyes; you could assemble a cornucopia of things...’
Things like - he laughed.
Things were secret...
‘Kinema.’
Frank and Monica liked to swopbio-chips. On Upfront they'd escaped the confines of the ship andwalked beyond the fences, giving themselves over to an unfamiliarnature.
Cut off from everything but eachother they strolled for hours beneath the green-tinged sky andyellow-flecked leaves of tall bushes and stunted trees, the latterheavy with exotic fruit, shrouded in colourful, noisome insects.
For now the pressure ofco-ordinating the dimensionless void was lifted. There was neitherinput nor Droover, output nor Droover's backhanded remarks.
They enjoyed teasing her, butenough...
‘Is enough,’ closed Rich. ‘Oneday, I know, you two are going to surprise me; but until then,’ heshook his empty hands, ‘I'll put my money on Abdul.’
The little thief.
Luke Farouke spent his vacantmoments polishing his crime skills, liberating items of dubiousvalue, replacing them with miniature treasures: an ivory brooch for acheap watch, a pot of Roman ancestry for one massed out of donkeyfaeces - but the man was a true artist, a genius.
*
Lumping Jack prowled the nightstreets like a wraith, his veneer of darkness compelling the eye tolook askance as he burgled the record's office of InterplanetarySpacelines. The supernational had a contract he was interested in; alot of money - he conjectured - was involved.
Naturally, he got what he wanted.
Twenty minutes later Morgan wasback on board his guppy, mind and fingers prying into the procreativewellspring of graphic information. What he had gleaned from a haplessnightwatchman; the stuff that made worlds pause; a mad scientist'sciphered elucidations, no less than Dr Grey's confidential papers,his instructions as to the handling and transportation of certainvaluable cargoes...
But what?
It was worth his while, hedecided, to find out.
*
‘Corpses.’
Spritzer,snatching the revolving steel ball, congratulated himself. He had toadmire Ernie, his use of fact, turning it inside out, hawking it asfiction, and in such a format, a comic-strip that by now had so manylookalikes and facsimiles, imitations and blatant rip-offs, thetruth, the compact warning of the originals was forever swamped.Buried like Ern: in life an engineer of opposing forces, in death aforce without substance or identity; a bubble popped...
If only they knew, he thought.There was Ern, dropping his pills, and why? He was slave to theengine much as the engine was slave to retrograde, its bizarre fuel,the splicer of time and space.
The twistedrunt had a Messiah complex, a megalomaniacal desire to wrest mankindfrom its entropic fate - all through the medium of an irregular,pictorial rag.
Why indeed...itwas more than syphilis contorting his brain, the insanity of Erniestretched to points achievable solely within the thraldom to which hehad given his every breath, his final act.
‘Rich.’
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing, I...’
‘Captain?’ He let the balldrop. It struck the gantry and rolled, nudged the toe of his boot.
'You were giving me a lot ofstatic just then.'
He smirked.‘It's fixed,’ hesaid.
You can rely onthe pitcher, for now.
'Thanks.'
If only they knew the intricaciesand understood the effort, showed - were it possible - theappreciation he deserved, and recognized their peril, he might yetcome down on their side. But that wouldn't happen, he would be forcedto kill again. A pain struck him, as it often did, across the bridgeof his twice broken nose.
If only they knew the truth, andlistened to Dr Grey.
‘Henry, they bleed blood andsweat sweat, but unlike you and me - and Ernie - they don't knowshit.’
Round and roundthe stars they go, looping the loop, matching beginnings and endings,starting where they left off, never questioning, never realizing, as,like carbon atoms, they cycle and recycle the same old (new) routes,propelled by a desire to trade and be traded, a need to explore comewhat may, a gravity of lungs and muscles upon them, the beguilingsiren's call, of nature's prey, and predator...
He wanted the engine, Ernie'slegacy. He wanted -
Spritzerlaughed.