Zero-G Read online

  “Impressive,” she said in earnest.

  “Not according to my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and a garrulous former wife. They all think I belong safe—there’s that word again—in a quiet pasture somewhere, not stationed in a rugged frontier.”

  “You do not seem like a man who can be outvoted,” she said.

  “I am not a democracy,” he agreed. “For the next two years at least, this is home. And—oh yeah”—he cocked a thumb over his shoulder at the fuzzy image of the moon through the light-opaqued window—“that’s my jurisdiction too. Not bad for a kid from Hell’s Kitchen. Most of the time I couldn’t even see the moon from the New York streets. And the stars? Only on Broadway.”

  “That’s where the casinos are?” Kristine said, pleased that she didn’t have to check her IC for that.

  “Where the casinos are, yes,” Lord repeated, a little sadly. The last of the legitimate Broadway theaters had closed in 2040, replaced by smaller off-Broadway places.

  “I have to confess,” she said, “I didn’t even realize the FBI was in space.”

  “Most people don’t,” he said. “It’s a new branch. A twig, really, just one month old. Our motto is Ius altus, humile catagraphum. High jurisdiction, low profile.”

  Kristine brushed away the Glossator function that had automatically translated the Latin. She studied Lord for a long moment.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Just thinking,” she said. “I know a lot of federal officials and—let’s wait before we go back. I’m not in the mood for my employer just yet.”

  “I think I can spare a few more minutes,” Lord said, looking back at the crowd that was now fully involved with itself. Even the usually standoffish Stanton was socializing.

  “Frankly, I would never have guessed you’re Bureau,” Kristine said. “You’re so—not formal.”

  “That’s probably why they offered to put me up here, out of the way,” he said, winking. “But, yes”—he raised his right hand—“it’s all true.”

  He tapped a small pin on his jacket. Kristine looked at it closer. It was a small G on a blue background encircled with a white ring.

  “ ‘Og’? Or is that ‘Go’?”

  Lord sighed. “They warned me no one would get it.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “No, no, the design—that’s my fault. It’s Zero-G. FBI agents on Earth used to be called ‘G-men,’ ‘government men.’ Now we’re G-men—in zero gravity.”

  “I see. The G has a double meaning.”

  “That’s right. I should probably put a chip in this thing that feeds the explanation to proximity ICs.”

  She looked back at the salon. “Where’s the rest of your command?”

  “They weren’t invited,” he said. “It costs a lot to bring alcohol to space.” He smiled. “I’ve talked enough. It’s your turn. Why are you here?”

  She smiled evasively. “Not yet. Maybe when I’ve had a little more to drink,” she said, holding up her nearly empty glass.

  “Then let me get you a refill,” he said. Once again, the gray eyes glinted invitingly. “Immediately.”

  TWO

  KRISTINE RELEASED THE stem and watched Lord go.

  Finally, something good. Kristine breathed deeply. Unlike the recirculated air on the trip up, the air here had a fresh if metallic taste. She knew, from Colonel Franco’s urgent need to impress her with his knowledge on the flight, that the station didn’t recycle breathable air but made it from people’s exhalations using backward-running fuel cells, or gathered sparse particles of oxygen from outside the station with experimental electric scoops.

  “The engineers call it ‘air apparent,’ ” he had said. “There’s something ‘off’ about it. They say there could be long-term effects . . . no one knows.”

  Looking now at the bleary heavens outside the thick glass, she said under her own breath, “I don’t care. Right now I like it very much.”

  Striding slowly, absently, through the dome, smiling at the workers, she thought that maybe it would be possible to start the trip over. From here, from now. It wasn’t Sam Lord himself but what Sam Lord had done: he made her feel human.

  She thought back to the claustrophobic, windowless NASA Skyshot Spacejet ride just two hours ago. It took off from the National Spaceport like a lightning bolt, pulled a hard left to avoid prohibited airspace near the White House, the National Mall, and the Naval Observatory, then accelerated to Mach 6 before the air inlets shut with an audible snap.

  Kristine hadn’t required Colonel Franco to tell her that the ship had reached the prerequisite eighteen-mile altitude. She was already holding her breath as the Spacejet—a smooth, slightly flattened cone with jet wings wedged onto its middle—jumped from Mach 6 to 25 in the time it took her to grip the armrests of the form-fitting vegan-leather seat.

  Except for the smell of gunpowder on ships that had just come from the cold of space—the result of metal interacting with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a flight attendant informed her—no aspect of the journey had taken her by surprise. It had all been detailed in a pre-­takeoff instructional, projected before her eyes on the IC. She knew why she had to wear the throat-to-toe jumpsuit made of the relatively new “memory material” that automatically adjusted to the wearer for the most flattering fit and, depending on the setting, could redefine curves or tighten abs like an old-fashioned girdle. It adjusted its grip based on skin temperature and blood flow to diminish the press of gravity during takeoff and landing. Kristine also knew why she had to stow her shoes and purse in the specially designed overhead bin. To keep things steady during the hypersonic trip, small but powerful jets filled the tiny storage space with blasted air when the bin door was closed, whistling shrilly as they kept her belongings in place whenever the craft angled and turned. That near-ultrasonic screech was only part of the noise: the external jets screamed loudly as well, and Colonel Franco talked louder still to be heard above the racket.

  But none of that, yet, had dampened the thrill of going to the Space Station Empyrean as the hired companion for Colonel Franco. She still didn’t understand why all the other young women at the agency—­naturals and pan-genders both—had declined. There was travel pay, a guaranteed two-day minimum, and the experience itself.

  “Read the reviews,” her best friend, Manu Mack, had cautioned her. “Space gets terrible notices.”

  Kristine couldn’t believe it. Even as the shuttleplane raced skyward, she remembered thinking, If my siblings back on the family ranch in Montana could see me now, they would be so jealous. And my folks wouldn’t have been so worried about me moving to the big bad American capital. She smiled as she thought about how her sister, younger brother, and she used to lie in the field, under the brilliant Milky Way, watching each shuttle streak across the night sky from Cape Frontier in Alaska. Now—here I am! On the inner edge of space!

  Her anticipation was suddenly high again, and unblemished. She had experienced that thrill once before, the sense of crossing a threshold into terra incognita; it was back when she got so pretty, shapely, and blond that even her own parents knew they shouldn’t keep her down on the farm. She wasn’t talented enough to be an actress, was too short to be a model, but a local pageant and a bronze trophy brought her to the attention of their congressional senator, who offered her a part-time position on his staff.

  Officially she was a personal aide, but in reality she was what the pages at the Capitol derisively dubbed an “office vase.” She was a greeter, someone who looked great and played simple to make the lobbyists or political rivals feel sexy or desirable or smart. She stayed with them from the waiting room to the inner sanctum. The leers and ham-fisted innuendo were bad, but not as bad as the money. So when one of the pages told her about D.C.’s top companion agency, she didn’t reject it out of hand.

  Companion agencies were d
ifferent from escort services. All were legal since the Sexual Freedom Bill was passed in ’32, but CAs had a strictly “look but no touch” arrangement. Happily for Kristine’s bank account, the money was good too. But the experiences were even better. She had been all over the globe, in every upscale and high-security building in the Global Alliance, and even under the sea in Japan.

  And now the most extraordinary experience of all. But it had been something of an unexpected ordeal. The hissy, jolting ascent of the shuttleplane into Earth’s orbit had seemed like a Caribbean sail when she boarded the SK ferry for the remainder of the journey to the station.

  Kristine paused and looked back at Earth through the Empyrean’s big window. She shivered, thinking back on the second part of the transit.

  SK stood for Solar Kite, and the instant she’d seen it on the IC tutorial, she knew why. At first it appeared to be a glistening, shark-tooth-shaped chip in the distance, but as it slowly, elegantly tumbled toward them she could see what appeared to be an olden-days lateen-rigged sail with a snowflake-like pattern on its gold-, silver-, and platinum-colored surface.

  The colonel was chatting with a brigadier general across the ribbon-­narrow aisle so Kristine turned up her audio.

  “We at NASA hope you have been enjoying your flight,” she had heard a calm female voice say, while the image of the lazily loping space sail didn’t change. “This final-stage ferry to the Space Station Empyrean will be as smooth and pleasant as the rest of the trip. The Solar Kite will adjust its position automatically to the spacejet, and upon boarding through the airlock we will fly to the Empyrean’s levitated geosynch orbit using sunlight and xenon ions from its own electric thrusters. So please sit back, relax, and enjoy the rest of your journey. Thank you for flying Skyshot.”

  Kristine tried to do all of that, but anticipation was high as she took her first out-the-window look at the newest completed space station in the sky. It resembled a splayed-out octopus with a smaller illuminated starfish lying on top of the thick, stubby central core—the flattened head of the octopus. A slim tower of strange, iterative fractal trusses projected from the core. It somewhat resembled the high, tapered Tokyo Tower on Earth, but with fewer open spaces. Below the weird radial skyline, facing Earth, was a huge circular sail that reflected the planet’s terrain with mirror-like clarity.

  That’s when she had to look away. Her head, like the station, was spinning. The tutorial had cautioned her that without orientation, without a clear up and down, her “Earth legs” would check out. She looked to Colonel Franco for assistance but the back of his head had none to offer. Unlike the relatively spacious shuttle, the rear of the seat in front of her was right in her face, so she looked down at her socks as the Skyshot drifted toward the edge of the Empyrean.

  The universe is outside and you’re looking at a Christmas gift from Cousin Al, she thought. How dube is that?

  Of dubious substance or not, the moment was broken when a dry, calm, live voice arrived over the ship’s IC channel.

  “Passengers, we are on final approach to the SS Empyrean. Please do not deseat.”

  There was no mention of traditional seat belts because there weren’t any. The chair formed a tight grip with the jumpsuit and required a substantial push on the armrests to break.

  Still looking down, annoyed by the mundane view, Kristine had nudged her head and brought up a detailed explanation of the landing in her IC.

  “A runway surrounds the outer edge of the station’s central hub, below the solar sail,” the voice resumed. “Of course, you will not see the microwave guidance beam emanating from the station, a welcoming hand that will guide us precisely to the centerline. It’s an infinite runway, for perfect landings every time.”

  The ceiling rumbled dully, and Kristine felt the shuttle sink toward the inner surface of the runway, which wheeled beneath the spaceplane’s extended landing gear. The touchdown was bump-free, and the Skyshot decelerated gently into the station’s whirling reference frame. Soon familiar weight returned as centripetal “gravity” took over: once again, outside her window, there was an up and down. When the ship had stopped after several minutes, it seemed as if the vessel had always been a part of the station.

  Kristine saw the SK ferry drifting back into space. Then she felt Colonel Franco turn toward her, preceded by a wafting of his perspiration and cologne.

  “Nice, huh?” he said.

  “Um-hm,” she cooed, because that was what men like him wanted to hear.

  Franco, she knew, was not stationed on the Empyrean. He was only here for the party. She didn’t know any of the other guests but could tell from their uniforms that they represented not just the United States but other governments and interests. Not that it mattered. She wasn’t here to socialize. Like Franco, her clientele were mostly regulars. They wanted her to show up, show off, and speak only when spoken to.

  “Your stowed items,” the flight attendant had said with a smile, handing Kristine her black velvet purse and matching high-heel pumps. She pointed starboard. “Each passenger has their own changing room. Please take your time, leave your jumpsuit anywhere, and thank you for flying Skyshot.”

  “Thank you,” Kristine had replied, and was on her feet as if the recliner had given her a head start.

  She had gone from the white of the spacecraft compartment to the white of the antechamber, where the seat, hooks, and a mirror looked as if they had all been fashioned from one block of glass and plastic. She touched the top of the neckline and the jumpsuit slipped off as if it were a dropped curtain. It swept sideways through the air a little as it fell, like some enchanted cloth in a story, her first exposure to what Franco had warned her was “non-gravitas gravity”; an illusion, a simulation lacking real substance.

  It seemed an ironic thing for that man to say.

  Kristine unfragged her clothes from her purse, dressed, then stood in front of the mirror. She stared at herself and the relatively sedate, moderately low-cut, backless, form-fitting little black mini-dress supplied by the agency’s wardrobe department, likely chosen by Colonel Franco himself. The automatic garment restoration capacity of the fabric had not quite worked in the artificial gravity, revealing the tops of the circulation-controlling panty hose, which sensed extremes of gravity and helped keep blood flowing along the legs. She wriggled her hips, smoothing down the dress, and touched the exit button. The mirror became a window and Colonel Franco was waiting outside.

  The young woman stared. Not at him, though doubtless he assumed so, proud in his ceremonial uniform, complete with medals and decorations, craggy face, crew cut, and rapier-like body. What caught and held her eye was the looming expanse of the planet Earth behind him through one of Empyrean’s octopus-arm portals. It was the first take-your-breath moment she had experienced so far.

  Franco had chivalrously, if somewhat mechanically, extended his arm and chaperoned her through the docking bay spaceport, where they joined a variety of ceremony attendees in an electromagnetic shuttle car. They were inside a tube, once again without windows, once more packed together, substantially similar biota without a shared thought or a familiar, welcoming look—territorial, even here.

  “Sorry it took so long,” Lord said, walking back into the room, a fresh glass of wine in his hand. “Apparently, people like to take my elbow and talk to me.”

  Kristine started at Lord’s voice. She had been trying to see the stars and had not seen or heard him approach.

  “That’s a good talent for a . . . a Zero-G-man or woman to have, isn’t it? Encouraging confession.”

  “It is,” he agreed, handing Kristine her glass. “More accurately, though, it’s that I like to listen, to learn, and most people like to talk. Narcissism is as vast as space.”

  “You say that but you don’t sound cynical.”

  “Oh, I’m not. It takes youth and idealism to be misanthropic,” he said. Then he frowned. “Exce
pt for my medic. He’s . . . grumpy.”

  “But not you.”

  “Not me,” Lord said. “At my age, you realize there’s room for everyone.”

  “May I ask—how old are you?”

  “I’m eighty-and-change,” he said. Then added, “You remember change, don’t you? Before e-money?”

  “I do not,” she said.

  “Then, eighty and a frac,” he said, resorting to the current vernacular.

  “I never would have guessed!”

  “And it really shouldn’t matter,” he said. “Ageism is the final frontier. I never understood why a quality envied in wine is frowned on in humans.” He ducked his head toward the other room. “Anyway, now I really should get back.”

  “Me too,” she said with open regret.

  He offered his arm again. “This time, while we walk, you can tell me more about you.”

  She did, briefly and comfortably, as if she were catching up with an old friend. He reacted without reacting—but it was more than just being a good listener. He looked at her, saw her, understood her as if her eyes were an IC giving him all the context and additional color he needed.

  “Who are those people anyway?” she asked as she finished her narrative. “I saw some of them on the flight up, but what are they doing here? I mean, about half the men and women are companions—”

  “Eleven of them are,” he informed her. “Three others are escorts. And one of them is a formie star.”

  “Is that Nicky Bligh?” she asked. “I thought I recognized her.”

  “It is,” Lord said, “though I have to confess I’m not a fan of her or the formies.”

  “Really? How can you not be?”

  “I like old-fashioned movies,” he said, “not entertainment where you plug ingredients into a computer and the SimAI whips something up.”