The Centauri Device

FOUR Too Much Gravity

General Gaw, Dr Grishkin that peculiar priest, and Swinburne Sinclair-Pater the Interstellar. Anarchist had each captured a piece of him.

General Gaw had the arms. 'Come off it, sonny!' she cried, waving her awful spoon. Dr Grishkin pulled his right leg off in an attempt to attract his attention. Sinclair-Pater, laughing madly, put his hands into Truck's head. 'I know you!' he said archly, waggling his skinny fingers. 'We all know you!'

There are mysterious troglodytic wreckers hobbling and hopping about in the gloom at the very base of the universe; for millennia, they have been searching for the one golden bolt that holds the whole surprising contraption together; Truck knew its whereabouts to the inch just before he woke up to all the vast sordid horror of a rubber restraining garment, in West Central Detention, Carter's Snort.

'I'll tell you!' he yelled, trying to thrash about. But they had all left by a back door in his head.

The only new construction in Carter's Snort since the depression: West Central Detention, thrown hastily up when the decline became apparent: conceived, built, doomed to be a slum, to deliver hinterland justice. Not that anyone inside it is interested in the latter (which is represented non-representationally in a mural above the unwelcome gate and has, apparently, to do with globes, balances, and lightning. Very inspiring, but all that can be said for sure is that it smells of disinfectant); no, they're deep down in all that concrete to earn a living. It bows their shoulders, as if they supported the whole steel-laced, flat faced pile on their necks.

If they have cells for souls, no one's to blame.

Outside, it's a reflection of the Snort it claims to serve: fans of rust where metal touches the walls; wet and dirty and down by the river.

Inside, John Truck. Well, he's been here before. Or in places very like it.

He was alone in a charge room with the echo of his own waking cry, the sole and total literacy of the hinterlands scratched and daubed on the pale green walls around him. This is where they write their only books: Picking Nick was here, busted for speed; Og, caught holding for a friend. All coppers do it with their mothers; if you get off, Angel, tell The Rat I didn't. Stuff and screw and stuff again. Novels of rage, futile exposed addressed to lawyers, relatives, and life; vomit and other things in corners; a cold steel door with rivets and only memories of paint through being kicked so often in silly resistance.

Truck was strapped on a bench, vertiginous from the anesthetic, already bleak and bored, wondering if the General had caught up with him at last. From beyond the door came a continual scrape of footsteps, a whole army of offenders filing past. Faint voices, the odd shout, some smashed loser who had or hadn't come down: the King's guests, paying their forfeits without the fun of the party. It was way past dawn.

He lay there for some time, silently fighting the crab lice in the restraining jacket and staring at the ceiling. People came to the door, changed their minds and went away again. Angel and The Rat and Fast Harry passed on their advice in disconnected misspelled prose, but he'd read it all before. When the door scraped open, he was half asleep. Imagine his surprise, to find Doctor Grishkin, the flabby priest, bending solicitously over him.

Cooped up in Ruth's apartment with time to consider that meeting on Bread Street, he had begun to feel a metaphysical uneasiness, even alarm, whenever he thought of Grishkin. He would have been hard put to explain why. Nevertheless, it was amplified unreasonably by the actual apparition or avatar of the man. Endeavoring to dispel some of it, he stared up into the round, lunar face where he could almost see himself reflected in a faint cheesy film of perspiration and muttered:

'I thought I told you to sod off?'

It was hardly a body blow (One of these days, Truck, he told himself sadly, somebody is going to discover the real you under all this foulmouthed repartee — a foulmouthed teddy bear); and a mistake even to imply he might be continuing their previous exchange. The doctor had reversed his cloak, but not his stance. Black, with a thin gold stripe. Very fetching.

'Captain, it is a little more complex than that. If you could bring yourself — If you could co-operate — '

His little eyes gleamed extravagantly. Things, amorphous and juicy, shifted to and fro behind his windows like the slow stirrings of some core, some hub — something real, at any rate — which existed quite apart from his benign and greasy faith: inexplicable urgencies of the psyche mimicked in the motion of the gut, demands that perhaps only Grishkin could fully comprehend and Truck completely fulfill. Faced with such ambition — such enigma and compulsion — Truck's bravado slipped a little.

'Don't tell me you're a copper. I wouldn't have believed they had it in them.'

Crucified by someone else's crabs (he hadn't yet accepted that they were now his although they evidently had — the eternal misunderstanding), wrapped up, in sweaty rubber and flat on his back besides, he wasn't at his freshest; it was a stupid thing to say. But the good doctor merely smiled. He was no copper and both of them knew it. Truck hunched one shoulder.

'That was a stupid thing to say. Why are you here, then?'

Any port in a storm.

Grishkin beamed. He waddled very rapidly round the room once, touching the walls here, tapping them there.

'Captain,' he said as he went, 'you've been detained before. You aren't a fool. For an offence such as this, for a narcotics offence' — he spread his arms, the palms of his hands upwards; he stared up at the conjunction of wall and ceiling — 'no one could reasonably expect a lawyer. But the twenty-fourth century admits — indeed, insists upon — your right to religious representation. Why else should I be here?' He nodded several times to himself, murmuring 'Just so, just so,' as if he were thinking of something else altogether.

'How you got in here I don't much care; get to the point, Grishkin.'

The Opener thrust his face close to Track's. He seemed to have had late nights recently; there were pouches of slack, slightly discolored skin beneath his eyes. He licked his tiny lips and then whispered earnestly: 'To open certain avenues to you, to — '

'Grishkin, if you — '

' — to offer you a way out, Captain.'

Truck felt absurdly disappointed. He chuckled sourly, thinking of the General.

Grishkin made a gesture of impatience and turned his back. 'Captain, you are a difficult person to feel concern for!' When he turned back, some of the urgencies contained behind his windows had escaped into his facial musculature, pursing his mouth intermittently and drawing his forehead into two thick long labia of flesh.

'Captain,' he said, 'there are questions other than that of personal satisfaction, of ideology. I need an agent; if you like, an interpreter; possibly even more. Do you understand me? You are the last person in the Galaxy who speaks the language I am interested in. My doctorate is not in theology or medicine, but in archaeology; do you take my point?'

Breathing heavily, he leaned closer, supporting his gross bulk with a hand placed each side of Truck's head. Beneath the perspiration, his skin was grainy, matte.

'It is no laughing matter. The local penal system can be circumvented. If you agree to act for me, you will be released. If not — a narcotics offense, Captain — it speaks for itself.'

He levered himself upright.

Truck? He was invincibly ignorant of his Time and Place, only beginning to recognize the nature of the tides. He sniggered. 'Can you circumvent IWG Fleet, doctor?' he asked. 'Can you circumvent General Alice Gaw?'

It wasn't really funny.

'Oh, sod these bleeding lice!'

Grishkin winced. The walls of his stomach contracted furiously behind the window of his soul. Of their own accord, his pudgy hands moved until their blunt fingertips touched Truck's neck. His cloak fell forward and obscured the light. After an effort, he controlled his fingers and stepped back; he wrapped the cloak about him and stood there, looking down almost compassionately.

'You are worth more than you imagine, Captain, If I suspected you were simply parroting things of which you had no understanding — you cannot be quite as naïve as — but no: you have seen her already. I had hoped to be in time.' He shrugged. 'Until there is some change in your circumstances, my offer will have to be withdrawn.'

'You won't have anything to offer then, doctor.'

There was a hiss and thud of automatic bolts being withdrawn; servos whined and the charge-room door swung slowly open to admit two uniformed policemen. Grishkin spread his cloak like a lunatic birdman, raised his eyes to the ceiling.

'The price will be right when the time comes, Captain.' Then, 'Open yourself to the Universal Principle, my son,' he intoned. 'You may not believe in Him, but He believes in you. That is my advice. Learn trust and honesty, pick only those blooms from the flora in the Gut of Matter. They may look drab to you now, surrounded by the garish petals of illusion. But later, later — '

'Ah, the secular arm. Open yourself to them, my son.'

He folded his arms and strode away, nodding at the policemen. They ignored him, and turned gray faces on Truck. One of them had a key to the restrainer. When the sound of Grishkin's boots had faded away down the passage, he held it up and grinned maliciously. When Truck returned the grin, his face closed up abruptly and he put it away again.

'Less of that for a start,' he said.

They took him to a cell that opened off the passageway from the charge room and unlocked the restrainer so he could sit in front of a small metal-topped table on which the contents of his pockets had been spread. One of them left, the other stood behind him fidgeting and sighing occasionally as if he hoped Truck might try to engage him in conversation.

For half an hour nothing happened. A draft carried a strong smell of disinfectant into the cell.

Eventually two men came in: an IWG agent in plain clothes carrying a blue plastic folder, and a middle-aged sergeant of the civil (effectively, Port Authority) police with a long, jowled face and a rumpled uniform. They sat down on the other side of the table, not looking at Truck. The agent gave his file to Truck's guard. 'Take that to Whillans for me, will you.'

'Whillans is sick,' the guard told him, 'sir.'

'Well, give it to Jansen, then.' He examined Truck's papers. He seemed interested in the log book from My Ella Speed. He was young-looking and tanned, but partly bald, and there were deep lines running down from his nose to the corners of his mouth.

'We know he was on Morpheus, whatever the BCA have to say,' he said to the sergeant. Suddenly, he turned to Truck and asked, 'Who are you selling to these days?'

'I'm not selling,' said Truck. He had to give them something, so he went on, 'I admit I was at Veronica's place, but I was only consuming.' He'd had precious little time to do any of that. 'I'm not selling anything — '

The sergeant got up noisily and pointed his finger at Truck. He was slack in the belly and shoulders, which is where West Central weighs heaviest on its executives. He shook his finger accusingly.

'You'd better straighten yourself up. You're up to your ears in Earth heroin and morphine. We could break your leg and no one would care. In here we could break your leg.'

Truck had always avoided the opium derivatives. Nobody wanted colonial heroin because papaver somniforum lacked 'bite' when grown away from Earth, and its alkaloids were always either weak or peculiar. Rigid control of growing by both IWG and UASR had shut down the black market — there was simply raw material to be had; so the only trade in the genuine article was gray, a thin trickle of refined and packaged material stolen mainly from military medical supplies, traveling a precarious conveyer belt to the cutting factories of the giant H and M monopolies of Earth.

It was scarce, it was expensive, and it was profitable enough for the monopolies to protect their connections jealously. Truck had never wanted his head blown off.

(There was a second reason, one that seemed odd even to Truck. He called it squeamishness because he didn't think he had any right to a moral stance. In that, he was probably correct. But underneath his leather hat and funny clothes lived a puritan. He wouldn't sell anything he didn't believe in taking himself. He never ceased wondering about it He thought of it as a fatal flaw in his character.)

'Earth heroin can get you killed,' he said. 'You know that as well as I do.'

The IWG man rapped the table. 'He's not playing fair with us, sergeant,' he said distantly. The sergeant sat down. 'Why don't we make it harder for him?' he complained, looking at his blunt, hairy hands as if he loathed them. The IWG man was staring vaguely up at the ceiling. 'There's an easy way and a hard way of getting things straight,' he agreed. He opened the log book again, flicked its pages over. He began to poke Truck's belongings about.

'You're not co-operating John,' he said. 'Look, this, could have been harder for you personally; we've shown you a lot of consideration.' His eyes were blue and watery, aimless; he gave his full attention to anything they happened to focus on, like an old animal. He blinked, and everything had equal weight for him. 'We know you were on Morpheus, not too many years back, dealing in amphetamines. Your operation made a significant contribution to the Butter Putsch, so we can assume you have a political involvement. Now you turn up in a raid on Veronica's. Why shouldn't you have a heroin connection as well?

'You're in a bit of a mess, John.'

In those callow days, drifting among the dark machine-tool factories and vast rolling mills, concerned only with making enough money to buy back his indentures and get off the planet, Truck hadn't been able to tell a political involvement from a vomiting fit. He was still having trouble.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' he confessed. 'I don't see what H has to do with politics. I've never had much to do with either.'

The sergeant jumped to his feet again. This time his chair fell over. He made a fist and slammed it down on the table in front of John Truck's nose. His face had grown very red. Small objects rolled about the table top, dropping off the edge.

'You're working for Veronica!' he hissed. 'Don't try to deny it.' He sneered. 'Just tell me one thing,' he said: 'Which are you? Anarcho-Syndicalist or Situationalist? Which is it?'

'Oh Christ,' said Truck, amazed.

The IWG man winced. 'Could you let me handle the political angle, Sergeant?' he murmured. He began to fumble through his pockets.

'It's bloody obvious,' said the sergeant. He sat down, staring aggressively at Truck.

'Look,' said the IWG man, 'really this is a Fleet matter, Sergeant. Medical supplies are involved. There's a "hold" order out on this man from General Gaw herself.' He found a piece of paper.

The sergeant looked impressed. Truck felt as if a fish was trying to escape from his lungs. He squirmed about in his chair, trying to think of something to do. The local law had been allowed its pound of flesh, then circumvented.

'I'll tell you everything, Sergeant!' he said desperately. 'I'm a small cog in a vast machine. A chemist on Sad al Bari is planning to flood the market with an augmented heroin/AdAc mixture. He has Trotskyist-Leninist backing — but I'll only tell you — '

The sergeant hissed and bent over the table. An expression of triumph crossed his thick features. 'I knew it!' he whispered. Then he shook his head ruefully. 'Taken out of my hands,' he said. 'Taken right out of my hands — ' He glanced sulkily at the IWG man. 'I could have made it to lieutenant.'

Truck jumped to his feet and ran for the cell door. Furniture clattered behind him. He was halfway there when the IWG agent kicked him effortlessly in the base of the spine. He hit his head on the wall. These days, he always seemed to be falling down. He noticed that the lice had stopped biting him; he suspected they'd left the sinking ship.

The IWG man turned out to be called Nodes. He seemed peculiarly out of touch with his own situation. He even introduced himself formally as he walked Track through the sterile but greasy corridors of West Central (institutional corridors have this quality; they combine against odds asepticism and grime, as if the ancient cycle of daylight fouling and midnight disinfectant has imparted a glaze, an intermediate patina, to their walls) toward the dreary Carter's Snort morning outside.

He said that there was no reason for them to have a negative relationship; he said that he was as human a being as Truck, since he had a wife and three fine children; he insisted on calling Truck 'John,' unaware that by attempting to change their traditional roles, he was simply implementing and reinforcing them. In short, he was a policeman. 'We shouldn't be alienated,' he said.

Truck tried to catch his watery, old-animal eyes.

'You're off your head. You know this charge is a frame? You know this General Gaw woman?'

Nodes smiled, staring off down the corridors.

'You know, that isn't much of a contribution, is it John? Honestly? If I offer you a more constructive relationship than that of officer and detainee, you should come some way to meet me, shouldn't you?'

'For Christ's sake stop calling me that.'

Truck thought, I should have kept moving, I could have been halfway across the Galaxy by now (steering for the bloody edge). It was too late for that. He felt the world turn beneath him, obstinate, grinding, heavy. 'Too much gravity.'

'What was that you said, John?'

The corridors paled, cooled; they came into a sort of front lobby with wide glass doors. A drunken spacer slumped on a bench, belching ruminatively; he glanced up as Truck passed. 'The fact is, bos'n, I need surety — ' he began, blinking. He saw Nodes, shrugged, closed his eyes, and retched disinterestedly. Outside, a thin gray sleet was falling on half a dozen blunt, armored Fleet vehicles drawn up against the curb, spattering across the wide, wet street on brief gusts of wind. Fleet marksmen with oily reaction rifles and subtly polarized contact lenses covered the surrounding area — lounging bored and professional, eyes slitted against the wind.

General Gaw was waiting for him there — he saw her through a scum of condensation on the glass. She had discarded her Women's Army uniform for a black coverall which accentuated her small but well-shaped potbelly and brutal thighs. She was carrying a yellow riot helmet in the crook of her arm. She grinned as Nodes ushered Truck through the doors, said something to one of the marksmen. A short, metallic laugh rang down the quiet street

'Welcome home, sonny. Cold enough to freeze your bum, eh?' Truck hesitated on the shining pavement; the wind whipped his hair across his eyes; he shivered, and fumbled with the zip of his second-best jacket. The General, though, was impervious to weather. She scowled ferociously up at him like a one-eyed parrot, her head turned slightly. Shook her index finger at him.

'Oh' — drawing the syllable right out and clicking her tongue with huge enjoyment — 'oh, but you've done it now. If only you'd been a bit sensible about it all, lad. I could have saved you all this — '

She took his arm in a steely possessive grip. The Fleet executioners shifted unobtrusively into a pattern of maximum security, placing themselves on likely lines of fire, their hard eyes flickering to and fro across Truck before going to sweep the misty intersection at the end of the block, the slick, damp rooftops. The sleet fell faster, soft and wet. 'You and I are going to have a quiet talk, laddie, somewhere nice and dry.' She laughed. 'A quiet talk!' she repeated loudly, grinning round at the marksmen.

Abruptly, one of them let out a high-pitched cry, raucous and mechanical. He fluttered his fingers rapidly in front of his eyes to adjust the polarization of his contact lenses, and began firing off his weapon. Bolts flared up into the sleet, vanished utterly. At the intersection, gray shapes shifted jerkily in the murk.

General Gaw shoved Truck powerfully away from her and screamed, 'Get him back in there, Nodes, get him back -!' She seated the yellow helmet like a bulbous growth on her head, spun away. 'Well talk later, Truck, when I've squashed these rats.'

As she vanished into the gloom a great, groaning concussion shook the street, filling the air with bits of floating paper and plastic and dust.