The Ophiuchi Hotline

11

Gold. Everything was yellow gold.

I floated in the dim light, aware, detached from everything but the single color. The liquid began to drain from the tank and still I floated, dry, in midair.

A shock came and made me aware of sixteen needle-tiny sources of agony; my arms and legs jerked convulsively but my heart did not start beating. Then a familiar sensation: I had banged one of my knees.

Another shock, and my heart thumped. I was alive, and about time, too. I'd rather have died than go through another shock. I took a breath and was choked by racking coughs. I bumped my head on the lid of the tank and drew cold hands away from the lump to find they were streaked with blood. Some had run into my left eye, tinting the gold with pink.

The cover of the tank popped with a wet hiss of rubber seals. There was a strap around my middle and I fumbled over it with hands that felt like inflated rubber gloves. As I sat there massaging my wrinkled feet, the rest of my senses crept up on me and made me sick. I wanted to spit out my tongue.

My fingertips and the soles of my feet looked ancient, mummified. I tried to get my eyes to focus around the room, squinting, wiping away the blood—

"Who the hell are you?"

The room was small, never meant to hold three people. Luckily, no one had to sit down in free-fall, not even Lilo, who was so weak she could not have lifted her arms in a gravity field. She floated, warming her hands around a tube of broth. She took tiny sips from the nipple, having found out what disaster she faced if she tried to drink it faster.

"I think you lost me again," she said, tiredly. More than anything, she wanted to go back to sleep. Her head was throbbing, and the voices sounded fuzzy. "What year is it, did you say?"

Cathay sighed, which irked Lilo and made it harder than ever for her to believe what he had told her. The story was incredible enough without having to believe her dead clone had loved this man.

But Parameter went on with infinite patience.

"The year is 571, the month of Capricorn. You were arrested in Sagittarius, 568, and executed one year later. That is, your clone was executed, according to Cathay. The original Lilo lived for a short time after that, then she was killed, too. A second clone—apparently already prepared, if the times are to add up right—"

"That's Tweed's standard procedure," Cathay put in.

"Yes. The second clone was killed escaping, like the original Lilo. The third clone was sent to Jupiter, where she met Cathay and was—"

"Yes, yes, I remember that part all right," Lilo said. Actually she did not want to hear someone say again that she had been killed. The details of her clone's adventures on Poseidon were murky to her. That could be straightened out later.

"Now, why the.... It seems like I should have been awakened here sooner. What happened?"

Parameter paused, seeming to sense that Lilo was disturbed by the story.

"Maybe we should let you get some rest before we go on."

Lilo looked up. Parameter/Solstice was a comic figure, a human sculpted by a child out of green Silly Putty. The only visible part of Parameter's body was her mouth, from which Solstice had retracted so her partner could speak to the others. The figure had bulging hips, a narrow waist, and no neck; just a huge lump of Solstice's body that covered the head and shoulders. But Lilo was not laughing. Unlike most humans, she was a little in awe of the perfect symmetry they represented.

"No, go on. I'll rest later. But thanks."

"Very well. You're in a clone body; you knew that and you expected it. But it isn't the clone body you left behind seven years ago, when you set up this station. That one died."

"What? Why?"

"Are you sure you want to go on? I can see this is upsetting you."

There was nothing she wanted more than sleep, but she was determined to plow on. It was important to know the extent of the situation, frightening though it might be.

"We don't know why, really. When we arrived, it was dead. You said that might happen, but you didn't say what to do. We went over our discussions with you and concluded we had agreed to awaken you. The trick was in defining what that meant. We decided we had an obligation to produce another clone, and awaken it. We weren't very experienced with your machines, so the waking up was a problem, I fear..."

"No, don't worry. You did very well, considering. So I'm the second one. Let's see, with the three that were grown on Luna, and my original body, that makes—"

"I'm afraid not," Parameter said. "We studied the problem carefully before we started growing another clone, but I guess we had to learn as we went along. The second clone was a failure. It died when we tried to awaken it. You're the third. Cathay helped. He arrived here three months ago."

"By now," Cathay added, "there's certainly another clone of you on its way to Poseidon."

Lilo crouched over the computer console. Five days had passed since her awakening and she was feeling much better, physically. Careful exercise had strengthened her muscles, though she knew she was still far from full health.

The capsule was getting too damn small. Not that Parameter/Solstice took up much room; they seemed content to stay in one spot all day; they didn't move just to be in motion. But Cathay was another story.

She took a perverse satisfaction in the fact that she disliked Cathay. It had shaken her to hear him tell of Tweed's methods for ensuring the loyalty of his agents. It was not pleasant to hear that she could be so predictable. But the last Lilo had liked this man, or so he said. Perhaps she had even loved him. Well, goddam it, this Lilo did not.

"Can't we at least talk about it some more?" he said, quietly. "Nothing is solved by your being like this."

"There's nothing to solve, as far as I'm concerned." She was at the computer on the pretext of finding out what had gone wrong with her first two clones raised in the capsule. Actually, she was too angry to concentrate on the figures that flew by on her screen. She was there so she could turn her back on him.

"You're really going through with it." He sounded as tired as she felt. Relenting for a moment, she realized it must be hard for him, too. He remembered her clone. He'd had a relationship with her, before her death. Now Lilo had changed that picture.

"Yes, I am. You haven't given me any alternative, because—"

"It's the chance to save a lot of people who mattered to you... I take that back. They would matter to you, if you met them."

"Damn it, you could say that about half the human race! Think what you're asking me to do. Okay, it sounds cold, but the fact is these people are nothing to me."

"Not even your clone? There'll be another there by now."

"Yes," she whispered, angrily. "You've kept reminding me of that, haven't you? But she is not me. I have no more obligation to her than to anyone else. I feel sorry for her. But frankly, the thought of meeting her makes my skin crawl." She turned back to her console and sighed. All right, she thought, one more time. Then if he doesn't drop the subject I'm going to kick his ass out the lock.

"I've admitted that the thought of taking that moon and leaving the whole damn system attracts me. It's an insane idea, but it's radical enough to solve all my problems—if it works. You've given me no reason to think it will. You're asking me to risk my life—which I have gone to extraordinary lengths to preserve—on the longest gamble I ever heard of. You tell me that isn't so."

Cathay was silent. He would never look at her when she got to this point, and she knew that meant he agreed with her.

"I'm not disputing that the drive would work. I know it has in the past. I'm saying that with the security you've described to me... with this... this Vaffa thing, this obscenity that pretends to be a human being—and a dozen of them..." She couldn't go on. The situation he had described to her on Poseidon was so utterly repulsive. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves.

"You tell me how we can get around Vaffa and set up the drive. Then I'll consider what you suggest."

"The other Lilo..." Cathay trailed off. "Well, she was talking in terms of laser rifles. If we could attack them indoors, when their suits are off—"

"I've never fired one. Have you?"

"No," he admitted miserably. He glanced up at her. His look told her that she was not the Lilo he had known. Well, she had been trying to tell him that for days. After several awkward minutes of silence he got up and went outside to be alone.

"I've fired one," Parameter said, suddenly.

"Have you?" Lilo asked. She wondered what had prompted the statement. Parameter seldom spoke for no reason. "Are you a good shot?"

"The best," Solstice said. When Solstice used Parameter's vocal cords to speak, she used a lower-pitched voice. It was startling until you got used to it. "I never miss. My reflexes and powers of calculation are much better than human."

"I know that. But would that make a difference? Would you be able to kill ail the guards before they got you?"

"No."

"I didn't think so. Face it, we're outnumbered. I'll bet each one of those monsters is almost as good as you are. And Cathay and I would be useless."

"Yes." The pair was quiet, but Lilo suspected they were conversing with each other rapidly. It should be interesting when they got through. She was not disappointed.

"It's possible," Parameter said.

"Yeah? You as much as said a fight would be hopeless."

"We never said that. We said we could not win a battle with laser rifles. We've thought of another approach. We won't be going, of course. There's nothing in interstellar space to interest a pair. Not enough sunlight."

"Obviously." Lilo sighed, and rubbed her fingers through her hair. She winced, and massaged her arm. She was still subject to cramps and spells of weakness. "Well, I'll admit there's no other alternative that attracts me. I had some vague idea of... well, of pairing and going out into the Rings. That's what I had in mind when I set up this station. Not that it's actually happened, though... I mean, now that I'm actually living in a clone body..."

"You're afraid," Parameter finished. "I'm not surprised."

"I'm sorry."

Parameter laughed. "Don't worry about my feelings. I'm quite used to the fact that most humans are afraid of pairing."

"I had planned to do it... "

"...but you hadn't thought it out enough. No, it's not for you. That is, it would be right for you, but you'll never see it that way. I knew that a long time ago."

Lilo knew Parameter was right. It was a sobering realization. With all the trouble Lilo had gone to, setting up the life-capsule station in the Rings to ensure her survival if she was caught in her illegal experimentation, she had not really thought hard about where she would go when she was revived. She had contented herself with vague thoughts of living in the Rings as a pair. There were no laws in the Rings; never had been and never would be.

But what other place was there for her to go? None of the Eight Worlds would have her; as soon as her genotype was detected she would be arrested and sentenced to the same fate as her original self had met.

She was an outlaw. And out there, circling Jupiter, was a world of outlaws in the same fix she was in.

"You said it's possible," she said, cautiously.

Parameter's exposed mouth grinned.

"You're a groundcrawler at heart, Lilo. You think in terms of hand-to-hand combat, even though you know nothing about it. Get your head out of the tunnels. We're talking about moving a world, taking it right out of the solar system. You have to think big."