The Outcasts of Heaven Belt

Ranger (in transit, Demarchy to Discus) +2.25 megaseconds

Fifty Kiloseconds later Wadie climbed the empty stairwell, one step and then another—wanting to crawl and knowing there was no one to see it, but determined that he would keep control over something, if only his own dignity. He had investigated the lower levels of the ship’s living area: the crew’s quarters; the alien lushness of a hydroponics lab adapted to one gravity; the workshop—the last memory was almost a hunger. He had seen everything but the section on the second level, behind a sealed doorway where a warning light blinked red. And everywhere he had been stunned by the incredible waste—of water, of air, of living space—in a matrix of drab austerity that was primitive compared to the Demarchy’s sophistication. He contemplated the irony in the idea that the Morningsiders considered themselves poor, when in some ways they were the richest people he had ever seen.

He reached the top of the stairs, leaned against the railing until his dizziness passed and his heartbeat slowed. His muscles ached dully when he stood, and when he moved pain burned in his trembling legs like a hot wire. He did his best to put his new clothes in order before he entered the control room.

The others were already there, watching something on the viewscreen. The captain and Welkin sat in chairs. Shadow Jack and the girl lay on the carpet, spreading their weight over the greatest area. The girl was trying to do pushups, her body rigid from the knees, as he looked in. He saw her elbows tremble, watched her collapse face down on the cushion. She lay spread-eagled on the floor, defeated. “I can’t”

“Then don’t,” Shadow Jack said, and more gently, “It’ll be over soon, Bird Alyn; we don’t have to get used to it.” He flipped playing cards out into the air, watching their incredibly swift plummet to the rug.

“Look who finally woke up.” He looked back over his shoulder; the cat sidled past his head and sat down on the cards.

Wadie bowed casually, carefully keeping his balance. No one moved in return, and indignation rose in him until he remembered that he couldn’t expect civility here. Pirates… He almost smiled, struck by the memory of what it had meant to be called a Belter, once, in the time when the only Asteroid Belt was Sol’s. He studied the captain’s face, clean now like her fair cropped hair; met something in her eyes that startled him. She glanced down, lighting a pipe. The tangy sweetness of whatever burned stirred memories in him, instinctive, of things he had never seen.

“At least you’re a likelier-looking trade this time,” Welkin said.

Wadie looked down at the blue cotton work shirt, the blue denim pants that stopped ten centimeters short of his ankles. He had forced the pants neatly into his polished boots. The boots braced his legs, but weighted them down like lead. “At least I’m clean.” He stepped carefully over the doorsill and crossed the room, holding his head up, back straight. He reached the nearest swivel seat and lowered himself into it, leaned back easily, breathing again. The girl stared up at him, awed. Shadow Jack looked away with a frown; he muttered and pushed the cat, scattering cards.

“Captain…” Wadie turned in his seat, reordering his arguments. He stopped, as he realized what they had been watching on the screen. “You’ve been monitoring Demarchy communications?” Six separate images showed on the bright screen, each one a different broadcast frequency. He recognized a general newscast, three corporation hypes, two local arbitration debates.

The captain nodded. “It’s been—enlightening.”

“Has there been anything about your ship from the Tirikis?”

“Yes, news items; and there was a—” She glanced back at the screen, as two of the broadcast segments suddenly disappeared, replaced by an octagonal star caught in a golden paisley, on a field of black. As they watched, the symbol blotted out the rest of the segments one by one. “What is this, Abdhiamal?”

“It’s a call for a general meeting; any demarch who wants to participate can monitor the final debate, startin’ now, and vote on the issues involved.” He remembered uneasily that it had been two hundred and fifty kiloseconds since they had left Mecca, more than two hundred and fifty kilosecs since his last report. “I expect this’ll be the debate about your ship, and what happened at Mecca. The Tirikis started to promo the second we left the rock; and nobody’s heard a word from me. I’d like to monitor the debate. And I’d like a chance to defend myself, if you’ll give me an open channel.”

She put her pipe aside. “All right, I’ll monitor the meeting. You can listen; but I can’t let you speak.”

“Why not? Your ship’s clear. And they can track you by your exhaust, they don’t need a radio fix—”

“I don’t need you telling them our plans. I’d rather let them guess.”

“Captain, I need to talk to them. This meetin’ could mean my job.” They all looked at him, unresponsive. He swallowed his irritation. “You—experienced the communications network we’ve got; it’s from before the war, and it still works as it should. It’s what makes the Demarchy work—every demarch’s got equal priority on it, and anybody with a gripe about anythin’ can broadcast it. Everybody who’s involved or interested can debate. If they need to, they take a general vote, and the vote is law.”

“Mob rule?” Welkin said. “The tyranny of the majority.”

“No.” He gestured at the slender golden teardrop on the screen, symbol of the hundred-and-forty-million-kilometer teardrop distribution of the trojan asteroids. “Not here. You can’t get a mob together across millions of kilometers of space. It keeps the voters’ self-interest confined to their own rock. They’re independent as hell, and they’re informed, and they judge. A jury of peers.”

“Then why would you be worried about losing your job?”

“Because I’m not there to defend myself; the Tirikis can claim anything, and if nobody hears different from me, what are they goin’ to think, except that it’s true? My boss will be answering them in my place, and he doesn’t even know what’s happened. If I can’t tell them, I could take him down with me. The government floats on water, and if you rock the boat you drown.”

The captain leaned forward, pressing her hands together. “I’m sorry, Abdhiamal, but you should have considered that before you came with me. I can’t afford to let you speak now… Do you still want to listen in?”

He nodded. All the symbols but one were gone from the screen again; as he watched, the time lag closed and the last one faded. The general meeting had begun.

“…should already have put our fusion craft in pursuit.” Wadie rested his neck against the seatback, as Lije MacWong’s final argument drew to a close on the screen. “We’ve done all we can to follow the wishes of the Demarchy. Too many things are still unclear to us, too, because we only know what you do. I’m a civil servant, no more, no less. If the people want to remove me for working in the people’s interest, that’s your privilege. But I don’t feel that I’ve done anything to betray your trust.” A band of color showed at the bottom of the screen, slowly turning violet from blue; voter participation was eighty per cent and rising.

Wadie watched the manicured brown hands fold on the gargoyled desk top, the pale compelling eyes that had challenged the Demarchy before and won. They disappeared suddenly; the seconds passed, rebuttal: esromtiriki flashed on the screen. He felt his mouth tighten as Tiriki’s serene, golden face appeared, eyes gleaming like metal. “The fact remains that the government…”

The captain leaned back in her seat, fingers tapping soundlessly on the chair arms. “He’s one of the trolls, Pappy. Handsome, isn’t he?” She looked up. “And out for our blood. How does it go again? ‘I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive, or be he dead—’ ” She broke off, took a deep breath. “Screw Jack and the Beanstalk… What was that about fusion ships, Abdhiamal? I thought you said the Demarchy depended on fission power and fission-powered electric rockets?”

He nodded. “We have three small fusion craft left from before the war; they’re our navy, if you want to call it that. But you’ve got a big lead on them. They couldn’t catch you before you got to Discus.”

“But it could give us less time to maneuver once we’re there.”

“…the government agent Abdhiamal threatened us and kidnapped the Outsiders who had come to us to negotiate. Two hundred kilosecs have passed without any further word from him. Their knowledge would have benefited the entire Demarchy, it could have saved Heaven—but because of this ‘government man’ we’ve lost the crew and the starship forever. Consider that, when you make your final decision.” The band of light below him showed an ever-deepen-ing violet.

Wadie’s hands tightened over nothing, final rebuttal: Lije MacWong showed on the screen.

“I regret to say that, in honesty, I can’t deny Demarch Tiriki’s final accusation. Wadie Abdhiamal, a negotiator from my agency, has overstepped his authority to a degree I consider criminal. He has in the past been suspect of questionable loyalty, of known Ringer sympathies, and I frankly consider it possible that he intends to aid them in usin’ that ship against us. I can only repeat that he was acting without my consent, or the consent of any other person in the government. This agency isn’t, and never was, a party to these actions. He alone committed a crime, and like any other criminal, he should be found guilty…”

Wadie straightened, felt something grate in his neck.

“… of treason against the Demarchy…”

“Lije!” he whispered, incredulous, willing the mahogany face to turn and the pale eyes to meet his own.

“.. . and so, fellow demarchs, I want you to reconsider the basic issue before you make your decision. This should not be a simple vote of no confidence against a government that’s served you well; this is a judgment on the fate of the one man who has betrayed the hopes of us all I ask instead for a bill of attainder against Wadie Abdhiamal, government negotiator, for treason…”

You bastard— He pushed himself up and moved through a nightmare to the panel.

“…let him never set foot on any territory of the Demarchy on pain of death. He has betrayed us all…”

“Let me talk.” He reached toward the banks of buttons.

The captain caught his arm. “No.”

“… I further urge again that all fusion-powered vessels be impressed into the pursuit of the alien ship; we must prevent it from reachin’ our enemies. We must have that ship for ourselves!”

PROPOSITION flashed on the screen, BILL OF ATTAINDER AGAINST WADIE ABDHIAMAL, NEGOTIATOR. CHARGES: TREASON. PENALTY: DEATH. NEGATING PREVIOUS CHARGE: GOVERNMENT NEGLIGENCE.

He stepped back from the panel, his fingers twitching uselessly; his hand dropped. He went to his seat, sat down heavily, watching the ballots begin to register, approve, object, numbers tallying with the passing seconds. Below them the percentage-of-voters band moved through red into orange into yellow. Five hundred seconds until it would reach full violet… five hundred seconds for the last votes to record from the outermost rocks of the trojans. An insignificant time lag, by the standards of the prewar Belt, as one hundred and forty million kilometers was an insignificant distance. Their closeness had meant survival for the trojans after the war; it meant death for him, now, letting men vote without hesitation, without reflection. He waited. The others waited with him, saying nothing. The ship’s drive filled the silence with vibration, almost sound, almost intruding, the only constant in the sudden chaos of the universe.

proposition approved. They found him guilty, twenty to one, and sentenced him to die. He watched the death order repeat and merge, like a thing already forgotten, into a new cycle of debate over the use of fusion ships. He raised his leaden hands, let them drop again, smiled, looking back at the others. “Now I finally know how MacWong’s kept his job for so long.”

The captain cut off the debate, filling the screen with the void of his future.

“I guess I see the distinction between ‘demarchy’ and plain ‘democracy,’ ” Welkin said quietly.

“Welkin, you don’t have the right to make any moral judgments about Heaven Belt.”

“He’s got the right,” Shadow Jack said. He sat up, pulling his feet forward. “The crew of this ship, they were…” He fumbled for words. “They were all married, they were a family; all of them together. And they all died in the Rings, except…” He glanced at Welkin and Betha Torgussen, back at Wadie, and down, twisting his fingers. “They all died.”

Wadie watched the captain, her arm resting on the old man’s shoulder. “I’m not married,” he said, his voice flat. “And now I never will be.” She looked back at him, not understanding, useless apology in her eyes, and a surprising sorrow. He got up, resenting the intrusion of her unexpected, and undesired, sympathy. “Well, Captain, you’ve ruined your final opportunity for a constructive agreement with the Demarchy. For my sake, I hope you have better luck with the Ringers than you did the last time.” He went out of the room and down the spiraling stairs. No one followed.