The Fortress in Orion (29 page)

“Used? Maybe six thousand credits. I don't know how much that is in Coalition currency.”

Pretorius peeled off more bills. “Your good-faith deposit,” he said, handing them to Djibmet. “Think they'll still have a problem?”

“No,” said the Kabori firmly. “No, they definitely won't.”

“Okay, you know what size ship we need. Make the best deal you can.”

“You can trust me,” said Djibmet.

“If I didn't, what was left of you would be floating in space next to Zbagnorg's body.”

The
Moonbeam
touched down, Djibmet left with the first load of cargo, and thirty minutes later a darkened vehicle approached the ship.

“He's back,” announced Snake.

“Okay,” said Pretorius. “Pandora, order the robots to move that huge crate next, and then the box with Michkag in it. We'll stand on the platform behind the crate as it lowers to the ground. Then we're just a few steps from the vehicle.”

“I could have them move it once it's on the ground, so that it's still between us and the cameras, just in case they come back on.”

“Couldn't hurt,” agreed Pretorius. “How long has the system been down?”

“Since just before Djibmet left,” she answered. “They ought to be bypassing what I did and getting back online any minute now.”

“Okay, have the robots move the box the way you said.”

And within ten minutes they had left the
Moonbeam
, driven across the spaceport to the ship Djibmet had purchased, boarded the ship, loaded Michkag onto it, and taken off.

“Done,” said Circe with a sigh as they reached light speeds.

But of course, they weren't.

33

The voyage went smoothly for a week. Even after they passed out of Coalition territory Pretorius refused to send the news of their success to General Cooper. (“
We've
got a Pandora” was his explanation. “Who's to say
they
don't have one? We'll tell him when we see him.”)

On the eighth day it became clear that they wouldn't have enough fuel to make it the rest of the way to the Deluros system, so they headed for an orbiting hangar and fueling station around Preston IV.

“Preston?” said Snake. “Isn't that a human name?”

“Yes,” replied Pretorius.

“Then what the hell's it doing in No Man's Land?”

“He probably didn't know we weren't going to expand forever, back when he named it.” Pretorius turned to the crew. “Since this
is
No Man's Land, there's no reason why Djibmet and the rest of us can't stretch our legs and get a look around while they're fueling us up.” He turned to Proto. “Probably be best if you went as a Man.”

Proto, who had appeared as a middle-aged man since leaving the fortress, nodded his agreement.

“I hate to ask, but how are we paying for this?” asked Pandora.

Pretorius pulled out the rest of the cash from the pelts and held it up. “It's Coalition money, but this is No Man's Land. They'll take it from them or the Democracy.”

“But will they take Coalition cash from a Man?”

“Probably,” answered Pretorius. “But just to be on the safe side, we'll let Djibmet pay for the fuel.”

“There was
more
?” exclaimed Snake. “How the hell much were they worth? I think we're all in the wrong line of business.”

“You held some back?” said Djibmet, frowning. “What if the person I bought this ship from had demanded more money?”

“Then he was a thief and you'd have found another seller,” answered Pretorius.

They began approaching the station, and in another twenty minutes they had docked, Pretorius had ordered the fuel and paid for it, while Circe gave Michkag his daily intravenous meal. Then they went over to visit a restaurant that served all races, just to vary their diet after weeks in space.

While they were eating, a group of a dozen Torquals entered, each of them the usual nine to ten feet tall, each of them with the usual grim, unsmiling visage.

“
Men!
” growled one of them.

The others merely glared.

“And a Kabori,” said another.

“We fight your wars, and you sit here and eat together.”

They kept up the verbal harangue throughout the meal. Finally Pretorius and his group got up to leave.

“Where the hell's Security?” whispered Circe.

“Look at those little badges on their outfits,” replied Pretorius. “These guys
are
Security.”

“And liquored up or the equivalent,” added Ortega.

“Why not?” said Pretorius. “Who's going to stop them?”

Snake stood up to leave. “I can't tell you how pleasant you've made this meal,” she said.

“We didn't try to,” said a Torqual.

“That's why I can't tell you.”

Suddenly six of the Torquals were on their feet, and the others were starting to rise.

“I'll handle this,” said Proto softly.

Pretorius looked at Proto in astonishment. “You?”

“Just be ready.”

“We're not looking for trouble,” said Pretorius. “Are you going to let us leave peaceably?”

The Torqual who seemed to be the leader pulled his burner and fired it just over Pretorius's head, then laughed. “Does that answer your question?”

“Absolutely not!” thundered Proto—and suddenly the Torquals were facing a thirty-foot-high nightmare creature that seemed to be all teeth and was roaring at them. They instantly turned their weapons on it, as Pretorius began shooting them down one by one with his own burner.

“Felix, get busy!” he snapped, and Ortega began blasting away with his built-in weaponry.

The image of the roaring, screaming face with the huge teeth moved to the right, then the left, then seemed to grow even larger. Finally one of the Torquals, realizing their fire was doing no good against the hideous beast, turned his fire on Pretorius, who instantly fell over, cursing a blue streak.

Then Ortega killed the last of them, instantly the image vanished, and Proto was briefly the misshapen lump that constituted his true appearance. He then became a middle-aged man again.

“God
damn
it!” muttered Pretorius from the floor.

“Are you badly hurt?” asked Circe.

“I'm not hurt at all,” he growled. “But that's the third artificial foot I've had blown away. Can't any of these bastards ever hit anything else?”

“Just be grateful that they can't,” said Ortega, lifting him up and supporting him.

“How's Proto?” asked Pretorius.

“I'm fine.”

“I was starting to wonder,” said Pretorius. “All those blasts . . .”

“They shot at the image,” answered Proto with a smile. “If they'd aimed for its chin they might actually have killed me.”

“We'll let that be our little secret,” said Pretorius.

“You know,” said Snake, “sooner or later they're going to summon another Security team—a sober one.”

Pretorius nodded, then suddenly lurched forward and began losing his balance. “Get me back to the ship. I don't plan to spend the rest of the day leaning on Felix or having him carry me.”

“Why not?” said Ortega. “After all, look how far
you've
carried
us
.”

EPILOGUE

Pretorius looked over to the door as Cooper entered his hospital room.

“Got the foot again, I see,” said the general with a smile. “At least we're not growing you any new organs this time. Evidently you're getting minimally better at your craft.”

“Go to hell,” said Pretorius.

“Just kidding, Nathan, my boy.”

“Can you guess what I think of your sense of humor?”

Cooper chuckled. “Actually, it was a brilliant piece of work, and I've recommended medals for you and your whole team.”

“I can't tell you how thrilled we are,” replied Pretorius with a grimace.

“I mean it, Nathan,” continued Cooper. “This is a truly remarkable team you've put together. It'd be a shame to split it up now.”

Pretorius stared at him for a long moment. “Okay, let's have it,” he said at last.

“This was a nice piece of work,” said Cooper, shifting his weight uncomfortably, “but of course it was a pretty straightforward job.”

“Right,” said Pretorius. “Anyone could have done it.”

“Oh, I wouldn't say that,” replied Cooper, feeling more uneasy as he approached the point of his brief visit. “No, it really was a very competent job.”

“I'm still waiting.”

Cooper stared at him for a moment. “We've got a situation in the Antares sector that's a real stinker,” he said at last. “We've lost three good teams trying to crack it.”

“Shit!” muttered Pretorius. “Whenever you bastards reach a dead end, you come to me.”

“To you and your team—your Dead Enders,” agreed Cooper. He walked to the door. “Get well quick. I'd like to send you all out next month.”

Pretorius was still glaring at the door minutes after Cooper had walked out.

APPENDIX 1

THE ORIGIN OF THE BIRTHRIGHT UNIVERSE

It happened in the 1970s. Carol and I were watching a truly awful movie at a local theater, and about halfway through it I muttered, “Why am I wasting my time here when I could be doing something really interesting, like, say, writing the entire history of the human race from now until its extinction?” And she whispered back, “So why don't you?” We got up immediately, walked out of the theater, and that night I outlined a novel called
Birthright: The Book of Man
, which would tell the story of the human race from its attainment of faster-than-light flight until its death eighteen thousand years from now.

It was a long book to write. I divided the future into five political eras—Republic, Democracy, Oligarchy, Monarchy, and Anarchy—and wrote twenty-six connected stories (“demonstrations,”
Analog
called them, and rightly so), displaying every facet of the human race, both admirable and not so admirable. Since each is set a few centuries from the last, there are no continuing characters (unless you consider Man, with a capital M, the main character, in which case you could make an argument—or at least,
I
could—that it's really a character study).

I sold it to Signet, along with another novel titled
The Soul Eater
. My editor there, Sheila Gilbert, loved the “Birthright Universe” and asked me if I would be willing to make a few changes to
The Soul Eater
so that it was set in that future. I agreed, and the changes actually took less than a day. She made the same request—in advance, this time—for the four-book Tales of the Galactic Midway series, the four-book Tales of the Velvet Comet series, and
Walpurgis III
. Looking back, I see that only two of the thirteen novels I wrote for Signet were
not
set there.

When I moved to Tor Books, my editor there, Beth Meacham, had a fondness for the Birthright Universe, and most of my books for her—not all, but most—were set in it:
Santiago
,
Ivory
,
The Dark Lady
,
Paradise
,
Purgatory
,
Inferno
,
A Miracle of Rare Design
,
A Hunger in the Soul
,
The Outpost
,
The Return of Santiago
.

When Ace agreed to buy
Soothsayer
,
Oracle
, and
Prophet
from me, my editor, Ginjer Buchanan, assumed that of course those books would be set in the Birthright Universe—and of course they were, because as I learned a little more about my eighteen-thousand-year, two-million-world future, I felt a lot more comfortable writing about it.

In fact, I started setting short stories in the Birthright Universe. Two of my Hugo winners—“Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge” and “The 43 Antarean Dynasties”—are set there, and so are perhaps fifteen others.

When Bantam agreed to take the
Widowmaker
trilogy from me, it was a foregone conclusion that Janna Silverstein, who purchased the books (but moved to another company before they came out) would want them to take place in the Birthright Universe. She did indeed request it, and I did indeed agree.

A decade later I sold another
Widowmaker
book to Meisha Merlin, set—where else?—in the Birthright Universe.

And when it came time to suggest an initial series of books to Lou Anders for the brand-new Pyr line of science fiction, I don't think I ever considered any ideas or stories that
weren't
set in the Birthright Universe. He bought the five Starship books, and after some fantasies and Weird Western excursions, he has now commissioned the Dead Enders series to be set there as well.

I've gotten so much of my career from the Birthright Universe that I wish I could remember the name of that turkey we walked out of all those years ago so I could write the producers and thank them.

APPENDIX 2

THE LAYOUT OF THE BIRTHRIGHT UNIVERSE

The most heavily populated (by both stars and inhabitants) section of the Birthright Universe is always referred to by its political identity, which evolves from Republic to Democracy to Oligarchy to Monarchy. It encompasses millions of inhabited and habitable worlds. Earth is too small and too far out of the mainstream of galactic commerce to remain Man's capital world, and within a couple of thousand years the capital has been moved, lock, stock, and barrel halfway across the galaxy to Deluros VIII, a huge world with about ten times Earth's surface and near-identical atmosphere and gravity. By the middle of the Democracy, perhaps four thousand years from now, the entire planet is covered by one huge sprawling city. By the time of the Oligarchy, even Deluros VIII isn't big enough for our billions of empire-running bureaucrats, and Deluros VI, another large world, is broken up into forty-eight planetoids, each housing a major department of the government (with four planetoids given over entirely to the military).