Saturnius Mons (Ruins of Empire Book 1) Page 12

  “Althea, I can explain.”

  “You can explain, can you? Well, this ought to be jolly good fun. Go ahead, then. Explain. I can’t wait to hear why you are charging all over Titan hopped up on the worst bloody drug created by humankind. Ooh, and I can’t wait for the part where you talk about how you put everyone on this mission in mortal danger while you detox. This will be fantastic.”

  Viekko leaned his head back until it bumped against the wall. “I could’ve managed it, okay? I had plenty to get me through this whole mission. But you had to go and shoot me up with some ugly thing. And I knew if you saw me, you’d throw a fit. Thank you, by the way, for provin’ me right.”

  Althea spread herself out and glared at him. “Don’t you dare blame this on me. You’re the bloody junky. You’re the one who smuggled that awful stuff here to begin with. You did all of this; don’t you dare try to put it on me.”

  “I did what I had to do, Althea. Like you said, I’m an addict. I don’t do what I do because it’s smart. I do it because I ain’t in control. The triple-T is and you saw what happens if I don’t do what it says. You of all people should know what that’s like. You got your own demons.”

  Althea paused and looked down at the floor. For a moment, he felt a twinge of guilt that he had gone too far. But screw her—she brought it up.

  Althea took a deep breath. “It’s different and you know it.”

  “Really? How’s that?”

  “I stopped.”

  “Yeah, only after you lost your career, your family and your entire life. The only reason you ain’t in some detention pit now is because the Ministry struck a deal with the Corporation so you could slum it around the solar system and hand out bandages. You lost everything and that’s sad but don’t go and act like you are so much better than me.” Viekko clenched his teeth. Okay, that was over the line. Even before Althea responded he felt a wave of remorse.

  Althea shook her head. “You’re a real bastard, Viekko.”

  Viekko rubbed his right temple. “Listen, I’m sorry. That was uncalled for, but…”

  Althea turned her body away from him. “I think I am quite done talking with you for tonight.”

  “Fine. Just answer me this. What happens between us?” said Viekko.

  “Us?” asked Althea with a certain icy tone. “There is no us. Not anymore.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I mean what do you want me to do? What happens next?”

  Althea reached into her coat pocket, pulled the little capsules out and looked at them for a moment. “When we get out of here… if we get out of here. You have to leave. You need to go back to the base camp and tell them about your condition. Declare yourself unfit for service and wait for the ship to go back to Earth.”

  “Come on, Althea. You saw the scene outside the spaceport. That didn’t happen years, months, or even days ago. It happened a few hours before we arrived. There’s somethin’ bad happenin’ here. You can’t do this without me.”

  Althea looked at him. “Well, we bloody well can’t do it with you, now can we?”

  Viekko stood up. “You’re right. I screwed up. I screwed up somethin’ terrible. And when I get back to Earth, I’m done. I’ll check myself into some triple-T program. I’ll fight through the Haze and the Disconnect until I come out the other side. I’ll never touch the stuff again. But right now, just let me get through this.”

  Althea saw him on his feet and recoiled. “What exactly are you suggesting? I give you your drugs back? You want me to look the other way while you continue to dose yourself?”

  “See, when you say it like that, it sounds wrong. I’m askin’ you to let me continue to do the job that I came here to do.”

  “While blazing on triple-T?”

  Viekko shushed her and looked back at Cronus and Isra. They were both still asleep. “Just say that a little louder, why don’t you?”

  Althea cupped her hand around the pills and held them away from Viekko. “It doesn’t matter. It’s going to be out soon enough because you are not getting your drugs back. So you can either admit what you did, go back to the base camp and get some help, or you can keep it a secret until the Haze hits again. At that point, I’ll tell Isra that you’ve caught something incurable and suggest a medical evacuation. Or you can wander off and just die. I don’t particularly care which.”

  Viekko stopped. He’d never heard Althea talk like this. It was like the friendly family dog rearing back and biting his hand when he went to pet it. “You… you don’t mean that.”

  Althea replaced the capsules in her pocket. “Yes, Viekko, I do. We’re not just talking about what happens if you lose your fix or don’t get a regular dose. What about an overdose? Do you have any idea what somebody with too much triple-T is capable of?”

  Of course he was. He’d seen and heard all the stories about triple-T rage. It made all the news wires almost every day.

  So had Althea. “Because I do. I see the women and children caught in the wrong place with the wrong person during an overdose. They come into trauma centers raped or beaten nearly to death. I will not put myself or Isra in that position. Not now, not ever.”

  Viekko sat down next to Althea. She was right. Well, she wasn’t; Viekko could manage himself fine. But she had the high ground and it was a tough argument to win. She was a doctor after all. She would have seen the worst of triple-T.

  She’s seen the worst… so she’ll be able to treat it, thought Viekko. “Okay, you’re right. I’m an addict and can’t be trusted. But I trust you.”

  Althea shrank into the corner. “What do you mean ‘you trust me’?”

  “I mean you can keep up on how much I’ve been takin’. You can watch my withdrawal levels and my tolerance. You keep all the shards. Give me, say three a day, don’t let me near the rest of ‘em. That should be enough to keep me sharp but not enough to overdose.”

  Althea’s mouth gaped open. “Are you insane! You want me to give you drugs?”

  Viekko shrugged. “That’s your job, right? You give people medicine, make sure they get the correct dosage, they get better…”

  “Triple-T isn’t medicine. It’s the most destructive drug ever created and I will have no part in making sure you continue to kill yourself on it.”

  “It is medicine. For me, right now, it’s medicine. I need the stuff to function.”

  “Why on Earth would I ever consider that?”

  Viekko nearly shouted. “Because you need me!” He winced and, when he was sure Isra and Cronus were still sleeping, he continued. “Think about that slaughter outside the spaceport. Think about those people who went and raided our supplies. Jaysus, Althea, take a look at where we are now. It ain’t a matter of if there’s gonna to be a fight, but when and how bad. Now you know medicine better than anyone I know. Isra could talk a preacher into heresy and convince him that it was his idea. Cronus… well, I’m pretty sure he’s good at somethin’. Me? I know how to fight. I can lead people into a fight. If I’m not here Titan will burn and take you, Isra, and Cronus with it.”

  Althea slid her hand back into her pocket. “This is madness, Viekko. You are asking me to keep you dosed on a highly illegal drug and keep quiet about it.”

  “You already did it once.”

  “I did it so we could talk. And… I guess part of me thought if I snapped you out of it, you could figure a way out of here.” She cupped her face in her hands. “You will get one a day, no more, no less.”

  “One a day? That’s barely enough to…”

  “Are you seriously going to argue with me about the dosage right now? Because I think it’s bonkers to be considering it in the first place, but you are right. We are in a bad situation and we need you functional.”

  “I’ll need more than one a day to be functional.”

  “Well, that’s all you’re getting, so I suggest you adjust your tolerance. That’s my offer. Take it or go back to the basecamp.”

  Viekko sighed. “Fine. But if the Haze gets real ba
d, we can talk right?”

  “You’ll get what I prescribe and that is all. And you’re going to rehab when we get to Earth.”

  It was a terrible deal, but it was as good as he was going to get. He nodded. “Fine.”

  “Good, then we have a deal.”

  “Great…er, what do we do now?”

  Althea stretched out to lay prone on the floor. “We’re in prison Viekko. We wait.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  There is no religion that punishes unbelievers quite like Economics.

  -from The Fall: The Decline and Failure of 21st Century Civilization by Martin Raffe.

  Viekko woke to a screeching metal hinge and a blast of white light. There were no windows, lights or candles in this dank pit, so the sudden brightness was like the arrival of a god. Out of reflex, he pulled his hat over his eyes and pressed himself into the corner of the cell.

  A silhouette appeared in the open door that some tattered scrap of Viekko’s mind identified as the leader of this city. Either that or some other idiot got his head stuck in a giant, spiky beehive. The man descended the stairs with a slow deliberateness as if trying to make a point with each step. Two soldiers followed in his wake. The light woke Althea, Isra, and Cronus as well. One by one, they blinked at the brightness and stood.

  The Houston stopped a few feet from the cell door. Viekko got to his feet and approached. When he got close, he could see the details in the Houston’s eyes. His thin, wrinkled face bore the wild-eyed look of a man who’d seen a lot in the last few hours and very little of it had been pleasant. His mouth pulled into the defiant sneer of a man being forced into a last resort that was only slightly better than death.

  “I take it somethin’ bad has happened,” said Viekko flatly.

  Isra came to the same conclusion. She approached, placed her hands on the bars, and read the old man’s face. “There is something wrong with the city. No, larger than that. The existence of every person on this moon is in danger and you need our help.”

  The old man touched the bars just a few inches from Isra’s face. “Titan is dying.” He turned and shouted orders in another language to the soldiers behind him. They scrambled to unlock the door while the Houston turned back to Isra. “You must come with me to talk to the Kompanio. Ask them what we have done wrong.”

  Isra cocked her head. “So you believe we are Kompanio now? That we are from Earth?”

  The cell door swung open and the Houston backed away from the bars, “I do not know what you are. If you are Kompanio, you will speak to Earth and save my people. If not, Venganto will add your ashes to the dead. Please. Come with me.”

  The Houston led them back up the stairs and into the palace. As soon as they were back in the lavishly decorated halls, they were flanked by two sets of guards in the long brown military uniforms. It all had the feel of security detail, although Viekko had to wonder what they were protecting and from whom.

  They walked out the front doors of the palace and the Houston stopped at the top of the stairs. A crowd was gathered on the street outside and filled a street wide enough for two vehicles on earth to pass each other. And yet they stood in eerie silence. Somewhere above them a bird with a wingspan that would embarrass an albatross flapped its wings and flew off the top of the ruined tower and soared over the city. The beat of the wings in the air was louder than anything on the street.

  The people of the city, dressed in dull browns and greys and looked at them with expressions that contained varying mixtures of curiosity, confusion, horror and awe. A soft murmur went through as the Houston led the team down the stairs. Viekko got an uneasy feeling like he was looking into the eyes of a people drained of life. Robots would have at least beeped in a meaningful way.

  The Houston made a slight gesture as he walked, just a flick of the wrist and a flourish of the fingers, and several soldiers marched down the stairs ahead of them to clear a path. The crowd spread revealing a cracked asphalt road that seemed just barely able to contain the plant life struggling to grow out of it. At the bottom of the stairs, the Houston turned and led the Human Reconnection Project down the road while the soldiers hurried into a box formation around them.

  Althea stayed close to Viekko and eyed the people they passed. “They’re just looking at us. No talking, shouting…just staring.”

  Viekko sniffed. “Say…Houston…sir? Looks like you’ve got a big turn-out here. What’s the occasion?”

  The Houston didn’t look back or even adjust his brisk pace, “They have been here since you arrived. They are…curious, about our new visitors.”

  “Ahh,” Viekko nodded. “You’d think they’d have mustered a might more enthusiasm.”

  As they walked, the crowd moved with them as if being pulled by a strong source of gravity. The more they walked, the more the crowd started chattering in their own language. Just whispers between each other at first, but gradually louder and more constant. A few started shouting things at the group. One young man pointed at Viekko and shouted something.

  “What did that boy say?” asked Viekko, walking close to the Houston.

  “He asked why you wear your hair like a girl,” said the Houston, smiling slightly.

  Viekko made a rude gesture in the boy’s direction.

  As they continued to walk, Viekko became interested in the number and condition of the screens that lined the streets. Unlike many parts of the city that were on the brink of collapse from disrepair, the monitors, for the most part, looked clean and functioning. A few displayed large cracks across their faces but most looked like they could flicker to life at any moment.

  Isra must have been thinking the same thing. She caught up to the Houston and said, “I must say, I am impressed by the level of preservation in this city. Your public communications platform,” she pointed to a couple of the larger screens mounted onto the side of a building, “looks remarkably intact.”

  The Houston bowed his head slightly. “By order of the Kompanio. It was the method they used to speak to the people of the city. We have maintained them through their long silence.”

  Isra glanced up at the dark screens. “And does the Kompanio still speak to the people?”

  “The Kompanio speaks to me. I speak to the people.”

  “Funny,” said Viekko, “If Kompanio and you are such great friends, you’d think they’d mention us.”

  “I think what my friend means,” said Isra shooting Viekko a lightning-fast glare, “if the Kompanio speaks to you, then why do you need our help?”

  The Houston walked in silence for several steps before answering. “It is the will of the Kompanio that I speak of. The instructions that we must all live by.”

  “Ah, so one of them metaphorical things,” said, Viekko glancing upward.

  Through the grey decay of crumbling buildings, a gleaming pyramid ahead stood out in stark contrast like a small jewel in a gravel pit. It wasn’t as tall as most of the buildings around it—Viekko estimated it was around a hundred meters high—but it added a touch of dazzling brilliance to a city that was otherwise fading to black.

  After a kilometer or so, they emerged from the narrow streets into a grand courtyard. The pyramid, surrounded by grass, trees, and small stone monuments, took on an even more august atmosphere. The sides, probably made of some long-forgotten polymer, looked like polished bronze and reflected the sun’s light in such a way that gave the courtyard and surrounding buildings a golden hue.

  They approached an entrance set into the base of the pyramid where two guards stood at attention. They didn’t so much as blink as the Houston walked past them and keyed in some numbers on a steel keypad. Two steel doors thick enough to withstand a nuclear blast slid open. Viekko started to realize that whoever designed this place did so intending the structure to remain long after the last human died away.

  Inside, they walked down a narrow, dark hallway for a few meters and emerged in an immense, open space. The walls all emitted a gentle white glow and there was a shiny steel
catwalk polished to a mirror finish that led to a horseshoe-shaped control area. The catwalk hung above rows and rows of whirring black boxes with a few figures in full-body white robes drifting among them. They stopped to attend to some part of the vast machine but otherwise moved like ghosts in white bedsheets in a strange, black electronic maze.

  Isra peered over the side at the men working in the servers below, “They are like acolytes to a cult of the machine. Do you think they understand the tasks they perform?”

  “I don’t even understand what I’m lookin’ at. Nothin’ but lights and buttons and far too many wires for my likin’. They couldn’t have built this out here, not before the Fall. So why is it still here?” said Viekko

  Cronus, however, seemed to know exactly what they were looking at. He shoved his way to the front of the group. “It’s…it’s A Markee 8700 supercomputer. I’ve read about these.”

  Viekko folded his arms. “A Markee… what?”

  Cronus practically snarled at Viekko as if he had just blasphemed in this holy place. “It was the last great transistor-powered supercomputer. Before quantum computing became the norm. Before The Fall all but destroyed it all. Even when it was built, it was considered a dinosaur. But it worked. Quantum computing, at the time, was unpredictable and prone to failures. But this…this was all solid state memory, half-life capacitors and graphene conductors. The right crew with the right training could keep a Markee going for…well, a millennium.”

  Viekko watched as Cronus walked up the catwalk running his hand along the railing as if he were caressing the entire apparatus. The most blessed relic or a patch of ground tread on by the most holy person never received such reverence. He sat down at a chair in the middle of the horseshoe shaped control area like a god returning to his throne.

  “Physical keyboards!” Cronus exclaimed laughing maniacally, “They still used physical keyboards. Amazing! I haven’t seen one since the excavation of Old Seattle. It was half-buried inside the caved-in skull of some office worker. Before the wars.”

  To be fair, it was the kind of crazed god that fertilized the earth with his father’s genitals and threw thunderbolts around like rice at a wedding.