Rich Man's Sky Read online

  “I don’t know why I am telling you this,” he said, “but I feel the urge to be known.”

  “Thank you for understanding,” she said back to him, and it was such a strange thing to say, he couldn’t tell if she was serious or sarcastic, or what she meant by it. It occurred to him that she was also nervous. Not about his power, not about his wealth. About him, Grigory, the authentic human being.

  She turned back to the windows, and was silent for a while. Eventually, she said, “I’ve left plenty behind, to become what I am.”

  “You are speaking of more than just Africa?”

  A pause. Then: “Speaking of myself. I left behind all the selves I could have been, if le Commandement des Opérations Spéciales hadn’t put my life on rails, with no way to get off.”

  “Ah,” he said, nodding, though she couldn’t see it. “We all leave selves behind, I think, to become new selves. And Africa was never a peaceful place, not in a million years of history. Never innocent, but I suppose you were, at one time. And now you’re prepared to shoot your friends in back of the head, for money.”

  “You’re an insightful man,” she said, making it sound like something other than a compliment. “But it’s not that little Poto-Poto girl I’m missing right now. Can’t I just be homesick? Looking down at the world makes me realize there’s nothing there for me to go back to. There is no Africa anymore. I mean, it’s still a pile of shit. Still Africa in that way, but with all the same robots and drugs and ‘content’ as everywhere else. So much bullshit. I have enough money now, I could buy a villa there, with robot guards and a human butler, or human guards and a robot butler. But for what? The whole continent is drowning in bullshit, not even trying to be itself any longer. There need to be better places than that. If we’re building things, we need to build better places than that.”

  Was that why she was here? Was that what Clementine represented to her? A better place? There were adventurers and escapists among the station’s crew, to be sure, who loved the frontier and all it stood for. An escape from Earthly bullshit, yes. A chance to participate in the creation of a grand future. But space was also full of boring laborers, and boring followers, and its own kinds of bullshit. There was some freedom here for men like Grigory, but rather less for men like Morozov, and perhaps none at all for men like Daniel Epureanu, the Moldovan technician with whom Grigory had drunk and smoked and eaten caviar last month.

  “There is bullshit in space, also,” he told her. “In Russian, we say the world runs on blat, ponty, and kompromat. This translates, very approximately, as returned favors, status-seeking, and the dirt one digs up on one’s enemies. There is precious little trading of favors in space, but ponty is all around us. Every man and woman here lords it over everyone beneath them. How could it be otherwise? My father lived for a time among the communists, who claimed to make all humans equal in rights and dignity. Hardly. Capitalism is at least more honest; your status is whatever you can grab from your fellow man. There is no wheedling for it, only grabbing by force or persuasion or by identifying a need. And there is kompromat up here as well. Your kompromat got you kicked out of Transit Point, and Igbal Renz has been targeted for death over his own, and rightly so. You think Esley Shade Station isn’t as decadent as your poor, contaminated Africa?”

  “Not for long, it isn’t,” she said darkly. “But you know, even Renz is trying to build something. I’m not sure exactly what, but I’ve studied the man. He’s not just smoking DMT and blotting out the sun. He’s up to something more . . . interesting than that.”

  “And the Americans can’t stand it.”

  “No,” she agreed. “They can’t, and they’re not alone in that. The French and the Kiwis and the Chinese can’t stand it. It’s a big light switch he’s got his hands on, and they’ll kill him for it. Like you said, these are treacherous times, even for trillionaires.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Even you.”

  “You think I don’t know this? It’s the air I breathe.” Nervously, he reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. He said, “You and I have very little reason to trust each other.”

  “Correct,” she agreed, her eyes on the dark world below.

  “It would be foolish in the extreme, and so we both know better. But Dona, I’m going to propose we do it anyway. Fuck the world and its schemes. They say space has a way of changing people, and perhaps we can choose the manner of it, and build, as you say, better places within ourselves. If I reset my wall safe combination, will you stay out of it? Let us both have some secrets?”

  She snorted, not turning. “Would you believe me if I said yes?”

  “Let us say, I will do my best to believe you.”

  Now she did look over her shoulder at him, and there were weightless tears quivering in her eyes.

  “Sadly, Grigory my darling, that may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  1.12

  26 April

  ✧

  ESL1 Shade Station

  Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 1

  Extracislunar Space

  Alice had never been a big believer in the “walk of shame” following a questionable hookup. When you got right down to it, all of her hookups were questionable, and that was just her actual life, so whatever. And you couldn’t “walk” in zero gravity anyway.

  And yet, as she tried to drift inconspicuously back to her own apartment, she felt quite conspicuous indeed, as though she were marked head-to-foot in three sets of handprints, and Jesus Christ already, would these astronettes quit looking at her? She was on-mission. The President of the United States had told her to use sex to manipulate people. So why did it feel like both a betrayal of their trust and a step too far beyond her own comfort zone?

  She wanted to get out of sight and sleep this off, but still she avoided the flexible shortcut tube between Gamma and Alpha Corridors, because the idea of it just squicked her out. Instead, she went back through the labs, back through Beta Corridor, back past Saira Batra, still quietly scrubbing the walls. Saira looked at her strangely. Finally, after what seemed like an hour, she made it back to her place, apartment Gamma-4. Opened the hatch. Went inside. Closed—

  Bethy’s uppercut slammed her in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of her, and then Bethy’s full mass was body-slamming her into the metal bulkhead, and the three millimeters of soft beige insulation coating the metal might as well have been asphalt, for all the cushioning it provided.

  “Listen up, girl,” Bethy hissed in her ear, “this isn’t a goddamn summer camp, and you’re not fourteen.”

  “Hi, Bethy,” Alice said, her voice an embarrassing squeak.

  “Fuck off,” Bethy said. “I’m this close to putting you out the airlock and finishing the mission myself.”

  “I have new information,” Alice said, through smooshed cheeks.

  “Yeah? Let’s hear it.”

  “Get off me.”

  Bethy didn’t, so Alice repeated, “Get off, Bethy.”

  “Or what?” Bethy wanted to know. “You’ll tell one of your little buddies? That wouldn’t be smart.”

  And suddenly, with a sinking feeling, Alice realized Bethy wasn’t on her side, either. No more than Dona Obata. No more than Sonya Kyeong. No more than anybody ever had been, in all twenty-nine years of her hard-fought existence.

  Should she really be all that surprised?

  “Who are you working for?” she asked. Then realized what a stupid question it was: Bethy had her pinned. Bethy was stronger and more aggressive. Bethy was firmly in control of the situation, and not about to relinquish that.

  “That’s a rude question, ducky. Why don’t you let me do the asking?”

  And that wasn’t going to work for Alice at all, so she pulled the gun out of her pocket and jammed it into Bethy’s ribs. Then realized it looked like a leg shaver.

  Shit.

  “What the fuck are you—”

  Alice was as surprised as Bethy when she pulled the trigger. The
gun barked and kicked, and suddenly all the lights were turning red and there were sirens blaring, and Lurch’s voice was saying, “Explosion detected in Gamma-4. Explosion detected in Gamma-4. All personnel, seal bulkheads. All personnel, seal bulkheads. Damage control officers report to your stations. Damage control officers report to your stations.”

  Bethy let go of Alice and drifted away, holding her side.

  “What did you do?” she asked. “Did you . . . did you shoot me? Oh my God, Alice.” Jewels of blood were shimmering out from between her fingers, shining in the red emergency lights.

  “I’ll shoot you again,” Alice warned.

  The lights in the apartment slowly turned white again, and the sirens quieted but did not go silent. Apparently, they’d already made their point. Well, good, Alice did not want to be distracted right now.

  “Who are you working for?” Bethy demanded.

  “Mankind,” Alice said, meaning it. She was sick of this. Sick of people running their own strange games on her, when all she wanted to do was save the fucking world. Just that! Jesus!

  But Bethy was quick; she lashed out with a kick, spinning the gun out of Alice’s hand. It hit the wall, bounced back toward Bethy, who plucked it out of the air. But she was hurt, and the gun looked like a shaver, and she didn’t know how to operate it, so she just brandished it vaguely.

  “Stay here,” Bethy said. “Please. I don’t want to take you out.”

  “Give up,” Alice suggested to her. “You’re hurt.”

  “Nope.”

  Bethy opened the hatch and pulled herself out through the opening. This meant she had to let go of her side, which trailed droplets of blood in her wake.

  Alice, who had seen her share of battle wounds, judged the injury serious but probably not fatal. Broken rib and a lacerated liver, maybe? The blood would clot before Bethy bled to death, but she’d be at risk for serious complications if she didn’t get medical attention.

  I did that, she thought. I shot my teammate.

  She hurled herself after Bethy, and made it out into Gamma Corridor in time to see Bethy disappearing into the flexible tube that joined it to Alpha. Pelu Figueroa, the ultra-fit Argentinian, was out here as well, closing the hatch to her apartment.

  “What happened to Bethy?” Pelu demanded.

  “She’s a government operative,” Alice explained brusquely. “Do not let her back in here. Close this hatch behind me.”

  She then hurled herself into the tube, scrabbling along its dryer-vent surface, trying not to freak out as it flexed and twisted in her fingers. She rounded a blood-smeared corner, and then another, and then she was back in Alpha Corridor again. Still covered in three sets of handprints. She watched Bethy disappear into the docking module and slam the hatch behind her. There were rustling and banging noises on the other side of the hatch, and by the time Alice got to it, the handle wouldn’t budge.

  “Bethy!” she shouted.

  This wasn’t good. This really wasn’t good, because the only stuff on the other side of the hatch were spaceships (Dandelion and two maintenance pods), a spacesuit gowning area, an egress lock, and one of the station’s two airless, robotically tended manufactories. If Bethy was planning to steal Dandelion, it would maroon everyone here. Alice was pretty sure you couldn’t get back to Earth in a maintenance pod. She was pretty sure the pods didn’t have enough fuel for such a drastic orbit change, and she knew for a fact that they didn’t have food or water or bathrooms or any fucking thing. Of course, ESL1 Shade Station’s manufactories were probably capable of making another Dandelion, or better yet, one of the actual rocketships Derek was talking about, that could get to Earth and back in less than two weeks. But Bethy stealing a spaceship and escaping was actually the best possible scenario, here, because if Bethy wasn’t headed back to Earth, then she was headed outside, for some nefarious purpose she’d never shared with Alice. And if these people were lucky, that might only mean damaging the giant electrical transformers or the telecommunications array. If they were unlucky, it could mean some devious sabotage of the Shade itself, or explosive decompression of the entire station, module by sealed module. Of course, Bethy couldn’t have smuggled any serious explosives with her from Earth, or the RzVz ground teams and/or the Transit Point Station crew would have caught it. And while she might conceivably have managed to improvise some explosive devices here at Esley, she was caught by surprise at this moment, shot in the ribs by an erstwhile friend. Not prepared.

  Ergo, whatever she was planning must not involve any equipment. Alice found that idea particularly chilling somehow. If Bethy shut off the magnetic containment on the antimatter storage, could she maybe vaporize the entire station, blow a city-sized hole in the Shade, and send the rest of it flailing and crumpling into a useless solar orbit? Just a giant wad of tissue-thin space junk to warn the other three Horsemen, and anyone else who dared to dream big. Jesus. Did Bethy know how to do that? Did everyone but Alice know how to do things like that?

  Maybe it wasn’t even that hard; these people weren’t exactly security conscious. Maybe there was a big red DESTROY EVERYTHING switch hanging out in plain sight. If so, then Alice could be utterly fucked, along with everyone else on this station. Bethy had to be stopped. But how? Should Alice head for the other egress lock on the far side of the station, climb into a spacesuit, exit the station, find Bethy, and . . . What? Kill her? How? With what?

  It truly sucked to feel so helpless, but what it really meant was that she needed help. She’d never in her life needed it more! She turned—and Derek was there. His hair all messy, his lips all red, his coverall zipped only navel-high over a hairy torso bare of space underwear. He was barefoot, too, but he was here.

  “What’s happening?” he asked, not in an accusatory way, but just one crew member to another. What’s our emergency?

  In a rush, Alice said, “I’m not retired! I’m a brevet major in the U.S. Air Force, here on special assignment! Your commission is subject to involuntary reactivation right the fuck now, on orders from the President of the United States. I need your help!”

  Derek stared at her for three full seconds. “What?”

  “Air Force. You. Now. Bethy Powell is some kind of enemy agent, and she’s on the other side of this hatch!”

  “What?”

  “Derek!”

  “What . . . do you want me to do? I mean, do you have any proof? Of anything you’re saying?”

  Thinking for the both of them, she said, “No. Fuck you. We’ve got to suit up and get outside, right now. Come with me. Come on!”

  She pushed and dragged him back toward the flexible tube. The other gowning area and egress lock were accessible through the employee break room, on the other side of Gamma Corridor.

  “Governments are scared pissless of this place,” she told him. “There’s no telling what she might do. Assuming she’s even working for a government.”

  Derek went into the tube ahead of her, not quite willingly, and Alice followed close behind, saying, “I’m worried she’s going for the antimatter.”

  “Oh. Fuck.”

  “Yeah. Move! Move! Can you get into a maintenance pod from the outside?”

  “Um, maybe. If we blow the docking bolts . . .”

  They spilled out into Gamma Corridor and swam toward and then through the breakroom.

  “I thought you were just a medic,” Derek protested.

  “I am. Go! Go!”

  When they got to the gowning area, they encountered a major obstacle, in that both their spacesuits were back at the other airlock. “Find something close,” she said, rifling through the suit lockers. She found one that said S. Lincoln on the breast, and “5” on the back, that looked to be about her size.

  “These are all women’s suits,” he said.

  “Find something, Derek.” She struggled into the suit marked S. Lincoln, hoping to God she wasn’t forgetting a step and about to suffocate herself in the emptiness of space. She put the pants on first, then tried to s
lither up into the top half and realized the whole thing was too tight. She was still wearing her coverall! She stripped out of the spacesuit, and then the coverall, then slid the suit pants back over her shiny-slick space underwear. Much roomier. A little too roomy, but whatever; she got the top half on as well, and rotated the seals into place the way they had taught her at RzVz flight training. She’d never had to do it herself before; at Paramaribo there’d been a whole staff of assistants rushing her through the process. At Transit Point, they’d all been helping each other. Now, just her.

  Meanwhile, Derek appeared to be struggling. He’d found an XL-type spacesuit—Jeanette Schmidt’s—but it was XL in all the wrong ways. Wide through the hips and chest, not tall enough. He could fit himself into the pants and top, but he couldn’t get them to mate at the waist. And his arms stuck out way too far. No way to fit a glove over that.

  “No go,” he said.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “I don’t think so. You might have to go out there without me.”

  Alice found that idea way more terrifying than jumping out of an airplane with an oxygen mask and a gun, but it was about par for the course, so whatever.

  “Okay,” she said.

  He shrugged back out of the suit top and, basically naked in wide-waisted spacesuit pants, helped her with the rest of her gowning operation. They were nearly finished when two women showed up. Their coveralls said S. Delao and Y. Ming. Both looked scared, which Alice found annoying.

  “What?” she barked at them.

  “We’re the damage control party,” said Delao.

  “Great. Suit up and get out there. I need you to climb around to the other egress lock and unjam the hatch from inside.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Y. Ming demanded.

  “I’m the new head of security, and I’m going to kick your face in if you speak to me like that again. Come on. We’ve got a saboteur out there.”