Fugitive From Asteron Read online

She nodded sadly.

  We stopped at the elevator bank at the end of the hallway. Off to the side, I noticed a long corridor. It was an indoor walkway to a separate building. Something at the end of that corridor caught my attention.

  I wandered through the walkway until I came to the other building. There I stood before an anteroom resembling an airlock that a person had to pass through to enter the facility, with security doors on either side of it. I walked up to the glass window of this anteroom because I saw something inside that made me gasp.

  “Alex, what are you doing?” asked Kristin, following me through the passageway up to the anteroom.

  “Kristin! What are those spacesuits used for?” I asked tensely, pointing to a clothing rack where three curious suits hung.

  “They’re not spacesuits. They’re protective gear made with a new, impenetrable substance called flexite. Those suits are worn on Earth for dealing with harmful material.”

  “What harmful material?”

  “I don’t know. Some kind of hazardous substance that you could breathe or that could permeate your skin, I guess.”

  “What substance?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What projects are those suits used for?”

  “Only one, Project Z. This is the building for that project, and the anteroom is the only part of it that an outsider can see.” She pointed to the small chamber where the suits hung. “That’s the project I just mentioned, the one my father canceled. Everyone has to wear a flexite suit to go inside, and the whole area is lined with flexite. It insulates the walls, floors, and ceilings. That’s the only thing I know about this area.”

  What is Project Z?”

  “No one outside the project knows.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It was a secret project. People had to pass the highest level of security to work on it. They were handpicked veteran employees who had been with MAS for many years. And most of them, I’m sure, knew only about the one part they worked on.”

  “Who knows about the whole thing?”

  “Just my father and a small inner circle of scientists and engineers. My dad managed the project personally. Why do you ask, Alex?”

  “Does Mykroni know?”

  She shook her head.

  “Do you know?”

  “No. Are you getting crazy again, Alex?”

  “Just curious. Who are the scientists and engineers who knew about Project Z?”

  “A very small group that my father knew personally for a long time and had worked with on other projects through the years. They’re all gone now. Two months ago, when the project was canceled, they were out of work. My father usually can get new projects pretty easily, but this time he wasn’t successful. With no new work for the people in the group, they all quit or were laid off.”

  “What does Z stand for?”

  “No one outside the project knows.”

  “Who is the customer for this project?”

  “No one outside the project knows.”

  “Why did your father cancel the project?”

  “No one outside the project knows.”

  I tapped my finger insistently against the window. “Kristin, can we go into the area for Project Z?”

  “Are you kidding? You need a special clearance to get in, and I don’t have it. The project’s been dismantled anyway, so there wouldn’t be anything to see.” She looked at me suspiciously. “That’s enough now. I’ve got to get you back to Mykroni.”

  Kristin tugged at my arm, but the flexite suits had a stronger pull.

  “Come on, Alex.”

  Finally, I turned away from the garments. It was the shiny sleeve of one of them that had caught my eye from the other building and lured me here. The suits that hung on the rack in the anteroom for Project Z were bright purple and looked identical to the suit that was hanging in Feran’s spacecraft.

  Chapter 11

  Data streamed across a series of electronic screens, all vying for attention from Mykroni and me as we sat on a flight deck. My boss would sometimes step in to give me personal instruction on matters of special importance, as he had on this particular afternoon, and I eagerly looked forward to our sessions. Today we were in a replica of the spacecraft I was learning to pilot. Having been at my various lessons since dawn, I was pleased to get a break when Mykroni paused, reached for the thin strip of metal that was his phone, and made a call.

  “I’ll go through section five with him now, Tom. Then you can take over. Here’s what I’d like you to do . . .” Mykroni was talking to one of my instructors about my training schedule.

  He hovered over me like an Earth tiger with a new cub, I thought, reflecting on the first superior I had ever had who did not fire orders at me like bullets or intermittently throw a fist in my face. I leaned back and closed my eyes, content to listen to Mykroni’s calm, even voice as if it were a favorite song.

  Each day I found odd things like this that pleased me. Kristin said I was becoming more relaxed. What did that word mean? Was it the state of mind that occurred when no weapon was pointed at one’s head? Of the many remarkable things I had experienced on Planet Earth, the most amazing surprise of all was never once having my life threatened.

  I was becoming so relaxed that I had not attempted to rescue Kristin from any imagined dangers since the incident with Officer Hodges at Big Eats. When I mentioned this to her, wanting to receive full credit for my reform, she praised me, but with a tinge of disappointment.

  “What if you’re getting too relaxed, Alex? What if I were really in danger? Would you be too relaxed to save me?”

  In my calmer state I was growing more aware of her full lips, her pointed nose with a slight upward arc, and her eyes of light brown glass that seemed to draw me through them to the spirit that lived inside. Kristin, I might not yet have mentioned, was exceedingly ugly. Her features were carved with delicacy and precision, a blending of the exciting female and the keen pilot in a stunning face that pleased me.

  She seemed content to leave me alone in my new life, which filled immediately with work assignments, as well as the details of establishing my living arrangements. Kristin seemed to sense my preoccupation, waiting to be called for any help I needed. Although she was absorbed with her own busy life, she was openly pleased whenever I did seek her. I found myself wanting to see her often, not merely because she helped me, which indeed she did, but because she somehow, like the Earth itself, had a vitality that excited me.

  After two weeks and two days on Earth, I concluded that everything here was the opposite of what I had known before, as if a cosmic architect had demolished one civilization to build something completely different. With my first paycheck plus the five-dollar gold piece from the man in the crate, I was able to buy the things I needed to start my new life. In the world I had left, everything had been provided for free, but none of it was mine. I had been told that everything was mine because I was the people, but I could not buy, sell, or control any of the things that were supposed to be mine. On Earth nothing was provided, and I had to pay for everything. In the world I had left, I had been taught that such a situation was cruel, but on Earth I did not find cruelty. Instead, I found ownership. I had acquired a growing collection of things that were mine and could not be taken away.

  I felt as if I owned more than just the things I bought. When I had rented a furnished apartment with a small garden near MAS, I discovered that the lock on the door was not to keep me in but to keep others out.

  Under Kristin’s supervision, I had gotten my hair styled and acquired the beginnings of a wardrobe. “This red shirt goes great with your black hair, Alex. And this blue one is the same color as your eyes,” she had said on one of our shopping trips. I added an item of my own, a silver neck chain, bought with my wages, which my Asteronian teachers would have considered a symbol of enslavement to my employer. The silver chain camouflaged the scars left by my neckwear from their world.

  On one evening with Kristin
, when I wore the clothes she had selected for me, she studied her handiwork and exclaimed, imitating my speech: “I indeed do think you look exceedingly . . .”—she lowered her head shyly, and I raised it, my finger on her chin—“. . . handsome,” she finished, which, I figured, meant I was ugly.

  I liked picking out my clothes, styling my hair, and looking at myself in a mirror. I told Kristin that this new grooming made me conscious of my appearance for the first time. I had never before given myself such attention, and I felt . . . I could not find the word.

  “Pampered,” she suggested.

  “Kristin,” I asked on one occasion, “why do Earthlings have so much concern for everything that touches their lives, from the work they do to where they live, what they eat, how they dress, and what they grow in their gardens?”

  “We’re living,” she replied.

  “Yes, but living requires only that you consume nutrients, not cheesecake. And dressing requires only that you cover your body with a basic garment, not outfits of different colors and styles. And sleeping requires only a mattress, not an entire bedroom suite. And growing flowers, well, that is not necessary at all for living.”

  “Living to us means pleasure,” she said simply.

  While I closed my eyes and listened to Mykroni talking on the phone, I thought of Kristin’s words. I was feeling pleasure from hearing my boss’s voice, from my grooming, from eating Earth food, from planning my garden, from seeing Kristin, from spending time in my apartment. I was aware of pleasure as if it were a new companion, accompanying me everywhere, as pervasive as the air I breathed and even more life-giving. Earth was a place where I could feel pleasure, and that one fact was coloring my every activity.

  But did I dare allow myself to relax and to feel pleasure?

  Every night I slipped into my spacecraft in the dark field. Every night I performed the same ritual of checking for messages. Every night I found none, and my worry drained until the next time. Do I dare miss a night? I wondered. Do I dare not go to the spacecraft tonight? I had my work to complete. After that I needed to see my gardener about flowers for the planting bed outside my apartment. Then I had an appointment with my tailor, a robot that would record my measurements and make my clothes fit as perfectly as a second skin. I no longer had time for Feran. I had seen none of his spies, and I had not heard of any inquiries about me. I could learn nothing more about Project Z or the flexite suits. I had drawn a picture of Feran’s cargo for Kristin and asked if she had ever seen such an object, but she had not. Could I dare forget that Feran possessed something called a flexite suit that belonged to MAS? Could I dare forget the cruelty he was capable of? What was Feran’s business on a planet where the people filled their lives with pleasure?

  Suddenly, the door to the flight deck slid open, and a tall young male with sandy hair, bearing a striking resemblance to my boss, came in.

  Mykroni interrupted his phone call to glare at the visitor. “How dare you barge in here?”

  “You didn’t answer my messages.”

  “Get out.”

  “I have to speak to you, and it can’t wait!”

  Mykroni sighed as he ended his phone call and stood up. “Alex, start working through the next section. I’ll be right with you.”

  A sensor by the door opened it, and the two of them left. The door slid closed behind them, but their muffled voices outside still reached me.

  “How much, Chuck?” Mykroni asked curtly.

  “There you go!” The man called Chuck sounded offended. “Putting me down already, when I came here to confide a problem to you?”

  “How much will your confiding cost me this time?”

  “Something came up . . . a bill I didn’t expect.”

  “What bill?”

  “Why would it matter what bill it was? I shouldn’t have to account to you for everything.”

  “Don’t ask me for money, and I won’t ask for any accounting.”

  I heard a new tension in Mykroni’s voice. I felt uncomfortable overhearing his affairs and tried to concentrate on my work, but I found myself bothered because something was upsetting him.

  His visitor was also agitated. “Just this once, could you do me a favor without making me feel like a child?”

  “Break the umbilical cord to my wallet, and you won’t feel like a child.”

  “Look, I need nine dollars, but it’s just until payday.”

  Mykroni seemed unmoved. “Did Teddy’s call you on your gambling debts?”

  “No.”

  “Did you buy more high-tech gadgets that even I can’t afford, like that fancy phone you carry?”

  “When I was considering a job in the lunar cities, how’d you expect me to communicate with them—by smoke signals?”

  “Did you get drunk again and find yourself on a cruise with a girl whose name you can’t remember?”

  “Please don’t bring those things up again!” Chuck sounded both pleading and demanding. “This is important. This bill has to be paid in three days, or I’m in a real fix!”

  “A bill you never expected, yet it’s due in three days? What is it?”

  There was an awkward silence. Then Chuck replied, “An eviction notice.”

  “Eviction?”

  “Please don’t lecture me. If you can just spare nine, it’s to pay the rent, not to gamble at Teddy’s.”

  “How much rent do you owe?”

  “Three months’ worth.”

  “You mean you haven’t paid it since the last time I lent you money? And not a dime back to me either.”

  “Look, man, what’s done is done.”

  “But you just got a raise. Tell me, Chuck. I’d like to understand. Why did Charles Merrett give you a promotion?”

  “You’re seriously asking me that? After I automated the whole office-cleaning system as housekeeping manager and saved Uncle Charles a bundle?”

  “I’ve wondered how you pulled that off.”

  “Why can’t you admit that I did pretty well for myself after I left your department? After you fired me!”

  “When you were in charge of food service, and you neglected to load enough provisions onto a craft, did you expect not to get fired?”

  “In your perfect life, haven’t you ever made a mistake?”

  I tried to focus on the instruments before me, but I could feel my own anger building at the way my boss was being addressed.

  “That spacecraft was on an extended voyage. If we hadn’t caught your mistake before launch—”

  “I made a mistake, but it could happen to anybody.”

  Mykroni sighed again. “Look, I believed you when you swore you’d reformed and begged me to get you another job. Now, over three years after I got you the housekeeping job, tell me: How have you changed?”

  “How? I did a great job in housekeeping and got a promotion.”

  “Then why can’t you pay your rent?”

  “It’s just a small loan—”

  “When will you pay it back? And pay back my other loans?”

  “Come on, now, really. You’ll never spend the money you have in your lifetime!”

  “But why would you be entitled to it? You act as if I’m still supposed to support you.”

  “Is that all you care about? Money?”

  “My own. All you seem to care about is somebody else’s.”

  “Look, I’m going to be kicked out on the street in three days! I have no one else to turn to!” Chuck cried in desperation.

  Weariness seemed to replace some of Mykroni’s anger. “If you must harass me, then do it in my office. I’ll be there in an hour.”

  “I can’t come in an hour. I’m on my way out.”

  “In the middle of the afternoon? Charles just got back from his trip. Don’t you have work to do?”

  “Why are you always looking over my shoulder?”

  “You somehow talked Charles into making you his special assistant,” Mykroni said sharply. “Whatever that means, it must require work. So
why do I see your plane disappear during the day?”

  “Why are you so nosy?”

  “When you park in the executive lot right outside my window, I see these things. I don’t like to think you’re goofing off on company time. I don’t want my friend to get taken.”

  “Uncle Charles can take care of himself! We were talking about my loan.”

  “I’m afraid Charles has had a soft spot for you for twenty-three years, since I named you after him.”

  “Uncle Charles isn’t complaining about me, so why should you? Look, in three days, I’ll be evicted! Won’t you do something?”

  “Why yes, I will do something,” Mykroni answered, his voice hot with anger. “I’ll evict you from this module right now!”

  I heard a scuffle.

  “Don’t push me around!” Chuck warned.

  Then I heard the thump of someone being shoved into a wall. That must have triggered the sensor, because the door slid open and the two men tumbled onto the flight deck.

  Chuck was clutching Mykroni by the collar and about to land a punch. I leaped up, grabbed Chuck’s arm, and twisted it behind his back.

  “Ow!”

  “You will not strike my boss!”

  “Stay out of it! He’s my father.”

  “Then you will certainly not strike him.”

  “Ouch! Let me go. You’re breaking my arm!”

  I thought of the robot at Big Eats named Genius, who said he was sorry for serving cold soup. Was not Chuck’s behavior far worse than not keeping soup warm? “You need to make an apology, Chuck,” I demanded.

  “Let him go, Alex,” said Mykroni. He tried to release my grip on Chuck, but I resisted.

  “Make your apology, Chuck, and I will let you go.” I twisted the arm tighter. A lifetime spent primed for violence gave me the edge over Chuck.

  “Okay . . . okay!” He shouted.

  I finally released him.

  He moaned, rubbing his arm. “Who the hell are you?” He scanned me with bitter eyes.

  I made a move to grab him again, but he stepped back and held up his hands to stop me.

  “Enough!” he said. The boldness he had shown in attacking his father was tempered now that he was facing a male his own age—and one who cared nothing about his well-being.