The Meek Read online

  Buster said: There’s plenty of air to breathe.

  Cody checked the atmospheric reading of his visor. Atmospheric pressure was seven hundred millibars: thin, like high-mountain air, but still breathable. He cycled the air inside his suit to match the pressure outside, swallowing as his ears popped, and took off his helmet.

  He saw that the cavern was a perfectly polished sphere with ledges and perches for the various Meek to sit. He saw seven women, all bare-breasted, ten men, also without shirts, and Agatha, wrapped in her orange tape. The luminescent moss hung from the various perches and gave the room an azure radiance, reminded Cody of the James Cook Coral Reef Habitat on Vesta, of the snorkeling trips he’d taken there with Christine, the water so blue and clear.

  Buster said: What kind of man are you, Cody?

  Cody felt wind in his mind, only it was a hot wind, an angry wind, smelled like creosote, tarry and thick. Buster licked his fingers and pressed them to Cody’s lips. The wind blew stronger and the smell of creosote became overpowering.

  Buster said: I want to know you.

  Buster put his hands on Cody’s shoulders. Cody backed away, but the wind—Buster’s scent—was too strong, and Cody’s feet felt glued to the spot, buzzing with pins and needles. Buster drew his face closer, then kissed him. Cody had never kissed a man before. He expected revulsion, yet all he felt was fear. He couldn’t move, as if numbed by venom, as powerless as a fly caught in a spider’s web. The wavering blue light of the moss began to fade. He felt that same sense of surrender, that giving in, as he had felt with Lulu. The spherical cavern disappeared around him. He felt … untethered. Brief images flickered through his mind. Not images of Lulu’s life, or Buster’s life, but images of his own life … Buster finding out what kind of man he was.

  He saw his mother swimming in the lake at the William Wordsworth Lake Country Habitat, with the hills green and lush around her, slate fences crisscrossing the countryside, sheep penned in, cottage roofs thatched, country roads no wider than a hop, skip, and jump. His mother smiled. His dad jumped out of the waves behind her, splashed her. A perfect marriage, what he aspired to. His brother, Craig, twelve years old in this particular vision, pedaled a pedal boat around the lake, introducing himself to all the various swimmers, a precocious boy with impeccable manners, shaking hands with the bathers and rowboaters in an adult way.

  Then Christine at the same lake—they owned the place now; his dad’s appointment to the University of Murray City on Mars meant his parents were unlikely to ever visit Vesta again. And Craig, now on the Moon—Earth’s fair old Luna—followed his own academic career, a junior professor of history. Craig would be unlikely to return to Vesta as well. Too busy with university life, the three of them; the Wisners were traditionally academic. But not Cody.

  Buster said: You were the oddball, the boy who disappointed his parents, the boy who did whatever he wanted, didn’t care about school, never went to college, just wanted to build things, to use his hands, the boy who wanted to master every tool ever devised by the hand of man. The boy, and finally the man, who always went his own way. Is that why she loves you? Because you’re independent? Is that why Lulu cares so much?

  Back to his own life, the creosote smell cutting it open with knifelike precision …

  Stayed on Vesta because he loved Vesta, the whole idea of Vesta, the safe little rock, brighter than all the other asteroids, loved the challenge of Vesta, how Vesta worked, how it supported humans, the engineering and structural miracle of Vesta. Fascinated by the intricate system of airlocks. Took a course in airlock mechanics. How to build a better airlock. And the bulwarks. How to keep a bubble of air intact. How to keep this living cell that was Vesta, with all its millions of people, its five major cities, 180 natural habitats, its oxygen mines, space ports, and military installations, a viable and self-sustaining microverse in the nothingness of outer space.

  Buster said: You love your home. We have this much in common.

  Then a course in nano-technology: the use of artificial bioforms in the construction and life-support industries. Finally, trade school. His parents showered praise on Craig because Craig was tenured at the relatively young age of 35, praised Craig because he sang tenor in an amateur madrigal group and had published a whimsical article on the history of Lunar winemaking. But didn’t care when Cody built a walnut armoire with intricate dovetailing and traditional Georgian carving.

  Buster said: They were on Mars, eighteen days away at opposition, but as far as you were concerned, they were gone. Gone for good. Buster taunting. Enjoying this. Playing this sour note. To them, you were nothing but a man with a hammer and a saw.

  A fascination with the potentiality of biological airlocks, airlocks that would instantly heal themselves at the slightest rupture. As if there were no greater altar upon which to worship than the airlock. An obsession, securing for Cody the position of Inspector-in-Chief, Airlocks Division, Public Works Department, Vesta City, Vesta. Two years of inspecting airlocks all over Vesta, making a lot of money, but finally growing tired of it, finally wanting to do something definitive against the vacuum, against the specter of instant death that loomed in the minds of all Vestans. Buster probed deeper, followed this, the professional side of his life. Cody Wisner on a crusade for the perfect airlock. Talking to industrialists, chemists, and biologists. Single-handedly becoming the catalyst, the man who developed what in the popular press was called insta-seal. what in research they called pressure-triggered bioconnective, a tough, cold-resistant biomorph that jumped from dormancy to full metabolic function in seconds if air pressure varied more than a hundred millibars.

  Buster said: Working for the public good. We have this in common too.

  But then blaming himself for the collapse in Residential Sector 5, such an unimaginative name for such a beautiful suburb. Everything on Vesta was unimaginatively named, including the capital city. Not like on Ceres, where all the names had an educational slant. Blaming himself because he was a builder, had been on the pressure-wall advisory committee for Residential Sector 5, gave the developers the go-ahead, should have looked deeper into the new grav-core, should have warned them to design a sky that could withstand fluctuations in gravity. Blamed himself because by then he was a force to be reckoned with in Public Works, a man with a voice, third from the top, closer to politics than to building, someone who could have actually done something to prevent the collapse.

  Buster taunted: A man with a voice. Only you didn’t speak out. A man working twenty hours a day to effect the conversion of Vesta from rim-grav to grav-core, to take a city that rested upside down on the inside of the asteroid’s crust and to place it right side up in excavated caverns, to go from centrifugal gravity to centripetal gravity, a measure that greatly stabilized Vesta’s tidal flux tolerances. The greatest engineering project the Belt had ever seen. But not without its casualties. Not without the collapse of Residential Sector 5. A microscopic particle of a singularity is an untamed beast. I know. We have one in the core. One that’s gone wild. A black hole can easily tear down the roof. You can’t tame it. I’ve learned the hard way.

  Cody surfaced from the kiss. Surfaced because Buster had at last revealed a part of himself. He felt Buster’s guilt. And ironically, the guilt was the same; Buster insisted on taking blame just as Cody insisted on taking blame, the root cause identical, a speck of black hole no bigger than a mustard seed, the one inside Vesta, the one inside Ceres. Cody pushed. Felt Buster’s surprise. Cody wasn’t supposed to be able to push. Cody was human, not orphan, not Meek; how could he push at the mind of someone as talented as Buster? Cody tried to walk through Buster’s mind, and again felt Buster’s surprise. That someone human could push in this way interested Buster. You try to know me? He felt Buster’s curiosity. We suspected you might have talent. But Buster had to find out. Walked right in. And opened another of Cody’s memories, as easily as he might open a computer file …

  Ceres, 34 years ago, when he and his father had travele
d to Newton from Vesta for Cody’s possible enrollment in any of the numerous boarding schools. A chance to grow up straight and strong. A one-gee child.

  There he was, just turned five, wearing gray because gray was what children wore on Vesta, stodgy, conservative Vesta. Cody was on Ceres undergoing Guthrie Testing to see if he had any psi talent; Vestan children were known for their psi talent, a peculiar coding in, yes, chromosome 3, that had been emphasized and reemphasized in the relatively isolated Vestan population through the centuries, a genetic resource that usually meant free tuition to the best schools on Ceres for Vestan children who had a particularly strong talent.

  The Guthrie Tests. He remembered them now. Remembered sitting in a classroom with some other Vestan children. The teacher at the front—a man with no particular psi talent at all—imagined a mortar and pestle. Cody’s job was to retrieve and draw. Cody drew a mortar and pestle. The teacher at the front imagined a treble clef, something Cody had never seen before. Cody drew a treble clef. Another teacher walked up and down the rows winnowing, sending children out of the room depending on their degree of success or failure. The teacher at the front imagined a wineglass. Cody drew a wineglass. The teacher was anxious. Cody didn’t know how to draw anxiety, so he just left the paper blank. The teacher had another class to go to, was late for it, had to rush the testing. That’s why he was anxious. So he skipped a lot and went to the harder stuff.

  A fairly detailed image of Buddha, carved in jade. Cody drew Buddha, had no idea what he was drawing, but drew it anyway. The teacher imagined a model of an ammonia molecule—one nitrogen, three hydrogen—and Cody drew that. The teacher imagined the continent of South America. Cody drew that. The teacher spoke to the other teacher. Cody could again sense the man’s anxiety. He had to teach a class today—substituting—on an obscure Canadian humorist by the name of Stephen Leacock, was planning on opening with a quote he kept thinking about even as he begged his colleague to take over the final testing so he could make it on time. Cody thought the quote was part of the testing. He raised his hand.

  “Yes, Cody,” said the teacher.

  “ ‘I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.’ ”

  A quote that stuck with him for life.

  The two teachers stared at him.

  The next day he was offered a scholarship and free board.

  The following day the orphans attacked the suburb of Planck’s Constant.

  The day after that he and his father flew back to Vesta.

  Buster said: This is why we need you as our go-between. Because you can talk to us so well. We suspected this about you right from the start. That’s why we kept coming to watch you when you first got here. And this is why we must use you now.

  Cody felt himself pushing again, understanding at last how he could trigger a penetration into Buster’s mind. By doing it the same way Agatha did. With the smell of pine.

  A smell that, as a carpenter, he knew so well.

  CHAPTER 13

  Cody pushed, and again felt Buster’s surprise. Then his anger. Then his struggle to break away. And finally his resignation. The smell of pine, Agatha’s scent, was like a password into Buster’s mind. A cloak of invisibility. Something he could use to get past Buster’s heavy creosote blocking. He slipped past like mist through trees.

  The first thing Cody wanted to know was why Buster had killed all those young men.

  Buster said: Because the silos, as you call them, represent our last chance.

  Cody probed for a further explanation, but even with the smell of Agatha’s pine Buster’s thoughts about the last chance were so safely blocked, so impenetrably encoded in their own complexity, all Cody saw was the mental equivalent of a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle dumped freshly out of the box.

  Buster offered something about himself as a way to change the subject: I am the original. I am the oldest. I am the one who can never entirely forget the ways of the clans.

  Impressions, images, segments, and, at least to Cody, bizarre episodes from Buster’s life floated through his mind. Buster as a child, no mother, no father, born in what the Martians called a genetic crèche; the first child, a small brown child, with long arms and short legs, Leonard Carswell’s answer to the future, to design a people who could live in harmony with the Martian ecosphere, and, in particular, could live in the 3,500-mile-long gorge known as the Valles Marineris, where, in its deepest part 10 kilometers down the atmosphere was thick, the temperatures warmer, and the soil could be turned for the cultivation of windbloom. Yes, the first child, the first orphan, the Adam of his race, but so unspeakably lonely, an island unto himself.

  Buster said: But then he made others. It didn’t matter. I resented Carswell. I hated how part of my genetic code always made me feel suspicious. I resented how part of my genetic code always made me feel threatened. I understood why Carswell did it. You have to feel threatened if you’re going to live in Valles Marineris. But I couldn’t forgive him. You can never know peace if you’re always suspicious, if you always feel threatened.

  More episodes. Buster as a young man, taped up the way Agatha was taped up, spading the red oxidized soil in the bottom of the Valley, trying to make windbloom grow, putting the spade aside, spraying the ground with what he called splice crystals, chemically treated water that wouldn’t sublimate from ice to gas in the thin cold atmosphere, moisture that remained tenable long enough to give the windbloom at least some meager sustenance. Working all day, then climbing, with his extra-long arms, the steep sides of the Valley, up to where his clan lived in the caverns. Cody became Buster. Buster knew everyone was afraid of him. Made sure everyone was afraid of him. Fear bred discipline, and discipline was his best weapon in the ongoing feuds with the other clans.

  Buster said: We fight, Cody. Carswell never meant this, or maybe he did, but somehow the fighting took hold, ruled our lives, made us war with each other. We fought over the sunniest, warmest spots in the Valley. We fought over the biggest ice deposits. We fought over the parachute drops the relief agencies in Murray City constantly sent us. Fought even when we had nothing to fight about. I hate fighting, Cody. The Father helped us stop fighting. The Father made us peaceful. At least as peaceful as he could. But there’s always the ghost code, the genetic memory that reminds us of who we once were. Those of us who were born in the crèche, of direct orphan stock, might have blue skins, might profess brotherhood and peace, but we still have our black hearts. We know how to sniff our enemies, how to detect a threat, and Axworthy and his crew are a threat.

  These thoughts and feelings came so fast that Cody felt overwhelmed by them. Other thoughts now, about the great plan, about the thing Buster had spent the last 25 years of his life working on, the last chance; quick-edits of a thousand little scenes, a comet out in the Oort Cloud, a building collapsing in Equilibrium, a vast hangar full of landers, a forest of asparagus-like trees, a diagram of orbital trajectories. A volcano, a cloudy sky, and people walking along a caldera. Distressing images. Puzzling images. Images that were the disjointed integers of an inscrutable equation Cody had no hope of understanding. And underneath it all, the ache of Buster’s love for Lulu.

  Buster said: She wants a husband. Not a leader. She wants someone who will make sacrifices for the sake of love. I can’t make sacrifices for her because I’ve sacrificed everything for the sake of my people.

  Cody sensed somewhere inside Buster an emotional vacancy. This seemed to be Buster’s greatest personal secret, this deficiency. And nothing angered Buster more than to have somebody discover it. Buster’s anger flared, and the pine scent was swept away by the overwhelming scent of creosote. Buster said, in spite of himself: You came here to present yourself as a hostage in the hope that you could stop your own people from hurting Lulu. I could never do that because I believe in my cause. I am the cause. You are making me lose Lulu because I have no choice but to fight for the cause. And that’s where you win.

  The kiss ended, reality
patched itself together fragment by fragment, and Cody found himself sitting on the floor of the spherical chamber, the taste of blood in his mouth, a gash on his lip, his head pounding with a violent ache. He took a sudden deep breath.

  He struggled to his feet and found Buster looking at him with cagey violet eyes.

  Buster said: You will leave. All of you. We ask you this. You will go back and tell Axworthy. This has been decided. We will not harm you if you all leave now. You can do this. You have the Conrad Wilson now. We renounce violence. But we of the crèche and of the Valley remember violence. Our blood still tingles with the ghost codes. I have been chastised by the Father for my attack, even though I wished only to free Agatha and Lulu. The Father has censured me for the death of your crewmen, but I tell him that I can never entirely forget Carswell and the crèche, or those cold hard years in the Valley when the Martians made us live outside. I can’t forget, for the old ways still run in my blood. You wish to again inhabit Ceres, but I tell you, Ceres belongs to us. If you fill it with air, we will take the air away. If you drink the water, we will poison the water. Ceres is a labyrinth, full of new tunnels, caverns, and passageways, and each one is booby-trapped. Ceres is a deadly place meant to keep intruders away. History repeats itself. I ask you to evacuate. Suffer the consequences if you refuse.

  Cody gave Axworthy a rundown of what had happened, told him about the spherical room and his conversation with Buster. Axworthy stared at him for a long time after that, his blue eyes sharp and clear under the heavy ridge of his brow. Falcon eyes, predatory in their concentration. Axworthy leaned back in his chair, lifted one knee over the other, and folded his hands on his lap.

  “You know what you did was reckless,” he said. “You risked your life and possibly the lives of others. For a Public Works employee to remove his location transmitter during surface repairs represents, as you well know, a violation of the Labor Safety Act of 2631, and could result in a year’s suspension without pay.”