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7: ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY

"The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom."

—H.L MENCKEN

Sheeba and I plowed into Heaven at Mach 10. Actually, exaggerate. We weren't going quite that fast, and the solar panel absorbed a lot of our momentum when it collapsed beneath us. On cue, our expensive pro-line body armor deployed, enveloping each of us in full bubble-cluster body shields. These bouncy wrappers kept us from squashing each other to bloody gore. My IBiS set off pyrotechnics in my thumb, and as the bubble wrappers deflated, I expected to lose consciousness—but I wasn't mat lucky.

"Beau, your leg."

Sheeba tried to press her hands over the rip in my space suit, although it had already self-sealed. My right thigh felt as if someone had twisted it in two.

I said, "Turn off your thrusters, dear!"

Sheeba's thruster pack was still blasting away, pinning us against the hull—pressing my back uncomfortably against a broken support strut. I grasped her controls and shut off the ignition. Then Provendia's spotlight silhouetted a pair of dark figures moving toward us, one tall and one short—the agitators. Their chains unreeled like snake heads. Then I did faint.

I awoke in semidarkness, and details took shape slowly. A ringing vibration. Cold, stale air. One stripe of pale gray light spilled through a partly open doorway, and moldy stains bloomed across a metal ceiling. I lay rigid, afraid to move, afraid to find myself paralyzed from the neck down. Cold seeped up from the floor.

"Sheeba?"

"I'm here, beau."

She crouched in the oval-shaped doorway, listening. The air smelted like a stale refrigerator.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"I'm fine. You should rest."

The room was barely larger than a closet, and its ceiling hung low enough to induce claustrophobia. A scummy fungal growth coated the welded steel walls and floor, and there was something peculiar about the room's shape. After staring for a long time, I realized it wasn't square. It was shaped like a stumpy triangle. The oval door cut across its sharpest corner, and the wall opposite the door was curved.

"Sheeba?'

"Do you need something, beau?"

I was trying very hard to figure out where we were. Someone had painted a large E on one of the straight walls, and a W on the other. East and West? I studied the curved wall, but instead of an N or S, there was a hand-scrawled A. Another A marked the door. What bizarre place had we landed in?

The ice-cold floor chilled my bones, and the scratchy blanket offered little warmth. Scratchy, yes. I moved my fingertips over its rough weave, delighted to find mat my hands still functioned. But what had happened to my gloves? And my EVA suit?

Sheeba crawled toward me. She wasn't wearing her suit, either, only her white smartskin longjohn and socks. "Nass, we're inside the ship. Do you want some water?"

"The gunship?" Ye gods, we'd been arrested by my own company. Maximally embarrassing moment. This was going to cost me a bundle.

"No, I mean we're in Heaven," Sheeba said. "Those workers tried to shove us off into space. They don't want us here, Nass."

When Sheeba's words finally soaked through to my brain, I sat bolt upright—and discovered that I was not paralyzed, only bruised and battered from head to toe. My right leg felt bludgeoned, and my left thumb was practically playing a symphony. "We can't be here!"

"Why did they want us to leave? We wouldn't hurt anybody." Sheeba squeezed water into my mouth from a plastic sack, then wiped my chin with her sleeve and made me lie back down. "Take it easy, beau. Your leg's broken in two places."

When I tried to sit up again, she laughed gently and cradled my head in her lap. Her fingers made soft round circles over my temples, across my forehead and down the bridge of my nose. "I keep thinking and thinking about these wars, Nass. The employees have everything they need. Why do they get so angry?"

I shivered with cold—my smartskin longjohn was supposed to deliver better insulation man this. My thumb-screen kept up a steady tremor, but I didn't want to check it while Sheeba was watching. Sheeba disapproved of implanted biosensors. Skin dye, contact lenses, tattoos—that cosmetic stuff was fine, but Shee thought health care should "harmonize with nature," whatever the heck mat meant.

"Maybe if the whole world did a group meditation, then people wouldn't feel so aggressive." She smoothed my eyebrows. "You know, we could pick one day and do a unified chant, like a global tantric purification."

I chewed my vibrating thumb. "We're inside A13?"

"Liam promised to send a doctor," she said. "Are you hungry. They left us these hard crackers. Not bad if you don't mind the carbs."

"Where's my suit? Sheeba, we have to get away from this place."

"Well, that's the thing." She raked her fingernails through my hair the way I loved, and tingles of pleasure washed down my spine. She continued in a soft murmur, kneading the cords in the back of my neck. "When I talked Liam into letting us come inside, he took our space suits."

"You talked to who? Liam?" I felt faint again. "You asked the agitators to bring us inside? Sheeba, we can't stay here!"

"Beau, your leg needs attention. Besides, this is what we came for. To seek the dark canal."

"No! We have to LEAVE!"

"But why, Nass? I have so many questions, and there's magna cum energy in this place."

"The agitators will kill us and eat us."

Sheeba's mouth dropped open.

Of course I was making that op. I couldn't tell her the real truth about Heaven, not then, not my delicate Sheeba. Scenarios played in my mind. If the agitators held us for ransom, Chad would need time to raise the cash. How long would that take? With my bioNEMs, a short-term exposure might not hurt me. But Sheeba had no NEMs to protect her. The dear child was completely exposed.

This was no time for surfer scruples. I would hail the gunship. Provendia would arrest us, my fellow directors would sue my ass to kingdom come, and the World Trade Org would ream us for who knows what arcane human resource infractions. I could visualize the hourly news, Nasir Deepra's fifteen seconds of fame. But with Shee's life at stake, a little public humiliation wouldn't bother me at all.

I searched for my helmet-mounted sat phone, but the room was bare. The agitators had taken it. They had taken everything. Without my phone, we were disconnected from the known world. They had even taken my travel mirror. Phew, Heaven smelted old and rancid, not sugary sweet I took shallow breaths in case the air was infected. The field reports about the disease had been woefully nonspecific.

Sheeba was still chattering away, unsuspecting, "He carried you down here in his arms, beau. You wouldn't believe how considerate he was."

Sheeba, how green can you be? I counted ten to stop hyperventilating. "Did you see where they put my sat phone? Tell me everything that happened."

While I wrapped myself in the blanket, Sheeba told me about this agitator thug called Liam, the factory foreman who had been "kaleidoscopically polite." Outside on the hull, when this "mega-kind man" tried to shove us off into space, she touched helmets with him so her voice would carry to his ears. Clever girl to think of that I could only guess what charms she used to persuade this rogue to abduct us.

She said Liam and his sidekick brought us into Heaven through an airlock, and she described their ancient twentieth-century EVA suits, worn bald and patched with duct tape. Once inside, she said the agitators stripped us to our smartskin longjohns and blindfolded both of us.

"That was certainly polite," I said. The idea of that thug ogling my Shee in her underwear made me seethe.

"Don't worry, beau. I counted the steps to this room and memorized the Ordic emanations. I can feel my way back to that airlock—no prob."

"Can you feel your way to our EVA suits?"

"Well . . ."

"We need the sat phone in my helmet to call Grunze." I tried to get up, but when I rolled onto one knee, blood rushed away from my brain. An icon blinked on my left thumbnail, and I hid it behind my back.

"Don't stand up. You'll get dizzy. Watch." Sheeba grinned and used the wall to push herself up to her feet. "Something weird's going on with the floor."

She widened her stance as if she were balancing on a moving conveyor belt, then took a few steps toward the wall marked W, weaving like a drunk. "Preter-sleek," she said, giggling. Then she did a quick pirouette, toppled and caught herself against the wall. She threw her head back and shrieked with laughter. 'Too fun!" After steadying herself again, she stepped toward the E wall, holding her hands out like a tightrope walker. "Wee! Look at me! It feels different going this way."

I realized what was happening. "Sheeba, it's the artificial gravity."

"When I move this way, I feel a teensy bit heavier." She pivoted on her heel, then ran toward the W again. "Ooh, this way feels light!"

"It's centrifugal force," I said.

"Yeah, like the factory's spinning really fast, you know? Like a giant bucket swinging in a circle, and we're pinned to the bottom." She spoke breathlessly, balancing on tiptoes. Then she sat down, peeled off one of her socks and rolled it into a ball.

"What are you doing?" I leaned back on my elbows, perplexed.

"Watch this." She tossed her balled-up sock in the air, and then the most uncanny thing happened. Instead of rising and falling back into her hand, the sock flew in a funny loop and fell in a curve toward the wall marked W.

"Whoa," I said.

"Psychedesque!" Sheeba went to get her sock. "It's the Coriolis effect. Verinne's handouts told all about this stuff."

"You read them?"

"Sure. Artificial gravity's beyond spiritual. It's a phys-iocosmic law." She sat cross-legged on the floor, tossing her sock at different angles and clapping her hands at the screwy magic that kept curving its path toward the W.

"W, that's West," she pointed. "That means retrograde. And East means prograde, the direction of our spin."

"And A?" I asked.

She stretched both arms out full length and pointed at the pair of A's on the curved wall and the door. "That's axial, in line with the axis of the spin. That's like neutral. You feel less effect when you move that way."

She tossed her sock ball at the door, but it still veered slightly West and missed the mark.

I prodded my broken right leg. Above the knee, my flesh felt swollen and tender and hot to the touch, so I focused on the Nasir-shaped glass man coexisting inside my skin. Right now, the bioNEMs would be scurrying around like busy clerks, moving calcium molecules to mend my fractures.

"Did you notice the creepy shape of this room?" I asked.

She munched a cracker and studied the walls. "Heaven's a cylinder, and the decks are round, so I guess all the rooms are shaped like pizza wedges."

"Of course they are." Her power of deduction surprised me. I helped myself to a cracker. It tasted of yeast and sugar, remarkably satisfying, so I took a second and a third.

Then a shadow blocked the light falling through our open door. Sheeba moved out of the way, and a tall angular man with a hawk nose and tangled blond hair ducked through the low opening. An agitator. I drew back against the wall and searched around me for some means of defense. Could I strangle him with the blanket?

"Liam." Sheeba dropped her sock and blushed. Then she turned to me. "This is Liam, the foreman."

So this was the mighty chief of thugs. He looked like a common criminal. Thin and washed-out, in threadbare coveralls and frayed sneakers, he duplicated every factory worker I'd ever seen. A nasty blond braid swung down to the middle of his back, and his height and wide lean shoulders made him awkward in the narrow room. He seemed uncertain where to stand. His blue eyes darted nervously. Why, he was just a juvenile, not even thirty years old. This was the war leader? Contempt replaced my fear.

"I demand to speak with my people. Return my sat phone at once," I said.

Sheeba touched my arm. "Nasir, he saved your life."

"Shhh," I whispered, warning her off. "Don't give our names. Don't give any information he might use against us."

The juvenile chieftain grunted. I have a distinct recollection of his lip curling.

"But Nass—"

I clenched Sheeba's wrist to quiet her, and the chieftain's pale blue eyes rested on my hand. They were deepset, hooded and gloomy. His eyebrows, mustache and beard bristled like copper filaments, several shades darker than his yellow hair. But it was his nose that impressed me, long and narrow, curved like a beak. I tried to stand and face him, but the pain in my leg, plus the weird Coriolis effect, made me stumble and fall. When I turned my head too fast, disturbing events transpired in my ear canals.

"Lean on me, Nass." Sheeba hooked her elbow under my armpit.

I waved her away and held myself up on my one good knee by deliberately leaning toward the E, the direction of our spin. Sneering at the boy-chief, I marshaled my most authoritative tone. "State your intentions."

The juve quirked his lips and didn't answer. Ill-mannered brute. I suppose, kneeling in my underwear, disabled and disconnected from my crewmates, I must have cut a poor figure. Still, I held myself as erect as possible and stared him down.

But he was no longer looking at me. The cur was ogling Sheeba. Devouring her, you might say, with his miserable, ice-blue eyes. As Shee knelt to examine my broken leg, his gaze stole along the lines of her waist and hips with a kind of forlorn awe. The punk infuriated me.

I shook my fist. "Give me back my phone."

At last, he said—in a surprisingly resonant baritone— "The Net don't work here."

"What? That's absurd. The Net reaches everywhere in the inhabited solar system. Don't try to hoodwink me."

Again, he refused to answer—insolent lout. For a juvenile, he wore an uncommonly dark expression. Shadowed cheek. Grim, hard-set mouth. His lips curved almost too gracefully for a man, but they were camouflaged by his tawny mustache. When Sheeba smiled, he blushed and didn't seem to know where to put his hands. What a kid. This thug was way too immature to be a factory foreman. No one with less than three decades should be in charge of anything!

Behind him, a stumpy female hopped through our oval door carrying a hammer. Her patched gray EVA suit was literally falling off in shreds, and a collapsible helmet dangled from her belt. So this was Liam's chain-wielding henchman. Dark brown skin, grimy fingernails. A scar stretched across her left temple and disfigured her otherwise handsome face. Both of the juves wore the typical sullen expressions of factory protes. It wasn't necessary to read their uniform labels to know they were my employees.

"Is this the doctor?" Sheeba asked. "Nasir needs analgesic vibra-therapy. Do you have a stim gun?"

"Don't know what that is." Liam's voice rose with a rich timbre. If he'd been an exec, he might have trained as a vocalist.

By contrast, his stocky woman friend spoke in grating soprano. "I ain't no doc, babe. I your guard. You treat me right, I treat you right." Then she made an obscene gesture with her hammer.

Sheeba shot to her feet. "But Liam, you promised a doctor." The Coriolis effect made her falter sideways, and the punk caught her in his arms.

Did I mark that moment as a pivot around which my life would bend and warp out of all recognition? No, I was too distracted. But here and now, I can't forget how he looked at her. How the tendons moved in his forearm, how he reeked of sweat, and how their faces nearly touched.

"Doc busy," he said, and his splendid baritone jarred with his mongrel worker accent Then he set Sheeba on her feet—gently, I realize now, though at the time, everything he did seemed coarse. "Careful how you move. Takes a while to get your balance here."

He nodded at me, and without another word, he left us. The great chieftain. What a tongue-tied whelp. Then I collapsed on the floor.

After he'd gone, Sheeba wrapped me in the thin scratchy blanket and eased my swollen leg into a position that didn't hurt. The scar-faced girl stayed by the door, hefting her hammer in menacing ways. Except for the pale wound on her temple, her skin was smooth and glossy, as dark as burnt caffeine. Thick black lashes fringed her green eyes, and a ferocious grin twisted her shapely features. She'd wound her black hair in a large, heavy bun that was coming loose. When I curled in my blanket, she stepped closer and rubbed her knee against Sheeba's cheek.

"How ya like your visit so far, babe? Remember you asked to come in. We didn't invite you."

Sheeba kept silent, but I shook with suppressed rage. "Let's make this easy. Return my sat phone, and I'll call my bank."

"Ho. You gonna buy your way out? Guess that's how you 'xecutives do."

The girl spoke in a such a thick worker accent, it was difficult to understand her. She leaned over my supine body and balanced her hammer on one finger directly above me. I wanted to bash her smirking face, except she might have dropped the hammer.

But she was just a child. Her vulgar behavior made her seem older, yet there was no mistaking the soft, smooth roundness under her chin. She was twenty at most.

"How much money you got in that 'xecutive bank?" she said in her high-pitched voice.

"I'll pay any reasonable figure. Just return my sat phone."

"However much, it ain't enough." She made as if to let the hammer go, then caught it quickly. "Oops." With one parting sneer, she stepped outside and shut the door. We heard her stout body settle to the deck just outside.

With the door closed, no light leaked in from the corridor, and pitch-blackness surrounded us. The air seemed even colder. But there were sounds I hadn't noticed before. In the quiet, engines thrummed, air whuffed through ducts, and liquid sluiced down pipes. Faint voices echoed through the steel walls like tones in a tuning fork. Our prison enveloped us in aural vibrations. Peculiar place, this Heaven.

"Sheeba," I whispered.

Her only response was an inarticulate grumble. Dear girl, she was probably terrified. Nothing had prepared her for this savage place. She'd never seen anything worse than an X-rated movie.

Or possibly a few segments of the Reel.

Resolutely, I dragged myself across the steel floor, sliding the blanket under me to avoid jerking my swollen leg. In the darkness, I found her by touch. She was sitting with her back against the wall.

"Sweetness, don't be frightened." I stroked her arm. "I'll think of something. I always do."

"He hardly said a word to me."

I took her hand. It was warmer than mine. "We'll make it through this. I'm sure Chad's got our lawyers online. As soon as we locate my sat phone, I'll call Grunze."

"Why didn't he stay and talk? You'd think he'd be interested to know who we are."

"Chad will pay whatever ransom they ask. Our friends will get us out." I positioned my leg so it throbbed less viciously.

"How many visitors does he get on your average weekend, I'd like to know. We might have news. He should interrogate us." In the darkness, she rocked back and forth. "It's creepy in here."

"Well, Shee"—I let out a wry chuckle—"didn't you come seeking the dark?"

"It's not supposed to be like this. How can we understand the zone if they keep us locked up? I want to look around. And talk to them." She scrambled to the door and beat the steel panels with her fists. "Come back! I have another question."

Poor Shee. Her fizzy quest for the dark was already vaporizing. The steel door opened a crack, and Scar-Face poked her nose inside. "Hi, babe. You need somethin'?"

Sheeba seemed disappointed. "Where's Liam?"

"Light is what we need," I called over her shoulder. "And more blankets. And my sat phone."

"And a doctor," Sheeba added. 'Tell Liam we don't like promise breakers."

The girl laughed. "Okay, babe, I tell him."

She started closing the heavy steel door, but Sheeba caught hold of it. I cringed at the thought of her crushed fingers, but she managed to hold it open. "Wait. What's your name? I'm Sheeba Zee from Nordvik."

Oh fine. Sheeba was making friends with this prote cub. I couldn't see the smile she gave the kid, but I knew well enough the power of her charm. The kid's green eyes reflected points of light as she let the door fall a little wider open. "Name's Geraldine. If you're nice, you can call me Gee."

Sheeba curled her body toward Geraldine like a blossom turning to the sun, and this produced a noticeable effect on the kid. I'd seen Sheeba do this move before. When she talked to people, she devoted her entire physical attention. Youthful exuberance, I thought. But now I noticed the sly way she nudged one shoulder through the door so Geraldine couldn't close it.

"Gee, are you like second-in-command?"

The kid sat on the floor just outside and rested her hammer across her knees. Silhouetted against the corridor light, her heavy bundle of hair adorned her like a black corona. "You could say that. I work the power plant. My turbines make all the power and heat. This place be stone cold without my handiwork."

Stupid brat, it is stone cold. What have you done with the adults? I wanted to growl. Pain and exhaustion were taking their toll on my 248-year-old body. Those bioNEMs drew their power from my blood sugar, and since they had a lot of breakage to repair, they were seriously sapping my energy. While the girls chatted, I finished off the crackers. Then, despite my best efforts to follow their talk, I rolled up in the blanket and dozed.

But one exchange startled me awake. It rang as clear as breaking crystal. Sheeba asked if Liam had a girlfriend.

"His aura looks like smoke. I think he needs someone to—to—"

'To screw his brains out?" Geraldine yipped and chortled.

No doubt, Sheeba found the girl's crude talk repugnant. No doubt, she joined in the laughter just to be friendly. Shee was friendly to everyone. Her trilling laugh echoed through the steel room, and she rocked back and forth. "Oops, almost wet my panties." She pressed her belly and shook with giggles. "Oh wow, I've got a vicious need to pee."

At those words, my own overfull bladder did a vague lurch, but fatigue was carrying me off into dreamland. The last thing I remember, Sheeba slipped out through the door with her new pal.

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