Beyond the Horizon

Chapter 4-1

The first place they stopped after leaving the garbage planet was Denebi in the Summer Triangle, near the red giant Vulpeculae. Sometimes known as Alpha Cygni, Denebi was a blue-white supergiant that bathed its fifteen planets with such bright light that humans lived under polarized domes only on the outer three planets. Denebi III, their destination, was a cold if well-lit ball of rock and ice with barely enough oxygen to sustain life. At a half-grav, it was an easy landing for even the bulkiest and most awkward of craft.

“Why are we stopping here?” Misty asked.

“I got an old associate who might be interested in some merchandise. Low gravity planets make better transshipment points, so this is a commerce center for almost all settlements in the Summer Triangle.”

“Doesn"t feel much like summer,” she muttered.

“You stay here and mind yourself,” Jack told her. “Keep yourself locked in the ship and don"t open the door for strangers.”

“Why can"t I go with you?”

“This old associate of mine likes kids—dipped in chocolate for dessert. I won"t be long.”

She made a face at him and returned up the gangway at his bidding.

Jack retracted it remotely and locked the hatch with the gene lock. He was still puzzled how she"d gotten past it on Canis Dogma Five.

He closed the cargo hatch and shouldered the bundle of exotic goods he"d put together to sell, the bulging satchel easily five times his weight. Without the satchel, he"d have had a difficult time walking in the low gravity.

The spaceport tarmac was littered with variegated ships, from yachts to deep-space cruisers, the bulk of them freighters. Salvagers like his were scarce, the densely-populated Summer Triangle having been consistently occupied, even in the long interregnum between the Circi and Torgassan Empires. There wasn"t much junk around to salvage.

He found a carrier at the spaceport edge and rented it with nearly his last galacti.

“Where you gonna sell that load o" junk?” the clerk asked him.

Jack frowned at the jibe. “I get a discount for letting you insult me?”

The carrier groaned and wheezed under the weight but followed him obediently, its rear blades sliding smoothly across the perma-frost ground. Cornering was difficult, the momentum wanting to carry off the carrier.

He wound his way through the markets, puffs of icy air above hucksters who offered up their wares to the crisp atmosphere, each breath freezing instantly to a glitter, lit by the bright blue primary like jewels.

Passing smoke shops and shoot shops, snort stops and shot stops, Jack felt the yearning for a lungful of comfort. Not until I make the sale, he told himself doggedly. And what about her? he asked himself yet again.

What about her? he replied to his own question, daring himself to think the unthinkable.

I can"t think about her right now, he told himself. While he didn"t think about her, another part of his brain plotted how he could rid himself of the pesky girl.

The unassuming storefront declared in inch-high letters the underwhelming presence who might be found beyond the door: “R. Delphin, Proprietor.”

Leaving his carrier behind, Jack pushed into the shop.

The interior was immaculate. Glasma cases displaying fine antiques lined both sides of the shop. The walls displayed stills of other antiques that had once graced the premises. An old man with half a cybernetic head peered at fine stones through a high-precision oculus. He wore a sterile white coat and white satin gloves. Even his shoes were draped with sterile white cloth.

“Stop right there. You need decontamination.”

Behind the door was a small decom stall. Jack stepped dutifully inside; the machine hummed and whined, and he tried not to think about the years it was taking off his life. When he stepped from the stall, the cube in his pocket felt warm. Why"s it warm? he wondered.

“Jack Carson, Junkster Extraordinaire,” Delphin said, looking him up and down, as if appraising his market value.

“Richard, how very good to see you,” Jack said, his enthusiasm sounding forced even to him, he who lacked all nuance.

Delphin looked over Jack"s shoulder. “What monstrosity are you attempting to off on me this time, Carson? I don"t want any, by the looks of it from here.” The proprietor turned his oculus on Jack.

“I"m not here to sell that. I got something else, requires privacy.” He let his eyebrow rise a bit.

“What about that?” He stabbed a finger over Jack"s shoulder. “You take your eyes off it, it"ll be gone.”

“Good riddance.” He might have shrugged, his voice nonchalant. “It got me here.”

Delphin"s oculus scanned Jack from head to toe and gasped. “I"ve never seen one of those. This way, Carson.” He spun and led the way to the rear, turned into a nearly hidden doorway. “Boy, mind the shop. In fact, put out the sign and lock the door.”

A rag-haired urchin ducked past Jack, steering clear of both men nimbly.

“Caught him trying to purloin a trinket,” Delphin said, leading Jack into a small laboratory. “He"s working off his debt. Better that than being sentenced to three years hard labor on a garbage planet.” The oculus riveted itself to a gadget that looked quite similar to the one that adorned Delphin"s head. “Put the cube there, on that platter.”

A mounted platter occupied the center island.

Jack put the cube on the platter, its iridescent sides swirling ominously.

Delphin swung the larger, ceiling-mounted oculus around and positioned its gargantuan lens just above the cube. The smaller oculus attached to his head also peered inquisitively at the alien device. The man"s hands danced across the controls.

The lights dimmed and a bright beam pierced the dark, the cube emanating no light itself. A dull, distant whine originated somewhere.

Jack wondered whether the images he"d seen on its sides had been projected from somewhere inside the cube, or whether the cube had put the images into his visual cortex. Its sides began to swirl.

“Where"d you get it?”

“Canis Dogma Five.” Jack didn"t have the subtlety to prevaricate.

Delphin gasped and swiveled his oculus toward him. “How"d you evade the patrols? That place is locked down tighter than a casino vault. Latitude and longitude?”

Jack told him and added, “The former Capital of the Circian Empire.”

The oculus swiveled back to the cube. “How much are you asking?”

Jack"s initial thought, en route, had been to get it appraised, but Delphin was already asking how much, and clearly wanted to buy it. Jack thought of a price and doubled it, then doubled it again, then for good measure quintupled that. “Fifty million galacti, ten percent now, the remainder once you"ve verified its authenticity.”

“Done,” Richard Delphin, proprietor of fine antiquities, said immediately.

“Cash,” Jack added.

The hesitation was brief. “Of course.”

Five million galacti cash was an inordinate sum. The trinket that the boy had tried to steal couldn"t have been worth ten galacti. The baubles at the front of Delphin"s shop were rarely worth more.

“I"ll need a few minutes to make arrangements, of course.”

“Of course,” Jack replied, his feet barely touching the ground. Five million galacti was five million galacti. Even if Delphin stiffed him for the balance, Jack was independently wealthy for the rest of his life.

Delphin left him there to secure the money, turning on the lights as he stepped from the room.

The profusion of equipment lining the walls held no interest for Jack. The cube under high magnification on the platter had grown quiescent, its sides a dull pewter.

I didn"t want to be Emperor anyway, Jack thought, the idea still as ludicrous as any he"d entertained. He remembered as a child—orphaned early and begrudgingly cared for until he"d stowed away on a garbage scow at age twelve—how he"d dreamt of achieving a position of power and helping all orphaned children to find a home. Jack had shared his dream with only one person, Cherise, a fellow orphan, whose prepubescent beauty bespoke the breathtaking comeliness she would acquire as an adult. To his surprise, she hadn"t laughed at his dreams and instead had told him how much she admired him. Her joining the other entertainers had ultimately led to Jack"s departure.

Looking at the alien cube, which had promised him the power to change the universe, Jack felt a distant, muted sadness.

He attributed his sadness to having left Cherise in the clutches of the old harpy who"d run the Southern Birds, but something about the cube on the platter…

I"m independently wealthy, he told himself, why don"t I feel ecstatic?

The sense of an opportunity lost wouldn"t leave him, but it was done. He"d made the transaction. There was no turning back.

Jack looked again at the cube, at its ugly pewter color, at its flat sides, and at its slightly beveled edges. Dull and unattractive. Just like Jack.

Well, maybe I"m more than dull, he thought. It would be a disservice to all ordinary-looking people to call me unattractive. He didn"t need a mirror to see the bulbous nose, the recessed chin, the beetle brow, the buck teeth, the sunken cheeks. The closest he might aspire to an Imperial position was court jester, but his wit was as dull as his looks. It would be generous to describe his intellect as a dearth of cognition.

Jack sighed. No, he thought, I could never be Emperor.

Delphin came bustling back in with a satchel. “You sure you want it in cash?”

Jack nodded. He had a knife in his boot and knew how to use it wicked fast. It wouldn"t stop a blaster to his back, but he"d manage. He"d developed a sense for danger, an intuition for intrigue. “I"ll be all right. Which way"s that back door?” He grabbed the satchel.

“You don"t want to count it?”

“No,” Jack said flatly.

Delphin shrugged and led him down a cluttered corridor.

Beyond it was an alley. Jack went deeper into the alley, picked a door at random—the back door to a small, indoor shopping mall—and walked toward the front.

He stopped at a boutique for a change of clothes. Remembering to remove the tags, he donned them and left the boutique.

Lightheaded, and much lighter in spirit, Jack started back toward the spaceport, the frosty ground crunching beneath his feet.

A smoke shop called his name.

Not with all this cash in hand, he told himself.

Just one to celebrate, and then I"ll take the cash to the ship, he thought.

No, not even one! he remonstrated himself.

Before he knew it, he found himself asking for a booth in the back, positioning himself so he could see the front door. “Your finest, please,” Jack said.

While the waiter went to fetch it, Jack dug into the satchel. The smallest domination was a thousand-galacti chit.

It"ll do, Jack thought.

The waiter returned with a bowl of smoke. The pipe was a blue glasma tulip whose petals arced out gently and gracefully from a glowing center, its stem serving both as a platform and as the inhaling tube. In the center was a dusty, dun-brown ball of c-grade smoke.

“I said, "your finest," ” Jack repeated, glancing at the chit.

In an instant, Jack was staring at the best smoke he"d even seen. Tears of resin beaded on the cluster, and the sweet smell clotted his nostrils. Already the entire establishment knew, the aroma pervading the place. Jack felt their eyes; he was glad he"d put the satchel on the bench beside him, out of sight below the table.