AE in the Irish Theosophist | Page 4

"The depression wiped it all out by the time I
came back." Though if I had come back twenty years earlier I would
have been a multi-billionare.
"You're not a very lucky spacer," the doctor observes.
I shake my head.
"No, I'm not." But at least the doctor sounds sympathetic, unlike Vince,
who ridiculed me for days straight about it. "I left people behind when I
skipped out because I was close to broke sixty of your years ago as well.
Now I don't even have them." Vince led me down to the floating cities
of Riley as last-ditch effort to save ourselves.
Floating ghost cities. He'd been nuts in the end.
"I'm really sorry for doing this to you guys," I say. The men all nod.
"It's okay."
The doctor stands up. "Don't you dare sympathize with him like that.
When the Air Guard rescues us we're booking charges. All of us."

"I . . ."
"Look, does he even know any of our names? Did he even bother to
check our names before he took us all hostage on his crazy last spacer
joyride?"
I try to recall if I checked their names. I don't think I did.
"That's right," she says. "Didn't even bother, did you?"
I have nothing to say to that.
The man closest to me speaks up. "Well, my name is . . ."
"Don't do that," she yells. "Don't give him your name. You don't want
him showing up on your doorstep one day, do you? Don't forget, he's
probably unstable. He's got some sort of implant problem. Just wait
until the Air Guard gets here. Don't talk to him anymore."
She sweeps past us all, hoop skirt bouncing, to go use the bathroom.
The men look anywhere in the gondola but at me or at the door to the
head.
I distract myself similarly by wondering if her waste will suffer the
same fate as the keys to my handcuffs? I imagine the carbon-based
remains will be compressed into the form of diamonds by the time they
reach the core of Riley.
Back when Riley was colonized, scientists tried to study what the
pressure did to things dropped in Riley's lower atmospheres, but
apparently the depression killed the more speculative kinds of
exploration like that. And any diamond prospectors formed up during
the first years of colonizing Riley had quickly turned to finding other
ways to make a living.
Like making airships to trade between the great floating cities.

#

It's a long, quiet hour before the Air Guard ship snares us. The gondola
shakes a bit, and then a long snaking tube attaches itself to the airlock.
My cuffs are still on, so I'm sure that will just make their job easier.
Someone knocks on the door to the airlock. The doctor opens it, and
Suzie walks in. She's frail, but wearing her old blue and red Air Guard
uniform and projecting authority.
"Get up the chute," she orders the colonists.
The men grab the pilot's body and scramble up awkwardly through the
tube with it. I watch as the doctor pulls off her hoopskirt.
She looks back at me.
I start to ask her name, but Suzie steps between us and the doctor starts
scrambling away.
"Hi, Suzie."
"You wouldn't believe the strings I had to pull to get here this quick. I
had to get back aboard one of my old ships just to come after you." She
shakes her head.
"But thank you so much," I say. I reach out to hug her. She pulls out a
stun gun, fires it at my chest, and I drop to the floor of the gondola,
convulsing.
"You self-involved asshole." She grabs the ball gag from the corner of
the room and ties it back on me.
"Mfff?"
"I've had sixty years to despise you. My secretary program, on the other
hand, based on a younger version of me, is quite infatuated with you.

Well, at least my memories of you." Suzie is quite strong for a ninety
year old. She's hogtied me with a piece of rope around my ankles and
the handcuffs, and dragged me to the back of the gondola. "But she
came up with quite a compromise. We come get your Id, which is the
real you that we always loved anyway. I always sensed he was in
charge when we were together back then. And then I get to kill you."
She points the stun gun right at my temple. "I'll turn you into a
vegetable right now unless you boot your neural network up and give
us Vince."
I need little convincing. She can have him. I hold up my cuffed hands.
Suzie grabs it them. A data link opens, using the very conductivity of
our skin