Originally published in Planet Magazine No. 13–16 (October 1997).
First Alarm
The console beeped.
Cliff looked up from his videonovel. It’s probably the narrowband radiodetection subarray, again, he thought. For some reason, it was drifting out of alignment a lot, lately. He was almost at the point of attributing the problem to sabotage, but he couldn’t figure out, for sure, how someone could have done that.
At the time of installation, maybe…. But all the installers were Service people with TOP SECRET clearance…. Maybe it was done, more artfully, at the factory.
Cliff knew, from reading spy thrillers, that every man has his price. Someone may have been bribed to do a little “modification,” to ensure that the subarray wouldn’t stay properly oriented, thereby creating an off-coverage hole that specially equipped infiltrators could use.
Somehow, though, that just didn’t compute. If misalignment had been someone’s goal, they should have modified the alignment sensors, too. Cliff did his readout checks religiously, but “they” might have reasoned that, if a Custodian disabled an annoying alarm, he would slack off on his readings, too — maybe because he was going ’round the bend, as some did, despite their careful screening.
If this were the case, they failed to include Cliff’s nature in their calculations. He was right for Outer Array 74, and it was right for him.
He arose and checked the readout on the control console…. Yep. The usual problem.” He input the correction command, and watched his monitor as the subarray was brought back into alignment with the small secret reference buoy, Var74, that was just inside Varmool-controlled space. The buoy transmitted its reference signals by state-of-the-art frequency hopping, but the Service judged it discoverable and sacrificeable.
Cliff thought it should have been discovered by now, but its low-observables and spoofing countermeasures had shielded it from Varmool scoutships. He knew that, if they found and tried to tamper with Var74, it would alert him and self-destruct.
The Custodian
The nameplate on his desk said “S/1c Clifton O. Harman,” and “Custodian.” It was an unnecessary piece of display, but all the Array stations had them. It even had a standard Service stock number, like the rest of his supply items. There was nobody around to be impressed with his title, though. Except for a rare supply visitor, he was quite alone—and presumed to be lonely.
Candidates for Array Custodian were rigorously screened by every valid test, physiological and psychological, to ensure they wouldn’t become psychotic and damage the expensive equipment in their charge. All the candidates had been under casual observation, since their graduation from Basic Training, by a screening organization with the innocuous name, “Material Evaluation Directorate.”
Those who exhibited genuine self-sufficiency were watched, closely. Tests of stability were covertly given them as they performed their regular duties. If they measured up, they were persuaded to train for the Array Service as Custodians.
Cliff was that kind of guy. Raised in a stable traditional family, he was nonetheless a natural loner. He could get along with people, if he had to. Loners who couldn’t were considered unsatisfactory for Custodial duty. As it was said in the training school, a Custodian had to be somebody who could — as far as people were concerned — “take ’em, or leave ’em.”
Loneliness was not, for Cliff, a yearning for companionship and bright lights. It was a subtle thing: a lack of the encouragement that a capable worker gets from his co-workers and bosses. Loneliness also meant fewer opportunities to grow, intellectually. Out here, he received no praise in the routine Ultrad messages that rolled out of his printer. And he had to create his own opportunities. Later, after his tour was up and he returned to civilization, he wouldn’t be lonely. But for now, he would just do his job, and do it well.
In addition to technical duties, he had a security responsibility. The Varmool — among Star Service personnel, they were known as the Varmints — had tried to remove more than one Array station. They didn’t want to be watched by the Empire, or anyone else. But policymakers assumed that the Varmool intended to invade the outer regions of the Empire. The official policy was to contain them, at least on this side of their dominions.
When the Varmool attacked an Array station, the Empire attacked one of theirs. The stations of both sides were so far out and widespread that they couldn’t be continuously guarded. As a result of Empire retaliation, the Varmool eventually ceased their direct attacks on the stations. Since they couldn’t very well sneak up on one and make its destruction look like an accident, they constantly hatched elaborate schemes to put them out of action, while evading the blame.
The Array stations operated with state-of-the-art technology. A Custodian had to have more than an ability to live alone in deep space. He needed a natural talent for troubleshooting complex, computer-controlled equipment. Cliff had early been the kind of kid who took things apart to see how they worked. From that stage, he went on to become a computer nerd, then an electronics whizkid. The Star Service scouted him, then sent him to a good tech college, all expenses paid. For his high-priced education, he had to serve two enlistments — eight standard years of service.
As inducements to volunteer for the Array Service, he was guaranteed a promotion to warrant-rank, a big bonus payment, and the assignment of his choice — upon completion of his two-year Array tour. Satisfied as he was with his life on Outer Array 74, Cliff nonetheless looked forward to the day when he could write his own ticket. He didn’t need that expectation to keep him sane, though.
Resupply
Cliff returned to his desk. The supply ship that had arrived two weeks ago had brought him a box of new videonovels and ezines. He was digging into them now, not only to be entertained by fictional situations, but to catch up on Empire news. He was curious to see if the Empress would crack down on Princess Deirdre’s antics. He was tempted to jumpsearch his browser to follow the story, but he restrained himself. He would ration the news and view it just as if he were back on one of the homeworlds.
The supply pilot-tech had tried to give him the news when he and Cliff were stowing the new supplies, but Cliff shut off the man’s recitation with a curt, “Don’t spoil it for me. I’ve got a lot of time to catch up…. It’s my recreation.”
The guy sure was a blabbermouth. After the rebuke, he had changed to Service gossip — the kind the zines didn’t have. Cliff listened to that. Most of the supply guys had a tendency to spout off. They spent a lot of time alone, themselves, making the rounds of the stations. Some of them really saved it up during those long trips out, and weren’t easily squelched.
This guy was an odd type, though. After the supplies were stowed, he had asked for a tour of the station. Although surprised that the guy hadn’t taken such a tour before, Cliff took him through his quarters and the access tubes which connected the subarrays with Control Central. He demurred only when the guy wanted to suit-up and have a look at the external hardware. Cliff had to remind him of the rule that the Outside was to be accessed only in case of a malfunction.
Eventually, he got the man back into his ship and off to the supply planetoid, Warehaven. He seemed glad to start home, though. Who wouldn’t be, Cliff thought. Only someone like me.
Much Misalignment
Later, during his sleep-period, Cliff was awakened by the alignment alarm beeping from his bunkside monitor panel. The problem was apparently growing worse. This was the first time it had sounded while he was sleeping.
He sat up and keyed the alignment readout. What he saw caused him to rub his eyes. The readout was normal. Did the problem correct itself? If it didn’t, he might have to file a report about it. He didn’t want to do that because Custodians were expected to take care of equipment problems without bothering the Service about them. They didn’t like dispatching a couriership to take a maintenance team way out there.
Cliff was afraid that, if he had to call out a team more than once, Personnel might record that he had not “satisfactorily” completed his tour. That meant that the inducements offered him for volunteering would be withdrawn.
Tomorrow, he would get on the alignment problem, in earnest — again.
* * *
Next day, after a fruitless and tiring effort spent trying to diagnose the problem, he retired early.
That “night,” the alignment alarm sounded, not once, but twice…. Each time, the readouts on the narrowband subarray were normal: no misalignment. He took his optical instruments to the inspection port and sighted the hardware alignment-marks, to be certain.
What the heck is going on? He was uncharacteristically annoyed with the problem.
During his next sleep-period, the alarm sounded three times…. Each time: no misalignment. Cliff was now annoyed and fearful. If the array actually became misaligned, he would be violating a serious rule. When the station was designed, the engineers even considered installing a sealed circuit that would automatically send an Ultrad message if an alarm were disabled, so they could query the Custodian about it. They had finally rejected the idea as being too restrictive on the Custodian’s maintenance duties.
He didn’t get much sleep during the next period. He mostly lay awake, waiting for the inevitable alarm. Each of the four alarms which sounded proved to be false.
One — then, two. Then, three. Then, four times…. Cliff was now suspicious. The problem was beginning to seem almost programmatic.
Groggy as he was from lack of sleep, he worked all the next day, installing a jury-rigged misalignment detector on the outside hardware. He tied it into the computer, so that both detectors had to indicate misalignment before the alarm would sound.
That night, he almost got a full period’s sleep.
More Alarms
He awoke at the shrill blast of the power alarm, to find himself floating under his blanket. The gravitoid net had failed; that demonstrated a general power failure more forcefully than any alarm. Just his luck, though: his airjet reaction unit was in Control Central. He was supposed to carry the ARU with him when he moved between CC and his quarters. His failure to do was one of his few lapses of discipline.
He laboriously pulled himself along the handrail to Control Central, his trusty flashlight flapping slowly from his belt. He felt a little sick now in the unaccustomed absence of G-pull. He usually did, but he had managed early in Basic Training to resist its effects well-enough to look good to his instructors.
In the dim standby-light, he found that the power monitor had tripped the main circuit breakers. He reset them. The compartment’s lights stabbed his eyes, and he was pulled to the deck as the power returned. He did a power monitor diagnostic, sitting at the console in his skivvies. There was no indication of why the power had been turned off. It must have been a surge of some kind. If so, it was the first one he had experienced, here.
Returning to his bunk, he tossed and turned, wondering if the alignment and power problems were related. But he couldn’t relate them in any meaningful way. He finally fell asleep for a couple of hours.
The next day, he dozed off in the afternoon while he was reading a videonovel. But not for long, though. He awoke suddenly to a warning horn, almost falling out of his chair. The radiation alarm was roaring. Rushing to the console, he saw there seemed to be a small reactor core-breach. He did a quick check, typing as fast as he could, making mistakes, and retyping. There was no doubt about the readings.
When Cliff arrived at Outer Array 74, he found that his predecessor had programmed the computer vox to a sexy young-woman voice. Cliff first changed it to a older contralto, then muted it altogether — after finding that it reminded him of his old grammar teacher, and seemed an intrusion into his privacy. He preferred to dvorak his input with his skilled fingers, anyway, and depend upon nonvox alarms to alert him…. His fingers had never had to perform with such urgency, before now.
He raced toward the reactor’s Manual-Control Chamber to check the situation, firsthand. Before he got there, the warning horns ceased their blaring. The resulting silence seemed very loud.
He entered the chamber and checked the instruments which were directly connected to the reactor. They indicated no radiation leakage and certainly no core-breach.
He returned to Control Central in a state of confusion and frustration. His mind raced around the possibilities. Is all this trouble just coincidence?… Or, is there a single cause?
Then, he experienced a dark thought — and an idea.
He sat at his desk and keyed off the videonovel he had been reading. He checked some online tech documentation, first. Then, he began typing to activate a rarely used program which had a disguise-name. When he had finished, he looked at his work for a while with some satisfaction. He blanked the screen and returned to the console.
But after he dozed off again and hit his head on a console switch handle, he quit for the day. He knew he had to get some rest or he wouldn’t be able to function at all.
Dire Emergency
The air screamed as it rushed through the ragged hole.
Cliff frantically tore off his T-shirt and stuffed it into the small opening in the hull. The whistling stopped, but he was only able to slow the leak of his precious air into the vacuum of space. He could hear it being pulled through his wadded shirt.
He looked around for the nearest emergency-patch storage box. It was down there where the tunnel curved to the left.
He ran to it and yanked at the access door. It wouldn’t budge. He strained and pulled with both hands. As he did so, another alarm sounded. There was another pressure drop, somewhere. He raced for the computer terminal at the next intersection.
After a run that almost dropped him to the deck with exhaustion, he arrived at the intersection. The terminal wasn’t there!
What the heck!…
As he stood there in complete frustration, his problems ceased.
He awoke, sweating, in his bunk.
He knew it had been a dream, but he sat up and checked the panel beside his bunk, anyway. Everything was normal. He felt like a fool, or worse. Now, he was imagining trouble — creating it in his mind. He lay back on the bunk with his hands clasped behind his head.
What’s happening to me?… Am I losing it, now, after all?
No! I didn’t imagine those alarms! They happened. Why, he didn’t know. But they actually occurred. His mind just used recent events in making up a dream to keep him asleep. He’d experienced such terminal dreams before, and he remembered what they’d taught him in the Custodian training school about the function of dreams: they were his body’s way of trying to keep him asleep by diverting his mind from irritating stimuli like an uncomfortable sleep-position or a distended bladder…. It was nothing to worry about.
But what’ll I do if the real problems continue?… How long can I keep myself from disabling the alarms to give myself some peace and quiet?
He was terribly alone, here. He couldn’t send for help while things were so uncertain, like this. He might lose everything he’d volunteered for, and they might even reassign him to a “facility” for “observation.”
He tried to fall asleep again…. He couldn’t take a pill. They were against the rules, and they hadn’t given him any. Stable, resourceful personnel don’t need sleeping pills.
He finally fell asleep. He awoke, restless and on-edge, to face the next work-period — and its problems.
Quiet Alarm
Cliff sat, irritably, at his desk. He was too keyed-up inside to read anything or play a videogame. Despite his condition, he had to stay alert during the work-period. It was his duty to do so.
He shifted in his chair. He put his feet up on the desk, and clasped his hands behind his head in a posture of relaxation he knew was not genuine. Now was the time for something to happen.
When nothing did, he got up and went over to the console. He was about to check all the readouts when the red word, “FIRE,” began blinking at him.
He checked the fire alarm panel. The location-indicators showed no detected fires.
What the hell’s going on?! There should be some indication of where the fire is. And why isn’t the bell ringing…. If I hadn’t been at the console, I might’ve missed the alarm.
He straightened up…. He could smell something burning — a vague, smoky odor which gave him no clue about its source.
He typed at the keyboard to start the ambient temperature readout cycle. The display showed no higher-than-normal temperature for any telemetered area in the station.
He held onto his flashlight as he ran from Control through the open door. When he reached the first tube intersection, he stopped and sniffed the air like a dog. He couldn’t tell which branch led to the fire…. He continued down the main corridor.
At each intersection, he had the same lack of success in pinpointing the source of the odor. It never seemed to get stronger. In a panic now, he raced through the tubes, frantically trying to locate the fire.
Finally, Cliff dragged himself back to Control Central, and checked the readouts. He was ready to drop, and had to hold himself over the console with both hands. There was nothing to indicate the source of the fire — or even if there had been a fire. The red “FIRE” light was dark, now.
He sniffed. “Dammit! I can’t even smell it, now!” His voice cracked with disuse. Cliff had never been one to talk to himself, even out here in Nowhere, and rarely cursed in the usual Service way.
He returned to his desk and tried to relax, but his mind churned in search of a simple explanation for his problems. There didn’t seem to be any — any that he could face, squarely…. Every logical path led to himself. He was the greatest variable here on Outer Array 74.
Part 2
Orders
The Ultrad message-receiver chirped.
Cliff looked up from the desk where he rested his head on his arms, trying to stay awake. The printer was unrolling a sheet of paper. Low-priority green words from Base appeared on his console monitor and were scrolling down the screen.
Wearily, he arose and moved over to the screen. As his half-lidded eyes scanned the lines, his mind rebelled at the inappropriateness of the message…. It was a long order for special maintenance on one of the subarrays. He watched, exhausted, until the end-of-message line was displayed.
He mustered enough strength to rip the paper from the serrated slot, ball it up, and throw it against a bulkhead.
“I’ve performed enough `special maintenance’ lately,” he croaked.
He had one more thing to do before he surrendered the day. He typed in a command at the console keyboard and, with a smile, noted the display on the monitor screen. Then, he cleared the screen and walked slowly toward his quarters. When he got there, he disabled the alarms on the bunkside panel and collapsed into his bunk…. He was soon fast asleep.
Assisted Decision
“Cliffy?… Son?…”
He opened his eyes and blinked. His mother was standing at the foot of his bunk. He stared at her, uncomprehendingly.
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” she said in that maternal way he recalled so well. “It’s time to get busy.”
Of course, in the logical part of his mind, Cliff knew his mother couldn’t be here at Outer Array 74. But oddly, he found it easy to accept her “presence.” He felt no compulsion to accuse her of being false, even though her image somehow wasn’t quite right. He felt relaxed and confident for the first time in days.
“What do I have to do, Mom?”
“Now, Cliffy, you know what to do. Haven’t you had enough of this awful place?”
“Yeah, I sure have.”
“Well, then… you have to get it all out of your mind.”
“How do I do that, Mom?”
“Just turn on that thing you have — destructor? — and the nightmare of this place will stop, son. Then, you can come home with me.” She smiled, benevolently. “Morty’s waiting…. He wants to go hunting with you.”
The mention of his old hound, long dead, pleased Cliff.
“I want to go hunting again, Mom — fishing, too.”
“Well, then, I want you to bring back some rainbow trout for supper tomorrow when your father gets back from Beckley.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“Good, Cliffy… You just go along and set your destructor, then come back here. I’ll be back for you later.”
With that promise, she disappeared without a sound.
S/1c Harman arose and splashed his face with cold water. Although he was still logy, he knew just what he had to do.
When he arrived at Control Central, he picked up his toolkit and left the compartment without checking the console.
He strolled down the corridor toward the Destructor Chamber. He continued past the red door and down to the end of the tube, where he found himself facing a door he had entered only twice — once during his initial orientation, and more recently, when he had taken the visiting supply tech on a tour of the station…. It was the Lifeboat Access Compartment.
He entered the chamber and walked over to the lifeboat. He opened its hatch and squeezed in. He moved up to the pilot’s control panel and opened the access door, below. He pulled up his toolkit and set to work on the circuit boards. He even whistled while he worked. It was a child’s melody he knew from his early days at home in the green mountains of West Virginia, on Old Earth.
Blue-white flashes illuminated the lifeboat’s cockpit — and through the viewshield, the Lifeboat Compartment — as Cliff used his electrocutter. Thin smoke curled from the hatch, and was pulled into the ventilator grilles of the room.
His modifications completed, Cliff crawled out the hatch and closed it behind him. Then, he left the room and walked back down the corridor to the Destructor Chamber.
He keyed open the door and entered the small room. He pulled open the door below the control panel and began to work on the circuits, whistling — over and over — the tune he had begun in the lifeboat. Finally, he backed out of the cabinet, closed the door, and stood at the actuator.
He keyed in his personal code, then the lengthy — but memorable — sentence which would allow him to start the destructor sequence. At the confirmatory beep, he pulled up the hinged cover in the center of the panel and brought his fist down on the large, rounded red button marked “DESTRUCT ENABLE.”
He returned to his quarters, whistling as he walked amid the clangor and flashing of the destructor alarm…. He knew, with satisfaction, that it would be the next-to-last alarm he would have to listen to.
He keyed a command into the bunkside monitor panel. Then, he lay back on the bunk and put his arms across his chest like a mortuary corpse.
“I’m ready to go home, Mom,” he said to the empty room.
There was no reply.
Revelation
Despite the loud destructor alarm, Cliff had almost fallen asleep, when the monitor panel began beeping a new note.
Wearily, he sat up to verify what he knew it was telling him. He turned off the panel alarm and sat quietly until he felt a tremor through his feet on the deck. Then he arose and walked, whistling a new melody, to Control Central. There, he turned off the destructor alarm with a coded command. The resulting silence felt so, so good.
He knew it would last for a long time.
At the commpanel, he keyed the station-to-spacecraft radio channel.
“Lifeboat, this is Array Control calling…. Please reply.” He heard only the slight hiss of the VHF-AM radio receiver.
“I know you’re there — `Mom.’ By now, you’re having trouble controlling the lifeboat…. Right?”
There was no reply.
“I took a chance that you couldn’t tell exactly what I was doing. I modified your controls…. Don’t bother to check. I guarantee you’ll never fix them, `Mom.'”
He guessed “Mom” was deciding whether or not to reply. After more silence, “she” decided. The voice was high-pitched and accented in an alien way Cliff couldn’t place.
“I wondered what you were doing, Custodian. I’ve always been better at telemitting than teleceiving…. I suppose you `modified’ the station’s destructor, also?”
“Of course. After I arranged for *your* good-riddance, there was no need for me to die, `Mom.’ This place doesn’t seem so `awful,’ now. I guess I’ll hang around…. Give my regards to Dad and Morty.”
There was a pause, as if the alien were formulating a clever reply to Cliff’s sarcasm.
“When did you realize what I was doing?”
“For certain?… When a special security program told me someone was accessing the computer from outside Control Central.”
“So, you played along with my little fantasies. I admit you had me fooled.”
“You were impatient. You should have run me down some more. Then, maybe, I would have believed it all. I guess you were in a hurry to get the gold the Varmits’re paying you for this job…. Just for the record, what kind of alien are you? They’ll want to know, back at Base.”
“Me?… You’re the `alien,’ here, Specialist…. I did leave you a bag of something you can analyze, though.” He managed a guffaw, in his piping voice. Cliff almost laughed, with him. “But I’ll take the rest of my secrets with me as I go… where?”
“Into a sector of ours where your corpse may be found someday — if it doesn’t fall into a star, first. But I do know that the Varmint ship that’ll be looking for you won’t have much luck — unless its long-range sensors are better than I think they are.”
“If you knew, why didn’t you just capture me and hold me for interrogation? I’m unarmed…. Was it because I’m an `alien’? Are you that prejudiced?… Or, was it because I played with your cherished little memories?…” The alien’s voice was sinking into the hiss of the short-range radio channel.
Cliff thought for a moment, then replied.
“It’s because I want to be alone.” *
Story copyright ©1997-98 by Frederick Rustam
Illustrations copyright ©1997-98 by Romeo Esparrago
