NUCLEAR FUSION by
James S. Dorr
The laser pinged, burned a streak into the corner above my left shoulder. I hit the pavement.
It pinged again. Lower. I scrambled backward. Once behind cover I checked the solvent tank on my back, then glanced toward the damage the laser had done. Wall damage only.
That'd mean work for Joran's robots -- the wall repair techs. Mine kept the station's walkways clean and, given the dirt that accumulates at a free transfer port, they had quite enough to take up their time without laser stains too. In fact, I'd been heading out to the rim to check the next shift, to make sure their own cleaning tanks were full, when the shots had burned past me.
A third ping, and this shot did streak the walkway. I had been going to back around farther to the next corner -- take an alternate radial out -- but making sure the streets were kept clean was my personal duty. One of the few laws we had on a station where alien races, often with wildly conflicting cultures, were forced to coexist dewlap to jowl, was that things had to be kept clean and working. The way I saw it, shooting the pavement violated that law.
I was unarmed myself -- by courtesy I should not have been a target either -- but I did have my tank and hose and my own emergency cleaning nozzles. I selected a needle-beam spray, twisted it on, and jumped out, makeshift weapon fuming.
My attacker, his features masked by humanoid armor, had just jumped out too. Spray hit the hot casing of his weapon and burst into steam.
The hand-laser dropped, along with two fingers. I pushed the call button on my belt to get a scooper 'bot on the scene pronto, then charged my assailant. A fist to the jaw turned his face to jelly.
Literal jelly.
I caught my assailant's drooping form and carried it to an organic park strip where any spills would be self-absorbed. He was coming to -- the chitin-like substance I'd thought was armor was already starting to regain its stiffness. I propped him into a sitting position and, still not having a proper weapon, waved my cleaning hose at his chest.
"No shoot again, comrade," the creature said. "I just honest amoeboid freelancer, wearing cytoplasm membrane in humanoid form to get along better. I working for captain of big space vessel, hoping to earn passage back to home planet."
I sympathized with him -- with her, it, whatever it is you call amoeboids. I had had a home planet once, but the station was home now.
More precisely, Rim Sector Fifteen was the only place I could really call home and, regardless of the amoeboid's bad aim, it was where I expected I'd end my days. I sympathized with him, but only a little.
"You shot at me, buster," I replied. "You broke the law when you messed up the station. How is that honest?"
"Honest job, comrade. Have chit for insurance to cover cleanup. All in order. You name Andrew Seldon?"
I nodded. "Yes."
"Please stop point dangerous gun thing at me. You go out with lady, name Martha Edwards, for fancy dinner yesterday night?"
"A sales representative, yes. She works for a cleaning materials company on Garrison Blue. She'd been showing me samples -- in fact, the solvent I have in my tank now is a new product she wanted me to use on a trial basis. . . ."
Then it hit me.
"Dulcie?" I asked.
"Lady name Dulcie sign contract, yes. Tell my ship captain she want you shot up because you go out with other female. She use different word though, comrade. You want see papers?"
I shook my head.
Dulcie, I thought, the forever jealous. I'd told her before I'd gone out with Ms. Edwards that it would be strictly a business dinner, but Dulcie was also forever forgetful. Dulcie loved me, but -- more than just love -- she burned with a fire of obsessive suspicion. She loved me, yes, but this wasn't the first time she'd tried to kill me.
The hell of it was. . . .
"Where is Dulcie?" I asked the amoeboid.
"You want make contract for revenge? Ha-ha! That funny. Joke on Dulcie lady, however. I honest spacefarer, tell you no have to pay me for that. Matter already taken care of."
The hell of it was that I loved her too.
"Where is Dulcie?" I thrust the tank nozzle into its holster, grabbed the amoeboid's shoulders with both hands. "If any harm has come to her. . . ."
"She no harm. No have to hurt me -- I truth-telling spacefarer. She only kidnap. Captain of humble amoeboid think maybe, since she can afford expensive contract, she have more money that others give over to get her back. In fact, had hoped maybe, if only wound you instead of kill, you might have idea of who make best offer."
I'd had one idea. I told the amoeboid we'd make a sling to put my right arm in -- pretend I was wounded. I thought I'd retrieve his laser gun, just in case, and use the sling to conceal it as well, but when I went back to where it had fallen I found that the scooper had beaten me to it. Nevertheless, assuming his fellows' hideout was nearby, I'd gone ahead and ordered him to lead me to it, then fade into the plasticwork fast as soon as we got there.
What I hadn't counted on was that the place they held Dulcie was not nearby. It wasn't even near the rim.
It wasn't exactly helpful either that my guide was ignorant of the station's layout. After we'd threaded our way through various streets and back-radials for more than an hour, I was the one to figure out, from the lowering gravity, that we were heading in toward the hub.
"That what you call it?" he said when I asked him. "Only know what space captain tell me. Just that I supposed to take roundabout, up and down route in case I followed."
"Your space captain -- is his ship docked at the hub? Is that where he's got Dulcie?"
"You good guesser, comrade, but not quite right. Space captain say humans have messy habits, no want on spaceship. We go to building that captain say called 'Rosa's Saloon.' Have room in back. You know this place maybe?"
I shook my head and let him lead on. The truth was, I'd rarely been out of the sector I lived and worked in -- scarcely ever been up to the hub. We humans are neighborhood dependent, in spite of the fact that we've conquered the stars. It doesn't really show until you get to place like a freeport station where, all of a sudden, there's so much strangeness you need a small place you can call your own. It may be a matter of just a few blocks -- with some people it could even be just a single room -- but, unless there's a pressing reason, you don't want to leave it.
Dulcie was pressing reason enough, though. Even if she hired people to kill me, I still loved her.
And she was in danger.
I waved my tank nozzle at the amoeboid -- for whatever reason, he seemed to fear that as much as my fists -- and told him to hurry.
"Understand, comrade. You want we take short cut? Space captain say, if sure I not followed and really in hurry, there alternate way I can. . . ."
"Move it, buster."
I tried to remember what I knew about amoeboids. It wasn't much. They generally reproduced by fission, but only after exchanging genetic matter by fusion, the same as some microscopic amoebas do back on Terra. Also, just like their Terran counterparts, they consisted of single nuclei surrounded by a thick protoplasm, except that the outermost layers of this, which they could change the shape of at will in response to environmental pressures, had to take on a chitin-like extra stiffness in proportion to their masses. Beyond that, amoeboids were known to be honest, at least in terms of the spoken word -- that was what was important now, that this one could be trusted -- although mercenary and sometimes prone to what outside observers might still consider shadowy deals.
They also tended to be literal minded. That, I decided, was why it took my specific urging for him to even remember that he might know a short cut. In any event, we took a steadily uphill path now, and the gravity change was becoming more and more apparent with each new step.
In time, we could almost swim through the air, propelling ourselves upward handhold by handhold. We entered a tunnel, then a broad, cylindrical courtyard. Filling the courtyard was a jungle of signs and arrows. One of the signs said "Rosa's Saloon."
We walked -- floated -- through the hatchway. Heads and pseudopods, mostly the latter, turned at the bar.
"This mostly amoeboid joint," my guide whispered. "That right word, comrade? Feel uncomfortable with form like yours."
I knew what he meant. Most of the patrons -- I wondered if there was ever a real "Rosa" -- were shaped like insects of various sorts, although some looked fishlike. Both were practical forms for low-G. A few went for geometrical shapes. But all were starting to leave their various booths and cradles and drift toward me.
"Maybe I go now, okay, comrade? That what you tell me when we start. That I fade into plastic."
"Not so fast, buster," I whispered back. "Not until you've shown me the back room."
"This way, then, comrade." He helped me shoulder my way through the crowd, then opened a port at the end of the bar.
Inside was Dulcie.
"Andrew?" she said. She rubbed her eyes, as if just waking up from a nightmare, and, as I reached the bare room's center, she pushed off from the corner she'd been huddled in and into my arms.
"I've come to take you home," I answered. I kissed her, hard.
"Oh, Andrew," she said. "You're still alive! I'm so . . . so sorry I tried to kill you. I. . . ."
"It's all right, Dulcie." I kissed her again, then took her hand and turned to lead her out through the main room.
"Not so fast, matey," a new voice hissed. I looked up to see a torpedo-shaped form, with chitinous barracuda-like teeth and a captain's hat, that had swum in behind me.
"It's not all right, Andrew," Dulcie continued. "I'm so forgetful. You told me your dinner with that . . . that woman would only be business. But when my friends said they'd seen you together, well naturally I just. . . ."
I put my arm around Dulcie's waist and backed up slowly as other shapes pushed in behind the torpedo. Insects and sharks, with teeth of their own. "I . . . uh . . . beg your pardon?"
"What I mean, Andrew, is I get so jealous. I think the worst things. I know I shouldn't. I. . . ."
"It is I who beg your pardon, matey. I skipper of crewmen who capture this lady. You come to give ransom?"
"I've come to rescue this lady," I said, beginning to realize that I might have made a mistake rushing in so quickly. Insects and fish were swimming around us, forming a globe we couldn't escape from. Nevertheless, I faced the torpedo. "I demand that you let her go free.I. . . ."
"Ha-ha! Is funny joke, yes? You not give us ransom, matey, you be captive too."
"I really mean, Andrew, it's just that I love you. I love you so uch, it makes me forget about little things . . . you know . . . details like letting a contract on you? In fact . . . I think there's something else I _ought_ to remember. If only those things would stop swimming around us so I could concentrate. . . ."
Little things . . . details. I tried to remember, to concentrate too. Fingers that fell to the pavement when I shot spray at the laser. The tank on my back. The amoeboid's fear.
"Dulcie! Listen. Close your eyes tight."
"I know there's something else I should remember. . . ."
"You pay ransom now?"
The new cleaning solvent I'd agreed to take as a sample. I selected a wide-beam nozzle, clicked it to mist-spray, and twisted it on. I closed my own eyes as it fumed around us.
"What this stuff, matey? I . . .oooh-h-h-h-h-h!"
I heard moans and thrashings. I twisted the spray off and opened my eyes to the sight of captain and the others, their form-protecting membranes dissolving, their protoplasm, unconfined in the near-zero G, spreading out into tendrils.
Their nuclei melding.
I pulled Dulcie with me out past the bar, then sprayed again as other amoeboids clustered around us. "Orgy in the back room!" I yelled as I forced our way through them. I'd have to send the rest of the solvent back to Ms. Edwards, I thought as we broke free into the courtyard. It seemed to be a trifle caustic for station use, at least when amoeboid ships were in hub, but I had some ideas about where she might be able to sell it.
"Andrew, what's happening?" Dulcie had opened her eyes as well now. "I . . . I was trying to remember something -- something important-- but then those creatures. . ."
Wonderful, even if flighty and . . . yes . . . scatterbrained and mistrustful Dulcie, I thought when we got back to Sector Fifteen. She'd known very well what had been going on when the amoeboids' chitin dissolved and their nuclei blended. In fact it had given her an idea about how we could celebrate her rescue. "We'll have dinner first, of course," she'd suggested, her voice rising in its usual way when she wanted to make sure I'd gotten her point. It was good to be home.
Even before we went out to eat, though, I still had to check in with my shift. Fortunately, the robots were semi-automatic and had already gone out to their jobs. I dropped off my solvent tank and nozzles, then topped their refill hopper off with the usual solvent in case any came back with their own tanks empty. Then I kissed Dulcie.
"A moment to change," I said as we walked, hand in hand, up the radial to my apartment. "You wait outside here." I took out my key.
"Andrew?" she said.
"Just a moment." I thrust my key into the door dilator. "I love you, Dulcie."
"I love you, too, Andrew. But I just remembered. Before I talked with those amoeboids about shooting at you, I'd called up someone . . ."
"Uh-huh," I said. I twisted the key.
". . . someone from the bomb squad . . ."
I turned and dived, taking Dulcie with me. We hit the pavement just as the blast went off over our heads.
". . . I am sorry, Andrew. Really, I am. But you know how jealousI get sometimes. . . ."
I kissed her hard as we lay on the pavement. Sometimes I wondered why I still loved Dulcie, but, when she kissed me back, I remembered. We picked ourselves up and, dinner forgotten for the moment, we walked together, arm in arm, through the smoking doorframe.
Afterwards, when we did go out, I noticed that the blast damage had been high -- confined to the walls. I shrugged with relief.
That, at least, would be Joran's crew's problem.
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