She took another drink, only a sip this time.
“Well, he was delighted. Asked me about her. Listened to my stories of her with genuine interest. Expressed a sincere desire to meet her when we returned to Earth.”
Rice looked at her, waiting for more, but there wasn’t anything more. His expression soured.
“Yup,” he deadpanned, “that would sure as hell piss anyone off.”
“So much for the sympathetic ear,” she said.
She should thank him for the drink and plead a headache, ask him to leave, see him in the morning. Instead she took another sip. She waited for him to speak, goad her into another admission, push her for an explanation, scold her for drinking too much. Instead the bastard just floated there on his tether, arms folded, watching her. Waiting. Serene and patient as a great black Buddha.
“Hard as it may be for you to believe,” she said at last, “I do not suffer from a shortage of men willing to play father to Penny. More like a sure fit.”
Rice looked confused. “Did you say sure fit?”
“Surfeit,” she corrected herself, enunciating the word carefully. Perhaps she had better slow down on the whiskey. “It means an overabundance.”
“Uh-huh. ’Bout how many make up a surfeit where you come from?”
“One. Well, Bitka made two, but one was more than sufficient.” Then the next sentence came out as a whisper, although she had not meant it to. “Back to one now, it seems.”
And then there were tears, but she closed her eyes to cut them off, tightened her jaw and compressed her lips. She would not do that! No drunken, blubbering confessions. What was done was done and tears changed nothing. She sat motionless, eyes closed, and inside herself she stared down the weak, silly girl whom she no longer was—had never been, really, except in her occasional self-indulgent daydreams.
Once she was sure her voice was under control she told Rice the story: the fling with a married man, the unexpected pregnancy because she had believed him when he said he was infertile, the aftermath when that he insisted he be allowed to raise the child, give it all the “advantages” his wealth and position offered. His childless wife would raise no objection—she was very civilized. Everyone was very civilized.
“Never took you to be exactly poor,” Rice said. “What kind of wealth and position we talking about here?”
“Henry Godolphin Pelham, son and heir of the fifteenth earl of Chichester. Very old name, very old title. The wealth is considerable, but much newer than the name and title, rendered acceptable to all concerned only by his pedigree.”
“Kinda like money laundering, huh?” he said, and Cassandra laughed, delighted with the image it conjured up—Henry the money launderer! She had not laughed for what seemed a very long time, but it had only been a little over five months.
“So, your daughter with him now?”
“No. She is with my mother while I am away.”
“He gave up, huh?”
She laughed again, but this time without any trace of humor.
“Henry is not the sort to give up. I have been fighting him for seven years. I won in the courts, three times. I am certain there will be a fourth challenge, now that I am away from Penny, especially as my assignment here was anything but coincidental. Henry belongs to The Rag in London, as does the Chief of Defense Intelligence, my superior.”
“The Rag?”
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “Army and Navy Club. I cannot of course prove that my transfer out here was arranged over whiskies there—probably in those overstuffed red leather wingbacks in the Smoking Room, if I know those two. I’m a member as well, you see, so I can hardly claim Henry had unfair access, can I? But there are members, and then there are members.
“As I said, Penny is with my mother, and so she will have to deal with this business. My mother has always been quiet, but for all that, she’s quite strong. She’s not as young as she once was, though, and I won’t be there to help her. I have come to hate Henry for what he is going to put her through. I never used to—hate him, that is.”
Moe nodded and took a sip of rye. “So, you figured Bitka would just complicate things in court, huh?”
She didn’t answer him, but the truth was she had not thought that at all. It was her fight, hers and her mother’s and Penny’s, and win or lose they would come through it, one way or another, with or without his help or hindrance. She simply didn’t want his help. She did not want to share this fight with him. She did not want to share Penny with him, or with anyone else. She had fought so hard and for so long not to share her with Henry, it had become part of her makeup not to share her at all—a mental habit.
A stupid, selfish habit, she realized—now that it was too late to matter. But there was even more to it than just that.
“One more question,” Moe said. “Did Sam know all this, ’bout the custody fight and all?”
Cassandra looked away and took another sip of rye.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Well, that was a mighty interesting omission, wasn’t it?”
She felt a vibration at the base of her skull and saw the ID tag for the duty communications rating.
“Commander Atwater-Jones here,” she said.
Ma’am, this is Signaler First Kramer. I have an incoming clear text for you from COMKTOKBASE. Captain Goldjune is copied as well.
Kramer’s voice seemed strained, hoarse, almost as if she had been crying.
“Very well, Kramer. Go ahead.”
Ma’am, the text reads: USS Cam Ranh Bay exited jump space vicinity Mogo, 1621 hours this date. Surviving crew and passengers well but will be under observation quarantine for immediate future.
Kramer paused and Cassandra felt suddenly flushed and lightheaded. She heard her blood pounding in her ears. She let go her drink bulb and covered her face with her hands, not wanting Rice or anyone to see her expression in this moment—a range of emotions she had no words for, no understanding of, but which filled her and overwhelmed her.
Kramer’s voice trembled when she resumed speaking.
Captain Bitka did not make it back.
Signed, J. Goldjune, Rear Admiral.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Two months earlier, aboard USS Cam Ranh Bay, running dark, outbound to Destie-Seven
7 June 2134 (one hundred eleven days after Incident Seventeen)
Sam saw Choice enter the conference room, the last to arrive. There were still several empty chairs around the conference table and the steward had laid out her lunch order beside Ka’Deem Brook, but she picked up her tray and moved to a different seat down the table and on the opposite side. That was interesting, Sam thought. Almost as interesting as the fact that Brook did not seem to notice she had even entered the conference room, deliberately unaware.
Sam put down his form and pushed his seafood salad to the side.
“The rest of you please go on eating,” he said. “Thanks again for helping out. We’ve been gathering data on this culture for over two months now, and our prisoner Te’Anna has been extremely helpful. I’m almost beginning to think of her as our guest . . . almost. I imagine several of you sometimes wonder where her sympathies lie. I do myself, but we need to remember that is dangerous thinking. We do not understand the Guardians. We will probably never completely understand them. Te’Anna’s goals, whatever they are, are clearly not aligned with P’Daan’s, but we should never assume that means they are aligned with our own.”
He paused and looked around the table, checking for signs of acceptance or rejection of that assessment, and he saw mostly nods. Dr. Däng frowned in thought, Brook remained studiously opaque, and Lieutenant Ma seemed preoccupied with another problem, but Sam saw no sign of actual disagreement from the group. Ma had emerged from his interview with Te’Anna badly shaken. Sam had watched the recording of the conversation between them concerning the jump drive, but the exchange had been so deeply mathematical in nature that he could not follow any of it, despite having taken a few courses in astrophysic
s.
“Okay,” Sam resumed. “In about thirty-six hours we are going to lock down the spin habitat and begin accelerating away from the bulk carrier we have been shadowing. When we do, the Guardians will see us and the real pursuit will begin. Our plan is to seize the shipyard at the moon we have designated Destie-Seven-Echo, and which we now know the Desties call Haydoos. If there is any place in this system where they know how to repair a jump drive, it will be there. The shipyard is part of the orbital station which corresponds to what we call a highstation. It’s at the synchronous orbit track above the moon’s equator and linked to the surface by an orbital elevator—a needle.
“Our Marines are going to have to fight for the highstation shipyard, and unless we are extraordinarily lucky we’re going to have to fight some long ships sooner or later as well. But we are as prepared for those eventualities as I believe it is possible to be. Further delay at this point reduces our chance of survival rather than increasing it.
“As to your side of the work, I’ve been getting individual reports from you. I thought it would be useful for us to meet and share a summary of findings in your areas of specialty. Mister Haykuz, would you like to start?”
It felt odd to start with the Varoki, Sam thought. Technically he was the senior Cottohazz civilian official on the ship, but Sam had never shown any deference to Haykuz’s predecessor e-Lisyss. That seemed like a different lifetime, so much had happened since. Now Haykuz’s ears spread in a comfortable and relaxed pose, his skin clear, no sign of defensiveness, hostility, or even unease. Yes, all of them had changed in the last two months.
“Thank you,” the Varoki said. “I will be brief. My specialty is diplomacy, at least nominally. I do not consider myself an expert, although I have worked with and observed several highly skilled diplomats. We have had no opportunities for formal negotiations since the destruction of our landing party on Destie-Four, in part because to attempt such would reveal our position. Instead we have been trying to ascertain the nature of the society and individuals with which we may be able to negotiate in the near future. Dr. Johnstone, our anthropologist—or perhaps now we should say sentientologist—has provided most of the insights and I will leave it to him to explain.”
Sam hadn’t expected that. He turned to the Maori anthropologist who hardly ever spoke in these meetings. Sam couldn’t remember exchanging more than a dozen words with him, four of which had been, Please pass the pepper.
Johnstone cleared this throat before speaking.
“Well, to begin, there are two distinct cultures. You have to distinguish between the culture of the New People—or Desties, as we used to call them—and that of the Guardians themselves. The New People, despite their technologically advanced state, live in a society which is a cross between a theocracy and a slave plantation. The authority and legitimacy of society is based on theological foundations, but the society is organized not for the benefit of a priestly class, but rather for the deities themselves—the Guardians—whose presence, unlike that of other deities, is manifest.”
“And the slavery part?” Sam asked.
“The Guardians own the New People, both individually and collectively, by right of creation. P’Daan and M’Eetos are the nominal supreme deities, but all of the locally known Guardians, including Te’Anna, have a place in the New People pantheon.”
“And they all just accept that?” Lieutenant Alexander asked, skepticism heavy in his voice.
“Every society has its atheists,” Johnstone replied, “its sceptics, its nonconformists, and I imagine it is the same here. In general, though, they accept it. A fairly small part of their productive labor is required to meet the desires of their gods, so their standard of living is high and, more importantly, fairly evenly distributed. Most New People have little interaction with the Guardians. In that respect, at least, it is similar to most religions.”
“The myth of the happy slave,” Choice said, and Sam could hear the disgust her voice.
Johnstone’s forehead wrinkled in consideration of that, or at least so Sam thought. It was hard to tell through his mask of Maori tattoos.
“That I could not say,” he answered, “but they are not rebellious slaves for the most part. I would say the average New Person has as much control over their day-to-day life as the average citizen of the Cottohazz.”
“You said there is a different culture for the Guardians,” Sam said. “How so? Sounds as if they’re pretty much on top. Aren’t the slave owners an integral part of a slave culture?”
“Within this star system, yes. What I call Guardian culture is the metaculture of the Guardian realms. It is the mechanism of interstellar interaction, and it is what we would call a classic gift culture.”
“A gift culture?” Sam said.
“Yes, a nonmarket-based exchange system, where gifts are given without expectation of material reciprocity.”
“Altruism?” Lieutenant Alexander asked, sounding even more skeptical than before. “And you’re telling us that actually works?”
“In most cultures,” Johnstone answered calmly, “material reciprocity can be replaced with a change in status. If one being gives something of value to another, the other takes it either with the expectation of repaying it or with the tacit acceptance of the higher status of the donor. This is as true when giving alms to a beggar as it is in a feudal society when a monarch gives a fief to a subordinate noble. There are many other details of gift cultures, but that is the central logic: giving and accepting gifts changes the status of both participants. The main departure in this case is that between Guardians this gifting, as an assertion of authority and status, replaces a market economy.”
“You mean the Desties don’t have a market-based economy?” Lieutenant Ma asked.
“That’s a different culture,” Johnstone said quickly. “Weren’t you listening? To a limited extent the New People have a market economy, as a mechanism for allocating resources. But the interactions between the Destination system and other star systems flow exclusively through their Guardian rulers. The cultural organization of the Guardian realms would be very familiar to a native of the pre-Columbian Mississippian cultures of North America, or of Homeric Greece.”
“Huh,” Sam, beginning to believe it but not sure what to make of it. “What does it tell us about our current situation?”
“It tells us the limitations under which P’Daan works,” Johnstone answered. “He has brought with him a force of eight warships, and we have no evidence the Destination system has ever produced vessels such as those. They must be gifts from one or more other Guardians, the ones our prisoner calls Hobbyists. If what Te’Anna has told me is true, P’Daan cannot accept more than this without lowering his status, incurring an obligation of obedience and loyalty to other Guardians beyond what he may be willing to undertake. The Guardians may have a thousand ships in the near stellar neighborhood, but P’Daan may be either unable due to station, or unwilling due to pride, to call on them. The cost to him may be too high.”
A thousand ships? Sam hoped he was wrong about that, or else right about everything else.
“Thank you, Mister Johnstone,” he said. “There’s a lot to think about there. It certainly fits with everything we’ve seen so far. Dr. Däng, would you like to go next?”
Dr. Däng gave her report, although there was little new in it. She was cataloguing and decoding additional genetic material, but it served to confirm what they already knew. She did confirm Te’Anna’s claim concerning the volume of her erectile tissue, which caused a few smiles and exchanged glances.
Lieutenant Bohannon gave the report on linguistics. Councilor Abanna Zaquaan, an infant in its arms, sat silently beside her. Again, nothing particularly new in the report, simply further refinements of their autotrans programs. There was one interesting observation at the end.
“As we learn more about the Guardian language,” Bohannon said, “and monitor some poorly masked ship-to-ship chatter, it becomes clear the language we call
Destie is not just the lingua franca of Guardian space. It is apparently the only language spoken. It may be the only language any of these species have ever spoken. We’re not sure that has any tactical significance, but it backs up Dr. Johnstone’s thinking.”
Sam turned to Choice.
“Ms. Choice, I don’t know that we’ve uncovered much new concerning their data analysis systems but—”
“Oh, quite a lot, actually,” she said. “Not technical details, but an interesting overview picture. We noticed from the start that the pattern of commercial astrogation in the Destination system suggests a level of computational technology roughly comparable to ours. However, after talking to Dr. Däng about their work in genetic engineering, it became clear they must have access to far more powerful computational assets.”
“What makes you say that?” Alexander asked, challenge clear in his voice. Sam saw that Choice suppressed a frown of impatience.
“The fairly short time they have been here in this system,” she answered, “and the massive genetic re-engineering it would have taken to raise the New People in that brief period, both suggest that. Also, the apparent speed and ease with which they genetically modified the rebel New People Te’Anna spoke of also suggests the ability to rapidly synthesize and implant billions of strands of genetic material with very specific design functions. We could not do that with our computing ability, and as you observed earlier, our ability is at least equal to the sort of computers moving those bulk carriers around.”
“But if they have better, why not use it?” Dr. Däng asked, which was of course the heart of the issue.
“I believe they have two tiers of technology,” Choice answered. “I’m even more confident of this after hearing Dr. Johnstone’s analysis of their cultural organization. One tier is used by the client races—at least in this one system we can examine—and is good enough for them to carry out their function, which is to provide for the material needs of the Guardians. The other tier is reserved for Guardian use. That appears to include a more advanced form of computing, actual genetic engineering, and star travel.”
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