by Baen Books
Elnessa smiled as several of the younger children lagged behind, mesmerized by the ghostly effect. Reuben cycled back to the end of the group, gently urged the stragglers to keep up, evidently throwing down the claim that he could reach the playground first. Cries of glee provided the soundtrack for the impromptu footrace to a dilapidated jungle-gym.
Nice kids, thought Elnessa. And they almost always were, despite the hell-holes that invariably spat them out. Usually, their parents or parent had died on a Grey World, still indebted to the company store or transit office, and—presto—the kids became the wards of the corporation. Which fed them as grudgingly and clothed them as generically as the parents it had killed—unintentionally, of course. But once wearing a megacorporate yoke that shackled them to the company store, a great many desperate employees discovered that they had to work in increasingly risky and brutal jobs to defray the debts that accumulated faster than the pay.
Elnessa scowled. The corporations were nothing if not ruthlessly efficient, even in the smallest of matters. Here it was, only two days past the collectively observed year-end holidays, and the physical-plant flunkies were already making the rounds, taking down the ornaments that ringed the periphery of the park. Elnessa watched the strings of white and red lights wink out, one after the other, just before they were recoiled into storage spools by the coveralled workers. ’Tis the season to be stingy, she thought. After all, what was the value in prolonging the modest, celebratory mood of the community when the company could burn a few less kilowatt hours? And all for the sake of something as intangible as joy? Bah, humbug.
She emerged from her bitter reverie, discovered that she was still watching the kids, unconsciously drinking in their innocence like an antitoxin. A moment later, Reuben drifted away from his charges, began approaching her obliquely.
She spared a quick glance at the younger man as he strolled across the spongy kitturf, then she looked back to watch the kids playing. One of them standing at the edge of the playground looked to be the oldest, but he certainly wasn’t the biggest. He was a little short for his age, thin, standing quite still, milk-chocolate skin, dark brown eyes, and very straight black hair.
“El,” Reuben said.
She looked up, almost surprised: he had not meandered toward her as he should have. “Hi, Reuben. Have a seat.”
“Okay. Jus’ for a second, though.” He flopped down on the ground. A slightly musky smell—the one given off by quickly compressed kitturf—rose up around them. “So what’s up, Mata Hari?”
Elnessa snorted, stared down at herself. “Oh yes, I’m one spry, sultry sex-pot; that’s me.”
Reuben—a good kid, but very new at coordinating the activities of Kitts’ illegal (hence, underground) union—seemed uncertain how to respond. “El . . . Elnessa, you’re really not . . . not so—”
“Christ, Reuben, I’m not fishing for a compliment, okay? Thanks to this damned xenovirus, my leg is almost shot, my muscle tone is going, and I stand zero percent chance of becoming a tantric mistress of the Kama Sutra. I know all that. And I know you didn’t mean to get yourself into this conversational mess, so let me help you escape it: I, your inside agent—‘Mata Handicapped’—heard some nasty chatter today between the big cheeses. Concerning your new PDPs.”
Reuben first looked relieved and thankful when Elnessa put aside the unfortunate reference to Mata Hari, but frowned as she concluded. “So tell me the news.”
Elnessa did.
Reuben blew out his cheeks, stared at the patchwork façade of the stacked modular uniroom workers’ quarters. “Damn,” he said. But he didn’t seem surprised.
Elnessa narrowed her eyes. “Give,” she said.
“Give what?”
“Come on, Reuben, you’re going to have to feign innocent ignorance a lot more convincingly than that if you don’t want the suits sniffing you out and introducing you to a sparring partner while you’re strapped into a chair.”
Reuben turned very white. “I’ll work on the act, okay?”
“Don’t do it to please me, Reuben. Do it to save yourself. Now, what have you heard?”
Reuben frowned. “Well, it’s not what we heard; it’s who was talking. And how much.”
“What do you mean?”
“Coded government traffic spiked big time today. Bigger than during inter-Bloc naval exercises.”
“What? You monitor military channels?”
Reuben looked sidelong at her. “You think the Megas are above calling in troops to keep us working?”
“Their private security forces, no. But not the Blocs’. That’s your old-school-union dinosaurs talking, Reuben. Nations and corporations have been at each others’ jugulars for almost twenty years now, with the nations supporting the unions ninety percent of the time.”
“Yeah, well, the industrial megacorporations haven’t become hostile toward the nations.” He leaned his index finger across his middle finger. “The Industrials and nations are like that. More than ever.”
Elnessa shrugged. “Sure. I can’t argue that. But when was the last time the Industrials made a move that even looked like a prelude to strike-breaking?”
“Well, in China—”
“Don’t get cute, Reuben. We’re not talking about Beijing’s ‘companies,’ here. They’re not genuine corporate entities anymore than their army is. They just get their orders from different people. Sometimes. But in the other Blocs—”
“Okay, okay, I get your point. But regardless of that, it’s still SOP for our membership on the other moons, like Tigua, to monitor all spaceside commo, even the coded stuff. Increased activity is positively correlated with impending operations, whatever those operations might happen to be.”
“Makes sense. So what’s the best guess about the cause of the chatter? War?”
“Maybe, but the command staffs of all the Blocs seem agitated.”
“Well, they would be if they were on the brink of war.”
“Yeah, but they’d be agitated at each other. Instead, the various Bloc naval commands were burning up the lascom beams communicating with each other. If anything, the different militaries seem to be cooperating more, not less.”
“So what’s your hypothesis?”
“Well, the only thing that would worry all the Blocs and push them together would be something from—well, from outside their respective command structures.”
Elnessa stared at him. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning—maybe—that unidentified ship Simovic was talking about is not part of anyone’s navy.”
“So whose do you think it is?”
“Look, El, we just don’t have any guesses about that. Maybe some military ship mutinied. Maybe the megacorporations have built their own warship, are throwing their weight around.”
“Then why does Simovic think he can sell orphans to—?”
“Okay, so maybe it’s a ship the megas have slipped into the hands of some of the local raiders you hear rumors about. They might have an interest in kids without records.”
Elnessa nodded; that seemed reasonable—and gruesome—enough. But even so—
“El,” Reuben said after a moment, “have you changed your mind yet?”
“About what?”
“C’mon El, don’t make this harder than it is. Will you take a—a package inside corporate headquarters?”
Elnessa shrugged, looked away. She heard Reuben lay something down on the kitturf beside her.
“What is that?” she asked, not needing to look.
“You don’t need to know, El. Any more than you already do. That way you’re not implicated if you’re caught.”
She turned back to look at him, ignoring the plain brown paper package on the ground between them. “Hell, you’re not very good at this are you, Reuben? If anything in that package is selected for inspection when I go in, then I’ve got to have a plausible explanation ready, don’t I? So I’m going to need to know what each object is so I know how best to hide it, or how to exp
lain it away if they take special notice of it. Right?”
Now it was Reuben’s turn to look away. “Yeah, I guess so. I just don’t want you to get—”
“Reuben, don’t you stare away when the topics get tough: that’s the most important time to stay eye-to-eye. Yes, I’ve been reluctant about doing anything more than listening and reporting. Which, admittedly, has worked out just the way you and your advisors back on Tigua thought. Since the suits have decided I’m nothing more than an unassuming, crippled artist-lady, I’m an operational non-entity to them, well beneath the notice of their security elements. So it’s been easy enough to be your ears inside the lion’s den. But now, with them talking about the kids that way—well, I’ll take the next step. I guess I have to. But I don’t know anything about—”
“El, we only want you to bring the materials inside. You can leave it anyplace you want. Just tell us where you’ve left it when you come out. We’ll take care of everything else.”
Elnessa felt relief at not having to do the real dirty work and in the same instant, felt like both a hypocrite and a coward. Damnit, if I’m in on this plan, then why shouldn’t I take risks equal to—?
“El, there’s something else.”
Reuben’s tone had changed, seemed to have become even younger, and more uncertain, somehow. She looked back up at him.
“Please, El: don’t stare at the kids. Not so much, or so long. It makes them—well, uncomfortable.”
El looked away, felt her chest tighten, forced that to stop—because if she didn’t, she feared she might cry. “I can’t help it, Reuben. They should have been mine.”
“I know. But the youngest is five and . . . well, you scare them.”
She wanted to ask: scare them? Why? But she knew: of course she scared them. Her face was framed by the strange and shocking streaks of silver-grey hair that the first set of transient ischemic attacks had left behind. Since then, she had started hobbling along unevenly with the aid of a cane. There was an ever-changing array of intermittent facial and body tics. And of course, there was her riveted attention upon them whenever they came into view, yearning after what she had lost, and now could never have again. She lowered her head. “I’ll stay away.”
Reuben almost whined his objection. “Look, you don’t have to stay away.”
“Yes. I do. If I’m there, I’ll slip into fixating on them. Never had kids of my own, you know.” It had been an utterly meaningless addition: of course Reuben knew that.
And the tone of his response indicated that he understood the statement for what it was: an unintentional plea for sympathy and understanding. “Yes, El—I know.” The silence that followed was not at all comfortable. “So, um. . . so maybe I should start explaining what’s in the package?”
“Might as well,” Elnessa said, looking up. And what she saw made her smile.
Reuben followed her steady gaze over his shoulder. The little boy with quiet eyes and shiny black hair was only two meters behind him. Waiting.
“Hi,” Reuben said with a quick smile.
“Hi,” the boy answered without looking at Reuben.
He started to rise: “Waiting for me? I’ll be there in a—”
“No, I’m waiting for her.”
“Her?”
Elnessa felt a hot pulse of annoyance: You don’t need to sound surprised that someone might actually want to talk to me, Reuben.
Who asked the child, “Why her?”
Oh, you’re just flattering me no end, now, Mr. Empathy.
Elnessa could see the boy laboring—mightily—to keep his face blank. Why? To conceal his dismay, possibly disgust, at Reuben’s thoughtlessly rude inquiry? “I’d like to talk to her. If you don’t mind.”
“Well, she and I—”
Elnessa interrupted. “We can finish this later, Reuben. Come by about seven, okay?”
“Uh, yeah . . . seven o’clock. In private is better, anyway—for what we have to discuss, I mean.”
Elnessa nodded tightly, amazed that Reuben’s idiot, injudicious utterances had not already undone him and the rest of the unofficial union.
The boy with the big, watching eyes moved into the space Reuben vacated. “Hi,” he said again.
“Hi,” Elnessa replied. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Vas.”
“‘Vas?’”
He smiled a little. “It’s short for Srinivasan. But most people can’t say that too well. Anyhow, I like Vas better. What’s your name?”
“I’m El.”
He cocked his head. “Just ‘El?’”
“Well, my real name is ‘Elnessa,’ but people have a hard time remembering that, too. They keep calling me Elaine or Ellen or Elise . . . or Bob.”
Vas stared, then laughed. “You’re funny.”
“I’m glad you think so, Vas. And I’m very glad to meet you.”
“I’m glad to meet you, too. I’ve been wondering: what do you do? I mean, for a living?”
“Well, I started out as an artist, but that was back before I came to settle in the Indis.”
“‘But aren’t you still an artist? At least some of the time?”
Elnessa started. “Why do you ask?”
Vas looked down at her hands and pointed. “They’re stained a lot, almost every time I see you. Or they’re caked with dirt or clay, I can’t tell which. And you look at things very carefully, for a long time. Like you’re measuring them—or feeling them—with your eyes.”
Clever boy: he sees far more than he mentions. He could teach Reuben a thing or two. Elnessa smiled. “You look at things a long time, too. I’ve noticed.”
“Yeah, but that’s just because I’m really careful. I have to be.” Before Elnessa could ask him why he needed to be careful, Vas had pressed on: “What kind of artist are you?”
“I used to create all sorts of art. I still did some pieces on the side when I first arrived on Kitts. Old style paintings, 3-D compgens, I even dabbled a little in holos.”
“What happened?”
She shrugged and looked down at her body. “A xenovirus.”
“You mean a disease that was already here?”
“Well, sort of. Not really a disease. It’s just that . . . well, most of the life on this planet—er, ‘moon’—just ignores life from Earth because it’s too dissimilar. Even though the life here is built from the same basic stuff—”
Vas nodded. “Carbon. Water.”
“—yes.” Damn, he’s sharp. “But sometimes, the local microbes go after our cells, anyway. Or sometimes, the weaker unicellar organisms from Kitts decide to use our bodies as hiding places from the stronger ones that eat them. It’s bad enough when those hiding microorganisms build up in our system, but sometimes, while doing so, they block or consume the few parts of us that they can use. And that’s not good for us.”
Vas nodded solemnly. “Your xenovirus blocks parts of your nervous system, doesn’t it?”
He is very, very sharp indeed. “How did you know that?”
Vas shrugged. “Because you don’t act sick so much as—well, just not able to control yourself as well as other people. And if the microbes were really, uh, consuming, your nerves, I just kind of guessed that you wouldn’t still . . . well, still be alive.”
And how right all your guesses are, my bright little Srinivasan. Despite the concise recitation of her medical woes, Elnessa only felt joy when she was looking into the warm brown eyes of this child. “You know, Vas, I’ll bet you could be a doctor someday.”
He shrugged, looked away, then back at her. “Will we get it too?” Seeing her momentary incomprehension, Vas added, “The disease, I mean.”
She had been slow to understand his question because she assumed that everyone—even kids—were informed upon arrival that, thanks to the new preplanetfall vaccinations and six-month boosters, there hadn’t been any infections since the first wave of settlers. “No,” she said with a firm shake of her head. “You’re safe. It only got the first colonists w
ho settled here. And only some of us.”
“Why did it only get some of you? And how did they cure it?”
Elnessa took care to compose herself before she answered. “Well, you see, Vas, when the Indi Group got permission to settle Kitts, they started with a really diverse group of people. At first, it just seemed that they were taking whoever was willing to come here, probably because they couldn’t be picky. But it turned out that the mix of colonists was actually carefully selected, and was made up of an equal number of persons from every major human genotype. When we asked why they had done that, the company explained that they wanted to create a truly ‘blended’ colony. We still thought they were just trying to make up a nice-sounding story to cover up the fact that they were willing to sign on anyone who was willing to travel here. Of course, they were building a carefully mixed community but not because they were trying to create social diversity.” She watched to see if Vas had understood all the terms she had used. His brows remained unfurrowed, signifying easy and complete comprehension.
Elnessa went on. “In fact, Vas, we were guinea pigs, and they had to have a reasonable sample size of every strain and subspecies of us guinea pigs.”
Now a frown bent Vas’ brow. “I don’t understand.”
Elnessa had her mouth open to explain and then halted: he’s only a kid, El, even if he is a very, very smart one. Kids worry, have nightmares, particularly if you say something that makes them realize that the world is less safe than they think it is. I really don’t have the right—
“Look,” Vas said very matter-of-factly, his eyes still calm but also resolute, “I grew up on Hard Nut, in the Lacaille 8760 system. Life is—hard—there. I lost my Mom, then my Dad, and my Tito Thabo, all in the last few years. So whatever your bosses did, you can tell me. I can take it.”