Playing God

by Sarah Zettel

  The university? Arron straightened up with a bottle of water in one hand and two packs of ration bars in the other. His expression must have looked stunned, because Rath frowned at him.

  “We all got one.” Rath hit a key on the table's edge and froze the graphic. Arron saw it was a video of a group of ty Porath demonstrating one of their massive trawling nets. “They're from various departments of Bioverse. Basically, it says this is our world now and you've been declared useless. Ship offworld or be shipped. You've got two months.”

  “No, I got that one already.” Arron shook his head. Then he thought of something else. “Hey, Cabal, are you planning a trip to t'Theria before the push-out? I could use a lift.” Cabal had a small converted trawler that he used to sail from one port to another, arranging buyers. He could have gotten a plane, he said, but boats inspired fewer random shootings from nervous islanders.

  Cabal raised his brows. “You? Heading for t'Theria? I thought you were strictly a Getesaph native.”

  Arron ignored that last. “I need to meet somebody coming in with the corpers.”

  “My God.” Regina leaned back. “Don't tell me you've got a Human friend?”

  Arron smiled indulgently and popped the cap on the water. “Yeah, actually, I do.” He swigged some water down. “I met her at college…”

  Rath's brow wrinkled in surprise. “You actually went to college? As in left your enclave and lived at a university?”

  Arron smiled crookedly. “Didn't realize I had such a stable psych outlay, did you?”

  Rath shrugged. “I wouldn't trust you in the same building as my sister.”

  Cabal snorted. “So, this friend you made during this grand experience of living at a college instead of getting your degree off the wire like a normal person, is coming in with the corpers. And?” He made a “come-on” gesture with his free hand.

  “And”—Arron mimicked his gesture—“she wants to pick my brains.”

  Cabal whistled. “You are going to consort with the enemy?”

  Arron sighed. “Actually, I'm running an errand for the Dayisen Rual. They want the relocation schedule updated. Somebody didn't think that the Getesaph might be worried about being left on the ground while the t'Theria are up above them.” He shook his head. “But I might talk to her about stuff, yeah. Things might be better if someone in the corp knew how complicated the situation here really is.”

  Regina looked at Rath. “What he means is, maybe he can convince them it's not worm it and they'll turn around and go home.”

  Rath smiled grimly. “Not a chance, Arron. They've been promised new gene combos. Once the corpers get the scent, there's no calling them off.” She blew out a sigh. “And I almost had my dissertation topic sorted out.”

  “Yeah, you've only been saying that for three years,” muttered Regina. Rath glared at her, and Regina patted her hand. “ ’Sokay. We'll find another world to dissect.” Arron had a feeling she was carefully not looking at him.

  Cabal broke the silence. “It wouldn't hurt me to make one more run out there. Meet me here at high tide in two days, and we'll head out, okay?”

  “Okay, thanks.” Arron transferred his ration packs to the hand holding the water bottle and picked up the portable. “Now, if you all will excuse me, I have some personal business to attend to.” He bowed to the assembly and retreated into one of the work alcoves.

  He slid the door shut behind him, cutting off the flow of banter from the main room. The alcove contained a chair, a comm station, a table, and a bunk. He set his portable on the table and jacked it into the comm station.

  Arron slid into the station's chair and dropped his stuff on the table. “Station. This is Arron Hagopian. Identify and open mail.” The one thing he missed out here was being able to follow the live threads. Without a full sat-net to handle the transactions, he had to receive the conversations as mail dumps and upload his responses.

  Arron tore open a pack of bars and munched on one of the crispy oblongs that was supposed to taste like fried rice but didn't. The station beeped and whirred. The outpost account didn't have quite enough for a fully interactive AI, but they were saving for it. We had been saving for it, Arron corrected himself. Now we are arguing about how to divide up the outpost's assets.

  The station blurted out a canned message. “Arron Hagopian identified. Sixty-five conversation holders have new data. One hywrite received. Displaying titles.”

  The screen lit up with amber lines of text. Arron skimmed them. Regarding Exploitation of Dedelph and the Dedelphi. Bioverse Feeding on Sisters’ Fear, that one actually had a Dedelphi author from the Mars colonies. Bioverse Saves Lives. There were several similar titles. He didn't see the names for any new architects. The discussion just didn't seem to be expanding any. The calls for inquiries and boycotts weren't getting anywhere. They certainly weren't hurting Bioverse.

  Arron suddenly realized that he was really looking for a conversation started by Lynn. He wanted some hint as to where she stood. He wanted to know what she saw that led her to believe the evacuation of the Dedelphi was a good idea.

  I want to be ready for her. Arron stared at the alcove's curving white walls. Rath pinned it. I want to be able to tell her she's wrong.

  Arron scrubbed at his face, as if trying to wipe something sticky off his skin.

  At the very bottom of the list was the address for Professor Marcus Avenall at the University of the East.

  Arron drank some more water, trying to swallow his tension at the same time.

  “Station, open hywrite from Professor Marcus Avenall.”

  Several lines of plain text formed on the screen. Marcus had always been a minimalist.

  Arron:

  We talked to Bioverse. They say they've barely got enough room for the Dedelphi and support staff. The only way you're going to be allowed to stay with the evacuees is if we pay the cost of maintaining you on one of the ships for the duration.

  Putting it bluntly, Arron, the university can't afford that.

  You've done amazing work. Come home, and we'll be delighted to find you a new project.

  Arron slumped back. Well, that's that. Home again, home again, riggity-jig.

  Anger surged through him. He hurled the water bottle at the wall. Plastic hit plaster with a thud and dropped to the floor. Liquid splattered across the wall and spilled onto the floor tiles, which drank it in thirstily.

  He dropped his head into his hands and ran them back and forth across his scalp.

  It wasn't just him. It wasn't that he'd fallen in love with the world and its people, which he had, he admitted it. It was that something unprecedented was happening here and nobody, nobody understood that Bioverse was about to shatter it to pieces.

  And nobody cared.

  An idea touched the back of his mind. He sat up straight again. “Station. Download and replay file Hresh from Arron Hagopian's portable jacked into your number three port.”

  “Loading. Replay.”

  It was a full media blitz file. One of the few he'd ever created that wasn't for grant money. It was from his first trip out into the field. He'd been assigned to a world called Hresh. Humans, in the form of the Avitrol Corp, had found the world seventy-five years before Arron arrived. Avitrol was a life-miner. They went out looking for new organic molecules that could be pressed into service as nanotech. Such things were rare, but incredibly valuable.

  The Hreshi were shambling, gold-pelted people whose idea of nanotech was a well-ripened cheese. Avitrol offered them luxury goods, automated services, and the skills to use them. All they asked in return was the run of the planet and the right to keep whatever useful things they found.

  When Arron got there to study a people he was physically incapable of talking to, huge segments of their world had been razed. First, Avitrol hauled up plants and insects by the freighter-load to test and retest. Then, the Hreshi themselves mined and drilled for fuels and raw materials for their new manufacturing needs. The people, dazed and distracted b
y their new wealth and able to travel farther and faster than ever, were warring with one another over ideals and land use. The gouging of their ecosphere unleashed disease that their medical sciences, which Avitrol had forgotten to augment with their luxury-goods market, had no way to control.

  Arron had stood horrified at the sight of so many dead and dying while his site supervisor lectured about what a great thing it was to find a race in transition like this. Furious, he'd built the blitz file and tried to knot it into the web, only to be informed by the university that if his name was found connected to its release, he could find other employment.

  So, he'd kept it under wraps. He'd tied other more staid and strictly factual knots. With the help of thousands of other voices, the webbed enclaves had rallied. Avitrol was shunned and had to make reparations to the Hresh.

  Now, as he watched the horrors he'd recorded, Arron wondered if the blitz could be reworked. He could weave parallels between Avitrol's life-mining of the Hreshi and Bioverse's working over of the Dedelphi. He could do it. His career at the university would be over, but if he could get the word out about what was happening here, if he could give back just a portion of the life and hospitality the Getesaph had shown him, it would be worth it.

  He'd need to set down a core idea to give the rest of the presentation something to wrap around. Take a page from Marcus and minimalize it. A text block, maybe with music in the background, but make it something they'd have to pay attention to.

  “Station, prepare media-tool workspace for a new thread. Clear space for text input. Convert voice input to text.

  Arron bent over the keyboard and set to work.

  Parliament Hall was never quite empty. Soldiers patrolled its gates and stood beside its doors, guarding the Members and their staff who worked through the night. The wide, polished-stone rooms were lit if dimly, by electricity all night long. Lareet had never lost her love of the beauty of the place. Layers of round wooden terraces rose from the floor like uneven stacks of coins. Tiled pools held island conference spaces in their center, fountains and waterfalls that filled every crevice with music.

  Umat paced beside her, close enough so that their shoulders could rub reassuringly together. Umat's expression was intense. Her slender ears were completely alert. She had probably already pushed the memory of the morning's blast into the back of her mind and was concentrating on nothing except accomplishing their errand. Umat was like that, and Lareet envied her.

  Silver lamplight illuminated a third-level terrace near the center of the hall. Their members, the Members Shavck, Ris, Pem, and Vreaith, sat at the circular worktable. Reflexively, Lareet fell back and let Umat precede her up the steeply slanting stairway (why did Arron call stairs ladders? Ladders were temporary, mobile things) to their workspace.

  Lareet and Umat stood side by side in front of the Member's worktable. Umat extended her hand and received the touch on her knuckles from Shavck Pem.

  “Dayisen Umat. Dayisen Lareet,” Member Pem greeted them. “The shades of night look well on you.”

  Lareet let Umat return the greeting. No one who had hearing could miss the pride in Umat's voice as she said, “We were successful. Scholar Arron will speak to Manager Lynn.”

  “Excellent!” boomed Member Vreaith, folding her hands on her belly. “I knew he would not refuse you after years of guestship and particular friendship.”

  Lareet wished she could bask in the approval as fully as Umat did. “He did warn us, Members, that she might not be persuaded. He has not had contact with her for a long time.”

  Umat dropped one ear toward her scalp in warning. “He did, however, complete his mating with her amicably. Our best research shows this can establish a pattern of favor and reciprocation, even if the parties involved are separated.”

  Member Ris laughed quietly. “Do relax, Dayisen Rual, both of you. No one is expecting a blood promise. There is nothing to do now but wait and see what happens. If the schedule is changed, we can go ahead with our first plans. If it is not”—her ears dropped briefly and lifted—“alternatives exist.”

  “Thank you, Members.” Umat reached out and quickly touched Member Ris's hands. “We stand ready for further assignments.”

  “As is expected.” Member Vreaith dipped her ears approvingly. “We have nothing further in this special area for you until we hear about the schedule. Go home and spend the night with your family in health and peace.”

  The Members did not bother with a parting touch. They just bent back over their table and sorted through the papers, talking in low voices about what was indicated by this missive and that note. Lareet politely folded her ears to muffle the conversation.

  Umat, radiating satisfaction, tucked her arm into the crook of her sister's, pivoted them both around, and waved to indicate that Lareet should go first down the stairs. Lareet gripped the rungs tightly with her toes and tried to shake the unease that had settled against her skin as she climbed down to the main floor.

  “What is the matter with you?” asked Umat softly, as they returned to the vaulted foyer. “You're as twitchy as a newt on hot concrete.”

  Lareet nodded to the soldiers who opened the double doors. She did not speak until she and Umat had crossed the shaded lawn with its thick ferns and moss, been checked out through the gate, and walked five yards down the crowded street.

  “I was talking with Scholar Arron this morning,” Lareet said finally. “He makes some strong arguments for the Confederation.”

  Umat squeezed her arm. “Scholar Arron is our sister in all but blood, but he is naive. He believes the devna can be talked out of killing us.”

  Lareet held her sister's arm tightly for a moment. “He also believes we can be talked out of killing them.”

  Umat drew herself up short. She turned and faced her sister. “Listen to me, my pouch-sister. I agree with Scholar Arron that the wars must stop. We will all of us be dead if they don't. We are going to stop them.”

  “You're right.” Lareet laid her hands over her sister's. “I'm just feeling we should be united in this. Our Members are not even acting for the full Defenders’ House…”

  “Our members are constantly gathering support, Lareet. By the time everything's in place, they'll have the entire Parliament.” She blew across her palm, trying to send Lareet's worries to the wind. “We will make the world safe for our blood.”

  Let that be true, Lareet breathed silently to the ground. Please, let that be true.

  Boats crammed into the harbor. They jostled one another's sides and tangled one another's anchor cables. Little fishers and squared-off houseboats clustered around the sides of the big barges, freighters, and the two mammoth warships.

  It could have been a harbor from any of a hundred times and places in the history of the Humans’ Earth. There were only so many shapes of vessel that could carry a biocular biped with two opposable thumbs efficiently across open water. Physics as much as body shape determined the way you built your ships, and physics varied a lot less than form.

  Torches, candles, and lamps reflected their light on the black, trash-speckled water. The wind was choked with scents of salt, dead fish, hot oil, hot fish, smog, and charcoal. Voices called to each other in six or eight different dialects, punctuated here and there by the splash as someone dived into the water to swim for somewhere they couldn't walk to.

  Cabal walked across the harbor by stepping from boat to boat. His boots clumped heavily against damp wood as he stepped on decks, chests, or boxes. Seawater soaked the cuffs of his work trousers, and more of it spattered his canvas shirt and short jacket. Sometimes heads turned as he passed. Sometimes someone shouted at him to get his poison off their boat. Mostly, however, he was ignored as an equal with the dozen or so Dedelphi who made similar zigzag paths to and from the shore.

  Finally, he swung his leg over the side of a well-kept fishing boat. It was bigger by half than most of the others in the harbor, built for market fishing rather than just subsistence. He negotiated his
way between ropes, chests, kegs, and nets.

  “Who's home?” called Cabal in the major Getesaph dialect.

  A hatch swung back, creating a square of yellow lamplight in the deck.

  “Who's asking?” came the reply from belowdecks.

  “Your brother,” Cabal used the English word. There was no true equivalent in Getesaph.

  “Come in, then.”

  Cabal descended the ladder. Belowdecks was a single room with bunks built into the walls, a galley area at one end, and a workshop at the other. Two Getesaph sat on the farside of a central table. They were both stripped down to canvas breeches and rubber boots, like fishers usually were.

  “Advisor Tvir, Advisor Cishka,” he said quietly as he sat down on the bench opposite them.

  “Trader Cabal,” replied Advisor Tvir. “The shades of night look well on you. What's your news?”

  Cabal nodded. “Scholar Arron is contacting a friend of his on behalf of the members of the dayisen he lives with. They want to change the relocation schedule, and this friend, she's working on that part of the project.”

  Advisor Cishka had lost an ear in some skirmish long ago. She rubbed the scar thoughtfully. “Do we know how likely he is to succeed in this?”

  “I have no idea,” Cabal shrugged. “They were close once, but he hasn't seen her in years. He's not talking about it much.”

  “Why is he talking about it at all? You and he are not true friends, you have said.”

  “He asked me to take him to t'Theria to meet her, and I've also told you how he gets going about internal affairs at every opportunity.”

  Advisor Cishka's remaining ear twitched. “You do not respect him, do you?”

  Cabal shrugged again and thought a minute before he found a way to construct the sentence in Getesaph. “There are places where he is shaded by night in broad daylight. He doesn't always understand how people could not completely agree with him.”

  “I hear you.” Advisor Tvir nodded. “At least I think I do. Thank you, Trader Cabal. You will let us know if he succeeds or fails? We need to know which of their plans the Defenders will implement.”