“By the time Diego’s mother rejoined the world, her eyes had apparently been opened to the reasons behind so many of the traditions of our region. It was hard to tell from a distance how her personality had changed, but I was surprised to see that her new baby girl had been given the name, not of her former daughter, nor of any of her relatives, but of my Mom. I could only guess that the police had told her who reported the attack on her family that led to her rescue, so the choice of name was a very quiet voice of gratitude.
“I checked how they were doing from time to time as the girl grew. By the time she entered school it was clear she was bright, but the family was struggling financially and she would never have a chance at university without some external help. I was a spacer by then, pulling in fabulous amounts of money that I could not spend in space, and I was becoming proficient at legitimate investing. I pulled a few percent of my savings and put them into a set of trust funds which I used to finance a contest in her school district. To ensure my anonymity, half of the money went to the district to build up their libraries, sports, and science programs. The other half was divided into six bursaries to be awarded as prizes for students entering first grade, sufficient to cover their educational needs starting with enrichment programs and running all the way through university. Five of the prizes were to be based on need and merit, but the sixth could only be won by Diego’s new little sister.
“The last time I had checked, the girl was entering high school. I found her entry in the school year book. She listed her heroes as her two brothers who had fought and died so bravely defending her mother from the terrorists. Her favourite subjects were social studies and introductory law. Her ambition was to study forensic science with the intent of joining the Agency in the Ministry for Law Enforcement, to protect all the peaceful, gentle people of the world.”
I sincerely hoped she never decided to investigate who had provided the bursary that was financing her education. And I begged Leilani, Sergei, Raul and Toyami to keep this story secret to protect the girl from the vindictiveness of Martian justice.
We sat quietly for a while. I worried about whose lives I was jeopardizing with these stories.
Finally, Sergei said quietly, “The girl was named after your Mom as an act of gratitude? Did you hear how Morris got his family name? People do strange and wonderful things out of gratitude, even if they forget pretty quickly why they were feeling grateful.”
I was sure ready for a distraction, but Raul was the one who took the bait. “We get the names our parents give us, don’t we? Surely it just means that, somewhere in the past, someone named Morris married into his family?”
“No, and that is the part of the story that is both wonderful and terrible. You all know the basic events of the Final War. It started with a full nuclear exchange amongst four great powers that exterminated most of their populations. The destruction was very uneven, leaving pockets of survivors who fled as refugees before the radiation sterilized them. Within India, the Indus and Ganges river basins were devastated. It was different in the south. There were scattered bombs in southern India, mostly destroying naval and army bases, but much of rural India survived.
“You know that Britain ruled ancient India for almost two hundred years? During that period, they made strong economic and personal ties that persisted through the century after India won its independence. The Morris from whom our Morris derived his name was English, Percival Morris. He had brought his family to United India on a business trip. Percival travelled extensively on business. He had left his family in Delhi, where they died in the initial bombardment. On that terrible day, he was visiting friends, descendants of the Scindias of Gwalior, at one of their estates far south in the Deccan. They kept him safe until he could fly back to England, just before the airlines shut down entirely because of the smoke and dust in the air.
“The Exchange killed half the population of the Earth, and during the Fimbulwinter and the Great Burning, famine and cold killed half of those who had survived. Refugees from northern India flooded into the south, and the famine there was far worse than in most other parts of the world.
“Europe, of course, did not participate in the Exchange, except for a few cities that were destroyed, apparently at random. In gratitude for the shelter they had given him, as soon as Percival arrived home he began to work to bring his friends in the Scindia family to the relative safety of England. It was necessary to travel by sea, but almost twenty-five members of the family escaped to England where they survived the Fimbulwinter and the Great Burning. I have often wondered where they found food during the Fimbulwinter, but even Morris does not know.
“Percival had lost his wife and all his children in India. Under his protection, the Scindia family that made it to England saved all their children. In gratitude, they decided to honour him by surnaming one of their newborn boys Morris instead of Scindia. The family has flourished since then, returning to the regions of southern India as merchants and politicians, with the Morris branch of the family prominent amongst the political class.
“Morris himself is immensely proud of his family history and will recount every detail to anyone who will listen. I heard the story directly from him at a departmental dinner, when he was relaxing after the meal.
“His is only one example, of course. Refugee families moved over the whole planet for years after the war, each trying to find a safe place to live. Almost all our names got mixed up, with people today using names that in ancient times came from completely different parts of the world. Even the order of our names is confused, with some places following the eastern tradition of putting surnames first versus the western tradition of putting surnames last.
“My male relatives have such close ties with the Westrus Militia that I am called Sergei Chou by almost everyone except the friends I grew up with, who call me Chou Sergei. The Sergei comes from my Russian ancestors, the Chou from the Han, but my family lives in what was Manchuria, and both sides arrived as destitute refugees during the Great Burning. Some of that history is terrible, but it is also sprinkled with gems of mercy and gratitude. I would not be here without those gems.”
Leilani shook her head, asking, “I wonder what Minister Morris will call himself now? Being dead and in hiding, he will need a new name. So will you. All of us, actually. Brian and I might be able to keep our current names, but only because we changed them when we arrived on the Mao. I expect we will still need new names as word of what we have been doing leaks out. I have no idea what we will do when we get back from this mission, except we will never work for CI or MI again. I can see no future except war, and I want no part of it.”
She looked at me with despair on her face, an expression I had almost never seen before. “Who are we, Brian? Who are we supposed to be?”
Privately, just to Leilani, I sent, “You are and always will be the love of my life, the most wonderful woman who has ever existed, my only hope and dream. You are the only one whom I trust to pick up the mantle I will drop.”
She cried, “Brian, I have waited so long! I do not want your mantle. I want you!”
Aloud, I spoke only platitudes. They were true but seemed pale and lifeless compared to what I felt. “Nothing much has changed, and I knew this day could come as soon as I realized we were in a war. It is earlier than I had hoped, that is all.
“We are Banshees of the Terrestrial Council. Our first duty is to preserve the lives of our Council members, even if they are now undead. They know more of the truth than anyone on the Earth and their counsel is more valuable now than it ever was before.
“Amongst ourselves, trust Leilani’s judgement. She is a superb organizer and would be directing the space-based wing of CI by now if I had not interfered. You know I love her and idolize her, and you have scarcely had a chance to form your own opinions. Regardless, it is still my judgement that she is better suited to lead the Banshees than I am.”
Privately, “You have the compassion to forgive the guilty and the wisdo
m to know when it will help. Save them, my Love.”
She sobbed silently, “We can do this together. Do not leave me.”
Publicly, “Our second duty is to preserve our own lives. We will need to watch out for each other, because few other people will have the courage to help us.”
Privately, “You must save their souls, guide them towards mercy and justice and away from hatred. Mars will bring selfishness, ambition, and deceit. But you are greater than Mars, stronger than hate.”
She wailed, “I do not want to be greater than Mars. I want you beside me.”
Aloud, “Our third duty is to provide warning and healing, which sounds romantic but is what we always did as agents and advisors. We must now work under very deep cover, but that too is normal for many of us, especially for Raul, Leilani and I.”
Privately, “Be invisible, my Love, walk in the shadows, and haunt the secret places where the powerful never go. We have spent our careers finding such places and now need to create some for ourselves. Stay hidden until the hour comes to reveal your great wisdom and love. You will guide us through this crisis and in so doing will heal all of us. If I can make that possible, it will be enough.”
With growing anger and desperation, “Brian, promise me! Promise me you will not do anything stupid and self-destructive. PROMISE ME!”
I let the Ghost answer, but there was a hesitation and she noticed, “Leilani, I do so promise. You know I was broken to prevent me from killing myself.”
Aloud, “Doctor Toyami, I do not know what role the ministers will find for you. It probably will not be the same as ours and I doubt we will need our own medical staff much longer. I fear that you too will be officially dead, so you probably cannot return to work at any conventional hospital, but the need is great for skilled medical care in many places where regular medicine never travels.”
Sergei was looking back and forth between Leilani and I, aware that we were having a private conversation. “You two are flirting! Oh, I know it is all heavy and tragic, but you are in love and unable to consummate your passion, so you are flirting by comm.”
Toyami breathed, “You are right. Their timing is unfortunate, but it is so sweet!”
Flirting? I looked at Leilani, who was wiping great blobby tears from her eyes. She understood what I was saying and why. My own eyes were growing watery as well.
Sergei said, “We had better go next door and do some exercise before these two lovebirds grow all maudlin and kissy-kissy.”
Toyami replied quietly, “Maudlin and kissy-kissy is exactly what these two need.”
But Leilani was already moving off towards the exercise room. She closed the door as she went in and would not let any of the rest of us enter for another twenty minutes.
The rest of the day continued like that, restless, despairing, brittle and increasingly tense.
2357-03-08 20:00
Best Day Ever
When I awoke the next morning, my neck was even worse than usual. I had apparently thrashed my head inside my armour enough to partly dislodge the opaque helmet. Checking the logs, I had been broadcasting to all the Banshees every time I passed into a dreaming stage, but the files got too large to save more than the first few minutes locally and I did not remember the dreams. The full dreams were probably recorded in the ACC office, but we could not go there and I was frightened of what I might find if I did.
I do not think the others had been woken by my nightmares, but their sleep had been disturbed. Everyone woke cranky and unrested.
This day was even worse than the last. Leilani and I argued and wept, Sergei and Toyami got vexed with both of us, and Raul withdrew to the relative sanity of the exercise room. There were periods when the Columbia slewed unexpectedly and accelerated without warning. Twice there were the sharp jolts of laser fire. With each of these we went silent with fear, but afterwards the stress returned and we argued more than before. Toyami refused to add more tranquilizers to our rations because we were already close to dangerous levels.
Raul refused to tell us more of his plan for rescuing Pantocrator other than his intention to go into Valhalla alone and return with the man as an apparent political prisoner being transported to the Moon en route to Mars.
We asked Toyami how she had ended up in the CI T&A, but her story was too simple and too short to provide much entertainment. She had graduated from medical school and as an intern had developed an interest in psychiatry and trauma recovery. She combined both interests by joining Legal Intelligence just before the Incursion, treating wounded and traumatized soldiers and agents as they returned to the Earth. When LI had been broken up, she had moved into CI.
She finished her brief story with the comment, “When CI offered a position on the earth stations, it looked interesting and exciting, so I applied and got the job. Now I am trapped in a steel box being hunted across the solar system by agents from Martian Intelligence who want to cut off my head. This is not nearly as interesting as I had hoped, and far more exciting in the worst possible way. I am not being paid nearly enough for this job.”
To which I said amen, if only to myself.
We cheered up briefly when a ship-wide announcement told us that we had passed the last known bogies that threatened to be pirates and could remove and clean our armour. The next set of bogies would be encountered in roughly twenty hours, so we could relax and rest, provided we kept our armour within easy reach.
It felt unbelievably good to remove the armour, flush out the septic systems, and wash each other down as though this was a normal flight. We exercised in the nude just for the sake of the change, washed again and put on clean pajamas.
But nothing had changed. By dinner we were back to bickering and tears. We tried bringing up soothing visuals on the walls, playing music through the speakers, and even found some old theatre on file, but our tastes in music and theatre were too different. No one could relax enough to enjoy the experience.
Finally, I asked to see the bonfire on the beach again, a good, standard neutral image. Then I asked, begged, everyone to try to think happy thoughts, to remember the happiest day of their lives and tell us about that. We had half a week to go before we reached Valhalla and would be at each other’s throats if this kept up.
I turned to Sergei. “You. Happiest day of your life. Cough up!”
He laughed shortly. “Happiest day? Has to be the day I left Mars. No, wait. That was the last day of terrible crappiness. The happiest day has to be when we arrived back and I dropped down to the Moon to visit an old friend. If you looked at my record, I have traveled a lot and have friends everywhere, even on the Moon. Anyways, if I tell you this story you must all swear to permanent secrecy, or I may have to kill you. No, in this company that is not the threat that it used to be. Hmm, I will have to change your preferences so you only ever get pink and orange pajamas.
“Everyone swear? Solemnly? Good. I found the only good restaurant on the Moon. The only one. All the others who make that claim are just better than the usual run, which is pretty poor. My friend took me on a day jaunt to Tranquil London, which is mostly an agricultural and industrial city. We went deep down, very deep. I am pretty sure that the excavators were just starting to dig the next level down. We went far off to the side, into corridors that were scarcely painted, much less finished, past endless, dimly lit halls filled with vats of algae and bacteria. I suspect Tranquil London might be able to feed itself if people are willing to die of boredom.
“At the end of the corridor there was a tiny little room with tables, frequented by the farm workers and the lower-level farm managers. You have all seen these places, tucked away in odd corners, and it is often true that they have the best food around, hand prepared, home cooked, by people who understand the local produce. But I would not have to kill anyone for my secret farm kiosk serving deep-fried algae, nor would anyone fly to Tranquil London for that kind of food.
“They served a vegetarian vindaloo. Not an imitation juiced with meds and chemical f
lavourings. No bacterial capsicum. This was the real thing, with honest-to-god habanero peppers. Real peppers plucked from pepper plants.
“They did not serve it in the front restaurant, and you had to know somebody local who could vouch for your integrity. The production is extremely limited and if they charged an honest price they would immediately attract official attention and be arrested for unlicensed agricultural experimentation. Their official permit said they were using the space for big bacterial tanks, part of the drive for Lunar self-sufficiency in food.
“They have, in fact, been raided five times as a suspected grow-op for illicit drugs, mostly because they need so much electricity, produced no food, and would not tell anyone why. Only the first raid was real. The rest were just for show, done with permission, a way to introduce a trusted colleague to an unbelievable discovery. My friend knew the agent from that first raid. He called ahead, but still had to make me swear many oaths with terrible consequences, promising that I would never tell anyone. I am breaking that promise and deserve to die in horrible agony. I hope the Martians are not listening, but maybe I could save myself by feeding them a real, live habanero. It would kill them for sure.
“They took me back to see their farm while they prepared the meal. The problem has always been that plants will not set seed if the gravity is so low they cannot tell which way is up. To address the issue, they had created large, enclosed centrifuges with mounts for the pepper plants all around the outside. They spin the centrifuge to create an artificial gravity just strong enough to set the seeds and produce fruit. When the plants flower, they stop the centrifuge and hand dust the stigmas with pollen. No bees or wasps on the Moon, thank goodness, but it makes the operation slow and frightfully expensive.
“They explained that they were selecting the plants that reproduced best in ever-lower gravity, crossing them back to retain the desired flavours and texture. They would not tell me when they expected to have viable lunar crops.
Lord Banshee- Fugitive Page 24