by Nancy Kress
Gruber, forgotten until this moment, made a gesture Kaufman couldn’t decode. Magdalena said pleasantly, “Couldn’t wait to come dashing out here to warn them about me, could you, Dieter? Fortunately, Essa here overheard Ann on the comlink. She told me what was going on.”
The native child, who looked just pubescent, darted forward and threw her arms around Gruber’s knees. He backed off and tried to dislodge her, an act Kaufman instinctively sympathized with. But the child, a skinny girl with bright black eyes and brown neckfur, hung on, babbling in World. Her skull ridges crinkled with emotion. Kaufman looked at Marbet.
“Essa is begging Dieter’s pardon,” Marbet translated: “I’m not really fluent yet, but I think she’s saying Pek Magdalena offered her something wonderful to tell Magdalena things … I’m not sure … to tell her everything … she offered … you didn’t.”
This last was addressed, flatly, to Magdalena, who merely shrugged. Marbet and Gruber looked appalled. Kaufman, the only non-speaker of World, said irritably, “What? What did she offer the girl?”
Marbet said in English, “A ride in her spaceship to other worlds. Magdalena, you know that’s not possible.”
“More things are possible to me than you think. And why not? She’s an enterprising kid.”
“You lied to her.”
“Maybe not.”
Kaufman could see that Magdalena was enjoying this fencing and Marbet was not. Gruber had succeeded in peeling the child off himself. She now stood beside Magdalena, and Kaufman had the uneasy feeling they were alike in some way he couldn’t name. He tried to get things back on track.
“Marbet and I are going to the village. Gruber, can you lead us there?”
“No need,” Magdalena said. “There’s room in my skimmer for you both. Gruber can follow on his bike.”
“I’ll ride with Dieter,” Marbet said, and Magdalena grinned.
Kaufman had been left with no choice. He didn’t know the territory. He climbed into Magdalena’s skimmer, followed by the silent, robot-like bodyguards. What exactly were they genemod for?
No matter. His business was not with them, nor even with Magdalena, whom he sat as far away from as possible. His business was with World, and what he had done to it.
NINE
GOFKIT SHAMLOE
There was a stockade around the village, a hand-built thing of rough-hewn tree trunks. There were fields, and small groups of people evidently working them. There were flowers, as many flowers as before. But, Kaufman realized, he couldn’t tell in what ways the village was different from before he’d removed the artifact, and in what ways it was the same. He had never, in his brief previous visit to World, been in an alien village. All he had seen was the lavish compound of the trader Hadjil Voratur, the grassy plain where the shuttle had landed, and the Neury Mountains landscape that had housed the buried artifact.
He could easily tell that Ann Sikorski had changed.
He remembered her as gentle, no match for his decision to remove the artifact from World no matter what happened to the natives. She’d been thin, with long fair hair, a soft-spoken and cerebral person, a superior xenobiologist. The woman striding toward him with marked hostility was muscled, strong, obviously a farmer. Her face was browned from sun and her hair cut very short. “Lyle.”
“Hello, Ann.”
“So you’re back. Where’s Marbet?”
“Riding with Dieter. They’ll be here in a minute. Ann, you look well. We were afraid—”
“That I was dead? Almost, more than once. But the society is surviving, Lyle, despite you. We’re surviving.”
“Pek Kaufman!” a native cried.
He recognized her—the translator Voratur had used, the woman Ann had befriended. Enli Pek Something. She was much bigger than most of these aliens, and clumsy. She came toward him, smiling, a small child in her arms. On her way she plucked a yellow flower from a bush and presented it to him. “May your garden bloom forever!”
He remembered the ritual words, all he had learned of the language. “May your blossoms rejoice your ancestors.”
Ann said caustically in English, “You’re supposed to offer her a visitor’s flower.”
“I’m surprised all these rituals persisted.”
“Don’t take it as evidence that you caused no serious change, Lyle. Everything’s changed. It’s just that Worlders hold onto all the old flower-related forma because now they’re the only shared reality they have left.”
Enli, Kaufman knew, understood English. Ann was dressing him down in front of a native. She had indeed changed.
Dieter’s bicycle roared up. Ann and Marbet and Enli hugged and chattered in World. Left out, Kaufman surveyed the village.
Low round houses—Worlders thought straight lines were ugly—made of wood, roofs thatched, set around communal cookfires. World was fertile, resources abundant, the climate benign, without seasons. The houses were painted deep red or purple, evidently favorite colors, with high arched windows. Everywhere flowerbeds rioted in glories of color, making the settlement look much richer than it actually was. The stockade circled three sides; the fourth sloped down to a river. A complicated system of buckets and pulleys brought water uphill.
Natives began to seep out of the houses, mostly very old or very young, the latter tended by the former. The rest must be at work in the fields. The ones Kaufman could see looked healthy, well nourished, dressed in simple roughly spun tunics (what had they worn before? He couldn’t remember.)
Enli said, in English, “Come into my house, Pek Kaufman and Pek Grant and drink—” she hesitated, the word probably didn’t exist in English “—something to drink.”
“Thank you,” Kaufman said.
Magdalena said in his ear, “A half-hour, Colonel. Then I talk to you and Marbet Grant. There are lives at stake.”
He didn’t reply. She walked toward another hut and Kaufman, Marbet, Ann, Dieter, and Enli went into Enli’s house, which was a single large room. There was no glass, Kaufman saw, in three of the four windows, and air circulated freely. Blankets, pillows, and small low tables furnished the room. Two of the neatly folded blankets were woven of rich, embroidered cloth looking worn; the other two were new, rough homespun. The pillows showed the same division, and the wood of the tables.
Ann looked at him. “Before and after, Lyle. People spending time on self-defense and subsistence farming have neither the time nor the division of labor for comfort, let alone art.”
“Ann,” Marbet said gently, “enough.”
“Not nearly enough. You haven’t seen the graveyard.”
Enli said loudly, “Berrydrink?” On the walk into the house she had invented a word in English.
It was better than just berry juice, Kaufman found. Richly flavored, a blend of different tastes. The “bread” Enli offered was also good.
Gruber said something in World to Enli, who laughed and held out a piece of bread to her child. Clearly Ann and Dieter were accepted here, welcome. No, more than that—they were part of this alien community.
“Enli,” Kaufman said in English, “I have come from Terra to see how World lives without shared reality. Can you tell me this?”
She turned on her pillow to look at him. Her skull ridges wrinkled, but Kaufman had not had enough exposure to Worlders to know what emotion was being expressed. Enli’s eyes, the deep soft black of ash, met his steadily.
“We do not share reality now,” she told him in slow English, “so we create our own realities. Some places, like Gofkit Shamloe, create good realities between people. Not all people, but most. We talk, and work, and teach our children, and honor our ancestors in the world of spirits. It is difficult sometimes, to look at someone and think, What does she think? It is very strange.”
“Go on,” Kaufman said when she paused.
“Other places create bad reality. They steal, which is all right, but they kill the owners to steal.” Her skull ridges contorted. “Sometimes they just kill. They think … they think
maybe they should be rich traders, or … I don’t know what they think. It is difficult. I teach Confit—” she indicated the child “—to not hurt people. But if killers come, he must hurt them. It is difficult.”
This speech seemed to have exhausted and disturbed Enli. She picked up the baby, who wiggled to get back down and then began to fret.
Ann said, “We’ve established trade relations with two of the closest villages. Not because anyone has anything to trade, but because it creates an alliance. Maintains contact. Also a larger gene pool, and a potentially more powerful defense against places like the Voratur compound, which is enslaving serfs to support them. They’re amassing an army to extend their power.”
Marbet said, to spare Kaufman, “Do you want to know what’s happening in the Solar System? You’ve had no news for what, two or three years?”
“Ja,” Gruber said eagerly. “What happens with the war? With the artifact? What is this about Tom being kidnapped?
Marbet began to tell them about Stefanak, Life Now, the Fallers, the Protector Artifact, Capelo. Enli tended her child. Kaufman got up and walked outside, his guts too roiled to let him sit still.
A mistake. Magdalena awaited him. Once more he looked at those brilliant eyes, aging face, still lush body, and felt the unmistakable and involuntary stirring in his loins. This time she didn’t mock him for it. She had other things on her mind. “Come with me, Lyle. There’s something you must hear.”
When he didn’t answer, she grabbed his hand. He shook himself free but followed her to another house, virtually identical to Enli’s on the outside. But not inside, where it held a bed and other human furnishings. She had a ship somewhere. The girl Essa sat cross-legged on a pillow, polishing a bowl. She grinned at him.
“Listen,” Magdalena said, and switched on a data cube.
“Thass not ’sposed to be there.” Laslo’s voice, very drunk.
“What isn’t supposed to be where?” Another young man, sounding marginally less drunk. “Just an asteroid.”
“Isn’t ’sposed to be there. Hand me ’nother fizzie.”
“They’re gone. You drunk the last one, you pig.”
“No fizzies? Might as well go home.”
“Just an asteroid. No … two asteroids.”
“Two!” Laslo said, with pointless jubilation.
“Where’d they come from? Isn’t supposed to be there. Not on computer.”
“N-body problem. Gravity. Messes things up. Jupiter.”
“Let’s shoot ’em!”
“Yeah!” Laslo cried, and hiccuped.
“What kinda guns you got on this thing? No guns, prob’ly. Fucking rich-boy pleasure craft.”
“Got … got guns put on it. Daddy-dad doesn’t know. Illegals.”
“You’re a bonus, Laslo.”
“Goddamn true. Mummy doesn’t know either. ’Bout the guns.”
“You sure ’bout that? Isn’t much your famous mother don’t know. Or do. God, that body, I saw her in an old—”
“Shut up, Conner,” Laslo said savagely. “Computer, activate … can’t remember the word…”
“Activate weapons. Jesus, Lash. YOU gotta say it. Voice cued.”
“Activate weapons!”
“Hey, a message from th’asteroid! People! Maybe there’s girls.”
“You are approaching a highly restricted area,” a mechanical voice said. “Leave this area immediately.”
“It don’t want us,” Conner said. “Shoot it!”
“Wait … maybe…?”
“You are approaching a highly restricted area. Leave this area immediately.”
“Fucking snakes,” Conner said. “Shoot it!”
“I …
“Fucking coward!”
“THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING! YOU HAVE INVADED A HIGHLY RESTRICTED AND HIGH-DANGER AREA. LEAVE IMMEDIATELY OR YOUR CRAFT WILL BE FIRED ON!”
And then a fourth voice, speaking rapidly, “Unknown craft … SOS … Help! I’m being held prisoner here—this is Tom Capelo—”
A very brief, high-pitched whine.
“Tom!” Kaufman said.
“So it is Dr. Capelo? You recognize the voice?”
“Yes,” Kaufman said. “But I don’t understand how—where and when was this made?”
“July third, coordinates in the Belt,” Magdalena said. “I checked the location. There is nothing there now, and this recorder had a pick-up range of less than a hundred clicks. The recorder indicated that the two separate voices came from separate loci. But after that, the captors turned off the recording equipment.”
Kaufman’s mind raced. Tom had been held in the Belt, probably in a hollow asteroid habitat, and from the warning and prompt firing, something important had been housed nearby, although not with him. The Protector Artifact? Stash it there with maximum defenses, and stash Tom nearby to … do what? Work on it? Maybe, but only if you had the kind of mind that didn’t realize that there was a huge gap between experimental and theoretical physics, that Tom Capelo practiced the latter, and that theoretical physicists did not need to be in the presence of the phenomena they invented equations to explain. Kaufman could easily imagine military officers who did not realize any of this. Tom had been brought to World originally to make sense of the artifact, and he had. What had they wanted him to do now?
And Magdalena said neither Tom nor the artifact housing was there now. They’d been moved. She’d also said—
“What do you mean, ‘After that, the captors turned off the recording equipment’?”
“Laslo was doing what he always does,” Magdalena said, pushing a strand of her black hair off her face. In her deep blue pants and silver-embroidered tunic she looked completely out of place in the native hut. “Laslo wants to do without my guidance, which he can’t. So periodically he plays these idiotic games, disappearing for weeks or months. My son is very immature for his age, I’m afraid. Still, I don’t think he anticipated that this flight would end with him and his friend being captured alongside the great Dr. Capelo.”
Kaufman stared at her. Yes, she believed it. But he’d heard the warning, the characteristic weapon whine … Laslo’s ship had been vaporized.
He said carefully, “Do you have any further indication that Laslo is still alive?”
“Of course he’s still alive. You don’t think Stefanak is going to murder Thomas Capelo, savior of the Solar System, do you?”
“No, but—”
“Where Capelo is, so is Laslo,” Magdalena said.
Kaufman looked into those blue eyes, bluer than sapphires, and saw absolute conviction. She believed her son was alive and with Capelo. She had to believe it; nothing else was bearable. Kaufman was looking at self-delusion in a character strong enough to elevate it to madness.
He said carefully, “Could your contacts gain any indication of where Dr. Capelo might have been moved?”
“No, And believe me, I tried. Security is tighter than a virgin’s ass. My only lead was Amanda Capelo. She wasn’t taken along with her father, so maybe she saw something at some point that would give me a clue. She might not recognize it as a due, but I might.”
He said, still very careful, “World seems a long way to come yourself to hunt for Amanda on that slight evidence.”
She smiled. “You’re right. I’d have sent somebody, except I was warned in advance.”
“Warned of what?”
“Then you don’t know. You’d already gone through the tunnel. By now, there’s been a revolution. Stefanak declared martial law and the anti-Stefanak forces have tried to overthrow him.”
Kaufman’s stomach tightened. “Tried? Did they succeed?”
Magdalena shrugged. “I don’t know. I was warned. A friend sent me word. ‘Leave the Solar System. Pierce has decided to move on the eighteenth. The navy will lead it off.’ I got out.”
Pierce. Solar Alliance Defense Navy Chief Admiral Nikolai Pierce, a bitter rival to Stefanak. And if Magdalena had the connections that Kaufman had always hear
d attributed to her, she was right to get out. Pierce would have had her killed instantly. Her vast, shadowy, quasi-political empire backed Stefanak.
She said, “I have a flyer bringing me news. He’s due to arrive at this tunnel in a few days. Meanwhile, this Godawful backwater is as good a place as any to hide until things are decided.”
“Until things are decided”—she spoke about political and military control of the entire Solar System as though it didn’t matter who won. Perhaps to her, it didn’t. Her only concern was her son. Kaufman found such misplaced single-mindedness unnerving, grotesque.
He said, “And if Pierce does win? You plan on hiding on World forever?”
She smiled at him. “Of course not. But you should know that the days immediately following a coup is the time when all sorts of people disappear. ‘Casualty of the fighting.’ I have a lot of enemies, Lyle. If Pierce wins, he’ll move to restore at least the semblance of order, and then I’d be a lot harder to kill without considerable publicity. No matter who wins, I’ll go back. Your primitive little planet here is just a convenient temporary storm shelter. And of course I hoped you had Amanda Capelo with you. You might have, you know. But you haven’t heard from or about her?”
“No,” Kaufman managed. He had been a soldier under General Sullivan Stefanak, Supreme Commander Solar Alliance Defense Council. He had, despite everything, admired the man. And now Stefanak might be deposed, or imprisoned, or murdered. Revolution …
“Yes, I could see that from your first reaction. And your pretty Sensitive’s. I’ll find him, you know. Laslo.”
She had his attention again. He looked at her closely. She believed it. She would find Tom Capelo, and with him would be her Laslo. Pity flooded Kaufman.
She saved him from speaking by adding, “Meanwhile, of course, if your little girl Amanda is still in Lowell City, it isn’t going to go very well for her. Or the whole rest of the population. Essa, what is it now?”
Humbly the native girl handed Magdalena the bowl, polished to a blinding shine. She said something in World, which neither Kaufman nor Magdalena could follow. “What?” Magdalena said irritably.