“We were very careful,” the shorter woman, Noel, said, and Aline nodded agreement. Clearly they expected Maddy to accept that explanation. Maddy, and both of her grandparents.
They had weapons. Deadly weapons, with training in how to use them. And Narsai's occupiers knew and approved of what they were doing, or they would never have arrived here still possessing those blasters. Upsetting these unwanted visitors right now was definitely not a good idea. But neither was leaving Madeleine in their supposed care, while Trabe and Cabbie went off to the Council meeting. The senior chair councilor still had no idea what he should do.
“I thought it was against the law to carry weapons on Narsai. Mum told me that, when I first got here.” Maddy frowned again. “And why do I need anyone to guard me, Granfer? I didn't know you were taking me along because you thought I was still too young to be left alone. I'm not, you know!"
“In normal times, yes. Of course; if you're old enough to be betrothed, you're certainly old enough to mind yourself for an afternoon or an evening.” Cabbie saved her husband from having to come up with a response. “But things aren't exactly normal right now, Maddy."
“The Commies don't recognize Narsatian law,” Aline said, answering the girl's other objection. “And we've got the Commissioner of Public Safety's permission to carry arms. Not by name, but she gave it to every militia member before the damn Commies killed her."
No one knows who belongs to the militia, though, Trabe Kourdakov thought, and proved from where Maddy had inherited her frown. That died with Harbie, and with Mara. Hmmm. But Cabbie knows these two; and if there's one thing my wife is for certain, it's a loyal Narsatian citizen.
Still, his granddaughter was too precious by far for him to take chances with her safety. Offending people who carried weapons might be damn stupid (as Katy would surely put it), but he preferred that risk to the ones created by leaving Madeleine in their care. So he looked first one woman and then the other in the eye, and said in his firmest, most decisive, most decidedly “senior chair” voice: “Thank you. I appreciate your willingness to help my family, and your loyalty to Narsai. But Madeleine's safety is my responsibility, and I prefer to keep her with me tonight. So unless you want to guard an empty house, you're free to go."
The two militia-women hadn't taken their hands off their blasters since the exchange of words began. And typically amateurish though they looked, in the way they stood at Catherine Romanova's door—slouching like the civilians they were, fingering their weapons’ handgrips as if carrying those illegal items made them both nervous—they had learned well how to get blaster in hand with minimal delay.
At this range, of course, aiming was the least of their worries. Aline shot Trabe Kourdakov at point-blank range, and Noel shot Cabanne Romanova from just over a meter's distance.
* * * *
They'd used the blasters on highest setting. Vaporize. Maddy Romanova stared, for one moment that truly felt to her (clichéd thought though it was!) like all of eternity passing by, at the places where her beloved grandparents had recently stood. Places where, now, there was nothing at all. Just, well, air. Then she turned her eyes first to Aline, and then to Noel; and she asked in a voice that held no emotion at all, “Why did you do that?"
“Can't you guess, Councilor Romanova?” Aline inclined her head, in one of the few overt gestures of respect common in their culture. “Being loyal to Narsai no longer means going along with what those old folks wanted. A new era for our people is beginning, and anyone who can't see that and move with it is going to get left behind! Or, if necessary, get taken out of the picture entirely.” She indicated the vacant spots at which Maddy had just been staring. “I'm sorry we had to do that, but it was time. And they'd lived their lives, wouldn't you say? Come along, Councilor. Here's the aircar, and we don't want you to arrive late for your own meeting."
* * * *
Maddy, Councilor Romanova (for so she was, with Granfer gone and Mum unavailable to accept that inheritance), climbed into the aircar because right now she was sure about only one thing. She must attend the Council meeting. She couldn't let herself feel her grandparents’ deaths; not yet. She couldn't let herself think, either, about how alone she was now on Narsai. If she did that, she would surely fall apart; and she couldn't afford the luxury.
“Will my husband be at the meeting?” She asked Aline that, since one of the militia-women sat in the aircar's back with her and left the front passenger seat vacant. Which made perfect sense, of course. Placing Maddy up there, close to the controls, would be begging for trouble, and putting her behind both of her captors (unless they wanted to drug or bind her) would be worse.
“Yes.” Aline looked at the youngster with new respect. “And you would have been, anyway. Whether or not we'd seen your grandparents off to it first."
“I thought so, when an aircar showed up that Granfer hadn't had time to order yet.” Maddy stared out the window, at MinTar aglow in one of spring's long sunsets. “Farren will take Granma's seat, and I'll take Granfer's. Then the Commonwealth will have full control of Narsai, because Farren's also their appointed governor; and I'm Farren's wife.” Or close enough to it, anyway, so that the difference didn't matter.
“That's the story. You're a quick one, for a kid your age!” Aline's tone and facial expression spoke of both unwilling admiration and horrified puzzlement. “And you're a cold one, too, aren't you? Even colder than your cousin, the Governor. But you're both our own, and that's what matters. Not whether or not the Terrans think they're pulling the strings."
With Farren, they are pulling those strings. He's their puppet. But I won't be! I can promise you that, Maddy thought, as she stared back at the woman who was her senior by more than a decade. And you don't want to know how cold I can be, Aline. No one wants to know that. I'm the Matushka's daughter by Ambassador Fralick, and it looks to me as if none of you have a clue about what that really means.
I may be a kid right now, but I can grow up pretty damn fast if I have to! And I can think circles around you, and shut down my feelings, too. For however long getting the better of you is going to take.
But it didn't mean she simply had no feelings, as Aline was implying. “Shut down” though they were, first from shock and now because she knew she didn't dare to let them find expression, her grief and outrage—and terror, too, at being abandoned by every adult she still had reason to trust—lay just beyond the barrier she'd set up to keep them contained. Roiling, writhing, and shrieking, below a still and silent surface.
Not cold at all. Just frozen in time, and waiting for release.
* * * *
Cabanne Barrett and her fellow commissioners trooped into the conference room at MinTar Medical, exactly as if they'd been invited, the minute the guard provided by the Terran Embassy opened that room's door. All sixteen commissioners, plus Ivan Romanov of the Romanov Farmstead—his wife, Lorena—and their daughter, Tena, with her husband, Kyle. Twenty people, crowding into a room that already held fourteen councilors and one unwelcome guest. Farren Kourdakov, Narsai's Provisional Governor.
Who looked up at them, from the portable podium behind which he stood (something that Trabe Kourdakov never would have used to address his peers), and asked, “When did this turn into a joint meeting? Hello, Mum. Hello, Dad. What are you doing here?"
“It turned into a joint meeting when we found out about it,” the Commissioner of Medicine answered, and she bit off each word as she uttered it. “We've seen the agenda, Farren. All of us have. But the first thing I want to know is, who appointed you to run things? Where's Uncle Trabe?"
“He hasn't arrived yet. And if you've seen the agenda, then you know the first thing on it is removing him from office, anyway.” The young man calmly eyed the middle-aged physician. “It's not worth the effort to throw you out, so see if you can find yourselves enough seats. Or you can stand, or sit on the floor. Whatever. Just don't try to participate, because this isn't a commissioners’ meeting. It's a meeting of the Nar
sai Council, and you've got no right to speak in it. Or to it, either one."
We'll see about that, Barrett thought. But she said nothing in reply to the boy's rude words, and she gestured for his embarrassed and angry parents to hold their silence, too. Instead she marched them—all four of her fellow Romanovs and Kourdakovs—to the back of the room, because standing against its wall would give them a much better spot for both observing and participating than would the first few vacant seats. Which were halfway back, with the room set up lecture style instead of (as was the Council's normal procedure for its meetings) in a convivial circle.
Were those days of a civilized, peaceful Narsai gone for good? Since Barrett had her own descendants to think about, not just these beloved collateral relatives, that thought tormented her whenever she let it rise into her mind's conscious levels. She was here to salvage whatever she could of the world she'd known, before the coming of those ships from Mistworld and her people's subsequent well-meaning but (she was now firmly convinced) rash choices made recent events inevitable. Just what that would entail, she didn't yet know; but what she and her fellow commissioners absolutely could not allow was a closed-door Council meeting. Not after they'd finally gained more or less equal standing, and full access to Council proceedings, as one of the few completely positive outcomes of Cousin Katy's machinations.
The door opened again. This time, Madeleine Romanova came through it. Flanking the girl were two adults who weren't her grandparents. Farren Kourdakov gave the pair of armed women (a blaster hung openly at each's belt) a welcoming wave. “So you've brought her!” he said, raising his voice sufficiently to overcome the low murmurs of private conversation going on elsewhere in the room. Among the other Councilors, and among the newly arrived and (except for Cab Barrett, standing at the back with her family) newly seated Commissioners, too. “Where are the two old folks?"
That was not a polite way to refer to one's elders, and his rudeness stopped what conversing his “now hear this” tone had failed to halt. Everyone stared at him, then, in shock. Everyone but Cab Barrett, who instead was watching Maddy.
The girl looked like a statue. One that had somehow become animated, because she was moving away from her escorts; and she was opening her mouth, as she drew breath and prepared herself to speak. To answer her betrothed husband's question, instead of leaving that job to the mysteriously admitted militia-women. (They must be that; although how the Terran guard could let them through instead of arresting them, Barrett couldn't begin to imagine.)
“They're dead,” Madeleine Romanova said to Farren Kourdakov, in her mother's and grandmother's strong, low-pitched voice. “Assassinated by these two idiots who think they're patriots. But all they are is collaborators, of course. Traitors to Narsai, just like you!"
Now everyone else couldn't move. Barrett herself could not do so, and she no longer wondered how a room filled with an entire planet's most accomplished, wealthy, and powerful citizens could possibly take a thirteen-year-old girl's words so seriously. She had wondered that, when she saw how every head was turning toward Madeleine at the first word the youngster uttered; but not now.
“No. Not like you. No one else here came all the way back from New Orient to do the Commonwealth's dirty work for them, so no one else is really in your league, after all.” The girl was speaking again, and now she'd reached her husband. Farren had turned away from the podium, moving woodenly because he, too, was in her thrall, and he stood facing her. “But just the same, with Granfer and Granma dead—and my Mum off-world, with no chance she'll come back anytime soon—you and I are Councilors now, Farren. And a person who's old enough to be betrothed should be too old to need a regent, so let's take our places. And let's have the meeting, after we find out who the rest of the Council,” she turned her face toward the seated people staring at her, “want to take Granfer's place as their senior chair's holder. If turns out to be you, I'll probably die of shock. Now that they all know the truth!"
* * *
Chapter 15
An ordinary gen received a given name assigned at random, from a list appropriate to the new being's gender, and a surname that (like a skimmer's encoded identification number) could tell an HR Solutions inventory clerk exactly which crèche had nurtured the youngster and what its work assignment was destined to be. But in a few very special cases, a new gen-line's designer chose its prototypes’ names personally—and that was how Rachel Kane had received her “ordinary human” sounding moniker.
But one couldn't create a gen destined to become a Star Service command officer, anyway, and then expect her to blend in among all those wildlings if saddled with a more typical gen-tag like (for instance) “Topsy Troglodyte.” So the second such gen who'd managed to reach adulthood, graduate from the Academy, and take up a commissioned officer's duties also bore the surname Kane. But this time none of his classmates knew that he'd received it not from a parent, but from the gengineer who designed him; one Eleanor Kane. This time no one in the young gen's new life, after he left his crèche for the Academy, even guessed that Randall Kane wasn't a cadet as ordinary as any other kid in his plebe year class. Dr. Kane and the others involved in her project at HR Solutions had learned from their prototype Rachel's experiences. When they sent Randall along behind his “sister,” they were careful to keep his true nature safely buried in his medical file.
But Randall—Lieutenant Kane of the raider-class starship Fortunate, now—knew. His owners couldn't do anything about that without erasing everything he remembered from early childhood until the day he'd entered the Academy at seventeen, and creating false memories that extensive to replace his real ones was just too intricate and dangerous to be worth attempting. Tweaking his actual recollections, selectively altering them so that he would truly “forget” only that he was a gen instead of a wildling, proved an even more impossible project to carry off; although Eleanor Kane and her staff debated that possibility for the better part of a year before abandoning it. At last they had to be content with giving him psychological conditioning against revealing himself to anyone except Star Service physicians (if and when the subject came up as relevant to medical care), and—if absolutely necessary—his commanding officer. The latter exception the Star Service advisor assigned to the project by Defense Minister Fothingill insisted upon.
He had a mark on his forehead, like any other gen. An ownership mark, put there indelibly on the day he was “born.” Like Rachel's, though, it wasn't visible to the unaided eyes of other Humans. And unlike hers, his mark had an overlay to keep it from setting off personnel scanners and raising the cry of “Stolen property!” every time he attended a concert with friends—entered a restaurant—or simply went shopping. For as long as he needed to be able to move about on civilized, industrialized worlds with the same freedom as his wildling comrades, HR Solutions would leave that overlay in place. Their scanners could see through it, though. As could those wielded by members of the Corporate Marshal Service, who had the job of hunting down and retrieving (at just about any cost) runaways like Randy Kane's “sister” Rachel.
From time to time he wondered about her, since he knew her history as well as did their mutual creators. He wondered, especially, how she'd managed to adapt—even marginally—to living among wildlings, being held to their standards and even learning how to lead them, while every time she ventured into the civilian universe she had to visit security offices wherever she went. While so many other things, surely, must have reminded her comrades from time to time—and Rachel herself, every day—of how unlike them she truly was.
No, he didn't find her defection a mystery at all. He only wondered why she hadn't gone rogue a whole lot sooner.
He felt the same way about the citizens of the planet his little ship now orbited. Mortha, to which the Commonwealth had “repatriated” tens of thousands of men who'd had off-world medical careers, during the scant six months since the policy against employing them anywhere else began implementation. Starting, both for security r
easons and to set the example, with the Star Service pulling the commissions of its best and most experienced CMO's (just about all who deserved that description), and discharging all noncommissioned Morthan medics, too.
His small vessel had been making runs from various bases and colonial worlds to Mortha ever since, escorting larger ships that carried the deportees. That was what the legal paperwork called them. “Deportees,” because Morthans were aliens; natives of the planet Mortha. Not Humans—although after generations of cross-breeding between the two species, a “pure Morthan” was about as rare a creature as a hen with teeth—and therefore not true Commonwealth citizens, after all.
The Kesrans seldom left their watery planet, by choice. The Sestians (native to Sestus 4 only; Sestus 3's inhabitants were Human settlers) thought themselves superior to everyone and everything else in the universe, and had trouble remembering that all Humans weren't their virtual slaves ... like those wretched Humans, wildlings all, who worked their mines for them. One such Human, Randall Kane remembered, had run away from his Sestian masters to serve as an ordinary crewman on a Star Service vessel; and parleyed that, over the years that followed, into first a field commission and then a chief engineer's berth on the Archangel. The starship where Rachel Kane had been XO until she accidentally bred with him, the wildling Daniel Archer who was her colleague, shipmate, and acknowledged lover. After which Archer somehow helped her escape.
That part Randall, as a male gen, didn't pretend to understand. But he couldn't blame Rachel for running away, or her lover for helping her do it. Nor did he blame the Morthans, both those who'd always lived on the world below and those he'd had a part (albeit a not especially willing one) in forcing to return, for doing what they were doing today, at last. Although he could not comprehend how they were doing it, since he'd always been told—and until now, had never had reason to doubt—that Morthans could not do other sapient beings harm.
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