by Nancy Kress
SueLin burst into the room. “Grandfather! I need to talk to you right now!”
“No,” Sloan said. “Later.”
“No, now! That bitch Evelyn Jemison cheated on the bird competition, she used illegal genemods, I should have won but she—”
A bird competition. Birds. Sloan looked at his oldest grandchild, an adult but acting like an adolescent, spending all her time breeding and competing songbirds. Interested in nothing but her own petty triumphs. SueLin, the daughter of Sloan’s estranged daughter Candace, also weak and ineffectual. SueLin, heir to the Peregoy Corporation after Sophia, who was childless. At one time, Sloan had hoped that Sophia would marry Luis Martinez. By now there were supposed to be plenty of Peregoy heirs, sturdy and smart and capable of looking after three hundred million people on three worlds. Instead, something—Sloan didn’t know what—had ended the romance between Martinez and Sophia, and a vacuum-sled accident had taken Sloan’s son Jonathan before he’d fathered any children. That left SueLin and her five-year-old brother, who could turn out to be anything but so far did not look promising.
Sloan made the decision he’d been contemplating for the last year. Martinez had once mentioned that Roman emperors and Norman kings had decreed their heirs, bypassing bloodlines when that seemed appropriate. Sloan was no emperor, but he had an obligation to ensure continued strong and benevolent leadership for those under his care. A sacred trust, in fact.
SueLin continued to rant about songbirds and “criminal cheating.”
Sloan said to Sophia, “Call Security. Get her out of here. And file that claim on the eleventh gate.”
Anyone else would have heard the astonishing words “eleventh gate” and seized on them. SueLin heard only “Get her out of here.” She started to curse him, including insults Sloan had never heard before. Security arrived and seized SueLin.
“You’ll regret this, you stinking old man! You can’t treat me this way! I’m a Peregoy, too, and when this is all mine—let me go, you motherfucking bastard!”
The silence after she’d been dragged from the room felt solid, as if the air were not gas but some denser form of matter. Sloan found it hard to speak. But he did.
“You’re right, Sophia. I’m going to declare war.”
• • •
Luis Martinez stood in the captain’s cabin on the PCSS Skyhawk. The porthole had been deopaqued, but Martinez ignored the view of New California turning below his ship, the wallscreen that had blanked minutes ago, the expensive but sparse furnishings of his cabin. His face furrowed with thought. Someone knocked on the door, which said, “Lieutenant Commander DiCaria.”
“Open.”
Martinez’s executive officer, Zachary DiCaria, entered and saluted. “You sent for me, sir?”
“Yes. Sit down, Zack. We have orders.”
DiCaria’s eyes gleamed, light brown against his dark skin. Martinez considered him a rising star—intelligent, loyal, and vigilant—and both of them knew it.
Martinez said, “Ten minutes ago I finished speaking with Director Peregoy. He had just finished meeting with Admiral Chernov and Defense Coordinator Clarke and is summoning the corporate Board of Directors immediately. An eleventh gate has been discovered, about a month out from Prometheus and three months from New Utah in its current position. Peregoy Corporation is claiming it. The Landrys went through first, lured the Samuel Peregoy through the gate, and blew it up. All hands lost except a scout pilot, who reported to New California. Two hours from now, the director will declare the Landry attack to be an act of war.”
For a long moment, DiCaria said nothing. Then, “What are our orders?”
Martinez knew officers, including the ancient Admiral Chernov, who maintained strict and formal distance from their staff. In this, they copied the director. Martinez, however, had always chosen a different course, and it was what had made him so valuable to Sloan Peregoy. Martinez studied his officers carefully, chose a few to trust, and worked with them closely. Not without military discipline, of course, but cultivating a two-way openness that encouraged their observations and opinions. He’d learned a lot that way. DiCaria had been promoted quickly in part because he, in turn, cultivated the trust of the NCOs aboard ship. What DiCaria learned, he passed on to Martinez.
Not that the director was wrong in his basic approach to the worlds in his care. Sloan understood the necessity of preventing the ecological and scientific disasters that had destroyed Terra: climate change, resource exhaustion, species extinction, desperate and annihilating biowarfare. Avoiding those on the limited land surfaces of the three Peregoy worlds required unrelenting control of the economy, the population, and science. In addition, people had to be planned for, including those in each generation who turned out to be helpless or stupid or ruthlessly exploitive. The first were cared for by the corporate state. The second were helped to simple jobs that paid enough to maintain themselves with dignity. The third were stopped, harshly if necessary. The result of so many obligations was the vast set of interlocking rules that regulated the Peregoy planets. Too strict rules, some said, but they worked. Mostly.
Martinez went one step further. Unlike the director, Martinez read a lot of Terran history. He understood, if Sloan did not, that the populace’s reactions to rules were also important. Sometimes, those reactions were critical.
He said to DiCaria, “We leave at sixteen hundred hours to guard and defend the new gate. Two other PCSS cruisers go with us, the Zeus and the Green Hills of Earth. I am Fleet Commander for this OpOrd. What I want from you, Zack, is a reading on the general attitude of the crew. They’re not getting the chance for a final leave with their families before we depart, and those on leave and too far away to return to ship will be left behind. A replacement roster is already on the way upstairs, including an officer to replace Lieutenant Jones. I’ll want your recommendation on whatever your non-coms tell you about crew attitude toward war.”
“Yes, sir. Captain—is the director firm in this? Might not meeting with the board change his thinking about…about war?”
DiCaria’s question told Martinez more than the young man suspected. It wasn’t only the crew’s attitude that Martinez needed to understand. He said crisply, “I’m only privy to what I was told. If anything changes, I’ll inform you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed.”
After DiCaria left, Martinez drew a small, e-locked box from his pocket. Sloan had sent it upstairs by special drone. The box was marked PERSONAL. “Don’t open it,” Sloan had said, “until you’re departing this new gate to return to New California.” It wasn’t like Sloan to be mysterious, and Martinez would have sworn that the old man’s face on viewscreen had looked embarrassed. Why?
He locked the box into the safe in his cabin and turned to the viewscreen. New California’s one continent was just turning into sight. Martinez gazed at the continent below, its lush green forests and three cities and outlying islands in the clear blue sea. He’d been born on Linda Vista Island, to one of three families with a license to colonize that lovely, semi-tropical Eden. His parents were buried there.
They’d been basix farmers, so inept at farming that their agribusiness had grown smaller and more in debt each year, until finally it failed completely. It shouldn’t have; the firm that had purchased it had doubled, then tripled, crop yield over the next few years. The fault had lain not in the farm but the farmers. Both had been disinclined for work or sacrifice. They had followed pleasurable pursuits instead, harmless enough but distracting, until finally they’d distracted themselves into the relative poverty that Peregoy Corporation safety nets permitted, and their teenage son along with them.
He’d hated them for that, for years. Only time had brought him to appreciate the one sacrifice they had made: to send him to spacer college. He had done well enough to forgive them, and eventually he’d made their last years happy with a small, perpetually messy house by the North Ocean, where they had partied too much and bragged to everyone abou
t their wonderful son.
Martinez owed everything to Sloan Peregoy. He’d come to Sloan’s notice in college; Sloan had always had an eye for talent. Sloan had mentored him, promoted him, made sure the promotions were both deserved and honored by jealous colleagues. Martinez could not say that he and Sloan were close; Sloan got close to no one except his daughter Sophia. Martinez was well aware that at one time, Peregoy had hoped he would marry Sophia and produce better heirs than Sophia’s sister’s kids, never mind that Sophia was twenty years older than Martinez. Her eggs had been frozen, and probably still were, since Sophia never showed any interest in him or any other mate, male or female. Martinez had married Amy instead. Since her death, there had been no one else, and never would be. He was married to the fleet now.
But…war.
Gods and Rationalists help us all.
7
* * *
GALT
Philip had been on Galt before, but not like this.
On his first two trips, he’d been a student, once working his way caring for life-support algae on a creaky and antiquated cargo ship, once as an intern with a summer biology expedition to a dying ecosystem on an outlying island. Both times he been at the bottom of the status ladder, doing whatever no one else wanted to do. Both times he’d slept rough and eaten when and what he could. He hadn’t minded; he’d been twenty.
The third trip, three years ago, had been to attend an environmental conference at the university. By that time, Philip had a job, the small inheritance from his parents, and a girlfriend. None of those things had lasted, and the trip had been just one more lackluster round of endless theoretical papers, almost totally divorced from actual environments. Accommodations, though not as crude as on a freighter, had been pretty basic.
Rachel Landry’s personal ship, the Landry Libertarian Alliance Security Corps ship Blue Flame, had staterooms, crews’ quarters, a chef, robocleaners, a live steward. There was a billiard table, a game he’d never heard of, which wasted the cubic feet of an entire small room. Philip turned out to be surprisingly good at it. He played with off-duty crew. Rachel had no time for him, presumably running the Landry worlds from her quarters. The night before planetfall, Philip got slightly drunk with the steward, who was very drunk.
“So,” Johnston said, lining up his shot, “what’re you shooing…doing here?”
Impossible to explain. What could Philip say: “I’m a seeker, looking for the fifth level of reality, the true substrate of the universe, the panconsciousness”? True but incomprehensible, sometimes even to him. He merely smiled.
“Thought so,” Johnston said, with deep satisfaction. “If I looked like you… But isn’t she a little old? Hope you’re getting paid enough.”
Philip blinked. “Uh, no…Rachel…we’re not lovers! I’m a biologist.”
“All biology, isn’t it?” Johnston missed his shot by at least six inches.
Philip thought of walking out. He thought of slamming his cue stick against the table, possibly breaking one, or both. He thought of using this opportunity to obtain information.
He said as he aimed for the number four ball, “I hear there’s trouble on Galt.”
“Oh, you don’t koe…know the half of it. Protests all over the damn planet.”
“What about?”
“Not enough jobs, no government help…well, hardly no government, is there? Dawg eat dawg. I tell you, I’m damn lucky to have this job.” Johnston’s face clouded; a fear had penetrated the fog of his inebriated brain. “You aren’t going to tell her what I said, are you? I know you two aren’t fucking.”
“Won’t say a thing, I promise,” Philip said, from equal parts pity and distaste.
“Thanks. Hey, what part of Pogyglot…Polyglot you from?”
Philip sank the four and aimed at the ten. “Albion.”
“Don’t know it. They got real government there, that helps people to jobs?”
“Sort of. Halfway between Landry libertarianism and Peregoy corporate dictatorship.”
Johnston spat on the deck. “Fucking Peregoys. We should blast ’em all to hell.”
Philip straightened up from the table. This was unexpected. “Why?”
“Why? Because they want to take every little thing we got, that’s why!” He rammed the cue ball so hard it careened across the table and leapt off. “Aw, game’s over. Gotta go. You won’t…you know, say anything to her?”
“No. I promised. I—”
The captain’s voice cut him off, booming throughout the ship. “This is the captain speaking. Six weeks ago, a Peregoy Corporation cruiser on an exploration mission was accidentally destroyed in deep space, and New California has issued a declaration of war against the Landry Libertarian Alliance. I repeat, we are now at war. Within the hour, CEO Landry will issue a statement to the citizens of Galt, Rand, and New Hell. As of now, this ship will assume wartime duties, regulations, and security. All crew, report immediately to the wardroom.”
The steward, instantly sober, said, “Aw, shit.”
Philip felt stunned. Wartime regulations and duties? The Landrys had such things in place, ready to go “as of now”? Did that mean war had been anticipated? Had Rachel expected this?
And why had a Peregoy cruiser, rather than a much smaller research ship, been on an exploration mission? Exploring what?
The only person who could answer those questions was Rachel, and Philip understood that he had no chance of getting time with her now. Even finding Tara would be secondary to war. Wherever Tara had gone, she wasn’t…
All at once, he had a suspicion of where she might be. The suspicion grew—not enough to fight his way into Rachel’s sanctum, but still a definite possibility. What should he do with it?
And what would now happen to him, marooned on Galt with little money and no assistance from the woman who had just become the commander-in-chief of a private navy at war?
• • •
Philip needn’t have worried. An officer met him at the departure lock with a credit chip, an address, and a hasty message from Rachel: “Give this recording to Dr. Hampden at Galt University, the Institute for Brain Research.” Rachel hadn’t forgotten him.
He took a maglev from the spaceport to the university. Life had undoubtedly been altered drastically in the Landry fleet, in the offices of power, at unseen military bases. But even though the announcement of war had been made hours ago, life in the city seemed more affected by civil unrest than by any fear of attack.
Three years ago, he’d seen poverty, disaffection, and addiction to the tempting array of street drugs that masked poverty and disaffection for a few hours. However, the city now looked tenfold worse. From the train window he saw people, thin and sunken-eyed, camped on littered sidewalks. Some seemed to be families with children. In a park a group of protestors marched around twelve-foot-tall holosign: GIVE US JOBS! The holosign flickered, shone brightly again, then abruptly vanished.
The man in the next seat looked up from his tablet and snorted. “Parasites can’t even protest well.”
The train hurtled beyond the press of buildings, past fields dotted with litter and cheap foamcast tents. Philip leaped to his feet. “Oh my God!”
In the middle distance, two women ran toward the maglev. As Philip watched in horror, they threw themselves in front of the train. In an instant they were gone, and a lake of dirty water flashed past. Philip demanded of the man, “Did you see that? Those women killed themselves!”
“Martyrs to the cause.” His lip curled.
“What do you mean?”
The man looked at him more closely. “You’re not from Galt.”
“No. Polyglot.”
“Not a good time to be a tourist, with war just declared.”
“I’m not a—what did you mean, ‘martyrs’?”
“These are all refugees from Rand. They came here expecting the unearned hand-outs they couldn’t get there, and since we don’t support parasites who won’t work, they try to manipulate publi
c opinion with these public suicides. That little stunt was being carefully filmed, you can be sure of that, and the film will be used as propaganda. Which will backfire, of course.”
“But if they want jobs—”
“They don’t, no matter what they say publicly. What they want is for those of us who do work to support them. That won’t happen.” He went back to his tablet.
Philip hated him too much to say aloud what he was thinking: War will create more jobs. It always did, throughout history. He looked at the man’s clean-shaven face, smug even in repose, and felt slightly sick. If Rachel hadn’t, even in the midst of crisis, remembered Philip, he might have been in the same position as those refugees, and just as subject to the supercilious cruelty of people like this.
Whose basic ideas of total self-reliance Rachel presumably shared, promoted, ruled by.
By the time the train stopped at the university, Philip was in an internal rage of social indignation, fear, and hunger. If it were possible, he would leave Galt immediately and forget this stupid idea of brain implants. Since a brand-new war ban on unnecessary travel made it impossible, he found a dining hall, ate, and went to look for Dr. Hampden.
“That way,” a hurrying student said, pointing. “Can’t miss it.”
“Oh, you have wrong directions,” another said fifteen minutes later. “You go through that building there…wait, I’ll walk you there.”
Oddly, this calmed him down. These students might be heartless Libertarians, but they behaved like all other students he’d known, and had been himself: willing to help, courteous to a stranger. And the campus was beautiful, shaded by Galt’s native trees like giant ferns, bright with beds of genemod flowers, glowing in late afternoon light from the sun. It glinted off the plastiglass windows, turned the foamcast walls to mellow gold, suffused the warm air with the spicy scents of flowers. Still, he was aware that only those who could afford the fees attended university. Hired security forces kept out those who could not.
Tara Landry had turned her back on all this beauty and protection to go to Zuhause University on Polyglot, a much more diverse and raucous college. Philip wasn’t surprised.