by Nancy Kress
Everyone on the bridge fell silent, the uncomfortable silence of people whose knowledge of the world had just undergone a tectonic shift. Finally Martinez said, “Course for New Utah.”
“Yes, sir.”
Anderson, was that you?
Ridiculous.
But—
30
* * *
EVERYWHERE
Just as the Observer is aware of the consciousnesses that are nodes in Its field, it is aware of nodes in the other fields. Concentrated matter, moving through spacetime, carries radiating nodes. The Observer has lost the word—“weapons”—but not the concept. The radiating concentrations of matter are dangerous. They can destroy the smaller nodes of consciousness. They can destroy all of them.
All quanta has been entangled since the Big Bang. The Observer is entangled with everything else, including the gates.
The Observer keeps the ships with radiating nodes from reaching places where many many nodes of consciousness are gathered. He closes the gates, curves spacetime within them just enough that those ships cannot pass through, and other matter can.
Do the Others, who are the gates, even realize? Perhaps not. They do nothing.
The small nodes of consciousness can—and do—destroy each other locally. But they cannot attack whole planets.
31
* * *
GALT
The first call came when Caitlin Landry was at the refugee camp. It was the second call that would change the world yet again, but the first one that hurt her the most.
“Ms. Landry! Ms. Landry!” The children had climbed all over her as soon as she emerged from her flyer at the edge of camp. Their parents always hung back, nodding politely, their faces each a miniature war between gratitude for her charity and shame at having to accept it. After all, these refugees from the plague on Rand were also Libertarians. Or had been.
As she had once been.
“Jenny! Pedro! Zack! How are you?”
“What did you bring us? What, what, what?”
“More vaccines,” she said solemnly, and their little faces fell. Caitlin laughed and pulled the sweets from her pocket. “Here, and here, and—no, only one, don’t be greedy! Jenny, did you figure out multiplication yet? Pedro, how is your dog?”
“It died,” Pedro said, and burst into tears.
“Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry.” She knelt and gathered him into her arms while the other children, more every minute as news of her arrival spread, moved back a few paces and stared at the ground, clutching their candy.
Caitlin hoped the dog hadn’t died of anything that could infect humans. She needed to talk to Dr. Katz.
As Pedro’s mother claimed him, Caitlin straightened, aware that her tunic and pants were of a much better quality than anyone else’s, aware of her privilege in this least privileged place on Galt. Throughout her childhood it had been her looks, not her privilege, that she had struggled with, but she’d long ago made peace with the parental voices in her head: “Annelise, Celia, and Jane are the beauties, but Caitlin is the smartest.” Even Gran had been mildly surprised that, after getting her degrees in virology, Caitlin had proved an able president of Galt University. Caitlin had never done any research worth publishing, but now she had sought out and sponsored those who could. Julie Hampden, for instance. It was enough. Caitlin was content with her life.
Or had been. Until Tara had discovered the new gate, until Philip Anderson had turned up as Julie’s research subject, until the plague on Rand had marooned tens of thousands of refugees on Galt. Always honest with herself, Caitlin admitted that part of her contentment had come, hatefully, from her knowledge that her sisters were not content. Schadenfreude—which meant the old competition among them was only dormant in her, not dead.
Caitlin knew about her sisters what they didn’t know about themselves: that they were desperate. Every one.
Annelise, the heir, desperate beneath her outward calm to do everything right, carry out every task without a mistake, to be always perfect.
Jane, desperate for war, an outlet for the rage she carried as the most difficult and least beloved child of her father, her mother, her grandmother. It’s not fair! she’d sobbed as a child when someone, anyone, tried to correct her about anything, but she’d never sobbed since childhood, abandoning all fairness along the way.
Celia, desperate to get away from a household mourning both parents, seizing on the chance to run Landry mining interests on New Hell, marrying there, and never, not once, returning to Galt.
Tara, so desperately and insanely in love—or what she called love—with Philip Anderson that Caitlin sometimes thought it had unbalanced Tara’s fragile mind.
And she, Caitlin? She didn’t believe in perfection, in war, in geographical escape. Romance, she supposed, was possible, but aside from a few early infatuations, it hadn’t touched her. Worst of all, she was no longer sure she believed in the guiding beacon of every Landry for five generations, libertarianism. Once, when there had been enough new land and untouched resources and limited automation on new worlds, it had made sense to her for people to take full responsibility for their own lives and the work that supported those lives.
But now there was little unclaimed land or resources, much automation, not enough jobs. The economic situation on Galt had taken an abrupt plunge with the loss of interplanetary trade through the gates; enterprises were laying off people. There was no economic room for the remaining refugees from Rand, and now no way to send them home.
She’d first gone to the refugee camp seven months ago, horrified by the suicides of two women under a maglev and then by the plight of innocent children. She’d expected to feel scorn for their parents—violent, dirty, neglectful of the kids they’d brought into the world. What she’d found were people, many highly educated, desperate to work. They kept their kids and their inadequate shacks as clean as possible. They went hungry so their children could eat, were vigilant to keep them from violence and thievery and cruelty. Those things existed here, thriving on desperation, but mothers and fathers did all they could to shield their children from becoming either victims or perpetrators. Caitlin had been surprised, and then ashamed of her surprise.
She had used her own money to set up a clinic, buy construction bots, build a school and a waste treatment center, dig wells. The refugees, once the initial capital was provided to them, were the builders, diggers, teachers, some of the doctors. Caitlin paid them. The refugees thanked her, admired her, resented her for her wealth, and named the camp “Caitlinville,” which she hated. She also hired vessels whenever she could to ferry refugees home. But no matter how many she got off Galt, Caitlinville filled up again as word spread to other camps. More people clamored for her help than she had help to give.
I am becoming Samuel Peregoy, she thought. But she didn’t know what else to do. And Caitlinville was only one camp; she didn’t have the personal fortune to aid all the other refugees on Galt. Annelise had refused to help. Jane and Celia were light-years away, their assets frozen.
So she’d raided the Freedom Enterprises coffers, knowing that both her grandmother and Annelise would discover the “theft.”
Caitlin said to Pedro’s mother, “I’m sorry about the dog. I never should have brought it for him.”
“It’s all right,” she said, lifting her sobbing little boy to her hip. “He wanted it so much. We are grateful for…for everything.” Stumbling over the words, not looking Caitlin in the eye. On Rand, Caitlin remembered, this woman had been an engineer.
“Can you tell me where Dr. Katz is right now? At the clinic?”
“No. Someone fell and broke a leg on D Street and he went there.”
“Thank you.” Caitlin smiled and strode toward D Street, knowing she was as glad to get away from Pedro’s mother as the woman was from her. Who knew that dependence could be such an emotional burden to everybody on both sides of the equation?
Her wrister rang. Julie Hampden. And there, right on Caitlin�
�s wrist, was another burden. She didn’t know if she believed her grandmother’s mystic tale of Philip Anderson closing the gates. Certainly Julie didn’t believe it (“It was a deep-brain implant, for fuck’s sake, not an elevation to godhood.”)
“Hello, Julie.”
“Caitlin, I need to see you. Immediately.”
“What about?”
“This link isn’t encrypted.”
Julie didn’t use that urgent tone lightly. Caitlin said, “All right. My office, thirty minutes.”
Caitlin returned to her flyer, landed it on the roof of the university administration building. Beyond the newly built high-voltage fence, protestors marched in their daily demonstration. There were more than yesterday. They jeered as her flyer soared over their heads.
Julie waited in Caitlin’s austere office. Under her professional composure roiled anxiety and defiance, breaking cover like whitecaps on a restless sea.
“Caitlin, there are two things you need to know. First, the university, in conjunction with its hospital, has been conducting secret research on retina transplants to defeat scan security. Five months ago we succeeded, and six transplants have been done so far. Five were recorded on Galt security records, so that nobody is getting away with false identities.” Julie bit her lip, which already looked as if it had been chewed by mice.
Caitlin, president of Galt University, said levelly, “Why didn’t I know about this?”
“It was your grandmother’s project. She didn’t want anyone to know.”
Her damn family! None of them would let the left side of her own brain know what the right side was dreaming up. Caitlin said, “Who was the sixth subject?”
“Your grandmother.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“When was this?”
Julie told her. The dates were just before her grandmother’s last trip to Polyglot, with Philip Anderson. But Rachel wouldn’t have needed a retina change to travel to Polyglot, a neutral planet. However, Sloan Peregoy had been there, and after that Philip Anderson had disappeared. Caitlin had looked for him, on Tara’s behalf.
Caitlin said, still in the same even voice that masked anger, “She’s ninety-six years old. When the hell is she going to stop scheming?”
Julie, wisely, did not answer this.
“Who was the retina donor? There must have been a donor.” It wasn’t illegal to sell your own body parts on Galt—after all, they were yours to sell—but…eyes. “Who were all the donors?”
“Legitimate deaths at the hospital, sold by the heirs. Caitlin, you must know the university wouldn’t condone anything else.”
“Apparently I didn’t know any of this.”
Julie put her hand on Caitlin’s arm. “There’s more.”
“All right. What’s the second thing? What else has the university been doing without my knowledge?”
“Not us. Not this. I only found out about it because a biologist—you remember Dr. Noah Porter?”
“Yes.” A brilliant geneticist, he had abruptly resigned from the university nearly a year ago and gone to teach at a minor college on Rand. Everyone at Galt U had been both surprised—it was a spectacular voluntary demotion—as well as relieved. Porter had been a difficult, pugnacious, perpetually dissatisfied researcher.
Julie bit her lip again before her words lurched forward. “A woman named Jenna Derov came to me this morning. She was a virologist on Rand, was here visiting her mother when the gate closed, and now, of course, she can’t go home again. Her husband and kids are on Rand. We employed her here as a lab tech, and she offered to trade information for a position at the top of any list we have for berths on the first ship back to Rand if the gates open again. She was pretty desperate, but she also…I don’t know, I believed her.”
Caitlin’s chest constricted. Whatever was coming next was not going to be good. “What did Jenna Derov tell you?”
“There’s a secret bioweapons facility on Rand, headed by Noah Porter. The goal was to create a deadly pathogen capable of infecting entire cities.”
“No,” Caitlin said instantly. “My grandmother would not do that. Secret retinal transplants, yes, but not weaponized pathogen.”
“She’s not doing it. Jane is.”
The two women stared at each other. Caitlin’s wrister rang: Annelise. Caitlin, still speechless, would have ignored the call, but Annelise used the override on all the sisters’ comms.
“Caitlin,” Annelise said, her face on the tiny screen as wide-eyed as Caitlin had ever seen her usually calm sister, “something major. Galt’s gates suddenly opened. Both of them, to Rand and Earth, and maybe also the one the Peregoys captured, to Polyglot. But they’re open only to probes and small scouts. The fleet is still experimenting, but so far no one knows what happened, or why. Rachel is flying back from her place on the coast. We’re meeting in her office at headquarters as soon as we all can get there. Are you coming?”
“Yes,” Caitlin said. The gates only partially open? What the hell could cause that?
Caitlin and Julie stared at each other. Neither spoke until Julie said, “No. Not possible.” And then, again, “Not possible.”
• • •
By the time Rachel reached headquarters, everyone knew more.
Tara had cried and begged to come with her. Rachel had soothed her granddaughter as well as she could; Tara was nowhere near ready to leave the coastal compound where Rachel had had her moved when Rachel herself had been discharged from the hospital. Also installed at the beach house were Tara’s nurses with the meds that were keeping her fragile psyche together. Rachel had told no one that Tara had started this war, but Rachel couldn’t control what Tara might, in her delicate state, blurt out to her sisters.
Rachel was not in a delicate state. Three months at the coast with rest, exercise, diet, and (except for Tara) peace, and she had recovered from her heart attack. Just yesterday she’d told Annelise that she, Rachel, was ready to resume as CEO of Freedom Enterprises. Annelise, always a stickler for the by-laws, had read the doctor’s report and agreed. Not happily, but she’d agreed. It helped that Rachel had been careful not to mention Philip Anderson, not to anyone, since the gate closings.
Do I feel guilty for using Annelise’s dutifulness against her in order to resume corporate control? No, she decided, she did not. Let Annelise think that belief in Philip had been a momentary aberration brought on by impaired oxygen flow, now fully corrected. The report from Rachel’s doctor—under, admittedly, a certain amount of pressure—had said as much, and Annelise believed it.
Rachel’s flyer hadn’t yet landed at headquarters when her wrister said, “New report, ma’am.” Captain Thayer, at the Galt-Polyglot gate. The Peregoy forces on the Galt side of the gate had long since relinquished it, under threat of starvation. Their ships now belonged to Galt. Rachel presumed that the Peregoy ships on the Polyglot side had gone to Polyglot. Before either Sloan or his formidable daughter could dispatch fresh forces to hold the gate, Jane would take it back for the Libertarian Alliance and once again Galt would control its gate to Polyglot.
“Go ahead, Captain.”
“The gates are allowing passage to scouts that carry no radiation weapons, but not to those that do. We’re going to try a larger, weaponless vessel, and then a stripped cargo ship.”
“Good. Report when ready.” Rachel kept her tone businesslike, but her mind raced wildly.
Philip. He was somehow controlling the gates. To stop the war but allow the passage of people, goods, ideas on unarmed ships? How much control did he have? Surely Philip—whatever he might be now—could not read cargo, or human speech, let alone minds. No, the most Rachel’s knowledge of physics would allow was that Philip had somehow altered the complex, entangled fields of the gate to detect and block the kinds of signals that radiation weapons, even when not in direct use, inevitably emitted. He was like a cosmic jammer, overriding only certain frequencies.
No. He was like nothing that had eve
r existed before.
There was nothing that Rachel could do about Philip. Always pragmatic, she considered the plenty she could do about Freedom Enterprises. Protestors swarmed beyond the compound perimeter, stinging like jeebees. Three days ago, violence with corporate security had cost three lives. “Two of theirs, one of ours,” Annelise had said. That was the thinking that Rachel was going to change. Everyone on Galt was going to have to realize that all three lives were “one of theirs.”
Of course, that job would have been easier before the gates reopened.
She climbed out of her flyer and took an elevator down from the roof. Her office looked exactly the same as when she had left it months ago. Annelise had evidently not used it. Here was Rachel’s curving desk, the top carved from a single slab of Galt’s beautiful mica-flecked stone. On it were two small holos on their karthwood stands. A corner of the room beneath a skylight bloomed with yellow ked flowers, native to Galt but genetically modified for fuller and longer-lasting blossoms.
Rachel’s intel said that Sloan Peregoy’s office held stuffed wolves.
Annelise and Caitlin, at the central table of gleaming wood, rose as Rachel entered. “Welcome back,” Annelise said, looking as if she were trying to mean it. Caitlin smiled, the most strained smile Rachel had ever seen from her.
Why? Caitlin had always been more interested in her university than in corporate issues. Was she upset over shortages at the refugee camp? Well, if so, Rachel’s new plans would come as a relief to this most intelligent and compassionate of the granddaughters.
“Thank you,” Rachel said. “Any word from Jane?”
“No,” Annelise said. “But I imagine she’ll link as soon as she passes through the gate from Rand. About these change in the gates—”
“Wait,” Caitlin said. “Before we talk about the gates or before Jane links, I need to tell both of you two things. Although you, Rachel, already know one of them.”