The Eleventh Gate

by Nancy Kress

  If only he had some word of Luis Martinez! Was he still alive and on his way home? Or had he been trapped on the wrong side of the eleventh gate and died there of starvation? Sloan couldn’t bear to think that. If Sloan’s son Jonathan had lived, he might now be just as desirable an ally as Martinez would have been. Might yet be. An ally against both the Landrys and against—

  No. Don’t even think that.

  Appalled at himself, Sloan flung open the flyer door and climbed out. Chavez followed close behind. The meadow, the only flat place on the tiny Jabina Island, was filled with bright flowers. Beyond, the sea sparkled in sunlight. It was beautiful, remote, impossible to leave except by air.

  Security advanced to meet them. The entire meadow was shielded; Sloan’s wrister gave a small bleep of protest as it died. SueLin was not allowed electronics of any kind and neither were her guards, lest she figure out a way to steal one. There was a transmitter hidden somewhere on the mountain that filled most of the island, but SueLin never went outside alone.

  The cabin looked comfortable, with one large common room, a dorm for the guards, a room for SueLin, storage and kitchen. Shelves held books, games, a holo player and hundreds of film cubes.

  Sloan said, “My granddaughter?”

  “Out hiking, sir, with two guards. She should be back soon. Assistant Director Peregoy transmitted only half an hour ago that you were arriving.”

  “And you have no way to tell SueLin’s guards that I’ve arrived?”

  “No, sir. Sorry, sir. But Ms. Peregoy is never gone long.”

  Not a hiker. Not a reader. No birds to breed. She must be so bored.

  Sloan filled in the time by inspecting everything, asking questions, learning what he already expected: SueLin was being treated well and behaving badly. The security guard had a purpling bruise on the side of his face; probably SueLin had hit him with something. Sloan didn’t ask.

  She erupted through the cabin door and, to Sloan’s dismay, flung herself at his feet and clasped his knees. “Grandfather, please, please get me out of here! I won’t do anything, I promise, I won’t even talk to anyone! Just take me home!”

  “Get up, SueLin. Have some dignity.”

  It sounded colder than he intended, but distaste overrode compassion. No Peregoy should act so craven, not ever. He was embarrassed for her, and for himself, in front of the guards.

  His coldness, or her own fury, sent her leaping to her feet. “Dignity! How am I supposed to have any fucking dignity when I’m a prisoner in this fucking place? Are you going to take me home or not?”

  “No. I’m sorry, but I can’t. The—”

  “You mean you won’t! You and that cunt Sophia!” She beat on him with her fists. A guard pulled her away and carefully pinned her arms. SueLin flailed, spat at Sloan, and started to cry.

  Horrified, Sloan wiped the spittle off his tunic and spoke as calmly as he could. “SueLin, the protestors have made you a symbol of their so-called ‘oppression.’ They would use you to whip up violence for their illegal demands, might even kidnap you for ransom. They seek to harm all the Peregoys, including you. Don’t you understand? Control of New California is at stake here.”

  “I don’t care! I want to go home! Take me home!”

  She was a child. She was a danger to Peregoy Corporation. She was a completely unfit heir to everything generations of Peregoys had built.

  “I can’t,” he said gently and he left, more shaken than he wanted to admit, followed out the door by her shouted and foul curses.

  In the flyer, he sat for a long moment before saying to the pilot, “Take off now.”

  Five minutes in the air, Chavez said, “We’re headed the wrong way, sir.”

  “No, we’re not. We’re flying to Horton Island. To the labor camp.”

  The bodyguard’s face hardened, which answered one of Sloan’s questions. Sloan watched Chavez weigh his choices. He was Sophia’s man, and Sophia had told him to bring Sloan home. But Sloan had substituted his own pilot for Sophia’s; the flyer was in the air and attacking the pilot would be dangerous; Sloan was still CEO. Chavez scowled but said nothing.

  Sloan said quietly, “Contact my daughter, if you like. Record anything you choose. But don’t interfere with me.”

  Horton Island, the top of a volcano that had erupted seventy years ago—Sloan remembered the eruption—consisted of rock and hardy scrub around a lake-filled caldera, isolated in the vast ocean. All food and supplies had to be come in by air or boat. As they approached the island, a cargo drone flew low and parachutes floated down several large, canvas-wrapped bundles.

  Smart. Sophia hadn’t needed guards for this place. There was no way to attack the drones, no wood to build rafts, no possibility of escape. Low, crude shelters dotted the island, built of parachute cloth and scrub wood. Sloan watched figures run toward the new drops. God, it must be constant warfare down there. Unregulated competition for food, women, control.

  It was not.

  “Unknown flyer, come in,” said a woman’s voice over the flyer dashboard, startling Sloan.

  “They have a transmitter down there?”

  “No, sir. That was a wrister transmission…we’ll be out of range in a minute.”

  “Circle back and keep circling, as low as is safe. Open a response channel. I want to talk to her.”

  Chavez shifted uneasily beside Sloan. Sloan ignored him. The pilot said, “Horton Island, this is the flyer above you. Are you receiving?”

  “Yes. Who are you?”

  Sloan leaned forward, speaking loudly from the back seat. “This is a representative of Peregoy Corporation. Are you—”

  “I recognize your voice. Sloan Peregoy.” And then, “So the gates are open again.”

  She was quick. Sloan said, “Who are you?”

  “Hannah Kruer, United Citizens for Responsible Government, sentenced here two months ago by your thugs, Sloan. What do you want now? Aren’t starvation rations punishment enough, or do you intend on taunting us while you starve us?”

  Sloan said nothing, waiting to hear more. The figures far below opened the parachute bundles and began carrying the contents to the largest of the makeshift shelters.

  “I know what you want,” Hannah said. “You want us to kill each other over what you send. That’s why you include one special thing in each shipment, isn’t it? To tempt us to fight over it. Well, it’s not working. We share and share alike, Sloan. We’ve set up fair ways of distributing food, supplies, and labor. We govern ourselves, with free speech and equal votes, free from conscription and oppression from you and your daughter’s dictatorship. Free from Peregoy surveillance and control and punishment. No matter what you do to us!”

  Sloan said to the pilot, “Leave now.”

  He had given his people everything, protected them, cared for them. And now this.

  Yet…starvation rations? Sophia should not have done that. He would change the order. Sophia would have to give way. He was still CEO.

  • • •

  Some days, Sloan felt his age, but not as he’d imagined. He’d always thought that very old age would bring arthritis, failing organs, fatigue. None of that had happened, perhaps thanks to the rejuv treatments and excellent, continuous medical care. Except for some stiffness when he woke in the morning, his body went on as usual. Not as when he was thirty, of course, but without staging any major rebellions. Nor did his mind seem less agile or less involved with Peregoy Corporation.

  No, what age was giving him was a strange, irritating sense of speculation. He pondered things he’d never thought about before. What if there really existed life after death? What did a human life mean? Was it only a personal narrative, ending with death, or did it mean something more?

  Such thoughts annoyed him. They were irrelevant. Yet they intruded anyway, and at strange moments: in the shower, as his dinner arrived from the kitchens, as he gazed out the window of his office at the garden bots trimming genemod flowers beside the Peregoy Corporation walls.
<
br />   There were no protestors out beyond the walls, not anymore. Sophia had seen to that. And yet Sloan knew they were still there, planning and waiting. His private intel network hadn’t been able to locate their leader, one Scott Berman. Had Sophia found him? And done—what?

  “Background research,” he said to the wallscreen. “Most recent photo and voice, compact text. Hannah Kruer, citizen of New California.”

  There were three Hannah Kruers, but one was a child and one almost as old as Sloan. When he’d chosen the third woman, the screen displayed her most recent photo. Pale skin and dark, very intense eyes. Unsmiling; this was a police photo. The wall said, “Hannah Marie Kruer, twenty-eight, born in Capital City, maintenance engineer at Tennessee Province Water Facility, no recorded marriage, no children. Arrested three months ago for treason and conspiracy to murder. Sent to Horton’s Island. More?”

  “No. Records of all persons sent to Horton Island, photos and police charges only.”

  Cameron Struppa, treason and conspiracy to murder and treason.

  Jean Antoinette Palmquist, treason and conspiracy to murder.

  Aliya Mosolf, treason and conspiracy to murder.

  John Stephen Hughes, treason and conspiracy to murder.

  Sherica Ann Miller, treason and conspiracy to murder.

  Christopher Daniel Larsson, treason and conspiracy to murder.

  Jackson Victor—

  The door opened and Sophia entered. “Father?”

  Sloan didn’t blank the wallscreen. She would know what he’d been doing, anyway.

  “Come in, Sophia. Do you have the reports from the New Yosemite mines?”

  “No, not yet. This is about something else.”

  She was quietly, definitively, furious. Nothing showed on her beautiful, impassive face, but Sloan knew. He had a sudden memory of Sophia at four, guilty of some childish infraction, feeling she’d been unjustly accused, facing her mother with her little face still and her thin body quivering with anger.

  This, too, came with old age—the past was so much more vivid in memory than it had seemed when it occurred.

  “What is it, Sophia?” Sloan said, although he already knew.

  Her pretty voice was calm, reasonable. “You countermanded my rations order for the political prisoners on Horton Island.”

  “I did. You’ve removed them from society and they can do no further harm. There’s no point in further punishment, which can’t even act as a general deterrent since the prisoners have no chance for outside communications.”

  “The point is the punishment. But more important, by overriding my orders, you eroded my authority with our employees.”

  “I think, my dear, that you’ve gone a long way toward eroding mine.”

  They stared at each other, neither blinking. Sloan spoke first. “Sophia, have every one—all hundred and two—of your prisoners really committed both treason and conspiracy to murder? Murder whom?”

  “You. Me. Peregoy Corporation.”

  “I can’t find trial records.”

  “There are no trials in wartime, Father. Treason is punishable by death. The prisoners are lucky I didn’t have them executed.”

  “We have no protocol for wartime.”

  “Precisely why I had to pull from the database for old Earth. But you’re evading my point. By overriding my orders, you’re creating confusion in the reporting chain. You and I can’t issue separate orders, and you’ve always left security to me.”

  Which was why Sophia now controlled the police. Sloan didn’t say that aloud. “You yourself just said that wartime is different. Didn’t Terra invest wartime control in a single commander-in-chief?”

  “Of the military, yes, and of course that’s you.”

  “Sophia,” he said abruptly, “Let’s not fence like this. Not you and me. Strikes are illegal and I understand your arresting those who lead them, especially with the factories working so feverishly to produce more ships. But illegality is not treason, and I’m having trouble believing that every single one of your prisoners planned to murder me. Peregoy Corporation cannot be ‘murdered.’ I won’t free the Horton Island prisoners because you’re right, that would undermine your authority. But they will receive enough food, the basic necessities of life, and a volunteer medical team if I can find one willing to be marooned there. Are we agreed?”

  “Yes,” she said, “and now I’ll try to get those reports for you.”

  She left. But Sloan had seen that one tiny quiver of her rigid body.

  He returned to the list of Horton Island “traitors.” The name he looked for, Scott Berman, still wasn’t there. He didn’t search for it in the entire d-base. Sophia would know.

  He sat a long time at his desk, his face in his wrinkled hands. How had it come to this? How?

  39

  * * *

  GALT

  Rachel dreamed of Philip Anderson, which was odd because she never had before. In her dream, Philip stood before her, a handsome young man on the blue sand of her beach compound. He smiled and then began to melt, oozing into the sand until only his lips remained, still smiling in horrible disembodiment, until they also dissolved to become just more grains of sand. Rachel tried to scream but couldn’t, no sound would come and—

  “Rachel, wake up, we’re here,” Annelise said. Gently she shook her grandmother’s shoulder. Rachel pulled herself upright in the back seat of the flyer. Her bodyguard and pilot sat in the front. Below the flyer, the refugee camp sprawled in pearly dawn light.

  Caitlinville, they called it, although Caitlin herself hated the name. Rachel had received word from Veatch that “the antique you seek” was not on Rand and “when you receive this, I’ll already be on my way.” That was worrisome. But, then, what was not? Rachel shook sleep from her eyes, and both Veatch and Philip from her brain. She and Annelise had a job to do.

  Annelise said, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine Annelise. I’m just old. The old often nap. Now let’s get on with it. And be grateful Jane isn’t here.”

  They could not have undertaken to send the refugees home to Rand without Jane’s cooperation. She controlled the fleet. Rachel knew that the only reason Jane had consented was that the major shipyards were on Rand, closer to vital mining operations on New Hell. Nobody except miners lived on New Hell, of course, but the rare ore found there were critical to building spaceships. Jane’s massive program of shipbuilding was stabilizing Rand’s economy, shattered by plague and the people fleeing plague. Jane needed the refugees back to work on her new fleet of warships, and she needed them badly enough to temporarily divert six cruisers and six huge cargo ships to ferry them all home.

  “No protestors,” Annelise said with satisfaction.

  “Nothing to protest about,” Rachel said. The uses of war, she thought, cynically, regretfully, with acceptance. She climbed out of the flyer.

  The refugees of Caitlinville were ready. The plan was to ferry them in batches up to the ships in orbit, using every smaller craft that could be mustered. Hadn’t there been some wartime operation on old Earth when small boats had carried thousands of soldiers to safety somewhere? Caitlin would know. She read Terran history.

  The refugees had organized themselves into groups. As Caitlinville emptied, refugees from less-favored camps arrived to await their turn at re-emigration, or whatever the term was. Some had credit enough to arrive by maglev; the poorest trudged along with their possessions on their backs, in hand carts, or—for a lucky few—on carrybots. The refugees looked ragged, thin, exhausted. Some had walked astonishing distances for days, families sticking together. In some ways, Rand was even more fiercely Libertarian than Galt, and families replaced government in caring for the old, the young, the sick and disabled. Nothing was more important than family.

  “Here come the transfer vessels,” Annelise said.

  At least a hundred small craft began arriving, their landings directed by a robocontroller. The vessels ringed the camp. Groups of
refugees moved toward each for retinal scans. It was all orderly, measured, a perfect reflection of Annelise’s orderly mind, even though Annelise hadn’t wanted to do this at all. But Rachel was CEO, and to Annelise, an organization reporting chart trumped all.

  Rachel said, “You’ve done a wonderful job, dear heart.”

  “Thank you. I—uh oh. Here she comes.”

  A flyer plummeted from the sky, landing not in Annelise’s careful ring but meters from Rachel’s own flyer. Her bodyguard tensed and drew his weapon, sheathing it when only Jane leapt from the flyer, her elaborate uniform spotless, her beautiful face maroon with rage.

  Rachel said to Annelise, “Let me.”

  Rachel had expected this. She hadn’t exactly told Jane that this operation was not being paid for by loans to the refugees, at a good rate of interest that would have enriched Jane’s war chest and strapped the refugees for years. Nor had Rachel not told Jane that. She’d let Jane assume it, knowing that sooner or later her granddaughter would learn the truth. Obviously she had. Now there would be screaming about robbing the Freedom Enterprises coffers, hobbling the war effort, betraying the principles of Libertarianism by unearned handouts, setting horrific precedents that only fed the baseless grabbings of the protest movement, etc.

  Rachel was wrong.

  “They did it,” she said through teeth that barely parted to speak. “The fucking shithole bastards did it.”

  Annelise, who never liked rough language, winced. Before she could say anything, Rachel laid a warning hand on Annelise’s arm. A long shiver ran down Rachel’s spine. Jane was not screaming or even shouting. Her face had purpled, but her voice was steady and deep-space cold, her body so still that the insignia on her chest didn’t even rise and fall with her breathing.

  Rachel said, “Who did what, Jane?”

  “The Peregoys destroyed my biowarfare facility on Prometheus.”