by Nancy Kress
On Prometheus? But…“How do you know?”
“I sent supply ships there, of course, as soon as the gates reopened. They retrieved a recording from an orbital probe. Two Peregoy warships bombed the site. It’s nuclear rubble. Everyone dead and the Peregoy ships have gone.”
Rachel felt vertigo swoop over her; she fought it off. Caitlin? Annelise put an arm around her and said, “What else did the recordings show?”
“Isn’t that enough? The fuckers won’t get away with this.” The mottled red was draining slowly from her face, leaving it pale as white stone. “Grandmother, I need these warships. Your refugees will have to wait.”
Rachel said, “We need to confer before you—”
“No, we don’t. I run the military. The ships are leaving.”
Annelise said, “Jane, let them take at least the first load of refugees to Rand. This camp. We’ll postpone the rest.”
“No,” Jane said.
“Yes,” Rachel said.
“No. I control the fleet and army.”
Their eyes met. So it had come, the battle she’d known was coming, known ever since the war began. This was what war did—gave the military, any military, power to topple civilian control. Had that happened often on Terra? Caitlin would know.
Where was Caitlin? Had she died in the bombing of Prometheus?
Rachel said, “Listen, Jane. I’m not going to go head-to-head with you on this, or anything else. But if you’re going to attack Peregoy gates, you need at least a day to plan with your commanders. I don’t know military strategy like you do, but I know at least that much. During that day, the ships can reach Rand, offload refugees, and return to you at Galt. Your commanders aren’t on board today, or at least not most of them, not for this safe run between two Landry worlds. Please, let’s do it this way. It’s just one day.”
Jane was silent so long that Rachel feared her refusal, even though she’d just been presented with a course of action to her own advantage. How consumed was Jane by her desire for revenge? As consumed as Tara had been by her desire for Philip?
Finally Jane said, “All right. One refugee run to Rand.”
“Yes,” Rachel said. “Good.” She would not thank this granddaughter for usurping control.
Jane turned toward her flyer. It was Annelise who asked the question Rachel should have asked.
“Wait a minute, Jane. Are you going to attack the Peregoy gates?”
Jane turned, studying her sister, and Rachel’s heart split along its seam.
No no no…
“Or,” Annelise continued—but then, Rachel had never doubted Annelise’s bravery—“are you going to attack the surface of New California? And Jane…” Annelise couldn’t get the words out.
Rachel did. “Did you have samples of your biowarfare pathogens stored someplace else besides Prometheus?”
Jane climbed into her flyer without answering, which was all the answer necessary.
Annelise whispered, “She can’t.”
Rachel knew Jane could, and would.
“Rachel—”
“We don’t know where the pathogens are. How many places. How close to Peregoy gates. We don’t know the incubation period or transmission vector or anything about the disease. And I don’t see any way to stop Jane. She’ll have given orders for her commanders to carry this out if she herself can’t.”
“But—”
“There’s only one thing we can do, Annelise.”
“What? I don’t see—”
“We can warn Sloan Peregoy.”
• • •
Sloan, Rachel knew, had returned to New California as soon as the gates reopened. Neither Rachel nor Annelise could travel to New California; they would become prisoners of war. Rachel’s emissary to Sloan would have to be a Polyglot citizen. It would have to be someone important enough for Sloan to see personally. Someone who would agree to carry an encrypted message plus the memorized encryption, without reading the message themselves.
Who?
She sat in the flyer, watching refugees methodically loaded onto small craft for ferrying up to the waiting fleet. Annelise, her bodyguards staying between her and the refugees, directed efficiently. Rachel leaned back against the seat, closed her eyes, and let her mind drift. Sometimes that worked.
Fifteen minutes later, a name wafted into her mind: Dr. David Darter.
He’d been the physician who’d attended her during her heart attack on Polyglot. Head of cardiology at Edward Jenner Hospital, he had nonetheless altered his schedule to visit her twice a day—she was, after all, Rachel Landry, CEO of Freedom Enterprises and head of the Landry Libertarian Alliance. They’d talked. He’d been ambitious, yes, a clear climber up the medical-status mountain, but he’d also struck her as an ethical man. Just before her discharge, he’d interrupted his own advice on diet and rest to say abruptly, “You could end this stupidity between Landrys and Peregoys, you know, before it escalates into outright war.”
She’d resented his presumptuousness. “Really? You do understand that was why I came to Polyglot, don’t you?”
He’d ignored her sarcastic tone. “Yes. It was the right action. Do it again. When you’re strong enough, go to New California and bargain with the Peregoys.” He’d hesitated a moment and then added, “With the director, not his daughter.”
That had caught Rachel’s interest; it implied he knew something about Sophia Peregoy, maybe something new. But before she could carefully pursue this, he stood and said sharply, “Follow my directions on rest, diet, and medication, Ms. Landry,” and left. Later that day, Rachel had begun the arduous trip home.
Sloan Peregoy might see the doctor who’d saved Rachel Landry’s life and now said he had important information for New California. Dr. Darter would probably not be in danger; Sloan would vet the hell out of him and conclude that this man was not in a position to be of further use. Still, there would be some risk. Would Darter do it?
She would have to trust him to not use the encryption key, which he would have to memorize in order to read the encrypted message himself. A Polyglot doctor who knew that a deadly pathogen might be loose in the Eight Worlds…his first response would be to notify the Council of Nations, who would prohibit all ships, cargo, and people from entering Polyglot. Not that Polyglot had anything like the warships or military to enforce a sweeping, all-out embargo, but people would die trying. So would Rachel just be escalating the war?
She couldn’t use Dr. Darter for this mission. Too many unknowns.
But she had no one else.
Back and forth she went, her mind plodding from yes to no, until she had exhausted herself without moving a single muscle, and Annelise had crammed all the refugees she could into ships that would return them to Rand. As the last trip finished, far into the evening, a cry went up from those left behind, most of them arrivals from the other camps. Fights broke out. These were not people to whom Caitlin had brought her charity, and they were desperate. Desperate people didn’t behave rationally.
How desperate am I? Desperate enough to risk using Darter?
She still hadn’t answered the question when Annelise’s bodyguards hustled her into the flyer, away from the chaos in the camp. The flyer lifted.
“Rachel?” Annelise said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Rachel said. She shifted on the seat and her body, stiff from sitting, protested. “There’s an idea I want to discuss with you, but not here.”
40
* * *
DEEP SPACE
Martinez watched Dr. LaShawn Parsage, ship physician on the Green Hills of Earth, administer a truth drug to Eric Veatch. Veatch lay strapped down on a gurneybot in a bare cabin. The small room seemed crowded even though it held only Martinez, Parsage, and the intel officer, Lieutenant-Commander Joanne Stiles. Well past middle age, experienced and unshakeable, Stiles had a mind like a Link browser. If there was anything findable in the memory of this weasely mercenary, Stiles would find it.
T
he doctor slid a syringe into Veatch. In a few moments Veatch’s expression smoothed from a glare into semi-vacancy.
Narcosynthesis, like much medicine and its less savory offshoots, had not advanced very far while humanity had been occupied with first destroying and then fleeing Terra. Most medical research had concentrated on controlling the depredations of alien microbes against which humans had no natural immunity. With Parsage’s drug, a witch-brew of depressant, barbiturate, and ataraxic, timing mattered. The subject fell into sleep, and then partially aroused from it. Questioning needed to happen during the brief period of twilight consciousness, when inhibitions were lowered and the cortex no longer functioned as inhibitory control over what was said. Maintaining that state required frequent, carefully balanced doses of the drug. Even so, what resulted was often a mishmash of fact, fantasy, and gibberish, although much depended on the individual personality being interrogated. Susceptibility varied widely.
The doctor nodded and Stiles said, “What is your name?”
“Eric Veatch.”
“What are your other names?”
“Er…Eric Veatch Veatch Veatch.”
“What is your name?”
“Eric Veatch.”
Was that the shadow of a smile on Veatch’s ugly face? Martinez wasn’t sure.
“Tell me your name.”
“StarStud. I banged her from the front and I banged her from the back and I—”
“Where were you born?”
“Polyglot. Cunts are juicy and I—”
It went on and on like that. Veatch had had extensive training in engaging the sex drive at will, so that it became powerful enough to override everything else. He had a strong erection.
“Increase the dose,” Stiles said. The doctor did, and Veatch fell asleep.
They kept at him for another half hour, but got nothing useful, unless it counted as useful that this was no usual mercenary. Stiles said, “Sorry, sir. His resistance training is superb. There must be formidable advances on Galt.”
Martinez said, “Is it worthwhile to continue?”
“I don’t think so, sir.”
The pilot was next. Young, with a minor criminal record for smuggling, she answered questions readily but didn’t know much. Mr. Veatch had engaged her to take Caitlin Landry and the others to Rand. She’d filed the flight manifest on Galt. On Rand, one passenger, Jenna Derov, had been sent planetside. Mr. Veatch had re-engaged the pilot, at three times the usual fee, to take the ship to Prometheus, via first the Rand-Polyglot gate and then the Polyglot-Prometheus gate. She didn’t know why they were going to Prometheus. Mr. Veatch told her he’d filed the necessary flight plans. She never looked too closely at why she’d been hired, what paperwork was done, or what was brought aboard on Galt—maybe it was smuggling? No, smuggling didn’t worry her.
They had not landed on either Rand or Polyglot, and nothing had come aboard from either planet. The ship had emerged from the Polyglot-Prometheus gate and been captured by the Green Hills of Earth. Ms. Landry had told Mr. Veatch and his men to not resist when they were boarded. She had not overheard any conversations between Mr. Veatch and Ms. Landry.
And, Martinez thought, she had no idea that she might have ended up dead in an explosion of a bioweapons lab. Venal, criminal, she was also criminally stupid.
More questions, up to the limit of how much drug the doctor said was probably safe, elicited the major events of the war while Martinez had been trapped behind the eleventh gate and then traveling out of communication range to Prometheus.
Finally Stiles said, “I think that’s all we’re going to learn from her.”
Martinez had the pilot removed to sleep it off, and Caitlin Landry was brought in.
She came without a struggle, except in her eyes. She was frightened, of course, but had it under control. Just before the first syringe pierced her, she looked directly at Martinez. “Don’t stop until you verify my entire story, including that my grandmother did not plan biowarfare. Or war.”
Martinez had never before had an interrogation subject give him directions about the interrogation. He doubted that Stiles had, either.
“What is your name?” Stiles began.
Landry’s face had relaxed, looking almost peaceful, not fighting the drug. An ideal subject—or the product of the same training as Veatch.
“Caitlin Landry.”
As Stiles continued with the baseline questions, the woman’s answers were clear and concise, a perfect match to the information Martinez already had. The first piece of intel came when Stiles was drawing out background information about the Landrys.
“Who ordered the biowarfare facility built in the Peregoy research station on Prometheus?”
“My sister Jane.”
“Did Rachel Landry know that biowarfare was being developed there?”
“No.”
“Did Rachel Landry know that biowarfare was being developed anywhere in any Landry holding?”
“No.”
“Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Who else knew about the facility?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are there more biowarfare facilities elsewhere on the Eight Worlds?”
“I don’t know.”
Martinez had already studied the available data and photos of Jane Landry. In charge of Freedom Enterprises security, she’d become commander-in-chief of a military organization that must have been building for quite a while. Not very much was known of her personal history. Abruptly she reminded Martinez of Sophia Peregoy, even though they looked nothing alike. Both were beautiful, as Caitlin was not, but Sophia was all smooth control and Jane Landry’s bright green eyes held fierce recklessness. She might be an uncertain commander, acting too impulsively, making mistakes. Or, of course, she might not be. Looks could deceive.
Stiles took Caitlin through the same sequence of events as the pilot, gaining essentially the same story except that Caitlin claimed Veatch had brought her to Prometheus on his own initiative, not hers. Had her grandmother authorized him to do that?
“I don’t know.” And then, “Probably.”
Dr. Parsage said, “She’s drifting off again.”
“Increase the dose. There’s more I want to know.”
The doctor said, “Too much is dangerous, sir. Perhaps another session tomorrow would—”
“Now.”
He injected the syringe. Martinez said to Stiles, “I’m going to question her.”
“Yes, sir.”
The doctor said, “Quickly, then, sir, before we lose her again.”
Martinez said, “Caitlin.”
Her face contorted. “Uh…uh…uh…”
“What was Jane Landry going to do with the biowarfare pathogen?”
“Uh…ah…ttack New California.” Tears sprang onto her cheeks.
The doctor made a strangled sound. Martinez was silent; it was the answer he’d expected.
“When?”
“I…don’t…don’t…know…”
They were losing her. Martinez asked one more sharp question, surprising even himself. “Who was Philip Anderson?”
“Tara’s…in love…him,” she got out before lapsing into sleep profound as death.
• • •
The rest of the interrogations confirmed what had been learned about the general course of the war and the specific mission to Prometheus, although not how that mission was supposed to be carried out. Martinez suspected that only Veatch knew, and that it would have involved saving himself, Caitlin Landry, and the pilot, and turning most of the others into unwitting suicide bombers, through remote detonation. For that, you needed stupid thugs, and Veatch’s six, all subjected to truth drugs, qualified.
The Princess Ida’s surprisingly extensive stores had helped extend rations on the Skyhawk and Green Hills of Earth. The Zeus, ahead of the other two ships, reported that New Utah would be able to resupply Martinez’s fleet—welcome news. Meanwhile, however, everyone st
ill went hungry. When Martinez dressed, his pants gaped at the waist.
Caitlin Landry asked to see him. He could have had her brought to him, but chose not to have her moved throughout the ship. She sat in her bare, isolated cabin, dressed in what looked like cast-off civvies: pants too large for her, a top too small, no shoes. Boots rested in the corner—ill fitting? Someone must have donated a comb; her shoulder-length hair was wet from the shower but not tangled. Martinez had given orders that the prisoners were not to be mistreated. They were bargaining tools, especially Landry.
She rose when he entered. “Could we talk alone?”
He dismissed her female guard, Spacer First Class Henderson, an augmented giantess who could possibly have defeated Martinez in hand-to-hand. Henderson was probably overkill, considering Caitlin Landry’s slight build, but Henderson was silent to the point of catatonia. No subversive friendship would develop with the prisoner.
“Captain,” she said, “I don’t know what I told you under truth drugs, but I want to make sure it was the truth. Will you tell me what I said?”
“No.”
She didn’t seem surprised. “Are Veatch’s crew all right?”
Previously she’d referred to them as “her” crew. Now she was distancing herself from them. Deliberate or unconscious?
He said, “No one has been harmed.”
“Are they still on this ship or on your other one?”
“Not relevant.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Ms. Landry, I granted your request to see me in case you have additional information to tell me. If you do not, this interview is over.”
“Yes. All right. I do have something to add. I am a virologist, or at least I was trained as one. The pathogen my sister developed is probably based on an existing disease—it’s too hard to start from scratch to build a virus that can be weaponized. She probably used one of the plagues we’ve had on Rand. I don’t know if you know this, but Rand was—is—home to more microbes adaptable to colonizing humans than any of the other Eight Worlds. The luck of the draw.”
Martinez did know it. He said, “Go on.”