The Eleventh Gate

by Nancy Kress

  “We on Peregoy can read, Ms. Landry.”

  She retorted, “I know that, or you wouldn’t have known what lex talionis was.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Do you remember every single thing I’ve said to you?”

  “Yes. I remember everything anyone says to me.”

  “Then remember this: You will advise the vaccine team, nothing more.”

  “Captain, I’m telling you that’s futile. You don’t have time to develop a vaccine before Jane lets loose her pathogen, if she has more of it. Which I’m sure she does, somewhere. A vaccine would take years. Listen to me!”

  He smiled, not pleasantly. “I am. And why are you giving me information about this pathogen in the first place? Do you realize that everything you just said is treasonous to your own side?”

  “Do you realize that there are no sides when we’re talking about wiping out the human race on one or more worlds? I told you—my grandmother and I didn’t want this war to start, we don’t want it to go on, and we don’t want idiots like you and my sister Jane to ramp it up! How can you be such a jackass?”

  His smile disappeared. “Watch yourself, Ms. Landry.”

  “Or what? Go ahead, murder me! Torture me for information I don’t have! Kill thousands of innocent people, destroy whole economies, wipe out individual freedom! That’s what war is, isn’t it? Don’t you read any history, Captain Martinez?”

  He turned toward the door. Caitlin hated herself for losing control like that. But she’d meant every word. He was a warmonger and she was not.…Only if she was not, if she truly believed what she’d shouted at him, why had she withheld—

  “Captain,” she called as Henderson moved aside to let him pass, “Captain, wait!”

  He turned.

  Now or never. “There’s one more piece of data about the pathogen. Something…something I didn’t tell you yet.”

  • • •

  Martinez walked back to the bridge of the Skyhawk, checked on everything there, and went to his cabin. He needed to think.

  There were too many questions without answers.

  One question: Could he trust what Caitlin Landry had just told him about the bioweapon? She’d said it could be verified by other researchers, which Martinez would damn well do. He didn’t trust her. And yet…

  Another question: Why hadn’t Martinez received orders from Sloan? Weeks ago, Martinez had transmitted reports about the Dagny Taggart and the Galaxy to New Utah, to be relayed by scout to New California. By now, he should have received status reports and orders. If Sloan was ill or had died, Martinez should have heard from Sophia. Why hadn’t he?

  Why wasn’t New Utah answering hails?

  And the largest questions of all: Jane Landry’s bioweapon. Did she have more of it? Where? And what would she do with it next?

  Caitlin Landry had said the target was New California. But it made more sense to first test the pandemic on New Utah. Easier to approach, less defended. People fleeing the plague would then carry it to New Yosemite and New California, without the Landrys having to risk a single ship.

  And then to Polyglot and the Landry worlds…on one point, at least, Caitlin had been telling the truth. Jane Landry was insane. Unless, of course, the Landrys already had a vaccine.

  Or, if not a vaccine, then what Caitlin had just suggested to him.

  Would that work?

  There was only one question to which Martinez did have a good answer. The Landry warships that had come through the Polyglot-Prometheus gate, just after Vondenberg captured the Princess Ida, had not pursued Martinez and Vondenberg. He guessed why. Jane Landry must have installed additional defense weapons on Prometheus, away from the station that Martinez had bombed. Now the Landry ships were digging up and installing those weapons aboard, to replace the ones they couldn’t bring through the gate. They would be armed—possibly with a K-beam—and he was not.

  He hoped the weapons retrieval from frozen, inhospitable Prometheus took a long time.

  Martinez returned to the bridge to try again to raise New Utah.

  43

  * * *

  NEW CALIFORNIA

  “Sir,” said Morris, Sloan’s human assistant, “A Dr. David Darter to see you.”

  “Who?”

  Morris stood in the office with his back pointed at the stuffed wolves. He didn’t like them, although he had never said so, but Sloan knew. Morris was not much to look at: short, skinny, pot-bellied, with the broad flat face and wide eyes of a kitten with a scraggly beard. But he was efficient and hard-working, especially necessary since Sophia was now so often gone, usually to the shipyards on New Yosemite. Also, Sloan could count completely on Morris’s loyalty, unlike Chavez’s. His private intel network had unearthed Chavez’s reports to Sophia.

  Morris said, “I vetted Dr. Darter myself, sir. A Polyglot citizen, Chief of cardiology at Edward Jenner Hospital, sterling record. Only known political activity is with environmental organizations. He was the doctor who treated Rachel Landry when she had that heart attack at the Polyglot Council of Nations, and he says he has important information, for your ears only, about Rachel Landry. He passed every scan-and-search. I thought it best to check whether you want to see him.”

  Information about Rachel Landry? What intel useful to Sloan could a Polyglot doctor have, and why would he give it to Sloan? Unless…

  “Is this about research into the physics of the gate closings? They’re pursuing that on Galt.” And it still rankled that Sloan had been unable to lure any of those researchers to New California.

  Morris said, “I don’t know, sir. Although it doesn’t seem likely, given that Darter is a cardiologist.”

  Sloan made a sudden decision. “Bring him in.”

  Darter was everything that Morris was not: tall, handsome, commanding. Briefly he reminded Sloan of Luis Martinez, who still had not arrived at New California. Where was Martinez, and why hadn’t he sent more information?

  Darter’s voice was deep. “Director Peregoy, thank you for seeing me. I know how busy you must be.”

  “I am, yes. So please come to the point.”

  “Not here,” Darter said, and now Sloan picked up on what Darter’s appearance and bearing had masked: This man was frightened. Of what? Not of being on a Peregoy world; Morris’s vetting revealed that before the war, Darter had been on New California half a dozen times for medical conferences. “Can we talk somewhere else?”

  Sloan stood. Darter was, of course, only trying to avoid routine recording, but maybe it was a good idea to also evade the hidden cameras that Sloan was increasingly sure Sophia had installed. “Follow me.”

  He took Darter to the roof, where Sloan’s flyer waited. He signaled to Chavez to wait by the flyer and led Darter to the high parapet, looking out over the city, where wind made it necessary to lean close to hear another person. Sloan had recently had his implant removed, telling everyone that it had begun to irritate his ear. Implant communications could be intercepted by someone who knew what they were doing.

  Darter gazed at the protestors massed behind the compound walls, shouting and raising their fists. A three-story-tall holo sign flared, held for twenty seconds, subsided: FREE SUELIN!

  Sloan said brusquely, “Be brief, doctor. I understand you have information about Rachel Landry.”

  “Not about—from. There was a data cube, but your people took it away from me. I suppose they think they can break the encryption.”

  Chances weren’t good, but the procedure was standard. He said, “So tell me what was on the cube. You must know or you wouldn’t still be here.”

  “I do know. I’m not supposed to, but I do. I read her message. I think Ms. Landry wanted your people to break it, but she didn’t want me to learn what it said.”

  Stranger and stranger. Sloan said, “Then how did you learn it? And what is the message?”

  “She told me the encryption key, trusting me not to use it. I did anyway, because I wasn’t going to carry a message unless I knew it wou
ldn’t hurt people. My responsibility to cause no harm overrode my promise to her.”

  A prig. Unless this was an act to whip up Sloan’s curiosity, in which case Darter was succeeding. The realization annoyed Sloan; he didn’t like being manipulated.

  “The message, doctor. Please don’t waste my time.”

  Darter turned from gazing over the parapet to look directly at Sloan. Wind whipped his thick gray hair across his forehead. Anguish contorted his face.

  He said. “Rachel Landry wants to warn you that her granddaughter, Commander-in-Chief Jane Landry, has genetically engineered a deadly disease and plans on setting it loose on New California.”

  “No,” Sloan said instantly. “Who do you think you’re scamming, doctor? If that were true, why would Rachel Landry warn me? Also, we have an extensive profile on her. Biowarfare does not fit it.”

  “I just told you—it isn’t Rachel, it’s Jane Landry.”

  The two men, both angry, faced each other. The protestors below finally caught sight of Sloan’s head above the high parapet and the shouting increased threefold. Holo signs flared.

  Sloan said, “I don’t believe you. Once a plague is out, it can’t be controlled. The Landrys would be putting their own people at risk.”

  “Do you think I don’t realize that? But surely Rachel Landry is in a better position than you or I to know what her granddaughter will or will not do.”

  “But this makes no sense. No. You’re lying to me, or Rachel Landry is.”

  Darter said coldly, “I hope so.”

  “You can tell Rachel Landry that her disinformation campaign is not working.”

  Darter strode away without answering. Sloan said into his wrister, “Morris, have Dr. Darter escorted out,” and cut off the link without waiting for a reply.

  He stayed on the roof a few minutes longer, watching the protestors, breathing deeply enough to tamp down his anger, wondering how the world had changed so much, so fast.

  • • •

  The Peregoy security experts easily broke the data cube encryption. “Too easily, sir. It’s like they wanted it broken.”

  “They did,” Sloan said. It just confirmed what he knew: This was disinformation from the Landrys, designed to panic him. He would share it with Sophia when she returned from New Yosemite.

  He conducted a half dozen meetings with good outcomes. Just as he prepared to leave the office for dinner, Morris reappeared, his morose face even more morose than usual. “Someone else to see you, sir. Karen Healy. You told me to always allow her immediate access.”

  “Yes,” Sloan said, although he’d hoped that Healy would never request access. She was the pilot who made cargo drops of food and supplies every week onto Horton Island. When Sloan had taken over the supply program from Sophia, part of their uneasy compromise about the “prison camp,” he’d replaced Sophia’s choice of pilot with his own. Since then, Horton Island had been receiving adequate food and other supplies. Sloan had even found a doctor willing to take a posting there. Healy sent him weekly reports, but she had never asked to see him.

  “Bring her in,” Sloan said.

  Karen Healy had the stern, unflappable air you wanted of a pilot during a crisis. Nonetheless, at the first sight of her face, Sloan’s stomach tightened.

  “Sir, when I initiated radio contact with Horton Island during last week’s drop, there was no answer. I went today with this week’s drop, and I could see that the parcels were untouched—they come down by parachute, you know, and they—”

  “I know,” Sloan said. “Continue.”

  “I flew lower. No radio contact. I circled, and when I had a close view, I took photos. Of the bodies, sir. Most of them are probably in the shelters, but some were lying on the beach or out in the open. They’re dead, sir. Everybody on the island.

  “All dead.”

  • • •

  Sloan sat at his desk, head in his hands, trying both to think and not think. Reason it through, but the conclusion…

  The prisoners on Horton Island had not died of the Landry biowarfare that Dr. Darter had described. New California was ringed with orbitals, warships, surveillance probes. If the Landrys had developed some way to get the weaponized pathogen to the surface, it would have been detected even if it couldn’t be stopped. But not so much as a meteor had struck Horton Island in the last two weeks.

  It might have been a naturally developing plague. New California had had a few of those in the early years, although nothing like Rand, where microbial evolution showed more similarities to Terra and so adapted more easily to human hosts. If this was a natural disease, it was deadly. But why Horton Island and only Horton Island? Had the disease jumped species? There weren’t any mammalian species on the island, which was one reason Sophia had put her political prisoners there. Still, Sloan had a hazy idea that diseases could spill over from birds to humans. Horton Island had seabirds.

  The birds came and went. The plague had killed everyone within one week. If birds carried it, it would have turned up elsewhere by now, on other islands or ships or even the continent. But there was nothing; Sloan had checked.

  So Horton Island had been targeted with a deadly pathogen. Genemod? And by whom?

  His first thought had been the protestors. They had turned SueLin into an unlikely symbol—perhaps they wanted to do the same to an islandful of martyrs. But Sloan rejected this idea. The protestors were young, idealistic, on fire with stupid righteousness. They might accept martyrs created by Peregoy Corporation’s “oppression,” but they would not kill a hundred eighteen of their own. That just didn’t fit his intel.

  So the labor camp prisoners had been murdered by someone on New California, someone with the resources to weaponize a genetically modified pathogen and keep its development from Sloan’s information network, someone who wanted the protestors gone. Someone ruthless enough to isolate the prisoners so no one would know when they were gone.

  No.

  There was no other conclusion.

  He felt a surge of anger so strong it frightened him. What was wrong with her? What was wrong with Jane Landry as well? Because now he had to believe what Dr. Darter had told him: Rachel Landry had, genuinely if incredibly, been trying to warn Sloan about how far her granddaughter would go to win this war. And not only Jane Landry.

  What should Sloan do next? He had no idea whatsoever.

  44

  * * *

  GALT

  Getting people to do what you want required that you know what they want. This wasn’t the first time Rachel had had this thought, but it was the most urgent.

  She wanted Annelise to be less meticulous and more far-seeing. Annelise wanted to not have to face the fact that meticulousness did not work in the midst of chaos. You could go on applying orderly protocols forever and only make the situation worse.

  Rachel said, “Linear equations will not describe chaotic systems.”

  “What?” Annelise said.

  “Never mind, dear heart. I’m just exhausted.”

  They were both exhausted. For twelve long hours they had worked in Rachel’s office, preparing three worlds for war, trying to think of ways to stop the war, and wondering when the war would actually resume. Nothing had been attacked. Not by beam weapons, which could no longer travel through gates. Not by Jane’s bioweapons, or Rachel would have had word via Polyglot. Was a war really a war if no one was fighting?

  Yes.

  Jane commanded bioweapons.

  Caitlin and Veatch, along with the Princess Ida, had gone missing. Had they died while destroying the Prometheus biolab?

  Armed ships were massed beside the Landry gates and, she was sure, the Peregoy gates as well. Even neutral Polyglot had its inadequate fleet dispersed thinly on the Polyglot sides of its four gates. Scouts were still freely allowed through, which was how Dr. Darter had returned safely from his interview with Sloan Peregoy.

  “He didn’t believe me,” Darter had said flatly, and Rachel saw that under his concern w
as the quiet outrage of an eminent specialist who was accustomed to being not only believed but obeyed. “And, Ms. Landry, I read your message to Director Peregoy.”

  “I half expected that you would.”

  “You must stop this bioweapon immediately.”

  Christ, didn’t he think she was trying? Rachel could not just snap her arthritic fingers and recall a granddaughter-turned-fleet-commander-turned-raging-war hawk. Jane had delusions of being a conquering military hero, defending the Landry worlds’ way of life. Didn’t Darter know that such people were willing to sacrifice long-term perspective for short-term gain, usually without even realizing they’d made a sacrifice? How could a man so intelligent be so stupid?

  She’d said, with restraint, “I am trying, Dr. Darter. Thank you for your service.”

  “I have a duty to warn my colleagues that this pathogen has been weaponized and may be let loose on the Eight Worlds.”

  “I’m sorry, but you can’t do that. You’ll create panic here and I can’t deal with panic right now, on top of all else.”

  “It’s in the nature of epidemics to spread,” he’d said, with enormous condescension but even more concern. “It’s my duty to warn people.”

  “But not just yet,” she’d said, and had called Security to take him away and lock him up.

  No choice. But she didn’t tell Annelise. Libertarianism did not sponsor a police state, even though that’s what Jane was well on her way to creating. Annelise would have said, with great earnestness, that there was neither cause nor precedent for jailing Dr. Darter. She would be right.

  Linear equations did not describe chaotic systems.

  Annelise accessed the Freedom Enterprises intel reports. “Jane cleared the Galt-Polyglot and Polyglot-Prometheus gates, so she’s in deep space somewhere, on her way to—where? She didn’t attack New California, after all, but—”

  “Annelise, you’ve said all that before. We both said all that before. Jane is going to verify for herself that her biofacility really has been all destroyed, or else she’s got a cache of bioweapons somewhere in space or hidden elsewhere on New Prometheus, or she’s going the long way around to attack New Utah, or…oh my gods.”