by Nancy Kress
But, then, the greatest mystery had always been human consciousness. Even in actual humans.
On the viewscreen the gate shimmered, silver against the black of space. So beautiful, so mysterious, so fraught.
“Sending signal,” Hallie said, and Rachel held her breath. The very air on the bridge seemed to suspend not only movement but time.
Nothing happened. No response.
They tried a few more times, with no result.
“We’ll try inside the gate,” Rachel said.
The pilot glanced at her, said nothing, and returned to his console.
“Gran,” Tara’s voice said from Rachel’s wrister, “where are you? What are you doing?”
“I’m on the bridge,” Rachel said in as normal a voice as she could manage, “but I’m about to go have breakfast. Are you hungry?”
• • •
For the next trial, Rachel wasn’t able to keep Tara off the bridge. The signal was sent inside the Polyglot-Prometheus gate—or at least, Rachel hoped it had been. The Kezia Landry passed through so fast and the composition of the gate—if “composition” was even the right word for something that seemed to be neither wholly matter nor wholly energy—was so unknown, that it was impossible to tell what happened with the sixty bursts fired by the ship. But the bursts seemed to make no difference to anything.
Rachel had feared passing through to the Prometheus side of the gate: What if Peregoy warships had reclaimed the dwarf planet? They had not. There was no one here, not even defense probes. And there was no Philip-response to her message, although she had no idea what such a response would look like. How did a demi-god respond to rhythmic disturbances in a quantum Mount Olympus?
So it would have to be the eleventh gate, after all, A month-long further voyage. Tara’s eyes glittered; she’d convinced herself that Philip was on the planet behind the gate she’d discovered. Rachel, convinced of nothing, was losing hope.
But the eleventh gate was all she had left.
50
* * *
NEW CALIFORNIA
Sloan was in a corporate meeting when the building exploded.
He and six executives sat around a polished karthwood table in a conference room at corporate headquarters. One moment the table holoscreen glowed with data, the coffee urn gleamed on a side table, Donna Charmchi expounded on her division’s budget. The next moment the ceiling buckled, the urn sprayed coffee, the holo dissolved, and all the noise in the world filled the room with dust and debris. Sloan, knocked from his chair, crawled under the table.
A second explosion, more distant.
Charmchi gasped, “Not this wing…”
None of them were hurt. They staggered to their feet, glancing wildly at each other. Sloan stood, covered with dust and coffee. Alarms blatted. Security rushed in, including Sloan’s bodyguard, Chavez. “Sir—”
“I’m fine. What…what happened?”
“Surface-to-surface missile, sir. Hit the east wing.”
More explosions, far more distant. Sloan said, “We’re retaliating?”
“Yes, sir. Please follow me to the basement, all of you.”
“Wait…who? You said surface-to-surface…”
“The protestors, sir.” The man actually bared his teeth. “Somehow they got military weapons. Please come with me.”
“No,” Sloan said. “The rest of you, go.”
He thought rapidly. Sophia’s office was in the east wing but she was on New Yosemite. If the protestors had military weapons, that suggested either the existence of a serious black market, which Sloan would have known about, or a recent defection of a critical cadre of soldiers to the protestors’ cause. How many soldiers? Armed with what else?
His bodyguard echoed his thoughts. “It’s not safe here, sir. We don’t know what else the fuckers got.”
“Accompany me to my office. The rest of you—go to the bunker. Now.”
Chavez led Sloan through corridors thick with foamcast dust and partially blocked by falling debris. The closer they came to Sloan’s office, the less the damage. He had not been the target; Sophia was.
Did the protestors know about Horton Island? He guessed yes.
His office looked untouched. The wallscreen worked. Sloan issued orders even as he studied images streaming from the east side of the building. They came from drones; the recording and imaging equipment on that side of the building had all been destroyed.
He saw no protestors, no holosigns, nothing in the streets beyond the compound walls. But at the edge of Capital City, another explosion. The protestors had fired from there, and Sophia’s army—whatever part of it had stayed loyal to Peregoy Corporation—was obliterating them.
Sixteen people had died in the east wing. Among them, on some corporate errand that Sloan would now never know about, was Sloan’s personal assistant, Morris.
He stayed in his office all night, receiving reports and issuing orders. Assessing, repairing, planning. The protestors did not have control of any of the warships in orbit or massed by the New California stargates, at least not yet. Word had gone to New Yosemite, and Sophia sent word back that she was safe but could not yet return to New California. She didn’t say why not—some new crisis at the shipyards? Were workers in rebellion there, too? How much rebellion?
The world had gone insane.
At dawn, Sloan sat writing a message to Morris’s brother, his only family. The words would not come. Sloan’s very bones ached; he felt limp with fatigue. With fatigue, with heartsickness, with anger that he could not get to rise higher than dull embers.
Morris, that supremely faithful little man.
Fifteen others, people under his stewardship, his care.
A city descending into civil war, this violence grown in the foul soil of what had happened on Horton Island—he was sure of that—and fertilized by seething discontent that Sloan still did not understand. Yes, he had controlled his people, but always, always for their own good. True, Sophia had gone too far in stifling dissent and increasing conscription, but did that wipe out decades of—
Then a hand was shaking his shoulder and he was lifting his head from the desk, where it had fallen in sleep. “Sir, sir…”
Chavez, whom for a brief disoriented moment, Sloan thought had come to kill him. But Chavez only said, “Are you all right, sir?”
“Fine.” He could barely move, cramped from sitting so long, still gray with fatigue.
“Sir, there’s a messenger with priority one clearance and…and news from the rebellion.”
Sophia? Sloan dragged himself to his feet. “Go on.”
“There were more attacks by the protestors, sir, on a circuits factory just outside the city and on the branch headquarters in Washington City. The factory was empty because it had gone on strike. The headquarters didn’t have too many people there this early in the morning, but there were…the news channels have it all, sir.”
His bodyguard giving him intel…but Sloan had no time for this anomaly. He said, “Where is the messenger?”
“Downstairs, sir. It’s a scout pilot. She claims to come from Captain Martinez. I didn’t bring her right to you, sir, because she hasn’t been vetted and no one is here who can do—”
“Bring her in. Disarm her first, but bring her in.”
Still Gomez hesitated. “I can do that, but if she’s a suicide bomber with any sort of new body-planted—”
“Bring her in now.”
The pilot was young, wide-eyed at the destruction, not the sort that Sloan would have expected Luis to send. She saluted—something that always annoyed Sloan, he was a corporate director, not a dictator—and said, “Lieutenant Maria Stebens, sir, with a message from Captain Luis Martinez.”
Sloan took the tiny data cube. “Where is Captain Martinez?”
“When he sent me here, he was on his way to New Yosemite, sir.”
“Wait outside, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.” Another salute.
Sloan put the tin
y cube into his wrister, which broke the encryption and scrolled the text, without either audio or holo. “To Director Peregoy from Captain Luis Martinez. Am carrying out a vital mission on New Yosemite and will continue until it’s complete.”
That was it. Sloan concentrated on what Luis had not said.
He hadn’t named the mission. Highly unusual. Did he expect that this message might be intercepted? Had it been, and if so, by whom?
Luis hadn’t said how long the mission would take.
He had not reported on where he’d been these long months, or what he’d been doing.
Most of all, he had not asked even pro forma permission to continue on New Yosemite instead of returning to New California, which was what he was expected to do.
Meticulously, Sloan destroyed the data cube. Sophia had told him that she was on New Yosemite. Technically, Luis should report in to her. Had he? Sloan had no idea what they would tell each other.
He would question the pilot further—and why was Luis using such young and presumably untried pilots? Had he had major decreases in force? That, at least, she should be able to tell Sloan. After he interviewed her, he would return to yesterday’s damage. If the—
Another explosion. It was somewhere in the distance, but through his window Sloan saw the smoke and debris rise above the city. Also, the protestors were returning. Very stupid—didn’t they know they’d be arrested? Or did they know, through collusion with elements within corporate security, that they wouldn’t be?
Everything was unraveling.
Holosigns leapt higher than the compound walls: FREE SPEECH NOW and AVENGE HORTON ISLAND and—still!—FREE SUELIN.
Force, which Sloan had never wanted to use in the first place, had failed. That left negotiation.
“Chavez,” he said to the bodyguard, “Bring that pilot back in. And equip her scout with whatever weapons it lacks, for a trip to Jabina Island.” If Lieutenant Stebens came from Luis, he could trust her.
Chavez, who was his bodyguard but Sophia’s agent, looked uncertain.
“Don’t just stand there, man,” Sloan said. “Do it now.”
51
* * *
NEW YOSEMITE
Sometimes luck was on your side.
It seemed an odd thought for someone who was a wartime prisoner, someone who was possibly committing treason, which used to be a nonexistent crime on Libertarian worlds without state government. Someone who was praising the purported enemy. Yet Caitlin had the thought anyway: We just got lucky.
She stood outside a Biohazard Level 3 lab on a research hospital orbital around New Yosemite. Through the unbreakable plastic window, she watched Peregoy lab techs creating batches of the virus J. randi mansueti. The scientists who had modified Jane’s version of the virus were all asleep after arduous days of day-and-night effort. Caitlin didn’t need to sleep; she hadn’t been working on the genemod. All she had done was share the initial insight, and the research team that Luis Martinez had assembled had done the modification in ten days.
They were superbly trained, these scientists. On Peregoy worlds, university was free to the qualified, part of the extensive government social programs that on Galt were thought of as “enfeebling handouts.” At Galt University, students had rich parents, or worked their way through advanced education for decades, or never attended at all. Innovation was unfettered by regulation, but much talent went untapped.
This orbital, too, was owned by the state. Peregoy Corporation was a state, no matter what it called itself. It taxed, conscripted, controlled. No one kept much of the money they earned, except corporate owners like Sloan Peregoy. But the orbital was beautifully equipped, and whatever the team needed that hadn’t been here already, including personnel, Captain Martinez had commandeered from the planet almost instantly. He—
“Ms. Landry,” he said, behind her.
She turned. Her guard, Henderson of the Perpetual Silence, stepped back respectfully. Caitlin was aware yet again how tall Martinez was. “Captain.”
“I want to talk to you. Come with me, please.”
She followed him to somebody’s office, which he must also have commandeered. The room abutted the outer edge of the cylindrical orbital; a window displayed a rotating panorama of stars. The desk held no clutter, just a dirty coffee cup. Martinez frowned and tossed it into the recycler.
A detail she hadn’t known about him: he was a neat freak.
He said, “Have you been treated well?”
“Yes. About my imprisoned crew on the Green Hills of—”
“Assume they’re fine. Please explain to me exactly what this genemod version of the Landry virus will do.”
Caitlin’s brow wrinkled. “Haven’t your own scientists explained it?”
“Yes. I want you to do so as well. It was, after all, your idea.”
Not that she had a choice; she was his prisoner. His manner, however, had changed from its former suppressed rage. Behind his eyes lay—not fear, but anxiety. Well, given the situation, who wouldn’t be anxious?
No, this was something more.
“Ms. Landry,” he prompted, not patiently.
“The researchers were lucky,” she said. “Usually it takes a long series of trials to modify a virus in exactly the way desired, because altered genes affect other genes, turning them on or off, creating methyl groups that…never mind, you don’t want that level of detail. They were lucky because this time it took just a few weeks. Only one simple gene change was involved to turn J. randi into a less virulent version of itself. I suspect that Jane’s virologists were working with a mild form of J. randi to begin with, much milder than the outbreak twenty-two years ago—viruses mutate on their own, you know. Whoever altered it to greater virulence did so really hastily. Sloppy work.”
“How mild is what these scientists just created? How sick will it make people who get this version of the disease?”
Caitlin shifted in her chair. Below the window, New Yosemite came into view, cloudless blue ocean. “We won’t know until the pathogen is tested. My guess is that severity of the disease will vary from person to person. The very old or those with compromised immune systems might become very ill, and so might some others. But for most people, J. randi mansueti will feel like a bad cold, or slight flu. A few days of feeling oinky.”
“Oinky?”
Caitlin felt herself blush. “In mild discomfort.”
“Where did ‘oinky’ come from?”
“A made-up word from when my sisters and I were small and we got sick.”
Almost he smiled, but only briefly. “You christened this form of the virus, didn’t you? ‘Mansueti’—the Latin for ‘mild.’”
“Yes. Why did you study Latin?”
He ignored this to return to the main issue. “And anyone contracting the mild form becomes immune to the virulent form of J. randi? Like with smallpox and Jenner’s milkmaids who’d had cowpox?”
He was always surprising her with how much he knew about things not military, especially Terran things. Or was he, in his austere way, showing off, with both Jenner and Latin? Why?
She said, “In theory they’ll be immune, yes. Of course, the virus will have to be tested on human subjects.”
They stared at each other. All at once the air in the small office prickled like needles. The orbital rotated on its axis, and stars replaced the view of New Yosemite.
She said, “You’re going to test it on my crew and me.”
“Yes.” He watched her closely.
“Well,” she said, “I suppose if I were you, I’d do the same thing.”
Surprise widened his eyes.
Caitlin said, “Did you think I didn’t suspect that? But your own scientists must have told you that it probably won’t harm us.”
“They did. What I want from you is your estimate of how probable ‘probably’ is. What are the chances of not falling dangerously ill?”
“I estimate around ninety-five percent. It’s only an estimate, of course.”
>
He nodded; the research team must have given him the same rough odds.
She said, “So we’re going back to New Utah?”
“Yes.”
“And then what?”
“Then, if the ‘cowpox option’ works, we infect New Utah. That’s where I think Landry ships will attack.”
“Jane will be there soon,” Caitlin said, and wondered if that, too, was “treason.” But of course he’d already figured that out.
She thought the interview was over, but Martinez asked something else. “How likely is it that a second, different pathogen could be made into a milder version, like this one was? Quickly?”
“A second pathogen? Do you have reason to think that Jane made two?”
“Just answer the question.”
“Unlikely. Really, really unlikely. We were lucky here, as I just told you. And if you have no data or samples of the second pathogen—do you? You haven’t shown me anything!”
He stood. “Henderson will take you to your quarters, Ms. Landry. We leave within the hour.”
She stood, too, so quickly that she bumped her elbow on the desk. It hurt. Without even thinking, she grasped his sleeve with her other hand. “Please, just tell me—is there a second pathogen?”
He removed her hand from his sleeve; his fingers were warm. He didn’t answer her.
In the corridor, Caitlin watched Martinez stride away, and then she stepped forward to peer again through the window to the biolab. Hazard-suited techs worked busily, creating a disease to save a planet from Caitlin’s sister’s agents of death.