by Nancy Kress
• • •
Henderson loaded Caitlin—that’s how it felt, like she was just one more crate of food—onto a class 6A vessel that reminded her of the Princess Ida. Caitlin was crammed into a central corridor loaded to the ceiling with crates. Martinez was resupplying three ships. For how long? The trip to the gate took half a day, they passed through, and no one fired on them. She’d half expected they might—not that she would have known before she was vaporized. She’d prefer not to die jammed hip-to-hip with Henderson.
Caitlin waited for transfer to the Green Hills of Earth, to become a lab rat along with Veatch and his recruits. To her surprise, she was taken by vacuum sled to the Skyhawk. Did that mean Veatch and the others were there, too? Why?
No use asking Henderson, or anyone else. She could only wait to see what happened next.
52
* * *
DEEP SPACE
It began as a flutter.
If Rachel had been asleep, she might not have even felt it. But she lay awake in her bunk on the Princess Ida, staring at the dimly lit ceiling, her unquiet mind churning most of the night. The same ideas, over and over: Philip Anderson. Panconsciousness. Jane. Caitlin. The eleventh gate.
Another flutter.
Panicked, Rachel reached for the plastibox beside the bed. “Open,” she said, and was shocked when her words came out so strangled and quavery that the box didn’t even recognize her voice. She tried again. “Open.”
The lid sprang upwards and she took out a patch, her fingers trembling. She pushed the patch into the bend of her elbow and waited. If this were more than flutters…
It was. Before the patch could do its work, Rachel’s chest constricted, as sudden and painful as if an iron band squeezed her. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out, couldn’t most of all breathe…
Philip Anderson.
Panconsciousness.
Jane.
Caitlin.
The eleventh gate…
Then everything vanished.
• • •
She woke with tubes in her nose, patches on her body, Tara sitting beside the bed. Rachel tried to speak, but all that came out was an animal noise. It horrified her.
Tara jumped up. “Gran?”
Another animal noise. Tears sprang to Rachel’s eyes. She was here, inside this body, she was Rachel, and she couldn’t communicate.
“Lie still, Gran, Dr. Wexler’s here. Just lie still.”
Wexler entered the cabin. He took Rachel through a series of idiotic tests: Raise your left hand. Blink your eyes. Idiotic, but Rachel couldn’t do any of them except blink. Her body would not obey.
Finally Wexler said—to Tara, not to her—“Your grandmother has had a stroke. She may recover some physical functioning, and for that we’ll just need to wait and see. We can make her comfortable, and—”
Rachel stopped listening. She blinked rapidly at Tara, trying to tell her, to make her understand, it was vital! The most vital thing in the universe…
Philip Anderson.
Panconsciousness.
Jane.
The eleventh gate…
Wexler finally left. Tara took Rachel’s hand. The tears flowed heavier now, dripping over Rachel’s cheeks, soaking into the sheets. All gone, all over, the last chance…and they were only a few weeks out from the eleventh gate… Had she told Annelise to contact Ian Glazer, leader of the protests on Galt, and tell him…arrange with him…
Tara said firmly, “Listen to me, Gran—you can hear me, can’t you? I know you can. I can do this. I’ll get us to the eleventh gate and I’ll have Hallie send the signal, just as you programmed it, to Philip. I’ll tell him. It will be all right. You just rest.
“I’m the one who started this whole fucking mess, and I’ll finish it.”
• • •
Rachel could stay awake for only short periods before sleep took her—invaded her, like an unwelcome army. Sometimes she couldn’t even tell if she was asleep or awake, drifting into a twilight country where thoughts and dreams merged, becoming two sides of the same thin disk of waning life. She was a small girl at the beach on Galt, only the sands were blue, as they had not yet been during her childhood, and she played with the child Tara. She made love with her husband, only he was Philip Anderson, handsome as a god. She flew through space on a ship…yes, she was on a ship—wasn’t she?
Yes. She’d managed to communicate enough with Tara, through eyeblinks and, once, feeble pointing, to convey that she wanted to be on the bridge. So a crewman had carried her there, where a makeshift pallet filled half the tiny space, and Tara attended her. Rachel tried desperately to study Tara. Was her granddaughter balanced enough, steady enough, sane…
“Don’t worry, Gran,” Tara said tenderly. “We’re almost there. Less than a week to the eleventh gate.”
Tara’s face glowed. Did the girl still believe that she could contact Philip, that Philip would acknowledge her? That he was actually Philip? He was not. Could Tara do this?
“Soon,” Tara said, just before twilight sleep took Rachel again and she dreamed that she floated among the stars, disembodied, while around her weapons detonated in blinding bursts of deadly light.
53
* * *
NEW UTAH
Martinez watched the shimmer of the New Yosemite-New Utah gate grow larger, until it filled the whole screen. Then the brief moment of disorientation, and they were through. Different stars, different planet turning in the distance. Different problems. But no one had fired on them—not Landrys, not Berman.
“Arriving at New Utah,” the pilot said, unnecessarily.
“Open encrypted communication with Zeus and Green Hills of Earth.”
“Communications open.”
Elizabeth Vondenberg’s face filled the screen. Didn’t she ever leave the bridge? The most conscientious officer he’d ever commanded: alert, tireless, and—thank the gods—not wearing her immediate-crisis expression of straight-line brows. On the Zeus, the exec’s face appeared. “Captain Vondenberg, Lieutenant Boyle.”
“Welcome back, sir.”
“Thank you. Report.”
“All quiet. No communication from the planet, no vessels detected approaching from space.”
“Good,” he said, although of course it wasn’t. There had been only two possibilities: that the Landry fleet from Prometheus had been detected or that it hadn’t. The first meant that battle was imminent, a battle for which he had no weapons, plus no time to carry out what he now thought of as the “cowpox option.” The second possibility meant that Jane Landry was still delayed on Prometheus to dig up, adapt, and install on ship the surface-to-space weaponry she’d put in place to protect the biofacility that Martinez had destroyed. There were no good possibilities.
Still, Martinez knew he’d been lucky. On New Yosemite, Sean Mueller had cooperated fully with Martinez’s requests. Mueller had not sent reports of Martinez’s presence on the hospital orbital to Planetary Defense, an omission for which he could be court-martialed. He had put the entire orbital hospital at Mueller’s disposal, brought up scientists from the planet, and enforced stringent security around the project.
“Why?” Martinez had asked his old friend.
“You have no idea what’s been going on here, Luis. It’s Sophia Peregoy. There’s a lot of military defiance against her. You don’t know what she’s done.”
“I do,” Martinez said grimly, and told Mueller about Horton Island.
“I knew there were political prisoners there,” Mueller said slowly. “I even knew they’d been killed. I wouldn’t be helping you otherwise, not without orders from the director. But I didn’t know there was a second biowarfare plague. Christ!”
“Why hasn’t Sloan stopped her?”
“Nobody knows for sure. Best guess is that he can’t. He was trapped on Polyglot those three months the gates were closed, and she effected a sort of covert coup. He’s still CEO, nominally, and word is he’s trying to u
ndo some of what she’s done. The old man hasn’t been corrupted. But New California is practically in a state of civil war, and too much of Security—now the ‘army’—are deserting and joining the protestors.”
“Where’s Sophia now?”
“No one knows.”
A station in deep space, Martinez guessed, overseeing manufacture of whatever weaponized virus had killed everyone on Horton Island.
Sophia. Whom Luis had once, briefly, considered marrying.
Mueller had said, “Have another drink, Luis. A toast to survival.”
• • •
He sent Vondenberg and Boyle his encrypted OpOrd, and then he transferred himself by vacuum sled to the Skyhawk. He put an officer in charge of distributing supplies among the three ships. Vondenberg would begin testing J. randi mansueti on the Peregoy prisoners, who would be kept in isolation until they recovered. If they did. If this version of the disease really did behave like cowpox and not its more deadly cousin.
On the bridge of the Skyhawk, Martinez tried to raise New Utah. No response.
There were a lot of preparations to oversee and it was evening before he could leave the bridge for Caitlin Landry’s cabin. The cabin was still bare; she had no personal items to warm its metal deck or bulkheads. Narrow bunk, made up neatly. Tiny table and two chairs. On the table lay the tablet he’d given her, with its very limited access to ship library. She was, as he expected, both baffled and angry.
“Why aren’t I rejoining my crew on the Green Hills of Earth for the cowpox-option trial? Are they all right?”
“Henderson, dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I asked you a question!”
He said, “Your crew is fine. The answer to your other question, if you think about it for half a second, will be clear to a woman of your intelligence.”
“It’s not clear. I’m not getting infected with my crew. Why not? Are they all right?”
Intelligent, but she didn’t think like a soldier. And why should she? However, a moment later she saw it.
“I’m a bargaining chip. With Jane.”
“Yes.”
“It won’t work.”
“Why not? You’re her sister.”
“Jane is obsessed. She’d sacrifice all of her sisters, and my grandmother too, to win this war. She’s no longer mentally balanced. Power can do that to a person. And—”
“It doesn’t always unbalance people.” Sloan, for instance. Otherwise, he would have backed Sophia.
“No. But my family is given to obsession.”
Immediately she looked as if she regretted saying that, which interested Martinez. “How so?”
She shook her head, lips set in a straight line.
“How is your family obsessive?”
“Why are you here, Captain? You don’t need me to tell you anything you don’t know about the genemod pathogen.”
He didn’t. Two-day incubation period, two or three days of mild sickness, and immunity to the virulent virus that Jane Landry had developed. At least, if everything went well. If the projections for incubation and infection were accurate. If the Landry fleet didn’t show up armed with K-beams and destroy both Martinez’s warships and everyone on New Utah. If.
He said, “Tell me about Philip Anderson.”
He’d surprised her. She said, “How do you know about Anderson?”
“You mentioned him under truth drugs. But only about him and your other sister, the youngest one.”
“Tara. But you already know what happened to him, don’t you? In fact, you know more than I do. My grandmother brokered a deal with Sloan Peregoy to get Philip as far as the eleventh gate, but the gate would have been guarded by Peregoy ships. That was you, wasn’t it? Otherwise you’d have no interest in Anderson.”
Once again he’d underestimated her. He said, “Sit down, Caitlin.”
It had just slipped out. He realized he’d been thinking of her by her first name for days.
She sat in one of the two chairs at the tiny table. Martinez took the other one. She said, deliberately, “Go ahead, Luis.”
He scowled, then regretted it. The room was too warm. “Ms. Landry, I asked you to tell me what you know about Philip Anderson. I have the story he told me at the eleventh gate. I want your version.”
“In exchange for what?”
“No exchange. You’re a prisoner of war, remember.”
“I remember.”
They stared at each other across the metal table, and across a gulf that was not as wide as he needed it to be. But Martinez had decades of disciplining his body. Peregoy Corporation Space Service had many attractive female officers, and Sophia had been—still was—beautiful. He was neither surprised nor dismayed by his physical reaction to Caitlin Landry as she sat there, defiant and intelligent and his prisoner. His reaction meant nothing except that it had been too long since he’d had sex.
That’s all it was.
She blushed, and immediately began to cover confusion with disjointed talk. “Anderson believed he could access some deeper level of reality, some cosmic consciousness, and he…you know this already, right?”
“Yes. Did you believe he could?” They were on safe ground again.
“I did not.”
“Did Rachel Landry?”
“No.”
“Does she believe it now?”
“No.”
Caitlin was lying, but Martinez let it go. He waited.
She said, “The sensible view is that Anderson doesn’t matter, because he was delusional. But I would like to know what happened to him because one of the researchers at the university, a friend, was…was also in love with him. If I ever get home, I’d like to be able to tell her for sure what happened to him.”
Martinez couldn’t see any reason not to tell her. “He died on the planet behind the eleventh gate.”
“On the planet? You know what’s there? What?”
“The planet was deserted, the air unbreathable. No one will ever go there again. That’s the one gate that has not reopened.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m not sure—I haven’t been there in months. But that was the state when I left.”
“I see. Thank you for the information, Captain. Tell me, do you know the origin of the word ‘heresy’?”
He shook his head.
“It goes back through French and Latin to ancient Greek, to the word haireistha. It means ‘choose.’”
He didn’t show that he was impressed. “And you think I’m choosing my battles.”
“No. I think Philip Anderson did the choosing. He picked belief over doubt. Are you…this will sound insane, I know…are you positive he’s dead?”
“I choose to think so. Haireistha.”
She smiled, a sudden wide, whole-faced smile full of unexpected and mischievous light. “So—good news and bad news. The gates fortuitously reopened, but the way the entire universe works might have to be rethought.”
When had he started smiling back at her? He made himself frown, and she sobered, too. She said, “Let me ask you one more thing. Why did you allow me access to the ship’s library of literature and history? Because you thought I’d be bored otherwise?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” She leaned back in her chair and studied him. “You don’t torture or kill your prisoners. You’re trying to save the lives of a planet of rebels against your government, who—”
“They hold as prisoners thirty-eight fleet officers.”
“—who would blast you out of the sky if you got close enough. You recognized the term lex talionis—you read history yourself, don’t you?”
He said nothing.
“You do. So answer me this: Why do you serve a dictator like Sloan Peregoy who denies freedom of choice to everyone he controls as if they were pets instead of people?”
Martinez stood. “You understand nothing about Director Peregoy.”
“I know that,” she said with sudden, u
nexpected humility. “Only what I read on Galt, and I’m sure that was highly biased. But here’s one thing I do know, Captain. Even if Sloan Peregoy is a benevolent dictator, the best kind of ruler in terms of taking care of his people, even if he’s fair and just and all those other wonderful virtues, even if all his subjects adore him, even then…do you know the history of Edward IV and his brother Richard?”
Martinez opened the cabin door. Henderson snapped to attention. “Henderson, return to duty.”
“Yes, sir.”
But Caitlin’s raised voice followed him through the open door. “The weakness in any benevolent dictatorship. The ruler can be fair and just, but that doesn’t mean his heir will be.”
Martinez closed the door and went to the bridge.
• • •
Two days later, Jane Landry’s ships still had not appeared. Martinez had not seen Caitlin Landry again, and was annoyed with himself that he was so aware of that. DiCaria came to his cabin as Martinez was eating a solitary meal he didn’t actually want.
“Captain, routine report from the Green Hills of Earth.”
“Thank you. Why are you telling me this in person?”
“Because I want to ask you something.” His exec hesitated.
“Wait, then.”
Martinez accessed the report on his wrister. It was not routine, but the fleet had no report status for “welcome but completely expected information.” The first of the captured Princess Ida crew had fallen ill in the hastily constructed isolation ward. Low-grade fever, headache, body aches, no loss of mental or physical function. If the illness didn’t worsen, the cowpox option was a success.
“Report received,” Martinez sent to Vondenberg. “Provide hourly status bulletins.” He closed the link. “Now, DiCaria, what is it?”
“Sir, I know I’m overstepping here, but I’d like to make a request. If you’re going to try to convince Scott Berman to allow infection of New Utah with this cowpox thing, and he agrees, I’d like to go downstairs with the medical team.”
“Why?”