by Nancy Kress
Their captors motioned them out. Lucy stopped defiantly and plucked a pelt from a basket by the door. “I need this to cover myself, all right?”
The elder nodded and she took two pelts, handing one to Karim.
They were marched toward a smaller inflatable, probably originally supply storage. Inside on a bed of pelts sat two men and a woman, all bound. They stared at Lucy and Karim.
“You’re not Cheyenne,” one man said. He was small, blond, and intense. The other man was both younger and larger, obviously unshaven for at least a week. The woman was Chinese.
“No,” Karim said as he and Lucy were pushed down to sit with the others. A brave bound their hands and feet and then the Cheyenne left. Five prisoners crowded the available space. Every one jostled to find enough room.
“I’m Jon McBain, an energy researcher for Mira Corp,” the blond man said. “This was my research station until we were taken over by those archaic lunatics out there.”
Karim said, without hope, “I’m Karim Mahjoub and this is Lucy Lasky. Have you ever heard of—”
“Oh my God,” McBain said. “Is it really you? Are you back?”
Karim lay bound in the darkness, unable to sleep. They had been fed, fish and game and some sort of fat mixed with dried fruit that had actually tasted pretty good. Karim and Lucy had gobbled ravenously, their hands untied long enough for that purpose, under watchful guard. Karim’s belly stretched taut and full.
But not as full as his mind. Jon McBain and his two techs, Kent Landers and Kueilan Ma, had questioned him about his mission: had he really deposited the infected Furs in space? Had they been picked up by other Furs? Was it actually working, the Vine strategy to render their ancient enemy harmless?
Yes, and yes, and I don’t know, Karim had said. And then McBain had told him there was a Fur ship in orbit, poised to attack Grrentrees.
“No,” Karim said, “it’s a Vine ship! They sent us down first in… never mind. Does Jake Holman think it’s a Fur ship? They might try to shoot it down with the Beta Vine! I have to get to him and tell him those are Vines upstairs!”
“We don’t know what’s happening in Mira City,” McBain said. “The Cheyenne took over this camp a week ago and of course their moronic philosophy doesn’t permit comlinks or MiraNet. We’ve had no news.”
Dr. Shipley, Karim remembered, hadn’t thought the Cheyenne moronic. “They are interested in the sources of life,” he’d told Karim once, “and in living as close to it as they can. Of all the Plains Indians, the Cheyenne were the most high-minded.” It hadn’t seemed high-minded to Karim, the scientist, back then, and it didn’t now.
“I have to get to Mira City to tell Jake Holman!” he said to McBain.
“Mr. Holman? I don’t think that’s who you want, Mahjoub. He’s an old man, and since his last stroke, I hear, not competent.”
Jake Holman an old man. His last stroke.
Karim said with some difficulty, “Who runs Mira Corp?”
“You’ve been gone—what?—about forty years? A lot has happened.”
The three scientists spent the next two hours taking turns relating the history of Greentrees. Long after everyone else slept, Karim lay awake trying to digest it all. Gail Cutler and George Fox and Dr. Shipley all dead. Nan Frayne living wild with Furs at war with the Cheyenne. Julian Martin. Mira City evacuations. Defense plant and allocations. Hope of Heaven. Dissidents and rebellion. Arson’ and murder.
It was a long time before Karim could even doze, and his last thought before he did was, I must get to Mira in time to tell them the ship in orbit is Vines, not Furs. I must get to Mira …
21 MIRA CITY
Jake couldn’t decide if he believed Star Chu and Yenmo Kang. Star had brought him back to Alex’s apartment; he woke in his own bed. His nurse, Cal Johnson, staggered in at dawn, looking happy and dazed. Jake had refused breakfast or a bath and Cal had fallen into the deep sleep of the sex-sated young. Alex, presumably, was in a similar state at Julian Martin’s. Jake lay under a warm blanket, cold seeping down his spine.
If Star and Kang had told him the truth, Julian Martin was a monstrous tyrant who wanted to rule Greentrees as dictator and was well on the way to doing so. Jake had no trouble believing in the possibility. He was experienced enough with evil to recognize how far it could go, as Alex and Ashraf and the rest of these native born Greenies were not. Julian Martin could destroy Mira in the name of ruling it. It had happened often enough on Earth.
In fact, it had almost happened on Greentrees. Forty years ago Rudy Scherer, Mira’s security chief, had tried to exterminate the Vines despite Jake’s orders to the contrary. Scherer had been driven by xenophobic paranoia, not by a desire for power, but Jake still should have remembered how easily military could go rogue. God, wouldn’t he ever learn? Wouldn’t any of them ever learn?
If it was true, then Martin had achieved enormous power in a short time. He had, if the Chinese youngsters were right, eliminated the one leader opposed to him, Lau-Wah Mah. Had eliminated Guy Davenport’s security force as anything but an auxiliary to his own Terran-led army. Had eliminated distrust of himself by the old tactic of setting minor local enemies against each other and then becoming a hero by restoring peace. Had eliminated MiraNet during crucial periods. Had eliminated the ship in orbit. Had eliminated the Beta Vine, leaving his own ship the Crucible the only warship around.
On the other hand, every one of those actions could be viewed as legitimate steps in a strong defense of Mira City.
Star and Kang might have fed Jake an artfully constructed story, one whose horrifying parts hung together for their own purposes. The Chinese felt abused and discriminated against, enough so to spawn Hope of Heaven. Wong Yat-Shing hated Mira. Even those Chinese who were not dissidents, Star said, felt apart from the Anglos and Arabs who mostly ran Greentrees. So ordinary Chinese citizens only needed to stand aside while dissidents created revolution from which their entire group would benefit. That, too, had happened often enough on Earth.
Should Jake tell all this to Alex and Ashraf?
He was under no illusions about either of them. Ashraf was mild, amiable, diffident man who occupied the position he did because the Arabs of Mira City wanted him to. The Arabs and the vast Cutler family were Greentrees’ richest people. They, along wit the Quakers and Jake himself, had financed most of the First Landing and had owned most of the original colony. Jake was old, the Quakers did not mix in politics, and the Cutler family, scientific backbone of Greentrees, were much outnumbered by the Arabs. Ashraf Shanti was a figurehead whose individual integrity had never been tested because there had never been any divide between his own beliefs and the medina.
Alex was more complex.
She was capable, warm, generous, intelligent but not shrewd. An idealist, grown in the nurturing agar of Mira’s long peace. And although as tray-o her job was to allocate resources, which she did very well, at heart she was not a person who counted costs. When something genuinely mattered to her, she committed utterly.
Jake remembered a conversation he’d had with her a few years ago. She had just become tray-o, put in the position in pretty much the same way Ashraf had, by her family’s influence. She’d been telling Jake her plans for resource allocation. He, who had once long ago been a lawyer, listened, and said, “Your view of power is too maternal, Alex.”
“Power? Maternal?”
“Tray-o is an inherently powerful position. By controlling resource allocation, you essentially control what gets done. You want to use power to nurture, to foster scientific and material growth whenever you think it should happen.”
“Of course,” she said, bewildered.
“A more accurate view of power was held by the Founding Fathers of old America. They—”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter. These men put together a government that laterr became the basis for the whole United Atlantic Federation on Terra. Very important. That government was based on a view of power much dif
ferent from your maternal nurturing. James Madison once said that the only way to keep order was to set ambition against ambition, interest against interest, as checks on eachh other.”
Alex had said instantly, “I don’t believe that.”
“I know,” Jake had said. “But you should. They were realists, Madison and Jefferson and Adams.”
Since then, Alex had not changed. She still committed utterly, without reserve.
How much did Julian Martin matter to her?
How much compared to Mira City?
Were Star Chu and Yenmo Kang telling the truth?
Jake went around and around with it in his mind, and could see no clear answer. His head ached. He needed to get to the bathroom. It was hard to do by himself, but possible. Laboriously he dragged himself from bed to wheelchair.
After the bathroom, he wheeled his old chair—the damn thing was sticking again—to the table, cut himself some bread, spread it with caliberry jam. The knife trembled in his fingers. He tried to be careful; all he needed now was a bloody hand. Maybe the food would revive him enough to think more. On the cot against the wall, which had once been Alex’s cot, Jake’s nurse slept on, Katous on top of him. This new nurse, Cal Johnson, could sleep through a typhoon. Ah well, one had to take what one could get.
Jake was just finishing his meal, sticky jam on his chin and blanket, when Duncan Martin entered without knocking.
“Go away,” Jake said. One of the few good things about being old was that you could abandon courtesy. “Go rehearse something.”
“I must talk to you alone,” Duncan said.
It got Jake’s attention. No quips, no quotes, no specious “My dear man.” Even that genemod actor’s voice seemed muted, its thrilli tones not projected for selfaggrandizement. Duncan wore brown Threadmores, as if he’d tried to pass through the city unnoticed, and it wasn’t even quite dawn.
Jake said, curious despite himself, “My nurse is asleep.”
“Not good enough. And I don’t want to be seen through the window. Come with me.”
He grasped Jake’s chair, wheeled him into the bedroom, and closed the door and window. Jake had dragged the bedclothes to the floor when he transferred himself, unaided, to his chair. Duncan let them lie and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Jake, I learned last night that Julian has armed the wild Furs against the Cheyenne.”
Jake kept his face as blank as he could.
“How did you learn that?”
“One of my actors is a tech at that water-tiling building by the river. He heard it from a scientific friend who comlinked from some remote place far south where a geologic survey of some kind is going on. This woman and her party came across a Cheyenne encampment full of corpses tied up in tanglefoam. They had apparently starved to death.”
“Rumors,” Jake said. “Thirdhand hearsay.” His heart began to thud in his breast.
“Perhaps. But these naive people are so truthful.”
Jake said carefully, “Even if it’s true, why do you think Julian was the one to arm the Furs and not, say, Hope of Heaven?”
Duncan’s voice went flat. “Because I have seen it all before.”
Jake forced himself to silence. If you waited long enough, most people would talk.
“Jake,” Duncan finally said, leaning forward, “I have struggled with this. I know you don’t believe me. Actor, sham, egoist, clown. I know what you think of me. However, those attributes have kept me alive and prosperous in a hellish Terra you cannot even begin to imagine.”
Jake said quietly, “Don’t be so sure.”
Duncan got up and began to pace the tiny room. Three steps in one direction, five in the other. He didn’t seem to realize he trampled Jake’s bedclothes beneath his muddy boots.
“My choices were to leave Earth with Julian or be killed by his enimies if I stayed behind. They would have torn me and everybody else even faintly connected with him into screaming shreds. He was that hated. His Third Life Alliance did things to stay in power—”
A memory, fifty years old, stirred in Jake: Third Life Alliance in charge in Geneva. War continues. The last quee message Greentrees had ever received from Earth. “War against who?” Gail Cutler had asked, and no one had had an answer.
“—and I’ll give you details if you like. Julian had control of bioweapons, secret police, a nuclear arsenal. He used them all.”
“I don’t need details,” Jake said. A part of his mind was numb, he realized. A part was concerned with stupid fixations: Why were Duncan’s boots muddy on a dry morning? His mind was protecting itself from full comprehension, and the implications of full comprehension.
“I hoped…” Abruptly Duncan stopped pacing. “Oh, what didn’t I hope? That Julian had learned better. That he genuine wanted a new start. I saw that his love for your pretty little planet was genuine, and maybe even his love for Alex. And so I hoped. When your Chinese consul’s body turned up tortured, that looked like Julian. Still, I wasn’t sure because, after all, there was Hope of Heaven. I was a fool—’Here’s that which is too weak to be a sinner.’ But now Julian’s arming one group against another, as he’s done many times before. He has reinvented himself so many times my poor acting is nothing next to it. Our name isn’t even ’Martin’ let alone anything as aristocratic as ’Julian Cabot.’ He was born Fields in—did you hear that?”
“I don’t hear anything,” Jake managed to say.
“It was … oh gods! Old man, if you value your life pretend you’re a vegetable, go slack and spastic, go—”
The bedroom door opened.
Duncan’s body blocked Jake’s view, but he knew what was happening even before he heard Julian’s quiet voice. “Duncan.”
“Julian! Oh God, I’m so glad you’re here, I found Jake like this. Help me to—”
“An actor still. I commend you. But your skill is wasted. I know what you’re doing here.”
“Paying a call on Jake. But I found him like this! And his nurse passed out, drunk maybe—”
Duncan moved aside. Jake lay flaccid in his chair, mouth open, eyes staring. Drool had accumulated on his chin and dampend his clothes. As quietly as he could, he let his bladder go.
Julian stepped around his brother. Jake glimpsed the armed men beyond him, in the main room, and knew Cal was already dead.
“Jake?” Julian said softly. “Are you acting for my benefit? Have you been taking lessons from my traitor brother?”
Jake willed himself to lie flaccid, staring, his right hand trembling only slightly.
Julian stepped closer. Jake sensed the moment that Julian smelled urine, and then feces. That handsome genemod nose twitched. He stared hard another long moment, then turned back to Duncan.
“So the stroke is genuine. But you didn’t know about it before you chose to visit at this strange hour and by that devious river route. I never would have thought it of you. My own brother. My mistake,” Julian said tonelessly.
“Cai, I swear—”
Duncan’s body crumpled. Jake smelled burning human flesh.
“Dissolve the body and get the residue out of here with the nursemaid’s,” Julian said. “Hanson, code seventeen.”
“Yes, sir. And that one?”
“No danger. Petrovski, make sure there are no signs we were here. Don’t slip up.”
“Yes, sir.”
lulian left. Jake watched helplessly, twitching and drooling, sitting in his own wastes, as Petrovski wheeled him through the doorway. Behind him, Petrovski sprayed every inch of the room and bedclothes with a fine mist from a canister on his belt. Genemod selective enzymes, Jake guessed. They would eat every molecule that could possibly have come from a fingerprint, mud, hair, or whatever else they were engineered for. The only clue left behind would be the total absence of human passage, and Guy Davenport’s colonial security force did not have the tech to detect that void. It had never been needed.
When Petrovski had finished, he closed the bedroom door silently. Now he would
remove Jake and then spray the other room, here Duncan Martin and Cal Johnson had already been “dissolved” to “residue.”
Jake struggled to breathe shallowly. His shit and piss smelled terrible. He was alive only because of Duncan’s warning. Now he must stay alive, must continue to appear stroke-damaged enough so that Julian didn’t hear otherwise, must tell Alex and Ashraf…
But he couldn’t think clearly how to do that. All he could think of was Duncan’s muddy boots. They were muddy because the actor had come stealthily along the river, trying to avoid public notice. But Julian’s men had been following him. Duncan had not realize his own brother would put him under surveillance. He had trusted Julian at least that far; Julian had not trusted him; Julian’s cynicism had won.
Jake had to get to Alex.
22
THE AVERY MOUNTAINS
Karim’s Cheyenne captors were apparently unacquainted with boredom. Scrupulous in feeding their captives, in taking them outside for piss breaks, even in allowing them an hour or so a day of supervised exercise, the Cheyenne nonetheless made no effort to relieve the boredom of sitting tied down day after day in a darkened inflatable with nothing to do. Nor would they answer any questions.
The Cheyenne themselves were always busy: hunting, smoking meat, scouting. At night they beat on drums and danced, or so it sounded to Karim, sleepless on the other side of the plastic wall.
“Until you came we were bored out of our minds,” Jon McBain said to Lucy. Karim suspected that Lucy and possibly Kent still were. But Jon and the other tech, Kueilan, filled the time by encapsulating for Karim every advance in science since Karim had left decades ago. He listened eagerly, longing for a screen, or even pencil and paper.
But always Karim’s thoughts returned to the ship in orbit. He had to tell Mira City that the ship was Vine, not Fur. He had to obtain for the Vines upstairs the death flowers they had come for. McBain, on the other hand, seemed never to think about the ship, the war, the Cheyenne, or imminent death. He talked excitedly and practically nonstop. Eventually he came to his own work.
“—when Alex Cutler renewed the allocation for the microbial battery. But then we discovered something so amazing I put the battery aside for the last months. Mira doesn’t understand about pure research, the tray-o isn’t a scientist after all, but for this… We found a unique biomass six, Karim. I know you’re not a biologist, but it’s an apparently huge cache of underground anaerobic bacteria. producing completely novel molecules. The amazing part is a pole inserted inside the biomass began vibrating with enough repeated sequences that we hooked it to a computer. There are enough variations and a high enough signal-to-noise ratio that I think it’s non-random process, a crystallization of some sort that we—”