Enigma

by C. F. Bentley

  She’d already stored and read most of the Maril documents. She knew as much or more about their culture and religion than most Maril. If the avians truly wanted to use Mac’s station for negotiations, then Laudae Sissy needed this knowledge. He stored the tracts Adrial had translated into CSS standard in a separate file and forwarded it to the Temple terminal.

  So what did he have that Adrial didn’t? He’d always found his Arachnoid ancestors had an interesting sense of spirituality. They saw the universe as a giant web of energy. A tiny vibration on any strand affected all the others. Similar to but not the same as what Laudae Sissy preached each Holy Day. He dumped those documents into the reader.

  Then a quick scroll through the index. What did Adrial need?

  There! His favorite book of all. Il Principe by Niccolò Machiavelli. Best give her the Standard translation rather than the original Italian.

  Now for his meeting with Pamela Marella and her team to seal the hull breach around the Squid ship with more than just ice. Pammy was the one person he hoped never got hold of the spectacles. He also needed to examine the lab results from the autopsies on the corpses of the Squid People and their ancient but curiously efficient ship. He’d found their propulsion system vaguely similar to the arcane one used on the station. Interesting.

  “I’m not a geneticist, Jake,” Doc Halliday said by way of opening. She’d accosted him in the tram between Control and a meeting to set up a second hydroponics garden and open promenade in Labby’s now deserted wing.

  “And that signifies?” Jake asked. He closed his eyes against the near constant fatigue. Oh, for one night of uninterrupted sleep. Just one.

  “Stay awake, Jake. This is important.” A slight sting on the back of his wrist told him Mariah had slapped a stimulant patch on him.

  He yanked it off. Too easy to get addicted to those things. Jake had done a lot of questionable things in his life. Too much alcohol, fistfights, women. Oh, the women! But never drugs. He’d seen too many good pilots wash out when they relied on chemicals to think for them.

  “Talk, Mariah. Make it fast.” He handed the contaminated piece of webbing back to her, holding it by his fingernails—which needed trimming. He hadn’t even had time lately to do that.

  In response, Doc Halliday keyed an override to stop the tram between stations.

  “Mariah?”

  “I performed autopsies on the bodies you found in the derelict Maril ship. I ran the tests, didn’t believe them, so I ran them again. And a third time to be sure.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “The female was pregnant. From fetal development I’m guessing six maybe even seven months along. But the baby was incredibly small, too small to survive.”

  “Dwarfism? I though that had been eliminated from the gene pool centuries ago.” But it still cropped up on rim worlds.

  “Nope. I’m surprised she didn’t spontaneously abort. She had Jarlanski’s Syndrome.”

  “What’s that?”

  “An autoimmune disease we think evolved in humans due to water polluted by heavy metals. Causes miniature fetuses, spontaneous RH negative reactions to pregnancy when both the mother and baby are RH positive. In advanced stages it causes organ failure in odd clusters. We cured it in the twenty-second century.”

  Jake shrugged. Then the implication hit him hard between the eyes. “A Maril with a human autoimmune disease?”

  “Yep. Found some other anomalies too. I think the Maril were once human, then they tinkered with their DNA to give them avian characteristics. Now that tinkering is breaking down. I don’t know why. That’s why they are trying to breed with humans on the rim rather than wipe them out.” Mariah Halliday, a CSS colonel, a trauma surgeon on a battleship, looked scared.

  “Since I got here, I’ve seen four species with DNA breakdown. The Squids went extinct. The Labyrinthians found a way to crossbreed to stabilize their DNA. I think they are back to a point where they can breed with their own kind again. If the female Maril in the morgue is an indicator, then her people are in big trouble for a couple of generations.”

  “That’s three.”

  “Harmony.”

  Jake chilled with dread. “The caste marks.”

  “If that’s the only tinkering they did, they may be okay, if they stop messing around and just let the damn things go. Otherwise . . . ?”

  “Who do you want to double-check your tests?” He straightened from his habitual lean against the tram walls.

  “I want Nigel Farnsworth of the Royal College of Genetics, Cambridge. And I want him here. I’m not trusting any courier with my samples. Unless you want to personally take them back to Earth.” She raised her eyebrows speculatively.

  “Thanks for the compliment. But that’s more Pammy’s field.”

  “I don’t trust her any more than I trust the Maril in battle.”

  This time Jake raised his eyebrows.

  “Yeah, I know Pammy’s the spymaster of the CSS. Gives me more than a couple of reasons not to trust her. She has her own agenda, and I’m not always sure it involves what’s best for the CSS.”

  “I agree. Pammy wants what is good for Pammy. If that coincides with what the CSS needs, that’s okay. Otherwise you might as well call her a pirate. Compose the letter requesting Farnsworth’s transfer, and I’ll cosign it with an ASAP from Telvino. But this discussion goes no further. Absolutely no one is to know what we know until we can confirm it. Not even Laudae Sissy.” Though that would give her another excuse to break the caste system on Harmony.

  “I agree. If Sissy has a secret this big, outsiders might not hesitate to coerce her into revealing it. She’s vulnerable. And you are vulnerable if anything happens to her.”

  Jake silently agreed but didn’t respond.

  “Can I get to my meeting?” He checked his comm unit for the time. “I’ll only be half an hour late.”

  “Okay.” Mariah canceled her override. The tram slid slowly onward, then gathered speed.

  “Any ideas on why the Maril tinkered with their DNA to begin with?”

  “I’m guessing humans settled on a light-gravity world. First generation would have bounced around in near flight. Succeeding generations adapted with less bone density, leaner musculature, but because the light gravity was natural to them, they couldn’t fly.”

  “And they wanted to,” Jake mused. “Bind some feather genes to the hair mixes and invent a way to get the skin flaps to drape from the arms. Instant feathered glides.”

  “How long ago?” Mariah asked. She acted as if she didn’t need the answer.

  “We know that the Harmonites encountered a monastic holy order of Maril when they colonized seven hundred years ago. Harmony was in the second wave of exodus from Earth. On that time line, the Maril must have been one of the first human ventures in space. Probably cut off from communications with Earth soon after landing.” The same wave that settled Amity, a closed world with human genes untainted by outside influences—human genes as close to the original configuration of the Maril as they could find. As good a place as any to begin crossbreeding.

  Adrial.

  “Is that why the Maril traders are making overtures to talk peace?” he wondered.

  Mariah pretended not to hear him. “Chirps and whistles carry farther than words while flying, so their language evolved too.” She watched the station’s numbers fly by. “We’re looking at fifteen hundred years probably.”

  “The Harmony Military and Spacers have made great strides in decoding the language—the written form has some similarities to their own obsolete Temple writing—or maybe Harmony adapted to what was already there.” Jake ignored his own speculation about possible peace talks. As far-fetched as the idea seemed, a year and a half ago he couldn’t foresee negotiating with Harmony either.

  Or falling in love with their High Priestess.

  “The Maril writing is pictorial, like ancient hieroglyphs. The next logical jump is to assume it’s also metaphorical, open to many interpretations
. Damn, no wonder we’ve never been able to break it.” Jake really wanted a good strong shot of whiskey. Maybe several of them.

  The last time he’d gotten roaring drunk was the night Major Jake Hannigan died and Lt. Colonel Jeremiah Devlin rose out of the dead identity.

  He took three deep breaths, letting each go slowly. “Harmony grant me peace of mind to think clearly and act wisely,” he repeated over and over, as he’d seen Sissy and Gregor do many times.

  “That’s a good ritual. I’m going to see if it works for me next time I end up doing bizarre and borderline-ethical surgical procedures.” Mariah chuckled as the tram settled to a stop. “Or autopsy aliens.”

  To restore Harmony we need to go out there to the stars. Jilly’s prophecy reminded him. Maybe Harmony came from the little things, the small rituals that linked back through tradition. Ancient tradition

  Jake made a point of remote kissing the glyph of Harmony on the tram. He needed all the peace and wisdom he could muster.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “Commas.” Sissy threw the stack of paper onto the conference table. “Eight months of meetings, an emergency of drastic proportions at home, and your only differences are punctuation!” She leaned forward, fists clenched on the table, and glared at the two ambassadors.

  “My Laudae, because of your early educational limitations, you are perhaps unaware of how much a comma can change the meaning of a sentence,” Garrin da Lukan pa Lukan/FCC said mildly.

  Sissy fixed her gaze on Lord Lukan’s son and primary assistant. “I know precisely how much punctuation affects the meaning of a sentence. In these cases they are meaningless. You are stalling. You don’t want to sign a treaty of alliance, or trade, or anything.” She shifted her attention to Lord Lukan. “You would rather Harmony City collapse and die than accept help from outsiders.”

  “Laudae Sissy, I want this treaty as much as anyone,” Lord Lukan protested. He held his hands in front of him, palms up. “We need the alliance. For many reasons.”

  “Then who gave you orders to wrap these negotiations in confusion until we are lost in a morass of punctuation?” She used Jake’s words. They didn’t need to know that. Jake chased different crises. Something to do with a sabotaged power plant in the refugee quarters.

  She wondered if Lord Lukan had learned of the hours she spent with Jake, either in his office or hers, going over the day’s events, evaluating every nuance of relationships and interactions around the station. Holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes with longing. Aching to break every law against cross-caste and cross-culture relationships.

  Would there be consequences if Lukan did know?

  The idea of the High Priestess of all Harmony becoming involved with an alien—even a human one—might depose her and send her into exile—never to return to Harmony again. Never to feel the sweetness of joining her mind, body, and soul within a funerary cave, the womb of the Goddess.

  If her enemies didn’t use it as an excuse to execute her. Within minutes of the quake Laud Andrew and Lord Bevan had declared the disaster her fault for deserting her home in favor of talking to aliens.

  “Lord Lukan, if you want this treaty so badly, then who gives you orders not to sign?” She sat back down, letting her anger bleed out of her posture. The emotion still roiled.

  Ambassador Telvino swiveled in his chair to more directly confront Lukan. “I thought you had the power to approve and sign?”

  Admiral Marella, trying to become invisible in the far reaches of the wedge-shaped room, busied herself with her handheld computer.

  Lukan had the grace to look embarrassed.

  Sissy reached for the papers she had just cast aside. After a quick glance to make sure they had not been altered since she had brought them to the table that morning, she found a pen in her pocket and affixed her signature to the last page.

  “Does this satisfy you, Ambassador Telvino? I accept this treaty.”

  “You have no authority!” Lukan pounded the table.

  “As High Priestess, my vote outweighs all votes on the Council of Guardians. I would have to sign in the end. Why not the beginning?”

  “You have separated yourself from the Goddess Harmony. The Council no longer recognizes you as Her avatar,” Garrin said quietly. His gaze slid away from her. “You caused the quake and monster storms. You leave us vulnerable to invasion while we fight to overcome . . .”

  “Silence! You will not repeat that nonsense,” Lukan ordered.

  “I will not stand by while she gives away our entire heritage by enlisting outsiders to do what Harmony should do for herself. What we have always done for ourselves and our colonies. She’s promising new Badger Metal hull plating to any ship that diverts supplies to Harmony Prime!”

  “Harmony and her colonies no longer have enough resources to provide everything we need for a disaster of this scale,” Lukan reminded his son. “Laudae Sissy has exchanged a valuable asset for help.”

  “She no longer has authority from the Council to negotiate or sign!” Garrin countered.

  “My sources tell me that if the government no longer looks to me for guidance, the people still do,” she returned. Flashes of her old insecurities ate away at her self-control. Over a year had passed since her ordination. At times, like now, she still believed she belonged in Lord Chauncey’s factory assembling navigation systems for spaceships.

  “The people?” Garrin dismissed them with a wave. “The people have no say in this matter.”

  More and more Jake convinced her that she had the authority and personal power to act on what she knew to be right.

  If only she had her connection to the Goddess and her sense of unity with a planet to confirm that authority!

  “The people are the reason Harmony exists. Without the people, you would have no power, no one to rule. Without the people working every day, you would have no clothing, no pretty houses, no cars, nothing. You’d have to make it all yourself. I doubt, sir, that you would survive.”

  That was why the original settlers had created the caste system. They created slaves to serve them.

  Sissy rose from her chair and tucked her hands into the sleeves of her robe. With a curt nod of her head she fixed her gaze on each person in the room in turn, including Admiral Marella, who tried to fade into the bulkhead.

  “I expect a copy of this treaty, signed by Ambassador Telvino and Lord Lukan, on my desk within the hour. If you delay in any way, I shall break this negotiation as I broke the government of Harmony. You will all be replaced by people willing to negotiate a viable treaty, people who do not have orders to stall and drag out the talks endlessly until some new crisis forces your hand. Do you understand me?”

  Ambassador Telvino rose and bowed low. He grabbed the treaty and signed it with a flourish. Then he shoved the document in front of Lukan.

  Garrin stayed his father’s hand from adding his own signature. “My Lord, you cannot sign this document. It is vague and . . .”

  “The only vagueness is in the changes you demand, Garrin,” Sissy interrupted. “My Lord, do you sign your name or do I send you home?”

  “I sign. As I should have signed weeks ago. You are right, My Laudae. We have orders filtered through many channels, but I think we both know their origin. I can no longer justify a delay. Harmony needs help. Now. Not at some undefined time in the future.” He shook off his son’s restraint and pulled his own pen out of a pocket in his formal blue robe, an old-fashioned pen with an elaborately carved wood barrel and a pointed nib. His signature dwarfed the other two in size and flourishes.

  “It is done.” Sissy sighed. “Shall we retire to the Temple for a blessing on this historic moment?” Not a question, an order.

  “Since you people take comfort in rituals for every action, I believe that appropriate,” Telvino said. “You too, Admiral Marella. You can report back to the CSS afterward.”

  “Your presence is also required, Garrin,” Lukan said. “We shall all inform our governments aft
er we have said prayers of thanksgiving and lit incense and candle flame to bless the occasion.”

  Rituals. Rituals to complete every action.

  A light flashed across Sissy’s mind. Rituals reminded her of her connection with the divine. If she found rituals for small actions as well as major ones, perhaps she could reforge her connection to Harmony. Like remote kissing of the sigil of Harmony on the trams. Like lighting candles. Like blessing food before eating.

  She did all those things and more.

  Was the Goddess just beyond her reach, coming closer with each little connection?

  She grabbed the important document off the conference table. Her fingers barely reached it before Garrin or Admiral Marella could. “I shall take custody of this and make certain you all have valid copies.” No sense in giving either of them the chance to alter it to their advantage.

  “You did not attend the treaty blessing ritual,” Mac said flatly to Admiral Pamela Marella. He confronted her as she sneaked away from the conference room and headed toward the secret office she’d set up in the damaged and abandoned wing. At least the office was a secret to most of the station.

  Mac had few doubts that the admiral could hide her spy headquarters from Jake.

  “I have no need for superstitious nonsense,” she sneered. Her eyes flicked right and left, seeking a path around Mac’s stolid presence between her and the lift.

  “Nor I. But Laudae Sissy needs them. Since she is the glue that holds Harmony to the treaty, you should acknowledge her request for your presence.”

  “I don’t have time for this. Get out of my way, Mac.”

  “Not until I know what you plan to do now that the treaty has been signed.”

  “That is not your business.”

  “If it affects the safety of this station and the people within it, then it is my business.”

  “This is my station. I do as I need to do to protect the CSS as a whole.” Admiral Marella took one step sideways, then three forward. “That includes removing you from my path—from this station if necessary.”