Taken Liberty v5

by Steven H. Wilson

  The most recent refitting of the Titan, unfortunately, was initially proposed by a member of the Confederacy's Council of Arbiters. This particular gentleman had never been to space, had never toured a space ship, and had never held a job in his life, other than a political one. He had no training for anything, outside of a few degrees in fields in which he'd never practiced; but he was from the right families, and so was pushed forward, by those who "knew people," as a political candidate. Successful candidates, after all, don't just up and declare one day. They are 'sponsored' by someone. That someone usually smells an attempt to gain wealth and power.

  This young man, picked to lead others because he could do nothing else, was wont to find projects to undertake which made him look busy and gave him lines to add to his resume. One project he conceived was to give the Navy a truly grand flagship, designed for more than just tawdry functionality. He wanted something worthy of bearing the flag of the Confederacy, something elegant, something beautiful.

  "We are the rulers of the stars," he said in Council. "We should have a vessel at the fore of our fleet which says so, and says so grandly." They stood and applauded him.

  So this young Arbiter, driven by the momentary adulation of his fellows, sat down with the plans of the Titan as she was laid out by Lindstrom Douglas, and began to make revisions. According to some experienced spacers who saw the plans, he damn near revised poor old Titan right out of space. His initial design wouldn't have held atmosphere, much less moved.

  He began by writing a poem.

  Now, most people in the Inner Worlds would have agreed that a well-designed ship is a thing of beauty. That the accomplishments of human minds and human hands are – when a modicum of reason has gone into their design – monuments to be celebrated. Those officers who thought Titan one of the most beautiful objects in the universe, however, those who were downright religious about the old girl, felt that way about her long before this young Arbiter put quill to parchment.

  Lindy Douglas, Jan Atal had told all his students at the academy, was a genius, tested, certified, recorded for posterity. Titan was the capstone of an ingenious career, a career which may have affected human progress more than any career in our history, for Lindy led humanity to the stars. Or it might be more accurate to say he led humanity home from the stars. Many had attempted shortcuts through hyperspace before Lindy Douglas. Most had become hopelessly lost and died in space as well. Lindy's mapping of L-Space made long-distance travel safe and practical. Titan was his living, breathing monument.

  But Titan wasn't built by a poet. It was designed by engineers and scientists, built by craftspeople. There was solid scientific thought behind its development, and solid philosophical thought behind the use to which it would be put – the exploration of space and the protection of human society. One doesn't arrive at the successful conclusion to a project like Titan by vomiting chaotic emotions onto paper, or into data storage.

  This young Arbiter didn't understand that. He was one of those to whom feelings – raw, ungoverned, unexamined emotions – were the be-all and the end-all. He believed science should take a backseat to compassionate sociology, that scientists and all whose work derived from rational thought, as opposed to directionless emotional reaction to the infinite, were, essentially, retarded. Perhaps it would be better to say he thought they were blind. They were unable to see or to understand the irrational, the nonsensical, the 'cosmic,' as Terrans had once called it. Others would say these rationalists functioned in a world that made sense, in which life had a purpose, in which right and wrong had definitions, in which you believed in what you could see, and withheld judgment on things you couldn't.

  This kind of mind-set, he maintained, prevented one from glimpsing the eternal. Since the universe made no sense, since humanity was at the whim of higher forces it could neither appease nor understand, it was ludicrous – nay, blasphemous – to attempt to understand the framework of reality. One should merely leave one's mind open to experience, not attempt to draw conclusions based on facts, for the human mind is feeble and all facts are really matters of opinion. One should understand that right and wrong had no definitions, and it was sacrilege to say otherwise.

  Since it was the mind-set of rationality which had designed Titan, it was necessary, in his eyes, for someone whose mind was uncluttered with the conditioning of reason to propose the new design.

  So he wrote a poem. The poem described how the ship should feel.

  He then contacted some friends who were some sorts of engineers – it didn't matter what kind, for all technicians were of the same, dumb, blind ilk – and they, under his tutelage, molded a new design from his poetic direction.

  And one "petty detail" he was too busy to notice was that the glorious promenades he had designed had windows in the floor. The life sphere's gravity is supplied by its rotation, which results in centrifugal force. That force attracts objects inside the sphere toward its outer perimeter, not toward its center. So the floor of, say, the captain's cabin is on the outer wall of the ship. It took one of those 'tawdry engineers' to point out this failing to the designer, and to propose that a system of mirrors below the floor and within the bulkheads could be used to project the view of space outside onto a wall, where it was less prone to induce vertigo than it would be beneath the occupants' feet.

  The young Arbiter wasn't happy. Having never been in space, he couldn't visualize it. It was 'artificial,' since passengers wouldn't be looking right out a window at space. Several people tried to explain to him that all vision is just reflection and refraction anyway, but he never understood the point. He tried to insist that they come up with another system for supplying gravity, so his child could have windows. A lot of people quit the project. The Arbiter broke down crying in the Council room, bemoaning that no one around him understood his emotional genius.

  While he was in therapy, one of his staff took over the refit. The project was completed five years overdue and nearly 300 per cent over budget. And the promenades – which had scandalized many taxpayers as an unnecessary luxury – had "windows" in the walls, extending into the ceilings, which were actually mirrored images, reflected from under the floor. No one could tell the difference.

  * * *

  "Brilliant!"

  Mors was shaking his head, examining the dregs of the Quintil coffee in his mug as he gently swirled them. Mors loved to drink coffee. His doctor had insisted for a period of sixty years that he quit. Then the doctor had died and no one had bothered him about it since.

  "I'm sorry?" Atal said.

  "How do you do it, Atal? Your ability to find new ways of getting into trouble is exceeded only by... Ah well, never mind."

  He set the mug on the table between them. They were seating in that very controversial captain's promenade. Atal's predecessor had furnished it with antiques – glass and whitewashed wood – to give the appearance of being on a cruise ship's promenade on the seas of Quintil. The effect was convincing. Only the absolute blackness of space in place of the ocean on the other side of the huge windows was a giveaway.

  "No, tell me, Professor. What exceeds my ability to get into trouble?"

  "I was going to say your ability to get out of it. But, my boy, I don't see that happening this time. You've wound so many hot political threads into this one problem –"

  "I walked in in the middle of the problem, sir. If my predecessor on Arbiter hadn't adopted Aer'La –"

  "Adopted? Interesting euphemism for making the child his sex slave."

  "Professor – such language! My virgin ears –"

  "Only one of them, boy. I know, I've seen the vids. Amazing. And yes, this old Phaeton has loosened up a bit on the subject of what young Metcalfe's people call 'original sin.'"

  "Do they really?" Atal didn't know which astounded him more. Mors speaking openly of sex – which his people deemed a dangerous luxury – or learning that Metcalfe's people actually believed in sin, and considered sexual intercourse to be one. People who allo
wed themselves no other way than copulation to continue their race would logically consider copulation a sacrament... but human mores were rarely logical.

  "Oh yes," Mors replied. "For millennia now. It's quite a taboo for them, too. I've always found that fascinating. At least, when my people declared it a taboo we stopped doing it."

  "And mine made it a party game. Useless, from an earth perspective –"

  "Hardly useless! I'd call some Quintil erotica a high art form."

  "You've viewed erotica? Professor, you have loosened up."

  "Part of my latest research, actually."

  "I'll be interested in hearing about it. Later. But sir –"

  "Yes, back to the poor child. Jan, this is exactly the kind of thing Fournier is expecting."

  "You mean that I might try to apply the principles of the Confederacy?"

  "That you might create a political hornet's nest for him during your first week on the job. You know how the Varthan alliance will react if this gets out. The girl is one of their nationals. They'll demand her immediate release to their authorities."

  "So that they can put her back in chains."

  "Precisely. Think of the black eye this gives them, the hope it might engender in other slaves in Freespace."

  "That's exactly what I'm thinking about. Why the hell don't we take a stand against these bastards? Our entire alliance is founded on the principles of freedom –"

  "Our alliance is founded on the principles of safety and convenience, and you damned well know it, Jan."

  "You're an old cynic."

  "To the core. The Confederate Charter has lots of lofty words in it, written by a few idealists who remembered the oppression they'd suffered on old Terra. But the reason most worlds bought into it is that we're nearby each other, and we have to watch each other's backs. Terra's not a superpower anymore, but the Qraitians are. If we don't stand together, we'll be conquered, the Varthans among us; but that doesn't mean we all share the same beliefs or even that we like each other. You'd be surprised how many people condone Varthan slavery, and how many more just don't care about it. We're held together by stellar geography, not brotherhood."

  "You're lecturing."

  "Sorry. Old habits."

  Mors sipped his coffee for a thoughtful moment. "I suppose I should blame myself as much as you. I knew about the girl's past."

  "You did?"

  "From Cernaq."

  "Of course. And I guess you couldn't have missed it, having met Aer'La."

  "Interesting that you say that, though, Jan. I was surprised, when I met her, at her behavior. I wouldn't have guessed her for a feral, were I not a telepath."

  "No? What makes you say so?"

  "As I said, her behavior. Ferals – I know from the few I've encountered, and I gather from what I've read – are usually either in a state of extreme agitation, or they're... I believe the best word would be 'dopey.' When one is agitated, I quite believe that a human male in her clutches would be in grave danger."

  "Aer'La can become extremely agitated. I've never seen her dopey. As to the rest, she can be very dangerous. I also assume she can be gentle, since I believe all of my male midshipmen have been intimate with her."

  "I gather she doesn't use the traditional drugs?"

  "Which traditional drugs?"

  "The ones used to manage them by their masters. Here." Mors activated his data implant. "I just recently came across this article about the practice."

  Holographic words appeared in the air before Mors, forming a shape roughly akin to a large, printed page. He gently shoved the glowing rectangle toward Atal. Responding to its programming to react so to an encounter between human flesh and its holo matrix, the page shushed its way forward in the direction Mors had pushed.

  Atal scanned it, a piece from a news service's health section titled, "Hope for treating sociopaths from an unlikely source."

  Physicians working in the Confederacy's penal system believe they may have an alternative to incarceration for some of the truly violent cases in their care. It's an alternative coming from an unlikely source: The Varthan Slave Trade.

  Dr. Arvenius Frook, chief physician of the Confederate Cometary Detention Center in the Rigel System, points to promising research on a compound known to Varthans simply as "grog."

  "Varthan Ferals are, of course, the most violently natured species in the known galaxy," Frook explained in an exclusive interview last week. "Many, if not most of them will kill for no reason whatsoever. This compound has been used for generations by the Varthans to take the edge off the ferals' killer impulse. According to interviews I've conducted with people in the, ah, industry, it provides clarity of thinking and a sense of well-being to the ferals thus treated. And, apparently, they love the stuff. If these reports are true, they're probably better off under its influence. Of course, I don't condone slavery."

  Frook went on to discuss possible applications for serial murderers and hate criminals.

  "While many behavioral aberrations of days gone by are prevented by careful genetic screening, there's still a lot we don't understand about violent behavior," said Frook.

  Civil rights groups, meanwhile, have protested...

  "Hmm," Atal said, snapping his fingers to dissolve the image. "Aer'La did mention grog. She didn't say anything about clarity or a sense of well being, though. She said it made them stupid."

  "Doubtful something the Varthans would admit, if they think they've found a way to expand the market for the stuff."

  A chime sounded in the air, and Carson's holo, ten inches tall, appeared on Atal's shoulder. Atal wondered if he would soon be accustomed again to the niceties of Inner Worlds technology.

  "Request from the Admiralty, Captain," said Carson's image. "Admiral Fournier requests the pleasure of a conference with you."

  "Send him through," Atal sighed.

  As if the man himself had, in fact, been transmitted into the room, Admiral Fournier appeared in front of them. Nor was he, like Carson's avatar, ten inches tall. Conferences with the Admiralty demanded full size holo. In fact, Atal suspected the oily bastard had himself enlarged a little in transmission.

  The technique was called compressed interactive communication: A hologram was crunched down into a tiny data stream and transmitted in packets, the signal following its own path through Lindstrom space. The technology was highly unstable, since an actual probe had to be sent into L-Space to transmit and receive. The probes tended to get lost, since they were on automatic. It took a human or a very sophisticated navigational computer to process the ever-changing data of what was where in L-Space.

  It wasn't a cheap way to communicate, but Fournier didn't have much regard for economy. Appearing thus allowed him a chance at virtual intimidation, as well as a peek into the goings on on Atal's promenade. Today, however, he didn't seem interested in peeking. His eyes stayed glued to his terminal screen, reading some report or other.

  "I'll get right to the point, Atal," he said. "I've no time for pleasantries."

  "I'm sure my guest would appreciate that, Admiral."

  Now he looked up. He was a good politician. His face brightened politely. "Professor Mors. Good to see you."

  "And you, Admiral," said Mors. "And thank you for that bit of pleasantry amidst your busy schedule."

  Fournier didn't reply. He really couldn't. Highly placed as he was, he couldn't be Mors's enemy. No one in the Navy could.

  "I hope the Captain isn't burdening you with this embarrassing situation, sir."

  "On the contrary, I insisted on hearing about it. I am here as an advisor, Georg."

  Fournier nodded curtly. "Very well, then. As you've no doubt surmised, Atal, I've received a transmission from Dr. Flynn. I'm disappointed, though not surprised, that you didn't see fit to contact me personally."

  "I am still investigating the matter, Admiral. The physician's call to you was premature, and against my orders."

  "The physician was carrying out his responsibilities as an
officer."

  "Be that as it may, he's second-guessed me for the last time. At the earliest opportunity, I want him off this ship."

  "We'll discuss that later. Now, because of the sensitive political nature of this matter, and considering the importance of our trade relations with the Varthan free state, I've already contacted their representatives. The Confederacy can't afford to be accused of harboring Varthan fugitives. It could cause an embargo and millions could starve."

  He looked pointedly at Atal. "Or weren't you aware that seventy-eight per cent of our grain is imported from Freespace?"

  "Seventy six point four eight nine," The Captain said quietly.

  "Don't spar with me, Atal!" the Admiral snapped. "I know you think you're acting the hero, but you've caused great difficulty for the Confederacy by trying to hide this. The Varthans will never believe you were ignorant of the situation for two years."

  "I didn't claim to be."

  "No, but the only way to keep you innocent is to make that claim for you! And believe me, I have no desire to keep you innocent. But to let you swing in the breeze would create greater problems for the Navy than you're worth. You have therefore protested your innocence. The Varthans won't believe you, but so what? We're cooperating now."

  "And how are we cooperating?" Atal asked.

  "The Varthans are sending an investigator, who will determine the girl's worth and circumstances of escape, and decide what's to be done. It may be that you could purchase the girl away from Vartha," he added with the wry, self-satisfied grin of one who considered himself a supreme wit. "But either way she's to be stripped of rank immediately. To show their benevolence, the Admiralty won't charge her with impersonating an officer. We... understand her desperation."

  "How kind of you."

  "It is kind of us, Atal, and don't forget: that kindness covers your posterior as well!"

  "But doesn't protect human rights?"