* * *
I found a spot away from all the noise and celebration and just sat quietly for a long time. I turned the power up on my embedded commlink for the first time in over a week and listened to the hum of the jammers. I listened to it for almost an hour before it suddenly went away, and I blinked to send the comm address I’d had waiting all that time. She answered almost immediately.
Sasha!
“Marr, I’m okay. I’m okay, honest, I’m okay and I’m so sorry, so sorry, and I love you so much.”
Oh, come home! Please just come home to us.
“I will, I promise. As soon as I can get transportation I’m coming home. And listen, this probably sounds stupid, but when I get there…do you want to learn how to samba?”
* * *
The next morning, after donating a unit of blood for Aurora, I sat in the heart of CSJ headquarters in Katammu-Arc, in a much larger office than before. Field Marshal Lieutenant e-Loyolaan faced me across his desk and studied me for a while.
I was not out of the woods yet, not by any means. Everything up until now meant very little if it ended up with me in a CSJ interrogation cell facing some guy whose orders were, “Find out everything Naradnyo knows,” and who did not share my aversion to traumatic interrogations. If they did that, they would find everything out eventually. I knew a lot of pretty incriminating stuff, and not just incriminating to me. Too many people would go down, most of them much better people than I was, so I figured I needed to do some pretty smart talking in the next ten minutes.
As before, e-Loyolaan’s face didn’t give much away. Finally he spoke.
“I sent four CSJ agents into Sookagrad and three were murdered.”
“Murdered? They kidnapped a citizen without identifying themselves as CSJ. The legally constituted law enforcement authorities told them to surrender, and did not shoot them until they themselves opened fire. The locals did everything right and your men did everything wrong. If those men were murdered, the murderer is the one who ordered them to carry out that mission in that way.”
“To what extent your gang of criminals and revolutionaries was legally constituted law enforcement is a matter of dispute, but also beside the point. I want the people who killed my agents.”
If he felt any personal responsibility for that mess, he covered it well.
“Sift the ashes of Sookagrad. You’ll find their bones.”
He looked away for a while, his eyes on one of the identical blank walls, but unfocused, far away. Finally he looked back, his expression still unreadable.
“An interesting message sent with the survivor, Mr. Naradnyo: ‘I have him and I know what he knows.’ Were you disappointed when your sister transmitted the confession to the entire Cottohazz and stole your exclusive ownership of that knowledge?”
“Some things, it’s too dangerous to be the only one who knows,” I said.
“Ah, that is very true, Mr. Naradnyo. Very true. Of course, his confession implicating AZ Kagataan in his bioweapons research will have considerable repercussions, all of which will financially benefit your young ward, won’t they?”
“Tweezaa e-Traak is not my ward. She’s the adopted daughter of Arigapaa e-Lotonaa. My wife is her court-appointed fiduciary guardian until she reaches her majority, but my only formal relation to her is head of security. I keep her alive; I have no responsibility with respect to her inheritance.”
“No responsibility, but your fortunes are tied to hers, yes?”
“I’m not on commission, if that’s what you mean. I’m on straight salary, and she’d have to get a lot poorer for my paychecks not to clear.”
I could tell he didn’t believe me, but it was a lie he expected, one within his comfort zone. He stared at me and colored slightly, an ear twitched. I suddenly was certain he burned to ask whether my father’s confession was all I knew, and that told me he knew the other part.
That was the first thing he had ever given away to me. The biggest secret, the biggest lie in the Cottohazz, and the head of CSJ knew it and guarded it, which figured. Knowledge was one of their three precepts, not Truth.
No matter what else happened, they were going to end up putting my father through the wringer and figure out what he’d told me. If e-Loyolaan was going to know that eventually, the question was how and when I wanted him to find out.
“There’s something else you want to ask me,” I said.
He shifted in his chair, the first time I think I’d ever seen any sign he was uncomfortable.
“I am always interested in the totality of one’s knowledge,” he said, “or at least what is relevant to the well-being of the Cottohazz. It is my responsibility.”
“Sure. As far as that goes, I’ve told you everything I know. I’ve heard other things, but that’s not the same as knowing.”
He became very still and looked at me closely. “What is the difference between hearing and knowing, in your opinion?”
“Proof.”
We sat there for a few seconds, studying each other, and I let him see as deep into me as he wanted. I wasn’t hiding anything, at least on this point.
“One man’s testimony can sometimes be considered an element of proof,” he said.
“Not if he’s already on record confessing to complicity in illegal bioweapons research, and that confession is everywhere on the float. Either he’s a criminal or he’s a liar. In either case, no one important’s ever going to listen to him again.”
“And is there a recording of this other conversation, the thing you heard?”
“Nope.”
“I imagine that if there is, it is almost certainly in your sister’s bio-recorder memory. I could simply bring her in and find out. She might not enjoy the experience.”
“Probably not, but I think you would enjoy it even less. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but she’s the voice of Sookagrad, a heroine to everyone in the Cottohazz who watched this disaster unfold. Right now, this morning, the two hottest-trending topics on the float are which studio is going to get the holovid rights to produce Sookagrad Calling, and who they’re going to cast as Aurora. And you’re going to snatch her off the street, pump her full of drugs, and do a surgical download of her recorder memory? If you do, you’re finished as head of CSJ.”
He actually frowned. Whatever else happened, I figured I could call this a win based just on making Field Marshal Lieutenant e-Loyolaan frown. He absently tapped his finger on the desk a few times and when its smart surface came to life he jumped a bit, looked annoyed, and immediately turned it off. I was careful not to react in any way.
“You will be leaving for Kootrin from here?” he asked finally.
“Yeah. Commissioner-designate Prayzaat, the acting commandant of the Sakkatto City Munies—he being a war buddy of mine and all—has lifted the material witness summons, so I’m free to travel. I have a couple things to do, but then I’m gone, as soon as I can arrange transport. Of course, things are still pretty snarled up.”
“I believe I can expedite that. Under the circumstances, I think the sooner you leave Bakaa, the better for all concerned. But there is one more matter. Your father has been taken into custody and will almost certainly be remaining with us for…quite some time. He is in this complex. If you like, I can arrange for you to visit him before you leave.”
I thought about it but shook my head.
“We’re not really that close.”
* * *
While e-Loyolaan worked on lining up my transportation, I checked in on Moshe in the Black Docks med center. The maglev was running again and I took it to Praha-Riz and then a local over to the Black Docks stop. A lot of the Varoki looked at me uncomfortably, some out of resentment, I guess for the humiliating invasion a Human enclave’s troubles had brought down on the city, some out of guilt for why it had been necessary. No one said anything to me, though, possibly because of the Zack Mike trooper who stood at one end of the maglev car, glaring at the passengers between belches.
When I got
to the med center Moshe already had a visitor, Dezi Zdravkova.
“Hey, Killer. That was a good move, holing up in Drak’zanaat Arcology.”
She stood up and shook my hand, smiling. “I didn’t think I’d see you again. I thought both of you were dead when I found out no one got past those gunsleds. I was up at the front of the column and didn’t find out until later—too late.”
“Nothing you could have done but get yourself killed,” Moshe said from his bed. “Sasha, your sister told how you got out, through the storm sewers. That was good thinking.”
“Yeah, we’re all pretty smart,” I said, “smart and good-looking.”
And alive, unlike most of the others. The uBakai had not exempted the clinic from their no-surrender order so Doc Mahajan was dead along with all of her patients. Dolores Wu had been killed in the long running fight getting to Drak’zanaat Arcology. Billy Conklin had made it there but had died in the brutal room-to-room fighting on the lower levels along with Bogo Katranjiev. Bela Ripnick had disappeared somewhere in the chaos of Sookagrad’s fall.
“What happened to Stal?” I asked.
“He got to Drak’zanaat and fought with us there,” Zdravkova said, “but he and Ivanov disappeared once the Zacks showed up. That was something to see! Those Zack Mike troopers don’t fool around, do they? Anyway, Stal slipped away. I think he wants to keep a low profile. I’m thinking I should do the same thing.”
I shook my head. “That ship has sailed, Killer. You’re going to be the real hero of Sookagrad, once all the dust settles, so you better get used to it.”
I saw a look of genuine distress at the thought of it, and she looked around, as if for a way out. “There are things I have to do,” she said.
“You still can, just in a different way,” I said.
She looked at me, puzzled.
“You’ll have a platform, and when it’s time to speak you’ll have an audience. Trust me, the time is coming.”
She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. “Is that all you’ll tell me?”
“Yup,” I said. “Except that I actually managed to find a bottle of locally distilled slivovitz.” I pulled it out of my hip pocket, unscrewed the cap, and held it up. “To Sookagrad, and absent friends.” I drank and passed it to Zdravkova.
“To Sookagrad,” she whispered, eyes distant, and she drank. She looked at Moshe and smiled tenderly. “You’re in no shape for this, dear. I’ll do the honors for you.”
“To Sookagrad,” he said, and Zdravkova drank again. She held the bottle out to me but I waved it away.
“It’s a present. Keep it. So Moshe, once you’re up out of this bed, I’m betting there are any number of starship lines who’ll be willing to hire the electrical genius of Sookagrad. You can probably name your price.”
His eyes flicked to Zdravkova’s and then he smiled wistfully. “Bah, I think maybe flying around isn’t so good a life after all. You go from here to there to there and then back to where you started, and what have you got? All the repairs and new construction they’ll be doing here…I think an electrician can do some good, and if I make a little money while I’m at it, that wouldn’t kill me either.”
I turned to Zdravkova. “So now that your blowing-up-stuff days are over, what are you going to do?”
She sat back down next to Moshe’s bed and took his hand. “I suppose write political manifestos no one will read, and waste my time with this old fool.”
“Old, young, all men are fools,” Moshe said. “The young ones are just more trouble.”
She smiled, raised the bottle in another toast, and drank.
Chapter Forty
I had one last errand to run in Sakkatto City. I talked Commissioner Prayzaat into a pass to see Elaamu Gaant in a private conference room, the ones counselors use and which are surveillance-free. He was being held in a Commonwealth detention facility pending trial on about twenty different charges, including high treason.
A guard brought Gaant in. Aside from the fresh bandage still covering part of the side of his head, he looked pretty good. This was the sort of detention facility where guys like him still got to wear suits.
As soon as he sat down across the conference table from me and we were alone, he said, “So, have you come to gloat?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“It is exactly what I would expect from a Human.”
“You know, Gaant, you’ve got bigot’s disease.”
He sat back and gave me a tight-lipped smile, eyes half closed. “You think I am a bigot because I recognize the truth which is plain for anyone to see?
“Well that’s part of bigot’s disease right there. But the big thing is you think everyone in creation is as much a bigot as you are. You think they all share the same prejudices, the same fears and hatreds and sense of frustrated entitlement as you. You also think most of them deny it out of shame or fear. So you figure they have no right to feel superior to you, but you are morally superior to them, aren’t you? By virtue of your courage in speaking what everyone else secretly believes but fears to say, and by your honesty in not taking part in their hypocrisy.”
“That is not a disease,” he said.
“Self-deception is always a disease.”
“Self-deception!” He leaned forward across the table. “What would you call your own notion of reality, this absurd belief that somehow we are all the same deep down inside?”
“I don’t believe that,” I said, “just the opposite. I think we’re all different. Every Varoki I know is as different from every other one as they are from every Human I know. You’re the guy who thinks everyone is pretty much the same, at least in a couple big groups. All Humans basically the same, all Zacks, all Varoki.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about you, and I think my wife Marr nailed your biggest weakness way back before all this mess started: you’re more glib than smart. You’re better at selling your ideas than at really thinking them through, so you persuaded a lot of folks you were the smartest guy in the room, and then you let them persuade you they were right about that. It’s the ultimate self-validating bullshit loop.”
“A great many people would disagree with you about that,” he said.
“Yeah, what I just say?”
He scowled and sat back in his chair. “I did not come here to listen to some Human thug insult me. Are we finished?”
“Not quite. I actually came here to tell you a secret, something I’m pretty sure you never knew. I’m going to tell you because I don’t like you very much, and this secret will eat at you for the rest of your life. It will poison you. It will undermine everything you believe about yourself and your entire notion of self-worth, and destroy every hope you have for the future.
“But here’s my offer: if you are afraid that something a Human could tell you could actually have that effect, I’ll stand up and leave right now and you can continue to live in self-deception. Or I can stay and tell you. Your call.”
I waited, hands folded on the table. I could see the fear color his skin, see his ears trying to fold back and him fighting to make them stand out. He was afraid. But he’d have a lot of time to stew here in detention, probably the rest of his life. He didn’t know for sure what my secret would really do to him, but I think he did know that having to live with the knowledge that he had given in to fear, and had been made to do so by a Human, would destroy him.
“Tell me your pathetic secret,” he said with an almost-convincing look of contempt.
“First,” I said, “I will tell you three facts which are widely accepted as true and yet which cannot all be true at the same time. All six known races have unique protein compositions. Neurotoxins, as proteins, are specific to each major race and affect no other. The jump drive components are guarded by a neurotoxin which attacks all six races indiscriminately.”
I paused and let him think about that. It didn’t alarm him, of course, but it puzzled him. He had probably heard most of those facts at one time or another, in some fo
rm.
“One of those must be untrue,” he said. “Is that the secret?”
“No, that’s the clue.
“What hardly anyone knows is the neurotoxin which guards the jump drive is not exactly a protein, but something like a protein. It functions like a protein, but it has no DNA. It is RNA-based. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I gather it’s a big deal. Apparently no other life we know of is RNA-based.”
Gaant shook his head. “So that explains the contradiction. Why is this significant?”
“RNA-based life means it’s from a different tree of life. It didn’t come from any of the biospheres of the six races of the Cottohazz, or any other independently evolved tree of life we have found on any other world. All of the life forms we know are DNA-based.”
“Where did it come from?” he asked, his voice growing cautious.
“No one knows.”
He frowned. “You mean one day it simply appeared, infecting jump drives? Like some sort of interstellar virus?”
“No, it’s always been there. You see, in a sense it is the jump drive cortex itself. The controlling mechanism of the jump drive is a bioengineered organism, or rather a colony of RNA-based microscopic organisms. The cortex, I’ve been told, is layer after layer of blank circuit boards. The organisms live there on the circuit boards, feeding on electricity. They are some sort of biological superconductors, and don’t ask me how that works because nobody’s figured it out yet. But they move on the boards in response to stimulus through the control interface, forming different electrical circuits as they do, and then the jump actuators fire and you’re someplace else. Like magic. When disturbed, they emit the toxin as a defense mechanism.”
He shook his head again. “Ridiculous! I’ve never heard of Varoki doing any sort of bioengineering, let alone anything that sophisticated-sounding, let alone three hundred years ago. If we built the jump drive that way, why haven’t we built other bioengineered devices since then?”
I said nothing. I just looked at him. The air circulation system made a faint whisper, the only thing that broke the silence for several long seconds. Gaant’s expression shifted, curiosity beginning to supplant anger.
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