Balance Point

by Robert Buettner

  And the rest of Earth continues to look to the Americans, like the Human Union’s outworlds continue to look to the Trueborns, to lead the bleeding and cough up the treasure when really bad stuff threatens.

  Tonight was about American politics, an engine of such peculiar complexity and apparent contradiction that it beggars the complexity and apparent contradictions of C-drive. About both of which I know only that they exist, and they work, and the less said the better.

  Inside, the Senator himself stood in the house’s foyer, sleek and handsome at the base of the great staircase. The burble of two hundred conversations mingled with a live band somewhere beyond the foyer. Weason radiated a thousand-watt smile, pulling a stream of paying guests past himself one handshake at a time.

  I looked past him and stretched my neck, straining to find the only guest who mattered amid a sea of of bobbing gray heads and sparkling tiaras.

  I saw her hand first, waving at the end of her tan, bare arm as she dodged through the rich and famous toward me.

  Kit squeezed past the last captain of industry that stood between us and planted one that, if it had continued another ten seconds, would have gotten embarrassing.

  I held her back by her shoulders at arm’s length and stared. The first day I saw Kit Born, she was sweaty and dusty and wearing bush shorts and field boots. I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the universe. The years and the scars, inside and outside, never changed that for me.

  Her blonde hair was still practically short, her eyes as vast and blue as the Gulf that twinkled beyond the windows behind her. Her earlobes and a band that embraced her neck glittered with stones that would unquestionably appraise for more than my car’s trade-in value.

  I raised my eyebrows at her dress, which was black and tight in the best places, and sparkled.

  She smiled, turned for me. “I picked it up in Paris.”

  I raised my eyebrows higher. “There’s no back.”

  She faced me again and smiled.

  I said, “Not much front, either.”

  Her eyes twinkled like her diamonds. “Jazen, the right thing to say is that it’s graceful. Or elegant.”

  I eyed the guest of honor, who was still showing shiny teeth to a procession of donors. “I suppose Weason said the right thing.”

  I clamped my jaw too late.

  She rolled her eyes. “Really? Jesus, Jazen!”

  I needed a subject change like a man on fire needed water. “You heard about Mort?”

  My heart thumped twice while she looked away and shook her head. Finally, she turned back to me, nodding, brow furrowed. “He found out about our friend?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. But Mort’s okay with it for now.”

  “Our friend” Bart Cutler had plotted to enslave half of the only other remaining intelligent species in the universe, and to exterminate the other half. He had also been responsible for the death of Mort’s mother, and of my best friend, and in the process had left Kit and me for dead in a jungle full of monsters. Kit and I needed to talk about what Bart Cutler might be up to now that he was out of prison. But neither of us dared mention him by name because, in this crowd, the mention of one of their own might have attracted an attentive ear. “Mort,” on the other hand, sounded like just another boring human.

  Which, of course, he was not. Mort was the only living repre-sentative of his species ever to leave his planet, or even to accept the reality that his cloud-shrouded planet was not the entire universe. He was the only one who had ever revealed to a human that his species, which the xenobiological nerds had named Xenoursus nutritor mortis (roughly, “alien bear who brings death”) were more than just apex predators. Grezzen were, in fact, the sole remaining intelligent species with which man shared the known universe.

  After Kit and I had persuaded this grezzen to come to Earth with us, Kit and I had started calling him “Mort.” Not so much to preserve his race’s secret of its intelligence, or the even bigger secret that grezzen could read minds. And not because he had ever needed a name. Telepaths don’t use names. We named Mort, and he accepted the name, because he was an individual who had become a friend.

  Friendship hadn’t come easily among the three of us. It hadn’t yet come at all to most of mankind and grezzenkind. Actually, the xenobiologists of the Downgraded Earthlike 476 First Colonial Expedition had named the species before Howard’s nerds had. However, Mort’s ancestors had eaten the invaders before they could publish, so Xenoursus nutritor mortis became his species’ official name.

  By whatever name, Mort’s ancestors slaughtered the Second Colonial Expedition, too. But that time the humans took some grezzen down with them. Hard feelings remained on both sides.

  Kit smiled at me and slid her fingers up and down the lapels of my mess jacket. “You don’t wear full dress enough. You look gorgeous.” She narrowed her eyes as she traced my medals with one finger. “And I’ve never seen you wear these. Ever.”

  I frowned. Medals were just ways that armies hid their mistakes. I hated mine.

  Kit leaned close and breathed in my ear. “I could rip ’em off your chest with my teeth.”

  Maybe my anti-medal bias bore reconsideration. And our discussion of Cutler could wait.

  Kit took my hand and towed me through a sea of tycoons and holo producers to the grand staircase.

  Kit’s father, the ringmaster of this black-tie circus, now stood alongside his guest of honor like they were a pair of penguins.

  Kit tapped Bradley Weason’s shoulder and he turned away from some guy wearing a sash. “Brad, this is Jazen.”

  Up close, the golden boy looked tanner and more square-jawed than his holos. “Captain Parker! An honor to meet you at last.” He shook my hand and somehow made me believe that the pleasure really was all his. Which, come to think of it, it was.

  The annoying thing about really good politicians is that they actually make whoever they’re talking to feel like the most important person in the room for forty-five seconds, then manage to drop the sucker like a spent magazine without disappointing anybody.

  Senator Weason unwrapped one finger from the glass in his left hand and pointed at the Star of Marin, probably because it glittered brighter than the Earth medals. Then he leaned close and lowered his voice. “Was that for saving Kit’s life?”

  He laid his right hand on my epaulet and stared into my eyes like he was ready to cry. “We all owe soldiers like you so much. But I’m especially grateful for that on a personal level.”

  I would have been grateful to remain unreminded that there had ever been a personal level between Kit and Brad Weason. Kit had assured me it was totally over, just dating during undergraduate school. Under hovertanks at armor school was the highest formal education I ever had, so I wasn’t assured.

  I said, “I never got a medal for that.” Which was true, though I had saved Kit’s life more than once. Most of what Kit and I did never happened, officially. But it was nice of him to mention it.

  The Senator raised his eyebrows at Kit. “Kitten? Did you misspeak?”

  Kitten. Just when I was starting to not hate his guts.

  Kit’s father wrapped an arm around the Weasel, one patrician to another. I think the Weasons fled Philadelphia aboard the same refugee yacht as the Trentins and the Borns. “Brad! You know Catherine can’t be specific about her work.”

  Same mud, same blood, Edwin. It was my work too, thank you very much.

  But neither could Edwin Trentin-Born be specific about his work. Which tonight, political fundraising aside, consisted of hooking his daughter up with a mate of better breeding and prospects than some mutt officer three ranks her junior. Brad Weason was on his way to becoming President of the United States. President of the United States is like King of the Earth, but with an expiration date. And Edwin Trentin-Born wanted his daughter to be queen. At least that was how I saw it.

  A fat man wearing a thin blonde oozed up to The Weasel.

  Kit’s father lit up. “Ernesto! Shake h
ands with Florida’s newest senator!”

  The Weasel excused himself from Kit and me and picked Ernesto’s pocket for the next forty-five seconds.

  Kit took my arm while she tapped her father’s elbow. “Daddy, we’re going down to the boathouse to check on Daisy. I bet her bright work hasn’t been polished for a month.”

  Daisy was a boat Kit had sailed since she got it as a ninth birthday present.

  Her father nodded without glancing back.

  The Trentin-Born boathouse stood on pilings above the waters of the Gulf, at the end of a two-hundred-foot-long pier that was lit by flickering kerosene lanterns. The night was still, and the two of us walked alone, listening to the waves lap the pilings as distance faded the sound of the band and the crowd.

  When we got halfway out along the pier I said, “Your father still hates me.”

  It was cooler out over the water. Kit hugged my arm tighter. “No, Daddy just hates my work. Two administrations ago Daddy was Secretary of freakin’ State, Jazen. The most civilized public servant in America can’t accept that his daughter serves the public by doing unspeakably uncivilized things.”

  I shook my head. “No. He can’t accept that you do them with somebody who’s unspeakably uncivilized. Kit, my only family was a downlevels midwife who delivered me illegally.”

  “Your parents are still alive.”

  “If you believe Howard Hibble. But not even Howard knows where they are now. Compared to people like you and Weason I’ve got the heritage of pond slime. Weason even has a silver medal.”

  “Equestrian? Jazen, that’s more poof than the one I got for sailing.”

  I shrugged. “I thought Trueborns were proud of their Olympics.”

  Her eyes widened. “Omigod.” She poked my chest. “That’s why you wore these!”

  “No.”

  “Yes!” She stood back, rolled her eyes. “God, you’re so insecure.”

  “It was Howard’s idea. So I wouldn’t be insecure.”

  She smiled. “Jazen, I don’t care rat shit for Brad Weason. Or whether your parents are A-List.”

  “Your father does.”

  “You think I care rat shit for what Daddy thinks?”

  I tucked my hands into my pockets and shrugged. She had a point. “If you did care you’d stop shooting bad guys for a living.”

  Demure as Kit looked with her diamonds glittering in the moonlight, I had watched through a spotting scope while she exploded a bad guy’s head at twenty-two-hundred yards. Then did the even-badder guy crouching next to him without a hitch in her breathing. Daddy couldn’t have envisioned that when he tickled her, pink and naked, in the delivery room.

  We walked on to the boathouse. The house recognized her, unlocked, and turned on the lights. Daisy hung from ropes and pulleys attached to the ceiling, her hull dry and gleaming beneath the floods and her bright work securely wrapped against corrosion.

  “God, I missed you, Jazen.” Kit turned, pressed herself against me and kissed me. “Checking Daisy” was code that Kit and I had shared before, and it had nothing to do with boat maintenance.

  There was a suite at the far end of the boathouse that had been designed for a caretaker, but never occupied. The suite had a view of the Gulf, which was nice, and a bed, which was nicer.

  Later, we sat naked side by side on a platform at the base of stairs that led down from the office to the Gulf and dangled our feet in the warm water. It was, in fact, so much later that the band had quit and the main house and outbuildings were dark except for the downlights of the security ‘bots circling above the compound’s roofs. The Moon had risen and now hung high in the silent sky. Whatever the condition of Daisy’s bright work, after two weeks separation, Kit’s had required lots of polishing.

  “Did Weason even know why you were along on the trip?”

  My view had been that Kit’s father had steered her onto the mission to Paris with Weason because it might reignite Kit’s feelings for a man Edwin Trentin-Born saw as a suitable match for his daughter. However, the last few hours had temporarily mellowed my anxiety.

  “Mostly the trip was to pump up Brad’s foreign-policy credentials. He knew I was along to notify other governments that we’ve certified an intelligent species under the Intelligent Species Protection Act. And that we promised the grezzen race that the ISPA notifications would be delivered confidentially.”

  “We could have told the French that in a Cutlergram.”

  “Jazen, diplomatically and philosophically, contact with another intelligent species is the biggest event that’s happened to mankind since End of Hostilities. Civilized nations deliver news like that in person.”

  I loved Kit with every fiber of my being, I knew that my birth parents were Trueborns, and I had come to believe in Trueborn democracy, with all its warts.

  Nonetheless, there were moments when anyone raised on an outworld saw a certain irony in the way Trueborns perceived the universe and their place in it. Which was that everything revolved around perfect them.

  I kissed a half-moon-shaped scar above her clavicle, which her dress had barely covered. I had dug that bullet out myself.

  Then I answered her. “Civilized nations don’t end hostility by exterminating the only other intelligent species in the universe.” Even though the Slugs had started the war by killing sixty million Earthlings, Orion had raised me to believe me that two wrongs don’t make a right.

  “Which is exactly why we passed ISPA. So what happened between mankind and the Slugs wouldn’t happen again.”

  “ISPA or no ISPA, we can’t even get along with ourselves.”

  Kit straightened her back like the self-righteous Trueborn she was. “Cold War II’s Yavet’s fault. What kind of civilization pollutes and overpopulates its world so badly that killing babies at birth is virtuous?”

  I raised my palms. “No argument, lady. Remember, I was raised an Illegal.”

  We sat and listened to the waves lap the pilings. Then she nudged me with a bare shoulder. “Illegal. I like bad boys.” She shoved me off the platform, dove in behind me, then wrapped her thighs around my torso.

  “Can we get off underwater, Parker?”

  She dunked me, then I clawed to the surface and coughed salt water. “Dunno. We can drown there, though.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when it collapses underneath us.”

  It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized that we had never discussed what rat bastard Cutler might be up to. I thought about poor Mort’s concerns and smiled. At least whatever Cutler was up to didn’t involve the Yavi, who were even bigger rat bastards than he was.

  EIGHT

  Max Polian floated weightless in the Trueborn cruiser’s forward observation blister. The ship again drifted within sight of an inhabited world, but virtually nothing else remained the same since his conversation with Cutler.

  Cutler had transferred at the Trueborn-controlled hub at Mousetrap to an Earthbound vessel, as had most of the passengers. And the world ahead was coming closer, not receding as Rand had been.

  The sight of home after the long journey caused Polian’s throat to swell. Yavet hung against the blackness of space like a soft, gray pearl, girdled at the equator by the thread-slender silver band of the Ring, twinkling in the sun as it turned slowly around the planet. Yavet’s clouds and the Ring, both symbols and products of mankind’s triumph over the environment, seemed to Polian more meaningfully beautiful than the Trueborn’s blue marble, smudged with uncontrolled smears of white and complemented only by a pocked and lifeless natural moon.

  The purser’s voice echoed through the blister, and the other six passengers in the blister turned in the direction of the speakers as though there were something to see. “Ladies and gentlemen, it will take us another hour to match and moor with the Ring of Yavet, which marks our closest approach to the Unified Republics of Yavet, as well as the terminus of our outbound voyage. All passengers are required to disembark at Ring Station, and once disembarked, cann
ot reboard. The Ring is officially part of Yavet and not affiliated with the Human Union Transport Authority. Downshuttle passage and baggage claim are entirely controlled by Yavi Customs and Immigration. So please be sure to gather all unchecked personal items, as well as your entry documentation, and carry them on your person where they are readily available for inspection. Duty Free, casual dining, and the Slot Slot will remain open until thirty minutes before final approach, for your last minute shopping, snacking and gaming convenience.”

  The blister’s other inhabitants swam aft. Polian remained, untempted by Trueborn cheeseburgers and their rigged games of chance.

  He stared forward again. The Ring was close, now.

  It was the only continuous orbital habitat conceived, much less completed, by mankind. The largest manmade structure in the known universe at a half mile across, thirty-six thousand miles in circumference, even the Trueborns ranked the Ring of Yavet first among the Union’s manmade wonders. Nature herself had produced nothing remotely comparable. The natural rings of other planets were optical frauds, loose assemblages of orbiting dust and rock.

  The Trueborns themselves had expanded into near orbital space in much the same way, at first. A clutter of communications satellites, surveillance facilities. Then a sprinkle of facilities to capture solar energy and to manufacture specialty products in perfect vacuum.

  But now the Ring marked the divergent history of the Union’s superpowers. The Pseudocephalopod War had depopulated Earth, and spared her the challenges and opportunities of population growth and exponentially accelerated industrialization. Historians said that if one wanted to see Earth as it would have been, but for the Slug War, one should look at Yavet.

  Perhaps. The difference, Polian thought, was how one appreciated what one saw. Polian saw greatness, fettered only by the Trueborns and the accident of their starships.

  To Polian, the story of the Ring was the story of pragmatic progress. Yavet had avoided nuclear war by melding its nations under a central government. As a unified people, more Yavi needed more, and produced more, and by their industry warmed their planet.