by Tony Daniel
And now this Ricimer held him, Gergen, responsible for his personal troubles? Held the Administration responsible? Even the Regulation itself?
For a moment, Gergen attempted to place himself in Ricimer’s position, to understand what he was thinking, feel what he was feeling. It was not hard. He’d known such people. There was an emptiness within every Guardian’s gid, a space that Regulation was designed to perfectly fill, to animate. But sometimes the fire of Regulation died down within an individual’s gid, or never caught in the first place. Into that emptiness then flowed envy. Spite. Greed. Out-of-control egotism and megalomania. It all ended in the same place: opposition to Regulation. And opposition to Regulation was, by definition, insane. To harm the Civitas was to harm every individual who composed it. It was an act of viciousness. Selfishness. Insanity.
Yes, every society produced aberrations. The question was how to limit that production. How to clean the civilization from its built-in entropic decline, its tendency to revert to the barbarism of individual license.
Deliver them to the dismemberment knives! the ancestors whispered. Cut out the disease.
Yes. That was the true answer. The chair knew it. Gergen knew it. They had learned the lesson the hard way on their rise to the pinnacle of Guardian society, and so to the pinnacle of galactic order.
Do not forgive your enemies and those who have ended up in alliance against you. Forgiveness is another Mutualist fantasy. Do not ignore your enemies after you have defeated them, either. Destroy them. Utterly.
For now that they had achieved the power they sought, the power to regulate as regulation should be, they must maintain it. The chair was many cycles older than Gergen. She had the best of medical attention, but there would come a time when she was unfit to continue. Weakened.
Or, Gergen sometimes let himself fantasize, she may just die suddenly. That would be nice.
When that time came, he must be in a position to make his move. To crush his opposition.
He must not allow this affair with the stolen vessel to be laid at his feet. He must not give the chair a reason to give his seat on the Council to another. This Ricimer had been indulged. Clearly the Sporata leadership had felt pity for him. He’d been allowed to live, to retain his command, after the Agaric Cleansing almost as a penance. Such sentimental rubbish the military allowed to take place within their ranks. This was why they would always remain subservient to the Council. For all their vaunted loyalty and honor, they were weak, and their weakness was their institutional bond. He and the chair had used this bond time and again to outmaneuver them.
And now they would do so again. That was where the blame could be placed. Somewhere in the Sporata chain of command.
And if they failed to recover the stolen vessel and its artifact?
Perhaps an entire division should be sacrificed as an example. Perhaps a fleet.
Gergen would do whatever it took.
But first he had the communication to initiate.
She wasn’t going to like this. Gergen could feel himself already cringing in anticipation of her reaction.
He took another breath. Went through his calming ritual. Regulate. Regulate.
It was no use. With a sigh that carried the magnolia-like aroma of self-pity, Gergen pushed the red button to call the Chair.
ELEVEN
31 December 2075
Richardson, Texas
A half moon hung in the Texas sky. It shone straight down through the skylight above Coalbridge’s kitchen. Nearby, the brighter stars blazed in a dark prairie firmament.
Coalbridge stood silently for a moment gazing upward. Since the war began and most of the population had moved underground, one good effect—perhaps the one good effect—was the disappearance of light pollution around cities. The stars came out in full force in the suburbs now. Of course, only the ground-topped apartments—the cheap and dangerous seats—could view them.
These days the stars looked different to Coalbridge than they had in his youth. More familiar. More cruel. He’d been to some of the closer ones. Still, he could never resist gazing at them.
Nothing deadly up there—at least not Dallas-bound—that he could see. After the sceeve attack that morning, planetary defenses seemed to be holding up. He, Leher, and Sam Guptha had gone topside, helped out as best they could. But, of course, there wasn’t much to do. The drop-rods had apparently been ejected from a quantum drone flown into the atmosphere. These were not old detritus rods from the invasion, but were a new weapon. An artillery barrage, softening the enemy before the real attack.
A swath of downtown had disappeared. The salt that suffused the city had done its job, contained the collateral damage. Nevertheless, the impact had thrown up supersonic rock shrapnel, even created a small lake of magma momentarily. Some of the Peepsie protestors who had somehow survived the initial drop were caught fleeing by the flowing liquid rock. Legless, charred remains ringed the outer edges of the now-congealed tendrils.
Nobody had survived in the impact zone. Estimates were at least three thousand killed. There were about a hundred casualties. The hospitals had been able to handle them easily enough, still equipped as they were, even after these eight years of inactivity, for thousands at a time. And the salt, enlivened by servant programs, had immediately moved in, penetrated bodies, taken over life-support functions as best it could until human emergency workers arrived. But this was only possible on the periphery of the drop. If you were in the fall zone when the rods struck, you were very likely dead.
Coalbridge remembered and shuddered. A thick cloud of dust and smoke hung over the landscape before him. He raised a sleeve to his mouth and nose, a handkerchief, anything. His eyes watered. He knew he was breathing in the dead.
There hadn’t been much to do except mourn the loss.
Oh, yes. He’d nearly forgotten amid all the human misery. Dealey Plaza, which had come through the entire invasion unscathed, had been destroyed. The nearby Texas Book Depository had finally been battered to dust, along with its ancient exhibits of Dallas’s day of shame. Ancient history. Better times.
How did the death and destruction make him feel? Coalbridge had to admit he was inured to it. He’d seen so much. He disliked what the Peepsies stood for, but he certainly didn’t want them dead. Dead they were.
Added to the long, long list.
He was not numb. No, he was still angry. Very angry. But he was resigned to staying the course, doing his part. He knew where blind reaction got you.
It got you, for instance, a nearly destroyed vessel fleeing from the Fomalhaut Limit, most of your crew dead. Yourself outthought by a fucking sceeve commander.
People who counted on you now dead because of you.
Never again.
There was no way to rush to the rescue and, through some impossible physical effort, save the day. The sceeve must be met intelligently and killed intelligently, or the rest of humanity would soon find itself on the casualty list. You needed a plan. Thanks to the president, the Extry now had a coherent one to follow.
So he cooked and tried to obey orders.
Coalbridge slid the pile of shrimp he’d been stir-frying out of his skillet and onto a plate—his only unchipped plate, actually. He dug around in a drawer and found a fork. In space, cooking was his hobby. It was his tension release after a long shift on the bridge. Cooking for himself aboard a starcraft made him feel connected to Earth, to the past, the smells wafting from the kitchens of his youth. He hated to admit it, but here on Earth, his prized hobby had begun to make him feel lonely lately. Until now, that is.
Coalbridge picked up the plate in one hand and two open Shiner Bock beers in the other and went from his kitchen to his dining room.
He set the mess of shrimp down on the table in front of Samantha Guptha, who was at the dining-room table smoking a cigarette. Sam was wearing one of Coalbridge’s off-white dress shirts over panties, a silver-banded watch on her right wrist, and nothing else. Coalbridge thought the outfit qui
te amazingly accented the saffron tones of her bronze skin.
“Cooked it in butter,” he said. “Little bit of a remoulade on it, not too spicy. Try one?”
“You’ve about filled me up, Coalbridge,” Sam said. She set her cigarette in an ashtray and reached for a shrimp, then bit into it with a quizzical expression, as if she were about to analyze its chemical makeup. Evidently she liked what her sensor told her, because she bit it off at the tail and chewed with satisfaction. “Mmm, who taught you how to cook like this?”
“Nobody,” Coalbridge said. “Me. Started out on a hotplate back when I was a lieutenant. Something to pass the time. Kind of turned into a second calling.”
“Good stuff.” She continued chewing and tossed the shrimp tail nonchalantly back on the plate. Sam was obviously an unabashed meat-eater. She swallowed, took a swig of the Shiner, smiled up at him. “What is it with you Extry boys and cooking?”
“Pardon?”
Sam considered him for moment, acted as if she were about to elaborate, then shrugged and said, “Never mind.”
She reached for her cigarette, took a drag, and combined her exhalation with a sigh of satisfaction. After another long drag, Sam tapped her cigarette against the rim of a U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford ashtray he’d saved from his navy days. The Ford had been his first assignment out of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. She was an ancient ship and would have been decommissioned long ago had it not been for the military cutbacks after the Sri Lanka mess. He’d been the air-defense weapons officer on patrol in the Indian Ocean when the invasion began twelve years ago.
The Ford had been old but sound. Upgraded with the most advanced weaponry then available.
Bows and arrows compared to now.
“Sure you don’t mind my smoking?” Sam asked.
“Nah, reminds me of my relatives. Every last one of ’em. My great-greats. Greats. Granddads. Grandmas. Aunts and uncles. Mom’s mom—we called her Oma—used to come over and she’d cook and smoke and tell me all kinds of stories of being in the navy. She was signal corps. Did five years, quit and went back to school, then went in as an officer and did fifteen more. She was kind of a tiger.” Coalbridge nodded at Sam’s cigarette, smiled wryly. “She got lung cancer.”
Sam took a sip of her beer. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Oh, it didn’t kill her,” Coalbridge said. “She was an addict, not an idiot. Fanatical about her chest X-rays. Found it early and chemoed the shit out it.” Coalbridge considered his own beer for a moment. “Nope, the first churn drop got her. Turned my whole hometown into goo.”
“Oh, Jim, really? Where was that?”
“Lawton, Oklahoma.”
“Long way from the ocean to go navy.”
“Tell that to the SECEX. He’s from Topeka.”
“Yes, but still—”
Coalbridge shrugged. “Granddaddy Looper was army, and his last posting was at Fort Sill, so they retired there.”
“Looper was your mother’s maiden name?”
“Yeah. Dutch or something.”
“And her parents were army and navy?”
“Mixed marriage,” Leher said. “They met on this joint task-force thing in Korea.” Coalbridge tipped up his beer, took a long swallow. “What are you smoking?”
“Rojos. They’re Mexican. About the only tobacco that survived the war.”
“Must cost you an arm and a leg.”
“Yep.”
He’d gotten her number after the war-council meeting, just before he’d been sent on his unexpected tour of STRAT and told to report to his even more unexpected meeting with the SECEX.
At the war council, Sam had performed brilliantly. She clearly was the only one present who understood some of the potential of the new sceeve weapon—the weapon allegedly headed Earthward on the craft of a disgruntled Sporata officer. It was all too fantastic for Coalbridge to believe—or rather, too hopeful. Yet Sam took the weapon seriously, and the Secretary of Defense had specifically put Sam’s Femtodynamics lab on the INTEL loop.
She seemed to think the thing was a sort of magic eraser, as far as Coalbridge could tell. He couldn’t get much more of an explanation out of her. She said she wasn’t at the “popularizing and allegorizing” stage yet with her figuring.
Coalbridge decided he would deal with the weapon when and if it became a problem or an opportunity and leave the worrying to the experts. He had a mission to attend to shortly, and that would give him worry enough, he was certain.
Sam was a hero to Coalbridge. It wasn’t every day you had a shot to get with somebody who’d actually saved your life a time or two—even if she didn’t know it.
He’d called her after receiving his special orders from the SECEX and told her he’d be willing to meet her just about anywhere. They’d had dinner at the restaurant on the top floor of her underground hotel in Richardson (the hotel had been some sort of sunken parking garage pre-invasion) and then . . .
Basically they’d come straight to his place in Plano so they wouldn’t have to do it in an anonymous hotel room. Because there wasn’t any question of their doing it—not after a few minutes together. The attraction felt more like physics than chemistry to Coalbridge. Nuclear strong force.
And, frankly, neither of them had been with anybody else for a while and both were horny.
Coalbridge pulled a chair nearby and sat down beside Sam. “So,” he said. “Are we really as good together as I think we are?”
Sam smiled slyly, then leaned over and kissed him. Her breath did remind him of his grandmother, but not in a shuddery incest way, Coalbridge decided. There was also the faintest trace of perfume combined in the scent of her. He knew she made a lot of money. What “a lot” might be was fairly vague to Coalbridge, who paid little attention to such matters. He figured her perfume was probably the expensive kind.
Sam rocked back in her chair, considered him. “Yeah, I think we are good together,” she said. “Too bad you’re going to be light-years away from me for the foreseeable future.”
“Demands of the service.” Coalbridge shrugged.
“Guess that’s why you give it your all when you’re back?”
“What makes you think I didn’t get any out on the Limit?”
Sam laughed and nearly snorted her beer through her nose. He found this as adorable as the rest of her traits and habits.
Sam was lovely.
Sam was smart.
Sam knew how to make nuclear weapons.
She was—
A keeper.
No, stop that. No time for that in this war. Least not for me.
“Oh, God.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“Uh, I was wondering about your accent.”
“Told you I grew up in Alabama.”
“Yeah, but—”
“But I’m Punjabi?”
“What? No way! Thought you had a serious accident with a tanning bed.” Coalbridge considered. “Do they even have those anymore? Probably do it with churn. Everything’s different each time I come back.”
Sam smiled, ignored the question. “My parents were both from Delhi, but they came over in the 1990s and were rocket scientists at ATK for years and years. It was a contractor for the Space and Rocket Center,” Sam said.
“Whoa. Pardon me, but they must’ve been, like, ancient when they had you, right?”
“Mom was ninety-nine,” said Sam. “Dad was a hundred.”
“Love and rockets.”
“First rockets, then love,” Sam replied. “It was an arranged marriage. But they fell in love over the years.” Sam flicked an ash. “Or so they told me.”
“Rockets? Liquid hydrogen,” said Coalbridge, shaking his head. “Out-of-control madness.”
“It was what you had back then.” Sam finished her cigarette and ground it out in the ashtray. She had long, delicate fingers. Clear polished nails. Her metal watchband tinkled against the ceramic as she drew her hand back.
“Anyway, I grew up in Huntsville and went to college at Vandy—where I met Griff, by the way—and grad school in Atlanta. So, yeah, the accent kind of stuck.”
“You’ve known Griff a long time?”
“Years and years.”
“Are you in love with him?”
Sam had been digging for another cigarette from her pack, which she’d stuffed in his shirt’s breast pocket. She did a double take, let the pack slide back down. “God, no, not anymore,” she finally said. “Sort of. Doesn’t matter.”
“Why aren’t you together then?”
This time Sam did pull out another cigarette. She carefully lit it before answering.
“I don’t know that I can tell you,” she said.
Coalbridge digested this for a moment. “Do you mean he has a problem . . . down there?”
Sam giggled. “No. I can speak to that. All systems are go with Griff. At least they were nine years ago.”
“Then what? Something to do with that ‘step on a crack, break your mother’s back,’ mindfuck he’s got going on?”
“Yeah, something to do with that.”
“Did that stuff hit him before or after the invasion?”
“After.” Sam breathed out smoke, considered. “Why do you care? You barely know the man.”
“True,” Coalbridge replied. How much to tell her? She had a top-secret clearance, but was this in any way a need-to-know situation? He decided it was.
“I expect to know him much better,” Coalbridge continued. “I requested him as the xenology specialist on my new command. It’s been approved. Got a text on my Palace while we were . . . Anyway, I just checked it.”
“You’re leaving tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
Sam seemed genuinely shocked—and worried. “Jim, what have you done? Griff doesn’t do space. It’s . . . it’s part of the OCD thing.”
Coalbridge shrugged. “He’s in the Extry, isn’t he?”
“Yes, but he’s afraid of the vacuum. He calls it a permanent crack. And don’t you get it? Griff can’t send postcards when he’s out in space.”
“What are you talking about?”