by neetha Napew
Still, when he reached for her hand, she let him take it. His fingers stroked her palm and she wondered if he would try something as simple as dot code. Cameras might pick that up. Instead, a fingernail lightly drew the logo on the FSP banner, then letter by letter traced her name. She smiled at him, squeezed his hand, and hoped she was right.
The next day’s work at the Center went well. Whatever Bias thought, he managed not to say and no one else asked uncomfortable questions. Lunzie came back to her quarters, feeling slightly uneasy that she hadn’t heard from Zebara but her message light was blinking as she came in. She put in a call to the number she was given, and was not surprised to hear his voice.
“You said once you’d like to hear our native music,” he began. “There’s a performance tonight of Zilmach’s epic work. Would you come with me?”
“Formal dress, or informal?” asked Lunzie.
“Not formal like the Governor’s reception, but nice.”
She was sure he was laughing underneath at her interest in clothes. But she agreed to be ready in an hour without commenting on it. Dinner before the performance was at an obviously classy restaurant. The other diners wore expensive jewels in addition to fancy
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clothes. Lunzie felt subdued in her simple dark green dress with the copper-and-enamel necklace that served her for all occasions. Zebara wore a uniform she did not recognize. Did External Security really go for that matte black or did they intend it to intimidate ofiworlders? He looked the perfect foil for Sassinak. She let hersetf remember Sassinak in her dress whites, with the vivid alert expression that made her beautiful. Zebara sat there like a black lump of rough stone, heavy and sullen. Then he smiled.
“Dear Lunzie, you’re glaring at me. Why?”
“I was thinking of my great-great-great-granddaughter,” she said, combining honesty and obliqueness at once. “You have grandchildren, you said? Tlien surely they cross your mind at the oddest times, intruding, but you’d never wish them away.”
“That’s true.” He shook his head with a rueful smile. “And since mine are here in person, they can intrude physically as well. Little Pog, the youngest, got loose from his mother in my office one time. Darted past my secretary, straight through the door and into my conference room. Set off alarms and thoroughly annoyed tte Lieutenant Governor and the Chiefs of Staff. He’d grabbed me by the leg and was howling because the alarm siren scared him. He made so much noise die guards were sure someone was really hurt.” His smile had broadened; now he chuckled. “By the time I had peeled him off my leg, found his mother, and convinced the guards that it was not an exceptionally clever assassination scheme using a midget or a robot, none of us could get our minds back on the problem. Worst of all, I had to listen to a lecture by the Lieutenant Governor on the way he disciplines his family. What he didn’t know, and I couldn’t tell him, was that his eldest son was about to be arrested for sedition. This is, as you might suspect, the former Lieutenant Governor, not the one you met the other night.”
The revelation about his job did nothing to quiet Lunzie’s nerves. Anyone who could pretend not to know that someone’s child was about to be arrested Had more than enough talent in lying to confuse her. She
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forced herself to concentrate on his feelings for his children and grandchildren. That, at least, she could understand and sympathize with.
“So what happened to little . . . Pog, was it?”
“Yes, short for Poglin. Family name on his mother’s side. Well, I counseled leniency since he’d been frightened so badly by the alarms and the subsequent chaos, but his mother felt guilty that he’d gotten away from her. She promised him a good thrashing when they got home. I hope that was mostly for my benefit. She’s very . . . aware of rank, that one.” It was obvious that he didn’t like his daughter-in-law much. Lunzie wondered if he’d meant to reveal that to her. “And have you caught up with all your family after your long sleep?” he was asking.
Lunzie shook her head, and sipped cautiously at the steaming soup that had appeared in front of them. Pale orange, spicy, not bad at all.
“My great-great, Sassinak, gave me Fleet transport to Sector Headquarters. She’s an orphan. She’s never met the others.”
“Oh. Isn’t that unusual? Wouldn’t they take her in?” His eyelids had sagged again, hiding his expression. Lunzie suspected he knew a lot more about her and her family, including Sassinak, than he pretended.
“They didn’t know.” Quickly, she told him what tittle Sassinak had told her and added her own interpretation of Sassinak’s failure to seek out her parents’ relatives. “She’s still afraid of rejection, I think. Fleet took her in. She considers it her family. I had one grandson, Dougal, in Fleet, and I remember the others complaining that he was almost a stranger to them. Even when he visited, he seemed attached somewhere else.”
“Will you introduce her?”
“I’ve thought about that. Forty-three more years. I don’t know who’s alive, where they are, although it won’t be hard to find out. But she may not want to meet them, even with me. I’m still trying to figure out whose she is, for that matter. I haven’t really had time.” At the startled look on his face, she laughed. “Zebara, you’ve been tvith your family all this time. Of
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course nothing is more important to you. But I’ve had one long separation after another. I’ve had to make my connections where and when I could. The first thing was to get my certification back, get some kind of job.”
“Surely your great-great, this Sassinak, wouldn’t have tossed you out to starve!”
“She’s Fleet, remember? Under orders. I’m civilian.” Sort of, she thought to herself, wondering just what status she did have. Coromell had recruited her: was that official? The Venerable Master Adept seemed to have connections to Fleet she had never quite understood. But surely he wasn’t a Fleet agent? Sassinak had sent her to Liaka with the same assurance she’d have sent one of her own officers. “I wouldn’t have starved, no. You’re right about that. But by the time I left Liaka, I still didn’t have my accumulated back pay. It would come, they assured me, but it was sticking in someone’s craw to pay me for forty-three years of coldsleep. All I really wanted was the credit for time awake, but ...” She shrugged. “Bureaucrats.”
“We are difficult sometimes.” He was smiling, but she wondered why he had intruded his position again.
They finished dinner with little more conversation, then went to the concert. Zebara’s rank meant excellent seats, a respectful usher, and a well of silence around them, beyond which Lunzie could just hear curious murmurs. She glanced down at the program. She had never heard of Zilmach or his (her?) epic work. The program cover showed two brawny heavyworlders lifting a spaceship overhead. She didn’t know if that was a scene from the work she would hear or the logo of the Diplo Academy of Music. She nudged Zebara.
“Tell me about this.”
“Zilmach, a composer you won’t have heard of, spent twenty years on this, working from the series of poems Rudrik wrote in the first Long Freeze on Diplo. Rudrik, by the way, died of starvation, along with some forty thousand of those early colonists. It’s called Bitter Destiny and die theme is exploitation of our strength to provide riches for the weak. You won’t like the libretto, but the music is extraordinary.” He nuzzled her neck and Lunzie
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managed not to jump. “Besides, it’s loud, and we can talk if we’re careful.”
“It’s aot rude?”
“Yes,” he said quietly into her ear, “But there are segments in which almost everyone gets affectionate; you’ll know.”
Zilmach’s epic work began with a low moaning of strings and woodwinds, plus a rhythmic banging on some instrument Lunzie had never heard before: rather Hke someone whacking a heavy chain with a hammer. She ventured a murmured question to Zebara who explained that it represented the pioneers chipping ice off their machinery. Zilmach had invented the instrument in the cours
e of writing the music.
After the overture, a massed chorus marched in singing. Lunzie felt goosebumps break out on her arms. Although she had told herself that the heavyworlders must have creative capacity, she had never truly believed it. She had never seen any of their art, or heard their music. Now, listening to those resonant voices filling the hall easily, she admitted to herself just how narrowminded she’d been. The best she’d been able to imagine was “kind” or “gentle.” But this was magnificent.
She did not enjoy the staged presentation of the lightweight “exploiters.” Although seeing massive heavyworlders pretending to be tiny fragile lightweights cringing from each other had the humor of incongruity. She remembered having seen a cube of an Old Earth opera in which a large lady with sagging jowls was being serenaded as a “nymph.”
But the voices! She had imagined heavyworlder music as heavy, thumping, unmelodic. . . and she’d been wrong.
“It’s beautiful,” she murmured to Zebara, in a pause between scenes.
“You’re surprised.” It was not a question. She apologized with her expression as the music began again. He leaned closer. “Don’t worry. I thought you’d be surprised. And there’s more.”
“More” included a display of gymnastics representing shifting alliances in the commercial consortium that had (according to the script) dumped ill-prepared heavy-
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worlder colonists on a planet that suffered predictable, but infrequent, “triple winters.” Complex gong music apparently intimated the heartless weighing of profit and loss (a balance loaded with “gold” bars on one side and limp heavyworlder bodies on the other) while the corporate factions pushed on the balance and each other, and leapt about in oddly graceful contortions.
Diplo’s gravity prevented any of the soaring leaps of classical ballet but quick flips were possible and used to great effect. A scene showing the luxurious life of lightweights in space was simply ludicrous. Lunzie had never seen anyone aboard a spaceship lounging in a scented fountain while a heavyworlder servant knelt with a tray of fruit. But overall she remained amazed with the lush, melodic sound and the quality of the voices.
Those segments in which, as Zebara promised, “everyone gets affectionate” depicted the colonists fighting off the depression of that long winter with song and love. Or lust. Lunzie wasn’t sure. Perhaps the colonists hadn’t been sure, either. But they had been determined to survive and have descendants.
Duet followed duet, combined into a quartet praising “love of life that warms the heart.” Then a soprano aria from a singer whose deep, dark, resonant voice throbbed with despair before rising slowly, impossibly, through three octaves to end in a crystalline flourish which the singer emphasized by a massive fist, shaking at the wicked lightweights in their distant ships.
Finally the male chorus of colonists, who had chosen to starve voluntarily so that children and pregnant women might have a chance to survive, made their final vows, led by a tenor whose voice soared to nearly the same dynamic height as the soprano.
“To you, the children of our dreams, we leave the bread of life!” Lunzie felt tears stinging her eyes. “We ask but this! That you remember . . .”
The voices faded, slowly dropping to a complex chant. The music and the rich incense flowing from the censers onstage were enough to get anyone’s hormones moving. She let her head sag toward Zebara’s shoulder.
“Good girl,” he murmured.
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Around them, rustling indicated that others, too, were changing their positions. Suddenly Lunzie felt something bump her legs, and realized that the seats in this section reclined completely. The armrest between hers and Zebara’s retracted. Onstage, the music swelled as the lights dimmed. Clearly, an invitation to Zilmach’s epic meant more than just listening to the music.
At the same moment that she wondered how she was going to get out of what was clearly intended, she remembered her pressure garment, and sniggered.
“What?” he asked. His arm lay heavily on her shoulders; his broad hand stroked her back.
“An element of lightweight weakness your producers forgot to show,” Lunzie said, trying to control her laughter. “This thing we have to wear. Very inefficient at moments like this.”
Zebara chuckled. “Dear Lunzie, I have no intention of forcing you. You might get pregnant. You’re young enough. You don’t want my child, and I don’t want the responsibility. But we are expected to whisper sweet nothings in each others’ ears. If the sweets are not nothings, who’s to know?”
This was no time to ask if Diplo External Security had the same kinds of electronics Fleet used, which could have picked up the rumbles from dinner in her stomach, let alone anything she and Zebara might whisper. If they didn’t, they didn’t need to know about it. If they did, she had to hope Zebara had only one double-cross in mind.
“So, how long does this last?”
“Several hoong minutes. Don’t worry. Well have plenty of warning before it’s over. There’s the funeral scene coming up and the decision whether or not to eat the bodies. So let’s use this interval to find out the tilings I must know. Who sent you here and what are you trying to find?”
Lunzie could not answer at once. She had not thought that even a heavyworlder could mention cannibalism so calmly. Another blow to her wish to trust him. His tongue flicked her ear, gaining all her attention easily.
“Lunzie, you cannot expect me to believe you came
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here just to get over your fear of heavyworlders. Ireta would have left you even worse. You could not care that much how we experience coldsleep or what it does to us. You are here for a purpose. Either your own, or someone else’s, and I must know that if I am to keep you safe.”
“You’ve told me your government wants you to use our old relationship. How can you ask me to confide in you first?” That was lame, but the best she could do with cannibalism still on her mind.
“I want my grandchildren to live! Really live. I want them to have enough food, freedom to travel, to get education, to work where they want. You want that for your descendants. In that we agree. If war breaks out between our peoples, none of our descendants will have the lives we want for them. Can’t you see that?”
Lunzie nodded slowly. “Yes, but unless your people quit working with planet pirates I don’t see what’s to stop it.”
“Which they won’t do, unless they see a better future. Lunzie, I want you to be our advocate, our spokeswoman to the Council. You have suffered from us but you have also seen, perhaps understood, what we are, what we could be. I want you to say ‘Give the heavyworlders hope! Give them access to normal-G worlds they can live on, worlds like Ireta. Then they won’t have reason to steal them.’ But as long as you are here to collect evidence proving how bad we are.”
“Not all of you.”
Lunzie caught a flicker of movement near them, above them, and curled into Zebara’s embrace. Perhaps someone needed the restrooms, sidling along between the seat sections. Or perhaps someone wanted to know what they were saying.
“You’re different. The patients I’ve met here are not like those who hurt me.” She felt under her hands his slight tension. He, too, had noticed that shadowy form edging past them.
“Dear Lunzie.” That ended in a kiss, a curiously grandfatherly kiss of dry lips. Then he sighed, moved as if slightly cramped, and laid his hand back on her hair.
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“Who? Please tell me!”
She decided to give him a little, what he might have tapped from Fleet communications if his people were good enough.
“Sassinak. She wanted to know if the Governor were officially involved in Ireta. Captain Cruss, the heavy-worlder on that colony ship, thought so. The Theks got it out of him. With Tanegli’s trial coming up, she wanted to know whether to suggest that the Fleet subpoena the
Governor.”
“Ahhh. About what we thought. But how were you, a physician, supposed to find out such th
ings?”
“I’d told her about you. She said I should come.” That wasn’t quite accurate, but if he believed she had been pushed into it, he might be sympathetic.
“I see. Your descendant, being a professional, does not consider your feelings, your natural reluctance. Not very sensitive, your Sassinak.”
“Oh, she is,” Lunzie said quickly. “She is sensitive, she just . . . She just thinks of duty first.”
“Commendable in a Fleet officer, no doubt, but not in a great-great-great-granddaughter. She should have more respect.”
“It’s a problem,” Lunzie admitted. “But she’s actually older than I am—real time, at least—and she has trouble seeing me as her elder. We both do.” She squirmed a little getting a stiff wrinkle out from under her hip. “But that’s why I came . . . really.”
“And I am to offer you just the information you seek, and ask you to smuggle out more. But you will be found to have instead information of great commercial value. You will be discredited as a commercial spy, detained long enough that you cannot testify against Tanegli. Your taped evidence will not be nearly as effective, and if Kai and Varian are not there ...” “Why shouldn’t they be?”
“Contract scientists with EEC? Easy enough to send
an all too special ship to collect them to attend the
Assizes. It should not be hard for those with adequate
resources to be sure they arrive late. Or not at all.”
Lunzie shivered. How could she warn Kai and Varian?
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Why hadn’t she thought of them before? She had assumed that, as civilians, they would be allowed to go about their new responsibilities on Ireta. She should have known better.