Asimov's SF, July 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Janip could have pointed out that she could resolve the whole situation, at any time, by announcing she was canceling her dam project. But why bother? Elisette had her objectives. Sivmati and his followers had theirs.

  * * * *

  Janip had been born on a world that had passed through a nightmare created by a moral fanatic. The revolt that had toppled David Jammet's tyranny had killed hundreds of people. Personalities that might have lived for thousands of years had been snuffed out like deleted bits of data. Janip's own father had been killed before he could complete his second century. Janip existed because his mother had managed to save her husband's genome. She knew she couldn't recreate the dead. That was impossible. But she had to do something.

  She had been a good mother. But no one could stop the flow of time. She had acquired other relationships. Janip had developed his own circle of friends. Inevitably, there had come a moment when he had known he could leave her behind. He had lived through six decades of experience and he was still one of the youngest people on Arlane. He was faced with the situation that confronted every “young” person sooner or later. The top social and economic niches in his society were all occupied and the people who occupied them were still going to be perched on the same branches when he was plodding toward the end of his first millennium.

  The eyes he was selling Elisette had been a cutting edge technology on Arlane. He had spent two standard years learning to deal with all the problems that could pop up when you planted them in a living human body with all its biological quirks. He continued developing his skills during the twenty tendays he had been imprisoned in the closet the starship's owners called a minimum-fare cabin. The eyes would be a state of the art item on Conalia in a few standard years but for now he had a de facto monopoly. Just as he had a temporary monopoly on the lesser items he had selected before he placed eleven light years between himself and the haunted world that had goaded a woman into producing him.

  Eleven light years in space. Eleven standard years in time. Two hundred days ship time as the ship pulled energy from the interstellar vacuum and pushed against the speed of light. His mother had lived through every minute of those years during the two hundred days he had kept himself busy in his closet. He had known that would happen since his first childhood contacts with elementary physics, but the reality still seemed eerie. Every friend he had left behind was eleven years older. The laws that governed space and time and the movements of starships were weirder than the most bizarre religions humans had invented.

  David Jammet had taken control of the human settlements on Arlane so he could pursue a dream that had bedeviled mankind for seven centuries. Jammet had actually believed, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that he could produce human beings who had been cured of the human tendency to engage in violence. It was an experiment that had been tried eight times in the last few centuries and it always ended in disaster. The creatures who emerged from the laboratories walked around in human bodies but they were psychological monsters. The human capacity for violence was inextricably linked to every trait the species needed or valued. It couldn't be sliced out of the human personality without damaging everything around it.

  Janip was an interstellar trader. A visitor who sold the things he brought from another world. And bought the things he would sell on the next. People were always fighting over something. He wouldn't exist if they didn't.

  * * * *

  The woman named Farello liked to sit on the observation deck that overlooked the river. She reminded him, in some ways, of the last woman he had bonded with on Arlane. She was tall and graceful and she maintained an air of good humored calm. The first time he noticed her, she was sitting at a table with two friends when he wandered onto the deck after dinner. The other women in the group invited him to join them and a pair of warm, interested eyes regarded him from the other side of the table as he traded light chatter with her companions. Her eyes were the primary memory he took away from the conversation.

  He had been settling for whoever came his way. His “hosts” wanted to keep him placid and the women who accepted the task were pleasant and pleasurable. This one triggered something deeper. He even felt a twinge of jealousy when he sought her out two days after that first encounter and discovered she and one of the men were double-linked on a work assignment.

  "They work together a lot,” the schedule tracker said. “They've got a high level of rapport and they seem to have a talent for spotting things that deserve a closer look. Would you like me to tell her you asked about her?"

  Janip shook his head. He had tried to sound casual but he knew Sivmati was going to hear about this. This was the first time he had indicated he was interested in a particular woman.

  "I'll see her when I see her."

  "They usually stay linked for forty-two hours when they're working together. They like to put in long work sessions and follow them up with long leisure periods."

  Janip suppressed the temptation to check the work schedules. Sivmati would learn about that, too.

  * * * *

  He “ran into” Farello the morning after her work session ended, when he wandered into the dining room in search of a late breakfast. She was sitting by herself, with a small plate of rolls in front of her, and she waved to him as she bit into a roll.

  It was a sharp day in early winter but the observation deck had an enclosed area. They carried their plates and cups to the deck a few minutes after he joined her and settled into one of the easiest streams of conversation he had ever navigated with a female companion. Farello and her working partner had been connected to the network that monitored the settlement's impact on the natural, unterrestrialized ecological system that surrounded the compound. She briefed him on the things she had just learned about the interactions between two of the native plants and a network of communal leaf nesters, he countered with some observations about the different directions evolution had taken on Conalia and Arlane, and from there they moved on to all the anecdotes and tidbits you could toss into the flow when you were chatting with someone you had just met.

  Janip knew he was emotionally vulnerable. His life had been disrupted. He was a stranger on a new world. No one had to tell him he was succumbing to one of Sivmati's manipulations. He had processed a quick calculation as he crossed the room toward her table and noted that she had made herself available at the earliest time he could have seen her again, if you assumed she needed to sleep for a few hours after her extended work period. Her wave had been well calculated, too. It had been friendly and pleasant but there had been no indication it was an invitation.

  The interlude that followed their breakfast chat was just as warm and fervent as he had hoped it would be. She wasn't calming him. She wasn't rewarding him for maintaining the peace and stability of the group. She was responding to him.

  He knew her emotions had been tampered with. No one reacted like that after two pleasant social encounters. But what difference did it make? Every situation had its pluses. Why shouldn't he take advantage of them?

  Elisette even encouraged the relationship. “It may be something we can use,” she said. “Sivmati may be playing with her need to bond. If he is, he could have set up conflicts we can exploit."

  "You don't think she's just been enticed by my natural sexual magnetism?” Janip said.

  "You have your attractions. But I think you can see that she's developed a fixation on you in a remarkably short time. Sects always attract personalities with a strong drive to form bonds. She bonded with the group. She bonded with Sivmati. He's probably enhanced her impulse to bond with you. The bonders that sects attract tend to be really strong—in the upper five percent in that area. She would be doing something for him and the group if she let him apply the modification. And she would be agreeing to reinforce a natural tendency. A tendency most bonders consider a virtue."

  Janip had thought of Elisette as someone who had the brains to spot an obvious site for a hydroelectric installation and the t
enacity to spend years working on it. Now he was beginning to realize she had qualities that went beyond that.

  "Sivmati may know what he's doing,” Elisette said. “Don't underestimate him. But we shouldn't assume he's a political mastermind just because he's managed to manipulate a bunch of sect adherents. Somebody who really understood personality modification would have thought twice before he created the kind of conflicts he's set up in that woman. He's burdened her with a serious psychological stress if I'm right—the tension between her bonds with her group and the bond she's developing with you. Don't let up, Janip. Work on that bond like you were planning to make it last to the end of eternity."

  Janip had decided the watchcats were the critical element in the compound security net. There were six of them and they patrolled the compound day and night.

  "They've always got at least one cat within striking range,” he advised Elisette. “I'll be dealing with a cat two minutes after somebody decides I'm making a break."

  "I can get you a program that will disrupt the cats’ programming any time you want it. Just give me the word. I can break it up into a hundred segments and hide it in as many messages as it takes. Your friends at the bank will never notice it."

  "They'll know we did it afterward."

  "By then you'll be free."

  "And what do I do after that? What happens when I land on my next world and the banks know I can't be trusted?"

  "I need those eyes, Janip. I'm paying you to deliver."

  "Can you send the program through some other link?"

  "As secure as the bank link? Do you think I'd be paying the kind of money the banks are charging me if we had anything else on the planet as good as this link?"

  * * * *

  The personal quarters building contained six suites that had been set aside for couples. Janip and Farello moved into a vacant set of rooms nine tendays after he began his sojourn at the settlement. The suite wasn't as big as the layout Sivmati occupied, but Janip liked the rugs and the heavy, ornately molded furniture the last tenants had installed.

  "You sound like you're settling in,” Elisette said.

  Janip shrugged. “I may as well enjoy what's available. I spent three days in a decent guest house in between the jail cell I lived in on the ship and the camouflaged prison I'm living in now."

  "And how about your companion? Are you planning to take her along when you leave?"

  "I want to get out of here, Elisette. That's priority number one. If she wants to join me later—we can deal with that then."

  Elisette studied him for a moment and let the subject die. Janip had given her the answer she wanted to hear. He was certain he had been telling the truth. But he also knew he hadn't really thought about the matter.

  * * * *

  Elisette wasn't the only party who was negotiating with the Cultivators. The bureaucrats in the government of Kaltuji City had entered the conversation. They worked for a political system dominated by traders and economic hustlers. Kidnappings and acts of violence interfered with the civilized pursuit of wealth.

  "They aren't making any threats,” Sivmati said. “They're sending me the usual extremely polite messages. But we both know they can create annoying inconveniences for our community if they initiate the economic sanctions they like to flourish. But that's all it would be. Inconvenience."

  Janip smothered his emotions under a blanket of bland serenity—his standard response to the useless rush of anger Sivmati usually provoked.

  "Is that a message I'm supposed to relay to my banker?” Janip said.

  Sivmati smiled. “I'm keeping you informed. Uncertainty can create unnecessary emotional stress."

  Margelina received Sivmati's message with a shrug. “We know what his medical resources are. They're good but he's a long way from total self-sufficiency."

  "Have you considered the fact that you're dealing with a religious community? People can be very stubborn when they feel they have to live up to a moral code."

  "He's not David Jammet, Janip. This isn't Arlane."

  "He could still hold out a lot longer than you might expect. And I'm the one who has to sit here while you make faces at each other."

  * * * *

  Janip could believe Farello might be torn by the emotional conflict Elisette had hypothesized. But she had apparently resolved it by deciding the villain in the situation was Elisette, not Sivmati.

  At Elisette's urging, Janip had linked to a second, lower-security network and used it to expand his social contacts and take his case to the general populace. Over three hundred thousand people currently inhabited the various settlements humans had established on Conalia. Most of them seemed to have an opinion on his situation.

  Farello's contributions seethed with rage at the people who objected to her leader's tactics. To Farello, Elisette was an empire builder who wanted to seize control of an economic chokepoint. The Cultivators’ power plant would have no impact on Elisette's plant at Belita Falls. Why shouldn't other people tap the river's potential?

  We are a peaceful community. We are building a facility that will benefit everyone who lives on Conalia. The new dam Elisette is erecting has only one purpose—a monopoly on the resources of the river. Why aren't you threatening Elisette? Why are you directing your anger at a leader who is trying to protect you from her ambitions?

  Janip maintained the most neutral stance he could manage. He had opened the second link so Elisette could slip him a clandestine program, if they decided they should activate an escape plan. He confined his public statements to principled arguments based on the importance of free trade, unhampered by political disputes.

  We all understand the benefits of trade. People like me bring you things that become valuable, important additions to your society. We buy other things so we can eventually sell them elsewhere. Everybody gains. But we can't carry out our function if we can't circulate freely.

  * * * *

  Janip had linked to dramas about men who became addicted to sexual liaisons with particular women but he had never taken the idea seriously, even when the links had fed him the physical sensations that were supposed to fuel the addiction. Some part of him had always remained detached. It was a fantasy that was just as unlikely as simulations crowded with women driven by an inexplicable need to give him anything his imagination could conceive.

  Was it happening to him now? Or was he just reacting to his isolation? It had been at least forty years since he had thought about sex as much as he thought about it now. He would leave Farello after a three-hour session that should have quelled all his yearnings for a couple of tendays and his mind would start wandering toward their next encounter before he'd spent an hour looking after his business interests.

  He could shut off his urges, of course. But he didn't want to. He had to force himself to make the effort. When he made it.

  "I think it's time we set a date,” he told Elisette.

  "It's like I said, right? She let Sivmati focus her biggest need on you?"

  "You want your merchandise. I want to get back to a nice normal place like Kaltuji where I can talk to people with nice normal interests like profit and pleasure. And there's only two ways that can happen. You can give them what they want. Or we can get me out of here."

  * * * *

  Elisette's accomplices transmitted the program over three tendays, inside twelve hundred other messages, in twelve hundred packets randomly distributed. Sivmati might have hired break-in specialists who could follow the transmissions coming in over the second link, but their surveillance programs would have to spot a telltale code sequence in five of the fragments.

  Janip loaded the fragments into his personal implant, but he left the program unassembled. He would assemble it thirty minutes before he started moving.

  "You won't have time to run a thorough retest on the program,” Elisette said. “But we have to take the risk. We have to assume they can monitor everything that comes through that link. And we have to assume they can ru
n through the stuff stored in your personal system now and then."

  Elisette owned two air cushion skimmers and she and her associates still used them to run between her installation and the settlements on the coast. Janip had even seen Sivmati return a wave when one of Elisette's companions had raced by the settlement while the primary facilitator had been standing on the observation deck.

  "There's no harm in a little civility,” Sivmati had said.

  The Cultivators were fabricating turbines that would tap the flow of the river as it pushed through the narrows. The turbines would be planted on the bottom of the river, where they would have the minimum impact on navigation, but they were already constructing a canal on the opposite shore, for traffic that would have to bypass their installation.

  Elisette decided the escape would take place just before dawn. One of her skimmers would position itself about twenty-five kilometers from the settlement. Janip would run toward the river at the appointed time, the skimmer would pull into position a few seconds before he reached the dock, and he and the driver would race up the river and present Elisette with her purchase.

  * * * *

  Janip could have spent the evening before the escape working on his business deals. He could have settled in beside Farello after she had gone to sleep and drifted off without waking her up. She would reach for him in the morning, he would be gone, that would be that.

  He had thought about doing it that way. He had known he should. He could even have picked a time when she would be immersed in one of her work sessions. He could have checked the work schedule and told Elisette she should pick a day when he would have the apartment to himself. But he didn't. He accepted the day Elisette chose and spent the afternoon with Farello, talking about all the things they talked about. They ate dinner alone in their apartment. And afterward he did everything he could to give her an experience that would dwarf anything she might feel when she discovered he had left her.