The Lotus Eaters cl-3

by Tom Kratman

  "High Admiral, this completes my report," the watch officer said, finally.

  Wallenstein nodded. She looked up to determine that the relief was already on station, then tilted her head toward the hatchway and said, "Dismissed." She stood, saying, "I'll be in my day cabin if I'm needed." Even though I really should be down in the Admiral's Bridge, planning for the future.

  * * *

  "Call from His Excellency, the Secretary General, High Admiral," the intercom announced. "I am piping it through to you now."

  "Only to me," Wallenstein ordered.

  "Of course, High Admiral," the intercom announced.

  "My dear Marchioness," the SecGen greeted as his face appeared on Marguerite's viewscreen.

  "Your Excellency," she returned.

  "I've been thinking about your personnel problems and I believe I have a partial solution for you."

  "Indeed?" Wallenstein tried and, so she supposed, likely failed, to sound enthusiastic.

  The SecGen's face split in an I've-got-just-the-car-for-you grin. "Why, indeed, yes. I have a nephew, the Earl of Care, a wonderful boy, of the very best breeding. He's always been enthused about space. He's in the Academy's class of 2526 but, I thought, given his flawless parentage and the precedent you've set with graduating the Class of 2525 early, that he'd be just perfect to command the Spirit of Peace. And the boy could hardly hope for a better mentor than yourself."

  "A spy, you mean." Marguerite kept her face carefully blank.

  "A spy," the SecGen happily agreed. He then added, somewhat ruefully, "Marguerite, he's the price I have to pay to keep your little program going. Be thankful I was able to come up with someone in my own family. The World Food Organization faction wanted to put up the Count of TransIsthmia, Julio Castro-Nyere. I was only able to beg off by citing to the growing troubles there."

  Marguerite sighed and said, "I appreciate your intervention, Your Excellency, but have you any idea just how troublesome an untrained captain commanding my flagship will be to me."

  "I do, actually," the SecGen agreed, nodding shallowly on the screen. "Some idea, anyway. Have you any idea how troublesome Count Castro-Nyere or one of his children would be to you?"

  Wallenstein smiled thinly. "Since you put it that way, Your Excellency, I look forward to the assignment of the Earl of Care as Commanding Officer, UEPF Spirit of Peace, with enthusiasm."

  "I knew you would understand . . . Marguerite, Richard's not a bad boy; trust me on that. And remember, we didn't make the world, we just have to deal with it."

  No, she thought. We didn't make it; our great-great-grandparents did. The bastards.

  * * *

  'Not a bad boy,' Wallenstein thought, eyes closed and body leaning back in her chair. I wonder what 'not a bad boy' means in a day when diadems are the latest fashion statement and our ruling class gathers about a monument to peace to watch young girls have their hearts torn out while the cameras transmit the lesson to the masses. Does he restrict himself to pulling the wings from flies? Is that what 'not a bad boy' means in this enlightened age?

  On the other hand, based on intelligence reports from TransIsthmia, Count Castro-Nyere would never content himself with pulling the wings from mere flies. That is one sick branch of the human family tree, arguably even worse than my predecessor as Marchioness of Amnesty.

  Briefly, Marguerite indulged in a daydream of a future in which she could return to Old Earth, triumphant and vengeful, weeding the ruling class out with a fine tooth comb and elevating to power decent Class Twos and—who knew?—perhaps even some worthy Threes.

  But I won't cut their hearts out, she thought. The Earth has plenty of rope and plenty of trees. Those will be good enough.

  Wallenstein's face suddenly brightened. Well . . . let's suppose Richard, Earl of Care is a right bastard. So what? I'm High Admiral, after all. If I must, I'll just space the little wretch once we're underway.

  * * *

  In the shadow of the moon, Jean Monnet's sail began to unfurl as gas was released into the inflatable ring about its perimeter. Had anyone bothered to dig into the records they would have discovered that the orbit that kept the ghost fleet on the dark side of the moon had been chosen for the boneyard precisely so that the sails could be inspected without the worry of the sun's light pushing the ships out of orbit. The little light reflected from the Earth, at the current angle, was not expected to be a problem for the duration of the exercise.

  The hull of the Monnet was lit now, in places, both from navigation lights and, emanating from the interior through portholes, light from recovered and repowered cabins. There was still no gravity inside, a situation that in some ways aided but more generally interfered with recovery efforts. Neither would there be any gravity, barring only the moon's insignificant tug, until the crew was certain enough of Monnet's structural integrity to begin to spin her up. And, should they discover that there were problems with the hull, that spin up would not take place until the ship was maneuvered to the only site in the solar system capable of dealing with such problems, the toroidal shipyard just sunward from the system's asteroid belt.

  And if we've got to use the shipyard, Marguerite thought, we're just screwed. At least with Monnet. I picked this one because it seemed likely to be our best and easiest recovery. I don't have—Earth doesn't have—the skilled space workers to do a serious repair anymore. I'm hoping that these repairs will go some ways towards fixing that lack.

  The sail continued to spread as the filling gas forced the sail's ring further and further outward. It was really quite magnificent in its way, as much so as wind filling the sails of wet navy ships had been in an earlier day. Whatever the Monnet's sail lacked in ruffle and snap, moreover, it more than made up for in size. It was simply huge, even staggeringly huge. Looked at from the side, it utterly dwarfed the ship it was designed to propel, even though that elongated, egg-shaped ship was approximately the size of an old style, wet navy super carrier.

  United Earth Colonization Service (UECS) Ship Jean Monnet, AD 2524

  You can't hear the crack of a flapping sail, thought Peace's chief engineer, Commander McFarland, detached to command the Monnet until he could train a replacement. You can't hear it but you can feel it.

  That was true enough. As the sail's ring filled and it stretched out, it also stretched the thousands of filaments—the sheets—that bound it to the ship, sending a vibration even through that massive vessel, through the bearing that connected the bridge to that vessel, and through the captain's chair to which McFarland was strapped in the absence of gravity. Since, even when underway, the bridge of the Monnet contra-rotated against the spin of the main hull, there was never any gravity there anyway.

  Others would go out later, in shuttles, to inspect the forward side of the sail. From where the engineer—no, the captain, now—stood, however, things looked—

  "She's nearly as good as the day she was launched, skipper," said one of bridge crew. "Ninety-seven percent of the sheets show up as solid. We've enough in ship's stores to replace those which aren't."

  McFarland nodded, then keyed his intercom for his propulsion section. "Your crew ready to get in their EVA suits and inspect the inside of the sail, Mr. Buthelezi?" he asked.

  Came the answer, "As ready as they're going to be, skipper. They're already suited and lined up at the mast locks."

  "Very good," McFarland said. "Do it."

  * * *

  In the very beginning, centuries past, it had been determined that lightships would require a mast to support the sail and for the sail to rest against when furled. Moreover, since the ships' primary means of both propulsion and breaking would be the light of a sun, either there would have to be two sails, or the entire ship would have to rotate to set the sail for braking, which would require reaction mass, or the mast and sail would have to rotate around the ship, which would require structural mass, machinery and, in a word, complications. It had been a very close call at the time. Nonetheless, the consensus had fina
lly settled upon a rotating mast as being no more difficult to build and, in operation, somewhat cheaper.

  Rumors that the decision was driven more by the particulars of ownership of the consortium that would build the rotating machinery were, of course, ruthlessly suppressed.

  It was up this hollow mast, devoid of gravity but for the trivial tug of Luna, far below, that Buthelezi and two dozen suited midshipmen pulled themselves, hand over hand, through hard vacuum. Behind them, behind the closed hatch of the air lock, another group of twenty-five was already preparing to take their places.

  EVA work was both tiring and dangerous.

  UEPF Spirit of Peace, Luna Starship Holding and Storage Area

  At this distance even image intensification couldn't make the boys and girls inspecting and repairing Monnet's sail anything more than dots that occasionally sparked as they used their suits' backpack maneuver units to move across and above the inner surface of the sail.

  Wallenstein found that she actually cared about these boys and girls. And why not? They're my people? And they're so damned eager to please they almost make me think the system has a chance. Elder gods, was I ever so innocent?

  While Class One parents had not just pulled strings but formed circle and weighed anchors to keep their precious little darlings from being graduated early and dragged off, Class Twos had tended to see the early graduation as an opportunity. It was an absolute fact that, excepting only Richard, Earl of Care, not one Class One middie was scheduled to join Wallenstein's fleet and not one young Class Two or Three had objected to joining.

  Marguerite listened, smiling, to the chatter over the radio as the midshipmen found little rips in the fabric of the sail and swooped down to seal the rips with strips of tape specially made for the purpose some long ago day. They didn't find many such rips. That there were rips at all was a result of orbiting astral debris that could even puncture the hull of ship. Indeed, that had been the major job in bringing the Monnet back on line, finding and fixing hundreds of leaks, large and small, in the hull from strikes from fast moving particles, some of them no larger than grains of sand.

  On the other hand, Wallenstein thought, it's not as if there are all that many children of Class Ones anyway, or that all that many of those attend the academy. And my Twos and Threes are at least the real children of real people.

  Thinking about children—and the middies were, compared to her own century and a half, little more than children—started Marguerite to thinking of other children, younger ones, on a different planet. She'd been able to push it from her mind, for the most part, for decades. But ever since she'd seen the sacrifice at the Ara Pacis, everything she'd tried to suppress had come flooding back.

  And I helped raise money for explosives to blow innocent people up, she mentally sighed. How many incarnations is that going to—rightly and justifiably—cost me?

  Time to make an appointment with the chaplain, I think.

  * * *

  It has sometimes been said that, after Saint Patrick came to Ireland, the Catholics moved right in and took over from the druids with hardly a ripple, adopting many of the mannerisms and customs of the druids, the better to spread their own faith. It surprised no one then, that when Christianity was suppressed by United Earth, the druids in many places came back and took over from the priests, again with nary a ripple, and in turn adopting and adapting many Catholic customs. One of these was confession.

  * * *

  "Bless me, Druid, for I have sinned," said Wallenstein, sitting opposite the chaplain, approximately lotus-style, on the floor of her quarters.

  "Speak to me of this," the Druid answered. The chaplain sat at the opposite corner from Marguerite. "Hold nothing back, for the Elder God or Gods, however many or few there be, will know if you do."

  Marguerite took a deep breath before answering, "I am a murderess, or—if I remember my Fleet Law class correctly—at least an accessory before the fact to murder, many times over. Back on Terra Nova, while the war on the Islamics was raging, I arranged for many pseudo-kidnappings, the ransoms of which went to buy arms and explosives for the killing of innocents."

  The druid nodded, his artificially grayed beard rustling on the robes over his chest as he did. "The Elder God or Gods knew this. What else?"

  "I am almost as guilty of attempted megacide, though at least there I was foiled."

  "And?" the Druid asked.

  She shook her head. "That's all I think, all that was past my duty in any event. Oh . . ."

  "Yes?"

  "I betrayed the former High Admiral, Martin Robinson, to his enemies, partially in revenge and partially so that I could take over his position.

  "And that's really all. Except . . ."

  "Go on."

  "I arranged victims from among the lowers for the former Marchioness of Amnesty to torture in her sexual games." Marguerite gulped as her eyes grew wide. "Oh, gods, I'm going to be reincarnated as a toad, aren't I?"

  Marguerite thought she saw a thin smile on the druid's face, but the beard concealed so much of that she couldn't be sure.

  "Quite possibly," he answered. "And that might be a best case." The druid's face grew dark as he added, sotto voce, "Though for all that, I can hardly say you've done anything worse than have my orthodox brethren, of late."

  "What was that, Chaplain?"

  "Nothing," the druid said. "Just thinking aloud."

  Wallenstein suspected she knew what her chaplain had muttered.

  "You have a serious problem, Marguerite," the druid said.

  "I know that, Druid. Why do you suppose I asked to confess?"

  The smile shone through the beard now, without doubt or question. "Oh, maybe because it's been decades," the druid observed.

  "No, that's not it," Wallenstein insisted. "Then again, I'm not sure what it is."

  That's a lie, a little voice whispered in Marguerite's head. It's that after being used for well over a century you finally realized that you were being used, and to no good end for anyone except those who used you. And you know it, just as you know that you were complicit in your own degradation, and for unworthy goals.

  But I have no need to tell him that.

  Don't you? the little voice insisted.

  No. Not for what I plan.

  Suit yourself. You will anyway.

  Yes, and isn't that a nice change?

  "Well," said the druid, "it doesn't really matter. Ours is a religion somewhat short on mandatory ritual. As least, we of the Reformed Druidic faith are short on mandatory ritual."

  The Druid smiled again, asking, "Have you never thought about our religion, Marguerite? I mean really thought about it? How is it that a faith that was essentially extirpated by the seventh century found a rebirth in the seventeenth? And what of what was lost in those thousand years? What of what was lost between when Vespasian overran the Isle of Wight and when Suetonius Paulus destroyed our center at Anglesey?"

  "It's never really been my job to think about it," Marguerite answered. "My mother was a priestess and so she raised me in it."

  "The answer is simple, in any event," the druid said. "It doesn't matter in the slightest," he shrugged. "It doesn't matter because our faith really isn't about gods anymore, if it ever was. Rather, it speaks to human needs. The God or gods—oh, yes, I believe he or she or they exist—can fend for themselves and hardly need us.

  "Instead, we are a philosophy, a philosophy concerned with people living well, and reasonably virtuously. The religious aspects are tacked on tatters and scavenged rags, not even good whole cloth. And none of that matters because we are not about God or gods, but about people.

  "It is our reason that leads us to the religious convictions we have. It is our reason that leads us to reject the notion of Heaven and Hell and substitute for them reincarnation, something theologically almost indistinct from the old Catholic notion of Purgatory, just as our reason and our understanding of people has caused us to adopt the old Catholic sacrament of Confession, alon
g with much of the pomp and ceremony.

  "You asked to confess because you have a cancer in your soul and need a way to excise it. I would answer you that by confessing you have in goodly part already excised it. I would say to you too that, just as one can never cross the same river twice, so you, too, have changed and are hardly the same person who did the things that are eating at your soul. Finally, I would say to you that to be whole and pure again, you must do some great good for your people, or indeed all people."

  Razona Market, Brcko, Bosnia Province, Old Earth

  'Some great good,' mused Wallenstein. How hard it is to do a 'great good.' Even so, I can still do some little ones.

  The newly ennobled High Admiral, escorted by a half dozen Marines, moved through the market on foot. She stopped here and there to inspect the merchandise, sometimes pulling a chin down to check teeth. The hawkers came up to her at each stop she made. Some had the girls and boys bow. Others tapped the goods with short whips to make them turn to display their wares.

  One girl in particular caught Marguerite's attention. She was a lovely little brown creature, perhaps fourteen years of age or a bit more.

  "Where are you from child?" the High Admiral asked.

  "TransIsthmia, your highness," the girl answered.

  "How did you end up here?" Wallenstein asked.

  The vendor supplied the answer. "She's a rebel brat, sold by Count Castro-Nyere. If she isn't sold quick, a buyer from the Orthodox Druids has expressed an interest."

  Marguerite nodded. "And your name?" she asked.

  "Whatever you want to call me," the child said, casting a fearful look at her owner and vendor.

  "I want to call you what those whom you grew up with called you."

  "Esmeralda, then, your highness."

  Wallenstein nodded began to turn away.

  "You worthless little twat," the vendor said, frustrated at the apparently lost sale. The frustration was all the worse because he hadn't a clue how the wretched bitch had screwed it up. He raised a scream from the girl when he struck her across her budding breasts with his short whip. He raised his arm to strike his property again. Before the blow could land, the vendor felt his wrist held in a firm grasp. Turning, he saw the blond woman in the black uniform, a wicked grin splitting her face and her fingers wrapped around his whip hand.