“Option two,” Osia said, “is we fight back. We get rid of the combat drones first, and the intruder second. Or force the intruder to admit that it was bluffing when it threatened to destroy us. We return all our agents to the surface. Our colonization program resumes.”
For the first time, the woman named Kacienta spoke: “Even if you convince the intruder to break off, it’ll keep interfering with your fucking colonization program. It’s got other agents like Fiametta still active, and it can find more. I guarantee it.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Meloku said. She looked to Fia. “I only caught Fiametta by chance. There have been all other kinds of religious movements stymieing Ways and Means’ expansion. Even if we can root them out, the other amalgamates can always cause more problems.”
Osia said, “It will always easier for an outside power to destroy or hamper a developing civilization than to build one. Especially at the slow pace we’ve carried it out so far.”
Habidah said, “Slow, but violent.”
Fia marked Habidah as someone to talk to.
“That brings us to our third option,” Osia said. “We lose the ‘slow.’ We abandon the piecemeal colonization effort. We don’t build a native empire under its own laws and customs. We go in using hard force, and this time we don’t restrain ourselves. We unify the world ourselves. We put thousands of crewmembers on the surface. Overpower and overawe the natives. Unify their world in months. Projecting that kind of power is the only realistic way to beat outside subversion.”
Fia curled her fingers around the edge of her table. This was what she’d been waiting to hear all along. She didn’t even know if she’d been dreading it.
It’s what she would have done, had she had these peoples’ power.
Silence lingered. Sona broke it: “That’s what most of us said should have been done from the beginning. And what we were expecting the moment we got here.”
Habidah said, “I can’t accept any of those options.”
Osia said, “They are the only ones. The only others I can think of are variants, but with broadly the same ideas and outcomes.”
Habidah snapped, “Here’s another. We pull out from this world. We let it develop as it would. And we don’t give in to the amalgamates.”
Sona asked, “Then we survive, on our own, for another thousand years?”
“I think we can manage,” Habidah told her.
Verse said, “We’re worth more consideration than that. We need a home. Room to expand, to grow. We’ve always had a home in the Unity.”
Habidah said, “I’m interested in the way you use the word need. Maybe it’s this language we’re using.” Fia blinked. They were all speaking Italian. Too late, she realized they were doing it for her. “I don’t think you understand what it means.”
Verse said, “We’ve always lived as part of whole. We’re not nomads. We’ve always had a home, we’ve always had wealth, and we’ve always had power.”
Habidah said, “You’re going to have to define yourself differently. No one on this world should have to suffer for you.”
“‘Suffer?’ It would be better for them. Look at her.” Verse did not nod to, or look at, Fia, but Fia knew without a doubt who the creature meant. Fia forced herself to face the spider. It said, “Do you really think she’s better off because we’ve delayed colonizing? How many intestinal parasites did you have to flush out of her system? How much better would her world be if she’d had medicine, education? Someone to keep them from making war?”
Now this told Fia a lot more about her status here. Fia said, “I am not an exhibit. You can talk to me directly.”
Still looking at Habidah, Verse said, “You wouldn’t like it if I did.”
Fia pushed herself up. The spider towered over her, even with its legs folded. But Fia still felt better on her feet. “One more thing I hate won’t make much of a difference,” she said.
Meloku said, quietly, “This isn’t important–”
Fia said, “It seemed to think this was. I don’t need to be protected.” She nodded to the globe. “Up there, when I spoke, I moved armies. The best men on Earth listened to me. I can speak for myself.”
Verse said, “You didn’t earn your voice.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“We all know your life story. You’re a plague orphan. You were a slave. You should have been ground to dust. What do you think happened to all the other boys and girls from your orphanage? Or all the other lives your condottieri ground to dust and ash? They didn’t get a voice.”
“I wasn’t like them,” Fia said. “I’m a soldier. I found other soldiers. I saw things they didn’t see in themselves, and I showed it to them.”
“Do you think that was your own doing?”
Fia’s blood froze. Most of the others were watching now. “Yes,” Fia said, as cold as she felt.
At last, the spider looked to Fia. “It came from your implant. That ghost voice inside you. Ways and Means’ backup groomed you. All it wanted to do was have you disrupt the Yuan government’s advance. You did that. You made soldiers and mercenaries in your region unmanageable. Unrecruitable. High on religion, full of themselves. And after that–”
Fia did not wait for it to finish its story. “After that, it abandoned me.”
“Tried to get you killed, didn’t it?” the spider asked. “Once Meloku found one discrepancy too many and started investigating, it tried to bury you. Less evidence left over. And no preacher is as good as a martyr.”
Some of the coldness was leaching from Fia’s chest. But not enough. “It misled me. Fine. I accept that. But I’m still important. Whether it thought so or not, I’m not replaceable.”
Verse must have felt it didn’t need to say anything else. It felt Fia seemed to have proved its point for it. Less to Fia than to the others, it said, “I think we’re finished.”
Three people spoke at once. Arguments broke out across the table.
Fia wavered a moment, the urge to retort frozen on her lips. No point in trying to continue the argument. It would have just made her look more foolish than she already did. She looked across the table, and fixed on Habidah. Habidah was massaging her forehead.
Habidah’s eyes opened as Fia approached. As combative as she’d been, she seemed a different person when she saw Fia. Afraid.
She would be the first person on this ship who had been.
Niccoluccio had mentioned her name once or twice during his lessons. Fia asked, “You know Brother Niccoluccio?”
A pause long enough to elide a story. Then Habidah said, “I knew him. He changed when he came here.”
“What happened? No one will tell me.”
“There was a war.”
“Ah.” When a man was reborn after a war, he did not have to be reborn as a good person. Or a better one.
Fia asked, “Why do you want Ways and Means to leave my world?”
“It’s not ours to be in.” Habidah slid her gaze across the other people and monsters. “Don’t make any mistake: if the crew of this ship goes to your world, it will be to exploit it. Like you’ve been exploited.”
“I said I’ve been misled. Not exploited.”
Habidah said, “Your ‘inner voice’ treated you like a tool.”
“I only did what I wanted.”
“You don’t understand. It changed what you wanted.”
“So?”
Some people labored under the illusion that they were the same person all their lives, and that they would never change in any significant measure. Fia had changed. The people all around her, from Antonov to Caterina, had affected that change. That her inner voice had been one of those influences was no surprise.
What would the Fiametta who’d lived in Saint Augusta’s, who hadn’t heard a whisper of her inner voice, think of Fia now? Would she think Fia cold? Frightening? Hateful?
All those things. It didn’t matter.
&
nbsp; Habidah’s mouth opened, and then closed. Fia could not figure what she was afraid of. She did not seem to know what to say. She had probably spent so long arguing, on behalf of this world’s inhabitants, against Ways and Means’ intervention, that she did not know what to say to a native in favor of it.
The arguments seemed to be wearing down. Fia returned to her place on the other side of the room. She kneeled. When she looked back across, Habidah was looking to one of the other humans, Kacienta. Her lips were in a tight line.
At the other end of their table, Osia said, “I’ve not yet heard any convincing alternatives.”
One of the golems, a triple-armed cone, said, “Then there’s no option.”
Sona said, “We have to join the other amalgamates.”
Meloku slapped the table. “Come on! The creature that exiled us is still out there. It’s more powerful than Ways and Means’ backup – more powerful than all of the other amalgamates together. If it catches them, it’ll annihilate them. Us, too, if we’re with them. It won’t give second chances.”
“It hasn’t caught them yet,” Verse said. “It might not be as powerful as it wants us to think.”
The cone-shaped golem said, “It might hurt us. The other amalgamates certainly will.”
Sona said, “I think we would all escape exile, if we could.”
Ways and Means interrupted: “No. We will not join the conspiracy to escape exile. We will not rejoin or rebuild the Unity, or anything like it. Consider the option eliminated.”
The people and creatures gathered at the table erupted. Half of them tried to speak at once. Others stood, silent. Verse started to say, “I told you so. You never did call us here to help you make up your mind…” The rest of it was lost to the noise.
Fia had been in contentious command meetings before. It had been a long time since she hadn’t been able to silence them with a bark. She swallowed her frustration. At least she understood the uproar. No matter what else happened, Ways and Means had all but announced they were going to war. Not all of them wanted to fight.
Ways and Means’ voice did not seem any louder, but somehow it spoke over all of them. “Our other choices remain open.”
The creatures at this table did not answer. They were too busy talking back. From what Niccoluccio had told her about the silent ways the others communicated, Fia had no doubt that even the quiet ones were anything but. They were speaking in ways she could not hear. Fia folded her arms, and waited.
Habidah waited for the clamor to die. When she spoke, her eyes were on the well of blackness wrapped around the walls. She asked, “You want to leave the old Unity behind?”
Ways and Means said, “We cannot continue to live as we have.”
At that thought, what was left of the noise died. They all knew that was true. For some of them, it might have been the first time they’d heard their ship say it.
Habidah said, “Then draw a clearer line. Your colonization effort, settling your crew – everything you’re trying to do is just a pattern of past behavior. End it.”
Ways and Means said, “We have never been without a home.”
“Nothing you’ve done so far has made anything better. And none of it is right.”
Fia asked, “Right for who?”
Habidah blinked. Fia guessed that she’d expected to be interrupted, but not by her. “For us,” Habidah said. “For you. For everybody on your world.”
Fia waved her hand across the same well of black that Habidah had been addressing. “You want to take all of this, all of this wealth and these wonders, away from us?”
“Wonders?” Habidah asked. “These aren’t wonders.”
“I broke some ribs on our journey here. I felt them pop. Saw big, ugly bruises. Now there’s nothing.”
The last time Fia had seen Caterina, Caterina had still not been able to make full use of her hand. She had spent days on the edge of death. How many soldiers had she seen suffer and die? How many of them could have been saved to live again, reborn?
Habidah said, “If Ways and Means and its crew were to settle your world, they wouldn’t act for your benefit.”
“Wouldn’t they, if this ship does want to break with its past?” Fia asked. “And where would this ship go? Where would you hide all your toys and your weapons?”
“This ship doesn’t need to go anywhere. It can survive like it is.”
“You would hide them away when you could share them.”
Incredulous, Habidah said, “If Ways and Means and its crew screw around with your world, it wouldn’t be to share.”
Fia said, “Whatever its reason, it’ll bring medicine. Food. Do you know how many people up there are suffering right now?”
Habidah looked as though Fia had struck her. “Yes,” she said.
Meloku was near. She had been listening. She told Habidah, “You interfered on this world once.”
She did not hide the barb in her voice. She had to mean Niccoluccio. Habidah swallowed. “Considering how it turned out, I would take it back if I could.”
Fia was beginning to understand more about how this woman operated. She saw her world with stark lines dividing good and bad. Herself and her friends versus her enemies. She always felt outnumbered. No wonder. She thought of herself as principled. The people around her did not have to slip up many times, or disagree with her more than once, to become enemies. She always had fewer and fewer friends.
Fia was very close to the “enemy” line. But Habidah could not quite put Fia there. She had put Fia in a different category entirely. Not a friend. Not an enemy. An irrelevance.
Fia was a native. To be defended, not listened to.
The last thing Fia ever wanted to be was protected.
A lie gave the teller power. Fia had lied plenty enough to know that. An omission had the same purpose. Habidah never would have told Fia who she was, where she had come from, and why, if circumstances hadn’t forced her.
Had they ever met on her world, Habidah would have held the truth over her like a sword on a pinion. Fia couldn’t have stood up.
Everything that Fia had learned put them on closer to even ground.
No wonder Habidah had been afraid.
Habidah opened her mouth, but Fia spoke first. Louder. “Go to my world,” she told the others. “You have my blessing if you’re looking for it. No more games or hiding behind hunting blinds. Land in full force, in plain view. And tell the truth about why you’ve come. I’ll help you.”
Again, order broke. This time, arguments were far more subdued. So many of the golems looked to each other in silence. Communicating, no doubt.
Habidah paled. Her mouth hung open. They had both been brought to this meeting to share their perspectives – as Ways and Means had put it. Well, Ways and Means had gotten them. Fia pressed herself back to the deck.
The meeting took an agonizing amount of time to wind down. Everybody had a piece to say, a rival to snipe at, a speech to give.
Fia had never doubted the outcome. Except for Habidah and Kacienta, all of them were in favor of settlement. Only Osia and Meloku held their peace, and kept their opinions to themselves.
When another long silence fell over the table, Ways and Means announced, “Thank you all for your input. We have made our decision.”
It did not say, Fia noticed, whether the discussion had influenced it. A handful of the golems looked to her. Others avoided her, including Habidah. They knew the same thing Fia did. If any of them had affected it, Fia’s words had.
Fia felt like she needed to swallow, but her throat was dry. She was not ready to have done what she suspected she just had.
But she had said it. She believed it.
Had she been in Ways and Means’ place, she would have dispensed with the drama and done it long ago.
36
Meloku’s shuttle this time was a slim, swan-winged clipper. Like their last, it had been designed for speed. Unlike it, this one h
ad been built with half a mind on passenger comfort.
This control cabin could not have been mistaken for a tomb. The shuttle was meant to travel at speed, yes, also to cater to diplomatic guests and their families. The cabin’s curved bulkheads used projectors to trick the eyes into thinking that it was larger than it actually was. Only by scanning in other spectra could she see that their space was seven meters long rather than the twenty it appeared to be.
Fiametta did not see through the image. Meloku did not care to disillusion her. Fiametta’s heart rate picked up when she settled into her acceleration couch, but not by as much as Meloku would have expected.
Meloku’s gorge had risen when Ways and Means had asked her to escort Fiametta. But she understood. Fiametta had proved herself adaptable beyond anything Meloku had expected, but she would never be comfortable around wholly demiorganic crew. Ways and Means did not have many humans it could count on to follow its orders.
The shuttle’s hull was sleek, polished silver. It had no stealth fields. It would not be going anywhere it had not been intended to be seen. They were going to make a statement. To be seen.
The usual compound-eye array of images sprang up across the fore bulkhead. They showed a hundred views of smooth orange gradients, the false skyline of their hangar complex. Though the shuttle’s boarding ramp had sealed behind them, their shuttle wouldn’t be taking flight for a while yet. Ways and Means had to get into position.
The shuttle was secured for acceleration. Fields and physical clamps held it in place. She and Fiametta had had to board now. The shuttle was to launch immediately after Ways and Means’ engine burns. They were aiming to give the intruder as little time to react as possible.
Fiametta flinched when her couch’s safety harness sprang out. She reflexively knocked it away. Meloku levered herself out of her own couch. She grabbed Fiametta’s harness and yanked it over her.
“Thank you,” Fiametta said, which was more than Meloku would have expected.
Meloku looked to her. Fiametta glared at Meloku when Meloku watched her too long.
She hardly liked Meloku more than Meloku liked her. Meloku would always be her captor, her interrogator. Alien to her and to everything she knew. And Fiametta was a warmonger, a hostage-taker, a robber, an arsonist. The kind of barbarian that, when Meloku had been traveling the planes, she would have no second thoughts about destroying like she had destroyed Queen Joanna. Meloku could not find peace with these things. Had she been in Fiametta’s position and needed help, she could not have thanked Fiametta.
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