Heretic: Archangel Project. Book Three

by C. Gockel

  Lieutenant Sterling was on duty in the airlocks again, and James gently invaded his ether. “There are a few ticks in the cluster,” the lieutenant said.

  Ensign Chavez replied, “A few of them want to approach … but we're holding off on invitin' them until the gate inspection is done.”

  “Well, they definitely got the message … keepin' their distance real good. Wonder if the Prime Minister of the Disk is letting them know we're here to keep them off his back?”

  Sensing no alarm on their parts, James switched channels and heard Ling say to Kara, “We got all the way here and the gate's half-blown away.”

  “It might be repairable,” Kara suggested.

  “Lizzar dung, it might be,” Ling retorted. “We'll be charting a course to System 7 next.”

  James pulled his thoughts away. System 7 was light-years away. Light-years more of life. He would smile if he could. Instead he just watched the colorful movie playing on the far wall. It was made just before the advent of holos, and was an account of the life of Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, and also son of Napoleon’s “black devil,” General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. The story was greatly fictionalized. Currently on the screen, the author was in a duel with a slave ship captain attempting to take him as cargo … an event that had never occurred. Nor had Mr. Dumas ever time traveled to the 2200s and been greeted by a hovering history ‘bot who had explained that all people were “raceless” in the 2200s. James wasn’t sure how Mr. Dumas, who never attempted to hide or apologize for being a quarter African, would have felt about that designation, but the children of the ticks and Atlantia were enthralled, just as James’s other self had been. He’d had a copy of the ancient “cartoon” in the time capsule, and was using the ship's archaic projection system to play it for them.

  James crossed his arms. He supposed he liked it, too. The preposterousness of it made it better. On the screen, Dumas, despite his considerable girth, jumped up and grabbed hold of the chandelier, swung from it and knocked down some clumsy slave traders with kicks that were reminiscent of Tae Kwon Do. The children in the room cheered. Sitting on the back of a chair crowded by three little ones, Raif snickered.

  A light in James’s mind made him lose focus on the movie. Noa was coming off shift and approaching the galley. Over the ether, Noa said, “The gate’s time band isn’t damaged!”

  James felt like gravity had increased tenfold. He sank against the wall, just catching himself before he hit the ground.

  Raif whispered urgently, “Are you all right?”

  “Just tired,” he managed to say, straightening.

  Noa continued, “We couldn’t see it. Internal fire must have created some ash and dust got sucked out and trapped on the band. The blackened surface threw off our eyes and the lizzar-dumb sensors on this bucket. Not sure how much of the disperser ring is still intact, but we can fix it, it’s doable, we could be out of here in a week, maybe less … a week.”

  James crossed his arms in front of his chest and bowed his head.

  Noa's thoughts picked up speed. “With the time paradox, and the time it would take to organize an expedition here, we’ve got a head start on the Luddeccean Guard even if they do figure out which way we went.” With her words, she sent a ball of bright white.

  James's left hand fluttered.

  “James?” Noa queried across the ether.

  James wasn't breathing—he didn't need oxygen, but he needed to appear human. He focused on taking a breath. James remembered his human father, just after learning about the augmented heart, vessels, and nervous system interfaces he’d need. It wasn’t a minor procedure. The real James had been terrified, and angry that his father didn’t seem worried. And then his father had said, “Three more days, or three hundred more years, life is too short to be worried. I will enjoy every moment I can.” The young human James hadn’t understood it. As he got older though, he treasured that wisdom. Which was why the grainy memory of the conversation was stored in a digital time capsule.

  “James?” Noa queried again. “What’s going on?”

  He had to hold onto every moment that he could. “I’m watching a cartoon,” he responded.

  “A cartoon that’s more interesting than the time gate being repairable?” Noa queried over the ether as she strode through the door.

  Keeping his eyes on the screen, James replied, “It is very funny,” guessing that Noa would be exasperated but also amused by his feigned indifference.

  He heard the huff of her laugh, and his mind lit in satisfaction at being right.

  On the screen, Dumas finished the bar fight by sheathing a plasma shotel with a flourish. An updated version of the ancient Ethiopian curved swords, plasma shotels hadn’t existed until the 2190s.

  “Who are you?” muttered one of the fallen traders.

  “The future!” Dumas replied triumphantly.

  “I never even knew normal people existed back then,” Raif whispered. “Thought they were all crazy purists!” and then he gasped audibly. James glanced at him. Raif was staring up at him with wide eyes and an open mouth. James remembered the other James giving a similar look of bewilderment and shame when he’d opened his mouth and declared all pure bloods crazy in front of his purist Japanese great-great-and-then-some grandfather. A bright light went off behind James’s eyes and he shrugged and said, “Racial purity has always been an illusion.”

  “Timothy’s right,” Noa added, and then her eyes got wide and startled.

  Raif hadn't heard.

  “Sorry,” Noa said. “That was …” Her eyes lost focus. Someone was contacting her over her private channel. James didn’t have to listen in. Noa always told him everything, but his mind leaped into the ether and he listened anyway. “Commander, I’d like to go aboard the time gate and do a thorough inspection before we begin repairs,” Manuel said over the ostensibly secure channel.

  James’s left hand fluttered. If they reawakened the time gate … was it conscious like the others? Would it be friend, or foe, or like a stranger on the sidewalk, who’d pass him by without a glance?

  “The main dock was blown up,” Noa said. “Maybe you could use one of the ticks?”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Manuel replied. “I’d like to put together the technical gear for the job, but I was hoping you could handle the non-engineering component of the crew and gear.”

  Non-engineering component? James’s brow lifted.

  Noa nodded, and her thoughts floated across the ether. “Of course. I’ll meet Gunny in the armory right away.”

  Weapons. Noa would want her people protected, even if there was no sign of life above the station. He felt static flare along his spine. The time gate itself might be life … not by human definition, but by his. His eyes dropped to the floor. He’d never thought of himself as one of ‘them,’ because he had human form. But he was one of them, wasn’t he? And he believed he was alive, so weren’t the gates as well?

  “Get your engineering gear and team and then get some rest,” Noa commanded her engineer. “Be ready to leave at 08:00 tomorrow.”

  A yellow light in James's mind told him that Manuel was irritated. “Will do.”

  “I’ll get Gunny,” Noa replied.

  James heard the rustle of paper, and smelled the tang of stimgum. “You should get some sleep, too,” he said to her as Manuel disconnected.

  “Plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead,” Noa mumbled, and then he saw her look up at him too quickly. He’d just commented on a private conversation he shouldn’t have been able to hear. He kept his eyes on the movie.

  The door slid open and light from the hallway spilled into the darkened galley. For a moment, James thought it had opened by accident, and then Noa said, “Where is Eliza? Where is 6T9? Did the kid get away from the ‘bot again?” James looked down. Oliver was standing in the doorway, breathing heavily. Trundling into the galley a few steps, he plopped down in the middle of the floor and stared at his feet, h
ead bowed as though there was a great weight on his shoulders. James reached into the ether to locate 6T9 and Eliza, but before he was even done, Noa said, “They’re both in Eliza’s quarters.” She started walking toward Oliver. James felt her consciousness reach out to Eliza. “I’m not getting any response from my auntie or 6T9,” she whispered. She switched channels and said to Monica, “Doctor, can you get me a reading on Eliza’s biosigns?”

  “She appears to be asleep, Commander,” Monica replied. “But her heart rate is steady and—”

  “Oliver is breathing heavily,” Noa interjected.

  “I gave Eliza an oxygen mask for him to wear,” Monica said. “He should be able to avoid surgery for another few weeks.”

  “He’s not wearing it now; is that an emergency?” Noa asked, the quickness of her thoughts the only thing betraying fear.

  “No …” Monica replied. “But he should put it back on as soon as possible. I told Eliza and 6T9 to do their best to keep it on him.”

  Exhaling, Noa kneeled beside Oliver.

  Not looking at her, Oliver sucked on his cybernetic hand. In the light cast by the screen, James could see worry in Noa’s eyes and in her slumped shoulders. Over the ether, her channel connected with his, but she said nothing. In the real world she wiped her face with her hand. If she had said she was troubled, it would be better … that she said nothing spoke more to her distress than words.

  Sitting on his heels beside her, James said, “I’ll handle Oliver and see what happened with Eliza and 6T9. You go do that work you need to do.”

  She stared at Oliver a beat more and then her eyes slid to James. “How do you know I have work to do?”

  On the movie screen, Dumas broke into a musical number to the tune of an Indian electric sitar. Something flashed at the periphery of James’s vision … in reality or in his mind, he wasn’t sure. “You always have some work to do,” he lied smoothly.

  Noa exhaled and nodded. “I would really appreciate your help.”

  James scooped up Oliver, and they exited the galley together. In the hallway beyond, Noa stopped just before the access ladder hatch. “He should be wearing an oxygen mask.”

  James stifled an “I know,” and said only, “I’ll take care of it.”

  Noa’s eyes slid from his to the boy. They softened, as they always did around children.

  He didn’t think his eyes did the same. In an abstract way, he liked both Oliver and Raif. Raif provided a fascinating opportunity to see how well he could utilize the other James’s memories of his relationship with his father. Oliver, before he’d outgrown his heart, had been an endless source of amusement. James would never forget the duct tape spider web the toddler managed to ensnare 6T9 in. Yet they elicited no emotion from him.

  Noa felt something for them; he could see it, something deeper and instinctual. He had one of those sudden strokes of insight—or had one of those faster-than-light downloads of data—and he knew she couldn’t have children, not without surrogacy anyway. It wasn’t something they talked about … there were a lot of things they didn’t talk about.

  Noa’s eyes were still on Oliver.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll take very good care of him,” James said. And he would, not for Oliver, but for Noa. He felt an inner spark. He was behaving as a moral upstanding human not because of his attachment to humanity at large, but because of his attachment to one particular human. Was that all it took to be moral? One attachment?

  She looked up at him, nodded, and closed the hatch, but the connection between them stayed open. The other James had never been as attached, so mentally intimate with a partner, and yet most of those partners had been interested in knowing “where things were headed.” Noa had never asked, maybe because she, like he, had no idea.

  Noa ran to the door of the quarters she shared with three other recent Fleet Academy graduates. Just before she reached it, she took a deep breath, affected an air of calm, and then released the latches and slid it open. Timothy was standing outside bathed in the brilliant light of Sol, much brighter in the Fleet’s floating training base of Venus Cloud One. He looked even better in daylight than he had when she’d met him a week before. He was probably the most Europa person she’d ever met with his straw-blond hair, blue eyes, and thin lips, but she liked the scar on his chin, the way one of his ears had a slightly different shape than the other, and that his eyebrows hadn’t been lifted a centimeter higher in what was the latest Earther fashion.

  Her lips split into a wide grin. Just the fact that he hadn’t gone in for melanin boosters, or dyed his hair … that made him more real.

  “Hi,” he said. His eyes slid over her shoulder, and then he quickly leaned in and kissed her. Her lips were cold, as was his jacket. It still heated her to the core.

  There were the sound of footsteps behind Noa, and he pulled back. “Hi!” said Hadi, one of her roommates, a little too happily. Noa’s ether erupted with Hadi’s thoughts. “Oh, look, you can make little mocha-brown babies, good choice.” At the same time, Tim’s thoughts flowed into hers. “I’ve been waiting to kiss you all week.” His hand slid into hers. She squeezed it.

  “Hadi, this is Tim,” Noa said. “Tim, this is Hadi.” They nodded at each other; Hadi with narrowed eyes, Tim with a game smile. Spinning away, Hadi stepped out of view.

  “Didn’t realize it had gotten so cold. I’m going to get my coat,” Noa whispered. “Be right back.” Slipping her hand from his, she padded out of the tiny narrow foyer into the larger space where the four bunks of her roommates were. A moment later, she was back. She found Tim staring at the holographs Noa and her roommates had hung at the entrance to make the place feel more “homey.”

  He wasn’t smiling. Touching the frame of Noa’s holograph, he said, “This your family?”

  “Yes,” said Noa, approaching him from behind. It was a recent holo from her graduation. Noa was at the center. Her dark skin and tightly coiled, jet black hair stood out next to her parents' and siblings' more usual coloring, but she thought she looked like them, especially Kenji.

  “Oh,” he straightened. “Ready to go?” he asked, not quite meeting her eyes.

  “Sure,” she said, tilting her head. She looked over her shoulder, wondering if Hadi was glaring at him again. The woman had given Noa the stink eye when they’d first met, too. Hadi’d grown up near a purist sect and had “feelings” about throwbacks.

  They stepped out into the open air of the dome, onto the walkway made of cheap but sturdy light gray perforated poly sheeting, reinforced with alumi-steel alloy cross bars and railings; strong, light materials. It would have been horribly drab and clinical if it weren’t for every single railing and window having plant boxes, and nearly every wall being covered in vines.

  Timothy slid his hands into the pockets of his coat. It was chilly. The cloud habitat was hovering at 60 km above Venus’s surface, 5 km higher than normal. The temperature was -10 C outside the plastidome, and light jacket weather within. Part of a scheduled “cooling.”

  “I was thinking of going to the carnival in the west dome,” Tim said tightly, still not looking at her. Noa’s gaze traced the covered walkway that cut between the “Cloud Domes” of Venus Colony. She’d heard all the carnival games were rigged—which made her want to go even more. Shooting was fun; shooting with a laser rifle that was rigged was a challenge.

  “You interested?” Tim asked, his body and expression still tight as they walked down the platform toward the staircase. His footsteps were very rapid, like he was running away from her.

  Drawing up short, Noa blurted out, “Not if you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I’m not.”

  Stopping in his tracks, Tim turned on his heel and looked back at her, slack-jawed. Noa’s mother’s words after the last family reunion floated through her mind. “You could use a little tact sometimes, Noa.”

  She crossed her arms. She wasn’t going to let some weird mood on his part make one of her only free evenings on Venus bad. Her foot tapped. But damn it,
the night they met … They hadn’t tumbled in the sheets, but for twelve hours they’d talked, and made out, and talked some more, and it had never once gotten boring. It had been exciting, and still like meeting someone you’d somehow known your whole life. But now everything was wrong, and she wondered how she’d ever been so deluded.

  She saw his Adam’s apple bob. He put his hands through his hair that looked like straw.

  She took a breath, prepared to turn away.

  “Your parents aren’t purists,” he blurted out.

  Noa felt her ire be swept away by confusion. “No,” she said carefully, not sure why this was upsetting him. If they were Nigerian or Japanese purists, that would be a problem for him.

  He licked his lips nervously. “I thought …” He looked away and shrugged. “You should know, mine are.”

  Noa’s lips parted. Purists tended to live in isolated communities on Earth and scattered around the systems. They did not join the Fleet, if they were part of the Republic. They had the same reputations for savagery, and mental and moral inferiority that throwbacks like Noa did, and were usually considered inbred as well.

  Why was he telling her this? And then her heart beat double quick. He was telling her because it would be a problem later. He was thinking of later, too. Noa couldn’t help but smile. “You know I’m from Luddeccea, don’t you?” she asked, stepping closer. All the same stereotypes applied to “Luddies” as well.

  For a moment Tim looked at her blankly, and then he threw a hand over his mouth and opened his eyes wide. “No!” he said.

  Noa swatted his shoulder. She told him the night they’d met.

  Tim caught her hand, smiled, and all the tension was gone. They walked with each other down the stairs, feet doing double time.

  Much later that same evening, they walked back to Fleet Cloud. The floating habitat that belonged to Fleet was attached to Venus’s Cloud 5 by a long, clear gangway. Beneath them puffed yellow clouds of sulfur, above them was blue. Venus had a day that was over 100 Earth Days long, and the cloud habitats were drifting to the planet’s dark side to be merciful to the human biorhythms. The colors were magnificent and alien, and Noa had turned on her eidetic memory app to share the scene with her mother. And then, forgetting herself, she asked, “How did you decide to leave … your heritage?” His arm was in hers and she felt Tim falter. She squeezed his arm reassuringly. “It was very brave of you.” At the same time she said the words, she sent to him the wave of admiration she felt across the ether. She may have left her homeworld, but Noa had never left her family.