Fire with Fire, Second Edition

by Charles E Gannon

  Flannery edged back toward the door. “Now, I’ve got a ship to run and a transfer to effect, so I must politely insist that you get your asses into your module, button up, and batten down. You’ve got twenty minutes.” He paused, then saluted. “Do Earth proud, folks.” One long, lanky step had him out the door and gone.

  * * *

  The habitation module’s viewscreen enlarged Tex Flannery’s perpetual scowl to almost five times life-size. “We’re downloading your final cargo manifest now. The special foods and extra gear you requested did manage to catch up with us late yesterday. Our shipboard PT guru tells me you’re all familiar with your individualized zero-gee regimens, should you find yourself living in a weightless or low-grav environment. Remember, muscular—and even skeletal—atrophy sets in fast, so you’ve got to get on it right away. Major Patrone has my permission to knock your heads together if you don’t. And don’t give her any grief about the daily blood tests she has to run on you once the module’s hermetic seals are breached and contact is made. If the major deems it necessary, she will also draw spinal fluid with the aid of the automated medical assistant we’ve installed in the module. The integrated lab is able to isolate, image, and chemically analyze almost any organism or compound that is foreign to the human body.”

  Hwang frowned. “That doesn’t account for the imponderables of advanced biotechnology.”

  “Quite true, doctor. I’m told that it is theoretically possible to design microorganisms that would superficially resemble human cells, but then release toxins, viruses—hell, even nanites—once they’re inside the body.”

  Wasserman’s voice held an edge of repressed panic. “You think they would try to poison us?”

  “No, sir, but there might be other reasons to put something in one or more of you.”

  ”Such as?” asked Trevor.

  Hwang answered with a shrug. “A sleeper virus that we would spread upon return to Earth, which is contagious but asymptomatic until it comes into contact with a second, activating organism. A lock-and-key epidemic.”

  Downing looked away so they could not see any worry that might have shown in his eyes. Feints within feints. Again, the ploy of the Trojan Horse. We’re not the only ones who might be working on a Case Timber Pony. But there wasn’t the time to pursue the disturbing parallels any further; Opal was adding another consideration.

  “It wouldn’t have to be an epidemic,” she explained. “It could be something tailored, something that works like a tracer in each of us. Maybe even something which could allow them to exert control over us later on.”

  “Control?” Thandla sounded uncharacteristically agitated. “They would control our minds?”

  “No, I don’t think it would have to be anything that dramatic. Consider how our behavior would change if something triggered our bodies to quintuple their normal testosterone production. And that’s just an obvious example. Given how our moods and impulses are partly governed by our biochemistry, a selective rebalancing of hormones, endorphins, and neuroactive compounds could have a strong and marginally predictable impact on our baseline behavioral tendencies.”

  “And this would be done how? By a virus?”

  Hwang shrugged. “I imagine the agency for that could be either biological or nanotechnological.”

  Flannery held up a hand. “And that’s why you’ll spend a few weeks in mobile quarantine when you get back. We can’t afford taking any chances that you might be walking time bombs.

  “Now, about the sensors we’ve provided for you. They’re small and state of the art and should give you opportunities to run all kinds of physical analyses on most objects you encounter at close range. Try to get a sample of everything you run across outside of your module: construction materials, plants, foodstuffs, atmosphere, respiratory exhausts. If you can manage to host a meal for any of them—assuming they find anything we eat palatable, let alone digestible—you’ll be hitting the jackpot. The uneaten portions they leave behind should contain some very informative traces of their biochemistries.”

  “And if we are invited to dine with them?”

  Elena’s question hung in the air a moment before Flannery shrugged and responded. “Since the Dornaani already have extensive knowledge of our language, they probably have knowledge of our genetics as well. Ought to, if they’ve been picking up our broadcast signals and watching our medical programs. Besides, unless you stay in your hab mod with the seals intact, you’re going to be leaving forensically significant traces of yourself as you go: flakes of dried skin, shed hairs. When it comes to any non-Dornaani species—hell, you’re going to have to eyeball each situation separately and make your best call. However, I will reiterate what I’m sure Ms. Visser has stressed every day: you are not a recon team, you are a diplomatic delegation. You can’t allow your impulses to gather, or protect, information to compromise that primary purpose. If attending a gathering hosted by exos seems decisively advantageous, you shouldn’t be turning down that invite. Now, according to the instructions sent by our visitors, you’ve got about twenty minutes to strap in before we cut your module loose. Good luck and God speed.”

  When the screen had darkened, Downing saw that Riordan was frowning. Downing cocked an eyebrow. “Yes, Caine?”

  Riordan spread his hands. “Doesn’t it seem strange that two species are going to be newcomers at this ‘Convocation?’ Which is to say, just how plausible is it that two species in this region of space are at almost precisely the same place on the developmental clock? I mean, a few thousand years, plus or minus, is nothing in terms of planetary evolution. So, if these five other species all developed supraluminal travel in the past five thousand years, that would be an average interval of one thousand years between new members being invited to their first Convocation.”

  Downing folded his arms. “Yes, I see your point. Given that model, it would be very strange for any two species to be ready to join the Accord in the same century, let alone the same decade. But your model ignores the possibility that all five races might have all arisen over a shorter period. That would produce a smaller average interval.”

  Caine nodded. “Okay, but I think there are some reasons why five thousand years is still a useful minimum time-span upon which to base comparisons. Not a definitive time-span, but a useful one.”

  Elena leaned in. “Yes, it’s a logical base-line for conjectures, simply because Earth has not experienced exosapient visitations—any large enough to leave a clear historical record—in the last five thousand years. If the Accord had not been functioning during that time, and with this number of nearby interstellar neighbors, it would be difficult to explain that absence.”

  Hwang frowned. “Or maybe no one came calling because no one was out there to do so until very, very recently?”

  “Except that the ruins at DeePeeThree were dated at about twenty thousand years, so we know there were starfaring exosapients twenty thousand years ago, operating very close to Earth. We now know there are some exosapients doing so now. What are the odds that the first group of exosapients all died out and that today’s group has absolutely no connection with them? It’s possible, but not likely. Even the most ferocious wars and interregnums on Earth did not produce a complete end of historical trajectories. The Roman Empire fell but continued on in the East, and then reemerged through the Papacy. The past not only creates the present, but leaves distinct marks upon it.”

  Downing nodded. “Caine and Elena are absolutely right. Given the probable complexity of true interstellar cultures, it seems likely that, if they were to fall violently, we would have felt the shockwaves on Earth. Or have detected the consequent flotsam and jetsam in one of the systems we’ve recently colonized. And furthermore, if a great interstellar power fell long ago, how could it continue to prevent violations of a protected race or the systems reserved for it—assuming that’s what we were? Such restrictions would almost certainly be ignored when, or if, the polity that promulgated and enforced them fell from power.”
>
  Thandla cocked his head slightly. “So, because we haven’t been caught up in interstellar politics earlier, you’re saying that you suspect that some of the contemporary powers have been around for a very long time? That there has been some continuity that dates back twenty thousand years, and which makes sure that everyone plays by the same set of rules? Which seem to include letting species develop on their own?”

  “That and more. Let’s assume that we are not the only carbon-based life forms that flourish in environments where water is encountered as a liquid and where there’s a decent amount of oxygen in the atmosphere.”

  Ben Hwang scratched his ear. “I see where you’re going. It means that whoever was in charge of policing the sections of space reserved for us kept the prime real estate free of any number of highly motivated claim jumpers. For a very long time.”

  Downing nodded. “It would seem so.” He checked his watch. “Time to strap in.”

  ODYSSEUS

  Caine checked his watch—just about fifty minutes since Flannery’s brusque farewell—and then felt a reasonable amount of gravity pushing him down into the acceleration couch once again. Trevor’s voice came out of the ceiling speakers a moment later. “Okay, folks. That bump you felt a few minutes ago was indeed the Dornaani connecting to us via our intership coupling node. Instruments now indicate a spin-generated equivalent of 0.97 gees. Be careful if you get up—we don’t know our rotations per minute yet, so we can’t be sure how bad the inner ear or Coriolis effects are going to be.”

  Visser’s voice followed Trevor’s: “Might the gravity be natural? Could we have already shifted, and come out near a planet?”

  Caine felt a sudden flush of embarrassment for Visser, was glad that Le Mule did not jump down her throat. It was fairly common knowledge—even for someone who had been asleep for fourteen years—that you couldn’t come out of shift near a planet. The proximity to a gravity well would deform the ship’s re-expression pattern and—pffffftttt: you came out as a whole lot of nothing. And as for the possibility that they might have felt a shift . . .

  Caine toggled his own comm link. “I doubt we’ve experienced shift yet, Ms. Visser. You feel a little jolt when you shift. Not painful, just a start—like when you wake up from a falling dream.”

  Movement at the entrance to his stateroom caught the corner of his eye: Opal, in a low-cut T-shirt and shorts. Which looked very fine on her. Caine tapped the commlink which was dragging awkwardly at the neckline of his own tee, rose, smiling—but then saw that her face was as rigid as a mask. He moved past her, closed the door, and steered her toward the acceleration couch on which he had been sitting. She didn’t resist or speak.

  He sat down next to her, put a hand on top of hers. She clutched his fingers so quickly and so tightly that he almost cursed. “Opal, what’s wrong?”

  Without looking at him, she spat words. “You heard that braying jackass, Le Mule. Shifting is just a nice way of saying that we’re going to be torn into trillions of tiny, subatomic particles.”

  “It is a pretty strange concept,” Caine started agreeably.

  Opal shut her eyes. “It is suicide.”

  He studied her face, started at what he saw there. “Why are you crying?”

  She blinked, looked even more surprised than he was, and yelped out a short laugh. “What? I’m what? Crying?”

  Caine only nodded: clearly, this was more than just fear.

  Opal waved an airy hand. “Oh, that’s nothing. I was just—”

  Caine reached out and drew her close slowly, gently. She exhaled and put her arms around him. She was in that position, unmoving, for so long that he wondered if she might have gone to sleep. “Opal, are you—?”

  She let out a long sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m—God, I’m such a coward.”

  “You?” He held her back to look at her. “You? This is a joke, right?”

  “It’s this whole shift business.”

  He doubted that, but asked, “What about it?”

  “Well, the mere thought of being shredded into subatomic particles—didn’t it scare you, the first time?”

  Caine shrugged. “It couldn’t: I was in cold sleep. And by the time they woke me up, I had already been through three shifts. I guess some part of me accepted that if shifting was going to kill me, it would have already done so. But instead, here I am.” He smiled.

  And then, she was grabbing his head in both hands and was kissing him. He also felt her shaking, as if she had started crying again, but a moment after he began to respond—eagerly—she stopped trembling. And by that time, he had stopped thinking.

  Several seconds—or minutes—later (he could not tell), the compartment intercom toned twice: a priority message. “Folks”—it was Trevor—“if you’re still in your acceleration couches, you might want to stay there. We just received a communiqué from our hosts. Seems they’re ready to initiate shift. For those of you who’ve never experienced one, you might feel a little vertigo, so just make sure you’re seated or lying down. Fifteen minutes, they tell us. See you on the other side. Out.”

  That reminder—about her impending discorporation—made Opal start away from Caine, who put his arms back around her. He tilted his head down until she could not fail to look him in the eyes: “Look: think of it this way. Your body is pushing around—sometimes destroying and rebuilding—electrons all the time.”

  Opal shuddered. “Sorry, but logic doesn’t help. I’ve faced death a few times, you know. Getting too close to it on one occasion is what got me banished to the future. But here’s the funny thing: I always knew I wasn’t going to be killed. I have known—all my life—that I wasn’t going to die young, that I was going to outlive all my siblings and live on into advanced, and probably testy, hag-dom. But this—it makes me feel like I’m about to dissolve into nothing.”

  “Well,” Caine said and his arms tightened a little more, “you certainly feel real enough to me.”

  He did not expect what happened next: she pushed herself into him with a sinuous motion; her reluctant vulnerability sudden transformed into forceful wantonness. “You’d be surprised how real I can feel,” she said in a tone that sounded like fierce annoyance.

  As Opal pulled herself against him, Caine imagined he felt various needs tightening her fingers—needs for love, for safety, for escape, for him, for release. But now, those separate needs were losing their distinctions, were fusing together into one impulse—

  And Caine, as distracted as he was by her profoundly suggestive words and motions, finally understood where her tears had come from: she had wanted this to happen for a long time. And now, made desperate by a fear of imminent annihilation, that unfulfilled want had cracked the emotional container in which she kept herself, had started leaking out . . .

  Caine stood away and extended a hand. “Come with me.”

  She had risen and put her hand in his even before she said, “Where are we going?”

  “To a therapeutic environment.”

  She blinked. “And where on this tin-can would that be?”

  He smiled, checked up and down the corridor, and led her aft. And as they approached the last door on the module’s central corridor, she understood: “The buoyancy tank? Now?”

  “When better? You like baths; think of this as the ultimate bath.” He opened the door; a muted glimmer of moving water moiréd against the walls.

  She seemed slightly more collected as she wondered: “Damn, is this even allowed?”

  “Hey—I thought you were the bad-ass, maverick major.”

  “Bad ass, yes: exhibitionist, no. How do we know that no one will—?”

  “We just passed all their doors. Closed tight. Waiting for the shift. Lot of first timers like yourself. All probably a little anxious, and eager to hide it from everyone else.” Caine pulled off his T-shirt. “So this may be the one time we can indulge in a little—” he slipped into the water “—hydrotherapy.”

  “Okay. Give me a sec.” She moved towards the
changing booth.

  “What for?”

  “My grand entrance.” She slipped inside, but he still could see her: she didn’t bother to close the door. In a moment, she had shed her outer clothes. She primped for all of one second in the mirror, making sure her bra and briefs were trim and taut, showing off everything to its best advantage.

  When she left the booth, she did not meet Caine’s eyes, but stepped daintily into the water on the other side of the tank and then waded across to join him. She leaned back against the rim of the tank, her body only a foot away from his. The water raised her breasts slightly. His arms—spread out to either side—suddenly felt very heavy. He felt the water lap against his side, shifted his body slightly, wondered if—oh Christ, stop thinking!

  Smiling at his own awkwardness and tendency to overexamine everything—even this—he turned toward Opal.

  She was not smiling.

  And then, thinking became extraneous.

  PART FIVE

  EV Lacertae and Barnard’s Star

  October, 2119

  Chapter Forty

  TELEMACHUS

  Downing was tapping his lower lip meditatively with a compupad stylus. “So Mr. Thandla, you have confirmed our final position?”

  The Indian nodded. “Starfield configuration and parallax measurement both put us in the EV Lacertae system.”

  “That’s some rather fast travel, I must say. And no communiqués except this morning’s?”

  “Correct.”

  Downing turned toward Riordan. “I’m assuming that they sent us a list of the systems included in Earth’s ‘allowed region of development’?”

  Caine nodded, and activated the holotank. A two-column list of star names glimmered into existence. “Excluding our home system, there are fifty-eight systems that have been reserved for us. I’ve highlighted the ones where we’ve already pitched our tents.”