Revolution's Shore

by Kate Elliott

  “Eighteen days,” she muttered. “No wonder I feel weak.”

  The door popped open behind her. She felt it prudent not to attempt to turn, yet.

  “Comrade Heredes.” The physician’s voice had that vigorous cheeriness that is so often annoying to convalescent patients. “You ought to be lying down.”

  Lily began to reply, but felt a hand on her arm before she could speak. It exerted the slightest pressure, to ease her to sit, and she began to resist as she glanced to that side.

  And did sit.

  Jehane smiled and released her arm. His hand, all of him, was encased in the thin sheath of quarantine gear, like the doctor. “Thank you, comrade. We have been concerned about you.”

  The very intensity of his concern as he stood next to her made her doubly dizzy. “What happened?” she asked, pulling the back of her hand across her forehead. Her fingers strayed in the loose ends of her hair; to her relief, she could feel that it was clean.

  Jehane turned his expectant gaze to the physician. “Comrade Doctor Prachenduriyang? Have you any more clues?”

  The doctor’s shrug was eloquent of ambivalence. “Oh, yes,” she said tartly, “I have clues, comrade, but they don’t lead me anywhere.” She examined the vital signs on the monitor again and shook her head. “Have you any idea, comrade Heredes?” she asked. “Were you exposed to any disease? Some kind of poisoning?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “There. I’m not sure I would even call it a disease in the medical sense, but perhaps rather a reaction. You are in quarantine because I have come to the only conclusion I can: that this is some sort of mutated plague that you picked up from the abandoned ship that you commandeered. We have sent messages to the—” She paused.

  “The Forlorn Hope?” Lily asked abruptly, pathetically eager to hear news of the ship and its crew.

  “Yes, the Forlorn Hope, to see if any other outbreaks have occurred similar to yours. Until we get such news, I fear we will have to leave you in quarantine, comrade. Your readings here”—she pointed to the monitor—“indicate that you have recovered, so I’m afraid that your convalescence may feel confined.”

  Lily made a slight shrug with her shoulders. “I don’t suppose it can be helped. Can a—a plague of such kind linger on a ship so long?”

  “Presumably,” replied the doctor, but she frowned.

  “I feel,” said Jehane slowly, “that there is something still disturbing you, comrade. Some piece to the puzzle that does not yet fit.”

  For an instant, Doctor Prachenduriyang’s gaze at Jehane betrayed the depth of feeling with which she regarded him. “Of course, comrade,” she answered, the three words conveying how strongly she believed in his powers of perception. “As a matter of course we take blood samples of any person admitted with an unidentified illness, and do a detailed analysis. I won’t go into detail, but in any case we can if necessary break down the sample to the genetic level in some areas. In the course of your illness, comrade Heredes, according to our analysis, a very small segment of your genetic material has altered.”

  Bach winked a single blue light, but otherwise remained motionless and silent. Jehane studied Lily with a gaze whose thoroughness, even wrapped beneath the quarantine sheath, seemed capable to Lily of piercing through to that altered segment that so disturbed the doctor.

  “But what does that mean?” Lily asked.

  The doctor’s lips were pursed tight again. “I don’t know. That you now harbor this plague in a form that is impervious to vaccines. That in an unspecified number of months or years, or in your children, you will manifest a further sequence of events, or illness—one can only speculate—that has come about because of this alteration. We can’t be sure. It might be a harmless, if virulent, physical reaction. It might be—more serious. I can’t give you reassurances, comrade, because I don’t know.”

  “Hoy,” said Lily, feeling very tired.

  Jehane put a hand, slick in plastine, on her shoulder. It was a deeply comforting gesture. “Would you like me to remain with you a while, comrade?” he asked.

  She looked up at him. He appeared utterly sincere, and concerned, and yet she was reminded of Jenny’s face—indeed, her entire expression—as she waited outside Jehane’s office while he spoke with his son Gregori.

  “No,” said Lily, and looked away. “I’ll just rest a bit now.”

  He nodded, removed his hand, and left.

  The doctor lingered. “I’m sorry. But I hate to lie to my patients. I wish I knew more.”

  “You looked after me well enough. I can see you have a problem, doctor—” She hesitated.

  “Call me Duri. I never insist on the full syllabary, unless I’m being formal. I understand you are capable of drink and food.”

  “I’m starving,” replied Lily with some force. “I feel weak, but perfectly fine otherwise.”

  “Yes.” Duri sighed. “Your signs are completely normal. Your color, your blood—everything is fine. Except …”

  “Except.”

  Duri waited a moment, but Lily did not continue. At last she reached out to pat Lily on the shoulder, a pale echo of Jehane’s gesture, and retreated to the door. “I have other duties, but I’ll send one of my assistants with a meal. You might make a list of anything you want. You have a terminal built in, of course.”

  “Thank you,” said Lily. When the door sealed shut behind the doctor, she turned immediately to Bach, who still winked blue.

  Bach? she whistled, interrogative.

  Patroness. He prefaced his remarks with a little prelude, as if, like a child, he had been asked to memorize lines to recite. Comrade Hawk instructed me—

  “Oh, he did, did he?” Lily muttered under her breath.

  —to engage thy attention as soon as your vital signs had returned to normal.

  “But how could he know—” She broke off. Go on.

  Bach waited a moment before he continued, as if her interruption of his carefully crafted melodies distressed, or insulted, him. Comrade Hawk instructed me to let it be known to thee that he has inoculated thee with the Hierakis Formula, and that once thou hast recovered from the initial reaction, that there will be no recurring symptoms.

  “The Hierakis Formula?”

  The Hierakis Formula. Bach winked through a sudden, brilliant pattern of lights, as if showing off. A term I had not the fortune to be conversant with previously, so I must assume that advances in human life extensatory research have progressed since I was first commissioned.

  “Hoy.” She lifted a hand again and stared at it: fingers, skin, the same lines at her knuckles. It looked no different. “I don’t believe it.”

  Patroness. His song was slightly dissonant now. Surely thou dost not suggest that I would practice to deceive thee?

  “No, Bach. Of course not.” She amended the words with a reassuring whistle. “But—” She shook her head.

  A brief chime signaled the entrance of the assistant with her food.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, checking the monitor as he levered out the tray for her to eat on.

  “I’m fine. That food smells delicious. Thank you.”

  The assistant smiled and left.

  Patroness.

  “Yes?” she asked between bites.

  Comrade Hawk also instructed me to request that thou dost not yet reveal this information to anyone else.

  “That’s all he said?”

  Affirmative.

  She speared a strip of protein and considered Bach’s gleaming surface thoughtfully while she chewed. “Leaving me stuck here for the present, of course,” she muttered as she hunted for the next strip. “All right. I’ll play his game a little longer.”

  Patroness?

  I mean, Bach, that I trust that comrade Hawk has good reason to say what he did.

  Affirmative, patroness. Indeed, it is my belief that he has devised a larger plan which he would have confided to thee had he not been sundered from thee so abruptly.

&nb
sp; “Let’s hope so,” murmured Lily, and got back to her meal.

  Over the next seven days Duri visited her assiduously every five hours. Nothing changed, except that Lily began to recover her strength by moving the couch to one wall and doing kata slowly to break herself in. She discovered that she was weaker than she expected to be, and was grateful that she was allowed this respite to convalesce.

  Jehane did not visit again. Lily had no more dreams of Kyosti, or at least none inside windows.

  On ship’s morning, eighth day, Duri sighed and shook her head over her screen. Lily watched her attentively.

  “Under any other circumstances I would proclaim you well and let you return to duty,” Duri said. The plastine quarantine sheath gave a sheen to her dark skin and silver-flecked black hair. “But we’ve gotten news from the Forlorn Hope. I’ll let you review the records on your own, but unfortunately there’s been an outbreak of this ‘plague’ on the ship. So far it’s confined to the people who found the ship—the people you were with—but there’s no knowing how long an incubation period there might be.”

  “Have they all been quarantined?”

  “No. They’re understaffed as it is—you’ll see why—and in any case the rest of the crew had already been exposed. At least there have been no fatalities. That gives me hope.” She checked her wrist-com and clicked her lips in dismay. “Void bless, I’ve got to go. All the reports are accessible through the medical folders, program three lest eight. I’m sure you have the clearance.”

  “Yes,” said Lily, glancing at Bach. “I’m sure I’ll have no trouble getting access to them.”

  As soon as Duri was gone, Lily plugged Bach in to the terminal and sat next to him, watching the screen. He quickly accessed the files detailing the most recently known movements of the fleet.

  It took a while, scrolling, indexing, and trying to make sense of schedules and route maps, but eventually a pattern emerged: the Forlorn Hope had been sent into a string of obscure systems whose allegiance was still heavily to Central and had engaged in a far higher percentage of battles and running actions than any other single ship in Jehane’s fleet. It had lost two companion vessels, and had taken, so far, eleven casualties out of a crew of forty-seven.

  “Too high,” said Lily, tense as Bach found the lists of reported dead. She let out her held breath when she found no familiar names among them.

  The plague on the Forlorn Hope was also recorded, as well as a complaint from Captain Machiko about the difficulties he was experiencing integrating the old crew with the new people who had come on board with him. His final suggestion was to transfer, as a body, the old crew to some new assignment, or else break them up. His report did not mention the ship’s doctor except in the most general terms, referring to his work in dealing with the plague, and what injuries the crew had sustained during fighting.

  “Let’s see the Boukephalos’s movements, Bach,” she said.

  Jehane’s flagship, with seven escorting vessels, had swung a long arc out from Tollgate past Jenny’s birthplace Unity and back in toward Cold Comfort, approaching the central region of Reft space from a different quadrant.

  “There,” said Lily, pointing at a highlighted three-dimensional map of the central Reft. “From here we can move in either on Gravewood or Blessings, although I can’t imagine that Central would give up Blessings without a fight. Is there any news of Arcadia?”

  She shut her eyes, resting them, as Bach searched. The robot had transposed all of his pieces so that he could use the quiet hum of the ventilation system as a pedal point as he sang.

  “—I urge you to restraint, citizens, for the promised day will come. And come soon.”

  The voice, achingly familiar, caused her to start up before she recalled where she was. After glancing once, a little embarrassed, toward Medical—but no one was watching—she focused on the screen.

  It was Pero.

  An old tape, surely, but no less vivid for that. There were lines by his eyes that had not been there before, but the open, intent expression that marked him so clearly was unchanged.

  “Our task now must be to give Central no leverage on which to break our backs. Walk quietly under their illegal laws, their illegal curfews, their illegal restrictions. Buy only what food you must from their dispensaries, but do not give them cause to arrest you for stealing. Do not use the illegal identification clips they have forced on us by boycotting the transportation they control, and the stores they police. Will this condemn us to a life of scarcity? Or hardship? Yes.” His face shone with the glory of such a burden. “But this crisis will pass, because Jehane is coming.”

  The screen flickered and faded to static as the tape ended. Lily pressed her lips against her fingers and smiled, thinking of Robbie. How wonderful that he had not changed at all—that his beliefs, and his passion, remained constant.

  Abruptly she thought of the Hierakis Formula. What would Robbie do if he knew of it? But the answer was self-evident—for Pero there could be only one action: the Formula belonged to the citizens of the Reft, all of them, impartially, and all should share it, without cost, without qualification. The only question he would have would be how to get it to them all.

  It took her a moment to realize that there were still voices on the terminal—coming from the speakers, that is, although no image registered on the screen.

  “—nevertheless, comrade, despite Pero’s invigorating words, the fact remains that Arcadia continues well supplied while we are struggling to keep our fleet manned, fed, and repaired. The Mun House bankroll cannot keep us solvent alone. We no longer have the leeway to conduct our campaign on the fringes and slowly cut Arcadia off.”

  “Hoy,” breathed Lily. “What have you found, Bach-o?”

  Thou sayest, patroness, that thou desirest news of Arcadia. After indexing the computer’s memory, I also accessed the ship’s internal com-circuits and discovered this conversation underway in the tac room adjoining the bridge. Dost thou wish me to access a different channel, or return to the internal files?

  “No, no,” Lily murmured. “Let’s listen.” She lifted one hand, slightly, and Bach subsided into silence. A single red light gazed, a steady, brilliant eye, out from the surface of his attached keypad.

  “—and your suggestion that we bring the fleet together and risk one total assault on Arcadia is absurd. Perhaps even treasonous.” This voice Lily recognized: the hard, brittle tones of Kuan-yin. “We’ll never get in without sustaining impossible losses.”

  “How many windows open onto Arcadia?” argued the first voice, defensive now. “Sixteen? Eighteen? How can Central garrison every point of possible entry?”

  “Now, now, comrade Fon.” A third voice. “We can’t possibly send the fleet in piecemeal like that.” After a moment, to her great surprise, Lily realized that the voice belonged to Finch’s mother.

  Kuan-yin said something undecipherable, but clearly uncomplimentary.

  “And yet, comrade Kuan-yin,” continued Finch’s mother, “comrade Fon’s concern about our fleet being overextended is in my opinion quite legitimate.”

  There was a pause, during which Lily imagined that Kuan-yin wanted to give her opinion of comrade Caenna’s opinion, but was constrained by another presence.

  “Then we are caught.” Even over the terminal, Jehane’s voice had a compelling magnetism. “Between the necessity to strike now, and the still overwhelming advantage of force possessed by Central’s military. Comrade Fon, brief me again on the situation at Blessings.”

  “Why Blessings again?” asked Finch’s mother.

  “Blessings remains, comrade Caenna, the single largest agricultural resource in Reft space. A jewel worth risking much for. Comrade?”

  “Yes. Yes.” Comrade Fon’s heavy voice sounded the slightest touch nervous. “According to our most recent reports, Blessings is still wavering. A large Centralist party still controls their legislature. And there is a small but active core of rebels loyal to us. But”—he coughed—“
evidently a new ‘Independence’ movement is gaining strength—they wish to secede entirely from Central, and from our revolution, and declare Blessings’s complete independence. They’re the strongest faction right now.”

  “And that, I submit,” said Jehane in a softly dangerous voice, “is the real threat to our cause. We need—we must have—unity in Reft space.”

  There was a silence, made longer by the sound of people shifting uncomfortably in their chairs. Lily understood clearly for the first time that Jehane did not like or approve of Hawk: Hawk would always be, as Yi had said so many months ago, a wild card.

  “Blessings,” said Jehane, “is the key. Give me Blessings, and I can take Arcadia. I must consider this.” A pause. “We’ll meet here again in eight hours.”

  The shuffling and movements and low chatter of people leaving scratched out over the speaker. The chime on the isolation unit door sang out, and Lily quickly punched to an innocuous text of Pero’s most recently received speech as one of the assistants brought in her breakfast.

  “Feeling better?” he asked reflexively.

  “Yes. I expect I’ll be back on duty any time now.”

  Eight and one half hours later Lily was startled out of her continued perusal of the movements of the fleet by the sudden appearance of Kuan-yin outside the isolation unit. The doctor was arguing with her, but the dispute was settled in short order as Kuan-yin shoved past Duri and opened the isolation door. Without a suit.

  The inner lock popped aside, and Kuan-yin stormed in, looking thunderous and on the edge of some great outburst.

  “Get up, Heredes,” she ordered. “You and the ’bot are coming with me.”

  Lily stood up, not liking to meet someone such as Kuan-yin sitting down. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t need your insolence. Jehane is gone. You’re going out tracking. I’ve called in every available ship. Now let’s go.”

  Lily stood her ground. “What do you mean, Jehane’s gone? Just hours ago he was—”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” If Kuan-yin could have sent out sparks, she would surely have kindled several fires by now. “But he was pushed into a corner by those damned idiots who don’t understand him.”