Unity

by Steven Harper

  Kara gave a slight shake of her head. This was weird. She was actually sitting across a table from Peter Attis. Okay, so her teenage fantasies hadn’t involved handcuffs and leg irons—those came when she was rather older—but still.

  “I wanted to say thanks,” Peter said hoarsely. “For saving my life.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” Kara said. “If you can’t convince Lee and Baltar here that you aren’t a toaster, they’ll still space you, and I promised to hit the big red button.”

  “So you don’t think I’m a Cylon,” Peter said.

  “I doubt you are,” Kara told him carefully, “but I can’t say I know for sure.”

  “I don’t know how I can convince you,” Peter said. He tried to spread his hands, but the shackles prevented him. “They look just like us. Or some of them do.”

  “Tell us what happened to you,” Baltar said.

  “Yeah,” Lee said. His arms were folded across his chest. “Do tell.”

  “Uh … I’m from Libron,” Peter replied. His voice was smooth and arresting, almost hypnotic. “My band and I were on tour, and we were giving a concert on a cruise ship. That was when the Cylons attacked. It was … everyone was panicking. Alarms were going off, lights flashing. My bodyguards disappeared, but no one seemed to care who I was anyway. Something blew up and threw us all to the floor. I found out later that half the ship had been destroyed and we—those of us who survived—were trapped on the other half. Radiation alarms kept blaring that rad levels were ‘unacceptably high.’ A bunch of us made it to an escape pod. We crowded inside. More people tried to push their way in, but there just wasn’t room. I remember how we … we slammed the door in their faces.” Peter’s voice was shaking now. “The last person I saw was a little boy, maybe eight years old. He knew he was going to die, you could see it in his eyes.”

  Kara found tears pricking at the corners of her own eyes. She forced them back and told herself this could be nothing more than a story told by a Cylon desperate to convince her that he was human. Just because he was handsome and famous didn’t mean he wasn’t a liar. The tears ebbed.

  “Then what?” Lee asked.

  “Someone hit the release and the pod pushed off.” Peter’s eyes hardened. “That was when the Cylons grabbed us. They hauled the pod onto one of their ships. We all thought we were dead. Later, we just wished we were. Or I did, anyway.”

  “What happened?” Baltar said, exuding empathy.

  “All of us were split up. You’re the first humans I’ve seen since then.” His voice was flat, without emotion. “They brought me to a laboratory and … here it gets a little hazy. I think I was drugged a lot of the time. I remember … I remember pain. A lot of needles. Bright light. I remember lying in bed, shaking and convulsing like a beheaded snake. A voice was babbling nonsense, and it took me a while to realize it was my own. I couldn’t stop babbling. And I remember some strange robots looking down at me, doing things that hurt. And I remember a woman with blond hair. She was there a lot.”

  A strange expression crossed Baltar’s face and almost instantly vanished. Kara wondered what that was about.

  “And then one day a woman—a different woman—came to my bed at the lab. I was pretty zoned out. She said that they were all done with me. I thought they were going to kill me then, and I was glad. It would stop hurting. But the woman didn’t kill me. She took me out of the bed, gave me some clothes—I was naked—and took me … I think she took me home with her. I mean, it was kind of like an apartment, but it was dark and damp all the time. The woman told me to call her Mistress Eight. I asked her what happened to the others in the pod and she said they all had died. She said it like you might say a houseplant or pet rat had died. I asked why I hadn’t been killed. She just smiled and said the others hadn’t been killed—they had died, and there was a difference. She wouldn’t tell me any more than that. Maybe she was lying. I don’t know.”

  A flicker of movement caught Kara’s eye. She glanced at the window set into the door and saw the faces of two female crew. Both of them were staring. One of them said something to the other, and Kara saw her mouth “Peter Attis” with an excited look on her face. She glared at them. They gave sheepish smiles and vanished. Kara turned her attention back to Peter.

  “Why did she bring you to her … apartment?” she asked. It seemed strange, the idea that Cylons would have places to live. What did robots need with a bed and a bathroom?

  Here Peter’s jaw trembled. “She kept me as a pet. Put a collar on me. Showed me off to her friends.”

  “Showed you off?” Lee asked.

  “Mostly she made me sing for them, like a trained songbird or something,” Peter said bitterly. “She kept me in a little cage most of the time. Sometimes she made me wait on her like a servant.”

  “Or a slave,” Kara said without thinking.

  “Yeah.”

  “So how did you get on the escape pod?” Lee demanded. His tone was belligerent.

  “I’m not completely sure,” Peter admitted. “Mistress Eight pulled me out of my cage and made me follow her at a run. Alarms were going off all over the place. We got into the escape pod—I hadn’t seen it in weeks—and she shoved it off. Then everything was exploding and bouncing around and everything. Was that you guys? Did you destroy their ship?”

  “How did you know it was a ship?” Lee asked.

  Peter shrugged. “That’s what they called it. I never really thought about it. I … tried not to think at all.”

  “What’s your favorite color?” Kara asked abruptly.

  “What? Uh, blue.”

  “What’s your favorite food?”

  “Red beans and rice. Why? What does—”

  “Who was the drummer for ‘My Heart Has Eyes for Only You’?”

  “Peter Deimos. It caused all kinds of confusion, so we all called him Deimos. He hated that.”

  “Who was your first real girlfriend?”

  “Pamela Gallic. We were twelve. What’s this all about?”

  Kara sat back, arms folded. “He’s genuine.”

  “Why?” Baltar said. “Because he can answer questions of the sort you find in Teen Tiger magazine?”

  “How do you know what’s in Teen Tiger?” Kara countered.

  “All facets of human nature fascinate me,” Baltar said airily.

  Three more faces appeared at the interrogation room window, all female. Their eyes went round when they saw Peter. Lee made an impatient gesture, and they fled.

  “Look,” Kara said, “I admit it. I am—was—a huge Peter Attis fan when I was a kid. If he’s a sleeper agent for the Cylons, he’s been one since he was a teenager. How likely is that?”

  “He could be a construct with the memories of Peter Attis,” Lee said.

  “That would be a first,” Baltar said. “The Cylons have never done such a thing before.”

  “I’m sitting right here,” Peter reminded them. “Shackled and chained, but sitting right here. I’m not a dog or a lamp.”

  “Shut up,” Lee said. “We’ll the ask the questions.”

  “This is how the Cylons treated me,” Peter said softly.

  Baltar suddenly twisted in his chair, as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder or whispered in his ear. “Well, that’s—” Then he cut himself off, blinked rapidly, and added, “—that’s … very interesting.”

  “What is?” Lee asked.

  Baltar looked nonplused. “That’s very interesting … how … how he—I mean, Peter—how he thinks … of us.” He cleared his throat and loosened his tie. Kara noticed he was looking a little flushed. His right arm twitched. Kara tried to edge away from him, no mean feat in a chair that was bolted to the floor. Baltar had a weird reputation around the Fleet, for all that he was vice president. He had a penchant for talking and gesturing to himself in public, as if he were holding a private argument. And some of his other behavior was definitely off. Kara had once walked into his lab and found him leaning over a table in a very strange pos
ition. His fly had been down and the tail of his shirt was sticking out of it. Kara didn’t press for details. Most people passed this off as a side effect of genius, but Kara was beginning to wonder if Gaius Baltar might simply be a frakking lunatic.

  “I mean,” Baltar continued, “that Peter here may be right. After all, we can’t be suspicious of every little thing every person does. The Cylons would love to know that we’re at each other’s throats.” His left hand suddenly leaped up and clutched at his right shoulder. He changed the gesture into a scratching motion, as if he’d had a sudden itch.

  “We have to tell the Commander something,” Lee said. “I doubt he’ll accept interviews from Teen Tiger as evidence that he’s not a spy.”

  “Proving something doesn’t exist is almost impossible,” Kara pointed out. “I mean, how do you prove someone can’t fly? Shove them off a building and see what happens?”

  “Fortunately,” Baltar said, “we have a less drastic method.”

  “Peter Attis!”

  Kara watched as Peter stared at the woman on the other side of the mesh-reinforced Plexiglas. He was still in shackles, and two armed marines stood on either side of him. His face remained stony and expressionless, but Kara thought she detected a slight tremor in his body. The woman in the cell had almond eyes, black hair, full lips, and a slender build, though if you looked carefully, you could see a slight rounding to her stomach—an encroaching sign of pregnancy. She also wore a look of utter surprise.

  “So you know who he is,” Lee said into the telephone receiver.

  “Don’t you?” she countered into her own telephone. Lee held his receiver out so everyone could hear her voice, faint and tinny. “Look, my memories of being a teenager may be implanted and fake, but they feel real to me. I remember having a crush on him and wishing I could see him at a live concert.”

  “Is he a Cylon?”

  “What are you, stupid? They don’t make copies of real people, and even if they did, they wouldn’t use someone famous as a sleeper agent. They use someone … someone like me. No one could verify my past because the Troy colony was destroyed in a mining accident and no records survived. That’s not the case with someone like Peter Attis. He’s too public, too well-known.”

  The use of “they” instead of “we” didn’t go past Kara unnoticed. Sharon Valerii was a Cylon, but she believed—or acted like she believed—her own people to be the enemy. Just a few days ago, she had defeated a Cylon computer virus that had invaded Galactica’s systems and sent the Cylons a virus of her own. She had helped Kara complete her mission on Caprica. But every time she looked at Sharon, Kara saw the traitor who had pulled out a pistol and shot Commander Adama in the stomach. Kara knew that killer Sharon’s body currently lay in the morgue and that this version of Sharon had done nothing but help Galactica . This didn’t matter to Kara in the slightest. Every time she saw the woman—Cylon—Kara felt an animalistic urge to wrap her fingers around Sharon’s throat and squeeze.

  But Kara also looked at Sharon and saw a friend, a fellow pilot, and someone who had saved her life. The conflicting emotions made Kara uncertain and uncomfortable, which was why she avoided the brig as much as possible.

  “Look, he’s not a Cylon,” Sharon said. “If he were, I’d tell you. If the Cylons sent another agent here to destroy the Galactica, I’d die along with everyone else, and so would my baby.” She unconsciously ran a hand over her stomach, a completely human gesture that made Kara want to hit her and give her a hug at the same time.

  “Bitch!” Peter yelled. He smashed at the Plexiglas with his shackled wrists. They left a slight scratch. “Frakking bitch!”

  Kara jumped, adrenaline zinging through her. Lee, also startled, dropped the phone as the marines instantly moved in to haul Peter back. He clawed and snarled at the Plexiglas. Sharon shrank away from him.

  “I frakking hate you!” Peter snarled, fighting unsuccessfully to free himself from the grip of two powerful marines. “If they can’t kill you, I will!”

  Kara got in front of him, blocking his view of Sharon. “Peter!” she said in a calm, firm voice. “Peter, listen to me! That is not your Mistress Eight. It’s not her.″ Without knowing why, she reached out and took his face between her two hands. His skin was warm on hers. She moved in close and looked straight into his blue eyes. Their foreheads touched, and her breath mingled with his. He was real. He was solid. “Peter, it’s not her. Your … ‘mistress’ is dead. You saw them shoot her down in front of the pod. That’s not her.”

  “Why is she there?” he demanded in a hoarse whipser. “Gods, what’s going on?”

  Kara continued to meet his eyes, forcing him by strength of will to lock his gaze with hers. “You said your mistress made you sing for her friends. Didn’t any of her friends look alike?”

  “A couple,” he said. “I thought they were twins or something.”

  “There are many copies of each different type of Cylon,” Kara said. “This one is a copy of your mistress, but she’s our prisoner. She didn’t do anything to you, and she can’t hurt you. Do you understand?”

  He looked long and hard into Kara’s eyes. A little thrill traveled over her skin. She wondered what it would be like to pull him closer, hold him, kiss him. It felt like his gaze was going through her, touching something deep inside her that she didn’t want touched. She was about to pull away when she caught Lee Adama looking her, at them. He looked almost … angry. A flash of her own anger rose to the occasion. What right did he have to be angry at her? He had no hold on her. Just to show him that, she turned her full attention back to Peter. Tears welled in his eyes.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “You’ve been places where none of us have gone. But you’re home now, with us. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” he said in a small voice. “Thank you.”

  Kara hugged him. It was a one-way embrace—Peter was still shackled, and the marines hadn’t released their hold on his arms. But Peter gave a heavy sigh and Kara felt his breath warm the collar of her shirt. After a moment, she released him and reached for the phone near Sharon’s cell. Sharon herself had retreated to her bed, removing herself from Peter’s line of sight. Kara punched buttons. After a moment, Dualla came on the line and transferred her to Commander Adama.

  “We’ve interrogated Peter Attis,” Kara said, “and we’re convinced he isn’t a Cylon.”

  “All three of you?” Adama asked.

  “Yeah—me, Lee, and Doctor Baltar. We all agree.” She shot Baltar and Lee a hard glare that dared either of them to say different. They remained silent. Lee raised his hands in mock defeat.

  “Then release him,” Adama said.

  “Thank you, sir.” Kara hung up. “Sergeant, unshackle Mister Attis. He’s not a Cylon and doesn’t belong in chains or a cage.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kara stood carefully between Peter and Sharon’s cell so he wouldn’t have to see her as the shackles fell away with clatters and clanks. “Let’s go, okay? I’ll show you around Galactica and we’ll find you a place to stay.”

  “A place to stay,” he echoed. “You mean, I can’t go home?”

  Kara led him firmly away from the brig. Lee and Baltar followed a little uncertainly. The battered metal corridors and walkways that made up Galactica’s innards snaked ahead of them in a dizzying array of directions. The Battlestar Galactica was the size of a skyscraper turned sideways, and even the engineering crews got lost if they left their own section. People in a variety of uniforms rushed about on errands only they understood, and the PA system crackled with orders and announcements almost continuously. Several crewmembers stared as Peter passed them by.

  “Not exactly,” Kara said. “The Cylons … they kind of took over the Colonies. Destroyed them.”

  Peter’s knees buckled and Kara grabbed him before he fell. “All twelve?”

  “Yeah. Sorry to be the one to tell you.” Kara planted herself until Peter could regain his feet. “The Cylons somehow managed to
breach the defenses. We still don’t know exactly how, but when they show up and start shooting, you don’t stop to ask questions, you know? Some traitor seems to have given them the codes.”

  Now Baltar stumbled, and Lee caught his shoulder to keep him from falling. Kara mentally rolled her eyes. The man was supposed to be brilliant, but he had the coordination of newborn kitten.

  “A bunch of ships managed to escape together,” Lee said. “Including the Galactica here. There are still a few in hiding back on the Colonies, but as far as we know, most of the humans left in the universe are here in the Fleet.”

  “So how many people are left?” Peter asked. He was walking on his own again, but his face was pale.

  “Something around forty-seven thousand,” Kara told him. They turned a corner and went down a staircase. “President Roslin keeps an exact tally, but—”

  “President Roslin? Isn’t she the Secretary of Welfare or something?”

  “Education,” Lee said. “But now she’s president.”

  “And I’m vice president,” Baltar put in quickly.

  “Let me buy you a drink,” Kara said, clapping Peter on the shoulder, “and I’ll fill you in. Then you can fill me in.”

  Peter gave her a long look. Kara looked back. For once, she didn’t feel thirteen. The moment stretched long, though it couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds.

  “Fill you in?” Peter said at last.

  Lee coughed hard. Kara ignored him. “About what happened to you with the Cylons.”

  “Ah.″

  “Before we do that,” Lee said, “I think we should take our guest to sickbay.”

  “What for?” Kara asked.

  “A thorough physical,” Lee replied grimly.