“It’s been four years, hasn’t it?” asked a voice to my right.
Zhádāo stood over me, a block of amber and ebon. She nodded towards the silt in which I’d been drawing. I followed her gaze to see that I’d written, in Arabic and English, Lasse’s name.
She’s a spy, the Beast had told me.
“It was yesterday,” I said.
She squatted—somewhat stiffly—beside me. “He’d be, what—fifty now?”
“Forty-seven.”
“Forty-seven . . . So much in such a short time. I remember watching the bios about him when I was just a captain.”
“A bit before my time,” I said. Reached out with my foot and stamped out Lasse’s names, while she continued: “I always wondered what he was like. What kind of a person he was, underneath the speeches, the glossy little bits from the Source.”
A weight of expectancy fell on me. I slid a glance at her, to see whether or not I imagined it. The vestal morning light showed me emotion in her face I had ignored before, the crease of anxiety across her forehead, the tender, swollen lower eyelids of weeping or worry.
“I have a suspicion that’s not what you really want to ask me.” Gently enough, I thought.
“Your husband was a man who left the Novus Rangers at the age of twenty-five—twenty-five, my God!—to train for the Ubastis Project. In five years he was assigned to lead Second Wave planetside. At the age of thirty.”
I nodded, to indicate that I listened. Not to indicate that I perceived her emotion.
“When I was thirty, I was a lieutenant colonel sweating rocket fuel in Acquisition and Contracting.”
“Thirty’s pretty good.”
“Yes. Idaho Port, you know. Lots of promotions to be had.”
“How old are you, General Zhádāo?”
“I’ll be forty-nine in seventy-three days.”
“Ah-ha,” I said.
“Oh, no,” she said, rounding on me. “No ‘ah-ha’ about it. I got over that jealousy a long time ago, Loren.”
I shrugged, blandly, palms upward. “Not everyone did.”
The general looked at me, stared at me, as if my face were encrypted code newly scrambled down to her monitor. “And you were fifteen years younger than he was.”
Anything that came out of my mouth in response would sound poor-spirited. I attempted to infuse my words with as much warmth as possible. “In this marvelous age, when time itself is subjective, what does an ‘age difference’ mean? What are your perceptions about that?”
“I’m simply wondering what that might have done to you. It’s not merely that he was so much older than you, it’s that he—that you and he—you were so young, Loren.”
I no longer worried about sounding poor-spirited; I dug my feet against her steerage. “And we weren’t even sixteen when we were sent off to live or die.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. So young—and he was in charge of all of you, a hundred kids, most of them girls.”
Bearce had fallen silent. The waves’ liquid caress of the beach seemed very loud, very present, as did the uvular call of the goobies, the ceaseless, pulsating chime of the arboros. Behind me the foliage rustled, a few twigs snapped. My very heartbeat ground in my ears, pumping chill blood slow and hard right down to my capillaries. “Of course most of us were female. Females have been shown to be the superior sex when it comes to colonization.”
“A grown man, isolated from the network of adult reassurance, companionship, intimate contact—did no one question the danger you children might be in?”
“Danger—we suck from Danger’s tits, every single one of us—” I stabbed a hand toward the sky “—borne in a steel womb; we don’t know the concept of Mother Earth, as our ancestors did; we know Mother Space.” I stood, light-headed with anger. “The word galaxy comes from the same root word as lactation, did you know that? No, no one questioned the danger we might be in. Everyone accepted it.”
“Loren, you’re not listening. I’m talking about the danger from Captain Undset. What he might have done. What I would say he did do.”
My vision blurred around the edges. Zhádāo shone at the center, her mouth turned down as if tasting bitter fruit, an unlovely line scored into her face from the wing of her nostril to her lips’ corner. Distress had sketched that face; I knew its penstrokes well.
“He did me no danger. He gave me life—”
She came to her feet, one hand fastening on my shoulder. “No danger! Look at you, an incredibly capable woman, you’re carrying a killing instrument on a beautiful summer morning, you smell of blood, you kill these animals to fill that hole his death left in you—”
I batted her hand away. “You were the one who spent time and money to get here—” Light dawned. My anger receded. “You’re shocked to learn that Natches aren’t the only ones who can pull a trigger, aren’t you? That Enhanced human beings can kill?” I pressed on. “And this isn’t the only instance where you’ve spent time and money—you had thousands of people—yes, people—damned to oblivion for whatever whim I can’t imagine.”
“‘People?’ You mean—those things? You a Beast-lover, Loren? How strange, and here I thought you had no problem killing animals.”
I drew breath; she rolled right over me.
“Your husband was killed by one, yes—a rogue who had escaped the rounding up I put into action. You’ve seen what a Beast alone can do. I’ve seen what hundreds can do—a thousand. Never mind your one little husband, Commander.” I had never heard that title uttered with such contempt. “And it seems after only four years you forgave and forgot. While I—since I was only a little older than your daughter, Loren, I have dedicated myself to their eradication. My life’s goal.” Her gaze scanned me from head to foot, and I knew she saw nothing worthy. “You play your little hunting games down here while the voices of a generation—more—groan for the same freedoms you enjoy. What makes you so special, Vashti Loren? Have you done what I’ve done? Have you seen what I’ve seen?”
I recoiled from her. She shook her head and attempted a smile. “I’m sorry. It’s this place—this savage place.” Amazed, I witnessed her master herself and reach for me. “It’s an infection, a pestilence, this wilderness, and in the name of humanity, it must be civilized.” Like talons her fingers dug into my flesh. “It can be done—I did with with the military, cleansing it—”
My head spun. I yanked away and stumbled to the water. It was the light made me squint so, the sunlight stinging like so many needles.
“Loren, listen to me—”
God, the sound of her voice.
“That’s enough.” A large person moved between me and Zhádāo; I felt the displacement of the air, heard boots squeak.
“Get out of my way, 389—”
“We can’t do that, General—”
“I order you—”
The gravelly bark that passed for the Beast’s laughter rasped over her words. “With all due respect, you know you can’t do that.”
“Loren—Vashti, listen to me, I’m sorry if I hurt you—”
Finally I could turn, with something like a smile on my face, and steer her away from her unwise course. “Would you like to put away the guns, then, General?”
The Beast stood between us; when Zhádāo tried to sidle around him, he blocked her.
“Back the fuck off, Beast—O-389, whoever the hell you are—” you forgave and forgot “—move aside. Go help Bearce pack for the day.”
He favored Zhádāo with a stony glare, fingers flexing and fisting, and skulked off in the direction of the camp.
Zhádāo watched him for a moment. “You need to get rid of that son of a bitch. If you don’t do it, I will. I knew it from the moment I saw him with you. That model is probably the sanest of them all, but it’s still untenable.”
Forcing myself to be interested in her choice of words helped to subsume my emotions. “What do you mean, ‘that model?’”
She began to walk along the beach, talking
, assuming I would follow. Still stunned, I did. We strolled along as genially as any two friends meandering the agora in New Albuquerque. “How did you acquire him, if you don’t know anything about him?”
“You could say that’s a character flaw of mine.”
She let out a cough of humor. “Your aide there is a member of the most successful generation of those things.”
“He said something about being Ferrum—stable—but I have no idea what that means.” I’d been the know-it-all for some time now; perhaps she’d take the opportunity to switch poles.
“That’s what being Ferrum means. Each generation was a gamble, an experiment, back in the days of extreme bio-Enhancement.”
“One sees viddies about extreme bio-Enhancement—”
She waved them away. “Feardie-wierdies. Twenty-first-, twenty-second-century ideas about grafts, mutilation, implants. Ignorance in the service of prurience. When you mix together a volatile amalgamate of hormones, neurotransmitters, and enzymes, all in the service of military science, it’s extreme, every time, and it’s an experiment, every time. I’ve seen the results, and it’s intolerable.”
“He mentioned another element name once—Astatine.” I flashed on that moment in the medbay—his weight crushing me, his hand pressed against my mouth. Astatine clutch, inception date 2263. Androgen receptors mutated in each clone and were found to be twice as sensitive as normal human receptors. Nothing but cancer and dementia . . .
“Astatine! I think there’s been more of the Astatine Gen killed or destroyed than almost any other.”
And Moira’s voice, wheedling, seducing: . . . the United States or Syrincon or FedSpace closes down a base, or retires a clutch because a better one is developed, and dumps them . . . Who’s in the oubliette? I forget.
“O-389 is here on political asylum,” I said.
“Impossible . . . Can Ubastis do that?”
I glanced at her to see her expression, as acquisitive as a gooby’s when presented with a piece of quartz.
“It seems we can,” I said neutrally.
“Is Ubastis a sovereign state, then? Has something changed?”
“Ubastis’s status has always been somewhat hazy with regards to sovereignty. The Commonwealth nominally is in charge, but Ubastis is more like a company than a nation, or a net of nations.”
“You have no government. You need government”
“Well . . . we govern each other. We have government, to a point. It’s not a good analogy, but I chose the one of company, in that we are all workers. In a nation, you have the governed and the governors. The governed have little to no say into how their nation is run.”
“Neither do the workers in a company.”
I threw up my hands. “There, you see, I said it wasn’t a good analogy. Imagine if all the workers owned the company, if all of them were responsible for the product. Or if all of the members of the nation could cooperate as equals to maximize the good of their community. That would be our product, you could say.”
“You’re a bunch of anarchists, is that it?”
“Someday,” I said, smiling. “Inshallah.”
“Why someday?”
She worried at me; it felt as near as dammit to having an interrogation upload jacked into my brain, the disinhibitors plunged into my bloodstream. First the shock and horror to disorient me, then the chumminess. I turned her further questions aside with unctions lifted right out of SpaceQuesters Are Everyone’s Friends! and GreenMama Vision. Those I could return by rote. I had no ready answers for the chilly current of O-389, or the deeper gulf surrounding Lasse.
During our walk we had covered nearly a quarter of the lake’s edge. I had to hide a smile when Zhádāo, in the middle of pumping me about UBI, looked up and saw how far from camp we were. Pure strolling had become more difficult; the sand turned silty here, and the rhizophora ran long runners out to the water.
“I didn’t realize—” she started, then whipped back to assess my expression. “How angry are you concerning what I said about Captain Undset and the Beasts?”
“Very,” I said. I hoped my smile was noncommittal.
“Commander, you can’t imagine that your friends haven’t wondered about that.”
“Of course not. I’m angry, that doesn’t mean that I’m going to go nova like O-389 over there.” I nodded my head in the direction of the camp.
“O-389 wouldn’t go nova,” she said.
“He’s a Beast; of course he would.”
“No,” she said again, shaking her head. “He’s Ferrum. The most stable of all generations. The pinnacle of bio-Enhancement. Goodness,” and she shook her head, “if you were to create the perfect man, that’d be your O-389.”
“And yet you think I should kill him.”
She opened her mouth, but a crunch in the encroaching arboros closed it.
Zhádāo froze. “Your gun—”
My hand flashed up for quiet. Another crunch. As quietly as possible I freed the Varangar and snugged the butt against my shoulder. It would take a VeeTOL landing to shut the goobies up, but the little chiming creatures of the canopy had gone silent. I did not like those two crunches. They sounded too deliberate, too stealthy—coupled with a certain stupidity.
“Get back,” I said. “Get behind me.” I swung the rifle up, finger nestled against the trigger. “Come out with your hands on your head,” I called. “If you don’t, I’ll start shooting.”
Nothing. “Perhaps it was just an animal—” Zhádāo began, and I squeezed off a round high into the canopy.
A squeal, a crackling rustle, the sudden wave of heat, the smell of burning as a laser weapon discharged. “Get down,” I shouted, dropping to the beach. With the brace around my knee I went down as fluidly as a magrail wreck. I bit my tongue against a growl of hurt—only to hear a like growl from the arboros. Big and bad, but a human growl nonetheless—I knew that voice.
I kept my rifle raised as the Beast walked out of the growth. In one hand he held a laser pack, lines dangling, sight and muzzle clattering on the gravelly dirt; with the other hand, fingers clenched in lank hair, he dragged a man. An offworlder by his clothes, green and brown camouflage, smeared facepaint, long hair.
The man clutched at the Beast’s grip, swung, swore, stumbled—when he actually managed to get purchase on the ground, the Beast kicked his feet out from under him.
“This isn’t the sort of game we were looking for, O-389,” I said.
“He was hunting us,” the Beast said. With a shove he pitched his captive forward and planted one booted foot square on his back.
Face to face the offworlder and I stared at each other. Blood slicked his teeth; his upper lip was beginning to swell. I was tempted to fatten his lower lip for him as well.
“Rahmat! Rahmat!” the man choked out in badly accented Arabic.
I let the Varangar slide into his view. Be at the lowest Kelvin possible, I told myself. Don’t let your temper get out of control. “Don’t insult the language,” I said. “Speak English. What’ve you done, that you’re asking for mercy?”
“I ain’t done nothing! I’m minding my own biz and this anthropoid jumps out of nowhere and jacks me up, takes my stuff.”
“Yeah, your stuff, I see your stuff. Your stuff is a laser pack—”
“Zheng-Hu model Mack Incinerator,” the Beast broke in helpfully.
“—which is banned by the governing body of this planet and backed up by the Galactic Commonwealth as a violation of weapons permitted on colonist entities.”
“We’re from the new city, Qetta—on recon—they’ve rescinded the law—and we got lost.”
“Lost?” I managed to cough out a laugh. “Qetta is on the other side of the planet.”
“Botanical survey—”
I jerked my chin at the pack. The Beast slung it a good four meters down the beach; I drilled three rounds through it. Then I jammed the heated metal muzzle against the offworlder’s cheekbone. “How many are with you?”
&nb
sp; He struggled to get up; the Beast’s boot pressed, he deflated with a little grunt.
I heard Zhádāo moving behind me, and then, incredibly, her call: “Bearce, over here!” Goddammit.
“There’s no use in trying to convince me who you’re not,” I said through gritted teeth. He rolled his head to look at me, green eyes brilliant through the muck of mud and face paint.
“What are your orders, Commander?”
I glanced up at the Beast. In a different scenario, I would be interested to see what he’d counsel; but with a couple of offworlders in my care, I had no room for experimentation. “Hold him,” I said.
“Yessir.”
I got to my feet with care, hopefully with an aura of grim impending judgment, rather than clumsy vulnerability. Bearce pounded up, breathless. “Anyone hurt?”
“Can you upload his viz to the Source and ID him?”
“No problem—”
“—and no voiceover, got me? O-389, you make sure he can’t move?”
“Make any more sure, he’s got a broken back.”
“That’s the way we like it.” I unsnapped the lanyard from the Varangar and handed it to Zhádāo. I nodded toward the prone figure. “Restraints. I didn’t bring any cuffs with me.”
It interested me to see how Zhádāo would deal with the prisoner. Did she know who he was? Did she know that we treated his kind with maybe a little more compassion than she had the Beasts? She wrenched his arms behind his back effectively enough, with a well-placed knee on his forearm, the better to wrap the webbing around his wrist. He spluttered and cursed and writhed in the sandy dirt, promising us “a devout fucking-up” when his mates found us.
“Not bad, General,” I said. “All right, O-389, get off him.”
“We don’t think so,” the Beast said.
“Who is he?” Zhádāo said, moving smartly out of spitting distance.
“We’ll find out in a couple of minutes.” Bearce slipped his Sourcefinder from his belt and keyed in a directive.
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