by David Brin
Doni checked his uniform to make sure all was spotless and straight. Then – although he knew he shouldn’t – he edged closer in order to listen.
“... won’t even acknowledge that the gulagis are fellow creatures of the Universal Spirit! Some of them were sentenced to this wilderness decades ago. Don’t the Primes teach us that cruelty is only valid when it’s useful? How can our vassals ever fully accept lasting faith in our wisdom if –”
“Acceptance comes from resignation, Milady,” the dock commander answered coolly, from a height of nearly seven feet. “Which is taught through adamant strength. As for the gulagis, they are malcontents, upstarts and rebels. “
“Not in every case.”
With a broad-shouldered shrug that rattled his sparkling necklace array, the commander seemed willing to concede that point, and made clear that it did not matter.
“In any event, the prisoners are no concern of yours, Milady. They serve the Imperium that they criticized and betrayed. That should be satisfying enough to the Universal Spirit.”
“But those supplies –” the Matron gestured to a stack, just beyond the glistening bow of the Mt. Orleans. “I expected someone from Compassionate Beneficence to sign for them.”
“There is no longer a representative of that organization here on Pallas.”
“No longer...” Kopok paused, the spiderweb of tendons and veins in her long neck pulsated. “I see. And they never saw fit to notify me? Oh, mothers, why must I forever be flattered into doing favors for well-meaning fools?”
She sighed, straightening and smoothing the ruffled folds of her blue gown.
“It must be my reputation for generosity. That is why I’m punished thus. Well, then. I suppose the supplies –”
“I will take charge of them,” the dockmaster cut in, tugging on one long earring. “Your Ladyship is free to continue on her way, completing the long journey from Earth to her Academy...”
Was there a sarcastic edge to his voice?
“...without sparing any further concern for this matter.”
Uh-oh, Doni thought, as a low hum seemed to fill the cavities within his ears, without actual sound. Taking a rapid glance at the Matron, he knew where the resonance was coming from. Kopok’s long, Coss face was rapidly undergoing what cadets called the change. Those eyes, often placid as deep space, turned stormy under glowering lids.
The big guy just made a mistake. Doni started edging away.
“You dare to decide what matters may, or may not, concern me?”
Her words were cold and sharp, like icicles, while the hum grew stronger, now tugging at the tonsils in the back of Doni’s throat. The dockmaster, clearly accustomed to giving orders from on-high, blinked several times at the much-smaller female of his race. Realization appeared to be dawning that, perhaps, he had gone too far.
“Please be assured that I did not mean –”
“You clearly know who I am,” continued the Lady Kopok. “Do you truly wish for a dispute between us?”
She left the implication hanging in mid-air, as if it were not something to discuss openly, within hearing of the lower orders. Doni already knew at least a dozen ways that the Solar System’s alien aristocracy settled disputes among themselves. From trial-by-combat to appeals for royal arbitration. They were even known to use law, when no other method sufficed. Whatever the method, Lady Kopok was reputed to be a master of them all. Or else, how could she ever have managed to do the impossible, and reopen Porcorosso?
An instinct for self-preservation made Doni look away from the confrontation and busy himself with the Matron’s bags. Straightening. Adjusting. Even though they were already neatly set upon the cart.
You did not want to be caught looking, when a Coss was being humbled. Even – especially – when the humbler was another Coss.
“I... I will see to it that the relief supplies are trans-shipped to your academy,” the dockmaster said, in a voice that seemed to strive, at once, for both dignity and appeasement. “Though it will ultimately be up to the gulagmasters, whether you are permitted to deliver these goods to the exiles.”
“I will deal with the gulagmasters, if it is my whim,” Kopok snapped, in a voice that sounded quite accustomed to obedience. “Or else, I may send the crates back to Compassionate Beneficence on Earth, at double freight charges. It would serve those idealistic fools right.”
While Doni marveled at the verbal agility of his headmistress, the taller Coss barked a brittle laugh of agreement, one that conveyed more than three-quarters relief. “Yes, Milady. It would.”
“Hm. Just make sure the boxes are delivered to Porcorosso, undamaged and unopened.”
The dockmaster clicked his heels.
“Safe journey, Lady Kopo.”
And he turned to go, gliding away in a graceful lope, assisted in the low gravity by traction boots. It all was done with haughty Coss solemnity, of course. Punctilious attention to face. Nevertheless, Doni picked up a definite mutter wave.
Crazy old bat, the dockmaster was thinking as he left.
Officious cretin, the Matron murmured after him, without making a sound.
Upon which, Doni felt her gaze sweep toward him. He snapped to attention next to the cart stacked high with luggage. “Shall I fetch a porter, Madam? Or an elepent?”
“Hm? Oh, nonsense. This is Pallas, Doni. There is barely enough gravity to walk, so obviously the cart isn’t heavy. Anyway, you could benefit from practice, estimating inertia and momentum.”
In other words, the muscle power of a fifteen-year old boy ought to suffice. Simply pull and push on the cart – massive but not “heavy” – a good, hard nudge now and then, at well-chosen intervals, so that it keeps rolling along toward the shuttle docks. The job should be easy. Surely no worse than piloting one of the academy’s leaky, obsolete rocket trainers, dodging meteoroids and “threading needles” in deep vacuum.
Only, pushing the luggage cart was tricky. You’d better be sure to time each turn and stop just right – every muscle-powered acceleration and deceleration – prodding the tiller with exactly the appropriate force. Make an adjustment too late and it may crash into a wall or collide with a grunting pachydermoid. Decelerate too soon and you could (far worse!) delay Lady Kopok a second longer than she expects.
All in all, Doni would prefer time in a trainer, when the worst penalty for a mistake was death.
Grabbing the tiller, he planted his traction soles and dug in, straining until the cart was on the move, rolling past gleaming cargo ships – each bearing the crest of a Coss liege lord – hauling his lady’s baggage toward a gritty little shuttle that awaited in a back corner of the cavernous space harbor. A completely human-built relic from another era, with a red pig painted on the nose. A pig wearing goggles, a brazen scarf and leather flight jacket, grinning with a jaunty confidence no human being would express nowadays.
The homely craft that would take them home. To Porcorosso.
ᚖ
Across the Solar System, most of the old battle scars had been erased. Except where the victorious masters thought that a lesson was needed. New York, Yokohama, Hong Kong and San Diego were left to smolder – ruins that would keep their deathly glow for another thousand years, teaching a sermon about the limits of Coss chivalry.
It was one thing to offer a little courageous resistance, during a time of honorable struggle. Humans were even allowed to erect statues to their greatest warriors, Penna and Chang, whose battlefield valor elevated them to the status of honorary Coss (posthumous).
But mass obstinacy was another matter. Those cities would never be rebuilt. The rubble and seared bones, never buried.
Porcorosso, clearly, fell into the first category. Everybody knew about the Last Stand of the Federation Cadets. It would be futile to squelch the legend. So, with typical Coss adaptability, they co-opted it.
Passing through the academy’s outer security grid, Doni guided the shuttle silently by the monument that Lady Kopok had unveiled, the da
y Porcorosso re-opened. A tableau, laser carved from a single chunk of nickel-iron asteroid, portrayed a trio of cadets – battered, wounded and surrounded by fallen comrades – resolutely facing a closing circle of giant Coss. Conquerors whose faces did not seem cruel at all, but rather proud of the defiant youngsters. Proud... and saddened by what had to be done.
Behind them all, with starwings wide-stretched, an effigy of the Universal Spirit seemed to beckon all of the nobly-fallen into her embrace.
It was propaganda of the first order. Through this image, the conquerors seemed to say: “We like humans. We respect you. We shall guide and teach and elevate you.
“But don’t even think of resisting us en masse, ever again.”
From this point to the berthing chamber, a guide beam revealed itself to Doni’s encrypted eyeptics. Easy to follow, the glowing route led close by a sentry post where every cadet took turns, standing guard detail for days without sleep. Grueling, hardening hours alone, in ebony armor that seemed more space than metal.
The student currently on duty saluted the shuttle, snapping rigid, presenting a deadly-looking string-rifle.
Doni spared a glance or two, looking for changes during his long absence, accompanying the headmistress to Earth. I see they finished the Refectory, he thought. Maybe we’ll start eating better, at last.
For the very first class, dwelling in little more than patched ruins, a year spent eating century-old Federation freeze-dried rations had almost sparked mass resignation. Till Madame began sending for takeout from Meteograd.
That village could be seen as a glitter in the distance... the final bead in a chain, strung along a single, adamantine tether that formed a jeweled necklace spanning more than two hundred kilometers of vacuum. Porcorosso tugged at one extreme end, pointing starward, while Meteograd, with a huge solar array, perched at the extremity nearest the sun. Lesser beads that lay strung along the tether between Academy and town included several dozen smaller outposts, ranging from metallurgical shops and hydroponic homesteads to a foreboding shadow, no more than twenty klicks from Porcorosso –
– the gulag.
His adaptive eyeptics tried to zoom toward that dark patch of night, only to be stymied by inbuilt myob programming. Myob, for mind your own business.
Ah, well. The Coss had made their attitude and policy clear. Curiosity, a human trait, was to be indulged, but only when there seemed to be a use, a need, or at least no opportunity for harm.
Indeed, the gulag was one place set aside for humans whose curiosity – or self-expression – struck the Coss as harmful.
“Shuttle Three, we’re ready to take you in mag lock,” said the voice of traffic control. An important task, hence given a senior classman. It sounded a bit like Herman Yang.
“Roger, Porcorosso Control. I am nulling engines and activating internal dampers.” Doni scanned the readouts. Inner-hull integrity looked good enough to shield passengers, cargo and electronics, when the docking fields clamped down.
“Very good, Shuttle Three. We’ll take over now. Welcome home.”
You weren’t supposed to feel anything, inside the perfect Faraday Cage of hull shielding. But Doni knew the very instant that a hand sculpted out of coherently tuned magnetic monofields converged to grab the little ship, both gently and implacably insistent. A queer vibration seemed to claw at the back of his throat, much like the mutter that he sometimes detected coming from a Coss.
Especially when one of them felt equally... insistent.
He turned and glanced back at Lady Kopok, who now sat blithely content, emitting no mutter at all, but viewing her domain with the apparent pleasure of a true owner.
I sure hope they have the place spic and span, Doni thought. The cadets and instructors had plenty of warning. Of course, nothing would suffice. But the headmistress was also fair. With any luck, only a week or so of hellish fault-finding lay in store, before the Academy settled back into hellish routine.
But you wanted this, he reminded himself. You wanted it real bad.
The main asteroid loomed ahead, laced with tunnels and studded with window lights, linked by a tensegrity circlet of cables and girders to the great tether, as well as a dozen outlying rocks. Dead ahead, a dock-cavity opened for Doni’s shuttle, blast doors separating so that only a shimmering force screen kept atmosphere within, a barrier that ships and boats normally passed through, with nary a sign. Though again, Doni had to clench his teeth, enduring a brief tremor until they were well inside.
As the little craft neared slip number three, a double honor guard of cadets were already lining up to welcome home the headmistress. But glancing left, Doni noticed that another spaceship had taken moorings – a little courier lug, designed for use only within the Belt. Several valves hissed visible trails of condensing vapor, a sign of recent arrival, probably no more than half an hour ago. From an open cargo port, three elepents were unloading boxes that looked surprisingly familiar.
“Milady,” he said to the headmistress. “Those crates. The ones for Compassionate Beneficence...”
It wasn’t always wise to break into a Coss train of thought. But Doni knew no better way to maintain Kopok’s trust than by staying useful to her. The matron glanced in the direction indicated, and let out a small snort.
“So, the dockmaster wanted to ensure no hard feelings. Remind me to send him a small gift, Doni.”
“Yes Maam.”
“And see to it that a crew loads all that stuff onto an elepent sledge, for shipment to the gulag. I don’t want it clogging the dock.”
“Aye aye.” Doni had already risen from the pilot station. Soon he had the hatch safetied, ready for opening. Through solid metal, he could hear the Academy’s small band strike up the school anthem. He turned, checked Lady Kopok’s gown for any lint or faulty folds that might cause embarrassment, then took his place behind, carrying her purse, briefcase and travel bag.
“Thank you for your hard work on this voyage, Doni,” the great lady murmured softly, taking a glance his way as he blinked back at her in surprise. “All complaints were minor,” she added. Perhaps the strongest praise he ever recalled hearing from the lips of a high-ranking Coss.
Only a low hum seemed to emanate from the matron as she then lifted a white hand and gave a languid turn, blithely ordering the hatch to open.
And, of course, it did.
ᚖ
“Have at you!”
A spray of sparks leaped from his blade, where it glanced off Puryear’s buckler, barely missing a two pointer on the upperclassman’s arm. Doni tried to slide his edge up and over, but found his way blocked by the mini-shield on his opponent’s shoulder. The other fellow was just too tall. Half a second later Doni leaped backward, dodging a savage counter-thrust.
Every point of contact crackled with ionization, emitting brilliant, evanescent motes and flashes – especially when Puryear’s shimmering zord beat down against Doni’s with harsh electrical impacts – forcing him to retreat. Nose filters alone couldn’t stanch the bitter tang of ozone. It made a dangerous taste in the mouth. One that soaked in through the sinuses, like death.
Of course there were safeguards. Limitations to the bodily damage that a cadet could suffer in practice. Still, there was a sense of deadly earnest that went beyond the pain of electric shocks and the shame of losing. Because someday –
He pounced toward an opening before completing that thought, then drew back from the trap, leaping as Puryear’s blade slashed where his ankles had been.
Because someday... soon... I’ll face real duels.
In the officer caste – especially the lower portions that were open to human beings – you had to be ready to fight and die over matters of dignity and reputation – part of the Coss policy of a Return to Honor. It helped Doni to focus during practice, knowing that soon this sort of thing could be deadly real.
After graduation.
Noisy cavitation waves boomed and seemed to ripple the air, every time their blades touched. A fl
urry of rapid exchanges – slashing attacks, parries and ripostes – sent reverberations bouncing off the walls of the Porcorosson practice arena. Doni blocked Puryear’s thrust en quatre, then tried to turn each blade around the other, catching the other boy’s weapon in a bind. A good move, but it depended on raw power and Doni just didn’t have enough brute force. He couldn’t press the advantage against a bigger cadet. As they locked together, grunting, embers of glittering oxygen flew between them, like angry gnats, to sting their exposed throats.
His opponent countered, using the advantage of strength to shove both glowing weapons toward Doni’s face. Doni had no choice but to interpose his left arm, deflecting the slender wands of glowing metal with his buckler-shield, a disk of armor no wider than his head. Sparks flew, briefly dazzling him and prickling his exposed cheek, raising dozens of micro-welts that would itch painfully, for days to come.
“Give up?” The senior asked, in a voice that clearly expected no answer. Taunting was allowed; surrender was no option.
Gathering his strength – augmented by the recent visit to Earth – Doni yanked away, managing to hop backward...
...though, as he escaped, one of the blades took a glancing stroke along his right thigh. Ionization pain tore through Doni’s leg, almost buckling the knee, feeling all-too genuine.
“Two points,” the computer referee announced, even though nobody cared about the score. Only who would be left standing, and who would spend the night unconscious, in a Recovery Room gel bath.
To make matters worse, the active training garment stiffened suddenly, limiting his movements, simulating the disadvantage of a real wound.
No choice. I’ve got to end this quick. One way or the other.
Before Puryear could notice this shift in advantage, Doni launched a series of overhead saber cuts toward the taller boy’s scalp, forcing him to retreat a little, while blocking high. But there was no worry on the senior’s face. In fact, a smile started to spread. After all, flamboyance was his forté. Nobody could match Puryear at hacking and slashing. Soon, he was moving off the defensive. Each exchange of cut and counter was taking place a little farther from his head and closer to Doni’s, than the one before. At this rate, with one fencer barely able to walk, there would be no escape. And when that glowing blade reached its inevitable destination, Doni knew what kind of brief agony to expect, before blackness.