Fleet of Worlds Page 23

  “Our ancestors’ supposed starship,” Aaron said. Lacey just stared.

  “That’s what we’re here to discuss,” Sabrina said. “That and what it would mean. Please let the man continue.”

  Sven laid out his findings, voice firming as he proceeded. Hull repairs consistent with the attack that began the colony’s official history. The many artifacts aboard for people shaped like themselves. A primitive synthesizer that offered safe and nutritious food. Needlework art whose floss and linen predated the founding of Arcadia colony. The almost-as-old stepping disc retrofit to the ship.

  “Suppose you are right.” Lacey’s tone dripped skepticism. “Why would the Concordance withhold this information? Why not admit that they had located our ancestors’ ship?”

  Kirsten took the projector controls. “Here’s why.”

  Lacey gasped as Citizen robots overran Long Pass. She finally asked, “Can you authenticate this?”

  Sven squared his shoulders. “It appears real, with no evidence of tampering.”

  “Sven is our expert,” Sabrina said. “So: Presume Long Pass is our ancestors’ ship. How do we handle the situation?”

  “Situation?” Lacey asked. “While this information remains secret, there is no situation. Not until we confront the Concordance—if that’s what you decide to do.”

  “Suppress what we have uncovered? Ignore it?” Kirsten quivered with anger. “You can’t mean that.”

  “I may not like it,” Lacey said, “but I mean it. Silence is our wisest course. Picture thousands of Colonists becoming as enraged as you. Imagine the chaos.”

  “Colonists reacting with hostility, you mean. Rebelling.” Kirsten struggled to express herself with terms that described teenaged misbehavior. How did one articulate anger and purposeful enmity between neighboring cultures? There ought to be a word.

  Jeeves spoke English. Clearly, so had the crew of Long Pass. Did English—true English—have vocabulary appropriate to their circumstances? What else had Citizens expunged, besides all clues to the location of their ancestral home, of Earth?

  Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe hostility and rebellion would suffice. Perhaps the time had come for Colonists to grow up and take charge of their fate.

  “Yes, rebellion,” Lacey said. “That’s exactly the problem. Suppose that we lash out like an immature teen. We could damage some Hearthian crops, certainly, or disrupt food shipments. We might even imprison or threaten the few Citizens on NP4. How do you suppose the Concordance would react? Before you answer, remember that they grew food on the nature preserves long before they found Long Pass.

  “The truth is, the Concordance does not need us.”

  “Kinetic weapons,” Eric said to himself. “Like the rigged comet in the Gw’oth system.”

  “What?” Sabrina asked.

  Eric grimaced, struggling for a brief explanation. “The details don’t matter. Smack a planet with something moving fast enough, and it wipes out everyone and everything.”

  “That’s why we were attacked! Explorer, I mean.” Kirsten was sure of it. “Someone realized we weren’t following orders, and worried that we might use the ship to strike Hearth. But they already had the exploding paint in place! They were prepared to betray us.”

  Pensively, Aaron rubbed his chin. “So possession of a starship gives us leverage. What if we also seized the ships at Arcadia spaceport?”

  “Stop it!” Sabrina shouted. She glared about her. “How quickly your minds turn to mass murder. We don’t even know that the Concordance ordered the attack on Long Pass. Yes, an attack followed a message to the world which would become NP5. I assume a Citizen vessel was there to coordinate the planet’s migration, probably the same ship that now encloses our old ship.

  “Everyone here knows Citizens personally. Is it so difficult to believe that the crew on that ship panicked, that they lashed out on their own? Perhaps the Concordance has since done its best to make amends.”

  Lacey nodded. “Whatever happened happened long ago. Long-dead Citizens attacked our long-dead ancestors. If rebellion ever made sense, that time has passed.”

  Kirsten stared, her fists clenched. “I don’t believe this. At the least, the Concordance hid that past—our past—from us. The lies continue to this day. How can we keep serving them? How can we live with them?”

  She shrugged Eric’s hand off her arm. She didn’t want to be calmed. “Sabrina, there are things I must know. That every Colonist deserves to know. Where do we come from? Did the Concordance treat that civilization any more gently than it did Long Pass? Is there some way our people can go home?”

  “Yes, Kirsten. We really must decide what we want. Not just information, not just apologies, but a way to confirm these things. And is it only information we want? And what do we have to . . . negotiate . . . persuade them with?” Sabrina too was having trouble with an English stripped of too many concepts. “One tiny spacecraft. I suppose exploding paint cannot be exploded twice, and we have you for a pilot and codes to fly it. But compare Explorer to—” She waved at the nearly featureless hologramic sphere: a General Products #4 hull. “They have thousands of those.”

  Eric said, “As for what we want . . . ? I suppose we want to leave.”

  Lacey: “Leave our homes? For what? This lost Earth?”

  Aaron: “Maybe. If we knew enough.”

  The debate raged, every option unpalatable. Exile for a few, fleeing—to where, no one could say—aboard stolen starships. Futile acts of revenge. Provoking their own destruction. Shame and dishonor if they did nothing.

  Kirsten finally stopped listening. Symbolic resistance or horrific destruction. Surely there was another way! Stomach churning, she mentally retraced the circuitous path that had brought them so close to the truth about their past.

  The Ice Moon of the Gw’oth. The woods of Elysium. The General Products factory. The arcologies of Hearth. The Human Studies Inst—

  The General Products factory and Explorer’s very thorough overhaul. Kirsten mused aloud. “While Nessus still commanded, this ship carried a fusion drive.” The others stopped talking. They were actually listening to her. “General Products replaced the fusion drive with thrusters before we three were given control. Nessus had a fusion drive aboard for a purpose. Just as surely, the fusion drive was removed on purpose. I think I just realized that reason.

  “A fusion drive directed toward a planet’s surface would also be a weapon—precise, controllable, and horrible. Easier to point—more effective, maybe more credible—than a kinetic weapon.”

  Pointing at the hologram of an old ramscoop that still floated in the center of the room, Eric articulated the thought Kirsten guessed had leapt into everyone’s mind. “Long Pass carries a fusion drive, if only we can use it.”

  Aaron shook his head. Lacey snapped, “Use it? It’s—”

  “It’s locked in a box,” Sabrina said. “An impenetrable shell. Whatever horror you’re thinking of perpetrating, that old ship is of no use to us.”

  “Actually,” said Eric, “It just might be the easiest part.”

  31

  Their edges sharp, their corners treacherously pointed, Nike thought the crates stacked before him looked out of place even here in the bowels of the alien-artifact-filled depot of the Foreign Affairs Ministry. They’d bite you as you passed. Warning signs encircled the boxes, and a wide aisle encircled the signs. Cargo floaters, material-handling robots, and burly workers streamed all around, giving a wide berth to the mysterious delivery.

  A worker shuffled forward, heads bowed. “I apologize, Your Excellency. Containers kept appearing, offloaded from the spaceport, marked to your attention.”

  The ministry depot, like almost anyplace on Hearth, was a mere step from his office. “You were right to contact me,” Nike said. Besides his name, every container bore a prominent label: Aegis. Nessus’ ship. Nike could imagine no peril here. He thought: I’m the last person Nessus would endanger.

  He also thought, with less surp
rise each time it occurred to him, how much he had missed the scruffy scout. He would debrief Nessus soon enough, once Nessus rested from the tiring, long-distance, solo journey.

  “What can you tell me about the contents?” Nike asked.

  The worker straightened. He was short and broad, with dark brown eyes. Only the cloth gloves which covered his heads were transparent—and, of course, gas-permeable. The rest of the protective garment that covered his legs, torso, and necks had been turned blue to show his foreman status. Clothing on a Citizen, however appropriate the context, was jarring. The covered mane, scarcely discernable through the sturdy fabric, seemed especially disfiguring.

  “Excellency, whatever you’ve been sent is very heavy. Scanners show only slabs of rock in foam padding. Nothing obviously dangerous.”

  Why would Nessus send a shipload of rocks? “Show me one.” As the foreman stepped toward a wheeled scanner, Nike clarified, “Open one.”

  “Your Excellency?”

  “It will be fine,” Nike said. He sufficiently understood Colonists to recognize curiosity when, unaccountably, he experienced it himself. Or was this Nessus’ influence again?

  With impatience surely akin to the unaccustomed curiosity, Nike watched from behind a safety barrier as a robot carefully lowered the top crate from a stack. It pried off the top and sides of the container. Workers in protective garb converged to peel back the packing material. Finished, they stepped back in confusion, revealing figures carved with wondrous detail from the marble slab.

  Nike wriggled his lips in unrestrained delight.

  NIKE ROSE AS an aide ushered Nessus into his office. Nike was, as always, poised and immaculately coiffed. His mane gleamed today with gold and orange gems. “Thank you, Vesta,” Nike said.

  Vesta backed out, closing the door behind him.

  “I see my gift arrived,” Nessus said, admiring the marble sculptures that hung from one long arced wall. Heroic figures, on whom the draped cloth was elegant. Wondrous beasts. Flawless craftsmanship. Despite the spaciousness of the office, only a small portion of the art could be displayed. “They are finer than I dared to imagine.”

  “They are magnificent, Nessus. Are they what I think? The Frieze of the Parthenon?”

  “Most of it,” Nessus replied. “Acquired from the British Museum.” Acquired was a neutral-enough term, and the humans themselves had quarreled for centuries as to the rightful owner. “Given your interest in human mythology, I hoped you would like them.”

  “Very much so.” After a glance at the closed door, Nike crossed his necks flirtatiously.

  How long I have waited for this moment, Nessus thought. And how circumstances have changed. He walked around Nike’s desk, the better to study two groups of seated figures facing each other. “Even human scholars cannot agree on its meaning.”

  Nike moved closer.

  “The frieze is said to celebrate the creation of the human kind,” Nessus continued. “Some say these scenes represent a Council of the Gods, debating the wisdom of that creation. We see that the two groups, representing both points of view, are closely matched.”

  And humanity’s fate again rests in the balance.

  “It’s time, Nike, to tell me exactly what happened with Explorer.”

  KIRSTEN FOUND LIGHT-YEARS distant from where she belonged. The entire crew conspiring. Explorer, intrinsically a deadly weapon, missing under the control of the duplicitous Colonists. The destruction of the ship made perfect sense.

  Logic did not lessen the pain.

  Nessus slumped on a bench in Nike’s office, the triumph of his gift washed away by grief. Months without sightings of or communications from the three. They were surely dead.

  He wondered who would tell little Rebecca.

  For all his anger at the Colonists’ deceit, Nessus accepted his responsibility in the tragedy. He had selected them. Taught them. Championed them.

  Evidently, he had failed them.

  Nike stood before Nessus, stroking his mane, massaging his tense shoulders, intoning a wordless dirge. “It had to be done, Nessus,” Nike said. “Truly, I’m sorry.”

  “I know.” Nessus shivered. “I’ll heal.”

  “I liked them, too,” Nike said. “But they chose their path.” Nessus could not bear to dwell on his loss. “I assume this ends the Colonist scouting program. Once Aegis completes overhaul, I’ll go out again.”

  “In time.” Nike began combing Nessus’ mane. “For now, I’m glad you are here.”

  NIKE AND NESSUS circulated slowly through the crowd. Nessus sneaked another peek at their complementary braids. The hair artist so hastily summoned to prepare them could have been no more surprised than he.

  The harmonized manes; the side-by-side walk, with flanks pressed together; their necks entwined in public, the introduction to each other’s friends—all were affirmations. All were traditions that invited the scrutiny and approval of the community.

  They were hardly mated, but a process had begun.

  “Clio.” Nessus repeated the name in greeting. “I am honored to meet you.” His trilling sounded flat and discordant, but no one commented. How could he remember so many names? This social meadow in Nike’s arcology teemed with Nike’s friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. On the periphery, blending seamlessly, a virtual herd spread far into the distance.

  They wandered among holo sculptures, dance performances, scent fountains, and mellifluous choruses, admiring the many forms of art with which most people filled their time. Sneaking another look at their coordinated manes, Nessus truly appreciated how much Nike and he had in common. They both worked.

  Somewhere in their meandering, he and Nike joined a group of dancers. Legs flashing, hooves kicking high, voices raised in joyful accompaniment, Nessus realized: I’m happy.

  This was not the mating dance, of course. Mating, should it happen, was far into the future. Still, amid the rich stew of crowd pheromones, sides heaving in exertion, throats thrumming accompaniment of a familiar ballet, Nessus allowed himself to envision the day he and Nike would walk together into the lush pastures of the Harem House.

  In his imagination, Nessus saw a cluster of Companions. They grazed on a nearby hill, each lovely, each shy.

  A Companion of surpassing delicacy and beauty glanced up from her nibbling. Twirling and leaping, he and Nike lured the fragile Bride with the perfection of their movements. She slipped between them and joined the dance, more graceful than anything he had ever seen. Their motions grew ever more intricate and sensual.

  She broke free, and Nessus held his breath. This was the moment of decision.

  The little one gazed up the hill to her friends. She could rejoin them, and resume the idyllic life that was all she had ever known. Or—

  She looked back at her suitors. Slowly, she walked into the nearby circle of scarlet hedge. She settled onto a bed of lush meadowplant—

  Their Bride.

  A roaring crescendo celebrated the end of the dance. Nessus awoke from his reverie, sweat trickling down his flanks. Nike stood nearby, breathing deeply. Friends watched them both, blinking approval.

  Never had the Bride-to-be been more real in his mind’s eye.

  Nessus permitted himself a moment of sadness for the Bride he had yet to meet. For after that glorious dance, after the tender moment of conception, after a year of doting by himself and Nike, would come childbirth.

  And in giving birth to a Citizen, the Companion invariably died.

  EXHILARATED AND EXHAUSTED, Nessus settled onto a pile of cushions. He owned only one small room deep inside an arcology, but Nike had a suite with an exterior wall. Craning his neck slightly, Nessus glimpsed woods below. The wall lighting panels were in their night setting, but the forest canopy shimmered in the light of the worlds.

  Nike synthed a glass of carrot juice and another beverage for himself, then settled onto more heaped pillows. He seemed oddly withdrawn.

  “What’s wrong?” Nessus asked.

  Silence gre
eted the question. Finally, Nike stood. He stared out the window, appearing not to focus on anything. “I would value your opinion on something.”

  “Anything,” Nessus said.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” Nike began. As though with a will of its own, a forehoof scraped at the floor.

  “We?”

  “The Fleet, Nessus.”

  Had he ever seen Nike not in total control of himself? Nessus’ mind whirled. “To the galactic north, I think. That is our shortest path from the galaxy, to open spaces where we can set a straight course without stars to be dodged. Then outward, far from the core explosion.”

  “And then?” Nike prompted.

  What odd manner of conversation was this? “To another galaxy, of course.”

  Nike exhaled a minor chord of great sadness before raising his heads high with resolve. In dire and portentous chords, he spoke—

  Of the races the Concordance had wronged. Of Sisyphus seeking endless, eventless stability in the darkness between galaxies. Of Eos’ corrupt bargain. Of Nike’s own worst fear: That the Concordance, devoid of stimuli, was doomed by its timidity to self-absorption, decadence, and eventual decay.

  Nessus’ mind had never ranged through fields this wide. Nike’s ambitions were frightening. He would shape the race itself.

  “What would you have us do?” Nessus asked.

  “We should go inward, closer to the galactic core. To a place rich with stars and resources, yet past the risk of a supernova chain reaction. To a place vacated by potential competitors, where, in temporary isolation, we can consider how better to coexist with other races. En route we will find species who could not flee, who will welcome our help.”

  Compared to the fate of the Concordance, Nessus thought, how trivial his worries seemed, even the deaths of three Colonist friends. As he searched for words of solace and hope, an alert buzzed stridently. An icon materialized, and Nessus recognized one of Nike’s aides.

  “Connect,” Nike said. “What is it, Vesta?”