Текст книги "Cyteen "
Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh
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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 61 страниц)
It was a barn of sorts on one side. He asked an azi for the Super, the azi pointed to a big bald man talking to someone over in the big doorway, and he went there and stood until the Super was clear.
"Florian," the Super said when he had seen the card. "Well." Looking him up and down. And called an azi named Andy to take him and show him his work.
But he knew that, from tape. He was supposed to feed the chickens, make sure all the water was clean, and check the temperature on the brooders and the pig nursery. He knew how important that was. "You're awfully young," Andy said of him, "but you sound like you understand."
"Yes," he said. He was sure he did. So Andy let him show him how much he was to feed, and how he was to mark the chart every time he did, and every time he checked the water; and how you had to be careful not to frighten the chicks because they would hurt each other. He loved how they all bunched up like a fluffy tide, and all went this way or that way; and the piglets squealed and would knock you down if you let them get to swarming round you, which was why you carried a little stick.
He did everything the best he could, and Andy was happy with him, which made him the happiest he had ever been in his life.
He carried buckets and he emptied water pans and Andy said he could try to hold a piglet as long as he was there to watch. It wiggled and squealed and tramped him with its sharp little feet and it got away while he was laughing and trying to protect himself; Andy laughed and said there was a way to do it, but he would show him later.
It was a nice feeling, though. It had been warm and alive in his arms, except he knew pigs were for eating, and for making other pigs, and you had to keep that in mind and not think of them like people.
He dusted himself off and he went out to catch his breath a minute, leaning on the fence rail by the side of the barn.
He saw an animal in that pen that he had never seen, so beautiful that he just stood there with his mouth open and never wanted to blink, it was like that. Red like the cattle, but shiny-pelted, and strong, with long legs and a way of moving that was different than any animal he had ever seen. This one—didn't walk; it—went. It moved like it was playing a game all by itself.
"What's that?" he asked, hearing Andy come up by him. "What kind is that?"
"AGCULT-894X," Andy said. "That's a horse. He's the first ever lived, the first ever in the world."
ii
Ari likedthe playschool. They got to go out in the open air and play in the sandbox every afternoon. She liked to sit barefoot and make roads with the graders and Tommy or Amy or Sam or Rene would run the trucks and dump them. Sometimes they pretended there were storms and all the toy workers would run and get in the trucks. Sometimes there was a platythere and it tore up the roads and they had to rebuild them. That was what Sam said. Sam's mother was in engineering and Sam told them about platytheres. She asked maman was that so and maman said yes. Maman had seen them big as the living room couch. There were really big ones way out west. Big as a truck. The one they had was only a middle-sized one, and it was ugly. Ari liked being it. You got to tear up the roads and the walls, just push it right through under the sand and there it all went.
She took it and shoved it along with the sand going over her hand. "Look out," she said to Sam and Amy. "Here it comes." She was tired of Amy building her House. Amy had a big one going, sand all piled up, and Amy made doors and windows in the House, and fussed and fussed with it. Which was no fun, because Sam put a tower on Amy's house and Amy knocked it off and told him go make a road up to her door, shewas making a house and herhouse didn't have towers. Amy got a spoon and hollowed out behind the windows and put plastic in so you couldn't see inside anyway. She made a wall in front and hollowed out an arch for the road. And they both had had to sit and wait while Amy built. So Ari looked at that arch where the road was supposed to come and thought it would be just the place, and the sand would all come down. "Look out!"
"No!" Amy yelled.
Ari plowed right through it. Bang. Down came the wall. The sand came down on her arm and she just kept going, because platytheres did, no matter what. Even if Amy grabbed her arm and tried to stop her.
Sam helped her knock it down.
Amy yelled and shoved her. She shoved Amy. Phaedra got there and told them they mustn't fight and they were all going inside.
Early.
So that was nasty Amy Carnath's fault.
Amy was not back the next day. That was the way with people she fought with. She was sorry about that. You fought with them and they took them away and you only saw them at parties after. There had been Tommy and Angel and Gerry and Kate, and they were gone and couldn't play with her anymore. So when Amy was gone the next day she moped and sulked and told Phaedra she wanted Amy back.
"If you don't fight with her," Phaedra said. "We'll ask sera."
So Amy did come back. But Amy was funny after that. Even Sam was. Every time she did something they let her.
That was no fun, she thought. So she teased them. She stole Sam's trucks and turned them over. And Sam let her do that. He just sat there and frowned, all unhappy. She knocked Amy's house down before she was through with it. Amy just pouted.
So she did.
Sam turned his trucks back over and decided they had had a wreck. That was an all-right game. She played too, and set the trucks up. But Amy was still pouting, so she ran a truck at her. "Don't," Amy snapped at her. "Don't!"
So she hit her with it. Amy scrambled back and Ari got up and Amy got up. And Amy shoved her.
So she shoved her harder, and kicked her good. Amy hit her. So she hit. And they were hitting each other when Phaedra grabbed her. Amy was crying, and Ari kicked her good before Phaedra snatched her out of reach.
Sam just stood there.
"Amy was a baby," Ari said that night when maman asked her why she had hit Amy.
"Amy can't come back," maman said. "Not if you're going to fight."
So she promised they wouldn't. But she didn't think so.
Amy was out for a couple of days and she came back. She was all pouty and she kept over to herself and she wasn't any fun. She wouldn't even speak when Sam was nice to her.
So Ari walked over and kicked her good, several times. Sam tried to stop her. Phaedra grabbed her by the arm and said she was wrong and she had to sit down and play by herself.
So she did. She took the grader and made sad, angry roads. Sam came over finally and ran a truck on them, but she still hurt. Amy just sat over in the other corner and sniveled. That was what maman called it. Amy wouldn't even play anymore. Ari felt a knot in her throat that made it hard to swallow, but she was not baby enough to cry, and she hated Amy's sniveling, that hurt her and made nothing any fun anymore. Sam was sad too.
After that Amy wasn't there very often. When she was she just sat to herself and Ari hit her once, good, in the back.
Phaedra took Amy by the hand and took her to the door and inside.
Ari went back to Sam and sat down. Valery wasn't there much at all. Pete wasn't. She liked them most. That left just Sam, and Sam was just Sam, a kid with a wide face and not much expression on it. Sam was all right, but Sam hardly ever talked, except he knew about platytheres and fixing trucks. She liked him all right. But she lost everything else. If you liked it most, it went away.
It was not Amy she missed, it was Valery. Sera Schwartz had gotten transferred, so that meant Valery was. She had asked him if he would come back and see her. He had said yes. Maman had said it was too far. So she understood that he was really gone and he would not come back at all. She was mad at him for going. But it was not his fault. He gave her his spaceship with the red light. That was how sorry he was. Maman had said that she had to give it back, so she had to, before she left the Schwartzes' place and said goodbye.
She did not understand why it was wrong, but Valery had cried and she had. Sera Schwartz had been mad at her. She could tell, even if sera Schwartz was being nice and said she would miss her.
Maman had taken her home and she had cried herself to sleep. Even if maman was mad at something and told her stop crying. She did for a while. But for days after she would snivel. And maman would say stop it, so she did, because maman was getting upset and things were getting tight around the apartment—tight was all she could call it. That made everything awful. So she knew she was upsetting maman.
She was scared sometimes. She could not say why.
She was unhappy about Amy, and she tried to be good to Sam and Tommy, when he came, but she thought if she got Amy back she would hit her again.
She would hit Sam and Tommy too, but if she did she would not have anybody at all. Phaedra said she had to be good, they were running out of kids.
iii
"This is the Room," the Instructor said.
"Yes, ser," Catlin said. She was nervous and anxious at the same time. She had heard about the Room from Olders. She heard about the things they did to you, like turning the lights on and off and sometimes water on the floor. But her Instructor always had the Real Word. Her Instructor told her she had to get through a tunnel and do it fast.
"Are you ready?"
"Yes, ser."
He opened the door. It was a tiny place with another door. The one behind her shut and the lights went out.
The one in front of her opened and cold wet air hit her in the face. The place had echoes.
She moved, not even sure where the tunnel was or whether she was in it.
"Stop!" a voice yelled. And a red dot lit the wall and popped.
It was a shot. She knew that. Her body knew what to do; she was tumbling and meaning to roll and find cover, but the whole floor dropped, and she kept rolling, down a tube and splash! into cold water.
She flailed and got up in knee-deep water. You never believed a Safe. Someone had shot. You ran and got to cover.
But: Get through,the Instructor had said. Fast as you can.
So she got, fast as she could, till she ran into a wall and followed it, up again, onto the dry. In a place that rang under her boots. Noise was bad. It was dark and she was easy to see in the dark because of her pale skin and hair. She did not know whether she ought to sneak or run, but fastwas fast,that was what the Instructor said.
She ran easy and quick, fingers of one hand trailing on the wall to keep her sense of place in the dark and one hand out ahead of her so she wouldn't run into something.
The tunnel did turn. She headed up a climb and down again onto concrete, and it was still dark.
Something—!she thought, just before she got to it and the Ambush grabbed her.
She elbowed it and twisted and knew it was an Enemy when she felt it grab her, but it only got cloth and twisting got her away, fast, fast, hard as she could run, heart hammering.
She hit the wall where it turned, bang! and nearly knocked herself cold, but she scrambled up and kept going, kept going—
The door opened, white and blinding.
Something made her duck and roll through it, and she landed on the floor in the tiny room, with the taste of blood in her mouth and her lip cut and her nose bleeding.
One door shut and the other opened, and the man there was not the Instructor. He had the brown of the Enemy and he had a gun.
She tried to kick him, but he Got her, she heard the buzz.
The door shut again and opened and she was getting up, mad and ashamed.
But this time it was her Instructor. "The Enemy is never fair," he said. "Let's go find out what you did right and wrong."
Catlin wiped her nose. She hurt. She was still mad and ashamed. She had gotten through. She wished she had got the man at the end. But he was an Older. That was not fair either. And her nose would not stop bleeding.
The Instructor got a cold cloth and had her put it on her neck. He said the med would look at her nose and her mouth. Meanwhile he turned on the Scriber and had her tell what she did and he told her most Sixes got stopped in the tunnel.
"You're exceptionally good," he said.
At which she felt much, much better. But she was not going to forget the Enemy at the end. They Got you here even when the lesson was over. That was the Rule. She hated being Got. She hated it. She knew when you grew up you went where Got was dead. She knew what dead was. They took the Sixes down to the slaughterhouse and they saw them kill a pig. It was fast and it stopped being a pig right there. They hauled it up and cut it and they got to see what dead meant: you just stopped, and after that you were just meat. No next time when you were dead, and you had to Get the Enemy first and make the Enemy dead fast.
She was good. But the Enemy was not fair. That was a scary thing to learn. She started shaking. She tried to stop, but the Instructor saw anyhow and said the med had better have a look at her.
"Yes, ser," she said. Her nose still bubbled and the cloth was red. She blotted at it and felt her knees wobble as she walked, but she walked all right.
The med said her nose was not broken. A tooth was loose, but that was all right, it would fix itself.
The Instructor said she was going to start marksmanship. He said she would be good in that, because her genotype was rated that way. She was expected to do well in the Room. All her genotype did. He said genotypes could sometimes get better. He said that was who she had to beat. That was who every azi had to beat. Even if she had never seen any other AC-7892.
She got a good mark for the day. She could not tell anyone. You were never supposed to. She could not talk about the tunnel. The Instructor told her so. It was a Rule.
It was only the last Enemy that worried her. The Instructor said a gun would have helped and size would have helped, but otherwise there was not much she could have done. It had not been wrong to roll at the last. Even if it put her on the floor when the door opened.
"I could have run past him," she said.
"He would have shot you in the back," the Instructor said. "Even in the hall."
She thought and thought about that.
iv
"Vid off," Justin said, and the Minder cut it. He sat in his bathrobe on the couch. Grant wandered in, likewise in his bathrobe, toweling his hair.
"What's the news tonight?" Grant asked, and Justin said, with a little unease at his stomach:
"There's some kind of flap in Novgorod. Something about a star named Gehenna."
"Where's that?" There wasno star named Gehenna in anybody's reckoning. Or there had not been, until tonight. Grant looked suddenly sober as he sat down on the other side of the pit.
"Over toward Alliance. Past Viking." The news report had not been entirely specific. "Seems there's a planet there. With humans on it. Seems Union colonized it without telling anybody. Sixty years ago."
"My God," Grant murmured.
"Alliance ambassador's arrived at station with an official protest. They're having an emergency session of the Council. Seems we're in violation of the Treaty. About a dozen clauses of it."
"How biga colony?" Grant asked, right to the center of it.
"They don't know. They don't say."
"And nobody knewabout it. Some land of Defense base?"
"Might be. Might well be. But it isn't now. Apparently it's gone primitive."
Grant hissed softly. "Survivable world."
"Has to be, doesn't it? We're not talking about any bail of rock. The news-service is talking about the chance of some secret stuff from back in the war years."
Grant was quiet a moment, elbows on knees.
The war was the generation before them. The war was something no one wanted to repeat; but the threat was always there. Alliance merchanters came and went. Sol had explored the other side of space and got its fingers burned—dangerously. Eetees with a complex culture and an isolationist sentiment. Now Sol played desperate politics between Alliance and Union, trying to keep from falling under Alliance rule and trying to walk the narrow line that might leave it independent of Alliance ships without pushing Alliance into defending its treaty prerogatives or bringing Alliance interests and Union into conflict. Things were so damned delicate. And they had gotten gradually better.
A generation had grown up thinking it was solving the problems.
But old missiles the warships had launched a hundred years ago were still a shipping hazard. Sometimes the past came back into the daily news with a vengeance.
And old animosities surfaced like ghosts, troubling a present in which humans knew they were not alone.
"It doesn't sound like it was any case of finding three or four survivors," he said to Grant. "They're saying 'illegal colony' and they admit it's ours."
"Still going? Organized?"
"It's not real clear."
Another moment of silence. Grant sat up then and remembered to dry his hair before it dried the way it was. "Damn crazy mess," Grant said. "Did they say they got them off, or are they going to? Or what are they going to do about it?"
"Don't know yet."
"Well, we can guess where Giraud's going to be for the next week or so, can't we?"
v
Ari was bored with the offices. She watched the people come in and out. She sat at a desk in back of the office and cut out folded paper in patterns that she unfolded. She got paper and drew a fish with a long tail.
Finally she got up and slipped out while Kyle wasn't looking, while maman was doing something long and boring in the office inside; and it looked like maman was going to be talking a long time.
Which meant maman would not mind much if she walked up and down the hall. It was only offices. That meant no stores, no toys, nothing to look at and no vid. She liked sitting and coloring all right. But maman's own offices were best, because there was a window to look out.
There was nothing but doors up and down. The floor had metal stripes and she walked one, while she looked in the doors that were open. Most were.
That was how she saw Justin.
He was at a desk, working at a keyboard, very serious.
She stood in the doorway and saw him there. And waited, just watching him, for the little bit until he would see her.
He was always different from all the rest of the people. She remembered him from a glittery place, and Grant with him. She saw him only sometimes, and when she asked maman why people got upset about Justin, maman said she was imagining things.
She knew she was not. It was a danger-feeling. It was a worried feeling.
She knew she ought not to bother him. But it was all right here in the hall, where there were people going by. And she just wanted to look at him, but she did not want to go inside.
She shifted to her other foot and he saw her then.
"Hello," she said.
And got that fear-feeling again. His, as he looked up. And hers, as she thought she could get in trouble with maman.
"Hello," he said, nervous-like.
It was always like that when she was around Justin. The nervous-feeling went wherever he did, and got worse when she got close to him. From everybody. It was a puzzle she could not work out, and she sensed by the way maman shut down on questions about Justin that he was a puzzle maman did not approve of. Ollie too. Justin came to parties and she saw him from across the room, but maman always came and got her if she went to say hello. So she thought that Justin was somebody in a lot of trouble for something, and maybe there was something Wrong with him, so they were not sure he was going to behave right. Sometimes azi got like that. Sometime CITs did. Maman said. And it was harder to straighten CITs out, but easier to make azi upset. So she mustn't tease them. Except Ollie could take it all right.
There was a lot about Justin that said azi, but she knew that he wasn't. He was just Justin. And he was a puzzle that came and went and no one ever wanted kids around.
"Maman's down there with ser Peterson," she said conversationally, also because she wanted him to know she was not running around where she had no business to be. So this was Justin's office. It was awfully small. Papers were everywhere. She leaned too far and caught her balance on the door. Fool, maman would say. Stand up. Stand straight. Don't wobble around. But Justin never said much. He left everything for her to say. "Where's Grant?"
"Grant's down at the library," Justin said.
"I'm six now."
"I know."
"How do you know that?"
Justin looked uncomfortable. "Isn't your maman going to be wanting you pretty soon?"
"Maman's having a meeting. I'm tired of being down there." He was going to ignore her, going back to his work. She was not going to have him turn his shoulder to her. She walked in and up to the chair by his desk. She leaned on the arm and looked up at him. "Ollie's always working."
"So am I. I'm busy, Ari. You go along."
"What are you doing?"
"Work."
She knew a go-away when she heard one. But she did not have to mind Justin. So she leaned on her arms and frowned and tried a new approach. "I go to tapestudy. I can read that. It says Sub—"She twisted around, because it was a long word on the screen. "Sub-li-min-al mat—ma-trix."
He turned the screen off and turned around and frowned at her.
She thought maybe she had gone too far, and oughtn't to be leaning on her elbows quite so close to him. But backing up was something she didn't like at all. She stuck out her lip at him.
"Go back to maman, Ari. She's going to be looking for you."
"I don't want to. What's a sub-liminal matrix?"
"A set of things. A special arrangement of a set." He shoved his chair back and stood up, so she stood up and got back. "I've got an appointment. I've got to lock up the office. You'd better get on back to your mother."
"I don't want to." He was awfully tall. Like Ollie. Not safe like Ollie. He was pushing her out, that was what. She stood her ground.
"Out," he said, at the door, pointing to the hall.
She went out. He walked out and locked the door. She waited for him. She had that figured out. When he walked on down the hall she went with him.
"Back," he said, stopping, pointing back toward where maman was.
She gave him a nasty smile. "I don't have to."
He looked upset then. And he got very quiet, looking down at her. "Ari, that's not nice, is it?"
"I don't have to be nice."
"I'd like you better."
That hurt. She stared up at him to see if he was being nasty, but he did not look like it. He looked as if he was the hurt one.
She could not figure him. Everybody, but not him. She just stared.
"Can I go with you?" she asked.
"Your maman wouldn't like it." He had a kind face when he talked like that. "Go on back."
"I don't want to. They just talk. I'm tired of them talking."
"Well, I've got to go meet my people, Ari. I'm sorry."
"There aren't any people," she said, calling his bluff, because he had not been going anywhere until she bothered him.
"Well, I still have to. You go on back."
She did not. But he walked away down the hall like he was really going somewhere.
She wished she could. She wished he would be nice. She was bored and she was unhappy and when she saw him she remembered the glittery people and everybody being happy, but she could not remember when that was.
Only then Ollie had been there all the time and maman had been so pretty and she had played with Valery and gotten the star that hung in her bedroom.
She walked back to ser Peterson's office very slow. Kyle didn't even notice. She sat down and she drew a star. And thought about Valery. And the red-haired man, who was Grant. Who was Justin's.
She wished Ollie and maman had more time for her.
She wished maman would come out. And they would go to lunch. Maybe Ollie could come.
But maman did not come anytime soon, so she drew lines all over the star and made it ugly. Like everything.
vi
The documents show,the report came to Mikhail Corain's desk, the operation involved a clandestine military operation and the landing of 40,000 Union personnel, the majority of them azi. The mission was launched in 2355, as a Defense operation.
There was no further support given the colony. The operation was not sustained.
The best intelligence Alliance has mustered says that there are thousands of survivors who have devolved to a primitive lifestyle. Beyond question they are descended of azi and citizens. The assumption is that they had no rejuv and that after sixty years the survivors must be at least second and third generation. There are ruins of bubble-construction and a solar power installation. The world is extremely hospitable to human life and the survivors are in remarkably good health considering the conditions, practicing basic agriculture and hunting. The Alliance reports express doubt that the colonists can be removed from the world. The ecological damage is as yet undetermined, but there is apparently deep penetration of the colony into the ecosystem, and certain of the inhabitants have retreated into areas not easily accessible. It is the estimate of Alliance that the inhabitants would not welcome removal from the world and Alliance does not intend to remove the colony, for whatever reason.
The estimation within the Defense Bureau is that Alliance is interested in interviewing the survivors. Defense however will oppose any proposal to retrieve these Union nationals as an operation which Alliance will surely reject and which would be in any case counter-productive.
The azi were primarily but not exclusively from Reseune military contracts.
See attached reports.
The majority of citizens were military personnel.
Nye will offer a bill expressing official regret and an offer of cooperation to the Alliance in dealing with the colonists.
The Expansionist coalition will be unanimous in that vote.
Corain flipped through the reports. Pages of them. There was a sub-sapient on the world the colonists called Gehenna. There were a great many things that said Defense Bureau, and Information Unavailable.
There was no way in hell Alliance or Union was going to be able to retrieve the survivors, for one thing because they were scattered into the bush and mostly because (according to Alliance) they were illiterate primitives and Alliance was going to resist any attempt to remove them, that much was clear in the position the Alliance ambassador was taking.
Alliance was damned mad about the affair, because it had been confronted with a major and expensive problem: an Earth-class planet in its own sphere of influence with an ecological disaster and an entrenched, potentially hostile colony.
So was Corain angry about it, for reasons partly ethical and partly political outrage: Defense had overstepped itself, Defense had covered this mess up back in the war years, when (as now) Defense was in bed with Reseune and gifted with a blank credit slip.
And if Corain could manage it, there was going to be a light thrown on the whole Expansionist lunacy.
vii
Gorodin—was not accessible. That was not entirely a disaster, in Giraud Nye's estimation. Secretary of Defense Lu had sat proxy so often in the last thirty years he had far more respect on Council and far more latitude in voting his own opinion than a proxy was supposed to have, the same way the Undersecretary of Defense virtually merged his own staff with Lu's and Gorodin's on-planet office: it was in effect a troika at the top of Defense and had been, de facto,since the war years.
And in Giraud's unvoiced opinion it was better that the proxy was in and Gorodin was somewhere classified and inaccessible at the other end of Union space: Lu, his face a map of wise secrets as rejuv declined, his dark eyes difficult even for a veteran of Reseune to cipher, was playing his usual game of no authority to answer thatand I don't feel I should comment,while reporters clamored for information and Corain called for full disclosure.
Full disclosure it had to be, at least among political allies.
And Giraud had heard enough to upset his stomach all the way from Reseune to this sound-secure office, the sound-screening working at his nerves and setting his teeth off.
"It is absolutely true," Lu said, without reference to the folio that lay under his hands. "The mission was launched in 2355; it reached the star in question and dropped the colonists and the equipment. There was never any intention to return. At the time, we knew that the world was there. We knew that Alliance knew, that it was within their reach, or Earth's, and by the accident of its position and its potential—it would be of major importance." Lu cleared his throat. "We knew we couldn't hold it in practicality, we couldn't defend it, we couldn't supply it. We did in fact purpose to remove it from profitability."
Remove it from profitability.Alliance had sent a long-prepared and careful survey to the most precious find yet in near space—and found it, to its consternation, inhabited, inhabited by humans not their own and not plausibly Earth's—leaving the absolutely undeniable conclusion, even without the ruined architecture and the fact that the survivors were azi-descended—
Union had sabotaged a living planet.
"Forty thousand people," Giraud said, feeling an emptiness at the pit of his stomach. "Dropped onto an untested planet. Just like that."
Lu blinked. Otherwise he might have been a statue. "They were military; they were expendables. It was not, you understand, my administration. Nor was there, in those days, the—sensitivity to ecological concerns. So far as anyone then was reckoning, we were in a difficult military position, we had to reckon that a Mazianni strike at Cyteen was a possibility. There were two possibilities in such a move: first, the colony would survive and maintain Union principles should we meet with disaster, should Earth have launched some suicide mission at Cyteen itself. The secrecy of the colony was important in that consideration."
"It was launched in 2355," Giraud said. "A year after the war ended. Lu folded his hands. "It was planned in the closing years of the war, when things were uncertain. It was executed after we had been confronted with general calamity, and that disastrous treaty. It was a hole card, if you like. To let either Earth or Alliance have a world potentially more productive than Cyteen—would have been disastrous. That was the second part of the plan: if the colony should perish, it would still contribute its microorganisms to the ecology. And in less than a century—present Alliance or whatever new owner—with a difficult problem, which our science could handle and theirs couldn't. I might say—some native microorganisms were even—engineered to accept our own engineered contributions. At your own facility. As I'm sure your records will say. Not mentioning the azi and the tape-tailoring."
