Come the Revolution (30 page)

“What happened to Stal?” I asked.

“He got to Drak’zanaat and fought with us there,” Zdravkova said, “but he and Ivanov disappeared once the Zacks showed up. That was something to see! Those Zack Mike troopers don’t fool around, do they? Anyway, Stal slipped away. I think he wants to keep a low profile. I’m thinking I should do the same thing.”

I shook my head. “That ship has sailed, Killer. You’re going to be the real hero of Sookagrad, once all the dust settles, so you better get used to it.”

I saw a look of genuine distress at the thought of it, and she looked around, as if for a way out. “There are things I have to do,” she said.

“You still can, just in a different way,” I said.

She looked at me, puzzled.

“You’ll have a platform, and when it’s time to speak you’ll have an audience. Trust me, the time is coming.”

She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. “Is that all you’ll tell me?”

“Yup,” I said. “Except that I actually managed to find a bottle of locally distilled slivovitz.” I pulled it out of my hip pocket, unscrewed the cap, and held it up. “To Sookagrad, and absent friends.” I drank and passed it to Zdravkova.

“To Sookagrad,” she whispered, eyes distant, and she drank. She looked at Moshe and smiled tenderly. “You’re in no shape for this, dear. I’ll do the honors for you.”

“To Sookagrad,” he said, and Zdravkova drank again. She held the bottle out to me but I waved it away.

“It’s a present. Keep it. So Moshe, once you’re up out of this bed, I’m betting there are any number of starship lines who’ll be willing to hire the electrical genius of Sookagrad. You can probably name your price.”

His eyes flicked to Zdravkova’s and then he smiled wistfully. “Bah, I think maybe flying around isn’t so good a life after all. You go from here to there to there and then back to where you started, and what have you got? All the repairs and new construction they’ll be doing here…I think an electrician can do some good, and if I make a little money while I’m at it, that wouldn’t kill me either.”

I turned to Zdravkova. “So now that your blowing-up-stuff days are over, what are you going to do?”

She sat back down next to Moshe’s bed and took his hand. “I suppose write political manifestos no one will read, and waste my time with this old fool.”

“Old, young, all men are fools,” Moshe said. “The young ones are just more trouble.”

She smiled, raised the bottle in another toast, and drank.

Chapter Forty

I had one last errand to run in Sakkatto City. I talked Commissioner Prayzaat into a pass to see Elaamu Gaant in a private conference room, the ones counselors use and which are surveillance-free. He was being held in a Commonwealth detention facility pending trial on about twenty different charges, including high treason.

A guard brought Gaant in. Aside from the fresh bandage still covering part of the side of his head, he looked pretty good. This was the sort of detention facility where guys like him still got to wear suits.

As soon as he sat down across the conference table from me and we were alone, he said, “So, have you come to gloat?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“It is exactly what I would expect from a Human.”

“You know, Gaant, you’ve got bigot’s disease.”

He sat back and gave me a tight-lipped smile, eyes half closed. “You think I am a bigot because I recognize the truth which is plain for anyone to see?”

“Well that’s part of bigot’s disease right there. But the big thing is you think everyone in creation is as much a bigot as you are. You think they all share the same prejudices, the same fears and hatreds and sense of frustrated entitlement as you. You also think most of them deny it out of shame or fear. So you figure they have no right to feel superior to you, but you
are
morally superior to them, aren’t you? By virtue of your courage in speaking what everyone else secretly believes but fears to say, and by your honesty in not taking part in their hypocrisy.”

“That is not a disease,” he said.

“Self-deception is always a disease.”

“Self-deception!” He leaned forward across the table. “What would you call your own notion of reality, this absurd belief that somehow we are all the same deep down inside?”

“I don’t believe that,” I said, “just the opposite. I think we’re all
different
. Every Varoki I know is as different from every other one as they are from every Human I know. You’re the guy who thinks everyone is pretty much the same, at least in a couple big groups. All Humans basically the same, all Zacks, all Varoki.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about you, and I think my wife Marr nailed your biggest weakness way back before all this mess started: you’re more glib than smart. You’re better at selling your ideas than at really thinking them through, so you persuaded a lot of folks you were the smartest guy in the room, and then you let them persuade
you
they were right about that. It’s the ultimate self-validating bullshit loop.”

“A great many people would disagree with you about that,” he said.

“Yeah, what did I just say?”

He scowled and sat back in his chair. “I did not come here to listen to some Human thug insult me. Are we finished?”

“Not quite. I actually came here to tell you a secret, something I’m pretty sure you never knew. I’m going to tell you because I don’t like you very much, and this secret will eat at you for the rest of your life. It will poison you. It will undermine everything you believe about yourself and your entire notion of self-worth, and destroy every hope you have for the future.

“But here’s my offer: if you are
afraid
that something a Human could tell you could actually have that effect, I’ll stand up and leave right now and you can continue to live in self-deception. Or I can stay and tell you. Your call.”

I waited, hands folded on the table. I could see the fear color his skin, see his ears trying to fold back and him fighting to make them stand out. He
was
afraid. But he’d have a lot of time to stew here in detention, probably the rest of his life. He didn’t know for sure what my secret would really do to him, but I think he did know that having to live with the knowledge that he had given in to fear, and had been made to do so by a Human,
would
destroy him.

“Tell me your pathetic secret,” he said with an almost-convincing look of contempt.

“First,” I said, “I will tell you three facts which are widely accepted as true and yet which cannot all be true at the same time. All six known races have unique protein compositions. Neurotoxins, as proteins, are specific to each major race and affect no other. The jump drive components are guarded by a neurotoxin which attacks all six races indiscriminately.”

I paused and let him think about that. It didn’t alarm him, of course, but it puzzled him. He had probably heard most of those facts at one time or another, in some form.

“One of those must be untrue,” he said. “Is that the secret?”

“No, that’s the clue.

“What hardly anyone knows is the neurotoxin which guards the jump drive is not exactly a protein, but something like a protein. It
functions
like a protein, but it has no DNA. It is RNA-based. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I gather it’s a big deal. Apparently no other life we know of is RNA-based.”

Gaant shook his head. “So that explains the contradiction. Why is this significant?”

“RNA-based life means it’s from a different tree of life. It didn’t come from any of the biospheres of the six races of the
Cottohazz
, or any other independently evolved tree of life we have found on any other world. All of the life forms we know are DNA-based.”

“Where did it come from?” he asked, his voice growing cautious.

“No one knows.”

He frowned. “You mean one day it simply
appeared
, infecting jump drives? Like some sort of interstellar virus?”

“No, it’s always been there. You see, in a sense it
is
the jump drive cortex itself. The controlling mechanism of the jump drive is a bioengineered organism, or rather a colony of RNA-based microscopic organisms. The cortex, I’ve been told, is layer after layer of blank circuit boards. The organisms live there on the circuit boards, feeding on electricity. They are some sort of biological superconductors, and don’t ask me how that works because nobody’s figured it out yet. But they move on the boards in response to stimulus through the control interface, forming different electrical circuits as they do, and then the jump actuators fire and you’re someplace else. Like magic. When disturbed, they emit the toxin as a defense mechanism.”

He shook his head again. “Ridiculous! I’ve never heard of Varoki doing any sort of bioengineering, let alone anything that sophisticated-sounding, let alone three hundred years ago. If we built the jump drive that way, why haven’t we built other bioengineered devices since then?”

I said nothing. I just looked at him. The air circulation system made a faint whisper, the only thing that broke the silence for several long seconds. Gaant’s expression shifted, curiosity beginning to supplant anger.

“You are saying we did not build it? Then where did it come from?”

“Apparently, and I only have bits and pieces of this, it came from a derelict alien ship, but I don’t know where your guys found it—certainly somewhere here in your home star system, but it doesn’t matter.

“The thing is the Varoki didn’t invent the jump drive; they found it. But Varoki intellectual property covenants, the ones which formed the basis of the
Cottohazz
charter, cover invention, not found knowledge. So three hundred years ago Traak and Simkitik and Kagataan and those other two guys lied on the patent.”

“How can no one know this?” he asked.

“For the last three hundred years the patent-holding houses have shared and protected the secret, no matter how bitter and violent the competition between them became, claiming the internal workings of the drive were proprietary knowledge. All that time they have been trying to reverse-engineer the process that originally created the jump drive, and understand the workings of the life form that makes it go. And you know what they’ve come up with? Nothing.”

He stared at me for a while, then shook his head again. “I do not believe you. If this is true, where is your proof?”

“Oh, I don’t have any. There isn’t any, yet.” I laughed. “That’s probably all that kept me alive the last twenty-four hours. But here’s my other secret.”

I leaned forward and he did as well, almost involuntarily, and when our faces were close I spoke softly.

“I figured out how to prove it. It’s going to take some time, a lot of work, and it may get a little dangerous, but I’m going to do it. And when I’m done, there won’t be a big war, the
Cottohazz
will still be around, but the Varoki won’t be on top anymore.”

He licked his lips. “You would never do that. It will reduce the value of Tweezaa e-Traak’s inheritance.”

“She’ll survive, and my responsibility is her survival, not protecting her money. Besides, when she finds this out, I know
exactly
what she will want us to do. What did you say when we first met? That we had corrupted her? In my experience, she is incorruptible, because her decisions are guided by her courage. Yours are driven by your fears.”

He looked at me with eyes full of fear and hatred, all mixed up together. “You think Humans will replace us? You think you can take our place?”

I sat back in my chair. “I don’t want
your
place! I don’t want a galaxy where people think my son’s something
more
because he’s Human. I just want one where they don’t think he’s something
less
. And
that’s
what I’m going to give him.”

I stood up and looked down at Elaamu Gaant for the last time.

“You were right to be afraid of us, Gaant. One way or another, we were always going to be your undoing, but not for any of the reasons you thought. It’s because we aren’t who you imagine.”

* * *

E-Loyolaan provided a very nice executive shuttle to get me out of town the next morning, ahead of almost everyone else looking for a ride. The weather had cleared and the shuttle rose out of blowing smoke from the residual fires and into a brilliant blue sky decorated sparingly with white accent clouds. As we banked over the city I caught a single flash of gold far, far to the south, reflected sunlight from the Old Tower needle. The devastation of Sakkatto City below surprised and shocked me. There had been many more fights than I had witnessed, and smoke still rose from the base of Drak’zanaat Arcology, where Zdravkova had made her last stand and a cohort of Zack Mike troopers had shot their way in to save her.

I’d had one other meeting before I left, with the new second governor of AZ Simki-Traak Trans-Stellar, a guy by the name of e-Drepaank. He wanted me to carry a personal message to The Honorable Arigapaa e-Lotonaa that the governors of the trading house had no further intention of interfering with Tweezaa e-Traak-Lotonaa’s inheritance. The governors regretted the terrible consequences of the foolishness of his predecessor, the late Vandray e-Bomaan, but they assumed no collective liability for his disastrous miscalculations. They hoped to enjoy a constructive and profitable relationship in the future.

I asked about the e-Traak family and he said he could not speak for them, which meant the truce was only with corporate, not the family, and might only last until the family made another really good offer to them. So it was more a temporary ceasefire than a lasting peace, but it was better than nothing. I told him I’d pass along the sentiment. He thanked me.

The shuttle flew almost due north, over columns of uBakai Army units withdrawing back to their cantonments and bases. Sprawling urban strips along the maglev lines showed the lingering effects of conflict as well, and everywhere vehicle traffic filled the roads. People leaving. People going home. Army units returning to a very uncertain future. I wondered what would happen when loyalist units and rebel units returned now to share the same base. I wondered, but I didn’t really care. Someone else could worry about that.

Soon the shuttle reached and started following the long deep blue coastline of the
Zhak Kakavaan
. After an hour we passed over the canyon which held The Valley House. I tried to pick it out and saw it, a spot of pink in the black and grey rocks below, but I felt nothing.

I’d last been there a lifetime ago, it seemed, but the span of a lifetime is negotiable. I’d left there to go to the reception in Katammu-Arc the evening of Day Four, Eight-Month Waning. Now it was Day Three, Nine-Month Waxing, nineteen days later. Nineteen days.

I’d stopped by the med center to say goodbye to Moshe and I’d told him about my post-death experience, how it had given me some sense of comfort when facing death since then, but no more, now that I understood it better. He’d shrugged.

“You know, you’re in a spaceship falling into a really big black hole, you pass that event horizon and all of a sudden you and that ship are spread about one atom deep all over the surface of the superdense core, and nobody can tell which carbon atoms were from you and which from the ship, ’cause one carbon atom’s like any other carbon atom.”

“Yeah,” I said, “that really cheers me up.”

He chuckled.

“Well, another interesting thing about a supermassive black hole is the closer you get to it, the slower time goes. If it’s massive enough, time slows down so much you die of old age in that ship before it collapses into the black hole, even though to someone outside looking in you’re gone in an instant.

“So time is local, see? It’s not universal. Who’s to say those last things your mind makes up—that it conjures from the best of your memories and imaginings—
don’t
last forever? Maybe forever depends on where you’re standing.”

Maybe.

I looked down through the shuttle window as we flew over more columns of military vehicles, these driving north, probably uKootrin forces withdrawing across the frontier. And then there were no more military vehicles, no more rising columns of smoke over cities and towns. The autumn noonday sun was not directly overhead, but slightly to the south, and so our shadow raced ahead of us, flashing over fields and forests and peaceful, intact towns, guiding our way to what would be my new home, because I did not think we would return to Bakaa, at least not to live, not for a very long time.

At some point we passed from Bakaa to Kootrin, from Gaisaana-la’s country to
The’On’s
, but I could not tell when. They looked the same to me.