Darkship Renegades (5 page)

I cringed. There would be a lot of anger about that. A lot of Cats and Navs had committed suicide to avoid revealing secrets. Their families would resent those who survived, anyway, but they would resent us worst of all, since we’d violated orders to survive.

“For the average Cat and Nav, suicide might be best,” Doc Bartolomeu said. “Sorry, but with no knowledge of Earth, and considering that gen mod brings on the death penalty there, the chances of a gene-modified human being captured and emerging again, unscathed, are nearly none. And there is no reason to risk discovery—no matter how small the risk—if the result will be death to Cat and Nav anyway. But given the special circumstances, and the ability of Nav Sinistra to extricate her husband from prison and get out of the world, surely you’ll admit theirs was a rational decision. There existed at least a chance, if not a good chance, that both could survive.”

They weren’t willing to admit any such thing, and there was much discussion back and forth. Some people said we should still be executed, or at least Kit should.

“They lived while other people died,” one of these people said. “They are as guilty of murder as if they had killed those people themselves.”

Kath shot up. She stood before I was aware of it. Incongruously, she wore a very feminine dress, a few scraps of fabric twisted in a way that made her look very young and innocent. But Eden is a small enough community, as I’ve said. Everyone knows everyone else, at least by reputation. You could hear the collective drawing of breath as people recognized her. And a deeper drawing of breath as she put her hands on her hips. “Stupid,” she said. And I sensed her sneering comment applied not only to the person who’d just spoken but to everyone else who had murmured assent. I wondered if those people would all drop dead of asphyxiation, since I couldn’t hear anyone exhaling. “Who spoke?” she asked, her voice full of belligerence.

A man stood, across the amphitheater. He was a short man, with blond hair running to grey and, as the camera pickup swung to get him on the screen behind Kit, I realized he had Cat eyes in pale green. From his age, he was a retired Cat, which probably meant his children were Cats or Navs, since the occupations were normally inherited in the sense that very well paid Cats and Navs could afford the prohibitive price of genetically enhancing their children and therefore assure their future too. Which meant that there was a good chance he’d lost family to Earth’s raids. I didn’t think we could blame his tightly compressed lips and his flinty expression on the fact he looked somewhat like Castaneda. “I did, Cat Denovo,” he said, firmly, looking up in Kath’s direction.

“Well,” Kath said. “Then you’re barely competent enough to stand and talk, much less to have flown a ship, as I presume you have.” Her hands had moved from her hips to ball at her side.

“Cat Denovo, if you weren’t distraught I’d challenge you to a duel for those words.”

“Oh, please,” Kath said, in the tone that implied she would like nothing better than a duel. “I don’t fight the mentally handicapped. As for my being distraught, at least it doesn’t make me stupid.”

“Cat—”

“No. Tell me in what way my brother is responsible for any of those deaths.”

For the first time the man looked like he was on uncertain ground. “Well, he survived and they—”

“You can keep repeating that all you want to. The only people who assume that because two things happened together one must have caused the other, are animals and infants. Which one are you?”

“You have no right to insult me.”

“I am not insulting you. Just pointing out your mental deficiency. You accused my brother and my sister-in-law of having committed murder. How? If they had died, how would that have saved the lives of all our friends and relatives who died?”

“What?” the man said. “It wouldn’t. But they had no right to survive where others died.”

“No? How not?”

“Because there are rules.”

Kath chuckled dismissively. “Cat…Verre, is it not? Are your eyes still good enough to pilot a ship?”

“I don’t see where that’s any of your business.”

“No? Well, at your age, I suspect they’re not any more efficient then standard issue eyes. I suggest you have them replaced, and then relocate to Earth.”

“What?”

“Your only rationale for why my brother committed some sort of crime is that he refused to die in obedience to
rules
,” she pronounced the word as though it were obscene. “That devotion to external, arbitrary imposition is better fitting an Earthworm than an Edenite. You, sir, don’t deserve to live here.” She must have seen something in her opponent’s eyes, as the camera swung around to pick him up again, because she said, “I’ll meet you any day, any time, with any weapon. But you’ll have to be the one to force it on me, because my reflexes are obviously better than yours. I’m younger. I won’t have it said that I took advantage of you.”

“Sir,” Verre said, turning around towards the podium area and Doc Bartolomeu. “Doctor Dias, you are running these proceedings. Would you tell Cat Denovo she can’t simply insult people to get her way?”

“Cat Verre,” Doc Bartolomeu said, “she didn’t simply insult you. She demolished your argument. You seem to believe that rules must be obeyed even when they endanger survival of self or those under one’s protection. They don’t. Even the most authoritarian governments on Earth made it a point of at least pretending to respect the right of self-defense. Sir, the right to continue drawing breath—unless it forces you to commit murder to do it, and sometimes even then—is the only true unalienable right anyone has. So long as they can keep it from being alienated.”

The man opened his mouth as though to speak, then closed it. I swear the snap of his lips meeting and the force of his sitting down was heard all through the amphitheater. But it might have been simply an effect of his image being on the big screen behind Kit, and his expression and movements visible to everyone.

When it became obvious Cat Verre was not going to continue, the camera turned to Kit again. It was still shaking, but almost imperceptibly. He still looked exhausted, but at least he didn’t look dead. His eyes were starting to focus.

“Cat Sinistra is not a murderer,” Doc Bartolomeu said. “Cat Denovo, for all her brusque manner, is absolutely right. Though it seems to be an ancient mechanism of the human mind, enough to create a syndrome named after it, just because someone survives circumstances that cause the death of many, it doesn’t mean he’s responsible for the deaths. Survivor’s guilt is an abnormal reaction and an unhealthy one. Any of you who feel otherwise are free to challenge Cat Sinistra to a duel. At least any of you who are Cats or who can get a Cat to stand for him or her. But I suspect you’d face so many revenge challenges that you’re unlikely to survive, no matter how skilled.”

“He’s not on trial for murder,” someone said. My eyes followed and the speaker was close enough for me to register he was another man, and also had blond hair. I wondered if I was only imagining the resemblance to Castaneda. “He’s on trial for treason against all of Eden. And it’s not necessary to challenge him to a duel. He did risk revealing Eden secrets to Earth. He should be executed.”

“Executed by whom, sir?” the doctor said. “No matter what the sentiment, there is no authority on Eden that can order the execution of one of its citizens. Yes, yes, a group of you could do it, but you’ll be laying yourself open to blood feuds, since I don’t believe everyone thinks he should die.” I noted that he asserted this, but asked for no corroboration. Was he really sure? “And he has family and friends powerful enough to inflict damage in return.” The look in Doc’s eyes served fair warning that he was indeed one of those friends.

A long silence fell, and then Doctor Bartolomeu said, “I will grant you, one might think that he did something dishonorable, in acting to his own benefit and marginally increasing danger to Eden. I can understand how people might feel that he needs to make restitution. But execution is well past any such reasonable punishment.”

“Blood geld,” a voice said from the crowd. “For every Cat and Nav who had the courage to do what he didn’t.” There was an avaricious sound to that voice, and I tried to calculate what the blood geld would be. Cats and Navs were expensive people to kill, as not only did their bioengineering in utero cost the family money, but they earned a lot more than normal people throughout their active years. And by the time I’d left on the last pod run, the number of couples missing and presumed dead was already well above twenty. Compensating all the families for lost wages would make Kit an effective slave to them the rest of his days and well past the age when a Cat’s visual acuity allowed for pod runs—even if we were allowed to do pod runs back to back, which I understood was no longer permitted.

“No blood geld,” the doctor said. “Whether Cat Sinistra should have followed the example of those who committed suicide or not, is a matter open for philosophical discussion, but he didn’t cause those Cats and Navs to die. If he’d died, those Cats and Navs would still be dead. So blood geld is not appropriate in the circumstances. I meant reparations he should make to Eden as a whole for having endangered us—even if fractionally.”

For a moment I frowned, furious that he’d brought that up, when it was…well, not ridiculous. I supposed we’d marginally endangered Eden. Very marginally. Either of us would have died rather than given away the location of the asteroid or how it was set up inside. On the other hand, once we were on Earth there was, of course, a chance, some of that information would have been extracted from us by drugs or torture.

On yet the other hand, Doc Bartolomeu knew better than to expect the paranoids of Eden to be rational about even a marginal danger to the security of the world.
What
did he think he was doing?

There was a long silence, and then a voice I didn’t recognize spoke up from a mid row, halfway up the amphitheater. “Why don’t we send them back to Earth, on a ship designed to give nothing away? If they survive and bring us back all the notes from Jarl Ingemar that can allow us to seed our own powertrees, then we’ll consider the debt paid.”

“Yeah,” someone else said, from another end of the amphitheater. “If they can find how Jarl grew the powertrees, maybe we can grow our own. Here and at the Thules. And then the ridiculous rationing can stop.”

As a chorus of agreement rose all around, I realized two things: first, that I felt near-frozen with fear at the idea of going back to Earth. We’d barely made it out last time. Would we escape this time?

And second, that Blondie was in the crowd. I could see him, standing against the side wall, a few feet from me, looking down at Doc Bartolomeu. And though he didn’t say or do anything to counter the consensus forming in the center—to send us out in search of Jarl’s writings as compensation for our not-quite-rational “crimes”—he looked very much like he would like to spit.

That last made me feel marginally better. If Mr. Castaneda didn’t like it, perhaps the plan wasn’t disastrous for us, after all.

And then I realized yet another thing. This had been planned.

Look, I never said I was suited to conspiracy. Ever. I could be cunning enough about getting my own way. And when cornered I would always fight for the right to continue drawing breath, as Doc put it. Or perhaps even the right to have my way. But I was not the type to lay plans in advance and carefully manipulate people into my aim.

And ordering us to do what we were on trial for doing was a master stroke I couldn’t have imagined at my most crafty.

Whoever had conceived this—Jean or Doc, or Tania or Kath—was clearly much smarter than I was. I could see now what the plan had been: to manipulate the crowd into deciding by obvious majority, to send Kit and me out of reach of the Energy Board, where they couldn’t kill Kit openly.

OUR LIVES, OUR FORTUNES,
OUR SACRED HONOR

“Why did you let it happen?” someone asked. I didn’t know who, but I was grateful that, for once, I was not the last one to see the plan.

We were in the back room of the Judicial Center, the rest and recovery area, where Kit lay on a low bed, with his arm flung over his eyes, to protect them from even the residual light allowed in by his eyelids and the darkening lenses.

“Why did you let them send Kit and Thena to Earth on a life-or-death mission?” Waldron said, standing up, so I could see he was the one speaking. “And one that might be impossible?”

His question was addressed at Doctor Bartolomeu, but Jean answered, “They’re not safe on Eden,” he said. “And Thena wanted to go back and get lost on Earth, anyway, instead of letting Kit be detained. She might have had the right idea.”

The entire family was sitting around the room, on floor and chairs. There were more people than those who lived in Jean and Tania’s compound. A woman who looked much too young for it, had been introduced to me as Kit’s grandmother, plus there were cousins and uncles, and in-laws. There was also a redheaded woman who sat apart from them, towards the back. She reminded me of someone, but I would not be able to say whom.

I knew that Jean meant well. But he had it all wrong. “No,” I said, “I meant for us to go to Earth and live there, someplace secluded. Not for us to go to Earth and go digging through secret places for documents that might or might not have been destroyed by now. Or for us not to be allowed to come back till we find them. Why, the Good Men of Earth are likely to—”

Kit made a weird sound and said, “Thena!”

“You don’t have to come back,” Kath said, very calmly. She sat near me, and now reached over to squeeze my shoulder. “Oh, we’d prefer it if you did, but if you don’t, it’s fine. You don’t have to risk your lives for Eden.”

“Of course we have to,” my beloved and I said at the same time, and then I shut up because, while I did know that, I had no idea why it was so. I let him continue. “We can’t leave Eden like this. Eden is the only home we have. We can’t let it be taken from us.” He paused. “You planted the suggestion they send us away, didn’t you?” he asked no one in particular. “And not just to give us a chance to escape Eden.”

“We planted the suggestion,” Tania said. “Mostly to allow you to escape since, as long as you’re here, there will be people who will want you dead.”

“
Mostly
,” Kit echoed.

“Well, there is also the undeniable fact that if it can be done—and Jarl thought it could—we need to be able to seed or transplant powertrees. We have never been able to do it, and as long as we have to go to Earth orbit for powerpods, we are dependent on Earth, the politics of Earth and the rulership of Earth—and how active they are in tracing us, and how much they mind the theft of pods. Even if the current hunt for darkship thieves subsides, it would always start up again. And because of the large investment needed to get to Earth we are also dependent on the Energy Board and its rules. We cannot allow that, because—”

“By controlling what people need to survive, they’ve become a government and are turning Eden into a dictatorship,” I said.

“An oligarchy, I’d call it,” Doctor Bartolomeu said, inclining his head marginally. “Or at least they’d consider themselves oligoi. But you’re correct on the essentials. A few people who consider themselves superior wielding the power of life or death over the rest of the world.” A fleeting smile turned his lips upward and rearranged his wrinkles. “Even when those people were engineered to be truly superior in every way that was considered relevant, it did not end well.”

Kit removed his arm from atop his eyes, and sat up. I rushed to sit beside him and he reached out for me and squeezed my hand hard. He smelled of sweat and vomit, with an overlay of illness, and he looked like he’d been dragged through hell backwards, but he was alive, conscious and attentive. I wanted…something else for us. I wanted people to stop trying to kill one of us, and just let us be. I wanted to be left in peace. You never get what you want.

He said, “What you’re saying, and what Thena is saying is that we can choose to come back to Eden, eventually, but to come back to Eden we must bring back the solution to Eden’s energy stranglehold, which has become a power stranglehold. Because we won’t be accepted back if we don’t bring with us the way to remove the power…” He looked around searchingly and Doc Bartolomeu said “The room is clean of bugs. We took care of it.”

Kit nodded. “The way to remove the power of life or death from the greedy hands of the Energy Board. And frankly, we won’t want to come back in that case, as Eden will be no better than Earth and this being a smaller world, it will allow those at the top to control every individual at the bottom that much more tightly. On the other hand, we can choose to stay on Earth and live in hiding and forget about Eden, right?”

“Right,” Kath said. “We would not force you to risk your lives for the chance of bringing freedom back to Eden. I mean, we hope you care for us, but risking your lives is a price that only the two of you can determine to pay.”

“Our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor,” Kit said, in almost a whisper. Mentally he said,
What do you think
?

We do it,
I said.
And we
do
find a way to grow the powertrees nearby, where anyone can harvest them. I want Castaneda powerless.

He smiled. By now he probably knew better than to appeal to my higher sentiments, since I might not have any. But he still added,
And I don’t want Waldron’s children growing up under his authority.

That too.
But mostly I wanted to take Castaneda’s toys away. And hurt him.

Kit smiled again.
My girl!
He said, managing to sound proud. Aloud, he said, “We’ll do it, or die trying. We’ll bring back the solution to the power rationing, a way to open the power business to everyone—or we die.”

“I didn’t expect any less of you, my boy,” Doctor Bartolomeu said, and he did sound like he really meant it. “But you must not expect this to be either simple or easy. The Energy Board can’t fight back openly, but that only makes it more dangerous. They will fight back. No one gives power up easily, certainly not someone who is as invested in holding power as Castaneda is. He is one of those for whom power is more important than material comfort, possibly more important than his own life. He must rule or die trying. I want you to realize when you pledge your life, you might very well be required to pay.”

“I don’t say it lightly,” Kit said. “And I understand that. Doc, I’m not an infant.”

“No,” the doctor said. “But you must also understand that you and Thena can’t go alone. The type of ship they will send you in will be more stripped and require more intensive piloting than the
Cathouse
ever did. And besides accidents, real or engineered, will happen. The Cat and Nav teams are designed to cover for each other at need, but this will require something more. I believe you will have to double up. As it is, with two Cats and two Navs we’ll be straining the food and fuel and water capacity of the ship, but since we won’t bring back pods, the allowance is slightly higher. Not by much, mind you. Pods aren’t that heavy. And the ships are built at most for a couple and their supplies, with about a child’s supply worth of tolerance. I wish you could do it alone, but we need to have four people and double every ability.”

“Go with another Cat and Nav?” I asked. I tried to imagine who would do it, whom we could trust, and whom I wouldn’t kill after months alone in a tiny ship. Maybe Kath and Eber, if we were all very lucky. “But any other Cat will be in danger on Earth. I mean, Kit will be too, but him I might be able to conceal. But you know, Cat’s eyes are—”

But the doctor said, “I volunteer to do the turn of backup Cat. While I don’t have Kit’s advantages of vision, I do have the reflexes, and I can move fast. I wouldn’t pilot through the energy trees, but I can pilot anywhere else.” He didn’t say his improvements came from being a Mule, but no one asked about it. For that matter, no one in the room, not even the extended family, showed any surprise at his volunteering, and I remembered something about the Denovos being hereditary friends of Jarl—probably originally Jarl’s servants, now I thought about it, or his confidential helpers—which probably meant they all knew what Doc Bartolomeu was. He lifted a hand as Kit seemed about to speak. “If I go with you, it gives you two people who know Earth, at least somewhat. Yes, I realize it has changed somewhat in the last three hundred years, but Thena has time to catch me up on that. But having been born and raised there, I’m not going to go into a panic at the sight of the ocean or have acute agoraphobia at the wide-open spaces, which you know very well most Cats and Navs would have.”

“And I volunteer to be the backup Nav,” the redheaded woman to whom I hadn’t been introduced said. And as she stood and took a step forward, I realized who she reminded me of. It didn’t make me feel any better. Classical paintings shouldn’t come to life like that, and I realized—startled—that she looked exactly like Botticelli’s Venus. So, she wasn’t standing on a seashell, and she had clothes on: a very practical-looking kind of coveralls, not much different from, even if obviously better tailored than the ones I wore when working on the ships’ innards.

I went all defensive. I couldn’t help it. There is something in every woman that makes her despise someone that much more attractive, someone who was better equipped by nature to appeal to a man who wishes to have children. I could no more have kept myself from talking than I could have stopped from breathing. “Wouldn’t your Cat object?” I said. In my defense I managed not to hiss and meow in the manner of another type of cat. Also, I was right, to a point; most—if not all—Cat and Nav teams were married and used to spending all their time together. And if we had to take her husband too, then we’d end up, by accretion, taking half of Eden. I didn’t think this was a good idea. For one, four would push the weight limits on the ship, as it was.

“Len died,” she said, and frowned in my direction, as if she held me responsible for it. “Radiation poisoning in the powertrees. I brought our ship back alone.” Her voice went all tight, as if a constriction in her throat only allowed it to squeak through. “I gave his body to space. I am without dependents or restriction on my movements.”

And no doubt would hate me till the day she died because I had been similarly poisoned and survived. Right. Sure I wanted her with me on a long trip in tight quarters.

Doctor Bartolomeu stood up, went to stand by her. “Thank you, Zen. It would help,” he said, then to me, “This is Zenobia Sienna,” Doctor Bartolomeu said. “She’s…almost my adopted daughter.” This got him a little smile from Ms. Ice Queen. “She’s the daughter of some dear friends. I’ve watched her grow up. I wouldn’t ask anyone to go with us—it’s not my right to command anyone to risk his or her life—but I think we should accept her services.”

“Zen?” Kit said, looking at her, and smiling a little in turn. It was obvious he’d known her for years, which of course made perfect sense. Most Cats and Navs knew each other; they all grew up together. None of which meant I had to like it. “Great. Yeah. It will give us a backup if Thena is…” I could see him struggle with the idea I could die, then shake his head. “If Thena is incapacitated. It will also give you time to…well…I know what it’s like. It will give you time to get better, to…get used to being alone, in a place where nothing reminds you of Len, you know?”

She inclined her head minimally. “That’s what I thought.”

Oh, great. Not only was she a grieving widow who would immediately awaken in my husband sympathetic feelings, because he’d been widowed himself, but he clearly knew her and liked her. That he knew her was a given, considering how small the community of Cats and Navs was. That he liked her, not so much given my husband’s temperament. As he liked to put it, he didn’t play well with others. But I had to get lucky right across the board. I was going to be locked in a small space with a woman who was mad at me and probably trying to make up to my husband.

While I trusted Kit implicitly—he’d risked his life for me way too many times not to—the morals of Eden were complex and fidelity might or might not be part of what Kit thought he had signed up for in marriage. I didn’t trust Zenobia farther than I could throw her.