Home: Interstellar: Merchant Princess (16 page)

Jerri leaned over to Meriel, her eyes a bit unfocused. “What does Doc want with you?”

Meriel frowned. “A psych evaluation.”

“Not a physical?” Jerri asked with a smirk.

Socket leaned over the table toward the other women. “He’s pretty, that guy, but as cold as a glass hull. I’d stay away from him if I were you. He’d talk the wings off an angel.”

Jerri smiled at Socket. “Did he?”

Socket shook her head. “Not yet. He still thinks it’s his decision.”

Nick’s burner link did not have Meriel’s dietary profile, so she keyed it into the kiosk on the table. She scrolled through the menu display and ordered a pasta and cream sauce with shrimp.

“Damn, child. You’re gonna blow an artery eating like that,” Socket said.

“It’s not Earth,” Jerri said.

Jerri was right; this wasn’t Earth. Out here, the references to foods like chicken, beef, or fish simply identified flavors rather than the actual animal protein served. It did not really matter anyway—anything she might order would be a hydroponically grown soy-mush blend with artificial flavors and colors that were combined with indigestible roughage for structure and texture. She knew that because it said so in small print right there at the bottom of every menu in the galaxy.

Excitement over her discovery competed with fatigue for her attention, and she debated whether to dance or nap. She wanted to tell John, but implicating herself in a security breach sounded like a bad idea. The mood at the table was dour in any case, so Meriel concealed her excitement.

Next to their table, the IGB news played on an overhead display.

“…Alan Biadez, seen here proposing increased immigration to tau Ceti-5. Action has been approved by the UNE/IS but opposed by residents of tC-5. TC-5 has agreed to accept a million healthy and productive immigrants each year by lottery. However, complaints have been filed claiming that the UNE/IS does not check the health status of immigrants, and that winning lottery tickets are being openly sold to criminals. They also charge that the UNE/IS will not pay for return passage…”

“Weasel,” Jerri said under her breath.

“Why do you say that?” Meriel asked.

“He’s been dumping Earth scum on the colonies, and he takes a cut. Everyone knows it. There are enough people in the immigration lottery to hide tons of graft and kickbacks.”

“Yeah,” Cookie said with a frown. “The funds got him elected, but they couldn’t prove nothin’.” He appeared woozy and swayed a bit in his chair, clearly unhappy about something. Smoke writhed down the sides of the large glass as he raised it to drink while the iridescent contents swirled within like a demon fighting to escape. Meriel assumed that the drink was some blend of tasty poisons that would certainly kill a smaller man and made a mental note never to order one.

“Uh-huh,” Jerri said and looked at Meriel. “You look like you’re shocked.”

Meriel bit her lip. “I thought he was one of the good guys.”

Jerri laughed. “Better look elsewhere. Biadez tried to get Alpha Centauri into the UNE just to dump convicts on the asteroid settlements.”

“How can you know that, Jerri?” Meriel said.

“I grew up on Alpha C,” Jerri said. “I can understand how you guys wouldn’t see this. Nothing leaves Earth without UNE’s OK, including news.”

“Earth is still the jewel of the galaxy. Why do people want to leave?” Meriel asked.

“The UNE controls everything now through regulation. If you don’t like it, there’s no choice but to leave or take adjustment drugs, and they won’t let the useful people leave. It’s all run by the bureaucrats, so no one knows who to blame anymore,” Jerri said, not mad but hurt. “They’re like lobsters in a tank, pulling all the good people back down.”

“But it’s so pretty there,” Meriel said but wondered if the adjustment drugs were the same as they gave her.

“Tourist advertisements,” Jerri said, “old photos. Tourism is the only real industry there, but they don’t let off-worlders travel anywhere. It’s all sims in the tourist bureaus. Every other business exists just to take care of the populace, like food and housing.”

“And wiping each other’s butts,” Cookie said.

“You’ve been there?” Meriel asked.

“Right after school,” Jerri said. “Everyone in the sector thinks they need to visit Earth to show how successful and sophisticated they are. It’s like a pilgrimage, and I believed. I started graduate school in astrophysics.” She shook her head. “But science is dead there now. It’s just another tool of politics.”

“Poor baby,” Cookie said.

Jerri hit him in the shoulder and took another drink. “They’ve narrowed their lives to entertainment and surgical body enhancements. BioLuna is making a fortune.”

Cookie frowned and nodded. “They traded their freedom for empty promises. And people who disagree are drugged into compliance.”

“They’re all like little flowers down there,” Jerri said, “nodding to each other in the breeze, telling each other how meaningful their lives are, and filling their time with entertainments. When winter comes, the little flowers will all die.”

Cookie sneered. “Yeah, yeah. Everyone who’s left plays nicey nice with each other and prays for the government to protect them from the sun and the weather and the sniffles. Some asteroid is gonna smack ’em into the Stone Age while they’re all singing ‘Kumbaya.’ But next time, it won’t be losing Brazil like in ’83; they’ll lose the whole planet.” He looked as if he would spit and swayed in his chair like a tree in the wind.

“Why should we give a damn about them anyway?” Meriel said. “We’re way out here.”

“Don’t be naive, Meriel,” Jerri said. “Don’t you read?”

“I’ve been busy,” Meriel said, looking down, unable to tell them that she had been drugged or sequestered for much of the last decade.

“Leave her alone, Jerri,” John said, and Jerri recoiled like she’d been slapped.

“We give a damn because billions of them would escape if they could,” Jerri said. “Everyone out here is living on the edge, and we can’t handle a billion refugees. That’s what the wars of immigration are all about. You think Wolf station can absorb another five million helpless people and survive? Earth wants to crush us into submission by overwhelming us with immigrants.”

“And make a buck doing it,” Cookie said. John opened his mouth to speak, but Cookie interrupted. “So who’s buying the next round?” he asked, and before anyone could answer, he laid his head on the table and began to snore.

“What’s eating him?” Meriel asked.

“He got a text from his sister on Earth,” Jerri said. “His favorite niece overdosed on adjustment drugs. He tried for years to bring her out here. Seems she was brainy, and Earth wouldn’t let her go.”

“That’s tough,” Meriel said.

No one at their table noticed as two men, apparently drunk, staggered past the bar near their table.

“And get this,” Jerri said. “They sent the family a check. She’s not a burden on the health-care system anymore, so the family got a rebate. It’s killing Cookie. It’s like they put a bounty on his niece’s life. His sister burned the check and sneaked the vid to Cookie to post on the net.”

“Can’t she post it there?” John asked.

“No. They’d pull it down immediately. But they will see it out here,” Jerri said.

“Maybe it will stop the UNE,” John said. “They can’t use the navy way out here.”

“Biadez will find a way,” Jerri said with a sigh. “Some of ’em even think we’re heathens. Their goddess, Gaia, does not bless us out here, and that justifies treating us like savages.”

“My mom said we followed God out here, and he was waiting for us,” Meriel said.

Jerri leaned over the table. “My dad said our struggle with Earth is a battle between our gods, Gaia and Prometheus, Earth versus progress, and—”

“Jeez,” Socket interrupted, “you girls need to get laid.” She looked at Meriel and John and smiled, and then to Jerri she said, “Say, the Blue Note next door has some fresh stationers. Let’s go get ourselves some dates.”

Jerri looked at Cookie who snored loudly. “What are we gonna do with him?

“Bring him along,” Socket said and began to wrestle Cookie to his feet.

“OK, but first I need to hit the head,” Jerri said and left.

When Jerri was out of earshot, Meriel turned to John and whispered, “You got history with Jerri?”

John frowned and sighed. “Long time ago. Didn’t work out.”

Crap, more complications,
she thought. “Does she see it that way?”

“Ah, the
Tiger
is kinda cramped, Meriel.”

Meriel frowned at him. “Uh-huh.”
Target of opportunity?
she thought. She prepared to say something when, from the corner of her eye, she caught a blur approaching their table. She leaned back in her chair automatically as one of the two drunks fell over Jerri’s empty chair and onto their table next to Meriel. The drunk rose and started to swing his arms wildly, but Cookie woke from his stupor and reflexively smashed the man in the face and pushed him off the table. The man staggered back to his companion, and the two hurried away.

None of this was unusual in a spacer bar, and no one noticed the ring that fell under the table—a ring that hid a needle tipped with a deadly virus.

During the slow hours after her cargo check, while the
Tiger
crawled its way out of Procyon A’s gravity well, Meriel studied in the mess. Nav without visualization was boring, and she could not concentrate. Cookie’s familiar puttering in the galley and the steady flow of crew and passengers for snacks did not bother her. What distracted her was Jerri’s condemnation of Biadez at lunch back on Enterprise. It was as if she’d spoken of a different man entirely.
How could she say that? Have I been so entirely wrong
?

Meriel cued up a vid of one of Biadez’s speeches from the packet that the Foundation had given to the kids after the
Princess
attack to introduce the foundation and its charitable works, and she projected it on the wall of the mess. Biadez stood at the podium in an impeccable dark suit and heavy coat while cherry blossoms drifted past in a mild breeze that tossed his hair. It must have been spring on Earth—or a perfect studio set. He looked much younger, as if the years had not weighed so heavily upon him. A beautiful blond woman with a smug smile stood behind him—his wife, perhaps. Biadez waved his hand to quiet the audience and began to speak.

“Throughout history, humans have lived on the edge of extinction, on the razor’s edge between starvation and annihilation, at the whim of the unforgiving hand of nature and subject to the universe’s existential lack of concern…”

Cookie came over, put a fresh mug of coffee in front of Meriel, and sat down next to her.

“We conquered the threats from Gaia and in so doing became her protector…”

“Thinking about what Jerri said?” Cookie asked.

Meriel smiled. “You remember?”

Cookie blushed. “Yeah, sorry.”

“Sorry about your niece,” she said, and Cookie nodded.

“Outposts of humanity cling to life in the stars but only human life, and even the richest habitats cannot support self-sustaining ecosystems with diverse species. And our human experiment is still young; it is still not clear if these outposts can survive without their roots planted firmly in the soil of Earth, the single planet that supports human life. I implore us to change that”.

Biadez pointed dramatically to the sky and continued.

“Earth is our home, but our future is out there. We need hubs and an expanding volume of people to protect Earth life from the whims of nature. We need anchors on other worlds and ecosystems built around them. We need to make the stars our home. And humanity must rise to that challenge or risk annihilation.

“Join me, and let us populate the stars!”

The vid ended, and a banner screen from the Biadez Foundation popped up. Meriel leaned back and picked up the coffee, letting it warm her hands.

“He understood,” she said. “How could he be the person Jerri talked about?”

“Maybe he understood once,” Cookie said, “but power corrupts, Meriel.”

“So do ideologies,” Jerri said from behind Meriel and walked to the coffee replicator. “I think you should hear the whole speech.” She got her coffee, joined them, and cued the vid to an earlier section. “Here,” she said, and Biadez spoke again.

“We conquered the threats from Gaia and in so doing became her protector…

“The sacrifice of personal liberty, the limitations of technological innovation, the strict regulations of how we live and where we live were all necessary to achieve this victory over ourselves—necessary and painful but for the common good.”

“Biadez was speaking to Earthers, M,” Jerri said, “to remind them what humans sacrificed to conquer their spirit. He never said what it meant to tame your god.” Jerri paused. Meriel hadn’t understood. “It’s an apology for tyranny, Meriel,” Jerri said. “And it’s only gotten worse.”

“But it’s a democracy,” Meriel said. “They can change it if they like.”

Jerri shook her head. “They’re plebiscites now and have the same power as a survey. Only the children vote now.”

“But we weren’t part of that,” Meriel said.

“The
Princess
?” Cookie asked.

Meriel nodded. “We were just orphans, and his foundation got us great ships after the
Princess
. Every one of us. We could have ended up in an organ farm or a mining colony, but we all got great fosters.” Meriel shook her head. “I can’t believe he’s who you say he is.”

“Do you believe me?” Cookie asked with the coldest expression she had ever seen on his face. Meriel could not answer him.

Jerri leaned over the table. “We don’t understand Earth any more, Meriel. None of us do. It’s still an ideal. And they don’t understand us.” She leaned back and sighed. “Did I tell you I visited Earth?” she asked, and Meriel nodded. “Oh, yeah, at the Gear Case,” Jerri said. “Well, my classmates laughed at me when I went through the debark checklist before leaving a shopping mall. They never for a moment thought to stop at a closed door and consider if there was a breathable atmosphere on the other side, and we cannot forget. They couldn’t understand why I had trouble sleeping without a net or felt uncomfortable at the beach without a tether. We pity those poor low-grav miners on Ceres. But on Earth, that’s how they think of us. We see stations as bastions of civilization, and Earth sees them as primitive outposts, one step from extinction. One Earther referred to me as a noble savage. She thought it was a compliment, like my citizenship on a backward station was somehow charming and virtuous.”

“Alpha C isn’t backward,” Meriel said.

“What did you do?” Cookie asked with a smile.

“She was my fiancé’s mom, so I didn’t kill her,” Jerri said, and Meriel smiled. “She paraded me around to her friends like I was an oddity,” Jerri said and sighed. “They act like Earth citizenship makes them the center of the universe, like all life slides downhill from Earth, and we’re on the bottom out here. She talked like she was reaching into the sewer and cleaning me up.”

“What happened to him?”

Jerri frowned. “He stayed with his mom.”

“But you don’t have to worry,” Meriel said. “You’ve got citizenship and a home on Alpha C.”

“I’m not so sure anymore,” Jerri said. “I had to leave Earth in…kind of a hurry. My folks might not want me back. To Earthers, citizenship on Alpha C is almost as low as being a spacer.”

“There’s a lot farther down to go than this,” Cookie said.

Jerri nodded. “I know. I just can’t see how people would give up their freedom for citizenship there or any station for that matter.”

“It’s safer,” Meriel replied.

Jerri shook her head with disappointment. “Not you too, Meriel. It’s dead there.”

“I just want a place for us,” Meriel said. “A safe place I don’t have to worry about the kids.”

The claxon sounded, announcing ten minutes to jump.

Meriel turned off the vid and shook her head. “I’m not stupid, Jerri. I just don’t get how a bad guy could be so kind to us.”

Jerri sighed. “We’re just different now, M,” Jerri said. “You’re thinking they’re like spacers, and they’re not. We just don’t understand them.”

“We can all understand greed and corruption,” Cookie said and walked behind the counter to the galley leaving Meriel and Jerri alone in the mess.

“So, you and John had something?” Meriel asked.

Jerri turned to her with an angry squint, which quickly softened. She nodded. “Yeah, it was great for a while,”

“How long was a while?” Meriel asked.

“Just long enough for me to think it might be more than a sleepover,” Jerri said and then smiled. “He’s not really a spacer, you know. You’ve seen it, like he’s walking on a station all the time without fear of losing G.”

“Yeah, like he’s got roots in the deck,” Meriel said.

Jerri nodded. “That’s it. Wherever his colony is, it’s got some mass to it.” She sighed again. “He’s sweet and kinda naive. He really did not like station sleepovers, too impersonal. He said it took the love out of love and that didn’t leave much left.”

“What happened?” Meriel asked.

Jerri looked down. “I knew he was going home to his kids, and I felt like I really didn’t have a place there.”

“Would you have gone?”

Jerri smiled. “Maybe. That’s the problem, Meriel. I’m a spacer and not a mom. I just didn’t feel like…like I had a place in his future.” She looked away, but Meriel could see the hurt in her posture. “Really? He didn’t invite me.”

“It’s a small ship, Jerri,” Meriel said.

Jerri looked up and smiled at her. “It’s OK, girl,” she said. “Go ahead.”

Meriel’s link buzzed with a text.

From Socket: Ferrell is looking for you.

“Thanks, Jerri,” Meriel said. “Sorry. Ferrell’s coming. I gotta run.”

“Sure, girl,” Jerri said. “Oh, and John likes to make his move on the bridge in the dark.”

Meriel smiled at her. “Thanks for the tip,” she said, but she already knew that. She turned around quickly and used the service corridor to return to her cabin for the jump.