Peace and War - Omnibus (43 page)

The shuttle rolled over for orbital insertion, and the solid-looking clouds of the storm drifted away. The sky darkened from cobalt to indigo.

They might well have weapons in orbit, I knew. Even if they were antiques left over from the Forever War, they could do the job.

But there was absolutely nothing I could do to affect that. No evasive maneuvers or counterattacks or even clever arguments. A kind of tentative and temporary calmness settled over me, that I remembered from combat: you may only be alive for the next few seconds, but whatever happens, it will just happen. I carefully tilted my head against the acceleration and could see the strained half-smile on Marygay's face; she was in the same state.

Then the sky turned black, and we were still alive. The roar abated and then was silent. We floated through space in free fall.

I looked back. 'Everybody okay?' They murmured tentative assent, though some of them looked pretty bad. The anti-nausea medicine worked for most people, but of course space travel wasn't the only stress they were going through.

We watched the
Time Warp
grow from brightest star to non-stellar sparkle to a hard bright image that grew and then loomed. The automated part of our trip ended with a not-quite-human voice telling me that control would be surrendered to me in ten seconds … nine … and so forth.

Actually, it was responsibility rather than 'control' that had been transferred to me; the shuttle's radar still mediated the rate of approach to the docking area. I kept my right hand gripped on a dead-man's switch; if anything seemed wrong, I would let go, and the previous moment's maneuvers would be quickly reversed.

The airlocks mated with a reassuring metallic snap, and my ears popped as our air pressure dropped to match the thin but oxygen-rich mixture in the
Time Warp
.

'Phase Two,' I said. 'Let's go see whether it works.'

'I think it will work,' the sheriff said. 'You've done the hard part.'

I looked at him. 'There's no way you could have learned our plans.
No
way.'

'That's right.'

'But you know us so well – you're so superior – that you knew exactly what we were going to do.'

'I would not put it so harshly. But yes, I was told to expect rebellion and perhaps violence, and advised not to resist.'

'And the rest of it? What we're about to do?'

'That's a mystery to me, or conjecture; I was asked not to tap the Whole Tree, so I wouldn't know too much.'

'But the others know. Or think they know.'

'I've said too much. Just continue with what you're doing. You may learn from it.'

'
You
may learn something,' Max said.

'Let's move along,' Marygay said. 'Whatever they've got set up for us, whatever they think they know, it doesn't change Phase Two.'

'You're wrong,' Max said. 'We should find out what we can from this bastard. We can't lose anything by squeezing him.'

'Or gain anything,' the sheriff said. 'I've told you all I know.'

'Let's find out,' Roberta said. 'Max is right. Nothing to lose.'

'A lot to lose,' I said. 'You sound like my old drill sergeants. This is a negotiation, not a war.'

'They were threatening to kill us,' Po said. 'If it's not a war, it's something close to it.'

Marygay came to my rescue. 'Leave it as an option. Right now, I think we're ahead for not having hurt or coerced him.'

'Other than beating him up and tying him down,' Roberta said.

'If we ultimately have to force information out of him,' Marygay pushed on, 'then we can do it. Right now we have to act, not talk.' She rubbed her face. 'Besides, they probably have their own hostage by now. Jynn couldn't get far in that floater.'

'Jynn killed one of them,' Max said. 'She's dead meat.'

'You shut up, Max.'

'If she's alive, she's a liability.'

'Shut up.'

'You home cunts,' Max said, 'You always–'

'My wife is not a cunt or a home.' I tried to keep my voice down. 'When we walk through that door she'll be your commander.'

'And I have no problem with that. I had a long career and never saw a het commander. But if you think
she's
het, you're blind as a worm.'

'Max,' Marygay said quietly, 'my
heart
has been het and home and irrelevant, as now. William is in charge on this ship, and you're being insubordinate.'

'You're right,' he said flatly. To me: 'I lost my head and I apologize. Too much has happened, too fast. And I haven't been a soldier since before my kids were born.'

'Me neither,' I said, and didn't push it. 'Let's just move.'

On the other side of the airlock, we expected it to be dark and cool, the minimum-energy mode we'd last left it in. But the artificial sun was bright and the air was warm and fragrant with growing things.

And there was a Tauran waiting for us on the shipside landing, unarmed. It made their sign of greeting, hugging itself. 'You know me,' it said. 'Antres 906. Are you the leader, William Mandella?'

I looked beyond it to the well-tended fields. 'What the hell is this?'

'I speak right now only to the leader. Are you he?'

'No.' I put my hand on Marygay's shoulder. She was also staring, stunned. 'My wife.'

'Marygay Potter. Come with me to the control room.'

'They're ready to ride,' Max said behind me. 'Straight to Earth.' They'd told us there would be several weeks of tending to the lifesupport farms, before we went into suspended animation. This looked like we were headed straight to the tanks.

'How many are here, Antres?' Marygay said.

'No one else.'

'This took a lot of people.'

'Come with me.' She followed Antres to the lift, and I came along, both of us struggling with the zero gee nets. Antres was deft with them, but elaborately slow.

We went up to the command level and picked our way into the control room. The center screen was lit, with the image of an older male Man, perhaps one we had talked to in Centrus.

Marygay climbed into the captain's chair and strapped herself in. 'Are there any further casualties?' the Man said without preamble.

'I was going to ask the same thing. Jynn Silver.'

'The one who killed one of us.'

'A Tauran is not "one of us" if you are human. Is she alive?'

'Alive and in custody. I think we have deduced much of your plan. Would you care to reveal it now?'

Marygay looked at me and I shrugged.

She spoke slowly and quietly. 'Our plan is that this ship is not going to Earth. We demand to be allowed to use the
Time Warp
as we originally requested.'

'You can't do that without our cooperation. Forty shuttle flights. What will you do if we refuse?'

She swallowed. 'We'll send everybody back on the shuttle we have. Then my husband and I will ride the
Time Warp
to the ground. Crash-land near the southern pole.'

'So you think we will give you the ship rather than let you kill yourselves?'

'Well, it won't be too comfortable for you, either. When the antimatter fuel explodes, the resulting vapor will blanket Middle Finger in clouds. There will be no spring or summer, this year or next.'

'The third year,' I said from behind her, 'will be blizzard and then floods.'

'We can't allow that to happen,' he said. 'So all right. We accede to your demands.'

We looked at each other. 'That's it?'

'You give us no choice.' Two data screens lit up. 'The launch schedule you see here was adapted from your original timetable.'

'So this is all according to plan,' Marygay said. 'Your plan.'

'A contingency,' he said, 'in case you allowed us no alternative.'

She laughed. 'You couldn't just let us go.'

'Of course not. The Whole Tree forbade that.'

'Hold it,' I said. 'You're disobeying the Whole Tree?'

'Not at all. It is
you
who are defying it. We are only taking a reasonable course of action. Reaction, to your declaration of intent to wholesale murder.'

'And the Whole Tree predicted this would happen?'

'Oh, no.' For the first time, he allowed himself a small smile. 'Men on Earth don't know you as well as we who grew up with you.'

The sheriff tried to explain what he knew or could deduce about the rationale for their plan. It was like a theological argument in somebody else's religion.

'The Whole Tree is not infallible,' he said. 'It represents a huge and well-informed consensus. In this case, though, it was … it was like a thousand people taking a vote, where only two or three were
actually
well-informed.'

We were all at a big table in the dining hall, drinking bad tea made from concentrate. 'That's what I don't understand,' Charlie said. 'It seems to me that would happen more often than not.' He was directly across from the sheriff, staring intently, his chin in his palm.

'No, this was a special case.' He shifted uncomfortably. 'Men on Earth think they know humans. They live and work with them all their lives. But they're not at all the same kind of people as you are.

'They or their ancestors chose to come to Earth, even though it meant becoming part of a small minority, outside of Man's mainstream culture.'

'Trading independence for comfort,' I said. 'The illusion of independence,'

'It's not that simple. They live more comfortably than you – or we – do, but what's more important is that they deeply wanted to come
home
. People who chose Middle Finger turned their backs on home.

'So when a Man on Earth thinks about humans, there's a profoundly different composite picture. If you took one hundred fifty Earth humans and shot them forty thousand years into the future … it would be cruel. Like snatching a child from its parents, and abandoning it in a foreign land.'

'That's nice,' Charlie said. 'The Whole Tree's decision was based on concern for our happiness.'

'Concern for your sanity,' the sheriff said.

'The huge expense of the enterprise wasn't a factor.'

Not a large one.' He made a circular gesture, indicating everything around us. 'This ship represents a lot of wealth in terms of our economy. But it's not worth much in Earth terms. There are thousands of them sitting empty, parked in orbit around the Sun. This wouldn't be a big project if people on Earth had proposed it.'

'But they never would,' I said. 'They're stay-at-homes.'

He shrugged. 'How many people on Middle Finger think you're crazy?'

'More than half, I guess.' We only had 1,600 volunteers out of 30,000 people. 'The younger half of my family does.'

He nodded slowly. 'But weren't they going along?'

'Bill, especially, in spite of thinking we're crazy.'

'I understand that,' he said. 'So am I.'

'What?'

'We asked that you take a Man and a Tauran.'

The Tauran spoke up for the first time. 'We are they,' it growled.

Book Three
The Book of Exodus

Thirteen

The timetable had called for fifteen days' loading before launch, but that presupposed everybody being packed and waiting. Instead, they'd had two weeks to rearrange their lives, knowing that the expedition had been scotched.

We lost 12 out of the original 150. Replacing them was not as simple as asking for volunteers, since they'd been chosen with an eye toward a certain demographic mix and assortment of skills.

Forty thousand years from now, we might come back to an unpopulated planet. We wanted our descendants to have a chance at civilization.

We didn't have unlimited leisure for revision, juggling the shuttle schedule while we found replacements. Word had of course gone to Earth about our insurrection, so ten months from now there might be some response. If they had thousands of ships at their disposal, a few of them might be faster than the
Time Warp
; a lot faster.

A hundred fifty people were sufficient for a town-hall kind of democracy. We'd worked out the structure a couple of months before. There was an elected Council of five, each one of whom would serve a year as mayor, and then retire, a new councilor being elected each year.

So we worked as fast as we could, without cutting corners. Fortunately, none of the elected officials were among the ones who decided to stay home, so our little bureaucracy was intact. We probably had to make more decisions in a couple of weeks than we would in two years aboard the ship.

But it was a ship as well as a town, and the ship's captain had authority over the mayor and council. Both Marygay and I were nominated for captain, along with Anita Szydhowska, who had been with me in the Sade-138 campaign. Anita stepped down in favor of us, and I stepped down in favor of Marygay, and no one objected. Both Anita and I were elected councilors. The other three were Chance Delany, Stephen Funk, and Sage Ten. Diana Alsever-Moore was nominated but declined, arguing that as the ship's only doctor, she wouldn't have time for a hobby.

It only took twenty days to get everyone aboard the ship. I wondered whether anyone else, watching the shuttles leave for the last time, had the image – old-fashioned even in my youth – of the last ropes being thrown back onto the dock, as a great ship left its safe harbor.

The last shuttle was supposed to have our children aboard. It was one short. Sara floated over to us and wordlessly handed me a sheet of paper.

I love you but I never did intend to come with you. Sara talked me into pretending that I would, so that we would stop wasting time fighting. It was dishonest but I think I agree it was the best thing.

I'm somewhere in Centrus. Don't try to find me.

If I was not loyal to you I could have stopped the whole thing the day we left you at the sheriff's. But I guess we all have to be crazy in our own way.

Have a good 40,000 years.

Love,
Bill

The blood had drained from Marygay's face. I handed her the note, but of course she knew what was in it.