The Razor's Edge

by Seanan McGuire

  The graying man seated by himself just inside the door stood as Raak entered. “You’re Raak Herryn, aren’t you? I’m Sammel Draken. Donnall said you might be here. The club meets downstairs. Take the steps in the back.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You did a tour in the militia, I understand,” offered Draken, not moving aside.

  “I did,” admitted Raak

  “Just one?”

  “One,” confirmed Raak. And that had been because he’d known that the Ascendency bureaucrats preferred to hire teachers who’d served in the militia, not that Raak hadn’t been good enough to make Tech3 in his three years.

  Draken nodded. “Just enough to get by the penguins and puffins. Enjoy yourself at the meeting. The drinks and food are on us.”

  “Who is ‘us?’”

  “The club—Tomorrow Seekers.”

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  Draken shook his head. “Tonight I’m on point.”

  Raak raised his eyebrows.

  “The penguins sometimes visit clubs and other activities they suspect might not view the Ascendency in the most charitable of lights.”

  Raak was still thinking about how Draken had called the black-and-whites penguins as he made his way down the rear steps. He’d no more than stepped through the open door beyond the lower landing than Stannal Ferra called out, “It’s good to see you, Raak. Everyone, that’s Raak Herryn. He teaches at the Collegium.”

  With that, Raak found himself with a dark lager in his hand, half-wondering how anyone had known that was his drink, and half-bemused at the rapid introduction to more than a dozen people he’d never seen before. In fact, the only one he’d known a week earlier was Donnall, who was talking to Raak and a couple whose names Raak had already forgotten, as well as to Jared Garlund, the last person to whom Raak had been introduced.

  “… colony because the Unity can’t build interstellar translation engines and portal transformers without rhenium … and no one’s looking to the future … to what happens to all of us when the rhenium runs out,” continued Donnall, looking from Raak to Jared. “That’s what Stannal thinks we should be doing.”

  “Isn’t that what the Ascendency’s always talking about?” asked Raak.

  “All the peers and their puffins do is talk,” countered Donnall. “What have they done? Do we really have a diversified industrial base here? And how much has been invested in developing Bartolan agriculture—other than the bare minimum. We’re still dependent on the original oil wells drilled near the High Point mines, and we couldn’t build a photovoltaic power system if we wanted to, yet the initial surveys indicated that Bartolan has higher concentrations of rare earth elements than most rocky planets.”

  Raak’s eye drifted past Donnall to the other end of the room where Stannal Ferra stood, taller than almost anyone else, talking to several others, including a tall and muscular woman, and a much smaller and slighter man. Behind Ferra on the wall was a flat screen, on which was displayed a schematic of the government structure on Bartolan, effectively meaning Sanjak City and High Point, and, of course, the geostationary orbit station and the translation station.

  “Now … for the lecture!” Stannal’s voice cut across the murmured hubbub, and everyone immediately turned to face the advocate, who had a laser pointer in his hand.

  Raak blinked, thinking he had missed something as Stannal continued to speak. “As we discussed at the last meeting, the structure of government on Bartolan is based on the dispersed authority model developed by the Unity for all planets that are not completely technologically and environmentally self-sustaining. Bartolan remains below that threshold because several sectors have not been fully developed, including renewable energy and associated power generation and transmission systems, intersystem and interstellar transport technology, and self-defense technology. Under the Unity model, local self-government is not only encouraged, but required, with the exception that all defense and policing powers are exercised in compliance with Unity laws and regulations, in our case, by the black-and-whites and by the militia, under the supervision of the Ascendents who raised the initial investment for the initial colonization and development …”

  Raak could sense a certain tenseness in the long room as Stannal spoke, yet everyone continued to look to the advocate as his laser pointer highlighted various parts of the wall screen. From the corner of his eye, he caught the glimpse of a black-and-white uniform, but, like everyone else in the room, he didn’t look around. He just kept listening.

  “… with the final appeal of all Justiciary decisions residing in the appellate justice of the Sectoral Governor …”

  From a certain release of tension, Raak gathered that the black-and-white had left the immediate room, if not the Pilot, because Stannal continued to lecture for another five minutes before someone gestured.

  “All right,” Stannal announced, “the penguins’ snoops are diverted and hearing the rest of that lecture. Now … I’ll get more to the point.” His smile was wry, but warm. “We have the expertise right here on Bartolan to exceed the Unity thresholds to become a self-governing world. If we could charge Unity customers a fair price for the rhenium the Ascendency pulls out of the High Point mines, we could buy what we need to develop the self-sufficient technology to qualify for independent status under Unity law.”

  “That’s not the problem,” said someone Raak couldn’t see. “We could buy it, but if it’s off-system tech, then we aren’t considered to have developed it.”

  “I stand corrected. What I should have made clear is that we can buy the lower tech equipment that will allow us to build the higher-level systems that qualify. The Ascendency doesn’t allow this. They spend more on bringing in Unity equipment than it would cost us to develop home-grown tech that would qualify. That isn’t the most cost-effective way to extract and refine rhenium, but it is the most effective way to keep control of Bartolan … and maintain comfortable estates in the Ascendency upper valley enclave. If you want the details and figures, talk to Donnal here.”

  After the meeting, Raak walked slowly home, blotting his forehead to keep the sweat from running into his eyes. In late summer, Sanjak City was hot all the time, even at its elevation, and the lowlands were uninhabitable. The heat was one reason for the high-ceilinged thick-walled stone and concrete buildings that dominated Sanjak City, just as the High Point mines were the reason that most of the metal in the city was some form or alloy of copper. As Raak passed the Ascendency Mercantile Exchange, a black-and-white stationed by the door looked at Raak. Raak smiled and nodded. The black-and-white didn’t return the nod.

  Raak was more than glad to step inside the simple concrete apartment, warm but not uncomfortably so, but far too small for more than a couple, another reason why he and Adryna hadn’t yet thought about having a child.

  “How was the club meeting?” asked Adryna, handing him a cool towel with which to blot away the sweat.

  “Ferra’s interesting, I’ll say that. I learned a few things.”

  “Do you like him?”

  “I don’t know. He knows what he’s talking about, and he’s very polite, and he certainly knows how the Ascendents and their puffins operate …”

  That had been the first meeting of more than a dozen that Raak attended, all of which were remarkably similar in structure, although Stannal Ferra wasn’t always the one talking. Sometimes a penguin showed up, and sometimes there was still a “lecture” even when one didn’t, suggesting to Raak that an Ascendency informer was present, although no one mentioned that to him.

  Donnal occasionally stopped by the collegium or the apartment to talk, and every so often Raak and Adryna had dinner with Donnal, usually at Lugh’s, but never at the Pilot. On those occasions, Donnal never mentioned Ferra or the Seekers. So Raak didn’t either.

  Months later, near the end of the fourth and last month of fall, Raak attended another of the meetings, near the end of which Donnal joined him.

  “Can you stay
for a drink with Stannal and me?”

  “If it’s not too long. I didn’t tell Adryna I’d be terribly late.”

  “It won’t be that long.”

  Moments after the room cleared, Raak was sitting at a corner table upstairs with Stannal and Donnal.

  “I’d be interested in your opinion of how things are going here in the City,” Stannal began. “Your folks were indentures, weren’t they?”

  “I’m sure you know that,” returned Raak mildly. “They died in the heat wave of ’19. That was when I was in the militia.”

  “They died and so did a number of others because the Ascendency didn’t want to increase the power grid capacity enough to deal with a two hundred year heat wave. We all know that. The Ascendents only increased the grid capacity because a Unity monitoring team happened to be on orbit station at the time. Do you think we can count on that the next time there’s a heat event … or a sand hurricane sweeps out of the lowlands?”

  “Probably not,” admitted Raak.

  “The High Point range is a fluke of Galactic nature,” interjected Donnal. “Kilometers and kilometers of nearly pure copper ore with ten times the concentration of rhenium found anywhere in the galaxy, so far anyway, and we’re sweating our asses off half the year and freezing the other half—”

  “What Donnal is suggesting,” said Ferra smoothly, “is that the Ascendency doesn’t exactly have our best interests at heart.”

  Raak nodded.

  “Would you be interested in doing something about it?”

  “I might be,” replied Raak. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Finding a way to replace the Ascendency and then to obtain independent planetary status in the Unity.”

  Raak couldn’t have said he was surprised that Ferra was planning a revolution, although ‘replacing the Ascendency’ was a far more genteel way of phrasing it. “Do you think it can be done without too much violence?”

  “That depends on how well we plan and how violent the Ascendents become.”

  Raak thought about his parents … and his sister. Then he nodded.

  “We won’t need much from you right now, but you have militia experience.”

  “What Stannal means,” said Donnal, “is that, if things do get violent, he’ll need protection, and we’ll need someone we can count on. It wouldn’t hurt if you feel out some fellows who you trust and who share the same ideas, without really saying anything.”

  “That might take a little time.”

  “Which is why we wanted to talk to you now,” replied Ferra. “If you need anything, you know where to find Donnal.”

  * * *

  Raak was still thinking about it the next week. That was when the fliers and the electronic messages began to appear.

  DOES THE ASCENDENCY CARE ABOUT YOU? DID THE ASCENDENTS CARE ABOUT THE HEAT-KILLED IN ’19? OR THE MINERS SUFFOCATED IN ’23?

  WHY DON’T WE GET BASIC TECH SO WE CAN BUILD OUR OWN HIGHER TECH?

  When Raak saw the videos of the sweeping vistas and the grounds of the estates of the Ascendents in the high sheltered valley west of Sanjak City, he found his teeth clenched as he thought about his parents dying of heatstroke while he’d been stationed at the mines. Then the transmission blanked, and when he left the Collegium to walk back to their small apartment, there were penguins on almost every corner. They carried stunners, the kind, Raak knew, that had lethal settings. Raak forced himself to smile pleasantly.

  There were no more meetings of the Tomorrow Seekers, or more likely, none that Raak knew anything about. But the messages kept appearing, despite frequent comm system outages and shut-downs.

  Two weeks later, a group of women marched down Center Street with placards proclaiming AN INFIRMARY IS NOT A HOSPITAL and WE WORK FOR YOUR WEALTH, GIVE US DECENT HEALTH.

  The penguins rounded them up, but released them a week later. All of them were bruised—all over—and one of them was Adryna’s friend Elysaan.

  Raak came into the apartment to hear her sobbing. He stopped and listened.

  “… can’t tell Rory … awful … they took turns … told us that … next time … do the same … except … we … wouldn’t … come back …”

  Raak swallowed … and slipped back outside, knowing that Elysaan wouldn’t want to know that he’d heard. He wouldn’t tell Rory, either.

  He was still standing outside the building, waiting for Elysaan to leave, when a penguin screamer hurled itself down the street toward three men standing at the next corner. The screamer stopped and two penguins stepped out.

  “Break it up, you three. Off the street! Now!”

  The men turned slowly, hands in the air.

  “Off the street!”

  Two immediately hurried toward the nearest apartment entrance. The third did not hurry. He walked deliberately after the other two. The penguins stunned him. Then they got back into screamer and ran over his body.

  Raak swallowed, but flattened himself against the wall until the screamer was out of sight.

  * * *

  “They stunned him and just ran over him?” asked the young man.

  “They also abused Elysaan and more women than anyone knows,” replied the older man. “That was the real beginning of the revolution. Then all the commlinks in Sanjak City and High Point were shut down, and the militia and penguins began building-to-building searches, just about the time that the ice winds began to whip through the streets.”

  * * *

  On the worst of days, the Collegium was closed to students. On one of those days, Karrl appeared as Raak was correcting student work, all done by hand, now that the comm systems were inoperative.

  Raak looked at his friend. Karrl had deep circles under his bloodshot eyes. “What happened to you?”

  “Just come with me. Please.”

  Raak put away the papers and pulled on his hooded thermal and gloves. The two walked outside, into the teeth of the wind. “What is it?”

  “Carryn. You’ll see.”

  Ten blocks east of the collegium was the infirmary, what passed for a medical center in Sanjak City. The penguins guarding the doors raised their stunners.

  “I’m here to see my wife.”

  “The center’s closed to anyone but the injured and health techs, townie.”

  “But she’s my wife,” Karrl protested, moving toward the door.

  Raak saw the stunner come up. He immediately moved, putting an elbow into the penguin’s throat, then threw the suffocating black-and-white into the second penguin. Before Karrl even looked at Raak, both penguins were down, one dead, one dying.

  “We need to get out of here,” said Raak, removing both stunners and noting that both were set to lethal.

  “But Carryn … you should see her … They beat her… just for carrying a placard … for wanting better healthcare.”

  “She’s better there than with us. And we won’t be in any better shape if we don’t get out of here. Now! Are you coming?”

  “Where?”

  “We’ll have to see.” Raak turned and walked swiftly away, leaning into the wind. He still couldn’t quite believe what he’d done.

  Karrl scurried after Raak. “Why did you do that?”

  “To save your life. Their stunners are set on lethal.” Raak had reacted, not thought. He hadn’t known the stunner setting before he’d attacked, only that he’d sensed something was wrong, very wrong.

  “Lethal?”

  “Lethal,” replied Raak.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To find the Seekers.”

  “The Seekers? What do you know about them?”

  “Not all that much. I’ve been to some of their lectures. I do know that, right now, I trust them a lot more than the Ascendents and the penguins … or the militia.”

  “But you were militia.”

  “That’s why I’d trust the Seekers more.” Not that Raak didn’t have concerns about Ferra and the Seekers, although those concerns were because he really knew so little abo
ut Ferra, except that the advocate usually represented small people against the Ascendency and sometimes even prevailed. The rumor was that he was an Ascendent’s bastard, according to what little Raak had been able to discover beyond the obvious.

  Raak found Donnal, and Donnal led the three of them to a tunnel, one left over from the hurried construction of Sanjak City. That tunnel led to another, a much newer tunnel, which led, in turn to what could only have been called a bunker.

  Stannal Ferra looked up from the small screen displayed on the table before him. “I didn’t expect to see you and a friend quite so soon.”

  “The penguins beat his wife nearly to death. When we went to see her, they pulled a stunner on him, set to lethal. I took care of them.”

  Ferra nodded. “What about the stunners?”

  Raak lifted the thermal to reveal the two.

  “Good. Weapons are always useful.”

  “Is there any way I can find out about Carryn? My wife?” asked Karrl.

  Ferra looked to Donnal. “Can your commhacks tap the med-systems without setting off alerts?”

  “Might take a little while.”

  “Then try.” The Seeker leader gestured. “There’s hot tea, coffee, or cider in the next module. Help yourself while Donnal finds out what he can.”

  Raak led Karrl to the narrow space. “Coffee?”

  “Cider, if it’s hot.”

  Raak had tea. Immigrants from elsewhere said that Bartolan tea was the worst they’d ever tasted, most likely because the plants spent most of their lifecycle in artificial light, given the vagaries of the Bartolan climate. To Raak, it tasted fine, certainly better than coffee.

  Raak had sipped half the mug when Donnal stepped through the narrow opening. One look at Donnal’s face and Raak knew it wasn’t good.

  So did Karrl. “How bad? Will she walk again?”