by Bobby Adair
She nods.
I smile viciously, “You’re good at it, I’ll give you that.”
“I’ve been at it awhile,” she tells me proudly.
“So,” I decide it’s time to find out what the truth behind all these layers of charades really is, “what have you decided about me? What’s going on here?”
Spitz leans forward, “We’ve been hiding nothing. We’ve been honest with you.”
“As I said,” starts Gustafson, “you could be hiding anything in that mind of yours. We had to see for ourselves if we could find that ‘anything.’”
“And you couldn’t?”
Gustafson shakes her head.
“Then why trust me?” I ask.
“It’s not you who we trust,” Gustafson tells me. “It’s Phil.”
I laugh.
“Phil is unique.”
I’m still laughing as I agree.
Gustafson doesn’t see the humor in it. “Phil might be the most talented bug-head I’ve ever come across. He and the implant have melded to a degree I’ve never seen. He seems completely comfortable binding telepathically to your Gray. What’s more, he can telepathically link with a human to any degree the human can. You see, we’re the weak link when it comes to Phil’s telepathic abilities, he can do so much more than any of us.”
“Okay.” I knew Phil was talented. Perhaps our long, difficult relationship blinded me to just how much so. “More than anything, Phil and Penny are the reasons we were able to destroy five Trog cruisers.”
“Interesting,” responds Gustafson. “Phil and Penny say pretty much the same thing about you.”
“I did my part.” I slump in my chair and eye the pair across the table. I’m feeling outfoxed, and I don’t like it. “So this telepathic linking, you have people who can link with Phil a lot more than I can?”
“By way of analogy,” answers Gustafson, “if you were to recognize Grays as the premier experts at telepathy and you were to rank them on a scale of one to ten, nearly all Grays would rank above seven. The young ones and the dullards would be the sevens. Most others would be in the eight or nine range, and some would rank at ten. Trogs with an implant—and all we’ve encountered so far have implants—come in around five and run up through seven, with some going as high as eight. At least from what we’ve been able to determine. The best person I have on staff—Elizabeth—ranks around five, maybe six on a good day. A handful of us on the station rank above four. Most of my staff comes in at three, though we have plenty of rookies at two who show promise. Dr. Spitz here, along with most humans, aren’t even on the scale.”
“Where does Phil rank?” The suspense is sarcastically killing me.
“Easily seven.” Gustafson looks jealous but quickly hides it. “He could be eight. More testing would tell us for sure.”
As good as the average Gray.
Good for Phil.
I’m curious. “You know what I’m going to ask.”
Spitz blurts out a laugh. “One doesn’t have to be telepathic to know that you want to know where you fall on the scale.”
Gustafson looks at me, silently coaxing me for a guess.
“Two?” I shrug. “Two and a half? I don’t even know what the criteria are.”
“Phil has memories of you when you’re not actively thinking about using your implant, and you do some things that suggest a six.” Gustafson sighs. “Unfortunately, you spend so much energy building your mental blocks to keep the Grays out of your mind you stunt yourself. He says there are more elegant ways to hide your secrets from other telepaths, yet you’ve never been open to any suggestions.”
I find myself on the defensive about Phil’s assessment.
I scan my memories for any cryptic conversations Phil and I might have had through the years where he tried to tutor me into a better method of controlling my mental privacy. I sigh. The exercise is frustrating, it seems like half the things Phil and I ever talked about were cryptic. That’s just how things were when dealing with Phil. “So what’s my day-to-day number, then? Four?”
“Your first guess was right,” answers Gustafson, “Two, two and a half. You could work at it.”
“Yeah.” I shrug. I don’t have the first clue as to how to do that. “What else did Phil tell you?”
“Not so much to tell,” clarifies Gustafson. “Elizabeth—the six I mentioned previously, the girl on my staff—connected with Phil, and he shared much of your history with her.”
That stops me cold. “Like Phil was trying to do with the Tick, read the history of his memories. So you know all of mine and Phil’s dirty laundry?”
“Not all of it, I’m sure,” answers Gustafson. “If Elizabeth was on the same level as Phil, then maybe. Sadly, she’s only had glimpses. She’s seen some memories fully from beginning to end. For others, she had to ask questions to understand the context. It was by this process we learned Phil was a person we could trust. He held nothing back, at least that Elizabeth could see.”
“And how did I fit in?”
“Phil trusts you,” responds Gustafson, as she pushes strands of hair behind her ear again. “The psychologist in me deduced when his younger brother died, that bond transferred to you as a way for Phil to deal with the loss. I wouldn’t say he also hates you but—”
“Hate?” I can’t believe it. Or, I don’t want to. He has cause.
“Perhaps ‘hate’ is too strong a word. Phil fosters a host of unresolved grievances, the most egregious I need not mention.”
“His wife?” I make it sound like a guess, but I know.
“That’s the most obvious.” Gustafson leans back in her chair, and her fingers fidget over the screen on her d-pad. “Even Phil believes it’s the most significant of his grievances. My guess is it’s the combination of a thousand times when you didn’t treat him as an equal, when you looked down on him, or disrespected him in front of others. Those things add up in a relationship.”
“Jesus, you sound like a marriage counselor.”
Gustafson cocks her head. “A relationship is a relationship whether there’s a bond of marriage or not.”
“So despite all of this affection and animosity going on in Phil’s head, you decided you could trust me anyway?”
Gustafson nods. “Phil trusts you. He’s loyal to you. He’ll follow wherever you lead. Both of you have the same goal, though if it were entirely up to him, he’d go about it a different way.”
“Which way is that?”
“Can’t say.” Gustafson looks around at the air.
“Why?”
“Phil doesn’t seem to have that answer. Maybe it’s the reason he relies on you, because you do. You worked out a way to contact the Free Army. You set up your network of insurgents among your friends at the grav factory. All of you trained together, and those of you who lived through the Arizona Massacre mutinied just as you committed to do. On many levels, your plan succeeded. Phil’s a follower. You’re a leader.”
I laugh at that. It’s something I still feel like I’m faking my way through.
“I didn’t need a summary of Phil’s memories to tell me that,” says Gustafson. “I saw it myself. You need some experience, though. You need confidence.”
I defer to a bromide response. “Doesn’t everybody?”
Gustafson agrees.
“So your offer to go to the colonies, was that the real deal?” I ask.
Spitz nods.
“It’s as much for you as for Phil.” She catches herself and admits, “In truth, it’s for Phil. We need him. We can’t afford to lose him navigating an assault ship in a losing war. He can teach us so much, maybe show every human with the talent how to be as proficient with the implant as he is. The benefit of that for the human race would be immeasurable.”
“Phil didn’t agree to go to the colony?” I’m surprised. It sounds like the kind of thing he’d jump at.
“Like I said,” answers Gustafson. “Phil is
loyal to you, and Penny, and Jill Fix and the rest of your people. He won’t abandon you to die in this war if he can do something to stop it.” Gustafson’s face turns pensive. “Maybe it’s tied to the trauma of losing his brother.”
“Or he’s just a good person,” I argue.
Gustafson apologizes. “A pitfall of my education, I’m afraid, distilling life’s choices to oversimplified reactions to childhood trauma.”
Chapter 29
Spitz walks me down a broad corridor, one of the many my guards followed when I first arrived. I have no guards now. I’m not masked. People, hundreds of them, are going about their business, some hurrying, others strolling. Some wear coveralls like they’re on their way to work or coming home. Others are dressed in casual clothes, the kind I’ve seen on earth.
“How many colonists have made the journey to the worlds you’ve discovered?” I ask.
“Worlds?” Spitz asks. “I don’t think I said anything about having more than one colony.”
“Gustafson slipped once and used the plural.”
Spitz shrugs.
“What does it hurt to answer?” I ask. “Like you said, the galaxy is a big place, with what, a hundred billion stars? Who knows how many millions or billions of habitable planets? Does it matter if I know how many contain human colonists?”
“If you choose to join us out in the colonies, we’ll tell you all you want to know. Besides, what good would the information do you? The risk of harm to us is greater if you fall into the Grays’ hands and they figure out how to extract your secrets.”
“I understand the risk, but you have to know the information would help me make my choice. I don’t want to get dropped in the new Roanoke, if you know what I mean.”
“You mean the British colony in North Carolina that disappeared?” Spitz looks at me quizzically. “Is that what you mean?”
I nod. What else could I mean?
“Do you think we’d leave a hundred people on a strange planet a few dozen light years away and ask them to fend for themselves?”
“How would I know? I just met you people today.”
Spitz laughs. “I suppose you have a point.” He stops and turns to me, putting on his most sincere expression. “I assure you, we have no intention of abandoning our colonies. We explained why we’re doing this, right? To save humanity.”
“What if things go badly here?” I ask. “What if you have no choice?”
“Fair question.” Spitz starts walking again. “I’ll tell you this much. We have multiple colonies. Just over a thousand people live in our smallest.” Spitz’s eyes twinkle. “Can you imagine, a whole world with only a thousand people there to shape it?”
I can imagine that—well, I believe I can. In truth, I probably have only storybook inklings of what life like that would be. Probably more drudgery and boredom than adventure, although adventure would always be waiting just beyond the wall.
The wall?
Would they have a wall?
So many millions of questions come to mind.
“Our largest colony,” Spitz is full of pride, “houses more people than our base here on Iapetus.”
“And I don’t know how many people are here,” I counter.
“Don’t be contrary. You have an idea of the size of this place. We have a fleet of vessels that make trading and supply runs between the worlds. It’s not a large fleet, but it exists so the colonies can support one another.”
“And act as a lifeboat in case things turn sour,” I guess.
“Exactly that,” confesses Spitz. “We’ve built and supplied countless ships for every purpose you can imagine, both commercial and military. I think you’d be surprised by our degree of success. It’s time for humanity to spread across the universe.”
“And abandon our home planet.” It slipped out on a puff of pent-up bitterness. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound harsh.”
Spitz is unfazed. “Collectively, we chose to devote our resources to saving people. Though I’ve been in favor of taking a more active role in the war here, I know if we had, we wouldn’t be where we are today on colonization. In fact, I believe if Iapetus were to come to a bad end, the colonies are self-sufficient—not individually so—but working together they can survive.”
Spitz comes to a stop, and the twinkle returns to his eyes. “No matter what horrors befell earth as a result of the Grays’ arrival thirty years ago, mankind has stepped through the threshold to a dream we’ve had since we put our first human on the moon, that of colonizing the stars, and that, Mr. Kane, ensures the survival of our species more than anything we’ll ever do while stuck on one planet. In fact, the siege, and now this war with the Trogs, underscores that fact. A race who lives on just one planet is doomed. Eventually, something will happen, whether an alien invasion, an unfortunately proximate pulsar, or even a significant asteroid impact—any of those could end in our extinction. On multiple planets, the odds of extinction turn astronomically small. I don’t know if we’ll ever have any impact on this war. I don’t know that we’ll ever be able to rescue the billions who still live on earth. I do know that if they are the price humanity has to pay to guarantee its continued existence, then it’s worth it.
Chapter 30
Spitz’s words leave me cold and wanting to point a blame finger.
They shouldn’t, though.
Sacrificing the few to save the many is the essence of the choice I make every time I take my soldiers into a fight. Why should the colossal calculus of sacrificing earth’s four billion survivors to save the trillions of future humans be any different?
Because nothing is certain.
The beating hearts of the people who fight by my side are reality.
The hundreds, maybe thousands of anonymous orange suits in the Free Army—few of whom I’ve met, many who despise me—are my brothers and sisters through a bond I don’t fully understand.
Every man and woman in the SDF is a comrade, in their hearts, if not in their actions. A certainty I’ve clung to my entire life. It’s the impetus for every step I take down my mutinous path. Like Spitz, I believe they’ll aim their railguns at their oppressors when they finally know they aren’t alone.
On that day, a conflagration of freedom will burn across earth and every vacuous rock in the solar system, leaving the ashes of North Koreans, Grays, and Trogs in its wake.
That dream has been the fire in my beating heart all these years.
Can I abandon it to take the easy road out to the colonies and a future any kid on earth would salivate over?
I thought I knew when I had no real choice to make.
Dr. Spitz leads me into an airlock. When we come out the other side, I see we’re in the hangar where Penny docked the Rusty Turd. The ship reminds me of my first taste of freedom. It reminds me of the price so many of my soldiers have already paid.
I can’t run away.
I look around and spot the Turd. It’s buried in a structure of scaffolds and industrial lifts. Mechanics swarm all over it. “What are they doing?”
“Repairing,” Spitz answers. “Enhancing.”
Enhancing?
“I need my ship.” Shaking my head, I turn to face Spitz, attempting to engage him in a battle of the wills. “I don’t know what Phil is going to choose, but I can’t stay here. I have to finish scouting—”
Spitz raises his hands.
Tamping down my concerns as I look back at my ship, I tell him, “We’re planning an assault. You may not have any respect for the Free Army, and that’s okay, but they need to gather intel to make their attack successful.”
“It’ll be a week before your ship is ready,” says Spitz.
“A week?” Despite the damage I know we sustained to our drive array, I don’t believe it. The techs back on the Potato managed their repairs and minor upgrades in a few days. “You’re delaying us on purpose so you’ll have time to convince Phil to go to the colonies.”
“Some things are out of my hands,” admits Spitz.
Violent thoughts tempt me to do something stupid.
They call stupid acts stupid for a reason.
“Tell them to finish what repairs they can, and then tell them to get off my ship. We’re leaving tomorrow.” It’s a totally arbitrary date, but looking at the current semi-disassembled state of my ship, I’m guessing there’s no way it can be ready to fly in any small number of hours.”
“Impossible,” Spitz says calmly.
“Who can make it possible?”
“No one, now.” He starts walking toward the ship. “To be honest, had we just repaired the drive array, we might have had you back into space in a few days.” He glances at me to take my measure before he proceeds. “Your guess is correct. I was directed to delay you. Lucky for you and all your people, the method I chose to delay you was to enhance your ship. My apologies, but we all have to answer to someone.”
I’m trying to guess whether yelling at him will hurry things along.
“Now that the enhancements have begun, it’ll take nearly as long to put your ship back to its original state as it would to proceed to completion. So, you can yell at me if you want, you can go and meet with Dr. Gustafson and voice your complaint to her. Perhaps you may even meet with Secretary Kimura. None of that will change anything. No physically possible path exists for completing the work on your ship in less than a week.” He points. “You see, we have as many techs as possible working to get it done as quickly as possible.”
I huff as I walk, and I try to estimate the number of people at work on the Rusty Turd. A hundred? And more inside I can’t see.
Anticipating my next question, Spitz says, “Your communications man, Jablonsky, your pilot Penny, and your sergeant Brice have already left to complete your scouting mission.”
That does it.
I stop, plant my feet, and put my fists on my hips, because I know if I don’t keep them restrained, I might punch the old man, consequences be damned.
“They’re all fine. They went voluntarily.” Spitz keeps his cool and points toward the ship again. “Phil will help explain.”
