by John Scalzi
“Is there another option?” I asked. “If we ask nicely, will the Conclave just let us pack up and go?”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Rybicki said. “I’m saying that the Colonial Union has kept you hidden because we needed to keep you hidden. Now we need to let the Conclave know where you are. We have something planned. And once we spring our little surprise, then there’ll be no point keeping either you or the Conclave a secret from the colonies. Because the Conclave will have collapsed, and you will have been the key.”
“You need to tell me how,” I said.
“Fine,” Rybicki said, and did.
“How are you?” I asked Jane, in the Black Box.
“I don’t want to knife people anymore, if that’s what you’re asking,” Jane said, and tapped her forehead, signifying the BrainPal nestled behind it. “I’m still not happy about this.”
“How could you not know it was there?” I asked.
“BrainPals are remotely activated,” Jane said. “I couldn’t have turned it on myself. Rybicki’s ship sent out a search signal; the signal woke up the BrainPal. Now it’s on. Listen, I’ve gone through the files Hickory gave me.”
“All of them?” I asked.
“Yes,” Jane said. “I’ve been completely made over and have the BrainPal. I can go back to Special Forces processing speed.”
“And?” I asked.
“They check out,” Jane said. “Hickory has video and documentation from Conclave sources, which is suspect. But he has corroborating material for each case, from Obin sources, from the races whose colonies were removed and from the Colonial Union, too.”
“They could all be faked,” I said. “It could be a monumental hoax.”
“No,” Jane said. “The Colonial Union files have a verification hash in the metatext. I ran them through the BrainPal. They’re genuine.”
“Certainly gives you an appreciation for ol’ Hickory, doesn’t it,” I said.
“It does,” Jane said. “He wasn’t lying when he said the Obin wouldn’t send just anyone to be with Zoë. Although from what I can see from these files, it’s Dickory who is the superior of the two.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Just when you think you know a guy. Or gal. Or creature of indeterminate gender, which is what it is.”
“It’s not indeterminate,” Jane said. “It’s both.”
“What about this General Gau,” I said. “Do your files have anything on him?”
“Some,” Jane said. “Just the basics. He’s Vrenn, and what he says in the extended tape of ours appears to be correct; after the battle with the Kies he began agitating to create the Conclave. It didn’t go over at first. He was thrown into prison for political agitation. But then the Vrenn ruler met an unfortunate end and the general was released by the next regime.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Assassination?” I asked.
“No,” Jane said. “Chronic sleep disorder. Fell asleep while eating and fell face forward on his dinner knife. Penetrated the brain. Died instantly. The general probably could have ruled Vrennu but decided to attempt the Conclave instead. He still doesn’t rule Vrennu. It wasn’t even one of the Conclave’s founding members.”
“When I was talking to Rybicki, he said that the Conclave was a pyramid scheme,” I said. “Some of the races at the top were getting the benefits and those at the bottom were getting pissed on.”
“Maybe,” Jane said. “From what I saw in the files the first colony worlds the Conclave opened up were populated by relatively few races. But whether that was indicative of some races getting an advantage, or of matching the races to the planet, is not something I could tell you. Even if it is the former, it’s not any different than what’s happening here. This colony is entirely settled by the oldest human colonies, the ones that existed before the Colonial Union. Ethnically and economically they’re nothing like the rest of the colonies.”
“Do you think the Conclave is a threat to us?” I asked Jane.
“Of course I do,” Jane said. “These files make it clear that the Conclave will destroy a colony that doesn’t surrender. Their mode of operation is always the same: Fill the sky with starships and have every single one fire on the colony. Major cities wouldn’t survive that, much less a colony. Roanoke would be vaporized instantly.”
“But do you think it’s likely?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Jane said. “I have better data than I did before, but the data are still incomplete. We’re missing the better part of a year of information, and I don’t think we’re going to get any more. Not from the Colonial Union, anyway. I can tell you right now I’m not cleared to see the Colonial Union files that Hickory gave me. And no matter what, I’m not inclined to surrender the colony without a fight. Did you tell Rybicki what we know?”
“No,” I said. “And I don’t think we should tell him what we know, either. At least not yet.”
“You don’t trust him,” Jane said.
“Let’s just say I have concerns,” I said. “Rybicki didn’t go out of his way to offer up anything, either. I asked him if he thought the Conclave would let us just walk away from this planet if we wanted to, and he suggested that they wouldn’t.”
“He lied to you,” Jane said.
“He chose to respond differently than total honesty would dictate,” I said. “I’m not sure that’s exactly a lie.”
“You don’t see that as a problem,” Jane said.
“I see it as tactical,” I said. Jane smiled at the reversal of our earlier conversation. “But it also suggests to me that we may not want to swallow every line he gives us. We’ve been maneuvered before. I don’t doubt we’re being maneuvered again.”
“You sound like Trujillo,” Jane said.
“I wish I did sound like Trujillo,” I said. “He started off thinking all this was about a political scuffle he was having with the Secretary of Colonization. At this point, that seems adorably quaint. Our situation is like a puzzle box, Jane. Every time I think I know what’s going on, suddenly there’s another layer of complications. I just want to get this damn thing solved.”
“We don’t have enough information to solve it,” Jane said. “All of Hickory’s information checks out, but it’s old and we don’t know whether the Conclave policies have changed, or whether they’re solidifying their power or falling apart. The Colonial Union hasn’t been forthcoming with us, but I can’t tell if that was malicious or if it was choosing what information to provide us so we could do our job without distraction. Both the Conclave and the Colonial Union have an agenda. But neither agenda is clear from any of the data we have, and we’re stuck in the middle.”
“There’s a word for that,” I said. “Pawn.”
“Whose pawn, is the question,” Jane said.
“I think I know,” I said. “Let me tell you the latest wrinkle.”
“I can think of about a dozen different ways that could go wrong,” Jane said, after I finished.
“Same here,” I said. “And I’d be willing to bet they’re not the same dozen.”
TEN
A week after arriving in the Roanoke sky, the CUS Sacajawea headed for Phoenix, carrying with it 190 of the former crew of the Magellan. Fourteen crew members stayed behind; two had married colonists in the interim, another one was pregnant and not wanting to face her husband, one suspected there was a warrant waiting for him if he returned to Phoenix, and the other ten simply wanted to stay. Another two crew members also stayed behind; they had died, one through a heart attack and another through a drunken misadventure with farm machinery. Captain Zane had said his good-byes to all his living remaining crew, promised he’d find a way to get them their back pay, and then lit out. He was a good man, but I didn’t blame him for wanting to be back in CU space.
When the Sacajawea returned to Phoenix, the Magellan crew members were not allowed to go home. Roanoke had been a largely unexplored colony world; its flora, fauna and diseases were unknown and potentially lethal to the unexposed.
The entire crew was to be quarantined in a wing of the CDF medical facilities at Phoenix Station for a standard month. Needless to say the Magellan crew came close to rioting at the news. A compromise was reached: The Magellan crew members would remain in quarantine, but each would be allowed to contact a small number of loved ones on the condition that loved ones kept quiet about the crew’s return until the CU officially released the news that the lost colony of Roanoke had been found. Everyone, crew members and family, happily agreed to the terms.
Needless to say, word of the Magellan’s crews’ return leaked instantly. News media and colonial governments who tried to learn more were met with official denials from the CU government and unofficial warnings that publishing the news would lead to impressively negative consequences; the story officially remained buried. But word spread among the families of the Magellan crew, and from them to friends and colleagues, and from there to the crews of other civilian and military spaceships. The story was quietly confirmed by members of the Sacajawea crew, who, despite having landed on Roanoke and all having been exposed to members of the Magellan crew, were not under quarantine themselves.
The Colonial Union does not have many allies in known space, but it has a few; soon enough the crews of allied ships heard of the return of the Magellan crew as well. These crews manned their ships and traveled to other ports, some of which were not at all friendly to the Colonial Union, and some of which belonged to members of the Conclave. It was there that some of these crew members transmuted their knowledge of the return of the Magellan crew into ready cash. It was no secret that the Conclave was looking for the lost colony of Roanoke; it was likewise no secret that the Conclave was happy to pay for reliable information.
Some of those who volunteered information found themselves encouraged by the Conclave, in the form of genuinely unspeakable amounts of wealth, to discover just where in the universe the Magellan crew had been all this time. This information would be difficult to come by, which is why the reward was so unimaginably high. But as it happened, shortly after the Sacajawea returned to Phoenix Station, its assistant navigator was fired for being intoxicated at his post. The officer now found himself on a blacklist; he would never again travel the stars. A fear of destitution plus a desire for petty revenge caused this former navigator to let it be known that he was in possession of information he had heard others would be interested in, and would be willing to share it for a sum he felt would make up for the wrongs he had suffered at the hands of the Colonial Union’s civilian space fleet. He got the sum; he handed over coordinates for the Roanoke colony.
Thus it was, just three days into Roanoke colony’s second year, a single ship appeared in the sky above us. It was the Gentle Star, bearing General Gau, who sent his compliments to me as the colony leader and bade me to meet him to discuss the future of my world. It was the third of Magellan. According to the intelligence estimates of the Colonial Defense Forces, begun before the “leak” was set into motion, General Gau was right on time.
“You have lovely sunsets here,” General Gau said, through a translator device slung on a lanyard. The sun had set some minutes before.
“I’ve heard this line before,” I said.
I had come alone, leaving Jane to manage the anxiety-filled colonists at Croatoan. General Gau’s shuttle had landed a klick from the village, across the stream. There were no homesteads here yet. At the shuttle, a squad of soldiers eyed me as I walked past. Their demeanor suggested they did not consider me much of a threat to the general. They were correct. I had no intention of trying to harm him. I wanted to see how much of him I recognized from the versions of him I had seen on video.
Gau motioned gracefully at my response. “My apologies,” he said. “I don’t mean it to be insincere. Your sunsets actually are lovely.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I can’t take credit for them; I didn’t make this world. But I appreciate the compliment.”
“You’re welcome,” Gau said. “And I am pleased to hear that your government made information about our colony removals available to you. There was some concern that it would not.”
“Really,” I said.
“Oh yes,” Gau said. “We know how tightly the Colonial Union controls the flow of information. We worried that we would arrive here, you would know nothing of us—or know something incomplete—and that lack of information would cause you to do something irrational.”
“Like not surrender the colony,” I said.
“Yes,” Gau said. “Surrendering the colony would be the best course, in our opinion,” Gau said. “Have you ever been in the military, Administrator Perry?”
“I have,” I said. “Colonial Defense Forces.”
Gau looked me over. “You’re not green,” he said.
“Not anymore,” I said.
“I assume that you commanded troops,” Gau said.
“I did,” I said.
“Then you know that it is no shame to surrender when your forces are outnumbered, outgunned and you face an honorable adversary,” Gau said. “One who respects your command of your people and who would treat you as he would expect you to treat his own troops, if the situation were reversed.”
“I regret to say that in my experience in the CDF, the number of opponents we faced who would have taken our surrender was rather small,” I said.
“Yes, well,” Gau said. “An artifact of your own policies, Administrator Perry. Or the policies of the CDF, which you were obliged to follow. You humans are not especially good at taking the surrender of other species.”
“I’ll be willing to make an exception for you,” I said.
“Thank you, Administrator Perry,” Gau said. Even through his translator I could sense his dry amusement. “I don’t believe it will be necessary.”
“I hope you’ll change your mind,” I said.
“I was hoping you might surrender to me,” Gau said. “If you have seen the information on how the Conclave has handled our previous removals, then you know that when colonies surrender to us, we honor their sacrifice. No harm will come to any of your people.”
“I’ve seen how you’ve handled these before—the ones where you’ve not blown up the colony,” I said. “But I’ve heard we are a special case. You’ve been deceived by the Colonial Union as to where we would be. We’ve made the Conclave look foolish.”
“Yes, the disappearing colony,” Gau said. “We were waiting for you, you know. We knew when your ship was supposed to skip. You were going to be welcomed by several ships, including mine. Your people wouldn’t have even made it off the ship.”
“You were planning to destroy the Magellan,” I said.
“No,” Gau said. “Not unless it attempted to attack or begin colonizing. Otherwise, we would have simply escorted the ship to skip distance to return to Phoenix. But you deceived us, as you say, and it’s taken us this long to find you. You may say it made the Conclave look foolish. We believe it made the Colonial Union look desperate. And we did find you.”
“It only took a year,” I said.
“And it might have taken another after this,” Gau said. “Or we might have found you tomorrow. It was only an issue of when we would find you, Administrator Perry. Not if. And I would ask you to consider that. Your government risked your life, and the life of every member of your colony, to make a shadow play of defiance against us. This was a futile colonization. Sooner or later we would have found you. We have found you. And here we are.”
“You seem irritated, General,” I said.
The general performed something with his mouth I assumed was a smile. “I am irritated,” he admitted. “I’ve wasted time and resources better spent building the Conclave looking for your colony. And fending off political feints by members of the Conclave who have taken your government’s insolence personally. There is a substantial group of Conclave members who want to punish your government by attacking humanity at its heart—by attacking Phoenix directly.”
I felt simultaneous washe
s of anxiety and relief come over me. When Gau said “attacking humanity at its heart,” I assumed he meant Earth; his mention of Phoenix reminded me that the only people who thought of Earth as the heart of humanity were those who were born there. As far as the rest of the universe was concerned, Phoenix was humanity’s home planet. “If your Conclave is as strong as you suggest, then you could attack Phoenix,” I said.
“We could,” Gau said. “And we could destroy it. We could wipe out every other human colony as well, and if I may speak frankly to you, there are not very many races out there, in the Conclave or out of it, who would complain much about it. But I’ll tell you what I’ve told those in the Conclave who want to make you extinct: The Conclave is not an engine of conquest.”
“So you say,” I said.
“I do say,” Gau said. “This has been the hardest thing to make people understand, both in the Conclave and out of it. Empires of conquest don’t last, Administrator Perry. They hollow out from within, from the greed of rulers and the endless appetite for war. The Conclave is not an empire, and I don’t want to make humanity extinct, Administrator Perry. I want it to become part of the Conclave. Barring that, I’ll leave it to its own devices, on the worlds it had before the Conclave, and only those. But I’d rather have you as part of us. Humanity is strong and incredibly resourceful. It’s become immensely successful in a short period of time. There are races who have been among the stars for thousands of your years who have not accomplished as much or colonized as successfully.”
“I’ve wondered about that,” I said. “So many other races have been around and colonizing for so long, and yet we had to go to the stars to find any of you.”
“I have an answer for that,” Gau said. “But I guarantee you won’t like it.”
“Tell me anyway,” I said.
“We invested in fighting more than we did in exploring,” Gau said.
“That’s a pretty simplistic answer, General,” I said.
“Look at our civilizations,” Gau said. “We’re all the same size because we limit each other through war. We’re all at the same level of technology, because we bargain, trade and steal from each other. We all inhabit the same area of space because that is where we began, and we choose to control our colonies rather than let them develop without us. We fight over the same planets and only occasionally explore to find new ones, which we all then squabble over like carrion animals fighting over a carcass. Our civilizations are at an equilibrium, Administrator Perry. An artificial equilibrium that is sliding all of us toward entropy. This was happening before humans arrived in this part of space. Your arrival punctured that equilibrium for a while. But now you’ve settled in the same pattern of stealing and squabbling as the rest of us.”
