The Eleventh Gate

by Nancy Kress

  Was Berman?

  He said warmly, “Welcome, Raptor, from the Libertarian Alliance. We’ve taken New Utah from the oppressors at Peregoy Corporation. You don’t know what it has meant to us to have the Landry worlds as models of freedom, places where people aren’t owned by Peregoy Corporation.”

  Silence. Everything now depended on Jane’s response.

  Berman said, “Commander Landry?”

  Nothing.

  “Are you there?”

  The silence stretched on. Into it, Lieutenant Pettigrew at the space-monitoring console said diffidently, “Sir, I’m getting some strange readings at seventeen degrees.”

  Martinez said sharply, “Radiation signature?”

  “Not weapons. It…wait, it’s gone.”

  “Monitor the area and don’t report unless it seems dangerous.”

  Pettigrew said, “Yes, sir.”

  Jane’s voice said, “Prove it, Berman. Prove you’ve taken the planet away from Peregoy Corporation. You can’t, can you? You’re lying.”

  “I’m not lying. And I can prove it. Look.”

  Martinez could see what happened next; both screens faced the door of the underground bunker. The door opened. A man dragged in Naomi Halstead, still in uniform, unable to stand. Martinez felt his jaw tighten. Halstead had been beaten again. Bruises purpled her face, although they were not fresh. Probably left from “John,” whom Martinez would settle with one day. But the blood running down her face was fresh, although that didn’t mean the injury was serious. Head wounds bled a lot.

  The PCSS officers following her walked upright, although bound. Five men, three women, all in uniform. At least four of them looked ill: lingering J. randi mansueti. From the sudden stiffening of DiCaria’s shoulders, Martinez knew that the lieutenant JG was his sister.

  Berman said, “This is what’s left of the Peregoy Planetary Defense officer corps. We sent the enlisted people, all conscripts by Sophia Peregoy’s new laws, through the gate to New Yosemite. They’re just as much victims as were the Movement members killed on Horton Island, in the Peregoy labor camp there. You know about Horton Island?”

  No answer. Jane Landry was considering. Martinez hoped.

  Berman continued. “There were thirty-eight Peregoy officers on New Utah. The rest have been executed. As these will be, in time. For now, they’re alive in case Sloan Peregoy sends warships with nuclear weapons through the New Yosemite gate to bomb us.”

  All at once Berman’s voice grew stronger, vibrating with passion. “We don’t want New Utah to be a Peregoy world, but we don’t want it to be a Landry world, either. We want to be free! You’re Libertarian, General—you must understand that! All humans deserve the dignity of making their own choices and, if they must, enduring the consequences of those choices. We will trade with Freedom Enterprises, establishing contracts and cooperation. We compatriots have risked everything for that dignity, which we should have had by right. We want to be allies of the Landry Libertarian Alliance. Martinez is as much our enemy as yours. We turned our planetary defense weapons on his two other ships and destroyed them. The Skyhawk escaped, out of our range now—but maybe not of yours. Destroy it. The ship is weaponless.”

  Into the silence on the bridge of the Skyhawk, DiCaria said softly, “Scout leaving the Raptor for New Utah.”

  “Understood,” Martinez said. The Landry scout had a dual purpose, which everyone on the bridge understood. Jane wanted to see if Martinez would—or could—fire on it. If he didn’t, the scout would request permission to land, and then would rain down the deadly version of J. randi. More efficient than launching canisters from the Raptor.

  Martinez waited. The scout streaked past the Skyhawk. Jane said, “Berman, I’m sending down an officer to negotiate with you. Lieutenant McAuliffe. You will show him every courtesy.”

  “Of course,” Berman said. To Martinez, his voice sounded weaker.

  Minutes passed.

  More minutes.

  And more.

  Waiting—it was always the worst.

  59

  * * *

  THE ELEVENTH GATE

  Rachel lay on the bridge of the Kezia Landry. Her pallet took up half the floor, crowding the other four people: Tara standing tensely on the balls of her bare feet, the pilot and two techs intent at their consoles.

  “Prepare to fire,” Tara said, even though she was not commanding weaponry. From her low pallet, Rachel gazed up at the viewscreen. The eleventh gate glowed against the blackness of space.

  Are you there, Philip Anderson?

  No one knew. Certainly Rachel did not. She knew only one thing, and though halting speech had returned to her since her stroke, she had not tried to communicate that one thing to her granddaughter. Tara had a job to do here. A job Rachel had handed her, a job that Tara didn’t fully understand, a job both desperate and possibly ludicrous, but a job nonetheless. Tara was doing it. Rachel would not distract her with the irrelevancy of her grandmother’s pain, for which Rachel refused to take meds that would further cloud her mind. Nor with the irrelevancy of her dying.

  Her mind was intact, although it drifted sometimes, confusing the present and the precious past. Once, she thought that Tara was her dead son Paul, but that only lasted a moment. Between drifts, Rachel’s mind could follow the actions that she herself had set in motion.

  “Fire,” Tara said, and chief tech Hallie Dunn activated the equipment that emitted bursts of particles at sixty per minute, aimed directly at the closed eleventh gate.

  Recognize it, Philip. He had boated so often on Polyglot—or was that Paul, sailing his little boat on Mirror Lake on Galt? Rachel had bought him the boat for his fifteenth birthday. But surely Philip, too, had boated…yes, he had. Bigger boats, doing marine research. Boats that used, if necessary, the old Terran distress signal of timed bursts of white light, sixty per minute. SOS…no, that was another code, Paul had learned it as a little boy, in the Galt Ranger troop…

  “Repeat,” Tara said, and all at once Rachel’s mind cleared of the past, of her own spent body, of everything but what was happening at the eleventh gate.

  Matloff.

  Basich.

  Varennes.

  The field of consciousness.

  The entire gate dimmed, brightened, dimmed again. Three short, three long, three short. So Philip had once, in that unknown boyhood on Polyglot, also played at ancient codes.

  “Philip,” Tara said, with such naked longing that Rachel was almost ashamed to hear it. “Hallie, do it again!”

  The bursts were repeated, but this time there was no response from the gate.

  Tara crumbled. “He’s gone!”

  “No,” Rachel rasped from the floor even though it took all her remaining strength, “he…it…is working.”

  60

  * * *

  NEW UTAH

  DiCaria said, “Scout entering the atmosphere…scatter canisters launched.”

  Somewhere behind Martinez, Caitlin made a small, strangled sound. Perhaps she hadn’t really believed Jane would do it. Martinez had never doubted that she would. He’d seen the bodies on the Dagny Taggart.

  DiCaria said, “Enemy ship heading toward us…the Eagle.”

  “Track with armed weaponry.”

  “Tracking.”

  Contempt washed through Martinez; Jane Landry was not even going to fight him with her own ship. A coward as well as an insane murderer.

  From his console, Pettigrew said uncertainly, “Space anomaly has reappeared, sir.”

  “A weapon?”

  “No, sir. It…I don’t know what it is, sir. Some sort of disturbance in space.”

  “Ignore it unless danger presents.” This was not the time for astronomical speculation. Despite Martinez’s not shooting down the enemy scout, Jane Landry might—or might not—believe Caitlin and Berman that the Skyhawk was unarmed. Martinez might have surprise on his side, but he didn’t have much else. His crew was already at battle stations. Caitlin had been removed
from the bridge, her part played, and played well.

  Jane Landry reappeared on the open link. “Martinez, I want to negotiate for my sister.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Send a scout to my ship with Caitlin aboard. Once I have her, the Skyhawk can go through the gate to New Yosemite. I won’t fire on you.”

  She was lying, and not very well. The Eagle was moving toward the stargate. If Jane Landry thought that Martinez possessed radiation weapons, it wouldn’t have been necessary to block the gate since the Skyhawk couldn’t have escaped through it. So she’d believed Scott Berman, or Caitlin, or both, that all planetary defense weaponry remained on New Utah and the Skyhawk was helpless. The Eagle wasn’t moving into firing range of the Skyhawk, not by the usual radiation weapons. But in a few minutes it might have the Skyhawk in K-beam range, while the Raptor was staying well to the rear.

  A K-beam was on the Eagle. And there might be only one. After all, it didn’t make sense for her to have installed more than one on Prometheus to defend her biolab, and she couldn’t have gotten K-beams through the gates from Galt.

  Martinez signaled DiCaria, at the conn, to move away from the Eagle and toward the Raptor. To Jane Landry he said, “Agreed—Caitlin Landry goes to your ship and mine goes through to New Yosemite. However, all Skyhawk scouts have already been deployed. We’ll move close enough to send Caitlin Landry on a vacuum sled.”

  “No,” Landry said. She believed that Martinez was helpless, but no commander, even an insane one, would let him get that close. Even without radiation weapons, he could have old-fashioned nuclear torpedoes. “Stay where you are. I’ll send a scout to you.”

  “Agreed.”

  She couldn’t believe he was that stupid—could she? Martinez had been in the military all his life; he’d encountered his share of megalomaniacal officers who overestimated their own cunning and underestimated everyone else’s. Their careers usually went down in flames. But Jane Landry, new at this and in sole corporate command, hadn’t had any superiors to evaluate or rein her in. And Caitlin said that once Jane fixed her mind on an idea, she was obsessive.

  Martinez said, “Advancing at half speed to meet your scout.” That would bring the Skyhawk within radiation firing range of the Raptor, but not within reliable torpedo range.

  Jane said sharply, “Stay where you are!”

  The Eagle had stopped moving. It hovered between Martinez and the gate, out of even K-beam range to hit the Skyhawk. DiCaria, as arranged, suddenly sped the Skyhawk at full speed toward the Raptor. At the farthest possible effective range, Martinez said, “Fire.”

  The Raptor was already in retreat, rather than returning fire: Jane Landry had panicked. But whoever had the Raptor’s conn was good. Martinez’s beam caught the Raptor only glancingly before it was out of range. He couldn’t be sure how much damage he’d inflicted. The Skyhawk retreated rapidly. If Martinez was wrong, if the Raptor had K-beams, then everyone on the Skyhawk was dead.

  The Raptor fired—conventional beams. The Skyhawk’s defense program evaded them.

  Jane Landry, the nonprofessional, let out a stream of obscenities that made the standby medic blink.

  Martinez gave a rapid stream of instructions, to which DiCaria responded instantly. The Skyhawk needed to avoid both answering fire from the Raptor and the more lethal K-beam from the Eagle. The Eagle sped toward them, but since both ships were moving at maximum speed, the Eagle couldn’t get into firing range.

  For several minutes he led the Eagle away from New Utah, the distance between the two ships not closing. Eventually the Eagle gave up chasing him and reversed course, back to New Utah. To do what? Not scourge the planet; Jane Landry wanted its Peregoy rebels to develop the infection she’d seeded there. The inhabitants of New Utah were her lab rats, before she took the infection to the other two Peregoy worlds, and she wanted to watch them die in agony.

  Martinez said, “Course to circle wide around New Utah and approach from side opposite to the Eagle.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Several more tense minutes. Jane Landry had cut communication, and Martinez had to guess what was happening on the Raptor. How badly had he hit it? The third ship had moved closer to the Raptor—was the flagship damaged badly enough to need evacuation? If so, it would be Martinez’s first lucky break. The Eagle sped toward both Landry vessels, undoubtedly to protect them.

  “Sir…” DiCaria said.

  “Hold course. Put the planet between us and the Landry fleet.”

  “Sir!” Pettigrew said, and at her tone, Martinez turned toward her. If this was another astronomical weather report…

  Pettigrew and DiCaria said together, as if choreographed, “Ship emerging from the gate!” In any other circumstances, their synchronicity might have been amusing.

  These were not other circumstances.

  DiCaria said, “It’s one of ours. D-class warship.” A moment later the viewscreen sprang to life. It wasn’t Jane Landry.

  It was Sophia Peregoy.

  61

  * * *

  THE ELEVENTH GATE

  At the Observer’s gate, there is a disturbance.

  Bursts of radiation, not dangerous but rapid and regular, hit the gate. Pause. Repeat. Pause. Repeat.

  The Observer stirs.

  Memory, a pattern within consciousness, finds nothing in space to match these bursts.

  Rapid and regular bursts. Pause. Repeat. Pause. Repeat.

  The quantum patterns of memory make different matches. The Observer has no words but it has the concept: danger. The regular, rapid bursts mean danger.

  There is no danger to the Observer in the closed system of the gate.

  Rapid and regular bursts. Pause. Repeat. Pause. Repeat.

  The Observer extends itself beyond the gate. Instantly, it exists everywhere, entangled with everything. Instantly, the Observer begins to lose coherence and energy. The sub-field begins again to decay. The Observer returns to the gate, but not before it observes all.

  The tiny nodes of consciousness, encased in the macro-level matter of a ship, hover just outside.

  Elsewhere, ships with dangerous radiation signatures once more approach a planet, even though the Observer closed all gates to those signatures.

  Danger to all the small nodes on or near that planet.

  62

  * * *

  NEW UTAH

  “Martinez,” said Sophia Peregoy on the bridge viewscreen, her face colder than space itself, “you are hereby relieved of all duty. Court martial to follow. Immediately relinquish your ship to your exec. You are under arrest for treason.”

  Pettigrew said urgently, “Sir…”

  Martinez ignored Pettigrew, staring back at Sophia. He kept his voice as icy as hers. “There are three Landry ships here, at least one of them equipped with a K-beam. That ship is the Eagle and it can annihilate you. I am sending what is known of firing range and capacity.”

  He expected Sophia to respond to this. She didn’t.

  “Relinquish command immediately, Martinez.”

  “On whose authority?” Was Sloan dead?

  “Mine.”

  “I report only to Director Peregoy.”

  “He is incapacitated. I am Acting Director.”

  Was that even true? Martinez said, “The Eagle is moving toward you.”

  Sophia’s posture didn’t change by a millimeter, but her ship, the Savannah, shifted to face the oncoming Eagle as if to fire. Fire what? She couldn’t have arrived through a gate equipped with radiation weapons, could she? What was she doing?

  All at once, Martinez knew what she was doing. The Savannah began to move, at maximum speed, toward New Utah. The Eagle followed. Martinez ordered, “Get in orbit around New Utah. Keep both ships in sight but prepare to change speed as ordered. Weapons crew, stand by to fire.”

  The Savannah flew toward New Utah, the Eagle in pursuit. Martinez dropped into orbit, keeping the planet between the Skyhawk and the Eagle. He adjusted speed so tha
t he emerged into view of the Savannah just as she launched the scout and sped away.

  A maximum-speed launch like that was tricky. Whoever was captaining the Savannah was good, and so was the pilot on the scout. Martinez hoped it wasn’t someone he knew, someone he’d served with, someone he now had to kill.

  In another moment, the scout would enter the atmosphere and release its scatter canisters. Sophia, like Jane, wanted to exterminate the rebels on New Utah. Sophia, unlike Jane, didn’t need lab rats. She knew her deadly genemod pathogen was effective. She’d tested it on Horton Island.

  “Fire,” Martinez said.

  Just before the scout entered the atmosphere, a beam from the Skyhawk vaporized it. Martinez then barely had time to orbit around the curve of the planet before the Eagle fired a K-beam at him. It hit the ocean below. The Eagle streaked off in pursuit of the Savannah.

  Martinez said, “Take up position near the gate.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sophia’s face appeared on the viewscreen. “Luis—do you think I don’t have more?”

  He knew she did. Somewhere on New California or on New Yosemite or—most likely—on a secret station in deep space, a biolab was creating more deadly plague. The only way to stop Sophia’s using it was to eliminate Sophia. Unless Sloan had also agreed to…but Martinez didn’t believe that. Despite everything, he didn’t believe it. If he was that wrong about Sloan, he was wrong about everything in his life.

  Sophia cut the comm link. The Savannah made a huge circle, leading the Eagle back toward the gate. The Savannah would reach it first, in time to pass through to New Yosemite. Jane’s ship, equipped with radiation weaponry, would not be able to follow. Nor could the Skyhawk. Sophia would escape, unless Martinez stopped her.