Father went home right after the ceremony, like he always does. He says it’s because he prefers to watch the balloons from our place with the girls, but I remember he told me he doesn’t like ceremonies. I said, thinking it was modesty, that someone who’d been involved with the colony since the beginning deserved to be honored. He replied, “It never mattered to her what I achieved.” Until then, I never realized how strongly my grandmother’s presence still haunted him. I knew Father was still young when she took her own life and the colony hadn’t yet begun. Father said she never got over my uncle’s death. I can’t forgive her for leaving him, and us. It makes me all the more determined to treat my daughters with equal love and affection.
Below the entry, the database code and brief description: William Russ Chenin, Assistant, Dome Technical Division.
The name was familiar. In the years before the Confederacy was founded, William Chenin helped design the improved habitat containment that replaced the first unwieldy Mars domes. The team’s work was required reading for engineering students.
“That’s Vince’s son,” said Murdoch. “Vince managed to work himself through apprenticeships, then tech school. He ended up on Mars.” He paused. “Grace killed herself twelve years after Will died.”
I stared at the hard brown carpet. A wave of guilt and grief choked me into silence. Nothing to say. How could there be anything to say? Will and Grace had both been dead for nearly a century.
I knew that. I knew Vince was dead, too. And Levin, curse him. But it was as much of a shock as if a policeman had come to the tent in the out-town and told me they’d died that morning.
If the Invidi were able to open jump points anywhere off the network, it meant that in a sense Will alive existed right there in front of me beside Will dead. Not before or after, but beside each other, equally accessible. All our moments, superimposed upon each other but separate. How did the Invidi bear this? No wonder they needed order.
“I’m going to see Jago.” I stood up after a long pause. “Have you considered,” Murdoch said, “that maybe this is one you can’t win?” He stood up too, hitched one hip onto the desk. Tucked his hands under his elbows as if he’d rather be doing something else with them.
I turned in the doorway. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m always trying to win?”
He laughed, although without humor. “Aren’t you? Isn’t that part of this whole preoccupation with the jump drive? Sure, you want to know how it works. But there are other fascinating bits of hardware in the universe. You can’t stand them having it and not us.”
I opened my mouth, shut it again. I’ve never denied that.
“I don’t like it either,” he kept on. “But I know I can’t fight them in that particular arena. Last time you were lucky and you got us into another arena—that’s the neutrality. Let’s keep the fight there, eh? Then we might all have a chance of coming out of this ahead.”
“You’re saying let them take Farseer, forget about the jump drive and how An Serat used us to bring the Invidi to Earth and whatever other games he’s playing that we don’t understand? Go back as if it never happened?” My voice rose in disbelief.
“Yes.” He leaned forward, quite serious. “Because it’s not getting us anywhere. It’s becoming a liability. And if you don’t see that, that’s a bigger liability.”
I felt as if he’d switched off the gravity beneath me.
“Not only that, for Chrissakes. Don’t you see that it’s a bloody deal safer not to know anything about that ship? If we say, hell, sorry about pinching it but we don’t know how it works, then they might let us go back to our old lives. Or not, I dunno. But personally, I’d rather not have ConFleet decide we need help forgetting.”
“You think they’d wipe our memories?”
He shook his head doubtfully. “I hope not.”
I can’t let that stand in the way of finding out the truth, I wanted to say, but then, it wasn’t just me, was it? Murdoch was involved. He’d sacrificed his job and risked his life to come and get me in the past, whether it was all part of an Invidi plan or not. ConFleet Security might even conclude Sasaki knew, too. And Eleanor Jago.
Maybe we can’t win, at that.
I took the uplift to Alpha without noticing anything around me. Murdoch’s words had stung. Partly because we’d slept together last night, and somewhere at the back of my mind was the unreasonable expectation that we’d cease to disagree from now on. Mostly because he’d never said anything like it before. During the occupation he’d disagreed with some of my decisions, but went along with them nevertheless. Even when calling me “obsessive.” But now we had no protocols, no procedure to follow or rank to hide behind.
Of course I’m obsessive. All good engineers are obsessive. It’s how we get the patience to keep trying different solutions when the first few hundred tries fail.
The jump drive is the key to the power of the Four in the Confederacy. Henoit and his New Council saw that. In trying to change the balance of power, they came looking for Calypso ’s jump drive.
Will changing the balance of power in the Confederacy help Jocasta’s neutrality?
No, put it another way; will changing the balance of power help the residents of Jocasta?
The potted plant by the door of Eleanor’s admin office, up one floor from her consulting room where she’d examined me the night before, had grown larger and been joined by feather-leafed companions. On the wall, the same orange and yellow-toned weaving hung sideways. Eleanor said walls should help soothe the mind, and she kept her one interface monitor on the desk.
“That’s new.” A small holo-crystal on the front of the desk. The face of Eleanor’s late partner grinned at me from under his wild thatch of hair.
Having Leo’s holo close by must be a good sign—for a while she couldn’t talk about him at all.
Eleanor sat down at the desk. She wouldn’t look at me and her hands kept rearranging handcoms, data crystals, saucers, on the desk. She glanced at the holo and smiled. The sight of Leo seemed to give her the impetus to continue.
“When you disappeared I was so angry with you.” She looked at me properly. “Thought I’d have to go through all that again.” She pointed at the holo. “I was packed up ready to leave, but Bill Murdoch came to see me. He said he didn’t think you were dead.”
“Are you still angry?”
She smiled then. “Sort of. You could have told me what you were doing.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I should have told Bill, too.”
She pushed her chair back and paced once or twice across to the wall hanging and back. “I don’t know why I’m nervous.” She ran a hand over her smooth bun. “I hope you’ll tell me I’m making a ridiculous mistake.”
“If it’s about where Murdoch and I have been recently, no, it’s not a mistake.”
She reached for her chair and lowered herself carefully into it, her eyes on mine. “Wait. Just in case we’re talking at cross-purposes. In your blood I found antibodies to viruses that have not existed for decades. Traces of antibiotics, of all things. In your lungs I found traces of the exhaust products of machines that haven’t been used for a century. Your respiratory system was irritated to a clinical degree.”
“Can you date these phenomena?”
“I’d say about the time the Sleepers were from. Or even before. Most of your results overlapped theirs to some extent.”
“Pretty good. Would you accept 2023?”
She closed her eyes for a moment. “I don’t want to. But the facts are there.”
I leaned both elbows on the desk. “Could I fake those results?”
“Highly unlikely.”
“We were there and we did come back. That’s as clear in my memory as your facts.”
“Did you get there in that Invidi ship in dock?”
“No, in the one we worked on here. Eleanor, that information, the results of your tests...”
“Is in a secure file,” she said. “I know sensitive m
aterial when I see it.”
“Send a copy to Murdoch, will you? He’s got even more secure files.”
“All right. But you can’t keep this a secret for long. The technology...”
“Has existed since the Invidi came to Earth,” I interrupted. “We knew nothing of it then and if it wasn’t for my ‘accident,’ we’d know nothing of it now. What makes you think things will change?”
“Because you’re involved.”
I winced at that.
“You’re going to fiddle around with it and work bits of it out and maybe change things.” She sounded resigned.
“I don’t think I’ll have time for that. ConFleet will probably come to take back the ship soon. And if I’m not careful they’ll take me too.”
“Have you seen deVries? She’ll know where you stand legally.”
“I’m going to see her next.”
She leaned forward, her face more animated. “Tell me— what was it like back then?”
“Inconvenient.”
“I’m talking about how you feel, Halley. How it affected you.”
I picked up Leo’s holo-crystal, looked it over, and put it down. “That doesn’t matter. We need to work out what to do now.”
“How you felt then will influence what you do now.”
It took a while to find the words. “I was afraid. That I’d die, of some stupid disease, all by myself in the past and never see you all again. Oh, damn.”
She passed a cleanchif over the desk and waited while I wiped my eyes and blew my nose. “Why a disease?”
“Or an accident or something. People died so easily then. Ordinary people, on Earth. Died of cell mutations...”
“Cancer.”
“Yes. Or because their organs failed. Children with faulty nervous systems from parents who’d used powerful drugs for fun. Or because they were standing on the wrong side of the street when some drunken driver came down it...”
I paused, noticed I was scraping the skin around the nails of one hand with the other, and stopped. “I’m no fan of the Invidi lately but, Eleanor, if the only thing they did was teach us to spend our resources on preserving life, then it was worth them coming.”
“Did you know anyone who died?” She kept her voice flat.
“Yes,” I said shortly. “By the way, did you find any signs my Seouras implant was active again?”
“Nothing pathological, no. But as I said this morning, we didn’t find much before, either. Have you had any subjective symptoms recur?”
“Only when I’m in that ship.”
“Don’t use the ship, then.” She put up a hand. “I know, I know. You have to use it.”
“While I can.”
“Is it worth all the trouble?”
I blinked at her, shocked. “Is what worth the trouble?”
“Working for neutrality and independence and all that.”
“I know you have your doubts, but we’ll make new contracts.”
“I know. It’s just that...” She tapped the desk in frustration. “Every time we settle down, someone turns the gravity off from underneath us again. Well, you know what I mean.”
“I know. What we need, metaphorically speaking, is our own gravity field generator.”
I called the head magistrate, Lorna deVries, from a public comm link in the hospital lobby, and told her I’d be right down.
Lorna deVries was chief magistrate on Jocasta before I became head of station. We used to play squash, in those days. She had a wickedly accurate backhand and an unerring sense of when her opponent was tiring.
She was at her desk in the far corner when I entered the huge, open-plan office. Her dark hair frizzed above her head and her black magistrate’s gown had slipped half off one shoulder, showing bright cloth beneath.
“Halley, nice to see you back.” She hugged me lightly and stood back to look at me. Lorna was one of the few people who made me feel tall.
“You look exactly the same,” she said, and steered me over to her desk.
Not very encouraging, when you consider what a wreck I’d always looked like here.
She activated two privacy panels and enclosed us in a tiny alcove. “And it’s nice to have you back,” she went on, seating herself behind the desk.
“It’s nice to be back, but...”
“But the problem is how long we can keep you here, right?” She didn’t seem worried. But then, she never seemed worried. “I talked to Jago. She says she found evidence of you and Bill Murdoch having been in the past.” She paused, as if to give me time to deny the words. They did sound unlikely, delivered in her quick, clipped voice.
I nodded confirmation.
She leaned her elbows on the desk and steepled her fingers. “Do you have any idea what this information could do?”
“Not just information. The ship we came back in is part of some Invidi experiment.”
Lorna let her breath out in a slow whoosh. “You can’t keep out of trouble, can you?”
“What’s my legal position?”
“Bill’s got it right so far. He’s put in a custody report. That makes you the responsibility of EarthFleet Security, which is acting on the charges they brought against you after you left so suddenly.”
“That’s unauthorized use of resources?”
“And facilities, yes. Misappropriation of funds. They’ll need to process those charges before they can hand you over to ConFleet. ConFleet Security will probably charge you with absence without leave and possibly desertion of duty.”
I rubbed at the implant in my neck. I swear it was getting itchier. A sense of being slowly suffocated. “What about the possession charges? They can’t prove there was a jump drive on Calypso II, can they? So there’s only Farseer. ”
Lorna frowned. “What’s Farseer? Halley, you know you’re not supposed to withhold information from me.”
“Sorry. That’s the name of the ship Murdoch and I came back on.”
“Oh. I’ll have to do some research, but I’d say the Invidi aren’t going to charge you with possession if you give the ship back. They won’t want this whole can of worms opened up for the rest of the galaxy to sniff. You could give it back in return for ConFleet dropping the charges.” She raised her eyebrows in query.
“Imagine what my life in ConFleet will be like if I do that.” Short and nasty.
“Are you going to take up ConFleet’s offer and stay on here, then?” If neutrality went through, ConFleet would give its human staff on Jocasta a choice of leaving and remaining in ConFleet, or staying and either becoming civilians or joining EarthFleet.
“I haven’t thought much about the future at all, Lorna. I’ve got enough trouble coping with the present.” And the past, I nearly added.
She pursed her lips and gave me her serious, handing-down-sentence look. “If you don’t give the ship back, I’d say ConFleet will charge you and apply for extradition even before the EarthFleet charges are heard. External Affairs might just be annoyed enough with you for starting this whole neutrality thing to agree.”
I opened my mouth to ask her how soon they could apply for extradition and get it passed, but she looked down and exclaimed loudly enough to make me jump.
“Aha! That’s an idea.” Looking up again. “Halley, you need to first ask for asylum under the MIA.”
The Mars-Invidi Agreement on Species Rights basically states that all members of the Confederacy have the right to be understood and treated according to the standards of their own species. It was designed to prevent more technologically complex species from having too much power over others. In law, it means that a suspect charged with a Confederacy crime may appeal to a court of their own species or planet.
“You know,” mused Lorna, “the MIA has the potential to change the legal structure of the Confederacy, if people would take it seriously. At the moment it’s used only as a glorified extradition treaty.”
“Asylum to Earth?”
“From ConFleet, yes.”
“If ConFleet asks me where I’ve been, I’ll tell them. Won’t the Invidi want to avoid letting everyone know about this new jump point? I don’t think they’ll charge me.”
She leaned forward. “If you give the ship back. If not, well, do you want to risk your freedom on how much control the Invidi have over ConFleet? And what about Murdoch? If they charge you with possession, he’s likely to be included. And are you going to keep quiet about this jump point to Earth?”
“I don’t want Murdoch involved.” As for keeping quiet about the jump point, if An Barik and the other Invidi came to get Farseer, I supposed they would make sure we couldn’t find or use the jump point again. Then the only proof of its existence would be the word of two humans, Murdoch and myself.
“Did they let you take the ship?” Lorna was making notes on a stylus pad.
“Not exactly.”
“Theft as well,” she groaned, and underscored a phrase. The interface beeped apologetically as it read the lines as an erasure.
“It was our only chance to get away. What if the ship is registered as evidence in an asylum case? They’d have to put it aside then, wouldn’t they? Until the case is held.”
She ran a hand through her boisterous curls. “I don’t know, Halley. I’ll have to check the relevant sources. I doubt we’ve got many precedents, which means anything could happen. And if we get orders to rush your hearing through...” She added, “Don’t forget I won’t be on the bench. Carr Val, the new associate, will be the judge.”
“But...”
“I can advise you or I can try you, not both.”
“Thanks, Lorna.”
“Thank me when I’ve got you off.” She stood up, an unconscious gesture of dismissal. “See you at Florida’s dinner. I’ll know more then.”
“If ConFleet haven’t arrived by then,” I said gloomily.
“If they haven’t arrived,” she agreed. “I said that to Florida and he seemed surprised. I don’t think he realized quite how dicey the situation is.”
“He doesn’t know about the ship.”
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