The Borders of Infinity

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  "Probably means that after that you're supposed to improvise for yourself," Miles suggested, opening his eyes again. So, that was the raw material he was building on. He had to admit the last line in particular gave him a turn, a chill like a belly full of cold worms. So be it. Forward.

  "There you are, Oliver. That's what I'm offering. The only hope worth breathing for. Salvation itself."

  "Very uplifting," sneered Oliver.

  " 'Uplifted' is just what I intend you all to be. You've got to understand, Oliver, I'm a fundamentalist. I take my scriptures very literally."

  Oliver opened his mouth, then closed it with a snap. Miles had his utter attention.

  Communication at last, Miles breathed inwardly. We have connected.

  "It would take a miracle," said Oliver at last, "to uplift this whole place."

  "Mine is not a theology of the elect. I intend to preach to the masses. Even," he was definitely getting into the swing of this, "the sinners. Heaven is for everyone.

  "But miracles, by their very nature, must break in from outside. We don't carry them in our pockets—"

  "You don't, that's for sure," muttered Oliver with a glance at Miles's undress.

  "—we can only pray, and prepare ourselves for a better world. But miracles come only to the prepared. Are you prepared, Oliver?" Miles leaned forward, his voice vibrating with energy.

  "Sh . . ." Oliver's voice trailed off. He glanced for confirmation, oddly enough, at Suegar. "Is this guy for real?"

  "He thinks he's faking it," said Suegar blandly, "but he's not. He's the One, all right and tight."

  The cold worms writhed again. Dealing with Suegar, Miles decided, was like fencing in a hall of mirrors. Your target, though real, was never quite where it looked as if it should be.

  Oliver inhaled. Hope and fear, belief and doubt, intermingled in his face. "How shall we be saved, Rev'rend?"

  "Ah—call me Brother Miles, I think. Yes. Tell me—how many converts can you deliver on your own naked, unsupported authority?"

  Oliver looked extremely thoughtful. "Just let them see that light, and they'll follow it anywhere."

  "Well . . . well . . . salvation is for all, to be sure, but there may be certain temporary practical advantages to maintaining a priesthood. I mean, blessed also are they who do not see, and yet believe."

  "It's true," agreed Oliver, "that if your religion failed to deliver a miracle, that a human sacrifice would certainly follow."

  "Ah . . . quite," Miles gulped. "You are a man of acute insight."

  "That's not an insight," said Oliver. "That's a personal guarantee."

  "Yes, well . . . to return to my question. How many followers can you raise? I'm talking bodies here, not souls."

  Oliver frowned, cautious still. "Maybe twenty."

  "Can any of them bring in others? Branch out, hook in more?"

  "Maybe."

  "Make them your corporals, then. I think we had better disregard any previous ranks here. Call it, ah, the Army of the Reborn. No. The Reformation Army. That scans better. We shall be re-formed. The body has disintegrated like the caterpillar in its chrysalis, into nasty green gook, but we shall re-form into the butterfly and fly away."

  Oliver sniffed again. "Just what reforms you planning?"

  "Just one, I think. The food."

  Oliver gave him a disbelieving stare. "You sure this isn't just a scam to get yourself a free meal?"

  "True, I am getting hungry . . ." Miles backed off from the joke as Oliver remained icily unimpressed. "But so are a lot of other people. By tomorrow, we can have them all eating out of our hands."

  "When would you want these twenty guys?"

  "By the next chow call." Good, he'd startled the man.

  "That soon?"

  "You understand, Oliver, the belief that you have all the time in the world is an illusion this place fosters on purpose. Resist it."

  "You're sure in a hurry."

  "So, you got a dental appointment? I think not. Besides, I'm only half your mass. I gotta move twice as fast just to keep up the momentum. Twenty, plus. By next chow call."

  "What the hell do you think you're gonna be able to do with twenty guys?"

  "We're going to take the food pile."

  Oliver's lips tightened in disgust. "Not with twenty guys, you're not. No go. Besides, it's been done. I told you we'd made real war in here. It'd be a quick massacre."

  "—and then, after we've taken it—we re-distribute it. Fair and square, one rat bar per customer, all controlled and quartermasterly. To sinners and all. By the next chow call everybody who's ever been shorted will be coming over to us. And then we'll be in a position to deal with the hard cases."

  "You're nuts. You can't do it. Not with twenty guys."

  "Did I say we were only going to have twenty guys? Suegar, did I say that?"

  Suegar, listening in rapt fascination, shook his head.

  "Well, I ain't sticking my neck out to get pounded unless you can produce some visible means of support," said Oliver. "This could get us killed."

  "Can do," Miles promised recklessly. One had to start lifting somewhere; his imaginary bootstraps would do well enough. "I will deliver 500 troops to the sacred cause by chow call."

  "You do that, and I'll walk the perimeter of this camp naked on my hands," retorted Oliver.

  Miles grinned. "I may hold you to that, Sergeant. Twenty plus. By chow call." Miles stood. "Come on, Suegar."

  Oliver waved them off irritably. They retreated in good order. When Miles looked back over his shoulder, Oliver had arisen, and was walking toward a group of occupied mats tangential to his own, waving down an apparent acquaintance.

  * * *

  "So where do we get 500 troops before next chow call?" Suegar asked. "I better warn you, Oliver was the best thing I had. The next is bound to be tougher."

  "What," said Miles, "is your faith wavering so soon?"

  "I believe," said Suegar, "I just don't see. Maybe that makes me blessed, I dunno."

  "I'm surprised. I thought it was pretty obvious. There." Miles pointed across the camp toward the unmarked border of the women's group.

  "Oh." Suegar stopped short. "Oh, oh. I don't think so, Miles."

  "Yes. Let's go."

  "You won't get in there without a change-of-sex operation."

  "What, as God-driven as you are, haven't you tried to preach your scripture to them?"

  "I tried. Got pounded. Tried elsewhere after that."

  Miles paused, and pursed his lips, studying Suegar. "It wasn't defeat, or you wouldn't have hung on long enough to meet me. Was it—ah, shame, that drained your usual resolve? You got something to work off in that quarter?"

  Suegar shook his head. "Not personally. Except maybe, sins of omission. I just didn't have the heart to harass 'em any more."

  "This whole place is suffering from sins of omission." A relief, that Suegar wasn't some sort of self-confessed rapist. Miles's eyes swept the scene, teasing out the pattern from the limited cues of position, grouping, activity. "Yes . . . predator pressure produces herd behavior. Social—fragmentation here being what it is, the pressure must be pretty high, to hold a group of that size together. But I hadn't noticed any incidents since I got here. . . ."

  "It comes and goes," said Suegar. "Phases of the moon or something."

  Phases of the moon, right. Miles sent up a prayer of thanks in his heart to whatever gods might be—to Whom it may concern—that the Cetagandans appeared to have implanted some standard time-release anti-ovulant in all their female prisoners, along with their other immunizations. Bless the forgotten individual who'd put that clause in the IJC rules, forcing the Cetagandans into more subtle forms of legal torture. And yet, would the presence of pregnancies, infants, and children among the prisoners have been another destabilizing stress—or a stabilizing force deeper and stronger than all the previous loyalties the Cetagandans seemed to have so successfully broken down? From a purely logistical viewpoint, Miles was elated
that the question was theoretical.

  "Well . . ." Miles took a deep breath, and pulled an imaginary hat down over his eyes at an aggressive angle. "I'm new here, and so temporarily unembarrassed. Let he who is without sin cast the first lure. Besides, I have an advantage for this sort of negotiation. I'm clearly not a threat." He marched forward.

  "I'll wait for you here," called Suegar helpfully, and hunkered down where he was.

  Miles timed his forward march to intersect a patrol of six women strolling down their perimeter. He arranged himself in front of them and swept off his imaginary hat to hold strategically over his crotch. "Good afternoon, ladies. Allow me to apologize for m'beh—"

  His opening line was interrupted by a mouthful of dirt abruptly acquired as his legs were swept backward and his shoulders forward by the four women who had parted around him, dumping him neatly on his face. He had not even managed to spit it out when he found himself plucked up and whirled dizzily through the air, still face-down, by hands grasping his arms and legs. A muttered count of three, and he was soaring in a short forlorn arc, to land in a heap not far from Suegar. The patrollers walked on without another word.

  "See what I mean?" said Suegar.

  Miles turned his head to look at him. "You had that trajectory calculated to the centimeter, didn't you?" he said smearily.

  "Just about," agreed Suegar. "I figured they could heave you quite a bit farther than usual, on account of your size."

  Miles scrambled back up to a sitting position, still trying to get his wind. Damn the ribs, which had grown almost bearable, but which now wrung his chest with electric agony at every breath. In a few minutes he got up and brushed himself off. As an afterthought, he picked up his invisible hat, too. Dizzied, he had to brace his hands on his knees a moment.

  "All right," he muttered, "back we go."

  "Miles—"

  "It's gotta be done, Suegar. No other choice. Anyway, I can't quit, once I've started. I've been told I'm pathologically persistent. I can't quit."

  Suegar opened his mouth to object, then swallowed his protest. "Right," he said. He settled down cross-legged, his right hand unconsciously caressing his rag rope library. "I'll wait till you call me in." He seemed to fall into a reverie, or meditation—or maybe a doze.

  Miles's second foray ended precisely like the first, except that his trajectory was perhaps a little wider and a little higher. The third attempt went the same way, but his flight was much shorter.

  "Good," he muttered to himself. "Must be tiring 'em out."

  This time he skipped in parallel to the patrol, out of reach but well within hearing. "Look," he panted, "you don't have to do this piecemeal. Let me make it easy for you. I have this teratogenic bone disorder—I'm not a mutant, you understand, my genes are normal, it's just their expression got distorted, from my mother being exposed to a certain poison while she was pregnant—it was a one-shot thing, won't affect any children I might have—I always felt it was easier to get dates when that was clearly understood, not a mutant—anyway, my bones are brittle, in fact any one of you could probably break every one in my body. You may wonder why I'm telling you all this—in fact, I usually prefer not to advertise it—you have to stop and listen to me. I'm not a threat—do I look like a threat?—a challenge, maybe, not a threat—are you going to make me run all around this camp after you? Slow down, for God's sake—" He would be out of wind, and therefore verbal ammunition, very shortly at this rate. He hopped around in front of them and planted himself, arms outstretched.

  "—so if you are planning to break every bone in my body, please do it now and get it over with, because I'm going to keep coming back here until you do."

  At a brief hand signal from their leader the patrol stopped, facing him.

  "Take him at his word," suggested a tall redhead. Her short brush of electric copper hair fascinated Miles to distraction; he pictured missing masses of it having fallen to the floor at the clippers of the ruthless Cetagandan prison processors. "I'll break the left arm if you'll break the right, Conr," she continued.

  "If that's what it takes to get you to stop and listen to me for five minutes, so be it," Miles responded, not retreating. The redhead stepped forward and braced herself, locking his left elbow in an arm bar, putting on the pressure.

  "Five minutes, right?" Miles added desperately as the pressure mounted. Her stare scorched his profile. He licked his lips, closed his eyes, held his breath, and waited. The pressure reached critical—he rose on his toes . . .

  She released him abruptly, so that he staggered. "Men," she commented disgustedly. "Always gotta make everything a peeing contest."

  "Biology is Destiny," gasped Miles, popping his eyes back open.

  "—or are you some kind of pervert—do you get off on being beaten up by women?"

  God, I hope not. He remained unbetrayed by unauthorized salutes from his nether parts, just barely. If he was going to be around that redhead much he was definitely going to have to get his pants back somehow. "If I said yes, would you refrain, just to punish me?" he offered.

  "Shit, no."

  "It was just a thought—"

  "Cut the crap, Beatrice," said the patrol leader. At a jerk of her head the redhead stepped back into formation. "All right, runt, you've got your five minutes. Maybe."

  "Thank you, ma'am." Miles took a breath, and reordered himself as best he could with no uniform to adjust. "First, let me apologize for intruding upon your privacy in this undress. Practically the first persons I met upon entering this camp were a self-help group—they helped themselves to my clothes, among other things—"

  "I saw that," confirmed Beatrice-the-redhead unexpectedly. "Pitt's bunch."

  Miles pulled off his hat and swept her a bow with it. "Yes, thank you."

  "You moon people behind you when you do that," she commented dispassionately.

  "That's their look-out," responded Miles. "For myself, I want to talk to your leader, or leaders. I have a serious plan for improving the tone of this place with which I wish to invite your group to collaborate. Bluntly, you are the largest remaining pocket of civilization, not to mention military order, in here. I'd like to see you expand your borders."

  "It takes everything we've got to keep our borders from being overrun, son," replied the leader. "No can do. So take yourself off."

  "Jack yourself off, too," suggested Beatrice. "You ain't gettin' any in here."

  Miles sighed, and turned his hat around in his hands by its wide brim. He spun it for a moment on one finger, and locked eyes with the redhead. "Note my hat. It was the one garment I managed to keep from the ravages of the burly surly brothers—Pitt's bunch, you say."

  She snorted at the turn of phrase. "Those jerks . . . why just a hat? Why not pants? Why not a full-dress uniform while you're at it?" she added sarcastically.

  "A hat is a more useful object for communicating. You can make broad gestures," he did so, "denote sincerity," he held it over his heart, "or indicate embarrassment," over his genitals, with a hang-dog crouch, "or rage—" he flung it to earth as if he might drive it into the ground, then picked it up and brushed it off carefully, "or determination—" he jammed it on his head and yanked the brim down over his eyes, "or make courtesies." He swept it off again in salute to her. "Do you see the hat?"

  She was beginning to be amused. "Yes . . ."

  "Do you see the feathers on the hat?"

  "Yes . . ."

  "Describe them."

  "Oh—plumey things."

  "How many?"

  "Two. Bunched together."

  "Do you see the color of the feathers?"

  She drew back, suddenly self-conscious again, with a sidewise glance at her companions. "No."

  "When you can see the color of the feathers," said Miles softly, "you'll also understand how you can expand your borders to infinity."

  She was silent, her face closed and locked. But the patrol leader muttered, "Maybe this little runt better talk to Tris. Just this once."
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  * * *

  The woman in charge had clearly been a front line trooper once, not a tech like the majority of the females. She had certainly not acquired the muscles that flowed like braided leather cords beneath her skin from crouching by the hour in front of a holovid display in some rear-echelon underground post. She had toted the real weapons that spat real death, and sometimes broke down; had rammed against the limits of what could really be done by flesh and bone and metal, and been marked by that deforming press. Illusion had been burned out of her like an infection, leaving a cauterized scar. Rage burned permanently in her eyes like a fire in a coal seam, underground and unquenchable. She might be thirty-five, or forty.

  God, I'm in love, thought Miles. Brother Miles wants YOU for the Reformation Army . . . then got hold of his thoughts. Here, now, was the make-or-break point for his scheme, and all the persiflage, verbal misdirection, charm, chutzpah, and bullshit he could muster weren't going to be enough, not even tied up with a big blue bow.

  The wounded want power, nothing else; they think it will keep them from being hurt again. This one will not be interested in Suegar's strange message—at least, not yet. . . . Miles took a deep breath.

  "Ma'am, I'm here to offer you command of this camp."

  She stared at him as if he were something she'd found growing on the walls in a dark corner of the latrine. Her eyes raked over his nudity; Miles could feel the claw marks glowing from his chin to his toes.

  "Which you store in your duffel bag, no doubt," she growled. "Command of this camp doesn't exist, mutant. So it's not yours to give. Deliver him to our perimeter in pieces, Beatrice."

  He ducked the redhead. He would pursue correction of the mutant business later. "Command of this camp is mine to create," he asserted. "Note, please, that what I offer is power, not revenge. Revenge is too expensive a luxury. Commanders can't afford it."

  Tris uncoiled from her sleeping mat to her full height, then had to bend her knees to bring her face level to his, hissing, "Too bad, little turd. You almost interest me. Because I want revenge. On every man in this camp."