by Greg Curtis
But she hadn’t meant it like that. She had meant it literally. Carm's blood chilled, and it felt as if a thousand frozen centipedes were climbing up and down his spine.
Del was a mute. In fact he had a ship full of them, about which he could do nothing. Finally he understood who her people were and why the Navy was hunting them. Now he knew why she'd refused to tell him in the first place. They couldn't get papers, because they’d have to undergo medical scans that would examine their genetics not just use them as identification.
Carm silently cursed himself for having trusted her. Why? He didn't have anything to defend himself with. How could he have left himself so vulnerable? But she'd appeared to be harmless and not particularly threatening despite her sharp tongue.
Frightened, every hair on his body standing on end, Carm began backing away, knowing that his only safety lay behind sealed doors. He didn't know quite how strong a mute was – everything about them was more the stuff of legend than fact – but he doubted she could break through toughened steel.
“Oh stop that you defect! If I wanted you dead you'd already be so,” Del snapped at him as if he was a foolish child.
Carm though decided then that he had to run, and so he turned and sprinted for the door as fast as he could. But he was too slow. She got there well before him, standing between him and safety and not looking even vaguely puffed, while he was already gasping.
“Really? That was the best you could do? I mean what have you been doing these past few years? Sitting on couches eating chips? Seriously you need to spend some time in the gym.” She clapped a hand on his shoulder, turned him around and marched him back to the glass coffin. “A lot of time.”
She was strong – far stronger than a woman her size should be – but then she wasn't one. Not a human one anyway. She wasn't hurting him at least. Probably because he was the Captain: without him their dreams of going home would die. However, the moment she didn't need him he was dead. He had one card to play, and he had to use it. And he had to hope the ship would be smart enough to know what he was doing and play along with him.
“And we'll work on that. There's no excuse for laziness. But for the moment the only thing you need to know is that you're safe. I'm not going to hurt you. No one is going to hurt you. Not even when you bring me home. My people aren't the psychotic nutbags of your tales. And we aren't killers. Not like her master.”
“That's—”
“The truth. White is a criminal and a murderer, a rogue even among our kind. And if there was any justice in the universe he would be spending the rest of his life in jail – with all of Naval Command beside him. But there isn't and we need him as he needs us. He needs credits, we need passage, and so the arrangement continues.”
“As long as Barclay's still alive.” She turned around abruptly to face the android. “If he's dead though, things change. We aren't going to just hand ourselves blindly over to your master and he has to know that. Barclay is still alive?”
“As far as I know.”
It wasn't the answer Del wanted to hear and Carm noticed the look of alarm that crossed her face. That spoke of something halfway decent. But he couldn't care about that when she was a mute and his life was in danger. He summoned all the courage he could find.
“And things also change if you don't unhand me.”
“Don't be brave,” Del snapped at him, but then she did remove her hand. “It doesn't suit you.”
“Maybe. But I'm not being brave. I'm being scared. And without me you live, grow old and die out here. The Nightingale will not respond to your commands. Ship confirm that please.”
“Confirmed,” the ship answered immediately.
It was only one word but it left Carm feeling a little light-headed. The ship had no idea how relieved Carm was when it backed him up – even though he'd known it would have to.
“You're being paranoid,” she sighed a little too loudly. “You will not be harmed under any circumstances. My people have laws.”
“You're mutes.” Carm didn't know why he had to point that out.
“Mutes but not rogues. White is a rogue. The Navy's screw up. One day the Navy is going to have to come clean about what they did.”
The Navy? Carm was puzzled but what he did understand was that White, rogue or not, was somehow more connected with the mutes than he'd guessed. Maybe he even was a mute – he was still unclear on that. But that was probably why she was so determined to distance herself and her people from him.
“So White is a mute?” It would explain the man's insufferable arrogance he thought.
“Of a sort.”
“No deal!” Kendra suddenly spoke up making them both turn around. “Carmichael now represents a clear threat to my master. He can never return to the Commonwealth with that knowledge. You should kill him immediately.”
“Oh be quiet you defective hunk of scrap! I'm not going to kill him! I'm not a rogue!”
“Then I won't help you.”
“Actually you will, because he represents no threat to your master whatsoever. He can never reveal what he knows about White. Not without revealing what he knows about mutes. And the Navy would kill him if they ever found out he knew anything. They would kill his entire family and all his friends too, and anyone else he might have spoken to even casually. And in any case he needs an alibi which you're going to provide.”
Carm turned to her wondering what she was saying. “But I don't—”
“But you're about to,” Del cut him off glaring angrily. “And you have only yourself to blame.
“You see the one thing that Naval Command can never have revealed is that they created the mutes. The rogue ones anyway. And that they did it to create a weapon through which they could control the Commonwealth. And that they've been using it ever since to get utterly, stinking rich.”
“That doesn't track,” Carm denied it instinctively. The Navy didn't do that. They kept people safe from people like mutes.
“Oh but they did,” Del smiled a little cruelly. Obviously she wasn't happy with him – with either his defiance or his opinion of her people. “They really did.
“You see there was a little research programme out there in the Commonwealth a long time ago, an attempt to improve the human race: The Progressive Genetics Programme. The one you know from your history books.”
The PGP. Carm knew it of course, as everyone did. That was where the mutes had come from. He nodded, despite having a bad feeling that he didn't want to hear any more. Actually he was certain he didn't want to know. And yet he was curious.
“The PGP was concerned with making people better, a little bit at a time. Healthier, stronger, fitter, brighter, longer lived, and less prone to diseases and psychiatric illnesses. They saw their work as the stuff of centuries, a long, slow advance of the species. With checks and balances along the way, ethics considered at every step. And of course, no sharding defects!”
Why had she raised her voice when adding that last Carm wondered? And why was she glaring at him?
“Unfortunately Naval Command saw the programme as a weapon. They weren't interested in slow and steady or in ethics. So they took it over, brought in some new scientists – ones who didn't care about their patients – and started pushing the envelope.
“Naturally it all went wrong, very wrong. They created their super soldiers, but they came with problems. The soldiers weren't loyal, refusing to take orders. Plus they didn't like being typical citizens of the Commonwealth either. Hell they didn't want to be soldiers at all: they wanted to rule.”
“The next part you know. There was fighting. Skirmishes not true wars, but bloody battles nevertheless. A century of them, with massive death tolls along with terrorist attacks, political assassinations, and ultimately martial law enforced. And there was chaos as no one knew who might be a mute.
“The Navy slowly won that war, driving the rogues underground, but they also very carefully covered up their involvement i
n the programme. It wasn't that hard: everything had been kept secret to begin with, and much had been destroyed. But they still needed people to blame. So everything became the fault of Progressive Genetics. The scientists were rounded up, tried and jailed – all in Naval courts so information could be controlled. And the original subjects, the mutes were silenced and quietly hunted down. Locked up or killed.
“However there were a lot of us. The PGP had been running for well over a century or two by then. It was a massive project, a movement in reality, and many of our ancestors had been part of the scientists' own families. There were hundreds of thousands of first generations and, while not all knew what the Navy had done, they all knew they weren't dark side like the ones being shown all over the channels.
“The problem was that the Navy declared multiple military emergencies and instituted martial law. It took over the channels, and controlled the flow of information. Plus there were enough rogues out there and battles for the Navy to be believed. Any first generation who knew something and spoke up, was locked away. A lot of them were killed on various pretexts. Attacking the guards or attempting escape. It didn't matter: the Navy just had to make sure that the truth never got out.
“Our forebears escaped. Not all of them, but enough. Some went into hiding and became an underground within the Commonwealth. Not a resistance, just a minority trying not to get killed. Others set out for the stars, planning to find a new world and colonise it and set up our own society.
“That's where I'm from; Eden, a world where the law is always first. Rights can never be ignored. The military must always serve the people and never rule them. The government is a senate of elected Councils. And where freedom of information is absolute. There are no secrets among our leaders,” Del said with the conviction of the righteous, but Carm didn't believe her. She was a mute.
“In time, when we on Eden were safe and able to, we sent people back to find more of our kind and bring them to our new world. It has become our mission to bring them home, to rescue our people from the bigotry and corruption of yours.”
Carm raised an eyebrow. His people bigoted and corrupt? That was a load of used floater parts and she surely had to know it. She couldn't really expect him to believe it. And as for the Navy being this gang of murderous thugs – that was just dark side talk.
“That's what I was doing before I had to flee again. My face became too well known to the authorities and they would have captured me if they could. You see, Naval Command knows there’s an underground railway out of the Commonwealth. They know there are people like me about. And they fear us more than anything else. They fear what we can say.
“Because after the crisis was officially over and Naval Command had to end martial law they suddenly discovered that they had had the one thing that every military dreams of: an enemy. A reason for existing. And with it they could do all sorts, like procure huge budgets, and have a loud voice in the Commonwealth. It had been their dream come true. Their failure, ironically enough, had quickly become their greatest triumph. And they couldn't let it go. So they kept the war going – in secret. It has been that way for six or more centuries. And we are talking untold trillions of credits.
“Now all they have to do is have a few secret meetings in back rooms with the heads of the Commonwealth, maybe show them a couple of ‘mutes’ as proof of the threat, perhaps rustle up some evidence of a mute attack, and then ask for the credits. They want a new battleship or twenty? It's theirs. New holiday homes for the admirals? Not a problem. They can have anything with a snap of their fingers as long as they have a war to fight.
“So they've been pretending to fight a secret war with us for six centuries. The leaders of the Commonwealth are completely under their spell. They believe that the Navy is the only thing that stands between them and complete destruction at our hands. And they also believe that the people can never know of the war because it would lead to panic and the complete breakdown of society. Only a very few conspiracy botbrains have even the slightest notion that anything's happening at all.
“It's a perfect system – for them. Unless it gets out. Because the instant it got out there would be investigations. And that would be a complete disaster for Naval Command.
“Naturally the Navy can't have anyone who knows what's happening around. So they hunt the mutes like me down, claim we're rogues bent on who knows what sort of evil, and catch or kill us. It doesn't matter if those they hunt know anything or not. You can't have peaceful mutes after all. It would be a disaster.
“And if they find a rogue like White then that's just more evidence of how valuable they are in this war. If their dirty little secret got out it'd cost them trillions of credits and get them locked up. So what exactly do you think they'd do to protect that sort of income? How far do you imagine they'd go? Do you think they'd have the slightest hesitation in killing you? And anyone you might have told?”
Carm didn't answer her. He couldn't. He didn't believe her exactly. But he couldn't completely disbelieve her either. So all he could do was stand in silence and pray she wasn't going to kill him.
“So now he knows,” Del turned to Kendra. “The dirty little secret is lodged firmly between his ears and buried in the memory banks of his ship. He can't get rid of it no matter what he does. He can never reveal what he knows of White without revealing everything else he knows. The Navy would have him in an interrogation cell before he could blink and a hole in the ground soon after. He's completely screwed and your master is safe from him.”
“If he was smart enough to realise that,” Kendra said. “But he isn’t. He's slow-witted and idealistic, believing whatever the authorities tell him. I studied him for years: he has very little ability at discerning the truth from a lie, and isn’t suspicious of anyone. Even now he thinks you're lying and is planning on reporting you. He is the perfect product of the Commonwealth upbringing. Stupid and completely obedient.” Kendra was scathing of Carm.
“And the pod I was in contains the material we give to our people when we find them. The evidence of the conspiracy, including thousands of testimonials on a full library of holochips. I'll show it to him, and even if he doesn't believe it completely, he'll be unable to deny it.”
“If I do that he's harmless? Agreed?” Del made it sound like a sentence.
“Maybe. I need to see the information and him viewing it. But only if it's compelling and he submits to voice stress analysis and passes.” Kendra accepted Del's proposal and just like that the dispute was over between them.
But it was just the beginning for Carm who was still trying to work out if he believed any of what was said. He soon realised that it didn't matter whether he believed it. Only that he thought it could be right, because if there was any chance that what they were saying was true then he had no choice but to keep his mouth shut. And there was a chance, especially if Del had the evidence she claimed. He guessed he would have to wait and see. But at least she seemed to be in no hurry to kill him.
They were right, he was screwed. And apparently that was a good thing. But he also supposed it wasn't his place to object, not when they were still waiting to procure the magical algorithms to go home. But then Kendra had to destroy even that hope.
“My master was right about you first generation mutes. You are clever. I'm glad I loaded you all on board.”
“You all?” Del's face abruptly dropped in shock. “As in you plural?” Del was all over Kendra in an instant and the android hadn't even admitted anything. But still she'd somehow said too much.
Meanwhile Carm groaned inwardly as his secrets were about to be exposed. Kendra couldn't seem to stop revealing everything. Fortunately he had a plan for dealing with that. He and the ship had worked it out on the way here. The only problem was that at the time he'd thought he was dealing with dissidents. Still it was all he had and he ploughed ahead with it, pretending a confidence he didn't have.
“Thirty-two of you. All buried in the walls of the s
econdary hold. Kendra will confirm that.” He waited patiently while the android did, but noticed that Del didn't take her eyes off him the whole time. Her hand might not be on his shoulder, but he still felt the pressure of her fingers squeezing regardless.
“And you weren't going to tell me that were you?” If she hadn't been that friendly before, Del was now ice. Colder than absolute zero.
“No. We only opened the first steel coffin, thinking you were an android like Kendra. But then you turned out to be human and started spouting on about your people and the Navy, and I realised I couldn't let the rest of you out. Whoever you were I could not let myself be surrounded by enemies and criminals.”
“How dare you!” Del's face twisted up in anger and she looked as if she was about to pounce.
“So I took precautions,” Carm hurried on before the situation got worse. “The others were removed from the walls and placed in a container, ready to be jettisoned if the need arose.” That was a lie. It would have taken far too long and in any case he wasn't a murderer. All they'd done was cover over the steel panels in the hold where her coffin had been and leave the others as they were. But she had to believe it or he would find himself surrounded by mutes in a matter of hours.
“What?!” Del believed him judging from the look of horror covering her face.
“I'm not going to jettison them, provided I'm safe. I'm not a cold-blooded killer. And the ship won't either.”
“The ship can't jettison them. It's not programmed to kill!” Del looked even angrier than before. And she was right – mostly. But Carm had an answer for her.
“They're still in their coffins with plenty of power. They could survive centuries in space. Die of old age. It's not killing.”
“You monster!” Del gave up and screamed at him.
“What did you expect?” Carm yelled back at her. He was angry too.
