A Covenant of Justice

by David Gerrold

  Finn didn’t answer immediately. He considered the import of her question—not simply the question itself, but what it meant to both of them. He’d never really thought about Vampires this way before and it left him uneasy. He might have to give up his hatred too.

  At last, he said, “Yes, I do. Because whoever designed your species cheated you out of a whole range of emotions that make life worth living. They didn’t give you the capacity for love. And I don’t know that what they gave you instead serves as any kind of useful substitute. From my point of view, I don’t think so. I’ve always doubted the myth of Phaestor superiority. Now I know why.”

  “But—” said Zillabar, allowing just a trace of her old self to smile through, “—you should notice that even as we lie here sparring, my blood serves your body, and not the other way around. You have succeeded in reducing me from master to servant; so perhaps you have demonstrated the superiority of your race after all—and maybe even this bizarre hormonal phenomenon you call love.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you still held power over us,” Finn chuckled back. “But I do appreciate your attempts at diplomacy. At least, while we remain tied together like this, we don’t have to torture each other.”

  “And I appreciate your kindness. Thank you.”

  For a moment, neither said anything more.

  “Tell me something else,” Zillabar said abruptly. “Do you think a Vampire can learn this thing—?” she said the word with audible discomfort. “Can a Phaestor learn how to care the way you people do?”

  Finn thought about it. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t even know if I’d want to try to find out. I don’t think I’d ever feel complete trust in any Phaestor. I don’t know that many others would either. The history of the Phaestor doesn’t encourage enthusiasm for the prospect.”

  “Think about this then,” said Lady Zillabar. “If the Phaestor do have the capability to care and we choose not to, then you humans will have to hate us after all. And if we do not have the capability to care, you will always see us as your enemies. In either case, your revolution cannot succeed, because the existence of an enemy—any enemy—represents a fatal flaw in the essential philosophy. If you cannot ever bring yourself to hold my kind of life sacred, then you will have established the precedent of separating out those kinds of life you find disagreeable. In such a situation, the dissolution of mutual trust becomes inevitable. You will always have to wonder and worry, who will the Alliance declare unworthy next?”

  Even in his weakened condition, Finn recognized that Zillabar had spoken the very same thing that had troubled him since he had first heard the distinctions of the Alliance of Life. How can we hold all life sacred when some forms of life hold nothing sacred, not even themselves? We make ourselves weak with such a philosophy, not strong.

  He didn’t know how to answer the Lady’s argument. It made sense. He could have spoken it himself. He already had, several times.

  “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “Better minds than I have considered this question and have come to mutually contradictory answers. For my part, I dream of a place beyond hate. Even before my brother and I came to Thoska-Roole, I had already grown tired of the violence. Now . . . after all we have come through, I feel it even more intensely. I have become sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. I want something else. I think we all do. Perhaps we’ll never achieve a world that works for everyone, with no one and nothing left out—but we still want to try.”

  Zillabar made a sound in response, maybe a snort, maybe something else, Finn couldn’t identify the emotion behind it. He glanced over to her.

  “I think you have resolved my question about caring,” she said. Her expression revealed that she did not think caring had any value for her.

  “Yes, I see that,” Finn replied. “Your refusal to recognize what lies beyond your own beliefs may yet prove a fatal weakness, not just for yourself, but for your whole species as well.”

  “I’ll surprise you,” she said. “I’ll grant you the possibility of that. Certainly, if I had accurately understood everything I dealt with on Thoska-Roole, I would not have ended up strapped to a table like this with my veins linked to yours and my liver cleansing your blood. Never mind, Finn Markham. At least one of us has a false set of beliefs—possibly even both of us. Does that surprise you to hear a Vampire speaking like that? It shouldn’t. However you interpret the actions of the Phaestor, don’t for a minute assume that we have no cunning behind our actions. If we have nothing else, we still have our intelligence, and you have six thousand years of history to see how well that has worked out.”

  “Yes,” agreed Finn. “We have six thousand years of history to see how well that has worked out. Not very well indeed.”

  “Well said,” acknowledged Zillabar. “And very shortly, we’ll both see the resolution of this question, perhaps even once and for all.”

  The Black Hole Gang

  Meanwhile, in another part of the starship. . . .

  The crew of The Lady MacBeth had gathered in the engine room to consider their own options. Because of Harry’s demonstrated skill as a judicial tap-dancer, they had invited him to sit in on their meeting and advise them. Harry agreed, but only after the usual heated discussion concerning his rates for legal advice.

  Robin spoke first, laying out the position for all of them. “Now that Captain Campbell has turned in her Guild insignia, we think we should have our contracts renegotiated. Captain Campbell says no; freebooters don’t show as big a profit as Guild spacers, so she says that if we renegotiate, we should take a cut in wages. We disagree; we think that as freebooters, we should become partners in the whole enterprise. We won’t ask for equal shares, but certainly some kind of pro-rata formula should apply here, shouldn’t it? I mean, Shariba-Jen certainly doesn’t need as much as oh, say, Gito or myself. Robots don’t have many needs. I wouldn’t presume to speak for Ota, of course, but it seems to me that we should offset the cost of Ota’s rescue against her share. And, personally—”

  Harry listened politely for at least fifteen minutes. Finally, he allowed himself a dyspeptic groan.

  “Do you feel all right?” Ota asked solicitously.

  Harry nodded. “Yes, I feel fine.” He massaged his temples. “But you’ve just reminded me why I quit politics—and why someday, I may even quit the law.”

  Something went fwoop.

  Harry glanced up nervously.

  Gito sat on the catwalk above the spherical cage containing the starship’s pinpoint black hole. He had a large orange fruit in his hand, which he peeled slowly and methodically. Periodically, he tossed pieces of the peel into the cage, where they first tumbled, then spiraled in toward the minuscule flare of blue-white radiation at the center of the sphere. They swirled around in ever-decreasing circles until finally they winked out with a flash and a fwoop.

  Robin flinched too. So did Ota. Nobody appreciated this reminder of the dreadful power of a singularity. They knew that Gito did it deliberately—as a way of attracting attention.

  “I think we should call a strike,” said Gito in his gravelly voice. “Shut the ship down until Captain Campbell meets our demands to negotiate. We’ve come as far as we can. She won’t move. Let’s stop it all right here. She’ll come around fast enough then.”

  Ota looked up at the little man, blinking thoughtfully. “Gito, we have nothing to negotiate. We lost the farm. The Dragon Lord took our eggs. We have no insurance. We have nothing. The Shakespeare Corporation will go into foreclosure in 82 days.”

  “We have the award that we won in the hearing—”

  “And how will we collect it? Do you want to try? I’d like to see you serve a warrant on the Regency treasury.”

  “Then why did Harry give us the award if he knew we couldn’t collect?” Gito called down to Mertz. “Hey! Justice-man! What good does the law do if no one can enforce it?”

  Harry agreed grimly. “You’ve just stated the entire problem. I can rule, b
ut I can’t enforce. You’ll have to wait for the Gathering for a resolution.”

  Gito tossed the rest of his fruit contemptuously into the singularity, swung himself around, and began climbing down from the cage. “Then we have nothing to discuss, do we. The hell with all of you. The hell with this spaceship. The hell with the Regency. And the hell with the Gathering. All this talk fills nobody’s pockets. To hell with heroes.”

  He stumped out of his own engine room, swearing quietly in his own native tongue.

  The rest of the crew traded disheartened glances. Robin sighed sadly. “I guess we’ll have to start looking for new postings. Maybe someone at the Gathering will want to hire us—”

  Ota disagreed. “I don’t think Captain Campbell will give up The Lady MacBeth that easily.”

  “She may not have a choice anymore. I don’t know. You know her better than I do, but I saw the look on her face when we left Burihatin-14. I think the fight has gone out of her.”

  “I hope not,” said Harry, but by then, the others had already filed out.

  Realspace

  Otherspace ended.

  Realspace began.

  Time, distance, and form all returned to the space outside the starship.

  Methodically, they took their bearings, they made their calculations, and assumed—correctly so—that their transit through otherspace had brought them halfway across the Palethetic Cluster and into the dark open rift beyond. Captain Campbell looked at the time/distance display and grumbled a reluctant acknowledgment of Robin’s skill at astrogation.

  “I’ve set up a standard deceleration approach to the Forum,” Robin said. “I’ll bring us in to a hundred thousand kilometers before requesting final approach instructions.”

  Captain Campbell nodded perfunctorily. After a moment, she got up and left the bridge, leaving Robin and Ota staring after her sadly. The two exchanged unhappy glances. They’d never seen the Captain so worried before. She wouldn’t show it to any of the passengers, of course, but the fact that she even allowed her crew to see her like this bespoke her terrible state of mind.

  “I wish we could do something,” said Robin.

  “We need to find a way to serve that warrant,” said Ota, grimly.

  As Captain Campbell passed through the main salon of the ship, Sawyer stopped her and asked for a moment of her time.

  She frowned, but she looked at him expectantly. “Yes? What do you want?”

  “I wanted to say thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For what you did for me and Finn. Everything. For the arbitration. For the blood donation—your crew and you showed me the real meaning of the Alliance.”

  Campbell looked at him blankly. “I didn’t do it for you. None of us did. We did it for Ota. You saved her on Thoska-Roole. We had to repay that debt. We always pay our debts. When the ship lifts, so does the ledger. Or something like that.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Sawyer. “Finn and I still have much to thank you for. If we can provide any service to you—”

  “No,” said Campbell. “I don’t want your services. I don’t want any more obligations. This time, it cost us our blood. Who knows what it will cost us next time?”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “No, you don’t. Thanks for your gratitude. Please don’t give any more.”

  “All right.” Sawyer gave in. He looked at her, oddly fascinated by a woman he couldn’t charm.

  On the other side of that look, Captain Campbell found herself annoyed at a man who didn’t take even his own life seriously.

  “Tell me one thing, Captain,” Sawyer said. “This Alliance business, this political stuff—I honestly don’t understand it. I don’t understand why Ota suddenly has such a commitment to it. Or anyone else, for that matter. Do you?”

  “Do I understand it? Yes. Do I agree with it? No.”

  “Explain it to me then. Why would Ota take such a stand?”

  Captain Campbell studied Sawyer. She replied blandly, “Because Ota doesn’t think like a fish.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said, ‘because Ota doesn’t think like a fish.’” Captain Campbell pointed to one of several aquariums in the salon. “See that? A fish doesn’t get to vote on the water it swims in. You do. Only you don’t. You just accept it. Ota stopped accepting it. Maybe someday you will too.”

  “Hm,” said Sawyer. “And what about you?”

  “Me? I swim in a different tank. Now, if you’ll excuse me—” She stepped past Sawyer and continued aft toward the ship’s cargo bay, leaving Sawyer to exchange a glance with an amused Harry Mertz, who had come into the salon in time to catch almost the whole conversation.

  “A different tank?” Sawyer asked.

  Harry grinned, “Don’t look at me. She made up the metaphor. I didn’t.”

  “She meant paradigms, didn’t she?” Sawyer asked, scratching his head. “No, that doesn’t make sense. . . .” Shaking his head, he wandered off in search of his brother. Maybe Finn could explain it.

  The Forum

  This particular trick requires a couple thousand pinpoint flecks of neutronium. At least. You can do it with less, if you wish, but to construct a smooth gravitational gradient, you’ll need many small individual gravity wells, equidistantly spaced.

  First, build a disk-shaped lattice of passive-field gravitational prisms, with each prism set to deflect all horizontal gravitational fields 180 degrees. This will allow you to put one piece of neutronium in the center of each triangular cell with the certainty that it will stay there. If any fleck starts to drifts to one side or another, the increased deflection of the gravitational prisms will push it back into place. Fill the lattice with your motes of neutronium and wait a hundred years or so to verify its stability. Then pave it over.

  You will now have a flat disk, five kilometers in diameter, with a planetary mass and a two-sided gravitational field.

  This configuration will produce some unusual gravitational artifacts. If you’ve built it to specification, with a thinner density of neutronium flecks around the edges, the disk will have almost no gravity around its circumference. This will give you easy access to free space. You can jump right off the edge, with minimal escape velocity needed as long as you stay in the equatorial plane. This property represents an asset rather than a liability, because it offers unique docking circumstances for star-traveling vessels.

  A perpendicular field of gravity will occur across the entire flat surface of the disk, both sides; but due to the sharp gravitational gradients of each of the individual flecks of neutronium, the pull of gravity will diminish rapidly as you rise away from the surface of the disk. Nevertheless, the combined gravitational pull of all those bits of condensed matter will still have sufficient strength to hold and keep an atmosphere of Earth-normal pressure across both faces of the disk, and a much thinner envelope at the equator. Balancing all of this will require some tricky math, of course, but any good quantum mechanic can easily juggle the necessary equations.

  Both sides of the disk will have equal functionality, of course, but for convenience sake, you might want to use one side for the necessities of civilization, and the other side for the maintenance of the disk’s very small ecosystem. Use the top half for gardens, fountains, meeting spaces. Use the bottom half for wilderness, crops, and ocean. If you work it right, you can create some extraordinary weather effects in a very small space.

  Install it at the Trojan point of a binary star system. Pick two fairly benevolent suns that allow some distance. Don’t plan on sleeping at night. This structure doesn’t allow for a convenient cycle of days and nights.

  But . . . if you insist on having a day-night cycle, you can always install a shadow field in a slow elliptical polar orbit, which will give you a useful approximation of a diurnal/nocturnal procession.

  Install spokes around the circumference of the disk, extending straight out almost to the limits of the usable atmosphere so that visiting starships
can dock safely and their passengers can walk or ride an elevator down to the main body of the disk.

  Put the whole thing well away from the Palethetic Cluster—for no reason at all, except maybe to make it inconvenient to get to.

  Call it the Forum.

  A place to stand. A place to speak. Most important of all, a place to listen.

  Here, you will find—on one side anyway—beautiful parks, luscious gardens, towering trees, crisp cold air, fresh blue streams, sparkling fountains, graceful bridges and pathways, a score of small gathering places, three fair-sized open-air bowls, and one great amphitheater at the center surrounded by thirteen columns, one for each TimeBinder. Here the air glows with its own light, the trees radiate luminescence, the ground itself sparkles, the pathways glimmer.

  The Lady MacBeth’s shuttle approached the Forum carefully, entering its atmosphere in a precise equatorial orbit. Approached this way, the Forum had only the slightest gravitational pull, but the small size of its intense gravity field also gave it a ferocious tidal effect. An unwary pilot could find himself with his ship ripped in half.

  Shariba-Jen backed the shuttle gently up to the end of a docking spoke and secured the boat with tractonic clamps. Routinely, he checked the outside atmosphere before popping the seals. As he expected, the Forum provided a near-perfect atmosphere for oxygen-using life forms. He never used it himself, of course, but he had learned the hard way that Captain Campbell considered it one of the highest priorities for herself and her crew.

  Star-Captain Neena Linn-Campbell stepped out of the rear access lock first. She looked off into the distance at the edge of the tiny world and experienced the faintest thrill of panic. The air had a hard crisp feeling. The Forum had less atmosphere than a full-sized planet; it didn’t have as much surface area, it didn’t need as much volume of gas to maintain the same amount of atmospheric pressure. Consequently, it also lacked a soft blue sky. You could stare directly out at the bright unwinking stars.