“Get that kid out of here,” he said.
He might have meant the goat, but he probably meant Junior Hasselblatter. Dr. Hasselblatter’s son was the bane of his uncle’s existence. Actually, he was the bane of everyone’s existence. Today he had harnessed his goat into a pair of homemade wings, which flapped at the pull of a lever.
Dr. Hasselblatter ignored the command. Kiyoshi noticed for the first time that he looked alarmed. He wrapped his arms around his wife. “I just heard!” he exclaimed.
“What?” everyone shouted. They had not got completely out of the habit of thinking that Dr. Hasselblatter had privileged access to information.
“War! We’ve declared war on Mars!”
The Pashtun men roared. Even Kiyoshi snickered.
“We know,” they all chorused.
Out here, they had no internet access. The boss-man used to have a slick system of redirects involving dark pools of privately-owned servers, but he’d cut the cord during the sex scandal / ISA panic. Six months had passed since then, so if the ISA were coming to arrest him, they weren’t burning metal to get here. But he’d never renewed their internet connection. It turned out they could get along just fine without it. Ship radios picked up the feeds, and news items percolated through the colony fast enough, depending on how interesting they were.
It said a good deal about the priorities of the colony—and the boss-man’s success in alienating his followers from the rest of the solar system—that war between the UN and the PLAN was not considered very interesting. This also explained why Dr. Hasselblatter had only just heard about it.
“But this is a historical event,” he insisted. “Humanity is taking a stand! Finally, finally we’re striking back at the PLAN! What a day! A watershed moment in the history of human civilization …”
This was too much for Kiyoshi. “Ten to one, it’s disinformation,” he said sharply. “And if it isn’t? They’ll pull back as soon as Star Force gets their delicate little fingers burned.”
He tended to be cynical about the UN. They’d let his home asteroid get slagged.
“This time is different! This is no hollow PR campaign. They’re planning a war.” A shrewd look came over Dr. Hasselblatter’s face. “The President’s hand must have been forced. She’s not a risk-taker. Her job’s on the line now—”
“Oh, Abdullah,” the boss-man said. “The President’s problems aren’t your problems anymore.” He said it kindly. For just a moment, he was not the boss, he was just an older brother setting a younger brother straight. Kiyoshi knew that tone of voice because he used it himself sometimes. “It’s a mess, but it’s four hundred million kilometers away. Anyway, Insha’Allah and all that.”
Junior Hasselblatter’s flying goat crashed into the tea party, breaking it up. Dr. Hasselblatter’s wife spoke sharply to her stepson. Sullen, he hugged his goat, and Dr. Hasselblatter hugged all three of them. The real Pashtun men went to put their spacesuits on, embarrassed by this public display of affection.
Kiyoshi caught up with the boss-man outside. “‘Insha’Allah and all that’?”
Certain privileges came with being the boss’s right-hand man. Kiyoshi could talk to him like this, at least on a private suit-to-suit channel.
“Hey,” the boss-man said. “There is a definite upside. The ISA is much less likely to come chasing after me in the middle of a war.”
“Naw, it’s the Allah talk that gets me.”
“Hey,” the boss-man said. “Call it God if you want. Call it fate, call it luck. Long as it’s on my side, I don’t care what you call it. There are a thousand ways to gain popularity, and all of them are right in the right circumstances.”
“In the name of Jesus Christ, may you be forgiven for lying your ass off.”
“I’m heading over to visit the Amish. Wanna come and hear me lie my ass off about how fusion energy isn’t a worldly convenience?”
Kiyoshi let out an involuntary laugh. Wished he could take it back. “Someday,” he said into the gunky mic in his helmet, “I want to hear you tell the Pashtuns—hell, everyone—that you and Dr. H. are from California; that you aren’t even Pashtuns, but half Iranian and half German or something; and that you never cracked open the Koran, much less the Bible or the Mormon scriptures or whatever else, until you got interested in preserving minority cultures.”
“Oh, most people are already aware,” the boss-man said. They were puttering away on small blasts of gas from their mobility packs. Behind them, the Pashtuns clung like flies to the nearly-invisible web of strands that would become one-eighth of the Salvation. “They just don’t care. Same as the war. It doesn’t matter a lick way out here. There’s a disconnect this far out from civilization. You should know that.”
It will matter if the ISA comes for you, Kiyoshi thought. “Even our cynical bunch might be interested enough to know your real name.”
“I doubt it.”
His real name was Qusantin Hasselblatter—but that wasn’t what Kiyoshi was referring to. He meant the boss’s old nom de guerre: Konstantin X.
“You have my permission to share that tidbit … later.” The boss-man gave a sinister chuckle. “When it’s too late for anyone to have second thoughts.”
“Aw, go and chuckle sinisterly at the Amish,” Kiyoshi said, laughing.
They split up. Kiyoshi had a long trek back to his ship. For half an hour, he floated on his fragile jet of ionized gas, with no external proof he was moving at all, relative to the fragments of 99984 Ravilious which were the only things big enough to see. A radio beacon in his HUD guided him towards the Monster. He stared glumly at the distant sun, which was tinted by his faceplate to a putrid shade of green.
So, revealing the boss’s real name wouldn’t give him any leverage. He’d had a feeling it wouldn’t, but it had been worth a shot. Maybe if he knew more of the compromising details … but those were buried deep in the ISA’s data vaults.
Sometime later, he thought about the war again. He really did not believe it would come to anything. On balance, it was a gift to the boss-man, giving anyone who might have been on the fence about the Salvation project a reason to work faster and harder.
But other people, elsewhere in the solar system, might fall for the UN’s hype. Some might take Dr. Hasselblatter’s view that this was a watershed moment in the history of human civilization, yadda yadda.
Kiyoshi thought of Alicia Petruzzelli. He’d only known her for one day, and most of that time he had been busy getting to know her in the Biblical sense. Forgive me oh Lord, for I am a hopeless fornicator. Though not recently, for want of opportunities.
She was exactly the type to fall for the hype. The thought gave him a pang of sadness. He saw Petruzzelli as a cherry blossom, plucked from her branch and carried away by the whim of the wind.
Oh well. We’re safe here. Ain’t no wind that can blow across 400 million klicks of vacuum.
iv.
Petruzzelli walked along a country road in Idaho, towing her suitcase. She walked between plots of varying hues of yellow and brown, and a thousand shades of green. July heat dampened her armpits. Back on Earth for the first time in years, she was hyper-aware of the smells, the dirt under her boots, the weather. The sky was overcast, as it usually was on Earth.
Since the late 21st century, fleets of cloud-seeders had plied Earth’s oceans, flinging up water vapor to increase the planet’s albedo. These and other geoengineering gimmicks had stabilized the climate. It was slightly warmer than it had been in the 21st century, but that turned out to be good for plants. Idaho had once been a desert. Now it was one of the nations in the Breadbowl Federation, helping to feed the world with cutting-edge agriculture. Bots labored in the fields, wielding hoe and cultivator attachments on the ends of rugged tentacles.
She had gotten off the bus in Murtaugh, figuring to save money by walking the rest of the way, but she was hot and tired by the time she reached the Chevy that stood on blocks at the end of her parents’ turn-off. She gave the Che
vy’s trunk a friendly slap. It was an antique, protected from the elements by a coat of splart—a sculpture, not a working vehicle. As she trudged up the dirt lane, she heard the lazy whump of the wind turbines in the fields. Trees shaded the lane. The air smelt so rich and earthy she could taste it on her tongue.
The farm buildings came in view. A young woman backed out of the dairy, her arms full of trays. Turning to shut the door with her hip, she saw Petruzzelli. “Oh! Hey! Sorry, I didn’t hear the van. I’ve got the eggs right here, I’ll just grab the … cheese …” She trailed off as she saw that Petruzzelli was not the person she’d been expecting. She backed up.
Petruzzelli knew what the woman saw: a chick her own age. with skin as pale as paper and hair like a solar flare, wearing a t-shirt that said KILL ALL THE FUGLIES, and red Gecko Docs that were designed for walking on spaceship decks, not dirt roads. It was all too obvious that she’d just come back from outer space this morning.
The woman dropped the eggs.
“Don’t call the police,” Petruzzelli said urgently. “I live here.”
“No, you don’t. Who are you?”
“Who are you?”
“Tempest Petruzzelli.”
What Petruzzelli had figured. “Gotcha. Then I guess you’re my mom.”
Tempest’s lips twitched; she was subvocalizing to someone, probably showing them what her retinal implants saw. Then she swooped on Petruzzelli with her arms open. “Alicia!” she exclaimed, hugging her. “It’s so great to finally meet you! Wow! C’mon in!”
“Sorry about the eggs.”
“Oh God, yeah, I don’t know what we’re going to do about that.” A collie dog lolloped around the corner of the farmhouse and nosed at the spreading puddle of yolks. “I told the guy from the famers’ market we would have twelve dozen, but I guess we won’t have any. It’s going to suck if they run out. But it’s not your fault! C’mon, everyone’s gonna be so excited to see you …”
Still talking, Tempest led Petruzzelli into the farmhouse, which managed to be at once rambling and cozy. There were layers of history here, if you knew where to look. The indestructible old sofa in the living-room dated back to Petruzzelli’s childhood. Now twin toddler boys sat on it with a large teddy-bear, which was teaching them math. Petruzzelli noticed a new infestation of batik, and suspected Tempest. She already disliked the woman. Unfair? Maybe, but Tempest was still going on about those eggs, and she clearly blamed Petruzzelli, even if she said the contrary.
The kitchen was the nerve center of the farm. A vast, scarred table held a miscellany of computers and snarled cables with crumbs caught in them. Mom Elaine’s stained-glass suncatchers dotted the windows. Baking aromas wafted from the Viking gas range. Two men and two women sat around the ancient table, drinking tea and noodling on the computers. Petruzzelli knew none of them. At least that was what she thought until the older, shaven-headed man stood up. “Alicia! When did you get back?”
“Dad Ezra! You shaved off your dreads.”
“Going bald,” he stage-whispered.
“Implants?”
“Are you kidding? You can buy a hog for that kind of money.”
Like all the farms in the Breadbowl, the Petruzzelli farm was a SPIN—Small Plot Intensive—setup: they kept a herd of Jerseys and raised pigs and chickens as well as crops. It was a labor-intensive way of life, despite all the bots and high-tech monitoring systems, which was one reason Petruzzelli had five or six parents at any given time.
“Mom Elaine?” she said, trying not to sound hopeful.
“Oh, honey, she’s gone. I think she joined a quad over Pleasantville way. We can get her contact details for you.”
“That’s all right, I can look her up if you tell me her new last name.”
An animated discussion ensued as they tried to remember it. Tempest brought Petruzzelli a glass of iced tea, and said, “Really, don’t worry about the eggs.”
“It’s OK if you don’t have her details,” Petruzzelli cut across the chatter. The sun chose that moment to peek through the clouds, illuminating the vivid reds and oranges of the biggest suncatcher in the window. It depicted a stylized StarTractor passing in silhouette across Jupiter. Mom Elaine had made that one to celebrate Petruzzelli’s promotion to captain of the Kharbage Collector. Mom Elaine had been the last one in the family who had known Petruzzelli as a child. But now none of the others could remember anything about her. That probably meant the breakup had been acrimonious, and they’d deleted Mom Elaine’s details. People relied so heavily on their BCIs that deleting was the same as forgetting. “I guess she’s moved on,” Petruzzelli said. “It’s fine, it happens. My fault for not staying in touch.”
With visible relief, they abandoned the topic of Mom Elaine. They updated her on their own activities. The twins came in and stared. Petruzzelli assumed they were Tempest’s, although no one said so. The oldest of the women, Mom Gretchen, turned out to be the individual formerly known as Dad Greg. “Nice transition,” Petruzzelli complimented her.
“I love your eyebrows,” Gretchen said, returning the compliment.
Petruzzelli’s eyebrows were smart tattoos, swooping curves that ended in smiley faces. She made them do a snarky grin. She did not feel up to producing a real snarky grin. Her gaze drifted to the cluster of screens in hand-carved wooden frames on the wall. They sometimes showed family vids, but at the moment were just showing feeds. That figured. Given the amount of turnover in the family since her last visit, her parents would be in a bonding phase—lovey-dovey, all is new and exciting, oxytocin abounding in the air—not a nesting phase, when they would want to bring out and polish the family heritage.
Her BCI was out of area at the moment, so she hoped to see some war-related news. Instead, she saw:
—A knitting class
—A live feed from the Iowa Rap Festival
—A romantic comedy about a guy who falls for a phavatar
—The President of Idaho giving a speech about something
“Want to hear the Prez’s speech?” Dad Ezra said. “He’s talking about the Idaho Immersion Tournament. That’s your kinda thing, isn’t it? Games. I’ll give you wifi access and you can get the sound on your implants. Hang on while I look for the password.”
“No, no, it’s OK, I was just—”
“Wait up, guys!” Tempest said. She jumped off Dad Raimundo’s lap and stood in front of the screens, stabbing at the air in the universal pose of one remote-controlling a balky system. “I found something really great! I’ve never even seen this before!”
The center screen switched to an old family vid—a very old one. It showed a three-year-old Petruzzelli with Mom Gabriella—her biological mother—and Dad Carlos—probably her biological father—in the vegetable garden. Petruzzelli had an earth-covered carrot in her hand, which she was happily chomping, to the grownups’ amusement.
Everyone squealed. “OMG, look at those hairstyles. That’s so fifties,” Dad Ezra yelled.
On the screen, Mom Gabriella swooped little Alicia up in her arms and kissed her nose.
“Did you guys seriously wear those culottes?” Tempest demanded, astride Raimundo’s lap again, playfully pulling his ears.
Petruzzelli said loudly, “I was actually wondering if there was anything about the war.”
Everyone went quiet.
“The war?” she repeated.
“Uh huh,” Mom Gretchen said. “Sure, honey, I’m sure we can find something about that. Tempest, can you—”
“Oh, never mind,” Petruzzelli said. “It’s not important.”
It seemed impossible that they wouldn’t pick up on her sarcasm, but they didn’t. She was sitting right here with them but they couldn’t really see her. All they saw was her tattooed eyebrows and trekkie gear. They didn’t see a daughter, and why should they? She wasn’t biologically related to any of them.
But legally … ah, legally, it was a different story.
She finished her iced tea and said, “Well. Why I came back
to Idaho. Not to stay!” Her eyebrows added a big grin.
They looked relieved.
“There’s a war on. And I’m going to join up.” She waited out their exclamations of surprise and horror. “You have to apply in your country of citizenship. But that’s not the only requirement.” She’d been appalled to learn just how many requirements there were. “I need you guys to sign off on it. You confirm that I’m of sound mind, you absolve Star Force of liability for anything that might happen to me, yadda yadda.”
“Fuck the UN,” said Dad Ezra. He suddenly looked like an old man. “Fuck ’em.”
“I know, I know. But everything’s different now.”
“Yeah, everything’s different! We’re about to be dragged into a war that Idahoans don’t want and Idahoans are not responsible for. You don’t kick a fucking hornet’s nest! Tell me, do they have any idea what’s going to come out of Mars, once we start throwing bombs at it? Can they guarantee the PLAN won’t attack Earth?”
“Nothing’s guaranteed. But I’m a damn good pilot, and I will do my utmost to protect the people of Earth.”
“You shouldn’t have to do this.”
“I don’t have to. I want to. I’m volunteering.” She pulled her tablet out of her pocket and held it out to Mom Gretchen. “I have the form right here. If you could all just sign it …”
They passed it around, adding their digital signatures, with expressions so grim they probably believed they were signing her death warrant.
“Is that all?” Dad Ezra said.
“Actually, there’s one more thing …”
“What?”
She’d spent the morning standing in line at the recruiting office in Boise, fresh off the spaceplane, disoriented by the gravity and the brightness. Her neighbors in the queue had been young men, mostly. A few old foilhats. Not everyone in Idaho wanted to pretend the war wasn’t happening. Sweating in the heat, taking turns to go buy sodas from the Kwikstop, they’d traded scuttlebutt about the recruiting process, and that was how Petruzzelli had learned the following:
The Phobos Maneuver: A Space Opera Thriller (Sol System Renegades Book 5) Page 5
