Nara

by M. L. Buchman

  He didn’t remember pulling the machete from the ground, but Samnal backed away from him quickly. The man tried to raise his own blade but Jaron slashed at his arm laying it open to the bone. Samnal’s blade dropped from his limp hand as he screamed. He turned to run and Jaron slashed open his leg.

  He stood over the gibbering man as he crawled into the jungle. Jaron wanted Samnal to die as horribly as his sister and mother and brother and father. They both cried out with each fall of the blade.

  Samnal in terror.

  Jaron in his past. “Murderer. Traitor. Idiot. Pain. Fool. Death.”

  Jaron’s scream rose until it ripped his throat and made no more sense than the parrots.

  # # #

  Robbie thumbed into the jungle and noticed that Jaron’s blade and hers were missing from the rack. Nobody else ever took hers, it was too heavy for the other workers to swing for any length of time. She grabbed one of the common blades which felt like a steak knife in her hand, jammed it sheath-first into her belt, and trotted down the ramp.

  At the edge of the jungle she hesitated, noting the fresh-cut outer path that she’d left for Jaron. He always liked to think there was something here that only he could handle and she made a point of leaving it for him. The fastest way to find him would be to follow this path until she found him at the end of it, but for some reason she swung the other way and plunged down the path toward the central clearing.

  As she jumped over the stream, a flash downstream caught her attention. She dug in on the landing and turned back. Jaron stood thigh deep in the water well down from the path. He leaned forward, washing his hands even though they looked perfectly clean. But his shirt, his face, his hair was soaked in something dark. Something red. She plunged into the stream and rushed to him creating a wave of water to both sides.

  “Jaron.” Robbie shook his shoulders before he focused on her. “Jaron. Are you hurt?”

  His eyes wandered to the machete at her waist and then drifted back to her face. That he looked her directly in the eye told her how far in shock he must be.

  “I’m fine. All clean. See?” He held up his hands. “Nice and clean. All washed away.”

  Scooping handfuls of water over him revealed no apparent damage.

  “Whose blood is this?” She put a large hand over his mouth and pinched his nose before ducking him under the water. The blood streamed away from his hair but nothing sprang anew from his body when she dragged him back into the air.

  “All washed away. All clean. No problems now.” His wandering eyes focused on her face again and something behind the facade broke.

  “Christ, Robbie, he killed all the dogs. The entire genetic family of Canidae gone with a single stroke.” Tears rolled down his face as he wept for the animals.

  “Who? Jaron. Who did this? Where is he?”

  He waved a hand downstream.

  Robbie pushed him to the bank and sat him on the sandy verge. “You stay there, okay?”

  He nodded and Robbie splashed downstream. If whoever did this wasn’t dead, she was going to tear him apart with her own hands. She didn’t dare leave Jaron for long in his current state, but if someone was suffering out here, she had to get them medical attention.

  Commpad. She slapped down into the water and dragged it free as she continued to wade along.

  “Medical team to the jungle biome. West entry, follow right-hand path to the stream. Jaron McAndrews in need of treatment.” At the acknowledgement, she rammed it back into its pouch with a splash.

  The jungle was silent except for her wave-churning progress. This was too far, she must have missed something. The water, the water about her was murky, but not with the silts that she’d been kicking up. Something colored the water, the way it had colored when she’d dunked Jaron.

  Robbie turned back upstream and in moments came upon what had once probably been human. A mass of slashed meat and bone lay in the foliage leaking its last blood into the running water. Buried deep in the flesh was a blade, one that they all knew.

  The wooden handle of Jaron’s steel blade showed the pattern of his fingers, outlined, Robbie was almost sick, in the victim’s own blood.

  Chapter 18

  8 January 1 A.A.

  Jaron sat and stared down at his hands. They hadn’t been this clean… perhaps since he was born. For a week they had not let him back into the jungle. Except once to lead the Captain and her team of judges through the events that he could remember.

  A holo of the corpse, in all its bloody detail, had been turned on for their benefit.

  Several of the judges had added their stomach’s contents to the jungle’s composting process. Just as Samnal’s blood had flowed into the stream, adding his nutrients back into Stellar One. They’d certainly be of more use there than they had ever been to the man.

  For himself, while he had no doubt that he’d done it, even without the evidence of his machete, he could remember nothing since Harold had flown aloft and Jaron had begun to clear the trail. This worried his judges beyond reason despite the psychologist’s reassurance that this was a common reaction to such a trauma.

  What was the Captain doing?

  Why didn’t she just get this over with?

  His mother had been right.

  Had the WEC troops ever tested his blood, he would have been eliminated for latent violent tendencies. He had proven himself a murderer. He’d always argued that such things came from upbringing, but now he must reexamine his own premises.

  The World Premier’s program of race cleansing based strictly on DNA analysis had just been proven valid. What secrets were contained in the results of the Second Human Genome Mapping Project? The results had been classified, and with the death of the world, were now completely gone. But they’d given the Premier’s troops the necessary knowledge to eradicate his father and brother.

  That they’d killed his mother and sister was just a misunderstanding when they’d sent him running to the jungle that morning so long ago. Now their sacrifice was about to be wasted. He had killed and he, in his turn, was about to be eliminated.

  The Captain’s cough returned him from his musings. Had she finally decided to act? Was Samnal right about how ineffective the woman was? He glanced about her pristine office.

  A long wall of clearplas showed a great slice of space, rotating in a great circle once every sixty seconds. The white rug and simple furnishings spoke of a centralization of power that no amount of ornamentation could impose. A glittering steel model of Stellar One rotated and spun above her desk. It was little bigger than his hand, yet something about it was wrong. A few moments of inspection revealed that the five rings were complete and the engines were in place. So this was not a holo, but an actual crafted model. The wall held a few certificates: Luna Shuttle Captain, Mars Hopper Commander, Captain of Stellar One.

  And Captain Devra Conrad Commanding sitting upright behind her desk. Behind her, beyond her desk of glass and steel, beyond her eyes of gray, there spread the emptiness of his future. The wall a pale blue, blending in with the Captain until only a space black uniform faced him, headless and handless, all washed away.

  “I have heard your statements regarding this tragedy, Mr. MacAndrews. I have also spoken at length with your coworkers.”

  He barely nodded. She glanced over her shoulder. Could she see the vast blankness there? She narrowed her gaze as she turned once more to face him.

  “Could you please tell me something of which I am not aware, something that will help me to create a final and proper justice in this situation?”

  Jaron leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He stared for a moment at his tightly clenched hands, even whiter than normal. Jungle white. Here on Stellar One the UV was tuned out of the artificial sun in the biomes. Everyone seemed too pasty, unnaturally light-skinned.

  His family had died and yet he was f
ree. He had no right to be the one left alive. No one to help him understand the steps that might lead him back to his jungle and his parrots. Robbie had visited him a few times, but he’d been unable to rouse himself enough to hold up even his usual small part of a conversation.

  How could he explain to this military leader the bane of the MacAndrews? He’d seen her record, at least the parts that had been published when she took command. Years of grinding her way from cargo handler through grunt commands on freighters and transports. She’d been in space for more of her sixty-five years than she’d been on all the planets and moons combined.

  Maybe she could understand. He had to try, even though it would make no difference in his sentence. If he denied this burden, he was no better than the WEC troops who had condemned his family without trial.

  He looked directly at her and noticed her left eye was a bluer gray than her right. Both far more alive than the similarly shaded wall behind her. It was a color in nature after all.

  “He killed all the dogs.”

  She sat in silence for a long time as if it didn’t mean anything.

  “I know that. We do not have all that many bioengineers on board with those capabil—”

  “Forever.” He paused. “All of them.” Again silence.

  “I know. But the problem I am faced with is setting a precedent.”

  He looked back at his hands and gave up. She was too wrapped up in procedures. The simple truths of environment making the species, that magnificently unique confluence of chance and genetics, was clearly beyond the comprehension of this spacer stiff in her black uniform. He barely listened as her voice droned on in the small room about Captain’s prerogatives in a quasi-military governmental structure. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine he was back in the jungle that he’d never see again. If she would just be quiet, he could almost lose himself.

  “You admitted guilt, but your coworkers have asked for leniency. They claim that it was justifiable homicide. There is no such crime in the articles governing this ship, nor anywhere in the history of the WEC. The punishment for intentionally causing serious injury or death of a fellow crewmember in our small community is clearly spelled out: death by injection. We were designed as an isolated world. Crimes against property can be repaid, but there is no room for crimes against the person.”

  Jaron nodded to fill the pause she apparently needed him to acknowledge. Harold must be sick with worry. Maybe they’d let them visit for a while before it was all over. They hadn’t been apart more than a few hours since that night in the Venezuelan treetops when he was orphaned so many years ago. Another time. Another life. He looked at the model of the station and the reflections off the spinning rings. They flashed at the same rate as a falling machete. He was having a hard time breathing in the close quarters of the Captain’s office.

  “Damn it, man. I am trying to help you. Everyone lauds your work. They all agree, your crew, the other biome leaders, and even my biologics liaison, Ri Jeffers, that the jungle’s best chance is with you in it. Can you not give me something to work with?”

  He’d try one more time. He slowly opened his hands forming a small bowl to stare into.

  “Each species that remains is a gift. In the twentieth century we were killing the Earth and the jungle began dying. In the twenty-first we were killing ourselves and still the jungle was dying. Stellar One is an ark to the stars. An ark of the best Earth had left to give. After the planet burned it is all we have to give.”

  Devra Conrad shuddered in her wide armchair. So, she truly did feel the loss. The loss of so much life in a single moment. Hundreds of billions of animals and uncounted trillions of tons of plant life had died in the same instant as the trifling total of ten billion Homo sapiens. Actually one of the lowest species population counts, especially when one considered the plant kingdom.

  That shudder across the Captain’s shoulders gave him the hope.

  “We carry with us that gift. Yerke fights for her ocean and marsh. Forest, desert, savannah, steppes, jungle; we all fight to preserve every last plant and animal. Only Carla gave up, but even she struggled well after hope was gone for her biome. Not a day passes that I don’t check the endangered list and try to devise some way to recover these losses. And this idiot…”

  His voice rose upward in anger before he cut it off. He’d almost revealed Samnal’s plan of this as an attack on the Captain’s command. He didn’t trust Devra Conrad, but neither did he want her death. It was simply that her priorities were wrong. Best that Samnal’s ridiculous plots died with him.

  “He killed a whole genus, foxes, too, and wolves if we’d had any. One man did this. I…” There was no way to describe the indescribable, either the woman understood or she didn’t. The small bowl disappeared as he closed his hands.

  In the long silence he could see her rock her chair back and forth as she first stared at him and then the ceiling. He wanted to shout for her to just get it done. She obviously didn’t understand.

  She sat up straight and twisted her shoulders until one of the vertebrae in her spine popped audibly. She flipped on the computer to record.

  “In the matter of Jaron MacAndrews before me, Captain Devra Conrad commanding, on this eighth day of January, Year One Ad Astra, 2093 of the Common Era, I have been forced to make a difficult decision.

  “A murder has been committed. But the man murdered, Samnal Jenkins, perpetrated the initial crime of killing fifty-three unborn fetuses, all but four of the known pregnancies aboard, and eleven of their mothers. He also performed the most successful act of genocide in recorded human history, killing an entire genus in a single night. Yet the genocide was against a non-human species and this judgment is not to be interpreted to imply that the death of a human is to be equated with the death of an animal or plant.”

  Jaron looked up at her sharply. She was exactly wrong. Hadn’t she understood a single thing he’d said? Apparently not. He returned his attention to the glittering model as she continued in her oblivious way. It no longer mattered what she said though he could do naught but listen as she droned out his doom.

  “However, it is my opinion that faced with such circumstances even the most mild-mannered of us might have acted similarly. With these factors in mind, and fully aware of the precedent I am setting, I hereby grant a full pardon to Jaron MacAndrews. He has been given a clean bill of health by both the medical and psychiatric teams that have examined him. However, for the next six months he shall report to the chief psychologist on a weekly basis for review. This matter is now closed. Recorded and verified this date, Captain Devra Conrad commanding.” She hit the off switch.

  “Clean bill of health.” The words landed like physical blows. He hadn’t even paid attention when they’d taken his blood. The first time it had occurred in his thirty years. He was clean. The heredity that caused the WEC to destroy his genetic family was not in him. They had murdered his mother and sister when they sought to protect him and now he tested clean. He was human, not a genetically judged and condemned criminal.

  He allowed the silence to stretch as he tried to comprehend that he’d be allowed to return to his jungle. That perhaps the natural order did prevail over the genetic.

  He whispered softly, “Thank you.”

  “I know you to be a good man, Jaron, and when I think of the children, I too…”

  “No. Not for them. We can always have more of them.” He wanted to shout, but instead clamped his mouth tightly closed. ‘No, for me. Thank you for proving I am not tainted. That my blood is good. That I am of my environment more than my genetics.’ But when he looked at her once more, Jaron knew she wouldn’t understand. He spoke the other truth that was in his heart.

  “I meant for the dogs.” But it was wrong. It was his own blood he cared about. He flinched as a drop of water fell from his eyelash into the waiting cup of his palms.

  # # #

 
Ri stood at the hatch to the base of the Ring One vator with Sub-Captain Olias. The Captain had decided to have the Icarus Two solar observatory lowered down the outside of R1 until it was docked at L1, rather than remaining at the core. That meant the Icarus wouldn’t be going anywhere soon. Not that there was anywhere else to go.

  After seven weeks getting back from its station in Mercury orbit, the crew of eight was returning to a very different world. They had left a teeming Earth six months before to study The Wanderer on its plunging course toward solar impact, when Stellar One had been little more than the core and framework . In their absence, a starship had been built, and their sister ship and the rest of humanity had been burned from existence. How were they reacting?

  The process was slow as the reserve liquid oxygen tank was lowered on the opposite end of the ring to counterbalance the ship’s mass. The deck rang as the shuttle seated home. The lock hissed open.

  A waft of air washed across her cheeks. It was alive with different smells and tastes. Not bad, simply as if someone had been cooking with an unusual set of spices.

  The crew eased slowly out through the lock and blinked about themselves. Ri was starting to sort them out based on their files, when she noticed Olias. His scar was jumping along his clenched jaw. An official greeting had no chance of escape. His anger was directed at one of the people in the back, either the pilot or the Captain.

  She followed his gaze and noted the Captain’s easy smile, broad and welcoming across his face slowly fade like the glow of a hot poker plunged into an ice water tank. Well, if Olias couldn’t be civil, it was up to her.

  “Greetings, and welcome to the crew of the Icarus Two spacecraft. Well done and welcome home.”

  “Such as it is.” The high voice belonged to Donnie Patterson, their comm officer. Twenty-four, two years older than Ri. But Ri would have put her about Renni’s age, eighteen if she’d lived. The perky little brunette was just a few inches past Ri’s diminutive height, and round in all the places Ri wished she was.