“And should they take revenge against you?”
“I’ve done them no wrong,” Greene said. “But if I am the price for their peace, I’ll give myself up to them. Better that I should die now than lose everything I’ve tried to achieve.”
“And what have you tried to achieve?”
“Peace,” Lyra Greene said.
Constance considered her. For an instant, she saw the woman beneath the polished veneer.
“What are your terms?” Constance asked.
“Peace and order,” Greene said. “The System is dead here, Huntress.”
“Then who are you?”
“A true Venerean, like Altais’s people.” Greene looked at her for a moment, frowning the way Milla Ivanov frowned, the slightest impression of confusion on her face and nothing more—a Terran way of frowning, a System mode of expression.
Then Greene said, “Don’t you understand, Huntress? My people and Altais’s people are not fighting because we are System and rebel. This is a civil war.”
“There can’t be a civil war when there’s a common enemy.”
“There isn’t one. The System isn’t here,” Greene said. She had her hands clasped together in her lap; Constance saw the remnants of a cracked and faded manicure on the nails. “My people deserve your protection as much as Altais’s do.”
“That’s not what Altais told me,” Constance said. Greene was lying. She had to be; it was impossible, incomprehensible that Venus should be in a civil war.
“What did he tell you?” Greene asked. “Did he tell you that we are secretly System, hiding away, biding our time? It’s a lie. Certainly there are people with me who worked for the System or didn’t act against it, but it’s not a sin to survive in the circumstances you’ve been placed into. It’s no worse a crime to have obeyed the System than it is for Milla Ivanov to have sung its praises for thirty years or for your brother Matthew to have stolen money and food all those years on Miranda. They all did it to survive.”
Constance’s jaw tightened. Lyra Greene had done a good deal of research. She wondered how much the woman knew about her and what she had planned for this meeting.
“But there can’t be any peace without someone putting an end to the war here,” said Greene. “It won’t end on its own. Someone needs to enforce it. And with the System gone, there is a power vacuum here that sooner or later someone will fill. We can wait years, decades, for someone to take it up, and while we wait we will have war after war as people struggle and fail to take the power they know exists. Or you can take it now and bring order to this planet again, and with that order, we will finally have our peace.”
Politicians and bureaucrats’ words, seductive in their apparent logic and what they appeared to offer her, but Constance had learned never to trust them. Greene said the System was gone and so order was gone, and now she wanted order again. It sounded to Constance as though it was the System that she missed.
“And why don’t you become that person?” Constance asked. “Bring order back to this planet.”
“If I tried, I would only bring us more war. You can see it now—Altais and his followers hate me. But you have the power, and you have the army. If you decided to take this planet, it would bow to you without a fight.”
“I did not come to rule,” Constance said.
“But someone has to,” Greene said. “And if it isn’t you, someone will lift themselves up by bloody means.”
“Bloody for you? I didn’t come here to give you peace, I came here to drive out the System and give your people freedom.” And she would not leave them peace if it meant leaving the System at her back to hate her, to hunt her, to kill her, knowing that this time they should strike fast the way they had failed to the first time around.
“Then set someone up to rule if you won’t,” Greene urged. “Someone you support who will do your will, who you’ll back in case of another war. So long as my people are safe, so long as the witch hunts and the murders stop, then I and my cities and my people will support whoever you choose.”
That would be the same as ruling herself. With thinning patience, Constance said, “I want these people to be free.”
“Freedom is a good thing. But we need peace, too.”
“And once the System is gone,” said Constance, “we all will have it.”
“Once the System is—” Greene was angry; Constance could see it cracking her polished facade. “And how will we have it once the System is gone? How will a war-torn solar system know how to transition to peace once your war is done?”
“The people will decide.”
“The people will—” Greene cut herself off again and turned her head away from Constance, breaking her gaze. When she spoke, her voice was calm again. “The System is dead, Huntress. It died the minute you detonated the bombs on Earth. The time for peace is now.”
“The System is not gone if those who helped it exist still live,” Constance said, “especially if they are willing to welcome the System’s fleet when it arrives.”
“I only want peace,” Greene said again, but her face was pale, and Constance knew it must be true.
“You don’t care who brings back your autocracy, do you?” Constance said. “Just as long as it comes back as soon as it can. You want the System back, and if you can’t have the System, you’ll try to force me to give you a government that functions the same way the System did. Tell me why I shouldn’t burn your cities.”
“My people are innocent.”
“If they want the System back, then they aren’t,” Constance said. “If they helped the System when it was in power, then they aren’t. If they ever lifted a finger to help the System, now or before, then they are not innocent.”
“The people left who ‘helped’ the System while it existed are guilty of nothing,” said Greene. “They were just trying to survive.”
“Just trying to survive?” Constance’s anger, which had been boiling low in her chest, grew hot and sudden like a solar flare. “The ones who were just trying to survive were my people, the ones who lived out in the dark and the cold. They were the ones who were just trying to survive when the System spent every moment making them suffer or waiting to kill them or their families or their friends. The ones who lived in fear of death, Lyra, those are the ones who were ‘just trying to survive.’ Not the people who were afraid they might lose their jobs.”
She had risen to her feet. Lyra Greene leaned back in her chair, her hands gripping the seat. Constance saw that Greene was afraid of her, and that only made her anger burn the brighter.
“The ones who lived knowing that the System might kill them at any moment,” said Constance, “the ones who saw the System take their families away from them. Those are the people whose acts are justified. Like my brother. Like Milla Ivanov. But not like you.”
“Huntress—”
“Were you just following orders?” Constance said. “Coward. Just the fact that they were safe and comfortable while other people were suffering is enough guilt.”
“Then where will it end?” Lyra demanded, still pressed back against her chair, still pale, but snapping back. “You left Miranda; you lived on Mars. Aren’t you guilty, too? You weren’t suffering with them.”
“I was acting to save them.”
“How can you say you’re for the people when you think that half of them—”
“Of course a System woman would think—” Constance interrupted, but Lyra Greene would not fall silent.
“How long until you all devour one another?” she asked. “How long until your people turn on each other because they don’t know how to stop looking for enemies?”
Constance looked at her, the polished System businesswoman who had lost her business and her System and her polish, who had strode into the room so arrogantly, as if she were there to broker a deal with a reluctant client. But Constance was the Mallt-y-Nos, the fire come to cleanse, the speaker of the revolution.
“You came to offer me surrender, with terms,” Co
nstance said. “Let me give you my terms.”
Lyra stared up at her.
“Surrender the System traitors you are hiding in your cities,” Constance said, standing over her. “Hand them all over to me. Once they are gone and once this planet is clean, then I will make sure that Altais will never trouble your people again. Your people can rule themselves however they please, and they will have their peace with Altais.”
“I won’t betray them.”
“Twenty-four hours,” Constance said. “You may have twenty-four hours to decide.”
—
“Althea, Mother.”
“What is it?” Althea asked. She was adding sensory pads to the manufactured hands so that they could know whether they were touching something and what it was they were touching—so that they could feel. The white slips of plastic looked like bits of skin clinging to the mechanical hands’ iron bones.
“Ships,” Ananke said, and an imaginary wind blew her photonic hair wildly about her face, and then she vanished from the holographic terminal. Althea was already on her feet, leaving the incomplete hand on the floor. She dashed down the ship’s familiar winding hall and burst into the piloting room, where Ananke’s hologram had re-formed, staring intently with sightless eyes at the main viewscreen, which showed an arrangement of six moving sparks of light. Other ships, far in the distance. They were nearly indistinguishable from the background stars except that they moved.
“Have they seen you yet?” Althea asked.
“Not yet. They think I am debris.”
“Okay.” Althea let out her breath. If the other ships hadn’t seen them yet, they could still avoid contact with them. Yet although she had known that was what she must do if they encountered other craft, she was unprepared for how badly she longed to open up communication with the other ships, to hear other human voices reply when she spoke.
“What do we do?” Ananke wanted to know.
Would it be more sensible to change course, get out of their sensor range, and hope that the other ships didn’t notice or didn’t care? Or would it be better to play dead, to hope that the ships moved on in their course, thinking nothing more of the Ananke than that she had been an asteroid drifting lonely through space?
“What’s their vector?” Althea asked.
“0.9535, 0.2860, 0.0953.”
The ships were heading outward from the sun and slightly above the orbital plane, outside the usually trafficked areas. Althea wondered if they were trying to avoid contact with other ships as well. The fact was immaterial; Ananke was above the orbital plane, and that and their theta direction meant they would pass within a few tens of thousands of kilometers of her.
“Should I hail them?” Ananke asked.
Althea hesitated. “For information?”
“Maybe they know where Ivan and Mattie are.”
Ananke’s childish hope brought Althea back to herself. “No, we shouldn’t risk it,” she decided. “Change course to get out of range of their sensors.”
“Why? Do you think they are hostile?”
“They might be.” Althea studied the tiny specks of light before her. She said, “Do you know whose they are?”
“They are System ships,” Ananke said, and magnified the image on the screen.
The ships gleamed with reflected sunlight. They were vast and sleek. Their centers glowed with engine lights. The ships were shaped like disks, radially symmetric shapes designed to accommodate their centripetal gravity simulation. Their edges tapered down to a narrowness that at this distance looked slender enough to draw blood. Around their central engines, symmetric arrays of gun ports traced dark circles as the wheels spun.
System warships. The most powerfully weaponized ships ever made and the primary component of the System fleet.
“Ananke, are there any other ships in range?”
“No,” Ananke said. “Just these six.”
Then where was the rest of the fleet? Althea couldn’t imagine why six ships would be out here alone unless they were the vanguard. Perhaps they had been separated in some battle.
“These are my sister ships,” Ananke said.
“You’re not a warship,” Althea said, looking at the weaponry that packed the pocked surface of the slowly spinning ships and thinking of the video footage she had seen not that long ago of System ships bearing down on defenseless Triton.
“I am not,” Ananke agreed. “But they are more like me than any other ships now built.”
Something in her manufactured tone gave Althea pause. She turned to look at the hologram with its serene and unreadable face, and in that moment of distraction the communications equipment buzzed to life.
“This is the System ship Pygmalion. Identify yourselves.”
“What do I do?” Ananke asked.
“Tell them you’re a System craft,” Althea said. “No. Tell them you’re a research ship and you mean no harm.”
Ananke announced, “This is the research craft Ananke. We are on a peaceful mission.”
“Was that good?” she asked Althea, and Althea said, “Very good, Ananke, good.”
The man’s voice said, “What is your alignment?”
Ananke hesitated again.
“Tell them you’re System,” Althea urged.
“We are a System craft,” Ananke said.
Silence, buzzing silence. Then the man said, “Who is your commanding officer?”
“Give me the comm, Ananke,” said Althea, but not soon enough; Ananke already had said, “Althea Bastet is in acting command of this vessel.”
“What happened to Captain Domitian?”
“He was killed,” Ananke said. “We were boarded by terrorists.”
“Ananke, let me speak,” said Althea.
The man said, “Is this Althea Bastet?”
“No,” Ananke answered.
“Then who is speaking?”
The hologram was fading, leached of color as Ananke’s attention went to the conversation; now the hologram turned to look at Althea with wide eyes, but Althea had no help to offer. She knew the System, and she knew what conclusions they would draw: that the terrorists had taken control of the ship and killed Domitian and Althea herself was a captive or convert, but either way, the Ananke was an enemy craft.
“Take control of their communications systems,” Althea said.
Where was the rest of the fleet? Were they nearby? The other ships could have signaled them; the fleet could be on its way to the Ananke even now. They should have fled to begin with.
She forced herself to be calm. They could handle this, she told herself. Ananke could take control of all those other ships and stop them from harming her.
“I have their communications systems,” Ananke reported.
“And what do you tell them?” Althea prompted.
Ananke said, “I am Ananke. Cease your attack.”
Silence from the comm. Althea said, “Are they answering?”
“No. But they’re moving.”
On the viewscreen, the ships were arranging themselves into a five-pointed star, with the sixth ship in the center.
“Are they leaving?” Ananke asked, and Althea realized that Ananke hadn’t come to the same conclusion that she had. The danger, the threat, had all been in Althea’s knowledge of what another human would do in this situation, not from any logical analysis of threat. And absent that awareness, the configuration that the other ships were moving themselves into was nothing more than a curiosity; Ananke would know but not appreciate the immediacy of the fact that that configuration was a prime position for a group to fire on a single target—
“Ananke, they’re going to shoot!” Althea cried out, forgetting everything for a moment in her terror for her ship, and Ananke acted with all the speed that only a machine could possess. The alarms inside the ship all pealed at once with deafening volume, and the ship rocked as it jolted to the side, sending Althea to the floor, where she could see nothing but the dust and grit beneath the computer pan
els lining the walls. There was a wrapper pushed up against the wall from some sort of candy that Gagnon had liked. Althea struggled to her feet again only to fall once more when the ship rocked to a stop, but this time she managed to land on her knees so that she could still see the viewscreen and the other six ships wheeling around to chase them.
That was as fast as the Ananke could move, Althea knew. The ship was too massive, was not built to move at a higher speed than the one they had just achieved.
“Ananke, take control of their weaponry,” Althea said. Her heart was pounding. It was different preparing for this possibility than it was actually living it: what had seemed so simple in concept was terrifying now, spiking metallic adrenaline through her veins. She thought of her beautiful ship torn to pieces. What would happen if Ananke was struck by weapons fire? Would Ananke die piece by piece, or would the computer, the intelligence within, simply cease to exist the moment one of her connections was severed? Althea’s creation was too complex even for her to predict.
Once the ship’s skin was ruptured, Althea knew that she herself would suffocate as all the air rushed out. And then, when the ship was dead, the naked black hole would drift through empty space unguided and unguarded and uncontrolled.
On the screen, the ships were getting closer. They were almost in position. Althea knew that they would fire again—it was a matter of seconds.
That was my government once, Althea thought. Those ships had been her allies, her friends, her leaders. She had trusted them. She had followed them. She had been loyal until the day Ananke had come to life.
“Do you have control of their weapons systems yet?” Althea demanded.
“No,” said Ananke. “Yes—some of them. But what if they have manual weaponry? What if they have old gun turrets that aren’t computer-run?”
“They won’t,” Althea said. “They won’t; those haven’t been installed on ships for hundreds of years.” The ships might not be firing, but they still were moving. “Ananke, shut down their engines and navigation. Quickly!”
Through the blaring alarms, the hologram took in a deep breath, and then everything went suddenly still. The alarms went silent; the blinking lights on the computer terminals froze. The hologram went stiff and then collapsed entirely, static devouring the girl who stood there.
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