Analog Science Fiction and Fact - Aprli 2014

by Penny Publications

  "I need a ship and a loyal crew, and I need to go straight from here to there. No interruptions, conversations, or debriefings."

  "A ship?" Ourobon looked puzzled. "You're taking a single ship to Destrier?"

  Toby shook his head. "Not to Destrier.

  "I have unfinished business somewhere else."

  20

  Nathan Kenani sat up, blinking, and swung his feet over the edge of the cicada bed. He rubbed his eyes, looked around the chamber, nodding in satisfaction as he apparently recognized where he was. Then his gaze fell on Toby.

  "Hello, Nathan."

  To his credit, Kenani didn't miss a beat. "And a fine good morning to you, too, Toby. I see you've been busy." He squinted, taking in the deeply tanned and weather-beaten skin, the new beard, and the uniform. "Been a long night, has it?"

  His eyes were shifting around the room again. He'd registered the troops; now he noticed Shylif, and Jaysir, who slouched in one corner. He looked around some more, appearing puzzled.

  "Where's your girlfriend, Toby?"

  "She... went home." Damn him! thought Toby. Kenani was dangerously astute; even freshly awoken from thirty years' sleep, he was able to instantly zero in on Toby's single weakness.

  He couldn't have known about any of the events on Thisbe, much less anything about the veiled threats that had been radioed to Toby's ship. Those messages suggested that Corva's life could be made a living hell if Toby didn't return there. He'd commanded his men not to acknowledge the messages in any way; the instant those who'd sent them knew he'd received them, he'd be on the hook of the Toby cultists.

  Halen had given Corva up to them. That fact had provided Toby with the final lesson— as if he'd needed it, after Evayne—in just how badly family could treat family.

  Toby couldn't turn the whole planet over looking for her. He had known where Jaysir and Shylif were wintering over, and when he'd woken them he'd pleaded with them to look for her. To his surprise, they had chosen to come with him instead.

  "You're not finished with what you came here to do," Shylif had explained. "Getting that done's the best way to get her back. And, let's face it, you're no expert on the locksteps yet. You'll need help."

  "Well, that's what you wanted, wasn't it?" Kenani was saying. "To help her get home?" He crossed his arms. "I'm a little cold, and hungry, Toby. Do you have..." Toby had looked back and nodded, and now somebody came forward carrying Kenani's folded uniform. A bot entered the room pushing a rolling cart stacked with hot food.

  Kenani stared at this little performance. "Huh. I always wondered how much like them you'd turn out to be, when you grew up."

  "Them?"

  Toby assumed Kenani was talking about his brother and sister, but the guide said, "The trillionaires. Those bastards we left Earth to get away from. Seems you're coming along quite nicely, the way you handle the servants and all."

  "You're not my servant, Nathan, and I haven't come to kill you or anything—in case you were wondering." Toby smiled at him. "Look, I did my homework; there's decades of news reports about you and the things you've done in the service of the lockstep. There's nothing horrible; you're pretty much the same man I met on that airship back when I was fifteen. I'm pretty sure you've been trying to keep everything together, just like your job description says."

  "Well." Now it was Kenani's turn to look uncomfortable. "Thank you."

  "Nathan, you've got integrity, that's why I came back to you. I mean—you deliberately gave me a chance to escape, last... last night. Didn't you?"

  Kenani shrugged. "Let's just say I decided to be a bit sloppy.... I knew what those denners of yours could do, but most of my men hadn't seen them before. So I just... overlooked something, and neglected to warn them about it too. I wanted plausible deniability in case you did get away....

  "Hell, what am I saying, I thought you deserved a chance is all."

  "That's good enough for me." Toby gazed away at the wakening city, thinking. After a few moments, he was able to summon the courage to ask the question he'd come here to ask:

  "Mom didn't go to sleep to wait for me, did she? At least, not the last time."

  An ironic smile played across Kenani's lips.

  "Just tell me."

  Kenani looked put out. "I didn't lie to you, boy—well, not entirely. She did start wintering over to wait for her search probes to report back. And that is what got the whole lockstep thing started." He frowned even deeper. "What makes you think that last time was any different for her?"

  "It's a little discovery I made on Thisbe. It seems I can override Evayne's commands to the lockstep system."

  "Really, now?" Kenani looked genuinely surprised. "I never thought she'd done that."

  That told Toby part of what he wanted to hear. "You're not surprised that she could do it. Only that she did."

  Kenani pretended to be absorbed with the difficulties of dressing himself. Toby let him get away with his silence for a minute or so, then he said, "Tell me how it happened.

  "How did my mother end up being trapped in hibernation like that? It wasn't her own choice, was it?"

  Kenani began to tuck into his food. He was obviously thinking about his options—what he could say, what he could leave out, what he could get away with. Finally he sighed and said, "I don't know for sure what happened that day. None of us were there, just the three of them. But they'd been arguing pretty fiercely, that's for sure."

  "About what?"

  "This myth about you being some kind of messiah was part of it..." Kenani hesitated, then took the plunge, "but not all of it. Fact is, your Mom'd been overriding their commands to the system. There were some new worlds that had joined the lockstep—this was, what, about eight years in, our time—and they wanted to use their own cicada beds. Break the McGonigal monopoly. Peter and Evayne were having none of that, let me tell you. So many services are tied to the beds that they could shut whole cities out of the system— and they did. Your Mom brought 'em back in. She wanted to change the way the lockstep operated, but somehow the other two weren't letting her do it. She wanted a democratic system, they wanted to keep control.

  "Here's the thing, Toby. If Evie did something, Cassandra would just shut it down; she could do the same with Peter. If both Peter and Evie both ordered something, Cassie couldn't override them. But neither of them alone could override her, either."

  "Ah," said Toby. It was as he'd thought.

  "I don't know how they got her into the bed. Might have knocked her on the head for all I know. But anyway, she wasn't able to counter their command when they put her under. They came back and told us she was wintering over to wait for you, like she had in the past. We were suspicious, but what could we do? The time stretched out and she didn't wake up, and then we found out Evayne had been sending people to worlds outside the lockstep, feeding them this rubbish about Toby being the messiah and Cassie some mystic figure waiting for the end of time. It was pretty clear at that point what had happened."

  Toby sighed, then glanced back at his people. Some of the former officers in Evayne's private army were looking extremely uncomfortable. Well, if they hadn't figured out yet that he was just a human being like them, then they'd better wake up fast. Things were going to get real uncomfortable for the Toby myth, real fast.

  "Thanks for being up-front with me. You're nobody's servant, Nathan. I'm not going to do anything to you, or order you to do anything... but there is one thing you could do for me—as a favor."

  Kenani looked relieved, but cautious. "What?"

  "You're a guide. That means you've got a direct line to Peter, right?"

  Kenani nodded slowly. "Any messages I send will go straight to him. Anybody else'll have to go through the bureaucracy."

  "Right. So you can forward a message to him for me."

  Kenani gulped. "You know, they sometimes shoot the messenger."

  "Don't worry. Anyway, I'll keep it short."

  Toby had been thinking about what to say to Peter, and he'
d rehearsed several different speeches and declarations—but now he found he didn't like any of them. "You know, Evayne, she... she fled Thisbe after we defeated her there. She said she was on her way to Destrier to kill Mom."

  Kenani blinked and went very still for a second. Toby watched him carefully, then said, "Now here's the thing... she changed course. She's not going to Destrier at all. It looks more like she's on her way to Earth."

  "Ah. Really?" Kenani was visibly fighting to keep his cool look.

  "I know my mother's not on Earth, Nathan. But I also know she's not on Destrier. She never was, was she? Destrier is a honey-pot. It's a trap to catch Toby-pretenders. It's a pit for drowning navies. She's so sure I'm going to go there that she doesn't feel like she has to show up herself; but she's just worried enough that she's on her way to where she and Peter really hid Mom."

  "Well, obviously, the capital is Mars now," stammered Kenani. "They call it Barsoom these days, isn't that hilarious?"

  "I said it looked like she was on her way to Earth, but really, there's a lot of worlds between here and there. You don't know which one it really is?"

  Kenani said nothing, but he was pale, and just shook his head.

  Toby shrugged. "I think you do—after all, you've been part of Peter's inner circle from the start. If Peter and Evayne never actually moved her, then she's where she had become accustomed to wintering over. I'm pretty sure I know where Evie's going. I want you to send this message to Peter:

  "Tell him Evie's threatening to kill our Mother, and tell him I have a better idea. Tell him I'll meet him and we can work that out."

  "Meet him where?"

  "Just say I've gone to finish the job I started."

  He nodded politely to Kenani, then (still stung by Kenani's comment about servants) picked up his own chair and carried it to a nearby table. He clapped Jaysir on the shoulder, nodded to Shylif, and together with their officers in tow, left Nathan Kenani sitting with his forgotten breakfast.

  "I can't believe it," said Jaysir a few days later. "This is the most heavily defended place in the whole lockstep? I never even heard of it!"

  Toby smiled sadly at the irregular, faintly starlit shape that they could just barely make out a few kilometers from the ship. "You know what they say," he said. "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em. Everything important about that thing was thrust upon it.

  "Welcome to Rockette."

  He, Shylif and Toby hung weightless in front of a large curving window in the officer's lounge of Toby's ship. They were alone for now, as the crew bustled about reviving the vessel's systems. Toby had chosen the fleet's fastest courier vessel, and then they'd stripped it of its armor and weapons, sawed off and discarded the cargo container, even thrown out most of the furniture. With extra boosters bolted on, the fusion engine could edge them up to an impressive 10 percent lightspeed. Even if Evayne were throwing her own furniture out the window, she hadn't taken a particularly fast ship, and only had the fuel she'd left Thisbe with. Peter had to come all the way from Barsoom, after a delay because of the time it would have taken Kenani to relay Toby's message to him. Toby had the advantage over Evayne in speed, and the advantage over his brother in timing. So, he'd gotten here before either of them—but just barely.

  "Sir?" The captain had appeared in the door of the lounge. "They can destroy us, sir, if they want us. We have no defenses."

  Toby smiled at her. "I know. This was never going to be an even match."

  "But what is this place?" She ventured into the room. The woman was as intimidated by Toby as the rest of her crew, but at least she wasn't a fanatical Toby-worshiper: she was worried about the safety of her people. "Sir, I've been in the lockstep navy for twenty years and I never heard so much as a rumor that this, this fortress," she nodded at the window, "existed."

  "I expect if you looked it up, you'd find that Rockette was private property," said Toby.

  "Owned by my family. And I doubt there's a single human being manning those lasers and ships." They were invisible to the naked eye, but radar had revealed thousands of them, as well as mines and missiles, forming a cloud around Rockette far larger than the comet itself. "Rockette's important to the McGonigals. That's all I can tell you right now. But tell your men they're safe. None of that firepower is directed at us."

  "Very good, sir." She bowed in midair.

  "Could you get a boat ready? My brother's arriving soon and I want to meet him on the comet."

  "Yes, sir!" She flew gracefully out of the room.

  "Hmm." Jaysir scratched his head. "'None of it directed at us?' Yeah, I kinda think it's all aimed at us—and anybody who finds out this place exists."

  Shylif was taking it all in calmly; after Sebastine Coley's trial and punishment, nothing seemed to faze him. "But Jay, you yourself said we'd be safe."

  "Yeah, and you believed me? How long have you known me, Shy?"

  Toby grinned at them, but he was hugely anxious. He'd made a guess on Thisbe about why he was able to override Evayne's commands to the lockstep systems. Jay agreed that he'd guessed rightly, and now as their little courier ship had approached Rockette, Toby had issued a command to its defenses to stand down. If his guess was wrong, then yes, they really could be blasted out of the sky at any moment.

  Even if it was right, he was only safe while it was just him and Peter at Rockette. When Evayne arrived in a few days, he'd be helpless.

  He might be heading into a tearful reunion with his siblings; or an interrogation. Knowing them as he did, Toby suspected this meeting would be a bit of both.

  "Tell me again," he said to Jaysir, "why this is going to work?"

  The maker shrugged. "I never said it would."

  "Yes, but—"

  Jaysir tilted his head from side to side, noncommittal. "The McGonigal security system is a black box. People have been poking at it from outside for thousands of years, but beyond a certain point, we just don't know. Your mom built it well."

  "Yeah." Toby let out a long, ragged sigh. "Thanks. Can I have a minute or two alone before I...?"

  "Oh, sure." Jaysir pulled Shylif toward the door. "You know I'd say good luck, but that would just be stupid. How about, 'don't get 'em any madder at you than they already are'?"

  "Great. I'll remember that."

  They all laughed, and the other two left.

  So there it was: the little comet he'd been on his way to when he got lost, fourteen thousand years ago. It didn't look like they'd built much on its surface, which was still painted crimson by radiation-baked organics. Those took millions of years to build up; in its tiny gravity field, he was sure he could find two little stones balanced precariously atop one another somewhere, that had been balancing that way since before the time of the dinosaurs. Next to the inhuman aeons that passed between a pebble wobbling and falling on Rockette, all the events of the last fourteen millennia were nothing. As far as Rockette was concerned, Toby wasn't arriving late at all.

  He shook his head and turned away.

  Nobody spoke to him on his way to the little inflatable lifeboat, and he made eye contact with no one. He felt like an intruder; they were well rid of him. Surely if Halen had been here, he would have organized banners and speeches and a photo-op, and would have demanded of everyone present that they swear some weird blood-oath or brand themselves to mark the occasion. That was the sort of thing you did with living gods. Toby was far happier sneaking out.

  In the red light of a tiny utilitarian airlock he let a suit build itself onto him, as he had so many times before. Doing his checks and cycling through the airlock made him feel much better because the familiar chore reminded him of days—not so long ago, for him—when he'd cycled himself through Sedna's airlocks to attend to some minor repair problem on the little world's surface. Funny thing was, he'd always grumbled about leaving Consensus to do those chores. As he settled into the ship's little lander, he found himself smiling, just a little.

  The next
few minutes passed in silence too, save for the occasional radioed flight-plan update from the ship's bridge. He acknowledged with a terse 'yes' or 'no' and kept his eyes on the approaching comet, where a landing field was now lit in pinpricks of light. When he did set down, nobody human was waiting for him, only a few bots that directed him into a deep slot in Rockette's regolith. Down there was another airlock.

  He never remembered, later, going through that lock, nor could he recall removing his suit or sailing down the long, dark passages into the heart of the comet. Toby was running on automatic, absolutely sure of what he was going to find here, but his thoughts shocked silent by what it would mean.

  As he'd expected, all the passages led to one chamber, a spherical room in the most protected heart of the comet. There was nothing ceremonial or even comfortable here, only coils of frost-covered hose, tangles of faintly humming machinery, and, tethered in the very middle of the space by wires and cables and pipes like the kernel of a seed, a single closed cicada bed.

  Toby drifted up to it and, after a momentary hesitation, put out his hand to rub the frost from the top part of the canopy.

  "Hi, Mom," he said.

  Toby could tell it was Peter in the doorway because of the way he moved. Forty years had bulked him up and slowed him down a little—and Toby had never before realized that he knew how Peter moved—but it was clearly him. Toby could have picked him out of a crowd even if he'd been facing the other way.

  That bullet-head, though; it still threw him. "You look good," Toby called, his heart meanwhile threatening to go off the rails. "Shame about the hair, though."

  The chairman was accompanied by some milbots, mostly big human-shaped types with guns. "You know I thought about doing that," said Toby, pointing to them. "I guess if I didn't know it was really you, I might take precautions."

  "Yeah, well I don't know who you are," said the chairman. He started to say something more, but stopped when he saw the status indicators on the cicada bed. He swore and moved down with surprising agility for (Toby tried not to think it) an old guy. Placing both hands on the bed's canopy, while his bots encircled Toby, he swore again and then said, "Shut down! Back to sleep."