Through Fire (Darkship Book 4)

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  “New—?”

  “Turmoils,” he said. “With a capital T. Historical disturbances, when all the bioed people were killed!” he said. “In Liberte, at least.”

  I stared. He had to be exaggerating. You see, unlike most people on Earth, I had seen images of the Turmoils. Most people on Earth had heard of them, but not in the detail we’d heard of them in Eden, partly, I thought, to hide the fact that after the Turmoils the Mules—now calling themselves Good Men and pretending to be completely non-bioenhanced—had climbed back into power. On Earth, the pictures, videos and holos of that time period were restricted or censored. On Eden they were mandatory viewing, because that was our genesis story, the reason our ancestors had left, the reason we kept our home secret from Earth and guarded it.

  For a while, at the end of the twenty-first, the fate of everyone on Earth had been determined at birth. Either you were one of the enhanced ones or you were a serf, at best a working drone, at worst one of the myriad dependent on the state for charity.

  And then it had broken.

  In Eden we were taught it had gone wrong because the biorulers, the Mules, weren’t quite human. They were genetically human, mind. Made of human DNA. Yet they hadn’t been raised as people, but as instruments of the state. They had no loyalty to humans or the ways of humans. They had wreaked havoc on the Earth while purporting to improve it. They’d destroyed vast portions of the fauna and flora of the continents and ruthlessly moved populations around, reduced some populations, enhanced others. We’d been taught it had gone wrong because governments were too powerful. Because one person, whether bioed or not, could not decide best for multitudes.

  But in any case, the results had been disastrous. The rebellion against the Mules was known as “The Turmoils,” capitalized, as though there had never been and there never would be worse disasters on Earth.

  It had started as a hunt for the Mules left behind, but, as those proved elusive, it had expanded to a hunt for all the Mule servants left behind, and, finally, for anyone who was smarter, prettier, faster—anyone who could be bioed. In some places, they’d used gen readers to identify modified genes, but in most places beauty or competence were considered evidence enough.

  Interestingly, but not unexpectedly, given the abilities they’d been endowed with, most of the Mules left behind had not only survived, they had gotten new identities and they’d thrived. They’d taken over. In the fullness of time they’d become the Good Men, Earth’s rulers under a regime that forbid bioenhancing and research, and concentrated on keeping the Earth as stable as possible. Having defeated the cloning stops in their genes, they’d also stayed in power. To keep up appearances, they had their brains transplanted into the bodies of their supposed sons, generation after generation and inheriting from themselves, to hold the Earth in an immutable grip.

  Simon had escaped the fate of the other sons of Good Men, of becoming a body donor for his “father,” because his father had suffered a disabling accident before he could have the operation performed. Simon had figured out the system and what his fate would have been. I didn’t know if he’d become a rebel then, or if he’d been a rebel before. A few other sons of Good Men had escaped the brain-transfer, and were part of the Earth-wide revolution raging against the old regime. I’d met two of them: Lucius Dante Maximilian Keeva and Jan Aldert Hans Reiner.

  It was impossible there could be Turmoils in a world where most of the territory was still in the control of the Mules-by-another-name, still part of the regime that had given Earth a vaunted three-hundred-year-long stability. Wasn’t it? I backed up to sit on the bed. “What do you mean Turmoils? What would precipitate Turmoils?”

  I couldn’t read him. I couldn’t tell if he was confused or upset, or if he felt sorry for me. It was all there, but what he said aloud was, “I think.” He swallowed. “I think it’s just as it was, and that they’re hunting down and killing anyone they believe is bioed. That was…the raid on the palace, the people surrounding the seacity. Not the Good Men, but the people, in the territories and in the other seacities. Most of the people here are administrators, so they think…”

  “That they’re bioed?”

  He nodded. “It was always a danger. The Sans Culottes, you know, want equality, so they swear allegiance to natural people, not to any state. And now they know the Good Man is not precisely of the people, not like the rest of us. And they whipped up a frenzy of maybe there are more. If the Mules lied and took over again, they might be all over.”

  “How do they know?”

  He made a gesture, like it was all up. “The Usaians,” he said, referring to the messianic cult that had modeled their revelations on the principles of the long-vanished country which used to occupy vast portions of North America, the same cult that was now firmly in control of Olympus seacity and its dependencies. “They broadcast—Their propaganda station—They broadcast the truth about the Good Men.”

  I looked blankly at him for a moment. It had been part of the regime of the Good Men to prevent wide broadcasting and news reporting except by those licensed to do so. The technological stop for such activity was in Circum Terra. Simon and I had been part of an invading party that had taken control of the station and removed those controls.

  “But how can that be in their interest?” I said. “Lucius Keeva, in Olympus, is as much of Mule stock as the rest of them, and he’s the face of the Usaian revolution.”

  “Oh, they’ve convinced everyone he is different. He saved one of their own. Some act of heroism or other, all conveniently filmed.” He made a face, then a dismissive hand gesture. “The thing is, we have nothing like it. And it’s different, anyway. The Usaians want only equality under the law, but our movement was supposed to make everyone equal. Really equal.” He sounded almost desperate. “The law can’t make you really equal.”

  A sarcastic voice at the back of my mind asked how they intended to perform this miracle, but I didn’t say it. He went on, “So, when they found out what Good Man St. Cyr was, he wasn’t an acceptable Protector. Some hotheads got to talking, out in Shangri-la, likely in some tavern or bar or diner, and they decided that he was just doing what they’d done before, the Mules becoming Good Men and some people, not quite hotheads, who had been plotting this for a long time, found the opportunity they needed to ignite a revolution only they have the power to control. A revolution far more destructive than we anticipated. The Good Man is caught in it, and—”

  “And?”

  He bowed his head. “We’ll need help. Don’t tell me you’re enhanced. The Mules were enhanced. But they fled or laid low until the madness of the crowds passed.”

  “We can’t wait that long. Did they capture Simon?”

  Alexis frowned. He looked puzzled or perhaps upset. When someone has a face that doesn’t owe much to beauty and which time has etched with wrinkles clearly due to frowning a lot, it’s hard to tell if they’re frowning or merely thinking. “Yes,” he said. “Or at least the word is that they’re trying to trade him to the Good Men, in exchange for a promise not to invade and not to pursue their vengeance against the revolutionaries. The revolutionaries hope to establish their own fiefdom here, with no interference. They’d rather reign in a tiny place than get in an enormous war they’d be sure to lose.” He took a deep breath. “The other people—The people at the palace…Most of them. Not all, but most of them…” He made a gesture with his hand. “Heads on stakes.”

  There was a suppressed emotion. I thought the words were compromise words for what he’d really like to say. For “people at the palace” he most likely meant “my friends, my subordinates, everyone I knew.” For “heads on stakes,” “they were all killed.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “We must go outside the seacity to find friends of the Patrician,” he said. “The people in Olympus owe him.” He stopped as though it had occurred to him such debts are often hard to collect and said, on a down note, “The Remys like him. They were children
together. Or at least they were young together. Same broomers’ lair.”

  This much was probably true. The Remys, retainers to the Good Man of Olympus, seemed to include Simon in their adventures and they had indeed been part of an illegal broomers’ lair together.

  “But you said it’s turmoils against bioed people. It can’t be. There are no bioed people anymore. There haven’t been since the late twenty-first, right?”

  “From my looks no one would ever suspect me of being bioed, right?” He shrugged. “But people knew me by sight, and someone might recognize me.” He looked up at me. “And you—Well, if they see you! I mean, you did a good job, but anyone who looks at you too intently…” He shrugged. “Bioed people escaped back in the Turmoils and a lot of those who served or serve the Good Men…the hereditary families, are bioimproved in some way. At least people say it’s obvious, looking at them. And their existence is an affront to equality. No one can be equal if some people were designed not to be.”

  “But no one can be equal,” I said, and refrained from pointing out that if my readings of history were right, there had been enough variation before bioing. “How can they enforce everyone being equal? People are born different, too.”

  He shrugged again. “Yes, but it’s not so obvious, or at least it’s not deliberate. It’s an act of God or fate or providence. Allons, that’s what they say, and so, anyone who worked for the Good Men, particularly those in hereditary positions, but even the others, too, were considered…suspect. And so…We must go. You and I can’t save anyone alone. Not against a whole seacity. If we try we’ll just end up dead. And we can’t find others, if there are still others, not without going back to the palace or chancing capture ourselves. And then the Good—the Protector will die for sure. But if we get help, we’ll have a chance.”

  I hesitated. A chance. Just that. I wanted to say I could take on the whole seacity with my hands tied behind my back. But while I might be faster than any one person, stronger than any three people, I knew I was no match against five hundred thousand. “And so, what do we do? You got us in these outfits, and I agree we will pass at least cursory glance. So, we’re a not-very-well-off couple out for a night on the town, right?”

  He bit his lower lip. “I have arranged for a car. Enfin, my service has…had resources. It is my hope,” he said, “that we leave the seacity and…go to the Good Man’s friends. Olympus. Olympus would work. They would know how to help me free him. And how to protect you.”

  I understood without being told that it wasn’t even a matter of loyalty or of doing as he was told. No. Alexis was holding on to these orders as the one thing still giving structure to his life in a world gone suddenly insane. I didn’t say that having people working on protecting me made me feel like a coward.

  “Once we’re out of the hotel—can we get out of this seacity?”

  “If we look like them, if we say we’re going to Shangri-la, or…or something, to see my mother, yes, we can. I think. From what I saw and heard, at least, it won’t be easy, but it shouldn’t be impossible.”

  “Your mother lives in Shangri-la?”

  He shook his head, and who was I to ask him questions? After all, he might not want me to know where his family was. Why would he trust me? I was a stranger tossed into his lap. More or less literally.

  “Once we’re out of the seacity, you’ll have discharged your duty.” I said. “I’m sure there is no large-scale hunting of those who might be bioed going on elsewhere. I’ll be safe. And then I might come back with the rescuing party.”

  Who Goes There?

  Alexis knew exactly where the transport was, and it must have been very carefully procured because it looked nothing like an official vehicle.

  It certainly didn’t look like anything that the Good Man would own. Parked in a narrow, deserted street, the flyer was gray, battered, with cracks showing on its ceramite finish. It was the sort of vehicle a very young man or a very poor one could own. It opened at the touch of Alexis’s finger in the genlock. We’d come to the street through a network of back streets, past bars and diners, past repair shops and used clothing stores.

  Through it all, I kept my ears open and stayed alert, not because I didn’t trust Alexis, but because I didn’t trust anyone, because I had need of making sure he hadn’t lied to me simply to remove me from the seacity; because I had to make sure he wasn’t betraying me, or, worse, betraying Simon.

  What I heard confirmed Alexis’s appraisal of the situation. First of all, there was the smell. Have you ever smelled large-scale burning? I hadn’t. I came from a colony world. Eden existed inside a hollowed-out asteroid. If we burned anything much, it would play havoc with the atmosphere scrubbers. And yet, I knew when I smelled burning that it wasn’t the normal burning of a log in the fireplace or a campfire like the one that Simon had built on his land to show me what it looked like. No. This was a…the only way to describe it is “dirty smell” compounded of chemicals and seared flesh and other things not meant to be burned.

  And then there were the sounds. Echoes of singing, that even at this distance, with no words audible, sounded angry. Explosions. The occasional scream. And laughter. The laughter was the worst.

  So I tried to help Alexis pass, to make us go unnoticed, to help us escape. I’d put my arm through Alexis’s and tried to babble about what we were passing. I wasn’t sure this was right. Len and I hadn’t talked much in the end because, like all navigators and pilots from Eden, we had a bioengineered mind link to each other. And it was probably not the normal talk. He knew what I was and so did I. And we had mind-to-mind communication, a handy thing engineered into nav and cat pairs. So there had been no need for much talk.

  But I leaned into Alexis and tried looking affectionate. Would a couple out for a day together talk about the disturbing events around them, or not? I didn’t. I talked of the dress and the weather, and an advertisement moving murkily on a shop window.

  The scary thing about these streets was how quiet they were. Sounds came from other areas, but not here. I’d been here before, on normal evenings, and they’d been full of people. People on their way to work, people looking for a meal, people out with lovers or friends or relatives.

  Now the streets spread out, empty, with closed shops on either side shining forlorn lights from the windows and their signs onto the pitted dimatough pavement. Even the eating establishments were closed. I wondered how many of the owners, how many of the residents in this unglamorous part of Liberte seacity were actually home, hiding behind their closed doors and their shuttered windows. And how many were elsewhere in the seacity? How many had been part of the mob that had taken over the palace?

  Explosions illuminated our surroundings in sudden orange bursts. But as far as I could tell, the explosions, the action were all on other levels in the seacity, above or below, accessible only by stairways and the public elevators, if those were still running.

  We found the battered gray flyer, and Alexis opened it without a word. Inside, it was very clean and smelled vaguely of lemon, but the seats were cracked, and the controls looked shopworn.

  Instead of taking off directly from parking, he flew just a little above the surface down the network of streets, as though the flyer were a ground vehicle. He caught my puzzled glance and said, “If we take off, we will be shot down. The word is out that there is an area from which we can take off. The Revolutionary Guard is vetting everyone allowed off the seacity. Not that they…” He shrugged. “They want to be sure, you know, that no one escapes.”

  The thought came through that he might just be intending to turn me in, to have me killed as the price of his escape. Still, I remembered Simon more or less throwing me at Alexis, and directing Alexis to keep me safe, the desperate note but also the absolute trust in Simon’s voice. Sometimes the best you can do is trust that others know what they’re doing.

  We flew at near ground level all the way to an area that might have been a parking lot in happier days. Now, there were some
charred hulls of flyers, obviously set on fire. I wondered what had happened to the occupants, and refused to look too closely, just in case they were still there.

  There were also other flyers, like ours, with people inside them, forming an irregular line. Down each side of the line came young men armed with burners. They were wearing red Frisian caps. I didn’t wonder at it. It had been part of the paraphernalia of the Sans Culottes, and Simon himself had worn one when he declared his own reign over and the transition to the Tenth Republic initiated. But there was something to the way these young men wore it that implied they were more serious—or at least less careless—of all that those caps implied. Liberty caps. I knew from Eden the history of the revolution they were associated with. Not in detail. It was ancient history, after all, and I was not a historian. But enough to know that it had become a bloodbath. I clutched my hands on either side of my seat and held on.

  One of the young men came to our window and bent to look through it at us—dark brown hair, gray eyes, a face that looked as though it had been smudged in an explosion, with a sort of sneer that might mean pride or fear. Or both. “What business do you have flying out?” he asked. His voice was raspy. “And who are you?”

  “I’m Alexandre,” Alexis said. “Alexandre Borde. This is my friend, Madeleine Fabron. We’re—That is—” He looked equal parts confused, scared, and perhaps embarrassed. “My mother is scared. In Shangri-la. She was on the com to me, and she’s scared. We’re flying back to stay with her.”

  The young man’s lip curled upward. “You’re from Shangri-la?”

  “Yeah,” Alexis said. “I work there, at the Debussy café. I’m the cook.”

  The young man looked over at me. “Madeleine is the waitress there,” Alexis said. I realized that the light over the passenger seat was broken and wondered if he’d meant it that way. Then I told myself, of course he meant it that way. I was not in the hands of a casual conspirator. His words I was on death row for revolutionary activities came back to me, and I wondered what those activities had been. Had he tried to overthrow the government of the Good Men? Had it all been propaganda and the distribution of pamphlets against their rule? Or had it been something more material? I had heard it was possible to get killed simply for disagreeing with them, but I didn’t know if that was true.