by P. J. Fox
She was considering how to do this when an enormous orange orb appeared in her path. She jumped back, frightened, and it glowed briefly purple in response. Kisten only nodded, seemingly unconcerned. Was it…alive? It floated past them down the hall, and she stared after it.
“That,” supplied Kisten without turning, “is a Moh.”
“A what?”
“A Moh. A sentient sulfur-based life form from the Moche System.”
Aria felt slightly faint. She hadn’t known that such things existed.
The whole ship was alive with things she never knew existed: human beings—or what looked like human beings—in every shape and size and color and other life forms, too. She’d never seen such diversity, never even imagined that it could be possible. Her teachers, growing up, had taught her that there was only one sentient race in the galaxy and they were it.
She wondered, uneasily, what else had been a lie.
The hall opened out onto an enormous gallery easily twice the size of her parents’ house. Part of it was some sort of cafe, and scattered tables were filled with various groups. Civilians, Aria saw with surprise. Others stood at the enormous picture window, easily the size of a film screen, chatting and staring out at nothing.
Kisten explained that most of these were settlers who, for whatever reason, wanted to try their luck in a brave new world. Some had been hired on as miners, mining engineers and geologists; some were hoping to be hired on when they arrived. Some wanted the thrill of the frontier and some were running from tragedies—the loss of a beloved spouse, or child—at home. Watching them, Aria realized that she felt a strange kinship with these people; they were runaways, just like her, hoping against hope for a better life.
“I thought,” he said, “that we could have dinner here.”
She glanced up at him. “But…why are you doing this?”
“Would you prefer it if I chained you spread-eagled to a table?” he asked.
She flinched. It made no sense for him to be polite, or for them to engage in this farce.
Minutes later, she found herself sitting at a small table with him. The huge space had been transformed into something almost intimate by the low light, and the wall of stars spreading out behind them. It felt almost like being out in space. Breathless, she forgot her awkwardness.
“What?” he asked, seeing the change come over her.
“It’s just….” She trailed off. The spell broke, leaving her defeated and confused. “Our government, on Solaris—and our church—teaches that we’re the only sentient species in the universe. But that’s obviously not true and….” And she didn’t know what to believe, and that scared her. She felt like her world was dropping out from under her.
“You and I are different species,” he pointed out.
“The Union claims you don’t exist,” she said, smiling shyly, briefly.
He smiled in return, amused by the witticism.
“It doesn’t…bother you?”
“As clearly I do exist, not terribly, no.”
A waiter of some kind appeared and inquired as to whether they wanted alcohol. Kisten ordered something that Aria had never heard of and then, when she just stared at the man, flustered, ordered something for her as well. She had no idea what it was and vowed not to drink it.
“No, that wasn’t what I meant…”
“That we’re different species?” He studied her across the table, curious. “No, why should it bother me?”
Because she wanted a reason for him to leave her alone, that was why.
The waiter returned and listed the food on offer. All of it was strange to Aria, so Kisten ordered for them again. She hoped that, whatever arrived, it was edible—not that she wanted to eat.
He sipped his drink. “What?” he asked again.
“I’m wondering what else my government has lied to me about.”
She hadn’t meant to answer him; she couldn’t understand why she was talking to him at all. And then, strangely, she found herself describing what the Union taught about Brontes.
The commander listened attentively, neither mocking nor correcting her. It was a novel experience; no one at home ever listened to her. She told him about how Brontes was reputed to be far less technologically advanced, and its citizens to have a far lower standard of living. Both of which assertions had been proven patently untrue just in her brief time aboard the ship. The technology of the Alliance made that of the Union seem like something from antiquity. Nothing like Atropos had ever been built in Union space. The food, the weapons, the communication devices—everything was different.
Even the clothes, and the names, and how people greeted each other was different. This wasn’t some forgotten colony of the Union, left to muck around in its own filth; it was an independent, highly advanced civilization. Growing up, as she explained, she’d also been taught that there was only one true form of civilized society and the only reason people rejected it was because they lacked sufficient enlightenment to perceive its value. But here were people—hundreds, thousands, millions of people—who had no knowledge of Union culture at all and seemed none the worse for it. In fact, they seemed happier than many Solarians.
She didn’t understand how happiness was possible at all in a culture where people enslaved each other, and she told him so. Because at some point, quite in spite of herself, she’d begun not just talking but talking. Opening up, as she hardly ever did. She’d given in and started drinking, which helped. Righteous indignation had replaced timidity along with her third cocktail and she found herself seized by an overpowering desire to clear up a few facts.
“Slavery,” she said with some asperity, “is a barbaric institution.”
“Why?” They’d finished dinner, and Kisten was sipping at another cup of coffee. He drank too much coffee and she wondered if she should tell him that, too. Her head was swimming.
“Why?” she echoed, scandalized. “I’m telling you that it’s wrong to own another person and you’re asking why?” She sighed, resigned to the fact that he was a barbarian and incapable of understanding. She’d enlighten him, anyway. “Slavery obliterates the individual’s self governance! One man has all the power and his fellow has none; he can, without justification or fear of recourse, impose any terms he chooses. Employment, however execrable its terms, is voluntary.”
“Is it?” He sounded amused, damn him. “Darling, you sound like you’re quoting a civics lesson.”
She couldn’t decide which annoyed her more: that he’d called her darling, or that he made her feel stupid.
“I know something about Solaris,” he said, sitting back in his chair and appearing for all the world to be perfectly relaxed. “Let me ask you this: the man who earns minimum wage at, for example, a machine shop—can he quit his job? Most wage earners on Solaris live hand to mouth; their livelihood is completely dependent on their wages. They live, as a wise man once observed, lives of quiet desperation. Trapped by forces beyond their control—supply and demand, access to education—simply earning enough to afford the most basic of human needs requires so much energy and focus that there’s nothing left over.
“If this man does quit, how will he support himself—or his family, if he has one? Your Union is staunchly capitalist; if a man wants food, or shelter, or medical care for his children then he has to earn them. You have slavery, too,” he finished, “the difference is that on Brontes, your so-called victims claim by right what most Solarians are taught to view as luxuries: adequate food, shelter and medical care. A work day lasting no longer than eight hours. Security in old age.”
“But—it’s different!”
“How?” he asked. He was maddeningly calm. Insufferable man.
“And—and your treatment of women,” she exclaimed, “is disgusting!”
He arched his eyebrow. “How accustomed are you to alcohol?”
She glared.
He stood up and, coming around the table, offered her his hand. After a minute’s hesitation, she too
k it. He helped her to her feet and, surprising her yet again, tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. They walked along like that, quietly, an odd parody of two people in love.
He led her onto some sort of observation deck where they stopped, dwarfed by the stars.
“I love the stars,” she said quietly. “The stars are freedom.”
The thought brought a pang. Freedom, as a concept, was beginning to have a sour flavor.
NINE
Kisten listened, face inscrutable, as the men took turns airing their grievances and accusing each other of progressively worse misdeeds. Each seemed to believe himself so above reproach that Kisten would have no choice but to agree with him—if he heard the so-called truth. As a result, both were so afraid of letting the other man have the floor that neither could get a word in edgewise. Within five minutes of their arrival, his office had begun to resemble a Caiphi fighting pit as its occupants descended into the reaches of bedlam.
The first man, it seemed, had courted the favors of the second man’s rather young and impressionable daughter. And won them, if her current state was any indication. Privately, Kisten saw no cause for alarm and was, in fact, rather proud of the couple for carrying off what had to have been a challenging subterfuge. Despite never having, to the best of their knowledge, strayed far from the overbearing orbit of her parents, she was six weeks pregnant.
“So you see,” finished the irate father, “he has to be killed.”
“And what,” shouted the younger man, red-faced and trembling with rage, “leave her without a husband and her child without a father?”
“She has no husband now!” cried his opponent, throwing up his hands.
Caiphos, one of the six Home Worlds, had a long and storied tradition of fighting for criminal pardons that predated its entrée into the Alliance. But the colonists on this ship would make even the most hot-tempered brawlers sob for their mothers. Kisten very nearly wanted his, and he was a grown man and the veteran of two wars.
He’d spent the previous night playing nursemaid, and he’d had no wish to repeat the same procedure after a scant four hours of sleep and with two grown men who should know better. But life aboard Atropos had become an unending civil service nightmare: refereeing disputes, passing out judgments, discussing stores and sleeping arrangements and all the other myriad pointless tasks that he’d become a naval officer not to do. If, as he’d pointed out to Aros, he’d wanted to spend his life pandering to fools then he would have sought a life at court.
Kisten was in a black mood, and not simply because he recognized this morning’s events—this had been the third such dispute since he’d showered, shaved, and bolted his first cup of coffee—as a preview of life on Tarsonis but because he didn’t know what to do about Aria.
He wasn’t an indecisive man, or one who entertained doubts. Since he’d been a child, he’d known both what he wanted and how to achieve it—or, at the very least, what steps must ideally be taken. He’d never encountered a problem, before, that could not be overcome by sheer force of will. A woman, however, was not an over-eager midshipman or an engine coil.
He could order her around and force her to do his bidding, but he couldn’t force her to see him as something other than a monster. He’d have to win her over, and convince her that neither he nor his people were what she thought. But he didn’t know how, and the admission—even to himself—bit deep. He was, he had to acknowledge, spoiled. He’d always thought of himself as someone who got what he wanted, and deserved to; both because he worked hard, and because he was Kisten Mara Sant of House Mara Sant and it had never occurred to him to think otherwise. But his departure from Brontes, and now this—this thing with this girl represented the first two times in his life when he’d been utterly stymied.
The two men finally subsided. Kisten regarded them expressionlessly. Under his cold, flat stare, the father at least began to wither. He let the moment stretch; silence had its uses.
“Gentlemen,” he said finally, “there are several facts to which I would like to call your attention.” He steepled his long, thin fingers and paused, as though for reflection. He wore a heavy gold ring on the third, a commendation for a battle in which he’d almost died. The ruby at its center winked in the light. Kisten kept his nails neatly manicured. He told himself that he took pride in his appearance, because he valued order; in truth, he was a vain man.
“Atropos is an Intrepid-class Frigate and, as such, holds a compliment of just over three thousand souls on forty two decks. Two thousand of said souls belong to colonists like yourselves.” The father opened his mouth to respond and Kisten held up a hand. “In the past week alone, we have had two natural deaths, one murder, twenty-two thefts and four live births.” One woman, regrettably, had suffered a miscarriage due to a previously undiagnosed medical condition. “This all in addition, of course, to the normal trials and tribulations of shipboard life.” He paused again, staring hard at first one man and then the other. “Now, bearing all of this in mind, I would like one or both of you to explain why, as commander of this vessel, I am being asked to act as both psychotherapist and marriage broker?”
“But—”
He regarded the father with the cold, reptilian gaze for which he was so famed. “She wishes to marry him; he wishes to marry her. Your consent is neither relevant nor required, and if you persist in distracting my crew from their duties by making a nuisance of yourself, I’ll see to it that your son in law is instructed in the finer points of Alliance law, which includes the right to kill any man—including her father—who lays a hand on her without her consent.”
“But on Kedion—”
“But we are not on Kedion. When you applied for and received asylum within our borders you became one of our citizens and, as such, subject to our laws. Which,” he added, “I suggest you learn.” He noted, with some amusement, the differing looks on the men’s faces.
“Now, if that will be all, I bid you both good morning.”
Ignoring them both, he returned to studying the report in front of him.
The father was led out, still sputtering, and soon Kisten was alone. He wondered, again, what he was doing. The words swam on the tablet in front of him, and he rang for more coffee.
He’d wanted to leave Brontes to join the navy, but that had been different—it had been his choice, for one, and he’d always been able to come home on leave and enjoy the attentions of beautiful women who complained of how dull life at court was without him. But in the first real mistake of his life, he’d overplayed his hand with his uncle and now here he was.
His parents, he knew, were on his side—as was his twin brother Keshav and, he suspected, as was the Emperor. But, as Keshav had pointed out, if he wanted to see any real change in the empire then he had to live to help it happen. Falling on his sword to prove a point would help no one.
And as Kisten had told himself, often enough, if they were going to be a colonial empire then they needed the best and brightest serving on the front instead of the worst. Too many men, having proved useless for anything else, found themselves resting in comfortable sinecures at the edge of the world where there was very little investigation into their activities. His younger brother, Arjun, was one such character; a dissipate and a roué, he’d drunk, gambled and fucked through his personal inheritance and now lived on their parents’ sufferance while he tried to placate his fat, grasping consort and figure out what to do next.
He sat back in his chair and, pinching the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes.
After their dinner, he’d walked Aria back to his cabin where all fantasies of anything approximating a romantic interlude had been shattered. He’d hoped, given his relative success at dinner—at least she hadn’t run screaming from the table—to, ah, encourage her a little. He could be charming when he chose. That she’d only talked to him because she’d been intoxicated was obvious; still, it was a start. Her willingness to let her guard down might be an alcohol-induced illusion, but it was a n
ice illusion all the same.
He’d found both her opinions, and her willingness to disagree with his, charming. And despite the bizarre and rather forced nature of their dinner he’d been surprised at how much he enjoyed himself. So much so, in fact, that he’d found himself thinking a great deal about how much he wanted to touch her. She was becoming, very quickly—and, he might add, entirely in spite of his own better judgment—the one bright spot in what felt like an increasingly bleak world.
Hearing her voice had been the start, true; learning about her view of the world had intrigued him. But it had been seeing her, there, in the clearing, that had confirmed the very feelings he’d refused to explore. Her sardonic wit made him laugh, because it so coincided with his own. Her caustic observations about the world around her disguised, he’d learned, a tender-hearted view of it. Hers was a loving heart that, he now more than suspected, had not been loved much in return. Her parents, from what he’d learned, were thoughtless and self-absorbed people who saw their children as useful extensions of their own ambitions.
He almost hadn’t come in time to save her, having used a local band of pirates as an excuse to hang back. He couldn’t come to her aid, or so he’d told himself, until he’d hunted down the bedevilment of the local merchants. He realized now that he’d stalled in the vain hope that he’d forget about her and come to his senses; it wasn’t possible to be infatuated with a total stranger. He’d shot the man who was about to kill her, he could do that much, but when he’d seen her collapse into the mud and grass something inside him had snapped. Crossing the clearing, he’d cursed himself for a coward and prayed that she wasn’t dead; that she hadn’t died believing herself to still be friendless and alone. He’d never been the sort of man who shirked his duty simply because it seemed distasteful to him, and here was someone who truly needed help, and who’d acted far more nobly than he.
But then, kneeling down beside her, he’d ceased to think of duty.
She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Even wracked with fever, thin and grimed in mud and blood and God knew what else, she had an ethereal quality to her that he hadn’t known existed outside of Paradise. Her features were fine and delicately formed. He’d never seen blonde hair, before, although he’d heard some Caiphi possessed the trait, and it had fascinated him. But what had fascinated him most of all was that such a quick-witted, facile mind existed in such a vessel—and that someone who’d castigated herself, if only in front of her own mirror, for her stupidity and cowardice could have acted as she had.
