Downtime

by Cynthia Felice

  Koh rubbed her eyes tiredly. “Stairnon, D’Omaha, you’d better pack right away. The mission commander has planned a tight schedule.”

  D’Omaha felt Stairnon take his hand underneath the table and give it a squeeze. There was a touch of color in her cheeks, a trace of a smile. She was probably the only person at the table who was completely happy with the evening’s outcome. Not even Calla or her lieutenants could be said to look happy. Leave it to Stairnon to take one look at these people and know that the obliteration of her life’s work was nothing compared to what they faced.

  Chapter 1

  The comm wasn’t on in Jason’s room, but he sensed the hush that came over his rangers down in the staging area. He looked away from the work on his desk, his glance skipping over the familiar forms of his rangers to three khaki-clad people as they stepped off the ramp-tunnel. Each wore a Praetorian crimson stole draped over the left shoulder, arms bare in shipboard-style shirts that revealed their genetic tattoos. Two of them were tall and lithe, the body style still in fashion after nearly a century of made-to-order babies on civilized worlds. The third was remarkably short and Rubenesque. It was Calla.

  Hastily Jason brightened the lights in his room and stood up so she could see him easily through the window if she was looking. Apparently she was, for she stopped, letting her officers walk on, and then she put her hands on her hips and looked up at his balcony window. Nervously he gestured to the green spiral staircase that led to the upper-level rooms. Calla nodded, then began walking again in short, brisk steps.

  She was limping, he noticed with concern, more than the slight unevenness he remembered as being her normal gait. He watched her pause at the base of the stairs, as if contemplating their length and height before she put one hand on the rail and the other on her thigh, then she climbed.

  Ten years since he had seen her, ten years since they had been lovers. She limped now. What else had changed?

  When she reached the top of the stairs, Jason thought that Calla’s teeth were gritted in pain, but she disappeared into the shadows of the corridor before he could be sure.

  “Open the door,” Jason said, turning his back to the window. The room-tender jelly bean, a light blue one lying on top of the heap in the transparent liquid nitrogen-filled tank, glowed briefly, and the mitered panel of glass was sucked into a slot in the green shale wall, opening his room to the corridor. He heard the pronounced echo of her uneven step. Her hip had deteriorated so much in the ten years since he’d last seen her that she limped. But what else? So much could have happened in the thirty years since she had last seen him.

  “Gold Commander Eudoxia Calla Dovia is approaching your open door from the west corridor,” the voice synthesizer announced.

  The jelly beans had picked up Calla’s identity from the crier all legionnaires were required to wear. Jason could be listening to the rest of the broadcast if he were wearing his nomenclator in his ear as he was supposed to be, but it was lying on the trunk with his stellerator. He hated wearing either of them, and as usual had shed them at the first possible moment when he had retired to his room for the evening. Was Calla listening to her own? Did she know the names of the string of backworlds he had been on these last ten years, the dates of his promotions, that he had been certified as surveyor and marksman among other things, and that his fiscal administrative abilities were rated superior? Was that why she was walking so damn slow, so she could listen to the official legionary crier? Now he cursed himself for taking off his nomenclator and wondered what she would think of him if she caught him shoving it into his ear. She would know he was nervous, he decided, and he let the thing lie.

  Calla stepped over the threshold and went directly to the only comfortable chair in his room without waiting for an invitation or a salute. That much hadn’t changed. When she didn’t have to, she didn’t stand on ceremony . . . or, it seemed now, her legs. In the bright light, her hair shone like freshly polished copper, giving her a brassy appearance that paled the gold worlds of rank she wore on her crimson collar. A wave of dizziness provoked a feeling of panic in Jason. Her hair should be graying, maybe solidly gray. There had been a few, just enough to tease a young woman about, and her collar used to have a metal bar.

  “Arthritis,” she said. He realized he had been staring at her. “I remember,” he said. “The clinics still cannot help you?”

  “I’m still one of a kind,” she said, her hand rubbing her genetic tattoo self-consciously. “The clinics can do nothing for me. There has not been and will not be any new research; I’m still the only one with this combination of autoimmunity and allergies, one not being enough to justify the expense. For anything more serious than a clean laceration, the clinics have the same recommendation. Euthanasia.”

  “It’s plain to see you haven’t taken their advice.” He tried to smile.

  “Of course not. We used to get along on Dovia just fine without cloned spare parts and the combined knowledge of the known worlds to fix every ache and pain. I don’t even consult them any more. The shamans can tell me everything I need to know.”

  He remembered when they first discovered Calla’s genetic singularity; she hadn’t had a tattoo then. Treatment for a broken hip, which should have resulted in a few days’ stay in the clinic, left her near death. As the clinic became aware of her exceptional problems, they also realized how utterly incapable they were of dealing with them, and recommended euthanasia. Instead, Jason had found a backworld shaman who agreed to treat her. That time she had recovered. And every time since then, he reminded himself, though he had not been there to aid her. Her durability was not surprising. With the possible exception of that one time, she never had needed him for anything.

  “Nothing has changed,” he said.

  “Everything has changed,” she said, her sable eyes fixed on him before she leaned over to push a hassock in front of her chair. She propped up her legs before sinking back and cocking her head, looking for a moment like a quizzical spaniel. “I’m thirty years older.”

  “It’s only fair,” he said, pulling up a chair until it was right next to hers. He straddled it and crossed his forearms over the back, leaning close so that he could see her hair. “I used to get angry because you were just a snot-nosed kid, yet you were always smarter than me. Now I won’t mind. You’re the elder, and you’re entitled to being smarter.” Her hair was solidly copper colored, right down to the roots.

  In sudden glee, she raised her brows. Those were tinged with slate-gray. “I never knew you admitted it, not even to yourself. I thought I would have to pull rank to get the respect I deserve from Jason D’Estelle.” She fingered the gold worlds on her collar, obviously proud of them.

  Jason frowned and resisted the temptation to touch the silver moons on his own collar. She hadn’t overlooked seeing them. Not Calla. Ten years ago, or thirty as she calculated it, she probably would not have believed he was capable of achieving them. And maybe he wouldn’t have if he had stayed in the Decemvirate’s Praetorian service as she had. But he was smart enough to know his limitations, even if she did not. He had gone into the one service where his rustic beginnings did not matter, and had come by his rank honestly, though not without pain. Jason had always understood the entitlements of silver moons and gold worlds, had always wanted them for himself. He wore the silver with pride. He spoke softly, exercising a control she would know he once did not have when she was deliberately goading him. “It’s a delicate situation, isn’t it? You outrank me, yet I’m the Ranger-Governor of Mutare. You’re subject to all the regulations I have established, and so are your people.”

  “Governor of a hundred bushwhackers on an outback, downtime planet like . . . ” Calla’s smile faded when she saw his face. “What’s this sudden concern with rank? It’s not new for me to outrank you. You were always getting busted for one reason or another . . . fighting, insubordination, fiscal irresponsibility.”

  She had listened to the crier broadcast. He felt disadvantaged. “Ten years
is not sudden,” he said. “I thought, perhaps, some clarification of how I perceive the situation would be helpful.”

  “Yes,” she said, “it would be — if you would say it straight out. Are you trying to tell me that I should not have chewed out the smartass on the comm this afternoon?”

  He was too taken aback to ask what smartass. He saw all the old signs of her anger, the unflinching stare and thinning lips, signs that only he was privy to ten years ago, for she never showed them in public. What was he to her now? Was her anger still just between them? Or in thirty years had she found some value in public anger and learned to exploit it?

  “I wanted a damn weather report,” she said, still glaring, “and he tells me the danae have gone home. What the hell kind of answer is that when I’ve got forty people outdoors wearing stellerators and I can see clouds with lightning streaks on the horizon?”

  “He gave you the same answer he would have given me,” Jason said sharply. His careful control was gone, his own anger rising because he hadn’t known she’d dressed down one of his people and didn’t like it that she had. “This post is only three years old. Rangers don’t get the kind of support Praetorian guards do, no weather satellites for instance. Today we knew there were spiral cloud bands off the coast of Mer Sal because your Belden Traveler told us they were there, but it doesn’t mean a hell of a lot because there’s no storm pattern data in the plotter’s jelly beans. We couldn’t tell which way the storm would go any more than you could. We do know that the danae seem to have a feel for the weather. They don’t like to be out in the rain. We keep a relay camera up in the terrace garden where the danae come to feed. If it’s daytime and there are no danae, chances are good that it’s going to rain.”

  “Danae are one of the indigenes, right? I’d forgotten.” She seemed mollified by his explanation, her anger gone. “You mentioned them in your reports. Had you said anything about their connection with the rain, or didn’t I read the right one?”

  Jason’s anger, as always, did not cool as quickly and now he felt slighted, as well. Had their positions been reversed, he would have studied every word of Calla’s reports. He knew she had to have had access to them, and with a three-month trip from Mercury Novus in the Hub to Mutare, she had to have had plenty of time. He tried to remember which report described the danae’s behavior before rainstorms, then said, “Maybe it’s only mentioned in the last report, and that one’s enroute to the Hub.”

  Calla shook her head. “That’s the only one I did read. We intercepted the drone messenger three weeks back.”

  “You intercepted it? What does that mean?”

  “It means that Mutare is very special to the Decemvirate, and that news and reports will go off planet only by special messenger.”

  “Does it also mean that we’re under martial law?” he asked, suddenly feeling tired and wary of the power represented by the gold worlds on her collar.

  “Not yet, Governor.” Calla put her elbows on the chair arms and shifted her hips. “Have anything to drink?”

  “Of course,” he said. The old awe was back; Calla knew something he did not, but this time he couldn’t expect to hear the answers to his questions whispered over the pillow. He went to his liquor cabinet and selected a bottle at random. Only after he had decanted it did he realize it was his last flask from the Hub, and not the stuff the kitchen had brewed from local fruits. Resigned, he took out the two quartzware goblets he had bought from a freetrader the year before. He filled the rose-colored goblets with deeper colored wine and handed one to Calla. He was sure she had noticed the fine acid etching under her fingers, for Calla noticed everything, but she did not comment. She sipped thoughtfully, silently.

  “It’s war, Jason,” she said finally, then shook her head. “It’s a revolution.”

  “There are no rebels in the Mercurian Sway, not since Dovia. The Decemvirate is too accurate in their predictions and very swift to intervene when the Sway is threatened.” Jason sat down again. “Which world would risk Decemvirate sanctions?”

  “Not one world. The entire Council of Worlds,” she said, finally looking up.

  Her answer made no sense to him. The Council of Worlds was the Mercurian Sway, its governing and judicial body. The Decemvirate regulated trade, distributed elixir, and deployed legions in council’s name, but it did not act without orders, nor could it without council’s funds. Council depended on the Decemvirate to provide alternative solutions to problems, complete with predictions on the benefits and consequences of each alternative. Being comprised of genetically special men and women who had nearly prescient ability to anticipate and understand trends, they were masters of probability. But it was the Council of Worlds that decided which probability to pursue.

  Jason drank half the goblet’s contents. The wine was dry, but not much to his liking tonight. “I think you’d better explain,” he said. “I can’t pretend to have kept up with thirty years of events in the Hub while having acquired only ten years of age. I don’t understand how the Council of Worlds can rebel against the Decemvirate, let alone why.”

  “Why is easy. Every world in the Arm wants a larger supply of Decemviral elixir.”

  Jason nodded sourly. “Now tell me something new. Elixir demand has exceeded the supply since before we were born. Has some special interest group been qualified as indispensable to the Mercurian Sway, like the decemviri?”

  The decemviri were guaranteed supplies, even after retirement. But it was a decemvir who had developed the elixir and subjected it and the entire Decemvirate to the Council of Worlds’ rule. That the decemviri personally benefited was a tiny price to pay for having all the rest of the elixir available to the known worlds, even though there wasn’t enough for everyone. But one group or another was always trying to justify themselves to the Council of Worlds as being essential to the Mercurian Sway. Some petitions caused unrest.

  Jason tried to think of who that might be now. “Old royalty? Praetorian officers?” He looked at her, and shook his head. Calla had not had any elixir that forestalled aging. She frowned and he looked away, embarrassed. At forty, as his body counted years, he’d acquired creases here and there. He didn’t care that Calla had more and that hers were more pronounced. He did care about knowing that if he didn’t like his wrinkles, he had only to check into the clinic for a few hours. Calla had no such options.

  “No,” she said stiffly. “Not the Praetorians, nor even council members. Everyone except the decemviri take their chances in the lotteries, or they go to the clinics.”

  Except you, he thought. And that had separated him from Calla because the survey rangers would not risk sending an officer to an outback world where every minor injury put the officer’s life at peril. Her request for transfer had been denied. Jason’s was accepted. He could have turned it down, would have if she had asked him to stay with her. But she had said nothing. She never expressed any anger over knowing that she couldn’t have what her peers took for granted, and even the memory of knowing it caused their parting didn’t seem to stir her now.

  “It’s the matter of reapportionment of the existing supply. The Council of Worlds rejected the Decemvirate’s recommendation for population control; too many economic reasons not to on the local world level.”

  “Also old news,” Jason said, sipping his wine. “They chose the other alternative the Decemvirate gave them, and that was to improve the elixir yields. That way they didn’t have to decide how to apportion the supplies to the new worlds. All were treated equally.”

  “Except that the yield increases were modest, and new elixir gardens fail more often than they succeed. They’re only now realizing that for a new plant to succeed, it required a generous supply of starter seed, skilled people, and equipment brains that have at least ten years of experience.”

  “Green thumb effect for jelly beans? People, yes, but not jelly beans. You take an experienced one from a successful environment, duplicate it, and then you have hundreds of experienced jelly beans.
What’s so hard about that?”

  “Something doesn’t transfer. The Decemvirate calls it jelly bean intuition, which in their opinion will never be reproduced uniformly. There will never be enough elixir for everyone. The Council of Worlds knows that now, and so they’ve put the reapportionment question before the Decemvirate again. People on old worlds where the population is stable are starting to lose their supplies because population on the new worlds is expanding faster than the elixir supply. The one-in-ten ratio is now one-in-twelve. Old worlds want elixir to be supplied based on population counts of thirty years ago.”

  “Which gives the old worlds a disproportionately large share, and that would make the new worlds unhappy.” Now Jason began to understand how the Council of Worlds might be said to be on the brink of a revolution against its own advisors. Regardless of how the elixir was reapportioned, either old worlds or new worlds would feel cheated. Yet once the decision was made, the Decemvirate was bound to enforce the decision, even to the extent of using the legions to do it. He reached for the wine flask to refill Calla’s glass, and added some to his own. “The Decemvirate better have a third alternative, one that all of them can accept.”

  “They don’t. Only variations of the two alternatives. The old worlds know the decision will go against them.”

  “The old worlds?” And then he caught himself. Representation on the Council of Worlds was determined by population. He knew that the new worlds were no longer the insignificant minority they had been when he left the Hub, but that change like so many changes was not real to him. Suddenly he felt the impact of the years he’d lost traveling to outback planets. He swallowed the rest of his wine to brace himself for what he knew was coming. “The Decemvirate will support the majority decision, which will go against the old worlds. They’ll attempt to distribute the elixir according to the decision, but every world has a military arm to throw against the Decemvirate’s imperial legions. So it will be the old worlds against the Decemvirate.”