Darkship Renegades

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  Doctor Bartolomeu asked Kit if he had, then, had any idea why Earth would do this, thereby giving Kit the option of answering about what he had known at the time, which had been close to nothing. At the time, Kit had known himself to be a Mule, but of course he hadn’t known that my so-called father was also a Mule, one of the original ones who’d known Jarl personally and therefore identified Kit on sight. So Kit had not had the slightest notion why he had been given Jarl’s writings or why he was being interrogated about them.

  Kit coughed. His face looked swollen and his breathing was labored. He shook his head and shrugged. “I assume,” he said, “that on Earth they think Jarl passed his work onto the people of Eden in such a way that every one of us learns the full complement of Jarl’s biological math in elementary school.” He shrugged, gave an apologetic look. “Instead of most of us, like myself, not being able to understand his work even if someone spent weeks trying to teach it to us after full training in the matter. I guess Earthworms think we’re all geniuses? It’s probably all that explains my wife marrying me.”

  His expression and voice were so embarrassed and confused that there were a few chuckles in the audience. I unclenched my hands a fraction. Getting people to laugh with you is a good step towards their not killing you.

  “Of course, I could tell them nothing, no matter how aggressive an interrogation technique they used.”

  “Did they use aggressive interrogation techniques?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hypnotics?”

  “Yes.” Kit said, and the setting of his jaw, the jutting-out of his chin, told me what I didn’t want to know. That he’d had a similar reaction to the drugs, and that he’d barely survived it. And that, I thought, with a shudder, probably only because the interrogators had realized what was happening and wanted him to survive.

  “Sleep deprivation and discomfort?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pain?”

  My husband’s eyes swept the amphitheater, and I realized he was looking for me. I didn’t know why—whether because the answer would hurt his pride and he needed my support, or because he was afraid how I’d react. He didn’t find me, and his features flickered, in the split second between question and answer, between stubborn pride and resignation. “Yes.” He seemed to look at the ceiling afterwards. Did he relax a little when there was no sound of my erupting?

  “And yet you told them nothing?”

  “There was nothing I could tell them,” Kit said.

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t understand those equations. It was like…being asked to translate a lost language. Biology isn’t my speciality any more than linguistics is. I’m a vacuum-ship-pusher and fairly useless at anything else.”

  Other questions followed a trailing multitude of them, clarifying various details, but always, always, avoiding the central questions of what Kit was, what I was, and why Earth was so interested in us.

  Kit vomited many times during this. His skin started to shine with sweat, and he became—if possible—paler, till he looked like he was dead except for still moving. His breathing sounded very loud in the amphitheater.

  Doctor Bartolomeu periodically looked at Kit through something that resembled a large magnifying lens, but which I knew was in fact a computer that picked up and analyzed various inputs, from the way the patient looked to his heartbeat, blood pressure, temperature, and other vital signs.

  After an hour, the doctor turned towards the audience and said, “I will now give Cat Sinistra the antihistamine and antidote. His allergic reactions to the hypnotics are such that, should we take any longer, we risk killing him.”

  There was a faint murmur, but no real protests, and the doctor injected Kit with a succession of colored injectors. Then while Kit covered his face and shook, probably in reaction to whatever the compounds were doing to him, the doctor turned to the audience. “As you can see, the accused neither willfully nor accidentally endangered Eden.”

  “But he didn’t follow instructions!” a voice said, from the audience. “They are supposed to follow instructions and kill themselves and destroy the ship to avoid Eden being discovered. My son—” The voice cut on something like a sob.

  I cringed. There would be a lot of anger about that. A lot of Cats and Navs had committed suicide to avoid revealing secrets. Their families would resent those who survived, anyway, but they would resent us worst of all, since we’d violated orders to survive.

  “For the average Cat and Nav, suicide might be best,” Doc Bartolomeu said. “Sorry, but with no knowledge of Earth, and considering that gen mod brings on the death penalty there, the chances of a gene-modified human being captured and emerging again, unscathed, are nearly none. And there is no reason to risk discovery—no matter how small the risk—if the result will be death to Cat and Nav anyway. But given the special circumstances, and the ability of Nav Sinistra to extricate her husband from prison and get out of the world, surely you’ll admit theirs was a rational decision. There existed at least a chance, if not a good chance, that both could survive.”

  They weren’t willing to admit any such thing, and there was much discussion back and forth. Some people said we should still be executed, or at least Kit should.

  “They lived while other people died,” one of these people said. “They are as guilty of murder as if they had killed those people themselves.”

  Kath shot up. She stood before I was aware of it. Incongruously, she wore a very feminine dress, a few scraps of fabric twisted in a way that made her look very young and innocent. But Eden is a small enough community, as I’ve said. Everyone knows everyone else, at least by reputation. You could hear the collective drawing of breath as people recognized her. And a deeper drawing of breath as she put her hands on her hips. “Stupid,” she said. And I sensed her sneering comment applied not only to the person who’d just spoken but to everyone else who had murmured assent. I wondered if those people would all drop dead of asphyxiation, since I couldn’t hear anyone exhaling. “Who spoke?” she asked, her voice full of belligerence.

  A man stood, across the amphitheater. He was a short man, with blond hair running to grey and, as the camera pickup swung to get him on the screen behind Kit, I realized he had Cat eyes in pale green. From his age, he was a retired Cat, which probably meant his children were Cats or Navs, since the occupations were normally inherited in the sense that very well paid Cats and Navs could afford the prohibitive price of genetically enhancing their children and therefore assure their future too. Which meant that there was a good chance he’d lost family to Earth’s raids. I didn’t think we could blame his tightly compressed lips and his flinty expression on the fact he looked somewhat like Castaneda. “I did, Cat Denovo,” he said, firmly, looking up in Kath’s direction.

  “Well,” Kath said. “Then you’re barely competent enough to stand and talk, much less to have flown a ship, as I presume you have.” Her hands had moved from her hips to ball at her side.

  “Cat Denovo, if you weren’t distraught I’d challenge you to a duel for those words.”

  “Oh, please,” Kath said, in the tone that implied she would like nothing better than a duel. “I don’t fight the mentally handicapped. As for my being distraught, at least it doesn’t make me stupid.”

  “Cat—”

  “No. Tell me in what way my brother is responsible for any of those deaths.”

  For the first time the man looked like he was on uncertain ground. “Well, he survived and they—”

  “You can keep repeating that all you want to. The only people who assume that because two things happened together one must have caused the other, are animals and infants. Which one are you?”

  “You have no right to insult me.”

  “I am not insulting you. Just pointing out your mental deficiency. You accused my brother and my sister-in-law of having committed murder. How? If they had died, how would that have saved the lives of all our friends and relatives who died?”

 
“What?” the man said. “It wouldn’t. But they had no right to survive where others died.”

  “No? How not?”

  “Because there are rules.”

  Kath chuckled dismissively. “Cat…Verre, is it not? Are your eyes still good enough to pilot a ship?”

  “I don’t see where that’s any of your business.”

  “No? Well, at your age, I suspect they’re not any more efficient then standard issue eyes. I suggest you have them replaced, and then relocate to Earth.”

  “What?”

  “Your only rationale for why my brother committed some sort of crime is that he refused to die in obedience to rules,” she pronounced the word as though it were obscene. “That devotion to external, arbitrary imposition is better fitting an Earthworm than an Edenite. You, sir, don’t deserve to live here.” She must have seen something in her opponent’s eyes, as the camera swung around to pick him up again, because she said, “I’ll meet you any day, any time, with any weapon. But you’ll have to be the one to force it on me, because my reflexes are obviously better than yours. I’m younger. I won’t have it said that I took advantage of you.”

  “Sir,” Verre said, turning around towards the podium area and Doc Bartolomeu. “Doctor Dias, you are running these proceedings. Would you tell Cat Denovo she can’t simply insult people to get her way?”

  “Cat Verre,” Doc Bartolomeu said, “she didn’t simply insult you. She demolished your argument. You seem to believe that rules must be obeyed even when they endanger survival of self or those under one’s protection. They don’t. Even the most authoritarian governments on Earth made it a point of at least pretending to respect the right of self-defense. Sir, the right to continue drawing breath—unless it forces you to commit murder to do it, and sometimes even then—is the only true unalienable right anyone has. So long as they can keep it from being alienated.”

  The man opened his mouth as though to speak, then closed it. I swear the snap of his lips meeting and the force of his sitting down was heard all through the amphitheater. But it might have been simply an effect of his image being on the big screen behind Kit, and his expression and movements visible to everyone.

  When it became obvious Cat Verre was not going to continue, the camera turned to Kit again. It was still shaking, but almost imperceptibly. He still looked exhausted, but at least he didn’t look dead. His eyes were starting to focus.

  “Cat Sinistra is not a murderer,” Doc Bartolomeu said. “Cat Denovo, for all her brusque manner, is absolutely right. Though it seems to be an ancient mechanism of the human mind, enough to create a syndrome named after it, just because someone survives circumstances that cause the death of many, it doesn’t mean he’s responsible for the deaths. Survivor’s guilt is an abnormal reaction and an unhealthy one. Any of you who feel otherwise are free to challenge Cat Sinistra to a duel. At least any of you who are Cats or who can get a Cat to stand for him or her. But I suspect you’d face so many revenge challenges that you’re unlikely to survive, no matter how skilled.”

  “He’s not on trial for murder,” someone said. My eyes followed and the speaker was close enough for me to register he was another man, and also had blond hair. I wondered if I was only imagining the resemblance to Castaneda. “He’s on trial for treason against all of Eden. And it’s not necessary to challenge him to a duel. He did risk revealing Eden secrets to Earth. He should be executed.”

  “Executed by whom, sir?” the doctor said. “No matter what the sentiment, there is no authority on Eden that can order the execution of one of its citizens. Yes, yes, a group of you could do it, but you’ll be laying yourself open to blood feuds, since I don’t believe everyone thinks he should die.” I noted that he asserted this, but asked for no corroboration. Was he really sure? “And he has family and friends powerful enough to inflict damage in return.” The look in Doc’s eyes served fair warning that he was indeed one of those friends.

  A long silence fell, and then Doctor Bartolomeu said, “I will grant you, one might think that he did something dishonorable, in acting to his own benefit and marginally increasing danger to Eden. I can understand how people might feel that he needs to make restitution. But execution is well past any such reasonable punishment.”

  “Blood geld,” a voice said from the crowd. “For every Cat and Nav who had the courage to do what he didn’t.” There was an avaricious sound to that voice, and I tried to calculate what the blood geld would be. Cats and Navs were expensive people to kill, as not only did their bioengineering in utero cost the family money, but they earned a lot more than normal people throughout their active years. And by the time I’d left on the last pod run, the number of couples missing and presumed dead was already well above twenty. Compensating all the families for lost wages would make Kit an effective slave to them the rest of his days and well past the age when a Cat’s visual acuity allowed for pod runs—even if we were allowed to do pod runs back to back, which I understood was no longer permitted.

  “No blood geld,” the doctor said. “Whether Cat Sinistra should have followed the example of those who committed suicide or not, is a matter open for philosophical discussion, but he didn’t cause those Cats and Navs to die. If he’d died, those Cats and Navs would still be dead. So blood geld is not appropriate in the circumstances. I meant reparations he should make to Eden as a whole for having endangered us—even if fractionally.”

  For a moment I frowned, furious that he’d brought that up, when it was…well, not ridiculous. I supposed we’d marginally endangered Eden. Very marginally. Either of us would have died rather than given away the location of the asteroid or how it was set up inside. On the other hand, once we were on Earth there was, of course, a chance, some of that information would have been extracted from us by drugs or torture.

  On yet the other hand, Doc Bartolomeu knew better than to expect the paranoids of Eden to be rational about even a marginal danger to the security of the world. What did he think he was doing?

  There was a long silence, and then a voice I didn’t recognize spoke up from a mid row, halfway up the amphitheater. “Why don’t we send them back to Earth, on a ship designed to give nothing away? If they survive and bring us back all the notes from Jarl Ingemar that can allow us to seed our own powertrees, then we’ll consider the debt paid.”

  “Yeah,” someone else said, from another end of the amphitheater. “If they can find how Jarl grew the powertrees, maybe we can grow our own. Here and at the Thules. And then the ridiculous rationing can stop.”

  As a chorus of agreement rose all around, I realized two things: first, that I felt near-frozen with fear at the idea of going back to Earth. We’d barely made it out last time. Would we escape this time?

  And second, that Blondie was in the crowd. I could see him, standing against the side wall, a few feet from me, looking down at Doc Bartolomeu. And though he didn’t say or do anything to counter the consensus forming in the center—to send us out in search of Jarl’s writings as compensation for our not-quite-rational “crimes”—he looked very much like he would like to spit.

  That last made me feel marginally better. If Mr. Castaneda didn’t like it, perhaps the plan wasn’t disastrous for us, after all.

  And then I realized yet another thing. This had been planned.

  Look, I never said I was suited to conspiracy. Ever. I could be cunning enough about getting my own way. And when cornered I would always fight for the right to continue drawing breath, as Doc put it. Or perhaps even the right to have my way. But I was not the type to lay plans in advance and carefully manipulate people into my aim.

  And ordering us to do what we were on trial for doing was a master stroke I couldn’t have imagined at my most crafty.

  Whoever had conceived this—Jean or Doc, or Tania or Kath—was clearly much smarter than I was. I could see now what the plan had been: to manipulate the crowd into deciding by obvious majority, to send Kit and me out of reach of the Energy Board, where they couldn’t kill Kit
openly.

  OUR LIVES, OUR FORTUNES,

  OUR SACRED HONOR

  “Why did you let it happen?” someone asked. I didn’t know who, but I was grateful that, for once, I was not the last one to see the plan.

  We were in the back room of the Judicial Center, the rest and recovery area, where Kit lay on a low bed, with his arm flung over his eyes, to protect them from even the residual light allowed in by his eyelids and the darkening lenses.

  “Why did you let them send Kit and Thena to Earth on a life-or-death mission?” Waldron said, standing up, so I could see he was the one speaking. “And one that might be impossible?”

  His question was addressed at Doctor Bartolomeu, but Jean answered, “They’re not safe on Eden,” he said. “And Thena wanted to go back and get lost on Earth, anyway, instead of letting Kit be detained. She might have had the right idea.”

  The entire family was sitting around the room, on floor and chairs. There were more people than those who lived in Jean and Tania’s compound. A woman who looked much too young for it, had been introduced to me as Kit’s grandmother, plus there were cousins and uncles, and in-laws. There was also a redheaded woman who sat apart from them, towards the back. She reminded me of someone, but I would not be able to say whom.

  I knew that Jean meant well. But he had it all wrong. “No,” I said, “I meant for us to go to Earth and live there, someplace secluded. Not for us to go to Earth and go digging through secret places for documents that might or might not have been destroyed by now. Or for us not to be allowed to come back till we find them. Why, the Good Men of Earth are likely to—”

  Kit made a weird sound and said, “Thena!”

  “You don’t have to come back,” Kath said, very calmly. She sat near me, and now reached over to squeeze my shoulder. “Oh, we’d prefer it if you did, but if you don’t, it’s fine. You don’t have to risk your lives for Eden.”