Darkship Renegades

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  I woke up as we landed on Liberte Seacity, thereby having missed the excitement of whatever revolution was going on. That was something I had to ask Simon as soon as possible, as well as what had happened with Syracuse Seacity and my father’s mansion.

  Liberte Seacity is not as vast as Syracuse and it is mostly devoted to algie cultivation, so, by comparison to Syracuse, a bucolic paradise. Their beaches are white and unmarred by factories or construction. Don’t take that to mean that Liberte was the seat of a caring and enlightened Good Man. I think Simon’s—for lack of a better word—father simply liked pretty beaches. Liberte Seacity was the administrative center of territories that included vast portions of Old Europe, as well as the narcotic-producing city of Shan-gri-la. But Liberte resembled a more carefully—artistically—planned work than Syracuse ever could be. I guess Simon’s father was more of an aesthete than mine.

  There were personnel waiting for us.

  When we stopped, Simon got up and glanced at Kit. “Er…keep your eyes down. The hair could be a dye job.” Then he walked past and opened the flyer. Onto rows of waiting people.

  I felt Zen tense, and tried to signal her that this was not an arrest. I doubted that Simon had even paused to think. We were guests and he was receiving us in the grand style that Good Men hosted friends and equals. He smiled at the six or so men and women waiting. “Ah, I don’t believe my guests have luggage, but if you lead them to the rooms you’ve prepared for them, I’m sure they will give you instructions on what changes of clothing to procure them.” He smiled, his disarming, seemingly confused smile. “I’m sure there’s clothes in their sizes in house stores, or fabric that can be vibroed or…something like that. If you’ll lead us to where you set up their rooms, I’ll be by, in case they have complaints.”

  Zen looked from my slight head shake to Doc and, I suppose because Doc looked calm and a little amused, relaxed.

  We were led up a vast corridor to a staircase, and from the staircase to what I identified as their best guest wing. I’d been here before, of course, with Daddy Dearest for occasions of state and meetings of Good Men. If you were put on this wing of the house, you knew you were in the good graces of the Good Man, or possibly vital to his plans. I didn’t think this applied, since we were probably the only guests.

  I got a room I’d got before, actually the last time I’d stayed here, without Daddy Dearest. Kit got the room next to mine, Doc the room after that, and Zen the room to the other side of mine. It wasn’t till Simon had left and the help—two women—were drawing me a bath and bringing in armfuls of clothes I could choose from to wear, that I realized that not only had I been put in a separate room from my husband—not that rare in my class on Earth, but not the normal arrangement—but that there was no connecting door.

  Of course, this was entirely appropriate, since I never knew who was in that body at the moment and I was emphatically not married to Jarl, or even to any strange blend that might emerge. On the other hand, I hadn’t told Simon this. In fact, I hadn’t told Simon anything about Jarl—or the fact that Kit was his clone—beyond telling him we were looking for his notes. And yet I knew, had known for years, that what might be a casual, absentminded slip in another man was usually done for a reason with Simon.

  Why had Simon separated me from Kit? Was it his lecherous nature and hopes that I would indulge in a little adultery? This was also not unusual in our class, but I didn’t think that Simon had missed me so much he would go to the trouble of setting this up. But what other reason could he have?

  I looked for a moment out the broad window of the room, at the ocean beating down below the window, and wondered if the Edenites would find the sight disquieting. Perhaps only Zen. Jarl knew the ocean, and had lived in Seacities most of his life, if his biography was right.

  The tones of the sea were picked out in the room, from the elaborate shell-like structure around the bed, designed to maintain an exact microclimate of humidity and warmth in that area, to the soft rugs on the floor. Yet the rugs felt harsh to me, used as I’d become to the bio-rugs in Eden. As did the bed, and the sofa, when I touched them. I couldn’t explain why, but biofabric was more yielding, infinitely adaptable.

  “Miss,” Attendant Number One said, looking out of the bathroom. And I followed her to find they’d run the tub and filled it with bubbles of what had been my favorite fragrance the last time I visited. I thanked them, then chased them from the room as politely as possible. It shocked them, of course. Patricians had attendants bathe them. But I had spent a lot of time bathing myself; I had never really liked having strangers around that much; and besides, I wanted to be alone with my thoughts and to mull everything going on.

  I wasn’t even surprised by the time I came out of the bath—fortunately wearing a bathrobe since, unlike Edenites, I wasn’t comfortable with casual nudity—to find Simon sitting on my bed and the two attendants nowhere near me. The fact that Simon was still fully dressed, and sitting with one leg drawn up and his arms around it—with his boot on the bed, because some men cannot be housebroken—meant he probably wasn’t there for amorous purposes. The expression on his face, pensive and puzzled, was not at all seductive.

  “Simon,” I said, in reproach, “do you wish to set all your employees talking?”

  He shrugged. “My employees know better than to talk.”

  I suspected he was wrong, but it didn’t matter.

  “At any rate, I didn’t tell them who you were, so they can’t really talk about you. Oh, you, maybe, personally, but frankly the way the world is just now, with rebellions, and assassinations, demonstrations and…” He grinned. “Even your scandals will be old news. Besides, they always knew what we were up to, didn’t they?”

  “I wasn’t married then,” I said.

  He put his leg down with deliberate slowness and looked at me intently. “I see. And are you now?”

  I opened my mouth, then snapped it shut. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I see,” he said again, and I was very much afraid he did.

  He paced to the window and opened it, letting in the deafening sound of the sea and the smell of salt, then he turned around, leaning back, posing, framed by the sea, his red shirt against the intense blue green of the sea, his hair dark against the luminous sky. There were creamy lace ruffles, I noted, emerging from the cuffs of his red shirt. Sometimes all you could do was try not to scream at Simon for being Simon. “Don’t be afraid to talk,” he said. “There’s a hush shield outside the window.”

  I almost told him about the spy cameras that Jarl had set up, but since that compound was now deserted, I didn’t bother. “Simon,” I said. “I don’t want to talk.”

  This got me the raised eyebrow again. “Thena, my dearest—”

  I must have snorted because he suddenly looked long-suffering. “I said, Thena, my dearest, I don’t think you ever realized how much I was in love with you. When I understood, really understood you were married and gone for good, it broke my heart.”

  “You don’t have a heart. You have a Swiss metronome.”

  He gave me an apologetic smile. “Fine, then it caused the metronome to skip a beat. You know that’s not good. We Gallic people have a very passionate nature and—”

  “You forgot the ‘r’ in ‘garlic,’ you fraud. You don’t have any Gallic background. Liberte was founded by a conglomerate of Swiss bankers escaping Old Europe taxes and intrusion, and if I understand properly, your…your father was created from spare parts from all Swiss cantons. At best you’ve got some old European passions or something. Warn me before you start to beat up on yourself.”

  He sighed. We’d always bantered like that, but he wasn’t entering into the spirit of the thing. “I was saying,” he said, “that I cared a great deal for you. Perhaps more romantically than you thought, but when you left I assumed I’d never see you again.” He examined the lace ruffles on his sleeve. “I’m not going to pretend I didn’t…well, accept it. I did. And I’m not going to pretend I wa
nt to be involved with you. I don’t. It’s clear you never viewed our relationship as I did. I thought, when I saw you with your Cat man that it was very obvious you were right for each other. You fit, as we never did. So I kissed you goodbye”—a feral grin as the so-and-so probably too well remembered the nature of that kiss—“and let you go. But Thena…there’s something wrong now. Something wrong between you and your husband and, if I had to hazard, something wrong with your husband, and I would not like to guess what. I’d like you to tell me, so I can help you, if possible.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

  Spotting the customary refrigerated tray on one of the low tables, away from the window, set with various beverages, I ambled over and picked a fruit juice. I’d just pulled off the top, converting the small bottle into a glass, and taken a sip, when Simon said, “First, your husband is a clone of Jarl Ingemar, isn’t he?”

  I spit juice across the room, to find Simon slapping my back as I coughed and spluttered. As soon as I could talk, I jumped away from him, “How can you…how do you…how?”

  “You’re not the only one whose father had holos lying around, and I’ve been in charge of my father’s affairs a very long time, Thena. You know I’ve always been good with faces. It’s not that hard, if you change the eyes and make his hair red, to see it’s the same person, really.”

  “Second, you’re not the kind to come to Earth on a jaunt, and certainly not to come with people who are risking themselves, as your redheaded friend—is she one of us? No, don’t answer that. You wouldn’t have a right to break her privacy even if you wanted to—and the elderly gentleman I presume because your…because Jarl’s clone called him Doc Bartolomeu, is Bartolomeu Dias, one of Jarl’s inseparable friends, in a remarkable state of preservation for his age.” He let go of me and waved me away from trying to mop up the juice with a tissue. “Leave it. My servants need to feel useful every once in a while, or they start wondering why I pay them. The thing is, Thena, that you didn’t come here just because it seemed to you a jolly good idea to get Jarl’s notes.” He looked at me, very seriously. “You’re in a bind, and I want to help you.”

  I realized that I wasn’t going to get out of this easily. Simon knew me much too well to be fobbed off with a casual lie or even two. So I sat on the bed, crossed my robe closed and told him the whole thing, from our landing in Eden onward. I omitted only things that weren’t mine to tell, though if he, with his ability to recognize faces—a legacy of his ancestor’s specialization?—didn’t figure out who Zen was, I wasn’t going to try to help him. He did stop me when I mentioned Zen and said, “She’s a widow? No children?” which might or might not mean he’d inferred her nature.

  I explained how important it was that we get Eden back to what it was, where people were free. Even if they seemed to me almost bewilderingly free, it worked, and it was better than a society where individual will counted for nothing compared to the will of the one ruler. “It’s not just that Castaneda is making people uncomfortable,” I said. “Or arranging the occasional accidental death, even though it’s clear he is doing that too. But the attack on Kit was unprecedented for Eden. It was very well hidden and we couldn’t find out who did it, thereby precluding revenge of blood geld. Anyone who might have talked, wouldn’t, because they were afraid of what Castaneda could do to their power. We knew he was behind the attack, but we couldn’t prove it. And we couldn’t stop it. If we can’t arrest his march to absolute power, no one will dare rebel. As small as Eden is, and as devoid of laws, it will devolve into an absolute tyranny, with Castaneda and whoever succeeds him in charge, forever, and everyone else little more than slaves. It will be much worse than anywhere on Earth.”

  When I was done, Simon was standing by the bed, very close to me. He pulled me into his arms. Strangely it was both very comforting and completely non-sexual. Strangely, because even two years ago this would have been sexual. “Thena,” he said, “listen. I was joking, or…not joking but being gallant about…wanting to marry you.”

  I sniffled “I know,” which is when I realized that I’d been crying into the shoulder of his red shirt.

  “And I don’t know what I can do to help you in this, except, of course, make all facilities the doctor might need available to him, which I will do tomorrow morning early. However…” He pulled away from me and used the back of his fingers to wipe at my tears. “However, I want you to know this…If all else fails and you need…refuge with someone who understands you, I’ll be here. I can’t pretend we are or ever were each other’s dream of love, but we’re good friends, yes? And if you want that I’m here for you for as long as you want.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and this time hugged him to me, tightly. We were locked in embrace, with me still in my robe, when I saw, over Simon’s shoulder, the door open.

  Jarl came in. Or perhaps it was Kit. Whichever it was, was not amused. And what he said was, “What is the meaning of this?”

  TO HAVE AND TO HOLD

  I think when being caught in a compromising position with a male, a married woman is supposed to feel some sort of panic. But I was never one to do the expected, and besides, for most of my life, most of my friends had been male and I’d never felt compromised by any of them.

  I sniffed, and let Simon offer me a handkerchief, into which I blew my nose noisily. And then I said the first thing that came to mind, which happened to be, “I’m not up on comparative semiotics, but I think I was crying on a friend’s shoulder.”

  Jarl stalked into the room, and I was now sure it was Jarl. No, I could never fully describe the difference, except that, as with the violin playing, Jarl walked with more discipline than grace. It occurred to me quickly and irrelevantly that it was perhaps the memory of his body being older and frailer, and having to move cautiously in order not to hurt himself.

  Simon turned to face him, with lazy grace, and they stared at each other for a moment, and then Jarl stalked around to the left, while Simon turned that way. They looked like nothing so much as barnyard animals, roosters, engaged in a territorial confrontation. I did not have the time for this.

  One of the funniest things in Eden was reading twentieth-century literature, back in the time when they still had faith in the eternal progress—mental, physical, emotional—of mankind, and when they were lousy with philosophies that told them they would eventually become perfect and live in a perfect society. It is funny in a bitter way, because they tended to believe man would become wholly rational and leave behind his animal nature.

  I’d like to bring one of those twentieth-century writers face-to-face with the two men in my room—two men who were both created by scientific processes, might I add.

  The sad thing was that Simon didn’t even want me, and I wasn’t sure about Jarl. But I was female and I nominally was married to one of them, or at least to his body. They were going to fight over me at the drop of a hat.

  I’d better make sure the hat didn’t drop. In fact, I’d better make sure I got their minds away from the possibility of a hat existing, let alone dropping. Knowing Jarl and his lack of control, the last thing I needed was for his old hatred of Simon’s…original to come to the fore. There are many many ways to get killed on Earth. Killing a Good Man might be one of the fastest and most painful. And that was before taking in account that Simon might be a bastard, but I liked him. And I was fairly sure his alleged heart was in the right place.

  I jumped from the bed. “Right,” I said, standing in front of Jarl. “Would you mind telling me the terms of my captivity?”

  “What?”

  I could genuinely say I’d taken him by surprise. His eyes flickered from Simon to me. Mentally, I said, Kit, rein in the troglodyte.

  Should I? To my relief, my husband, or what remained of him sounded more teasing than worried. What were you doing with the oh-so-suave Simon? What did you tell him that caused him to take you in his arms? Kit paused, possibly realizing what he’d given away. Yes, he brough
t a portable viewer, and yes, the bug, whatever it is, follows Simon. I have no idea how that was done, and he won’t tell me.

  But you couldn’t hear us?

  No. Simon must have some kind of circumventing mechanism in place. It’s part of what’s driving Jarl insane.

  “You’re not a captive,” Jarl said, and tightened his lips.

  “No? Then why are you here asking me about a visitor to my room? What business is it of yours? In Eden, it would be enough to challenge you to a duel.”

  “A duel! Thena, we’re married.”

  “We are not, Jarl Ingemar.”

  This caught him out of step. He opened his mouth and said, “But—”

  Before he could finish his thought I said, “And even if we were, I would challenge you to a duel for doubting my word. When I married Kit I presumed fidelity was implied. If he didn’t trust my word, why marry me?”

  Hey! I trust your word. And I don’t remember a promise of fidelity.

  I said implied.

  He gave an artistic mental sigh. Yeah, I suppose it was, by the laws of your people and all…It’s sad, I’ll have to give up my plans to have a harem. And I’d already picked out ages and body types.

  I stomped on the temptation to tell him he wouldn’t have that chance if he were a figment of Jarl’s mind, and instead turned to Jarl and gave him my best slow I’m a patrician of Earth and I’ve scraped better looking stuff off my soles look. “As for you, Mr.…or should I call you Patrician, since you’re our equal? Patrician Ingemar, I didn’t marry you. Ever. I don’t think I would marry you while compos mentis. I don’t like the way you jump to conclusions.”

  He looked puzzled. Men aren’t very hard to puzzle. The old-style feminists, the ones who complained forever about male oppression, must have been the worst verbal sparrers in the history of mankind.

  Something science has shown us is that men aren’t at home with words. Oh, sure, there are exceptions. I’m almost sure Shakespeare was a little sharper than the rest. But on average, most men are less verbal than most women. Heck, most of them get confused with more than ten words together and if possible would ban them on the principle of illegal assembly and conspiracy to confuse. The fact that women have always been better with words is probably a compensation for the fact men have the muscles, the size, and the spatial reasoning. If you ask me, men got the short end of the stick.