I jumped into the line of Castaneda’s fire, and let a laser ray fly at him. He ducked. I saw what Kit meant, that Castaneda might be enhanced. He moved as fast as I could. Of course in Eden, anyone could be enhanced if their parents paid enough, and I suspected there were retroactive enhancements, too.
I fired again and ducked. He retreated, interposing his friends between us. I pursued. My entire vision, almost my entire thought was bent on him.
He was destroying Eden. If I let him escape, he’d find a way to exonerate himself and finish the job. He’d killed Waldron, and if he got half a chance he would kill Kit and my entire family. He would at least try to indenture Kit. And our only choice would be to run away, to give up Eden forever.
I had to kill him.
I realized three of Castaneda’s friends were arranging themselves around him, shooting at me, protecting him. But they mustn’t be hitting me because it didn’t hurt. Kit was involved in a single fight with someone who had gone after him. I could see through the corner of my eye as the two wove and shot around the flyers.
I aimed carefully and picked off Castaneda’s right-side bodyguard.
Doc stepped in beside me and said, “You can’t go it alone, Sinistra.” I wondered if he was talking to me, or the wraith of Daddy Dearest.
He relieved me by distracting Castaneda’s remaining bodyguards and allowing me to aim at Castaneda. I hit him over the heads of his friends, on the small slide of hair and forehead I could see between the two still-standing bodyguards.
For a moment it looked like I hadn’t hit him. Then blood and brains erupted in an explosion, and Doc hit Castaneda’s left-side bodyguard.
When it all cleared, Castanedas were on the ground, dead or wounded. On our own side, only Waldron was down, and Jennie was kneeling by him, holding his hand. When she looked up, she seemed to have aged a hundred years. Her eyes looked immensely sad. “We found out,” she said, “about the trap Castaneda had set to blow up anyone coming after him. His second cousin told us. He thought—” She seemed unable to continue and sat on her ankles, rocking back and forth.
Kit limped from behind the flyers, looking cut and bruised. Jan came from the other side, limping.
Doc, standing beside me, whimpered. It was such an uncharacteristic sound for him, I turned to look him fully on.
And Doc was very pale. Standing, but very pale.
I noticed the sleeve of his arm was dripping blood.
“Doc,” I said. And then I realized that he’d been hit twice. The shoulder shot was just the one bleeding the most. He’d also taken a shot through the stomach. “You’re wounded.”
Doc Bartolomeu turned to me, his face so pale that he looked like an animated wax doll, and contorted in a rictus of pain that lent itself ill to the smile he superimposed on it. “Hush, child. It’s all right. It’s time. I won’t make Jarl’s mistake. My time is all in the past. And perhaps…” He smiled a little and seemed to look behind my shoulder. “Why…perhaps a few hundred years of separation is expiation enough,” he said softly. At least it sounded like that was what he said. “Do you believe in ghosts, Thena?”
“No,” I said.
“Pity. Ghosts would work, as an explanation.”
“No. We need you.”
“No. You and Christopher and…and your children will be fine.”
And then he died.
I started to kneel down beside him, to try to…I don’t know what I wanted to try to do, but there must be something, there must. I couldn’t take losing both Waldron and Doc.
But I couldn’t see him clearly; it was as if everything had gone foggy and dark. I put my hand up to rub my eyes, but I fell forward, across Doc.
Thena, Kit said in my mind. Thena. Light. That is all your blood. Thena, don’t die.
ALMOST THE END OF THE WORLD
We almost had a civil war then. I know nothing about it, because I was unconscious and in a regen tank. I’d got shot three times, most of my hair burned away, and without regen I’d have been one-armed forever. I was out for a week, but I heard about it afterwards.
I think the only reason war didn’t happen is that everything had been so public. No one could say we’d accused Castaneda in secret, or that it had been us who had shot Doc.
There were many duels in the coming days, and two of them took out the two men who’d shot Doc Bartolomeu. Kath took care of one, and Kit another.
Kit had been quiet and detached through everything. He’d helped prepare Doc’s funeral. He’d gone through Doc’s belongings and closed Doc’s house, leaving in it anything that couldn’t be sold. He stood as principal mourner at the funeral while Doc was cremated and his ashes deposited in the rose garden where the Denovos’ dead were placed.
Kit didn’t cry or even look sad, and I suppose most people thought he didn’t feel much. But Waldron’s death had left a hole in the family, and most people didn’t hear Kit play his violin at night, the lonely notes crying like lost souls, until he grew too tired to play anymore. I came back from the regen center in time to hear this. I came back in time to go with him to the reproductive center, accompanying Jennie to consult about the baby she and Waldron had in the biowombs. I’m glad she decided to keep him and that she has that consolation. Right now it looks like she’ll never get over her grief, but Kit says it passes. Maybe it will. I don’t know. Maybe everyone will heal, too.
While at the center, we found that Doc had left two embryos in deep-freeze. We think they’re his own male and female clones. Kit has inherited control of these. We think we’ll gestate them soon and raise them with our children. No, they won’t be Doc, but a little of him should be allowed to go forward into the future. Something of his should have a chance at a normal life.
I wasn’t aware that Kit had challenged one of Doc’s killers who had escaped. The first I knew of it was when Kit came back, looking grey and haggard, and put the engraved burners we’d brought from Earth in their storage case in our room, then sat on the bed. “It is done,” he said. “He is avenged. In the end, whatever Jarl intended for me, I was Doc’s son, as much as I was anyone’s. He loved me for what I was and raised me, and wanted me to be happy. I was the repository of his hopes for the future. And I owed him a son’s duty.”
And then he covered his face with his hands and cried.
Over the next few weeks, things worked themselves out. Most of the people in the conspiracy were either quasi-innocent or misguided. A few truly bad apples were told they could choose to either leave for the Thules or continue to live in Eden under public shunning. Or fight duels for their honor. A few fought duels, but most of them left for Ultima Thule, where I was given to understand by Tania the locals had ways to deal with anyone who tried to make a grab for power. At any rate, the most power they were likely to get was over a couple hundred people, if that.
Some of the Thule colonists decided to feed the powertree in exchange for a share in its eventual fruit.
You see, it had been decided that the powertree would be private property and not common. Part of this was because everyone had finally looked at the Energy Board and the Water Board. Institutions of Eden, they’d been around so long that no one had ever questioned on whose authority they levied fines, or hired people, or decided who could and couldn’t fly.
I guess everyone had assumed they were some form of shared proprietorship among the hereditary members of the board. Turned out they were wrong. Going far enough back in the history of the two, it became obvious that they had originated from emergency panels and that the first collector ships from which the fleet grew had in fact been common property, owned by all citizens of Eden.
And that ultimately was the problem, because when something belongs to everyone, it belongs to no one, and those who administer it in a supposedly selfless manner end up being the ones who own it.
Over the centuries, the families in charge of the boards had enriched themselves under the cover of public service. It had never caused much problem because greed
was a relatively clean desire, like lust. It was for something that people wanted to have, to acquire, to enjoy, and which might affect other people but didn’t enslave them.
But then there had been Fergus Castaneda and his desire for power, which he’d decided to gratify by means of the Energy Board. Desire for power is not clean. It doesn’t stop till you’ve stripped power from everyone else, and made them your slaves.
And now, we’re going to have three water companies and two energy companies, and the powertree that is growing nearby but not too near will be owned by Kit and the people who tend it.
The water companies were formed by people who bought the ships at public auction, the profit to be distributed to each Edenite. Now Cats and Navs can choose which company they want to work for; companies will have their independent training programs, and if a Cat and Nav want to fly independently, that’s all right too, provided they own their own ship and pay dock fees—and arrange with an energy company to buy their powerpods.
Kit and I are not working independently. Yes, eventually the little powertree will grow, the fruits will ripen, and people who harvest them will pay us a share. Eventually, our children will be wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. But right now we owe really quite a lot of money to the Energy Board, which got transferred as debt to the people whose ships we damaged.
Doc’s estate had come to Kit. We’ll keep it for Doc’s children; Kit thought we owed it to them. So, we barely had money to purchase even the Cathouse. Fortunately Kit’s family decided to buy half a dozen ships, including the Cathouse, and start their own family enterprise. Which is how we came to be in the Cathouse, a month later, headed for the powertrees.
WHERE THE HEART IS
Kit was playing the violin. I liked that. It reassured me every time he played it, because it was so obvious that he was alone in his skull.
I knew there were memories there that had nothing to do with science or knowledge, memories that he would never share with me. And his playing tended to the sadder melodies. But that was fine. As long as he was the only one playing that violin.
We were in the bedroom, and he stood, playing, while I reclined on the bed and listened to him.
As the last plaintive note sounded, I said, “Kit.”
He lowered the bow. “Yes? Hey, want to go to the exercise room? You haven’t wanted to mock-fight for a while.”
“I don’t feel like it,” I said.
“You’re getting fat,” he said, but grinned.
“Am not. Okay, maybe a little. Do you mind terribly?”
He sat on the edge of the bed, and patted my hair. “No. You have a while to go before I mind.”
“Yeah,” I said. And as I thought of our last trip to Earth, I thought of Doc and Jarl. “I think we’ll name our firstborn Jarl Bartolomeu.”
“What?” Kit said. “What if it’s a girl?”
“Especially if it’s a girl. Think of the surprise.”
He laughed and kissed me and said, “Well, no reason to worry about that. I’m sure in the next few years I can convince you to come up with a more sensible girl name.”
And he probably could at that.
I’m just glad to be home.
You’re very strange, and we’re not home, Kit said. We’re in the Cathouse.
Which is home, I said, and explained, slowly, because I could see he didn’t get it. Home, Kit, is wherever you are.
Table of Contents
WELCOME TO EDEN OUT OF THE FRYING PAN
QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES?
TYRANNICAL AUTHORITY
MORE THAN ONE WAY TO SQUEEZE A BUG
UNREASONABLE SEARCH
OUR LIVES, OUR FORTUNES, OUR SACRED HONOR
THE POISON AND THE DAGGER
IN THE HOPPER
THE TRAITOR AND THE DAGGER
BETWEEN WORLDS
UNDERWORLD
THE MAGIC POTION
WHO GOES THERE? RUN!
VOICES
ALL TOO MORTAL FLESH
POP GOES THE SHIP
PATCHES AND RAGS
THE MINOTAUR IN THE LABYRINTH
FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD
THE LIVES OF OTHERS
FALLING TO EARTH EXTERMINATOR
EMPTY NEST
OLD HOME WEEK
IN A STATE OF NATURE
MAYDAY
DANSE MACABRE
FRATERNITE
TO HAVE AND TO HOLD
HORATIUS AT THE BRIDGE
BURNING THE BRIDGE NIGHT TERROR
THE FOX AND THE WOLF
THE FOX IN THE FOREST
SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?
THE KINGDOMS OF THE EARTH
THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE ARACHNOPHOBIA
SPARE PARTS
THE GALLERY OF FRACTURED MIRRORS
A CHANCE IN HELL
TREMORS
MOTHER I’M FRIGHTENED
BREAKING MIRRORS
WELCOME TO THE FUN HOUSE
AN ANCIENT DEMON
PICKING UP THE PIECES
IN BETWEEN
THE BOOMERANG RETURNS AND VERY LONESOME HEROS
I DIDN’T SEE NOTHING
THE FIRE OF THE GODS
THE SILENCE OF THE SPHERES
THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE BOILING FROG
UNDERGROUND
TICKLING TROUTS
PAYING THE PIPER
ALMOST THE END OF THE WORLD
WHERE THE HEART IS
Darkship Renegades Page 40
