Chapter Four
Spin One
When Murphy heard a sharp knock on his stateroom’s hatch, he presumed it was Janusz about to check in before he turned the CO’s security detail over to whoever had the spot in the overnight rota. But when he swung the portal open, Naliryiz stalked in, narrow arms crossed in a way that made it look like she was hugging her lean low-gee body for warmth.
He smiled. “Well, hello to you, too.”
Usually she responded gladly to even his most predictable—not to say hackneyed—attempts at banter. But not tonight. She stared up at him from beneath her very straight, very severe brow. “What you did today was very brave.”
“Well, I just—”
“It was also very foolish.”
“Was it?”
“Do you hold your life so lightly?”
“No,” Murphy sighed, “but I don’t really know how much of life I’m holding on to, anymore, do I?”
Naliryiz’s face went very pale.
Damned if every one of their talks didn’t come back to the multiple sclerosis. “Look: it’s just hard, cold numbers. Putting my life up as collateral for those eleven people kept you all—SpinDogs and RockHounds both—from stumbling into a range war right when we need everyone pulling in the same direction, not running headlong against each other. This way, we all get to do the work necessary to have a fighting chance against Kulsis. Otherwise, the Otlethes Family—and any allies that continued to stand with them—would have been struggling against a mounting wave of fear and resentment over a mass execution that was likely to have been labeled The Day of Spacings. Or something equally grim and accurate. I just took the necessary steps to defuse that.”
She shook her head. “Yet, if one of the RockHounds violates the terms of their parole . . . ” She couldn’t bring herself to speak the inevitable endgame aloud.
Murphy nodded. “If one of them violates their parole, I die.” He shrugged. “And with any luck, I’ll become a martyr.” He shrugged. “If chanting my name—whether the people doing it like me or not—helps everyone hold it together long enough to repel the Harvesters, then once again, you continue to exist.”
“Yes, we do . . . but without you.” Her eyes were imploring him to survive, and many other equally impossible things.
Murphy found a natural smile. “Odds are I won’t last that long, anyway.” He fought against the curve of his lips becoming brittle, felt himself losing. “Anseker and his cronies thought I was bargaining with a full life, not the last bits of one I’ll soon be quitting. Hell, if I go out with my boots on, maybe they’ll never find out just how genetically inferior I really was.”
Naliryiz opened her mouth to speak, but her eyes grew bright and, lips clamping tightly, she exited his quarters without uttering a word.
After all, what was there to say?
* * *
The next knock on the coaming that housed the hatch into Murphy’s quarters was slower, heavier. Almost certainly Janusz.
He opened the hatch and discovered he was both right and wrong. His Polish bodyguard peered around the coaming sheepishly. “Colonel, you have visitors.”
“Visitors?” Murphy swung the hatch wider.
Three men stood behind Janusz, two wearing the black uniforms of RockHounds serving in an official capacity, the other garbed in the mishmash of clothes and gear that marked him as a salvage jobber from the far reaches of the system.
Murphy glanced at Janusz, who shrugged. “Come in, gentlemen. Janusz, you can wait outside.”
“Actually,” said the older of the two in black uniforms, “it would be more convenient if your armsman waited at a distance.” He shrugged in response to Murphy’s quizzical look. “We mean no imposition, but our words are for you alone.”
Janusz looked worried as Murphy gestured him out of the stateroom and invited his guests to sit.
The three looked around at each other before the oldest shook his head. “It would not feel right to be seated as we speak, Colonel Murphy.”
So, since you want to do this standing, maybe you mean to shoot me fair and square to my face, after all. “You have me at a disadvantage, gentlemen. You know my name, but I do not know yours.”
“And for now, let it remain so,” the younger uniform-wearer intoned with a solemn nod.
The older one agreed with a single inclination of his head. “Yes.” He looked up into Murphy’s eyes. “My people are in your debt, Colonel Murphy.”
“For what?”
“For intervening before seven of our kin could be slaughtered, and then again, for standing as the bond of their parole.”
Murphy shook his head. “You owe me no thanks. Had the situation been reversed—had they been SpinDogs lined up for execution and you ready to send them into space—I would have done the same.”
“We know, and that is the greater half of our gratitude. Let us speak plainly. You are much prized by the SpinDogs.” He saw the dubious look on Murphy’s face. “Well, most of them, at any rate. So logically, your path to power depends upon grooming that relationship: to both ingratiate and become indispensable.
“But you did neither. You defied them—or at least, convinced them there was a better path. Which, at the very least, suggests you are wiser than they.”
Murphy frowned. “I’m sorry to disagree, but that doesn’t mean I am wiser. As you say, the SpinDog families hold the power. They cannot afford to be seen as flawed, or weak, or both. I am an outsider. I am free to suggest alternatives without being disgraced or damned.”
“Still, you risk being thought weak.”
“Or foolish,” added the one in utility-motley. He sounded like he might be expressing his own opinion.
Murphy shrugged. “Had all eleven people been spaced without a full hearing, without any consideration of the blackmail or circumstances that brought them there, do you think it likely that the SpinDogs and RockHounds would have been able to work together to do what they now must: build the fleet that is our only chance of survival?”
Their response was peculiar; they nodded, but at each other rather than in response to him. The younger, salvage operator lagged behind the older two, but finally joined them with a grudging shrug.
What? Am I being . . . tested?
When they’d come to whatever silent consensus had been established among them, they glanced cautiously at the door. Not fearful, but secretive. What? Are they going to show me a secret handshake?
“Your solution was timely and wise, Colonel Murphy, but it does not set all dangers of division to rest. There is still an appetite for vengeance in the bellies of those who feel a parent or child or sibling was wronged during the recent power struggles. There are probably those who might be even more eager to work for the Kulsians, more eager to settle the blood debt than survive—either individually or as a group.”
“They don’t have power,” the other one in black muttered, “but they exist within every Family. Both in these spins and on our stations.”
“And our outposts,” added the third and youngest.
Murphy crossed his arms. “There will need to be a determined and unified counterintelligence effort to ensure that such individuals do not—cannot—make contact with the Harvesters when they arrive.”
“Aye,” said the younger of the two in uniform, “but how can that be, when we are disdained by those on the spins?”
“You do not know all the injustices we suffer,” added the young salvager.
“I am aware of them,” Murphy corrected gently.
“Aware of many, perhaps, but not all.” The two in black glanced furtively at the younger one, whose eyes evinced slight exotropia when he turned his head quickly. As a child, Murphy had heard such persons called “wall-eyed”—a condition that was, luckily, absent among the Lost Soldiers. Their “pedigree” was already suspect among the SpinDogs, for whom such physiological—or genetic—defects were unknown.
But thanks to the twice-traitorous Yukannak, Murphy had learned why they were present among the RockHounds: their Breedmistresses were less proficient. Probably because they either lacked adequate training or were themselves less genetically optimized to conduct Reifications: the semimystical means whereby the SpinDogs read and groomed their Families’ genecodes. Guild-mother Shumrir had forbidden Murphy to ever mention or ask about Reifications, but questioning Yukannak had not been within the scope of her prohibition. He revealed that Reification was not only known on Kulsis, but drove much of its Overlords’ interests in what they called R’Bak’s “pharmaflora.”
As the two uniformed RockHounds averted their eyes from their salvager companion, Murphy saw an opportunity to demonstrate that he did indeed understand the full dimension of the inequities they suffered: specifically, children born without the benefit of genetic screening. But if he showed himself too knowledgeable . . .
Hell, this can’t be any riskier than staking my life as bond for nine parolees. “Do you refer to the impediments your Breedmistresses encounter when conducting Reifications?”
Their eyes widened. “You know of this?” said the oldest.
Carefully, now. “I know enough to know I have much more to learn.”
The other chewed his lip. “Still, you understand why, among themselves, the SpinDogs call us ‘lesser beings’—and believe those slurs.”
Which, judging from your own faces, you half-believe yourselves. Murphy merely shrugged—which they could interpret however they wished.
Again, the three exchanged glances, but this time, whatever consensus they reached was far more definitive. “We shall meet again,” the oldest said, straightening. “And that you may know we are in earnest, we leave this with you.” He produced a tube from his pocket, handed it to Murphy, nodding for him to open it.
Murphy extracted a rolled sheet of paper and unfurled it: a drawing. Well, more of a schematic, annotated in a script that had a faint similarity to classical Ktoran—and so, was indecipherable. Reading and writing had not been included in the Dornaanis’ time-compressed language lessons. “What is this? Or perhaps, more importantly, where does it come from?”
The younger of the uniformed pair nodded at the schematic. “Better that you should ask when it comes from, Colonel Murphy.” He smiled at Murphy’s surprise. “We understand that your Lieutenant Thomas, the one you call Vat, has become quite fluent in our language. See what he makes of this writing.”
Noticing that the salvager was observing the exchange only in occasional, reluctant glances, Murphy played another hunch. He nodded at the fellow. “Was it you who found this?”
The young man started, looked away. “No. It came down to me.”
“His great-grandfather discovered it one hundred and twenty-four of our years ago,” the middle-aged one in black supplied. “While conducting deep salvage.”
Conducting deep salvage? “Where?” Murphy asked.
The old one shook his head. “That is something you cannot be told. It is something you must see.”
Murphy heard his hanging tone. “I would very much like to visit that place.”
The senior of the three smiled; his teeth were so yellowed they did not even reflect the bright light of the stateroom. “We suspected as much.” The salvager tugged at his elder’s sleeve, pointed at his own strangely ornate watch; the older one nodded. “We have stayed too long as it is.” His deep bow was copied by the other two. The salvager opened the hatch, looked out, nodded up the corridor—to Janusz, no doubt—and swung it wide for the other two.
As the oldest stepped over the threshold, he paused and glanced back. “I see why Korelon named you ektadori’u, Rodger Murphy. We shall be in contact, so that you will be able to prepare.”
“Prepare for what?”
“To see what few have seen. It will require a week. Tell us when you believe it possible for you to be absent for that long. We will see to the rest. Be well—and be very careful—Colonel Murphy.”