.III.
“I think you’d better elaborate on that, Captain Zilwicki,” Henke said. “My intelligence people’s view of this so-called ‘Alignment’—and my own—is that it’s basically an innocent bystander. It got used as a front for the real Alignment without its knowledge. Over the last several months, we’ve interviewed literally hundreds of its known members in front of treecats. And because we have, we know they’re telling us the truth when they tell us that none of them had any clue that was happening. Aside from that, I have to say that, as far as I’m concerned, it’s been just one hell of a shrill nuisance. It’s among the loudest voices criticizing us.”
“I’m aware of that, Milady, and I agree. But that doesn’t mean that this”—his fingers mimed quotation marks—“‘Benign Alignment’ isn’t tightly associated with the Alignment we already knew about, whether it’s members realize that or not.”
“How many of them are there, Anton?” Cachat asked. “Do we know?”
“We have pretty reliable numbers on that,” Hibson put in. “The Domestic Intelligence Branch of the Office of Investigation had very thorough records on the Benign Alignment’s membership, and my people have everything DIB ever had. Trust me, we made looking for the Alignment our number one priority.”
“DIB had records on them? Why?” Cathy asked.
“Because while they were tolerated by the Mesan government, they were never fully trusted,” Hibson replied, “so they were under constant surveillance. And the Alignment itself made no strenuous efforts to keep their identity secret, anyway.”
“So how many of them are there?” Du Havel asked.
“Just north of eight hundred thousand,” Zilwicki replied.
“That many?” Du Havel’s eyebrows rose. “I had the impression they were just a fringe group.”
“Out of a system population of over twelve and a half billion, eight hundred thousand is only point-zero-zero-six percent, Web,” Zilwicki pointed out. “So, numerically, it was a fringe group. But it’s still what you might call a…largish absolute number, and the Benign Alignment’s members punch above their weight—in the area of science and technology, at least, if not politics. Their membership has a very high percentage of biologists, both theoretical as well as technical, and an especially high percentage of Mesa’s geneticists.”
“And how many of the bastards worked for Manpower?” Saburo demanded with a scowl.
“None, so far as we’ve been able to determine.”
“None?” Saburo’s eyebrows rose even higher than Du Havel’s had.
“None,” Hibson confirmed before Zilwicki could reply. “Not one single known member of this Benign Alignment of Captain Zilwicki’s was ever an official employee of Manpower, and every one of them we’ve interviewed has…strongly asserted the same in front of our furry lie detectors.”
“I’m pretty sure that was why DIB—or the General Board, anyway—didn’t trust them,” Zilwicki said. “But to understand why I think that, you have to understand the nature of the Benign Alignment. They fully share Leonard Detweiler’s advocacy of genetic engineering and uplift, but they’ve always been harshly critical of Manpower and its methods. It’s fair to say, in fact, that they hated Manpower themselves—with a passion. Which is why, given Manpower’s position on the General Board, the system government didn’t trust them any farther than it could spit. The Benign Alignment viewed Manpower as the single greatest obstacle to getting the galaxy’s population to accept Detweiler’s vision because of so thoroughly it had blackened the very idea with the perversions of genetic slavery.”
“That’s very interesting,” Henke said, “and I mean that sincerely. But I’d like to get back to where we started. Why and how do you see this ‘Benign Alignment’ as being the key to—what did you call it?—‘one whole hell of a lot,’ as I remember?”
“I think they’re key to several of the things we need,” Zilwicki replied. “First, and most critically, I take it from what you’ve already said that we’re pretty much in agreement that the members of the Benign Alignment still here on Mesa have no connection with the other Alignment. That is to say—”
Henke’s lips quirked.
“Let’s call them the “Malign Alignment,’” she suggested. “And, yes, you may assume I agree that there’s no connection between them and the murderous bastards we’re looking for.”
“Actually, there is a connection,” Zilwicki disagreed. “It’s one the Benign Alignment’s members don’t know about, but it’s still there. In fact, it’s one of the things I’m counting on.”
“Okay, now you’ve lost me,” Henke said.
“I think we’re all satisfied at this point that the Malign Alignment has been using the Benign Alignment as a front,” Zilwicki replied. “But it goes farther than that. Judging by the involvement of both McBryde brothers—both of whom were listed as known members of the Benign Alignment—it’s also been their primary recruiting pool. Makes sense, when you think about it, since they’d start right out being in favor of ‘genetic uplift.’ That probably makes it an easier step to become a ‘designing genetic supermen’ fanatic.
“Assuming I’m right about that, it also means that a lot—I don’t know what percentage, but a lot—of the Malign Alignment’s members were like the McBrydes: members of the Benign Alignment, as well, like wolves hidden among the sheep. It wasn’t simply a cover for them, either, because it also let them take advantage of the Benign Alignment’s social and professional networking, which undoubtedly increased its own reach.
“But there’s a flipside to that, as well. I’ve analyzed the casualty lists from the various ‘terrorist” incidents, and the Benign Alignment’s losses are significantly higher, proportionally, than those of the population as a whole. Again, that’s only reasonable if the Malign Alignment was evacuating key personnel, many of whom would have been concealed as members of the Benign Alignment. But there’s another reason for that, too. One which suggests an interesting possibility to me.”
He sat back, eyebrows raised, looking around the compartment expectantly. There was silence for a long moment, and then Jeremy X whistled softly.
“You are a cunning man, Anton,” he said. “I am once again reminded of all the reasons I am so glad that you’re on our side.”
“Okay, so I’m the dummy in the room again,” Berry said, looking back and forth between her minister of war and her stepfather. “Where, exactly, are you going with this, Dad?”
“He’s suggesting that this ‘Benign Alignment’ is the one segment of Mesa’s full citizenry that can be trusted,” Jeremy told her, never looking away from Zilwicki. “He’s going to propose that we bring them into the fold. Offer them a political alliance, if you will. Tacitly, if not openly.”
“You are?” Berry’s eyebrows rose.
“Just a minute,” Henke said, before her father could reply. “I understand the logic of our being able to trust them. What I don’t see, is why they’d trust us. I’m trying not to let my personal…irritation get in the way of my judgment, but their denunciations of us have been particularly shrill. And that’s because of how furious they are with us for suggesting that something called the Mesan Alignment is a cesspool of evil. I would anticipate a certain degree of—skepticism, let’s call it—on their part if we suddenly approach them with an offer of political alliance.”
“That’s where my analysis of their casualty rate comes in, Milady,” Zilwicki said. “Because they were joined at the hip, whether they knew it or not, the Benign Alignment suffered one hell of a lot more ‘collateral damage’ in those ‘terrorist” attacks and nuclear explosions—proportionately speaking—than the rest of the system population. The fact is, they got hammered by the Malign Alignment. Anyone like Jules Charteris, whose wife was about to be disappeared without him had to be ‘tidied up.’ Probably quite a few parents—or children—fell into that same category. The ‘collateral damage’ from the coverup had to hit the people closest to the evacuees hardest, and the Benign Alignment was too close to the Malign Alignment to not take heavy losses. Even when they weren’t threads that needed to be snipped themselves, they were far more likely than the general population to be in close proximity to someone who did need snipping. You can’t use fuel-air bombs or nukes in someone’s neighborhood without killing a hell of a lot of his neighbors…and relatives. Not only that, I will guarantee you that for a lot of the Benign Alignment’s members, people they loved—people they never guessed were part of the Malign Alignment—were taken from them not by death, but by their superiors.
“I can’t begin to imagine how many of them will be furious with the Malign Alignment’s leadership for what’s been done to them, and how many of them will be furious with the people they loved for being part of the Malign Alignment—for helping to empower what the Malign Alignment did to them. But either way, it’s going to generate one hell of a lot of anger.
“If they become aware of it, that is.”
“And assuming they believe us about that,” Henke murmured, but she was nodding as she spoke.
“I think there’s…a pretty fair chance of that, Milady,” Lecter said with a thoughtful expression. “They’re really pissed with us for suggesting they had anything to do with the terrorist attacks or the nukes, but what they’ve attacked is our use of the label ‘Alignment’ for the people who were behind the bombs. Not many of them have joined the chorus that claims we did it ourselves.”
“She’s right,” Zilwicki said. “Almost none of them have, in fact. And by and large, these are highly intelligent people. They may not want to look at the evidence, but once they admit it is evidence, I don’t think very many of them will be able to deny it.”
Henke nodded again, more firmly.
“It’s certainly the first hopeful thing about the Alignment—Malign or Benign—anyone’s floated to me lately, anyway.”
“Wellll…” Zilwicki drew the word out uncharacteristically and gave Jeremy a look that seemed somehow wary. “There is one other point I’d like to address.”
Henke looked at him as warily as he’d looked at Jeremy, then sat back and invited him to continue with a hand wave that was almost resigned. Zilwicki turned his chair to face Jeremy directly.
“There’s another reason I think an alliance between us and the Benign Alignment would be workable, Jeremy. The fact is, that both we and they have something positive to gain.”
Cathy’s expression got a little pinched.
“Anton, I don’t know that this is the right time—”
“There’ll never be a ‘right’ time, Cathy.” Zilwicki glanced at her, and he looked more like a dwarf king than ever as he almost growled the words. “That’s in the nature of the beast. But I think this is as right a time as we’ll ever get.”
Their eyes held for a heartbeat or two. Then she sat back, and he returned his gaze to Jeremy.
“The fact is that the Benign Alignment is right, in a lot of ways, and has been all along. Beowulf’s restrictions on genetic engineering need to be…reappraised. Although, to be fair, Beowulf’s attitude toward those restrictions has already evolved one hell of a lot over the last several centuries. And, also to be fair, the Code was always more concerned with preventing the weaponization of genetic engineering than with restricting genetic improvement per se. Part of the problem is that it was so difficult to separate those aspects, especially in the wake of Old Earth’s Final War. Most people today don’t realize, for example, that the ‘Scrags’ actually represent what was probably the least extreme of the ‘super soldier’ modifications. Some of the other mods were so far from the human norm that they could be produced only by cloning, and those…variants ought to scare the crap out of just about anyone. One reason we still have the Scrags and not the others, is that most of the others were too genetically differenced from humanity in general to maintain a viable population.
“Still, there’s no question that Beowulf, like the rest of the galaxy, overreacted to the Final War. It was inevitable, really. But Leonard Detweiler was right when he called the Beowulf medical establishment on it. As nearly as I can tell he was an autocratic, stiff-necked, arrogant pain-in-the-ass who was only too well aware of his own brilliance. That probably had a little something to do with how…poorly received his pungent criticisms were. But he was also right, and there are plenty of examples of what you might call improvements on the base model to demonstrate that. Some of them were deliberate and planned, and some of them were nature taking a hand. I might point to Duchess Harrington as an example of the former. The Meyerdahl mods predated the Final War, so they were ‘grandfathered in,’ anyway, but the Beowulf Code has never objected to genetic modification to suit planetary environments. Not until the modification would get extreme enough to edge into weaponization territory, anyway. And Thandi here is a perfect example of the natural selection model, although even that’s an ‘artificial’ result in the sense that no human beings would ever been subjected to the conditions on the Mfecane worlds if they hadn’t learned to travel between stars.”
“But if the Beowulf Code allowed something like the Meyerdahl mods to stand, what was Detweiler’s problem with it?” Tourville asked. Zilwicki looked at him, and the Havenite shrugged. “I’m not trying to play devil’s advocate here, Captain Zilwicki, but this isn’t really one of my areas of expertise. Prior to our visit to Mesa I was the prototypical uninformed layman on the ins and outs of ‘genetic uplift.’ Since then, though, I’ve come to the conclusion that Beowulf’s objection had to be more to his proposed methods then to the technology itself.”
“That’s fair enough, Admiral.” Zilwicki nodded. “Part of what Beowulf objected to about Detweiler’s proposals was the radical nature of some of the improvements he advocated, and part of it was, in fact, the methodology he proposed using. For example, some of the earlier efforts to raise intelligence levels had…unfortunate consequences on things like mental stability. Victor and I saw an example of exactly that sort of ‘unfortunate consequence,’ secondhand, at least, in the case of Herlander Simões’s daughter.” His expression turned hard and cold for a moment. “I don’t know how serious Detweiler was and how much of it was a way to deliberately goad a medical establishment which had already rejected his arguments, but he actually proposed doing…trial runs on clones who could be terminated if it turned out their genetic modification was a blind alley. Which is exactly what the Malign Alignment did in Francesca Simões’s case. He was really, truly pissed with the ‘Luddite thinking’ of the Beowulf medical mainstream by that time, so I think it’s entirely possible he was venting in hopes that pure outrage would carry off some of his critics. As Francesca demonstrated, though, at least someone took him seriously.
“But another part of what Beowulf objected to was the potential social consequences of a deliberate policy of genetic uplift. Of a search for a Homo superior whose attributes would be defined by its designers and directed towards a programmed goal.”
“Social consequences?” Tourville repeated.
“The human race has an unfortunate tendency—one which appears to be pretty thoroughly hardwired into us—to fear ‘the other,’” Zilwicki replied. “We’ve tried, off and on, for millennia to eradicate that tendency, but without very much success. Where we have made progress—and a hell of a lot of it, actually—is in expanding the definition of what you might call ‘us’ so that fewer and fewer people fall into the category of ‘not us.’ One of the things Beowulf feared was the emergence of a new ‘not us’ that would be feared and hated. A reemergence of what used to be called ‘racism.’ That sort of concern made a lot of sense at the time, in many ways, given the prejudice against ‘genies’ which had come out of the Final War. And that same sort of prejudice is alive and well today—and stronger than ever, for many people—where genetic slaves are concerned. Which, by the way, is why the Benign Alignment hates Manpower with every fiber of its being.
“But they were also concerned that targeted improvement—improvement for the sake of improvement, not simply to fit specific environments—would become deeply politicized. Who defined what was an ‘improvement’? Who had the authority to control and direct programs like that? Did anyone have that authority? And what happened when someone decided to follow in Plato’s footsteps, organize a government on the basis of his Republic, but with its citizens genetically engineered to suit their roles within it?”
“Plato?” Tourville repeated. “Never heard of him. Where was his republic and what happened to it?”
“It never actually existed,” Zilwicki replied. “It’s the name of a very old book in which a philosopher named Plato described the ideal republic.”
“Never heard of him,” Tourville repeated.
“I can shoot you a translation of his book after we’re done here,” Zilwicki said. “The point is that the Beowulfers were worried about a continuation or reemergence of the pre-Final War competing genetic programs which had come so close to wiping out Old Earth. And they were afraid that the creation of a genetically stratified society—one based on actual, documentable genetic differences—would definitely re-create the sort of prejudice and bigotry associated with old-fashioned ‘racism.’ And you have to admit, Admiral, that what we’ve so far learned about the Malign Alignment and its stratification into alpha, beta, and gamma lines—and there might be still more ‘lines’ below the gammas—suggests that that’s exactly the outcome it’s looking for. So the Malign Alignment is a poster child for why the Beowulf Code shouldn’t be reappraised.
“But the Mesan Alignment that was established here on Mesa during Detweiler’s lifetime, the one we’re now calling the Benign Alignment, rejected his radicalism—assuming he was ever serious about it in the first place. It was dedicated to supporting a gradualist improvement of the human race—one which deliberately conserved strengths, weeded out weaknesses, but without any defined final objective. What you might call the maximization of each individual’s natural potential as a part of moving the entire race forward. I can’t be sure yet, but I suspect we’ll discover that the Malign Alignment began as a splinter faction of the original Alignment that was impatient with the concept of gradualism. But that original Alignment definitely was a benign organization, and I’m pretty sure it was only because of the…intensity of feeling where genetic modification was concerned during Detweiler’s lifetime that it was organized in secret.”
“But why stay that way?” Tourville asked. Zilwicki looked at him, and the Havenite grimaced. “As far as I can tell, the prejudice against your ‘gradualist improvement’ has been fading for a long time now. If anybody wanted to propose something as radical as your ‘super soldiers,’ or if they wanted to begin combining human and nonhuman genetic material, I’m sure a lot of people would object. And we may very well discover that that’s exactly what your Malign Alignment has been up to. But from what you’re saying, that’s not what these people have been doing, at all.”
“It isn’t. But I think the answer to your question is twofold, Admiral. First, its existence has been a fairly open ‘secret,’ at least here on Mesa. That is, it wasn’t costing its members anything in terms of pursuing its goals or their own lives to remain ‘secret.’ But, second—and more importantly, I suspect—there’s the fact that it is here on Mesa…which is also the home of Manpower and genetic slavery.” Zilwicki shook his head, his expression grim. “Obviously, they’ve been afraid that any Mesan organization advocating for an expansion of genetic engineering would be tarred with the Manpower brush. Which is another reason that they hate Manpower so passionately.”
“Where you going with all this, Captain?” Henke asked.
“I think it’s time we—the Grand Alliance—brought the Benign Alignment into the open, Milady. I think we need to make it clear that what the Benign Alignment’s been doing is not—for that matter, never has been—a violation of the Beowulf Code. And then I think we need to offer it the opportunity to…repair some of Manpower’s more egregious transgressions.”
There was a sudden silence, in which most of the people in that compartment very obviously didn’t look at the two former genetic slaves at the table.
Jeremy glanced around the compartment, then shook his head.
“How about people don’t take it upon themselves to presume to know what the wretched and downtrodden products of Manpower think? I assure you, we’re quite capable of speaking for ourselves.”
He turned to Zilwicki.
“Just how much good do you think they could really do us?” he asked.
“I don’t know, exactly.” Zilwicki had been resting his wrists on the table edge. Now he spread them wide, without raising them. “But as you’d expect from people with their viewpoint, they’re heavily concentrated in the biological sciences. And medicine. And however much they may have despised Manpower, they’ve been right here. Able to study Manpower’s work up close. None of them ever worked for Manpower, so far as I’ve been able to determine, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t had access to its researchers and technicians.”
“Interesting,” Jeremy said. He leaned back in his chair, slowly, and folded his hands across his slim midriff. He sat that way for several seconds, then looked at Henke.
“Anton and Cathy know—at least roughly—Admiral Gold Peak, but what do you think my life expectancy is?” he asked.
“I really couldn’t say,” Henke replied. “Did you escape slavery early enough for prolong to be effective in your case?”
“No,” he said.
“Well, I know Manpower’s never wasted any effort on extending the lifespans of its slaves,” Henke said, meeting his gaze levelly. “So I would assume that your life expectancy is short, at least by the standards of someone who has received prolong.”
“You might say that.” Jeremy smiled, but there was no warmth in that smile. “Of course, for you prolong recipients, all ‘natural human lifespans’ seem extremely short. But for those like me—” he gestured with his thumb at Saburo “him, too—the matter gets parsed a lot more closely. By the time prolong was developed, the average lifespan for humans had edged past a T-century. A bit more for women; a bit less for men, as always. But it was still a century, maybe a hundred and ten or twenty T-years.”
He was silent for a moment, then inhaled deeply.
“After I escaped—eventually, not right off—I consulted the best doctors I could find. All of them came up with the same rough estimate of my own expected lifespan. All but two thought I’d make it past the age of sixty.” His smile widened and showed some real warmth. “Assuming I didn’t get myself killed in the course of my activities, that was. But only one thought I’d make it to seventy.”
He swiveled his gaze to Saburo.
“What about you, Comrade? I don’t think we’ve ever discussed it.”
“Not much point to discussing it,” Saburo replied with a grimace. “But mine is better than yours. Not by much. No one I consulted thought I had a chance to reach eighty.”
By now, most of the expressions around the table were pinched.
“I knew it was short, but I hadn’t realized it was that bad,” Tourville said, and Saburo shrugged.
“My reflexes and hand eye coordination are way outside normal human parameters.” He nodded toward Jeremy. “His come close to being supernatural. But we paid a price for it.”
Jeremy made a growling noise in his throat.
“What’s most annoying is that Manpower could have engineered us—rather easily, in fact—to have normal lifespans. Which prolong would have extended tremendously…if anyone had been wasting it on slaves. But they didn’t bother.”
“Sugar plantations,” Cathy almost snarled.
“Exactly.” Jeremy nodded, then looked around at the others. “Ancient Ante-Diaspora plantation owners in the Caribbean found it was more profitable to work a slave to death in a few years and buy another than it was to keep her or him alive. Manpower has the same point of view. Almost all genetic slaves have unusually short lifespans, because the kind of people who buy us can always get another if—when—we break.” He bared his teeth briefly. “But that’s also true for former slaves and most seccies, because the damage—Manpower’s engineers call it the ‘parameters’—was done before birth. Except that Manpower’s engineers call that process ‘decanting.’”
“I already knew a lot of that,” Henke said, then snorted. “You may have heard that I have a friend whose family is fairly prominent among the abolitionists, both in Manticore and on Beowulf. But I don’t think I’ve ever discussed the damage as such with her. How much of it can be repaired? After the fact, so to speak.”
“Quite a bit, probably.” Jeremy unclasped his hands and sat upright. “Maybe not as much for current generations, but certainly for their kids. Assuming the geneticists and medical technicians are good enough. And if enough money is available. It’s not cheap.”
“It’s not cheap by the standards of an individual,” Zilwicki said, “even if they’re billionaires. But ‘cheap’ is measured on a very different scale if you’re matching it to the wealth of an advanced star nation. Which—” he cleared his throat “—Mesa still is. Yes, there’s been some damage done by the nukes. But much less than you might think. Modern industrial societies are extraordinarily resilient. They bounce back in no time.”
He tapped his forehead, near the temple. “It’s the brainpower, what does it.’
“So who do we approach first?” Jeremy asked. “In this very Benign Alignment of which you speak?”
* * *
“You didn’t seem taken off guard when I raised the subject of genetic engineering,” Zilwicki said to Cachat as they followed the other participants out of the briefing room.
Cachat twitched his lips in a facial version of a shrug.
“I wasn’t expecting you to raise it, but it’s not as if I hadn’t thought about it before. Don’t forget, I’m the one who shares a bed with Thandi and engaged in other activities there than just sleeping on any number of occasions. Until I learned what to expect, the experience could be…startling, let’s call it. And I know exactly how well Jeremy X can shoot a pistol. I owe my life to his marksmanship.”
He shrugged again, this time with his shoulders.
“Why shouldn’t those abilities—and many others—be shared by all humans? As long as it can be done safely and with the full cooperation and consent of the individuals involved, I certainly have no objection. Of course, the simple passage of time hasn’t eliminated all of the other considerations that worried the people who wrote the Beowulf Code in the first place. You were right when you said some of those considerations are ‘hardwired’ into us, and I’ve had entirely too much personal experience with the sort of nightmares corrupt ideologues can create. Letting someone like Oscar Saint-Just direct a program of ‘targeted uplift’ would be…” He paused, as if searching for the exact words he wanted, then snorted.
“It would be a really bad fucking idea,” he said.
“So you think it would have to be kept out of the state’s control?” Zilwicki asked, and Cachat shook his head.
“I don’t know if it could be trusted to proceed without state control, at least where those full cooperation and consent aspects are concerned,” he said. “Bottom line, one reason I’ve never been incensed by the Beowulf Code’s…myopia is that it truly does take something like the Code, with its broad acceptance and legal recognition, to prevent something like this from being abused into genetic slavery or that ‘genetically stratified’ society the Malign Alignment seems to be aimed toward. Maybe ‘state control’ is the wrong way to phrase it, but somebody—and maybe your Benign Alignment is the place to start—has to articulate what’s acceptable and what isn’t, codify it, and then hold all of the would-be Saint-Justs out there as accountable to it as they’ve been to the Beowulf Code. Somebody with genuine enforcement power. Of course, anything like that would have to be set up carefully. With the proper sort of watchdogs.”
“Like you?” Zilwicki asked with a thin smile.
“I was thinking of former Ballroom members, actually.”
“Hah. You know, I believe that’s the first time I ever heard the words ‘Ballroom’ and ‘watchdogs’ used together.” Zilwicki took Cachat by the arm and began walking down the passage. “But it’s not such a strange idea, now that I think about it. We developed our original watchdogs—genetically engineered them, even if the methods were crude—out of wolves, didn’t we?”
Victor eyed him sideways.
“I think you’re trying to distract me,” he said. “Speaking of watchdogs—or should I call them hunting dogs? I’ve noticed the absence of your two minions for some time now.”
“Damien and Indy?”
“Yes. Them.”
“Oh, them!” Zilwicki grinned. “I don’t see where you have a need to know.”
“You bastard.”
“That’s a harsh thing to say to a long-time partner of yours.”
“You bastard,” Cachat repeated.
“Oh, fine. I’ll tell you.” Anton glanced over his shoulder. “But not here. Anyone might be listening.”
“Who cares?”
“Neither one of us, I suppose. But principles are there for their own sake, I always say.”
They continued down the passage, with Zilwicki’s hand still grasping Cachat’s arm. Steering him, if not propelling him. The Havenite agent made no attempt to resist, however. His paramour wasn’t the only person he knew whose strength fell outside normal human parameters. He’d have as much success resisting a tidal bore.
Balcescu Station,
Debrecen Planetary Orbit,
Balcescu System.
“I don’t mean to insult our hosts or anything,” Indiana Graham said, “but this dump makes Seraphim look good.”
Damien Harahap looked around. In its better days—which he doubted had ever been all that good—the area of Balcescu Station through which he and his companion were passing at the moment had been a vending area. A string of small shops on either side of the corridor had catered to the needs of the station’s crew and visitors.
Those glory days, such as they had been, were long gone. As time passed and Balcescu Station’s business had become more and more enmeshed in the slave trade, it had suffered from the same condition slavery always brought with it. Wherever it spread, everything not bound up with slavery itself began withering on the vine. The wages of free people stagnated or declined, and while the wealth of the relative few who benefited from slavery increased, that wealth wasn’t typically spent in the places where slaves did their work or the slave trade was concentrated.
The only exception to that rule of which Harahap was aware was the planet on which genetic slavery had originated. Mesa itself had remained a wealthy and advanced star nation, despite being the headquarters of Manpower and despite the fact that the majority of its population were slaves or descendants of slaves. And while he didn’t know why that was true, he agreed with Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat, both of whom were convinced the reason it had was at the heart of what they called the Manpower Mystery.
“Manpower makes no sense,” Cachat had once told him. “Economically, it—and slavery—should have died a natural death long ago. Which is why Anton and I are both sure it isn’t really a business to begin with. It’s a disguise—a way to hide malice and malevolence beneath mere greed and corruption.”
As badly as slavery might undermine a healthy economy however, its sudden disappearance left a vacuum. Whatever business had allowed the small shops to survive had declined since Torch’s navy had seized the station. The navy’s personnel substituted to a degree for the now vanished practitioners of the slave trade, but only to a degree. Mostly because there simply weren’t as many of them, but also because they weren’t transients. They’d buy food and drink regularly, so restaurants and taverns survived, although even they had fewer customers, because there were fewer mouths to feed. But the market for other goods, the sort travelers tended to pick up in transit—never great to begin with—had all but collapsed.
“I wouldn’t call them our ‘hosts,’ exactly.” Harahap’s tone was even drier than usual. “Given that Torch seized the place by force, its people are more in the nature of an occupying force than a bunch of guests.”
“And scary occupiers, to boot,” Indy agreed, and Harahap snorted.
“Scary” was one way to put it, he supposed. The civilian inhabitants of Balcescu Station had come perilously close to being massacred by the Torch Marines who’d witnessed the destruction of the pinnace they’d sent to seize the Luigi Pirandello. Harahap couldn’t find it in his heart to blame the Torches for their reaction. In fact, the thing that truly surprised him was that there hadn’t been a massacre. Not even a handful of freelance murders. Given how many of Torch military’s personnel were ex- (and, in some cases, not so very ex-) members of the Audubon Ballroom, the temptation must have been high. The fact that they hadn’t yielded to it spoke well for their discipline.
According to reports, they had come close, however. Which was all very regrettable, of course…but was likely to increase the local’s eagerness to cooperate.
They’ve got to be worrying that something might trigger us into having them summarily executed after all, he thought. Not that he ever would. But neither would he refuse to capitalize upon the fact that they didn’t know that.
They made their way through the rundown shopping area to the entrance to the section of the station in which the Torches had established their headquarters. The two guards waved them through without bothering to check their credentials, which they’d already seen. Harahap thought Torch’s military—its ground forces, at any rate—were quite good. Not surprising, perhaps, in troops who’d been trained by Thandi Palane. But they weren’t what you’d call a spit-and-polish outfit.
That was fine with Harahap. He vastly preferred competence to perfection of drill. He nodded approvingly to the guards, and the treecat on his shoulder bleeked in amusement. No treecat would ever need something as silly as “credentials” to know if someone was who he said he was, and Fire Watch had even less use for pointless formalities than his two-leg.
They continued down the passage to the office of the station’s new commandant, and Harahap pressed the door buzzer. Lieutenant Colonel Kabweza was perched on a chair behind a desk covered with old-fashioned handwritten notes. Like a bird. Kabweza was so short that when she raised her chair to a comfortable work height, her feet would have dangled a few centimeters off the deck if not for the footstool under her desk.
Now she looked up and waved them inside. Her expression was not happy. Neither was it particularly surprised, however.
“No luck,” she said with a scowl. “We’ve scoured the records every which way from Sunday. They’ve been scrubbed completely clean.” She nodded toward the chairs in front of her desk. “Have a seat.”
Harahap detected no enthusiasm in her invitation, which didn’t astonish him. From her point of view, investigators sent out from Mesa were more of a nuisance than anything else. But she’d been polite and cooperative, and she obviously didn’t like telling them her efforts had been fruitless.
“Completely scrubbed?” Indy said as he took his seat. “That seems odd. I wouldn’t expect a station like this to maintain tight security.”
“Normally, I’d agree with you,” Kabweza said. “Especially when you add in the warning not to mess with their computer files we gave them as we approached the station. Understanding that the distinction between ‘warning’ and ‘bloodcurdling threats of ghastly horrors’ couldn’t be discerned without special optical equipment.”
She smiled, although the expression was fleeting.
“But there it is. By the time we were able to check the records ourselves, there wasn’t anything left.”
“I assume you didn’t carry out the bloodcurdling threats of ghastly horrors,” Harahap said, and the colonel shrugged.
“What would have been the point? What’s done is done—and, besides, we don’t think the station crew were the ones who did it. My technicians tell me they’re pretty sure it was a prearranged scrub. Probably programmed to happen automatically under certain conditions.” She smiled again, more broadly. “Conditions like, oh, imminent occupation by hostile forces.”
Harahap wasn’t surprised. The Alignment was anything but sloppy, when it came to security. They wouldn’t have overlooked programming the computers of a transit station they were using for a special evacuation to scrub themselves if it even looked like someone else might get a look at them.
He didn’t waste anyone’s time with phrases like are you sure? and have your technicians doublechecked?
This trip was looking more and more like wasted effort. Well, he’d been on wild goose chases before. He’d be on more in the future. And he’d always known the expedition to Balcescu was something of a long shot, anyway. Zachariah McBryde had last been seen leaving Mesa aboard a luxury liner. The liner had made its first stop at a planet named Descombes, and they’d found a recording that showed McBryde disembarking from the ship.
Then…he’d vanished. Further investigation determined that there were three alternate ways he could have left Descombes, and Harahap had picked the one he thought was the most likely choice for a clandestine evacuation—a nondescript general cargo ship that had offered limited—and cramped—passenger accommodations.
That had led him and Indy to Balcescu. Which now looked to be a dead end.
“The one thing I’d still like to do,” he said, “is to question the former station CO. Somogyi, I think his name was. I assume you still have him in custody?”
“Zoltan Somogyi,” Kabweza agreed with a nod. “And, no, we don’t. We just released him a few hours ago. There didn’t seem to be much point in keeping him.” She tapped the touchscreen built into her desk. “Zoltan Somogyi’s address,” she said.
“Somogyi, Zoltan,” a computer voice replied. “Section Alpha Two, Suite One-One-Three.”
Kabweza tapped another command, and the terminal transmitted the same address to Harahap’s uni-link. The station schematic he’d loaded to it on arrival blinked alight, highlighting the route to Alpha 2, Suite 113.
“Thank you,” he said, standing once more. “It’s probably a long shot, but longshots sometimes pay off. Come on, Indy. Let’s go pay a visit to Mr. Somogyi.”
* * *
“I know you’re the fearless, brilliant interstellar secret agent,” Indy remarked to no one in particular as they hiked through less than pristine passages towards their destination. “But to an amateur such as myself, this seems like a waste of time. If the Marines couldn’t sweat anything out of him when he was still scared to death, what are the odds we can?”
“It probably is a waste of time,” Harahap agreed. “But, like I told the Colonel, you never know. And we don’t have anything else to do right now, so why not take a chance? Besides—”
He reached up to caress the ears of the treecat on his shoulder.
“I’m willing to bet Somogyi’s never met a treecat, but he may have heard about their reputation by now. Maybe he hasn’t, too, in which case we might just…enlighten him. Someone who can stand up to familiar interrogation techniques can be rattled by something unfamiliar. And if he happens to buy into the notion that Fire Watch here can actually read minds, and not just emotions…”
He shrugged, and Indy snorted.
“Did I ever mention that you’re a very devious fellow?” he asked, and Fire Watch bleeked a laugh of agreement.
* * *
“Hurry,” Zoltan Somogyi hissed, leaning over Sophie Bordás’s shoulder. Bordás was—had been, at any rate—Balcescu Station’s sensor officer. At the moment, she sat at a work console in one corner of his three-room suite, keying in commands.
She also restrained herself—barely—from snarling, If you think this is so easy, why don’t you do it yourself? Instead, she said, “We made these security protocols hard for anyone to access for a reason, remember?”
“Sorry.” Somogyi straightened and wiped his face with one hand. “I just—”
The entrance buzzer sounded. Bordás broke off what she was doing and both of them stared at the closed door.
“Just ignore it,” she whispered.
Somogyi hesitated, obviously drawn to the idea. But after a moment, he shook his head.
“Better not. I told that bitch Kabweza I was going home. If she’s sent somebody to check on me, I damned well better be here.”
He moved to the door and activated the bulkhead viewscreen that showed the corridor beyond it. Two men stood there, neither of whom he recognized. One of them was an obviously young, wiry fellow. The other—probably the older of the two, Somogyi thought, although prolong made such judgments chancy—was probably the most ordinary looking individual Somogyi had ever seen. As he watched, the ordinary looking one pressed the buzzer again.
“Come on, Zoltan,” he said into the mic above the buzzer button. “We know you’re in there. We just want to ask you a few questions.”
Somogyi looked back at Bordás. She stared at him for a couple of seconds, then shrugged.
“I’ve been covering my tracks as I went,” she said. “They probably won’t figure anything out even if they look. But give me a second to get away from the console.”
She crossed swiftly to a nearby couch and slid into it. Then, after a brief hesitation, she sprawled across it, as if she were a very regular visitor to Somogyi’s apartment. A lover, maybe.
Fat chance of that ever happening. Somogyi was tolerable, but that was about the best she could say for him.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Let ’em in.”
Somogyi unlocked the door and opened it.
“What do you wa—”
He broke off, staring down at the animal seated upright on the deck next to the older man. It was vaguely catlike, allowing for the fact that it had six limbs and was quite a bit larger than any Old Terran cat he’d ever seen. It was also staring at him, quite placidly, to his relief. The thing was dangerous looking.
That was his first thought. Then he noticed the harness it wore…and what looked like a very small pulser holstered under its left forelimb.
He gawked at it, and the man standing next to it smiled at him.
“Never seen a treecat? I thought you probably hadn’t. Which is why Fire Watch got off my shoulder and out of your doorcam’s field of view.” He smiled again, a pleasant expression which somehow failed to set Somogyi at ease. “We didn’t want you to be nervous or anything, Zoltan. I can call you ‘Zoltan,’ can’t I?”
“Uh…” Somogyi replied.
“Good!” The older man patted him on the shoulder. “This probably won’t take more than a few minutes of your time, Zoltan,” he said breezily as he pushed past Somogyi into the apartment. One eyebrow rose as he saw the woman sitting on the couch.
“Good afternoon, Ms.…?”
“Bordás,” she supplied.
“Ah! The sensor officer.” The interloper beamed. “The very person I wanted to talk to next.”
Somogyi stared at him, then back down at his monster, trying to remember…Treecats. What had he heard about treecats? He’d certainly never heard that they packed pulsers! But—
They can read minds. The damned things can read minds!
Panic roared through him, and he slammed his shoulder into the younger fellow, who was still standing in the doorway. The impact knocked him aside, and Somogyi raced toward the lift shafts. He’d gotten at least three whole meters down the passageway when something slammed into his shoulders from behind. He twisted under the solid, sinuous weight of the impact, then—
“Bleek!”
A hand—a four-fingered hand, with long, multi-jointed fingers—reached around from behind, into his field of view. Those fingers wiggled there, as if to be sure they had his attention…and then an obviously razor-sharp claw popped out of each fingertip. One of them just brushed his cheek, ever so lightly, and he froze.
He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He barely even breathed, and a single thought went through his mind.
I am so screwed.
* * *
“Those are copies of the station’s surveillance records,” Colonel Kabweza murmured. It had taken her security techs an hour or so to break Bordás’s codes, and she frowned down at the imagery flowing across her display. “Now, why would Somogyi have made them?” she asked herself thoughtfully.
“Petty extortion and blackmail,” a voice said, and she looked over her shoulder. Damien Harahap had entered the compartment; now he crossed it, Fire Watch flowing along beside him, to stand at her shoulder. “He and his partner in crime—well, more like partner in peccadillos, really—made them because they’d realized how regularly and thoroughly the station’s security protocols scrubbed the originals.”
He handed a chip to her.
“Run this,” he said. “Let’s see if anything turns up.”
Kabweza looked at him dubiously for a moment. She wasn’t a big fan of running someone else’s executables on her own terminal. But she plugged it in, tapped YES at the run prompt, and sat back with her arms crossed.
“That’s why they made the backup records,” Harahap continued, his eyes on the display. “As for the elaborate security precautions, that was because both of them—especially Somogyi—were wary of the people he thought really controlled Balcescu Station. He wasn’t trying to blackmail them, just spacers and slavers passing through who engaged in petty offenses of one kind or another. But he also figured anyone scrubbing data so furiously would be…less than happy to discover that someone was circumventing their security measures.”
“And just who were ‘the people’ he thought really controlled the station?” she asked, and Harahap smiled at her.
“That, Colonel, is a very interesting question, isn’t it?”
A tone chimed, and he and Kabweza looked back at the display. The image of a man, sitting at a small table in one of the station’s passageways, filled the left half of the display. Two women sat at it with him. The one to his right was obviously talking, and he was listening to her. A far larger version of the man’s face filled most of the other side of the screen.
A line of alphanumeric characters blinked below the face: Zachariah McBryde. Probability 98.8%.
“It’s McBryde, all right,” Harahap said. “I’ve studied enough of his imagery by now to be sure of it, even without the recognition software. I recognize the woman talking to him, too. Don’t know the other one, but that’s his boss, Lisa Charteris. But—”
He frowned, and used a finger to indicate another man, standing a few meters away, watching McBryde and his companion at the table. His posture seemed stiff; his bearing, alert.
“But this is the guy I really want to find out more about,” Harahap continued. Fire watch bleeked questioningly, and he looked down. The ’cat’s fingers flickered, and Harahap chuckled. “I want to find out more because if he isn’t a watchdog, I’ve wasted my life,” he told the treecat. “I’ve seen a lot of them, and he’s nowhere near as good at it as most of them have been. Not if part of his job is to be unobtrusive, anyway.”
“Why would McBryde need a watchdog?” Kabweza wondered. “He’s in no danger by this point.” She glanced at the time mark. “This recording was made twenty-six hours before we seized Balcescu Station. By the time we got here, he could have left on either the Prince Sundjata or the Luigi Pirandello. And once we did get here, no bodyguard could have helped them, anyway.”
“I said ‘watchdog,’ not ‘bodyguard,’” Harahap replied, his eyes back on the display. “He’s not a protective detail. The reason he’s watching McBryde and the others is to make sure they don’t get captured…or try to run away on their own. And I’m willing to bet we just found out what happened to the Luigi Pirandello and the pinnace that seized it.” He nodded at the display. “That man—or someone else like him—was aboard the Luigi Pirandello. Once he knew capture was inevitable, he blew up the ship and took your Marines with him.”
Kabweza frowned, rubbing her chin with the tip of an index finger.
“But was McBryde aboard when he did it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Let’s see if we can find out.”
He reached past her to her console and raised an eyebrow at her. She grimaced, but she also sat back and nodded permission, then watched him enter another command.
* * *
It took a while, and the recognition rating wasn’t quite as firm—but 87.4% was more than good enough for Damien Harahap. Especially when the only reason the rating was a bit low was that the images had been captured from the rear, showing only a partial profile, as people boarded ship for departure. The rating for Charteris was a bit better—91.1%—although she was in a different boarding queue.
“Okay,” Harahap said. “Zachariah McBryde got out of the system aboard the Prince Sundjata. And Lisa Charteris had the bad luck to be aboard the Luigi Pirandello. So now her real status matches the official one. Dead as a doornail.”
“That’s a bit cold don’t you think?” Kabweza asked, and he shrugged.
“There’s nothing any of us can do to change what happened to her at this point,” he said, still gazing at McBryde’s image. “And she worked for an organization that killed God only knows how many innocent bystanders covering her disappearance. I’ve carried out operations with a lot of ‘collateral damage’ in my time, but not like this. So it’s a little hard to work up a lot of sympathy for her. I feel a lot sorrier for the other passengers and your Marines, Colonel.”
“Point,” she agreed with a nod. “Definitely a point.”
* * *
Harahap and Indy stood gazing through the crystoplast wall of the departure lounge while they waited for their courier boat to mate with the boarding tube. There wasn’t much to see. The planet below them, Debrecen, was as drab and nondescript as the station that orbited it, and Fire Watch had opted to nap in one of the lounge’s—many—unoccupied seats instead of watching nothing at all happen.
But Harahap wasn’t actually looking at the planet, either. He was gazing at the starfields beyond it.
“Wonder where McBryde is now?” Indy said.
“I don’t know,” Damien replied. “And it’s a big galaxy. But someday, I intend to find out.”