Darkship Renegades (4 page)

Jean looked down and said, “No, look, Thena, see…” looking much like a man who finds himself forced to explain the facts of life to an innocent female.

“No, listen. Of course, humans and Mules can’t reproduce.” It was part of making sure they were
supermen, but not supermen who could take over
. Which was why the Mules were all male, and, for double sure, all supposedly incapable of being cloned. Though that second part had been broached both on Earth and on Eden.

I explained it to the Denovos, my voice shaking, Earth had enormous resources and some of Jarl’s writing. They had scientists, both human and Mule scientists they could conscript. And twenty years after Jarl had left, some of those Mules he’d left behind had figured out how to clone themselves.

Being the kind of people they’d been created to be—not exactly the most empathetic creatures on Earth or anywhere else—they’d used this not for reproduction, but as an endless source of new replacement bodies when old ones aged beyond their prime, transplanting the brain into a new body about every fifty years, while keeping up the pretense of dynastic succession. And then the Mules, having ascended through the power ladder during the turmoils—and now posing as Good Men of an Earth in which genetic engineering was punishable with death—had labored for three hundred years or so, in secret, to create a modified clone of one of them: a female. Me.

I told Kit’s family all this, as clearly and succinctly as I could, aware they’d probably think I was insane, but not knowing how to prove a discovery that I hadn’t wanted to make, and which I would still dearly love to deny. I didn’t want to think that I was that much like the bastard who’d called himself my father. And I didn’t want to know I’d been created to be the queen bee of a new race. A race that thought itself superior to simple homo sapiens.

“I didn’t want to believe it either,” I said, “but…in the fight with my…with Milton Alexander Sinistra, he left little doubt I’d been created as a brood mare for the Mules.”

Jean nodded. He looked resigned. “Doc Bartolomeu suspected it. He said you had to be Sinistra’s…modified clone, unless you were a human designed to look like Sinistra, and he said that your fath—uh…Good Man Sinistra was not the kind to indulge in such a thing in a fit of sentimentality. And besides…” He shrugged. “Well, he thought it was possible. He said Jarl worked on that just before he died, even with Eden’s more limited resources. On his own. And he and Jarl had come to see it was possible. He said there were loopholes the creators couldn’t have seen. Their science wasn’t that advanced.”

I licked my lips. “My…uh…father recognized Kit for Jarl’s clone, and this delusion that knowledge as well as genius is inherited must be very widespread, because he tried to make Kit read notes that Jarl left behind.”

“There are notes Jarl left behind on Earth?” Jean asked. “Still available?”

“Oh, yes. They’ve been working off them for centuries.”

“Good,” Jean said. “I must call Doc Bartolomeu and tell him this. He has always said that the notes Jarl left
here
, on how to seed powerpods, would be far better understandable, if Jarl hadn’t assumed he’d always be around to remember all the research he’d done on Earth. Without that, the research he did here was like…half of a jigsaw puzzle, with the important pieces missing. It’s as though we’ve got a lot of black fur, but we don’t know if it’s the rug or the cat’s tail. With those notes on Earth…Yes, I can see how we’ll be able to spring Kit.”

He got up to go call Doctor Bartolomeu Dias in private. Which was when I knew for sure that my in-laws were insane. What Jarl’s notes could have to do with setting Kit free, I’d never understand. Of course they had to do with restoring power to Eden, eventually, depending on how long the powertrees took to grow, which was a matter out of the understanding of anyone alive or dead—except for Jarl. But what did that have to do with Kit and with Blondie’s power play?

Kath got up too, and then Waldron and Jennie. Jennie smoothed her form-fitted dress and said, “I shall get on the buzzer and start with my family, spreading the idea that Kit owes it to Eden to answer questions under hypnotics, instead of just being secretly disciplined by the Energy Board. Since the board has talked about what suspicious characters Kit and Thena are, they should allow the public to judge in how much danger they placed Eden. After all”—she gave a crafty smile—“he was on Earth. The first one of us in three hundred years. Who knows what they told him or what he told them. Eden has to know to be prepared. It wouldn’t be right for the Energy Board to do away with him.” She smiled at me. “It will work. By tomorrow morning, everyone will assume that of course Kit will be interrogated in the Justice building, under hypnotics.”

“That quickly?” I asked, my voice sounding odd.

“Oh yes,” Jennie said. “Even not counting on Kath’s powerful gossip network, I have nine gossiping sisters.”

“And a mother,” Waldron said, rolling his eyes, “who is a…uh…social power.” He ducked from Jennie’s playfully aimed slap, then gave her his hand, and they walked off.

“And we should tell Zen. If they attacked Kit, they might—” Anne said, as though speaking to herself.

“Who is Zen?” I asked.

“What?” Anne looked at me. “Oh, she’s…a family friend. Recently widowed.” Anne blushed. I wondered why, but I wondered about something else more.

“But why would they attack her, if they attacked Kit? Why—”

“Oh, there’s no reason,” Anne said, patting my arm. “I’m probably being very foolish.”

I remained totally in the dark at what means they’d use to make the Energy Board grant them a hearing or even make public opinion think they should. Surely gossip alone couldn’t accomplish it?

It was true that the Energy Board didn’t have the power to impose the death penalty on anyone. If they did, it would be murder, and they could be sued for blood geld or initiate a neverending chain of feuds and revenge. One even the mighty Energy Board wouldn’t be immune from.

On the other hand, if the Energy Board could cut the supply of energy to anyone they wanted, and if they were willing to use that force to shut off all protests against their authority, what did their right or lack thereof mean?

Rights only exist in the abstract. That was something the old Usaians didn’t seem to get with all their idea of natural rights. Or perhaps they did, since they’d made it a religious belief and therefore immune to questioning by reason.

Rights only existed if the group was willing to recognize them. And they rarely remained the same around any government. Government—any government—is simply an entity that can impose its will on the population by means of force. Whether that government is a monarchy as most of those in Earth’s past were, an oligarchy as the regime of the Good Men, a democracy or a democratic republic, no matter what the system of voting—one man one vote or pay in, situational, sacrificial or negotiated—whether the government existed by consent of the governed or imposed from above, whether for the good of all or the good of a few, government meant only one thing—force.

Through police or army or other means, government could impose its will on the rest of the people. Done judiciously and when needed, or wholesale and continuously and with intrusive caprice, didn’t matter. Without force behind it, government would be only a small group of people with very strong opinions. The kind of people that populate any faculty lounge or philosophy club.

Eden had no army and no police. Each individual was supposed to defend himself and his community. The hushers were at best a defensive force against a farfetched threat of invasion by Earth.

But since the Energy Board had got hold of the lever of rationing power and stood on their willingness to use it for political purposes, they had the force they needed to move Eden. Exactly where the board wanted it.

Eden had acquired a government. And it looked to be a dictatorship or, at best, an oligarchy.

UNREASONABLE SEARCH

If this kept up much longer, I was going to happen to someone.

My night hadn’t been easy. Nor the day after, nor the next night. Sleep was never easy when Kit was absent. This time it had been disturbed by tormented dreams and sudden waking-up, believing I was still on Earth and Kit was still imprisoned at my father’s mercy, in the dungeon known as Never-Never. So called because once you entered it—guilty or not—release was delayed to that mythic time.

Waking up didn’t make things any better, either. We were—instead—caught in a trap in a place we’d considered home; separated and threatened in a world that
should
be safe.

And then on the second morning, when the hearing was actually set to happen, Kath took forever to get me to the Judicial Center. This was a problem because mine and Kit’s flyer was still parked at the arrival area, and there was no adult except Kath left in the Denovo compound. And Kath, sipping her bug juice, acted perfectly serene and completely in control. And relaxed. Way too relaxed. “Oh, they wanted to go early,” she said about the rest of the family, “to make sure that Kit is all right before the hypnotics and that they don’t give him too large a dose.”

“Wouldn’t Doc Bartolomeu know that?” I asked.

She smiled, her best renaissance Madonna smile. “Yes, but you know my parents.”

Yes, I knew her parents. But there was absolutely no reason that Anne, her husband, and for that matter every other adult would have gone too, unless they weren’t sure what would happen. And there was no reason for them to leave without me.

A young neighbor had come in to watch the children and had taken them to one of the back rooms, from which a vague murmur of voices reached us. But other than that, the compound was eerily silent and had that empty feeling that houses get when almost everyone is out. It spooked me. I’d never seen this home this quiet. The Denovos were a boisterous clan and the public areas normally jumped with an intersecting madness of competing personal trajectories.

I sat across from Kath, refused the offer of bug juice—I didn’t like it anyway—refused the offer of the hot chocolate that Doc Bartolomeu had sent over. And I fumed. After a while, I said, “Kath, look, you don’t need to come. I’ll drive myself. I’ll just take your flyer.”

Perhaps it was the threat of my less-than-experienced hands taking her flyer through the insane traffic of Eden Center that woke her up. She looked startled. “Oh, no, no, no,” she said, “I’ll take you.”

And like that, she turned around, left her cup on the ground where the cleaning robots would pick it up, and hurried to the door, with me trailing behind.

Of course, by the time we arrived, it was two minutes to the start of Kit’s examination, and every possible parking space in the Judicial Center had been taken up. We had to circle for ten minutes before we found a narrow and possibly illegal space, where Kath wedged her flyer, after asking me to get out so I wouldn’t need to open the door once we were parked. Which was a good thing as getting out once she was between two flyers would have required me to become one with an orange flyer next to us.

We hurried up the stairs to the Judicial Center proper. No, the name made no sense, since technically it was neither. I didn’t understand how it could be a judicial anything since there were no laws on Eden.

And as for Center…look, justice on Eden could take place anywhere. Probably the most common way of resolving what would have been some sort of litigation on Earth were duels. Most of these duels weren’t even to the death, and many of them might involve nothing more serious than fisticuffs.

However, there was a notion of justice. For instance, certain customs determined whether society at large regarded a death as something to be punished, something to be praised, or various shades in between. Say you killed someone who had, for years, been on everyone’s radar as a nuisance or worse.

If this fact were known to the entire community and if the person was so wretchedly disliked that there was no one who would avenge him, you wouldn’t even be bothered over it. There was a chance, in fact, some people would thank you.

On the other hand—as was more common—if you murdered a person whose death would be regarded with relief by some and with grief by others, you would be in trouble with the person’s family, his friends, and the multitude of connections who might have a reason to commit revenge murder.

But if you killed someone perceived as helpless and at your mercy, then total strangers might undertake to avenge the death. You’d find you’d become one of those “better dead” persons.

One way to circumvent this, as well as revenge for other, more or less serious crimes, was to volunteer to be examined in the Judicial Center as to your reasons and your thinking when you killed the person. Or of course to prove you hadn’t done it at all.

Because interrogation was done under hypnotics, one couldn’t lie, or even fudge it. I knew. I’d been interrogated once.

If, after you presented the true case, most people agreed that the death had been forced for a pressing and necessary reason, then there would be no feud in return, as that would invite retribution from practically everyone. You might still be required to pay blood geld or other compensation to the victim’s family.

And when a case was prominent enough, it would attract a lot of people. And I guess this attracted still more because it involved Earth and a potential danger to Eden.

Which probably explained why the center proper—a huge amphitheater, sitting hundreds of people—was even more crowded than the parking lot. There were people seated in every one of the seats—and squeezed two to a seat, here and there—and there were people seated in the aisles that led down to the front and stage area where Kit sat and where Doc Bartolomeu hovered over him.

Walking down the aisle was impossible. Making our way to a seat was impossible. The only places we could sit were on a path near the door. It would be a complete violation of fire safety rules, if Eden had ever had fire safety rules.

As we came in, I heard Kit’s voice, sounding oddly distant and wavery, boom over the amplifying system, “—to get her treatment or to give her the coup de grace. And I couldn’t.”

I could see the backs of the rest of Kit’s family sitting in the front row, within his field of vision. Would Kit be upset at not seeing me there? I felt Kath’s hand on my arm, pulling me down and I understood. Kit’s family thought I would get upset and then I would get dangerous.

It took me all of a second to realize that was indeed likely, and considerably longer to convince myself that inflicting some pain on the population of Eden at large, and the members of the Energy Board in particular, would be a bad idea.

This was made harder by taking a look at my husband—or rather, at his amplified image projected on a screen behind him, I guess so people could judge his expression for themselves. His skin had gone a shade of pasty grey and his specialized inner eyelids had closed halfway. Those eyelids were similar to those of certain cat, bird, and reptile species, whose eyes were likely to be damaged by light that wouldn’t hurt others.

We were in normal light and therefore Kit had his light-abating contact lenses in. He always did when not in semi-dark. Which meant there was only one reason for his nictating eyelids to show, same as in a real cat, on Earth: he was ill.

I started to get up, to take a step forward, even though walking straight ahead meant walking through the spectators row upon row ahead of us. But Kath grabbed my arm again, hard, and more or less shoved me down. Her lips formed “no,” but her eyes looked amused. And though it annoyed me, it also made me feel better, because Kath would never look amused if Kit were in any true danger.

As I sat down, I became aware of what Doc was asking Kit. “…endanger Eden?”

And wondered if he had asked Kit if Kit had willfully endangered Eden. Because I knew the answer to that, and saying, in front of all, that he hadn’t even thought of Eden wouldn’t be likely to turn the tide in Kit’s favor.

Kit seemed to struggle with the answer or struggle not to give the answer, which I knew was impossible. Except that people who’d never been under hypnotics wouldn’t know that and his struggling not to speak would make them think he had something to hide. My hands clenched on my lap.

And then Doc Bartolomeu rushed over with a sickness bag and it was obvious Kit was vomiting. Which accorded with what his family had said. And gave him perfect cover for his expression—if he needed to cover. I didn’t know. There are things even an intermittently telepathic married couple won’t know about each other.

Afterwards, he wiped his lips to the back of his hand, and said, “There was no danger to Eden. I erased all data and disabled the alarms and the responders that tell us when Eden is near. I did it in a way that would take them decades to reconstruct.”

“How could you know what must be done?” Doctor Bartolomeu asked.

“I had talked to my wife about the technology of Earth for over a year,” he said. “I knew.”

The interrogation continued. How he’d managed to get aid for me. I could hear both Kit and Doctor Bartolomeu, a small, olive-skinned man whose wrinkled face and interested eyes made him look like an ancient gnome out of a fairytale, skirting anything that might give away my true nature, and the fact that I was the only female Mule ever. I hoped it was not that obvious to the rest of the audience that there were vast parts of events being edged around and avoided.

The most dangerous part was when the doctor asked Kit how he’d been interrogated, and about what. Kit mentioned they had given him the writings of Jarl Ingemar to read.

The sudden, absolute hush that fell over the amphitheater—a silence so complete that I was sure everyone would be able to hear my frantic heartbeat—told me more than I wanted to know. Everyone must have heard that Kit was a Mule, Jarl’s clone. And they’d think someone on Earth knew it. Why would they give Kit Jarl’s writings unless they suspected him of the same capacities—of being Jarl’s clone?

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

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

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

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

“Did they use aggressive interrogation techniques?”

“Yes.”

“Hypnotics?”

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

“Sleep deprivation and discomfort?”

“Yes.”

“Pain?”

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

“And yet you told them nothing?”

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

“Why not?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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