A Covenant of Justice (45 page)

As they came down along the wide corridor, a pale Phaestor youth and several Dragons came up the passage from the opposite direction. Neither party acknowledged the existence of the other, but as the Dragons came alongside d'Vashti's guards, they all turned in unison and quickly dispatched them, killing them easily and efficiently. One had his back broken, another had his head bitten off, a third collapsed under the blows of a Dragon's hammering fist, and the fourth—well, the Dragon just reached into his chest and ripped his beating heart out with his bare hand.

The Phaestor youth ran to the Lady, dropping to one knee and offering his service. “We have brought your salvation, holy mother,” he offered.

Zillabar reacted with anger. “It took you flaming long enough, you stupid bazoons!”

The boy hung his head with shame. “I apologize, my Lady. We have had some difficulty keeping up with you.”

“Oh, the hell with it. I don't have time for bitchery anymore. Let's go.”

“We have a shuttleboat waiting, ma'am, and we have a long-range cruiser waiting for you, deep in the rift. This way, please—”

They headed up the corridor at a brisk pace. The Dragons carried the bodies of d'Vashti's insect-guards, not willing to leave either evidence or a potential snack behind.

“When last we met—we TimeBinders—when last we put our minds and our hearts and our memories together, we gave birth to a Regency, a body with the authority to muster the resources to fight the predators that threatened the worlds of the Palethetic Cluster.

“We redesigned ourselves. We recreated our children. We turned into the most vicious possible fighting force. We gave them a language of their own, and we turned them loose to patrol the rift between ourselves and the Eye of God. They succeeded in stopping the predators. They succeeded—and we succeeded in our original goal of security and safety throughout the Palethetic Cluster.

“But we also made a mistake. At that time, we did not look far enough ahead. We did not ask ourselves, what will we do when the predators no longer represented a threat? Will become of our children then? Well, now we have the answer to that question, and it dissatisfies us.

“Let me tell you what has happened. Six thousand years ago, we designed a language for our Phaestor children that would channel their thinking into action and results. We gave them a language which not only denied passivity—you could not even express the concept of it. The Phaestor language has no words for surrender or weakness or failure.

“The language
worked
. It helped to make our Phaestor children invincible, because they could not conceive any possibility other than victory. The language obliterated the alternative. But—” said the Nexus. “That same Phaestor language has come home to torment the parents. When the Phaestor ran out of predators to destroy, they needed a new challenge. They reinvented themselves as an aristocracy, and they gave themselves a goal—the Regency would expand its authority over the Cluster worlds, to include not just their defense, but their governance as well.

“We do not deny that the Phaestor won a great victory over the deadly planet-killing predators. We will always owe them our gratitude for that—but the excellence they demonstrated at making war does not also imply equal excellence at making peace. We have found instead that the mind-set needed for winning a war interferes with the processes of peace, over and over and over again.

“The Phaestor have mostly succeeded in extending their authority. They have mostly succeeded in assuming the governance of the Cluster. And they have mostly succeeded at transforming the way the rest of us think and feel and speak, because they have made their language—
the language that we invented for them
—the language for all of us.

“I speak to you now, as the Nexus, as the voice of all the TimeBinders. I give you the first decision.
We must return to the Old Tongue
. We cannot continue to use the language of the Phaestor. It channels our thinking away from the methods of respect and cooperation. As long as we use the Phaestor tongue,
we speak in a crippled language
!

“I will demonstrate. The old tongue contains a verb not found in our present speaking. The verb
is
. . . the verb of existence. It allows one to assign a static quality to a moving object. It allows one to discuss occurrence, to describe, identify, or amplify. It allows one to indicate status, it allows one to discuss the past as well as the future as identities—

“But the verb
to be
does not exist in the Phaestor language. And because we now use the Phaestor language, it does not exist for us either. Because we do not have it, because we do not use it, we cannot say many of the things we most need to say.”

Harry Mertz took a deep breath. His voice rolled out across the entire arena. “I
was
the first Nexus. I
am
the Nexus again. I
am
the immortal man. I
was
born in the Eye of God. I slept for a thousand years in a vessel that plunged across the rift. I
am
the oldest human
being
alive.

“I
am
connected to the minds of twelve TimeBinders. I
am
the sum total of all of their lives and all of their past lives. I have
been
male and female, child and parent. I have been dreamer and peasant, poet and soldier, servant and served, teacher and student, savior and saved, idiot and savant—I have
been
all of this and more. I
am
humanity.

“And speaking for a thousand thousand separate voices, I have this to say about the state of the Cluster today: I
am
sick and tired of
being
sick and tired!”

Long tubes of light lined the keel of the mountain—the spinal cord of the machine's communication network. The thoughts of its intelligence engine passed back and forth through the optical cables. The corridor glimmered off into the distance, fading out into an indistinct blur. Thick stanchions framed the passage; polymer decking felt like slabs of stone underfoot.

As Juda-Linda led them down toward the access-bay to the under-quarters, Gito fumbled around in his duffel. “I brought you a gift,” he said.

“Don't need no gifts,” Juda-Linda grumbled. “Tall people give gifts. Gifts patronize.”

“No,” said Gito. “This gift doesn't patronize.” He swung around abruptly and hit her with a hypo-spray injector. Juda-Linda's eyes rolled up into her head and she toppled over like a small brick dumpling. “Urgh,” said Gito. “She might not forgive me for this.” He shrugged. “No loss, I guess.” He dragged her over to the wall and propped her up, trying to make her comfortable.

“All right, let's go to work,” said Finn, pulling a gun out of his duffel. Shariba-Jen had already identified an access panel and had popped it open. He plugged himself into the network and went silent for a moment.

“Hey,” said Sawyer, pulling out his own gun. “I forgot to ask. Can we get out of here again?”

Gito glanced up and down the keel as he assembled his weapon. They didn't expect anyone to interrupt them, but they had still come prepared. “Probably not,” he said, answering Sawyer's question.

“I didn't think so,” Sawyer said.

Abruptly, Jen began cursing in fluent binary. To the others, he said, “Some son of a lizard has changed the protocols. All of the intelligence engine's internal messages travel through this network. Multiple monitors exist throughout the vessel. The redundancy guarantees no data loss—only someone has implemented a very non-standard data coding. Stand by, while I search for the translation protocols. They have to have them somewhere—”

“What does all that mean?” Sawyer asked.

Finn scowled. “It means, we can't connect the bomb-trigger to the starship's weapons.”

“You mean, we can't resolve our previous dilemma about the sanctity of Phaestor life?”

“Sure, we can,” said Gito. He opened Shariba-Jen's duffel and began attaching a new control chip to the magnetic bottle containing the singularity. “We'll just put the damn thing on a time fuse.”

“No,” said Sawyer. “We made an agreement—with ourselves. About the sacredness of life. We have to keep our word. Innocent people will die.”

Gito blinked at him, astonished. “No one aboard this vessel can claim innocence. They share responsibility by their presence. You know that. So do I.”

Sawyer shook his head. “I wish I could believe you—but you almost signed on board. And you know that Juda-Linda doesn't share the Phaestor hunger. Don't you think that others here might deserve the same compassion?”

“You've spent too much time with Harry Mertz. You've caught his madness. You've turned into a weakling.” Still, Gito hesitated. He stopped himself from arming the new control chip. He turned around and looked at the optical cables running along the walls. He studied the access panel, frowning, worrying, scowling and muttering to himself.

Abruptly, Gito said, “Gotcha!” He pointed. “See that regulator-channel? That controls the arming of the weapon system. I can set a channel detector right next to it. If an abnormal increase in message-traffic occurs, the detector will notice it, and can use that stimulus to trigger the singularity expansion. That'll accomplish the same thing without the need to tap into the ship's computer network. Good!” He turned to Sawyer. “Will that make you happy? Will that let you sleep well at night?”

“It will make me
ecstatic
. I'll sleep like a baby.”

Gito reached into his duffel and pulled out a third command chip. He clipped it into place on the magnetic bottle, armed it, and locked it. “Done!” he said. “If they target their weapons, it arms itself. If they arm their weapons, it goes into time-bomb mode. If they fire, it triggers. The first thing that'll happen, it'll break this cable, interrupting their ability to fire. By the time they reroute, the lens will have begun eating the ship like a Dragon in a garbage dump.” With Jen's help, they slid the bottle into position, securing it firmly to the wall so it looked like it belonged there.

“What if someone spots it and tries to remove it?” Finn asked.

“It'll go off. Even I couldn't remove it now. If anyone even thinks a dirty thought near it, it'll go off. Now, let's get out of here before somebody thinks a dirty thought.”

They gathered up their equipment. At Gito's urging, Shariba-Jen stuffed Juda-Linda into his empty duffel and slung her over his shoulder. They headed back the way they came as fast as they could.

“We stand here, all of us, as a question. A question asked with a thousand different voices. We
are
this question: What does it mean to
be
a human
being
? Who
are
we? Who
are
the rightful members of this body?”

The Nexus looked out over the crowd thoughtfully.

“We could spend the rest of our days asking this question, seeking to define ourselves—and in the end, we will accomplish nothing of value. We will end up only with another collection of reasons, explanations, rationalizations and justifications—excuses for turning one against another.”

He paused, as if gathering his strength for the leap of faith to follow.

“Let me
be
dangerous. Let me suggest that the question has no answer—no answer that
is
worthy of any further expenditure of our valuable time and energy. I say this, I assert that the definition of sapience—of sentient life itself—
is
irrelevant to the real issue.

“The real issue
is
not who is worthy, but who
is
willing to
be
accountable. Who
is
willing to take a stand here?

“I say that any of us who step forward and say, ‘I
am
sapient,'
are
demanding not a privilege, nor invoking a right, nor even an authority. I say that any of us who dare to make that statement
are
simply claiming our fair share of the responsibility.”

The Nexus paused, letting his words sink in across the Forum. Some of his listeners frowned unhappily. Others nodded. Many looked puzzled. What did all of this mean?

“And if that
is
true—then it follows that this
is
true as well: that none of us here, nor any of us hereafter, may claim the right or the authority to deny any other sapient being its fair share of the common responsibility.

“Or let me put it another way. I ask each and every one of you. What
are
you willing to die for? What
are
you willing to live for? That
is
the place where justice lives.”

Suddenly—

The sound of clapping came ringing down from the top rank of the amphitheater. A single pair of hands, clapped slowly and methodically. The Nexus turned to see who stood there. The audience swiveled in their seats, craning their necks as well.

Kernel Sleestak d'Vashti stood poised at the rim of the arena, flanked by a regiment of ferocious-looking Dragons. As he stood there, the rest of the Dragon Guards stepped into position around the stadium. They had surrounded the Gathering. Gasps of surprise and horror came from the crowd. Many leapt to their feet. Shouts of anger and fury arose.

d'Vashti ignored them all. He came striding down the steps, his great dark cape flowing out behind him like a wind. He walked down almost to the center of the Forum and took a position opposite the Nexus. They stood at eye level.

“You speak bold words, old man. But your Gathering has no validity.”

The Nexus shook his head. “This
is
the place where the law
is
made. Here, we
are
all its servants and none of us may
be
above it. You yourself have already acknowledged that.”

d'Vashti laughed, amused. “If you insist, I'll play your charade: I
am
sapient. I accept the authority. I have to. No one else has the power to enforce it.”