Chaos Quarter (17 page)

“Is that why they stay so reclusive? They’re worried about somebody stopping what they’re doing?”

“They worry about adulteration,” she said. “They have little fear of most primitive human nations. Hegemony territory is significantly larger than all but two primitive nations.”

“Which nations are those?” Rex said, already knowing the answer.

“The Free Terran Commonwealth and the Empire of Europa. The ambassador spoke of them often. He was fearful of the lethality of their mechanical spacecraft and spoke often of how they could match the forces of the Hegemony,” she explained.

Rex felt a small bit of relief at that and then asked, “Does the Hegemony plan on waging war on human nations? Or in the Chaos Quarter?”

“I am unaware of their plans. There is division amongst Masters on how to deal with the infestation of primitives. Some favor continuing to develop superior life forms, while others favor purging worlds of primitive man.”

“Purging? They want to eliminate us?”

“Some Masters consider your presence a relic that stands in the way of their expansion. Others believe that war is not advantageous and focus on improving their lives.”

“Which faction is in power?” Rex asked.

“I am unaware of their political machinations. I am aware the Masters of both opinions rely heavily on the thoughts of Him.”

“Him? God?”

“Not a deity. Him is the Ultimate Mind,” she replied simply.

“I don’t understand,” Rex said.

“He decrees and the Masters generally listen.”

“What is Him? Or He?” Rex asked.

“The Ultimate Mind.”

“Have you ever seen Him?”

“No. It is not required for me to perform my duties,” she answered.

“But Him has not decided to ‘purge’ the primitives from Explored Space,” Rex figured.

“He can not,” she replied. “He operates the society for the Masters. He does not determine the path the Masters take, only how the path will be achieved once decided. He has no independent will.”

“Well that’s good,” Rex said sarcastically. He rubbed his eyes. Any doubts over his decision had vanished, right around the moment Second had mentioned she’d been murdered. The madhouse she’d described afterward had just been icing on the cake.

“Thank you, Second. Please return to the bridge.”

She got up and walked away, disappearing down the hallway. Rex tilted back in his chair, digesting what he’d just heard.

He stayed that way for a long while.

* * *

Rex had taken a long shower after the interview with Second, using up far too much water. He didn’t care. Part of him had felt soiled just imagining the things she’d spoken of. Blending human DNA with animals to create slaves? What part of that didn’t send up red flags in a person? He’d heard of minor tweaking to effect human appearance. Heck, Chakrika’s people must have played around with pigment genes to look the way they did. And the blue-skinned woman he’d spent the night with on Halcyon clearly hadn’t been one of the original “types” that had evolved on Earth. But tweaking one or two of your own genes to make a different-colored human was worlds different than creating soulless slaves using human parts!

What kind of person, if they are even still people, would do that?
It had bothered him long after the shower. What type of being would look at Second and not see a woman? Hell, he still had problems wrapping his mind around the fact a woman obeyed his every word! It still gnawed at his soul that she wasn’t a woman, that she had been
grown
to be a
tool
for somebody else’s use.

After drying and dressing, he’d called everybody to the bridge. They came in, Lucius taking his station, Chakrika sitting down at the empty communications station with Quintus in her arms.

Rex stared each in the eye and then looked to Second.

“Second, please go to your cabin and remain there,” Rex ordered.

She left the room.

“Close off the bridge,” Rex ordered.

The computer closed a metal door, sealing them in. Rex turned back to his tiny crew.

“Computer, project the recording done with Second this afternoon.”

For the next half-hour they watched, Second’s words spinning off tales of disgust and horror with her usual, unassuming monotone. Lucius kept his face as wooden as ever, but his eyes betrayed a deep shock. Chakrika was absolutely horrified, covering little Quintus’s ears so he couldn’t hear the madness that spun from Second’s lips. Tears streaked from her eyes by the end of it. When it concluded they sat silent for a long moment.

“I can understand why your nation has so much interest in them,” Lucius said gravely.

“It’s not possible!” Chakrika shrieked. “Nobody can do that! It isn’t possible!”

“We all know it is,” Rex said coolly. “And when we’re done, everybody will know. The whole of god-damn Explored Space will know.”

“That ship will continue trying to find us,” Lucius noted. “If this is what they wish to hide, they will stop at no lengths to destroy us.”

“I know,” Rex said.

“You can’t let them have Second,” Chakrika said fiercely. “I know she’s a freak, but you can’t let them get her back.”

“I don’t intend to. It’s her we’re here to discuss,” Rex spoke, looking sympathetically at Chakrika. “You asked me once to fix her.”

“Yes,” Chakrika said.

“Well her injury knocked loose nerves from the lobe that, I
think
, controls her mind. Last night with Quintus, the fist she made in the recording…these were not accidents. Strong emotion is overpowering the programming that controls her. Her right brain has lost most of its connection with the controlling lobe and is asserting itself. If the fix is as simple as removing this implanted section of brain, then we can make her normal,” Rex spoke.

“Do it,” Chakrika declared.

“There is a risk,” Rex said.

“Any time we would have to spend on a world while she was getting operated upon would give our pursuers time to track us,” Lucius figured.

“Yes,” Rex replied.

“I thought we’d lost them?” Chakrika asked. “How would they even know where to look?”

“They found our engine output from Cordelian servers. They could do the same from Helvetia. It would take longer due to all the traffic around that rock; they’d have to sift through everything. But if they kept at it, they would figure it out eventually,” said Rex. “And if what she said of their ‘Warriors’ is true, we could be facing an enemy in close combat that we might not be able to beat.”

“So we leave her a slave?!” Chakrika shouted, the outrage upsetting little Quintus.

“No,” Rex replied quietly. “I won’t.”

“You think it is worth the risk?” Lucius spoke.

“Yes,” Rex said. “My superiors would tell me to finish the mission, but I can’t turn my back on this. Human life isn’t meant to be used like a wrench or a hammer and tossed aside once you’re done.”

“I sympathize Rex, but consider what we face before doing anything. Most people learn to live with free will as they grow to maturity. This woman was never a child. She will not gradually develop her will as her mind becomes more and more capable. She will go from being a living machine to a person overnight. What is to say her mind can even handle that sort of transition?” Lucius asked.

“Nothing. Nothing guarantees she’ll ever be normal or well adjusted,” Rex replied. “But none of that really matters.”

“What do you mean by that? These are valid concerns—”

“A human being is an individual.
Any
human being. That is an entitlement, Lucius! It’s a
prerequisite
for being alive!” he seethed. “I don’t care if she goes mad and spends her days locked in a mental ward. She deserves to be
herself
!”

Lucius backed down, turning his gaze from Rex.

“It is your decision,” Lucius spoke. “I will abide by it despite my reservations.”

“Then we’re changing course. I traded with a world on my way out here, place called Byzantium. They were fairly advanced and had significant hospitals. We go, find a neurosurgeon, and then make for Boundary at best speed.”

“Your own people may reprimand you for this,” Lucius spoke, gesturing at the room around him. “Your computer records everything. If your intelligence people are as machiavellian as you fear, they may punish you.”

“Small price to pay,” Rex said. “Chaki, you want to take her up to full speed?”

She smiled proudly and moved down to the pilot’s station, handing Quintus to his father.

“Gladly,” she declared.

* * *

Lucius remained on the bridge after Rex left, staring into the viewscreen, into the void as it spilled by. Tirana was another dead system, focused around two stars, a small red one and a larger orange one. They spun around a center point, the space between them filled with a swirling vortex of gasses. The few planets they had, all gas giants, traced quirky orbits as they followed the dueling gravities of the stars.

Somehow Chakrika doubted the distant stars were on his mind. His face had hardened since Rex left, his mind clearly stewing over what had just happened.

“Say something, Lucius,” she spoke, as he unconsciously hugged Quintus closer to his chest. “You’ll give yourself an ulcer worrying like that.”

“Cannot get an ulcer, the nanobots will repair it,” he replied sarcastically.

She sighed dramatically and turned back to the viewscreen, joining him in his silent gaze.

“It’s not because I do not
want
her to be free of this,” Lucius spoke, keeping his gaze fixed on the screen. “I understand, I do. What they did to her is what I used to do to my serfs.”

Chakrika turned to face him.

“That isn’t true. Whatever bad things you did—”

“It
is
true,” Lucius asserted. “Different degrees of the same thing. My people,
myself
, we treat our serfs like rubbish to make them less than us. We dehumanize them and tell ourselves that God wills it. This ‘Perfected Hegemony’ merely did with genetics what we failed to do with words, laws, and coercion.”

She let him turn his thoughts over for a few moments.

“It isn’t because I think I’m superior to Second or to whoever she will be when this is done, it’s Quintus,” Lucius went on.

“What about him? He’ll be with us, he’ll be safe,” Chakrika assured him.

“Rex thinks that because we’ve lost the Hegemony ship, we’ll have time to travel to this Byzantium and find a surgeon who can operate on her. But he doesn’t have a child to concern him. I don’t care how many years he has lived, he cannot know what it means. When he told us he would sponsor us for citizenship when we reached the Commonwealth, my soul leapt. Not for myself, but for Quintus. I’m resigned to being hated by his people, even if I get a certificate saying I’m one of them. But my son would have a chance to grow up in a real nation, a safe nation where pirates don’t come from the skies to blow up your home.”

He slumped back in his chair, stretching his neck, trying to push his fears from his body with the motion. She could tell it wasn’t working. The lines remained around his eyes, on a face too young to have such lines.

“We’ll reach the Commonwealth,” Chakrika said, not knowing herself whether she believed it or not. “We will. You’ll take Quintus some place safe. Find some farm in the middle of nowhere where you won’t run into many people and just live out your life.”

“Farm…” muttered Lucius with a dark laugh. “My mother would die from shock if she thought I was working the land with my own hands.”

“Then someplace else! A ranch! It doesn’t matter!” Chakrika spoke. The excitement in her voice passed to Quintus, even several feet away in his father’s arms. He flung his arms out in front of him dramatically, his mouth forming the first hints of a smile.

“And what will you do?” Lucius asked, turning his head to face her. His gaze held her eyes for a long moment.

“I-well, I’ll come visit you!” she said. “On your farm!”

“But not to stay?” he asked.

She withdrew, tearing away from his gaze. Quintus, oblivious, playfully slapped her forearms.

“I was presumptuous earlier…when we…”

“When you nearly kissed me?” Chakrika asked.

“Yes. It was not my intention to cause you any unease,” he spoke.

She swallowed, her nerves firing a hundred times their normal rate.

“No, I-uh-it’s just that I never…never have been with a man like that…” she stumbled.

Lucius raised a confused eyebrow.

“Yes, I’ve
been
with a man,” she stressed. “But I’ve never, uh, been with a man that I cared for.”

Her words hung in the air, drawing a shocked expression from Lucius.

“You mean—”

“First I was a slave and then I was a whore,” she replied darkly.

“Basilisk,” Lucius countered.

“Words,” Chakrika said, brushing away a tear. “Stupid words that hide the truth. ‘Different degrees of the same thing.’”

Lucius nodded, a smile breaking out across his stern visage.

“You were afraid to kiss me because you like me?” he asked.

“I don’t know how to do this, Lucius,” she said, fear evident in her voice. “I remember movies from my childhood when I was young, seeing men and women together and smiling. But I don’t…I don’t know…I spent the last ten years being hurt by men or…or selling myself to them.”

“I can understand your fears,” Lucius replied. “Young noblemen who could snap a finger and have a woman in their bed do not spend much time learning the ways of the heart.”

“What about the governor’s wife?” Chakrika asked.

“Kambinachi,” Lucius spoke with a sad chuckle. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Tell me,” Chakrika spoke.

“Well, Kambi was thirty-four years old. Her husband, having a household of young, nubile serving girls, didn’t pay her all that much attention. At one of the feasts, she approached me about such matters…I was hesitant to sleep with my new employer’s wife, but I was also intoxicated, and she kept going on about how she had never slept with a pale-skinned man.”

Chakrika laughed at that.

“I regret that she died,” Lucius spoke, his voice and features softening. “And that she barely got to see her son. But the truth of the matter is that, as much as I cared for her, we were not in love. We had an affair, meeting when we could. When she fell pregnant, I honestly did not know if it was mine or her husband’s. I stood outside the delivery room, hiding in a closet. When the child came, I heard the commotion, the shock. The mid-wives knew that Odemegwu was not the child’s father. So I rushed in, grabbed both of them, and ran for
Long Haul.
”