Cyteen: The Betrayal (38 page)

A generation had grown up thinking it was solving the problems.

But old missiles the warships had launched a hundred years ago were still a shipping hazard. Sometimes the past came back into the daily news with a vengeance.

And old animosities surfaced like ghosts, troubling a present in which humans knew they were not alone.

“It doesn’t sound like it was any case of finding three or four survivors,” he said to Grant. “They’re saying ‘illegal colony’ and they admit it’s ours.”

“Still going? Organized?”

“It’s not real clear.”

Another moment of silence. Grant sat up then and remembered to dry his hair before it dried the way it was. “Damn crazy mess,” Grant said. “Did they say they got them off, or are they going to? Or what are they going to do about it?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Well, we can guess where Giraud’s going to be for the next week or so, can’t we?”

Ari was bored with the offices. She watched the people come in and out. She sat at a desk in back of the office and cut out folded paper in patterns that she unfolded. She got paper and drew a fish with a long tail.

Finally she got up and slipped out while Kyle wasn’t looking, while maman was doing something long and boring in the office inside; and it looked like maman was going to be talking a long time.

Which meant maman would not mind much if she walked up and down the hall. It was only offices. That meant no stores, no toys, nothing to look at and no vid. She liked sitting and coloring all right. But maman’s own offices were best, because there was a window to look out.

There was nothing but doors up and down. The floor had metal stripes and she walked one, while she looked in the doors that were open. Most were. That was how she saw Justin.

He was at a desk, working at a keyboard, very serious. She stood in the doorway and saw him there. And waited, just watching him, for the little bit until he would see her. He was always different from all the rest of the people. She remembered him from a glittery place, and Grant with him. She saw him only sometimes, and when she asked maman why people got upset about Justin, maman said she was imagining things.

She knew she was not. It was a danger-feeling. It was a worried feeling. She knew she ought not to bother him. But it was all right here in the hall, where there were people going by. And she just wanted to look at him, but she did not want to no inside.

She shifted to her other foot and he saw her then.

“Hello,” she said.

And got that fear-feeling again. His, as he looked up. And hers, as she thought she could get in trouble with maman.

“Hello,” he said, nervous-like.

It was always like that when she was around Justin. The nervous-feeling went wherever he did, and got worse when she not close to him. From everybody. It was a puzzle she could not work out, and she sensed by the way maman shut down on questions about Justin that he was a puzzle maman did not approve of. Ollie too. Justin came to parties and she saw him from across the room, but maman always came and got her if she went to say hello. So she thought that Justin was somebody in a lot of trouble for something, and maybe there was something Wrong with him, so they were not sure he was going to behave right. Sometimes azi got like that. Sometime CITs did. Maman said. And it was harder to straighten CITs out, but easier to make azi upset. So she mustn’t tease them. Except Ollie could take it all right.

There was a lot about Justin that said azi, but she knew that he wasn’t. He was just Justin. And he was a puzzle that came and went and no one ever wanted kids around.

“Maman’s down there with ser Peterson,” she said conversationally, also because she wanted him to know she was not running around where she had no business to be. So this was Justin’s office. It was awfully small. Papers were everywhere. She leaned too far and caught her balance on the door. Fool, maman would say. Stand up. Stand straight. Don’t wobble around. But Justin never said much. He left everything for her to say. “Where’s Grant?”

“Grant’s down at the library,” Justin said.

“I’m six now.”

“I know.”

“How do you know that?”

Justin looked uncomfortable. “Isn’t your maman going to be wanting you pretty soon?”

“Maman’s having a meeting. I’m tired of being down there.” He was going to ignore her, going back to his work. She was not going to have him turn his shoulder to her. She walked in and up to the chair by his desk. She leaned on the arm and looked up at him. “Ollie’s always working.”

“So am I. I’m busy, Ari. You go along.”

“What are you doing?”

“Work.”

She knew a go-away when she heard one. But she did not have to mind Justin. So she leaned on her arms and frowned and tried a new approach. “I go to tapestudy. I can read that. It says Sub-” She twisted around, because it was a long word on the screen. “Sub-li-min-al mat-ma-trix.”

He turned the screen off and turned around and frowned at her.

She thought maybe she had gone too far, and oughtn’t to be leaning on her elbows quite so close to him. But backing up was something she didn’t like at all. She stuck out her lip at him.

“Go back to maman, Ari. She’s going to be looking for you.”

“I don’t want to. What’s a subliminal matrix?”

“A set of things. A special arrangement of a set.” He shoved his chair back and stood up, so she stood up and got back. “I’ve got an appointment. I’ve got to lock up the office.

You’d better get on back to your mother.”

“I don’t want to.” He was awfully tall. Like Ollie. Not safe like Ollie. He was pushing her out, that was what. She stood her ground.

“Out,” he said, at the door, pointing to the hall.

She went out. He walked out and locked the door. She waited for him. She had that figured out. When he walked on down the hall she went with him.

“Back,” he said, stopping, pointing back toward where maman was.

She gave him a nasty smile. “I don’t have to.”

He looked upset then. And he got very quiet, looking down at her. “Ari, that’s not nice, is it?”

“I don’t have to be nice.”

“I’d like you better.”

That hurt. She stared up at him to see if he was being nasty, but he did not look like it. He looked as if he was the hurt one.

She could not figure him. Everybody, but not him. She just stared.

“Can I go with you?” she asked.

“Your maman wouldn’t like it.” He had a kind face when he talked like that. “Go on back.”

“I don’t want to. They just talk. I’m tired of them talking.”

“Well, I’ve got to go meet my people, Ari. I’m sorry.”

“There aren’t any people,” she said, calling his bluff, because he had not been going anywhere until she bothered him.

“Well, I still have to. You go on back.”

She did not. But he walked away down the hall like he was really going somewhere.

She wished she could. She wished he would be nice. She was bored and she was unhappy and when she saw him she remembered the glittery people and everybody being happy, but she could not remember when that was.

Only then Ollie had been there all the time and maman had been so pretty and she had played with Valery and gotten the star that hung in her bedroom.

She walked back to ser Peterson’s office very slow. Kyle didn’t even notice. She sat down and she drew a star. And thought about Valery. And the red-haired man, who was Grant. Who was Justin’s.

She wished Ollie and maman had more time for her.

She wished maman would come out. And they would go to lunch. Maybe Ollie could come.

But maman did not come anytime soon, so she drew lines all over the star and made it ugly.

Like everything.

vi

The documents show, the report came to Mikhail Corain’s desk, the operation involved a clandestine military operation and the landing of 40,000 Union personnel, the majority of them azi. The mission was launched in 2355, as a Defense operation.

There was no further support given the colony. The operation was not sustained.

The best intelligence Alliance has mustered says that there are thousands of survivors who have devolved to a primitive lifestyle. Beyond question they are descended of azi and citizens. The assumption is that they had no rejuv and that after sixty years the survivors must be at least second and third generation. There are ruins of bubble-construction and a solar power installation. The world is extremely hospitable to human life and the survivors are in remarkably good health considering the conditions, practicing basic agriculture and hunting. The Alliance reports express doubt that the colonists can be removed from the world. The ecological damage is as yet undetermined, but there is apparently deep penetration of the colony into the ecosystem, and certain of the inhabitants have retreated into areas not easily accessible. It is the estimate of Alliance that the inhabitants would not welcome removal from the world and Alliance does not intend to remove the colony, for whatever reason.

The estimation within the Defense Bureau is that Alliance is interested in interviewing the survivors. Defense however will oppose any proposal to retrieve these Union nationals as an operation which Alliance will surely reject and which would be in any case counter-productive.

The azi were primarily but not exclusively from Reseune military contracts.

See attached reports.

The majority of citizens were military personnel.

Nye will offer a bill expressing official regret and an offer of cooperation to the Alliance in dealing with the colonists.

The Expansionist coalition will be unanimous in that vote.

Corain flipped through the reports. Pages of them. There was a sub-sapient on the world the colonists called Gehenna. There were a great many things that said Defense Bureau, and Information Unavailable.

There was no way in hell Alliance or Union was going to be able to retrieve the survivors, for one thing because they were scattered into the bush and mostly because (according to Alliance) they were illiterate primitives and Alliance was going to resist any attempt to remove them, that much was clear in the position the Alliance ambassador was taking.

Alliance was damned mad about the affair, because it had been confronted with a major and expensive problem: an Earth-class planet in its own sphere of influence with an ecological disaster and an entrenched, potentially hostile colony,

So was Corain angry about it, for reasons partly ethical and

partly political outrage: Defense had overstepped itself, Defense had covered this mess up back in the war years, when (as now) Defense was in bed with Reseune and gifted with a blank credit slip.

And if Corain could manage it, there was going to be a light thrown on the whole Expansionist lunacy.

vii.

Gorodin-was not accessible. That was not entirely a disaster, in Giraud Nye’s estimation. Secretary of Defense Lu had sat proxy so often in the last thirty years he had far more respect on Council and far more latitude in voting his own opinion than a proxy was supposed to have, the same way the Undersecretary of Defense virtually merged his own staff with Lu’s and Gorodin’s on-planet office: it was in effect a troika at the top of Defense and had been, de facto, since the war years.

And in Giraud’s unvoiced opinion it was better that the proxy was in and Gorodin was somewhere classified and inaccessible at the other end of Union space: Lu, his face a map of wise secrets as rejuv declined, his dark eyes difficult even for a veteran of Reseune to cipher, was playing his usual game of no authority to answer that and I don’t feel I should comment, while reporters clamored for information and Corain called for full disclosure.

Full disclosure it had to be, at least among political allies.

And Giraud had heard enough to upset his stomach all the way from Reseune to this sound-secure office, the sound-screening working at his nerves and setting his teeth off.

“It is absolutely true,” Lu said, without reference to the folio that lay under his hands. “The mission was launched in 2355; it reached the star in question and dropped the colonists and the equipment. There was never any intention to return. At the time, we knew that the world was there. We knew that Alliance knew, that it was within their reach, or Earth’s, and by the accident of its position and its potential-it would be of major importance.” Lu cleared his throat. “We knew we couldn’t hold it in practicality, we couldn’t defend it, we couldn’t supply it. We did in fact purpose to remove it from profitability.”

Remove it from profitability. Alliance had sent a long-prepared and careful survey to the most precious find yet in near space-and found it, to its consternation, inhabited, inhabited by humans not their own and not plausibly Earth’s—leaving the absolutely undeniable conclusion, even without the ruined architecture and the fact that the survivors were azi-descended-Union had sabotaged a living planet.

“Forty thousand people,” Giraud said, feeling an emptiness at the pit of his stomach. “Dropped onto an untested planet. Just like that.”

Lu blinked. Otherwise he might have been a statue. “They were military; they were expendables. It was not, you understand, my administration. Nor was there, in those days, the-sensitivity to ecological concerns. So far as anyone then was reckoning, we were in a difficult military position, we had to reckon that a Mazianni strike at Cyteen was a possibility. There were two possibilities in such a move: first, the colony would survive and maintain Union principles should we meet with disaster, should Earth have launched some suicide mission at Cyteen itself. The secrecy of the colony was important in that consideration.”

“It was launched in 2355,” Giraud said. “A year after the war ended.”

Lu folded his hands. “It was planned in the closing years of the war, when things were uncertain. It was executed after we had been confronted with general calamity, and that disastrous treaty. It was a hole card, if you like. To let either Earth or Alliance have a world potentially more productive than Cyteen-would have been disastrous. That was the second part of the plan: if the colony should perish, it would still contribute its microorganisms to the ecology. And in less than a century-present Alliance or whatever new owner-with a difficult problem, which our science could handle and theirs couldn’t. I might say-some native microorganisms were even-engineered to accept our own engineered contributions. At your own facility. As I’m sure your records will say. Not mentioning the azi and the tape-tailoring.”