One's Aspect to the Sun (30 page)

I leaned my head back against the cool metal wall of the corridor, letting its solid bulk comfort me. The ship always had a way of doing that. Maybe the evidence wasn't much, even taken all together. It didn't tell me where Mother was now or why she'd disappeared as suddenly as I'd found her. But at least it gave me something to do.

Chapter Seventeen

I hurried back towards Engineering. It said a lot about how well the rest of them understood me that none of them had followed me into the corridor or moved from the spot. Only Hirin and Maja had gone.

“Baden,” I said, as soon as I was within earshot. “Do you think I could talk with the Chairman for a few minutes, and send him some data packets, without jeopardizing our situation with that PrimeCorp ship?

Baden pursed his lips. “I think so. I'll make it as narrowband as I can; the quality might suffer a bit, but the ship should still be far enough out that they wouldn't pick it up. There's lots of that other chatter I mentioned down here to mask it, and they shouldn't even be looking for us out here. If they pick us up at all, they'd likely think we were still on the planet.”

“
Okej.”
I outlined what I'd been thinking. “If he'll help us, I'll send him the photo of the intruder, the names of the kidnappers, and anything we might get off that pirate's belongings. If Buig can identify any of them and link them to PrimeCorp, we'll have something to start with.”

“We can do even a little better than that,” Rei said suddenly. “Wait right here.”

Without another word she swarmed up the ladder to the upper deck. Everyone looked at me, but I shrugged.

She was back inside a minute, swinging something small and soft and black from her hand, and she tossed it to me, carefully, as she passed. “I'll bet you can get a better identification of the intruder with some of his skin cells, and maybe a hair or two . . .” She dropped into one of the skimchairs and let it spin her around, looking extremely pleased with herself.

I picked it up. It was the intruder's mask.

“How?”

Rei tilted her head to one side and grinned. “Souvenir,” she said. “I thought it would be a good one. I had it in the secret locker in my room so it wouldn't be out in plain sight if anyone came asking about the man. I kept it after we took it off him that night. Didn't think he'd miss the warmth. No-one else has had it on, so anything in there belongs to him.”

I hugged her. “Remind me never to call your souvenir habit crazy again.”

She pulled back. “You think my souvenirs are crazy?” But there was a smile in her eyes.

“Okay, folks,” I said. “Here's what we're going to do. Yuskeya, if you're feeling up to it, would you try to extract some information from this mask and the pirate's belongings, and package the results to send to Chairman Buig? Ask Dr. Ndasa to help you. I'll go and retrieve that message from Sedmamin about the virus. Viss, you took the photo of the intruder, would you send a copy to Baden? And Baden, you can cobble all of this together, make it as small as you can, and get it ready for me to narrowband down to the Chairman after I've spoken to him.”

A chorus of
ayes
met my requests, and I led the way up the hatchway ladder. Yuskeya said she'd need about half an hour, and I headed to my quarters to call up Sedmamin's nasty message from the notebug. I settled at my desk and tried to load it, the one where he'd admitted that there had been a virus in my notebug message. I should have realized he wouldn't be that sloppy, though. The message was a corrupted mess of gibberish, obviously set to self-destruct after it had been read. I made several attempts to rebuild or decrypt it with some filters I’d gotten from Lanar, but it was no use. I wondered briefly if Baden could make anything of it with his superior techrig. Somehow I doubted it. Sedmamin was a master when it came to covering his tracks. Maybe we wouldn't need it anyway.

A knock at my door took my attention from the screen, and I crossed the room to answer it. It was Maja, and she looked pensive.

“May I come in?”

I nodded and pushed the door open, stepping inside and holding it for her to follow me. “Of course. How did it go with your father?”

“Oh, fine,” she said absently. “He’s more angry at Amadoro than he is at me.”

She crossed the room, looking around as if she'd never seen it before, and sat down in my big armchair. She stared across at the wall, saying nothing, as if she were searching for a way to begin. Her fingers drummed a nervous staccato rhythm on the arm of the chair.

I sat on the bed and waited. She obviously hadn’t come here because of Hirin.

“I didn't know you'd been attacked,” she said finally. “Besides what happened to us on Rhea.”

I shrugged. “Well, like your father said, it was before we left Earth. It wasn't a big deal.”

She stared at the wall above my bed, not meeting my eyes. “But . . .twice? I think it was. Is. A big deal.” She met my eyes, her blue ones thoughtful. “And the things Emmage said in that vid . . .it all makes me realize that I never really listened when you tried to explain why things were the way they were.”

I raised my eyebrows and half-smiled at her. “I noticed.”

Maja stood, walked around the chair slowly, running her manicured fingers gently over the soft woven fabric. “All I could see was that it wasn't fair. I always seemed to be on the outside. You and Dad and Karro, even Uncle Lanar—you all loved space so much. I hated it. Never staying in one place, living on a far trader. You all thought it was so exciting. For me, it was just . . . unsettled.”

“It isn't the life for everyone. I suppose I didn't pay enough attention to what you wanted. But there was always PrimeCorp to think about—”

“I understand that now.” She sighed. “I just thought it was a stupid excuse then. I stayed angry about that for a long time. PrimeCorp never seemed like such a threat to me. Then it started to be obvious that you hadn't passed on whatever was keeping you young. I hated you for that, too—and you wouldn't cooperate with PrimeCorp to find out about it. And later,” she went on, as if she were determined to make a full confession, “when Dad got sick. That was your fault, too, as far as I was concerned. And then I couldn't forgive you for putting him in that facility and leaving.”

“Maja, I—”

“No, no, you don't have to say anything. I understand. Now I do, at least. Then when Taso and I . . . he went off with someone else.” She smiled wryly. “She was much younger. And even though it didn't make any sense, I blamed you.”

“Honey, I'm sorry.” I didn't know what else to say.

She shook her head. “It doesn't matter now. Really. It was just one thing after another, all our lives, and now I see that I always got it wrong.”

“I wouldn't say you always got it wrong.” I looked up at the viewport, at the incomprehensibly vast expanse of stars beyond it. I'd thought of the whole thing as my home, never understanding that Maja needed something else. Never paying enough attention, I realized. “I spent a lot of time when I was younger being angry with my mother, too. It took time, and learning to understand the situation, before I could see her reasons for acting the way she did.”

She stared at the fabric of the chair, lightly tracing the design. “I think I should have been able to find that clarity sooner.”

“I didn't make it any easier for you to do that. It wasn't exactly a normal life.”

“No, it wasn't,” she agreed, almost smiling. “But that's no excuse.” She'd circled the chair and sat down again, leaning her arms on her knees. She looked forlorn, her blonde hair tumbling over her eyes like it had when she was a little girl. “These last few weeks, being here on the ship, I started seeing things differently, even though I didn't realize what was happening. Then when I saw you finding out things even
you
hadn't known, from Emmage—I'm afraid I can't call her 'Grandmother' yet—it came into focus. And knowing that there was real danger from PrimeCorp . . . I can't blame her, either . . .” She sighed. “I'm not quite sure what I'm trying to say.”

I knelt down and put my arms around her. “That you don't hate me?”

She laughed a little at that, or maybe it was a sob, but at any rate, she hugged me back. “That's it, Mother. I don't hate you.”

“That's good to know, Maja.” I smiled. “I don't hate you, either.”

I told Maja that Rei would fill her and Hirin in on what we were planning and she left then. I looked at the time; Yuskeya wouldn't have things ready yet. I was intensely aware of the chipcase in my pocket, and the unwatched messages from my mother waiting for me to view them. I hesitated only a moment before I pulled out the
L/L
chip, slotted it into the reader, and touched the second vid file to start it.

The background had changed from the last vid; Mother was obviously in a different place, although it was impossible to tell how much time had passed between the last message and this one. Her hair was swept into one long auburn plait and hung over one shoulder. She wore a baggy, loosely-knit sweater in shades of green and blue. A bank of bookshelves covered the wall behind her, but I couldn't make out any of the titles.

Mother smiled, a bit tentatively, it seemed.
I've been wondering what you both may be thinking about my decisions and actions from an ethical standpoint,
she began.
We—most of us, anyway—felt that we had a moral right to decide how our research would be used, if not a legal one. In the end, I alone took the action, and the responsibility, of removing the data. But that was seventy-five years ago. You probably wonder why I've worked so hard to keep it secret for so long.

She took a deep breath.
You may be thinking that even if they made untold billions from the product, at least PrimeCorp would have made it available. That there are thousands upon thousands of people who've died in that time, who would still be alive today if they'd had the bioscavengers.

I can't even count the number of nights I've lain awake and thought about that.
Mother's voice was weary, those little lines around her eyes more pronounced.
I hunted for ways I could safely get in touch with you, Luta, when Maja and Karro were young, so that I could offer you the choice for them. But I knew they would be monitoring you, watching. I had to consider both the benefits and the risks. If PrimeCorp had this data, it would effectively
rule the entirety of Nearspace.
I think I did the right thing; look how they've exploited their monopoly on the rejuv market with Vigor-Us. If PrimeCorp could offer virtual immortality, every government in Nearspace would be under its thumb. I simply couldn't take the chance. I was afraid of the kind of society I might be creating if I let it happen. No single corporation should have that much power.

Even the alien governments, the Vilisians on Damir, and the Lobors, would have come under PrimeCorp's sway. We had samples of Vilisian and Lobor DNA even then, and some researchers were working on modifying first- and second-generation bioscavengers to work for the alien races, too. We share a certain amount of basic biology. It would only have been a matter of time before they had a prototype that would work against alien aging, too.

Mother took a drink from a delicate china teacup that sat on the table or desk next to her. Graceful tree branches wound around the sides of the cup and the curving handle echoed their shape.
I did wonder if some other company would come up with the same data at some point,
she continued,
or with a similar product. I always felt that in the event another company developed a self-replicating bioscavenger, I'd send everything back to PrimeCorp and let them go to it, or maybe leak the data on the public nets, because at least then there'd be competition. No one would have sole control of human aging. However, I felt that the possibility of that happening was unlikely, for two reasons.

One was the breakthrough I mentioned. Like the discovery of penicillin at the beginning of the twentieth century, or the Krasnikov matter we depend on for wormhole travel, our breakthrough was something of an accident. We wanted nanobioscavengers that would not only deal with disease, trauma, and aging, but that would be self-replicating as well. The self-replication was the roadblock. And then—I suppose you could call it a twist of fate. Those Vilisian DNA samples? One of them got into a human culture by accident. We never did know how it happened—probably just a tech not following proper lab procedures. But when it combined with the proteins we were growing in the culture—
she sat back and snapped her fingers.
There it was. The key to the self-replication problem.

Mother glanced off-camera, and the image froze. The end of the vid.

I sat back in my chair. Vilisian DNA was the key to mother's breakthrough research? I never would have guessed that. And, I supposed, neither had anyone else, since the research had apparently never been duplicated.

Unless it had now, by Dr. Ndasa and Schulyer Corp. I wondered if the revelation would come as news to him.

I looked at the chipcase lying open on my desk. Two more chips, which might hold the keys to Mother's research. Or more evidence against PrimeCorp. Somehow I doubted they'd be protected by the same password as this chip.