Piracy Preferred
And he left me. Standing alone in the middle of his perfectly decorated room, with its white carpet, its polished pine shelves, its low, cushiony seats, its broad glass doorway facing the sea, I tried to think of what to do next.
I didn’t realize I was furious until I noticed the images forming at the back of my mind were of kicking my way out through that glass doorway to the terrace and—
And what? Plunging to the sea below? The idea made me smile, because it was so much the act of a romantic lover, and I wasn’t one—certainly not Simon’s. But what else could I do? Challenge Lucius to a fight? The thought came and for a moment there was a feeling of relief, because Lucius was definitely someone I could with impunity be furious at. If I lost control and attacked him, he’d probably stop me before I landed a single punch. He was as fast as I was, and as strong. No, stronger, because behind his enhanced capabilities were his not inconsiderable bulk and his not inconsiderable masculine advantage.
But then if I attacked him, I’d get no satisfaction either. And besides, what could I get him to do? Send a rescue party for Simon? He’d said he couldn’t, and I remembered Simon telling me that when Nat was captured and condemned to death, the Usaians had refused to help. Lucius and one of Nat’s sisters had gone in, and the young woman had died in the attempt. I remembered that story particularly because Simon had been affected by her death and seemed genuinely fond of her. He’d said she was like a little sister to him.
I took deep breaths. Lucius might have been unpleasant about Simon—had been unpleasant about Simon—in saying no, but he’d also said, and I had to believe it, that his “no” was more dictated by circumstances than by his dislike of Simon. And he had to know more about what had happened in Liberte than I did. Could I swear there was no reason at all for him to say that Simon had brought this on himself? Could I even say that Simon’s intentions had been good?
I realized I’d been clenching my fists so hard it hurt, and let go.
Granted that Simon was not the best person in the world, for whatever the definition of “good” might be. I knew that he was manipulative and deceived others and possibly himself, but I also knew how he’d come to it. Whoever had said to know all is to forgive all was a child and an idiot. I could understand most crimes without in the least thinking they were forgivable. But there was a point to it. Up to a point, if you could understand how someone had got twisted and turned inside, you had to forgive them, because—what else could you do?
In Simon’s case I could see all too well how he’d gone astray—how desperate he’d been to survive. And from what I’d heard, from himself and from others, if a Good Man were taken down, it wouldn’t just be him dying, but most of his retainers and dependents. It wasn’t just sheer selfishness and desire to keep himself alive that led Simon to do what he did, to play the fool, to dissemble, to act—often—like saving his skin was the most important thing in the world.
I doubted that it had never occurred to him, Earth born and bred, that as large as this world was he could just have left Liberte, he’d have had plenty of places to hide. Perhaps—I thought—as spoiled as Simon was; as used to being in power and having everything he wanted, it would have seemed like dying for him to go away, perhaps, leave his power and privilege behind, and have to do more than sign forms for a living. On the other hand, considering how many years he’d lived with the dire threat to his life from the other Good Men, even Simon might have considered it a better option.
Then I realized if he’d gone into hiding, Liberte would have been taken over and all his retainers and servants destroyed.
Seen that way, it was almost altruistic for him to stay in Liberte and to pretend to be a fool and inoffensive.
If that was his motivation, then trying to control the revolution he knew was coming was the only thing he could have done.
I had no proof that Simon had ever done anything—much less that—for altruistic reasons. But I remembered his face, his screaming at Alexis to get me out of there. He could have found a way out. He could have disappeared. Or he could have demanded Alexis defend him and die protecting him while he made an escape. Instead he’d chosen to see me safely away.
That action alone argued in favor of a man who had been trying to do the best he could for his dependents and those who couldn’t survive without him.
And that meant—
And that meant, inescapably, that I couldn’t leave him to die.
Even if I didn’t really have a chance of saving him, I’d tried to get help, the sane thing to do. It hadn’t worked. Only the insane thing remained. I had to do it alone.
I didn’t like the conclusion. I didn’t want to go back to Liberte. Lucius Keeva had said it would be suicide, and there was a very good chance he was right. I remembered those heads on poles. Once madness sets in and crowds are out for blood, a place won’t be safe until sanity is restored, and judging from historical reports of such events, that could be years. Or decades.
The French Revolution wasn’t the model for this. The Turmoils were. They’d taken almost twenty years to burn themselves out.
And they’d only really stopped the insane killings when the Mules themselves, experienced and trained at crowd control, had taken over under a new guise again.
They’d gone on long after the mobs had killed every bioimproved person that could be easily spotted and onto killing anyone who was a little too beautiful, a little too fast, a little too smart, though not smart enough to hide it.
But Simon had been captured, and if Lucius—and Alexis—were right, then he’d be used as a bargaining chip in a power game. But bargaining chip or not, he was going to end up dead.
Right.
I realized that as satisfying as kicking out the plate glass—if it wasn’t transparent dimatough—window of Lucius Keeva’s room might be, the thing to do was to get out of here as quietly and as quickly as I could, and to find my way back to Liberte.
Fortunately, Lucius had left that option open by telling me I could go anywhere I wished in the house, provided I didn’t upset the guards.
I went back to the bedroom and found my slippers, and put them on my bare feet. They were the dance slippers I’d worn to the ball. Immensely impractical, but better than nothing. Then I tried to think through what I’d need.
Money. That was the first thing. I’d need cred gems. Preferably unmarked credgems. And I’d need weapons, and I’d need—I sighed—to get a lot of awful hair dye again and perhaps a dress even more awful than the pink one.
I had nothing to sell. Robbing Keeva seemed foolhardy, and at any rate what, other than his liquor, could bring any substantial money?
I eyed the cut-crystal decanters with their mysterious contents, and then told myself it was stupid. I had no idea what liquor was good, or even expensive, on Earth.
Then I thought that Simon had opened an account for me. Not much—at least not by his reckoning—but enough to get me immediate necessities or little luxuries if I went out shopping alone.
I’d never gone shopping alone. Unlike most women, I’d never understood the purpose of shopping for its own sake, and he insisted on giving me things before I’d even expressed an interest in them.
But I remembered there was an account with the main bank of Liberte—Finance de Liberte—and that it was coded to my genetic print.
I wondered if the revolutionaries had taken over banks. I didn’t think so. Not yet. They were still very much in the phase of breaking things and killing people, and I doubted they’d thought of more sophisticated things, like hacking into bank accounts.
So, I needed to find a bank.
I headed out of Keeva’s lodgings, in the sort of purposeful walk that makes people assume you know what you’re doing. Which, of course, is particularly important if you don’t.
I wandered purposefully down three consecutive corridors, until I glimpsed what looked like daylight. At which point I collared the impeccably uniformed and very young man guarding the doorway and said, “Pardon me, could you tell me the way to the nearest bank?”
He blinked at me, in utter confusion. Then gulped and turned very red. This might have been the effect of interacting with a woman, or at least with a woman outside of an official framework. Or it might have been that he wasn’t good at personal interaction with any human being. He swallowed hard and said, “Down the street. Turn right at the clock. It’s the first building on the right.”
I thanked him and wandered down the street, with my hands in the pockets of my borrowed outfit, trying to look casual and at home. It came home to me that my looks were a real problem. Men stared at me. The more subtle of them tried not to gawk directly or at least not to stare. But the younger just looked. Women looked too, often with some malice.
The men and women all seemed to be in some form of uniform, which might be the other reason they stared at me: because I wasn’t. Also, I started wondering about something else. I’d noticed in my time in Liberte, and when interacting with people from Olympus and other seacities or territories, that they all had slightly different gestures, slightly different ways of standing, slightly different ways of holding themselves up. Which is to say, they would have stuck out as different, as strangers in Eden. I remembered when I’d first met Kit’s wife, who’d been raised on Earth, and how odd her every gesture, her way of moving seemed.
Eden is a small place. Sure, some professions—my own old profession as a navigator of darkships, for instance—had their own slang, and their own way of behaving. But that was conscious and by choice, and not something you learned from birth to identify as the normal way to do things.
I started worrying long before I reached the bank. If I stuck out like a sore thumb everywhere I went, would there be any point in going back to Liberte? They could identify me, track me, arrest me, kill me or use me as a hostage.
In the back of my mind, I heard Lucius say “It’s a suicide mission.” I didn’t want to commit suicide. For one, my committing suicide would not help Simon. I needed to go in, fit in, bring him out.
Right then and there it seemed impossible.
The coward in me—and I’m not really a coward, I think, but there is a coward in my mind, one who tries to convince me to take the easy way every time—whispered that I should just stay here and let Liberte take care of itself. After all, I’d escaped with my life.
But it was not that easy. Year after year, I’d wonder if I could have saved Simon, and feel like I should have. It was no use telling myself it would have done no good. If I didn’t try it, I couldn’t be sure.
Like that, I was standing in front of the bank. It had never occurred to me to fear that it might be one with employees, because the only bank I’d seen was the one where Simon had taken me, when he’d established my account. And I wasn’t even sure if it normally had human employees, or if it was an exception made for him.
In any case, I must have feared it at the back of my mind, because I felt perceptible relief when I entered the swinging glass doors and found myself in a broad, polished white ceramite lobby, surrounded by row upon row of teller booths.
This was one step up from the place where you either pushed in your thumb or your credgem. The booths were usually controlled, ten to one operator, which meant they could handle more complex operations than simply withdrawing or depositing credits.
A lucky break since it had just occurred to me I needed to do some fancy financial work. If I didn’t, if I left my money in an account in Liberte, then sooner or later the revolutionaries would find a way to breach the accounts. It was an unfailing habit of revolutionaries to take the property of those they deemed had offended them. If Lucius Keeva was telling the truth, even the Usaians had taken most of his home for their headquarters.
I let that thought go, as right then the Usaian movement was the least of my concerns. Instead, I advanced to the nearest empty booth, and closed the door behind me. I checked that the door opened several times before closing it and locking it.
It was one thing to lock myself in a small room of my own volition; another and completely different to allow someone else to lock me in. One of them was unpleasant, the other was crazy-making. In fact, part of the reason I had decided to stay on Earth had been that. I couldn’t stand the idea of being locked in a vehicle, alone, stranded months’ travel away from the nearest source of help. It had been fine before. But now I was aware of what it might mean.
And besides, I was tired of the ever-perpetual pressure to remarry—what good was it? Navigators married pilots. I knew every one of the single cats between my class and the current one, and I didn’t want to marry any of them. None of them would, as Len had, be able to look past my peculiarities, at my real self. If they even knew of my peculiarities. And I didn’t feel like explaining to anyone else that, yes, I was different. For one, you never knew how people would react. Look at my foster parents, who had never gotten over what I was.
So I’d had my choice between being locked in a small space with someone or alone, but it was still locked, and still away from all help, medical or otherwise.
And, yes, I do have issues that have come home carrying issues in arms. Why else would anyone run away from home to an entirely new planet?
I checked the lock on the booth door again, found it opened when I pushed it, and decided to sit down. The booth had controls, automatic, which turned on a holo of the operator, and allowed the operator to see me. I looked at the panel in front of me, for a moment, and realized that any attempt at accessing my account and getting anonymous gems off the machine would show my face to someone at the other end.
There are times when my enhancements are useful. Beyond just being Jarl Ingemar’s clone, I had another bioengineered advantage. The world in which I’d been born enhanced those they intended as pilots or navigators of energy-collecting darkships, so that the team—I wondered when the tradition of their being married had come in—had a good chance of coming back alive.
Pilots—my late husband as well as my “brother” Kit—were enhanced with eyes that allowed them to see in the dark and which gave them the nickname of “cats,” and navigators, like myself, were designed with…mechanical intuition. Electronic intuition too. There were few machines I couldn’t understand after a look. I had sense of direction, and a superhuman memory too, but right then what I needed was the mechanical ability.
I lifted the panel on the machine, gingerly, lest an alarm should sound. Found the anti-vandalism alarm as, by instinct and some knowledge of similar mechanisms, I lifted the lid of the machine and disabled it with my little finger slipped beneath the panel, then lifted the panel fully, braced should another alarm ring, and should I be trapped in here. I had my story all ready, should that happen. I’d tell them I thought the machine malfunctioned, and I was trying to fix it. It’s amazing what people will believe when said by a young woman who has mastered the art of looking innocent, or even a close approximation, as I had.
But no alarms sounded, and I supposed it was because no money transfers could take place from this machine without the intervention of the human operator, so even if you managed to break into the machine and sabotage it, you’d gain nothing.
At any rate, I didn’t want to sabotage it. I just wanted to confuse it, enough that anyone operating the machine wouldn’t be able to give an accurate description of my features to anyone asking. Look, I wasn’t doing anything illegal. The money had been given to me, and it was in an account in my name, but I suspected there was more communication between Olympus and Liberte than anyone on either side would like to admit to, and when I got my money out and changed it to a portable, unidentifiable format, I didn’t want word to go ahead of me to Liberte to warn them to look out for a redhead who looked thus and so. Not the least because most people would recognize me on description.
So I tampered with the visual intake circuits just enough that the picture would waver and flicker and tremble, more or less constantly.
Which was why when I reassembled the machine and turned it on, and the holo of a rather plain young woman, with scraped back dark hair and wearing a tunic as nondescript and grayish as mine floated in front of me, the first words out of her mouth were, “I’m sorry, the picture is not very clear. Can you move to another booth, please?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, I don’t wish to move to another booth,” I said.
There was a silence, and she looked like she would like to ask me why not, but instead, what she said was, “We like to have visual verification to protect your account integrity.”
“You have a genlock for verification,” I said.
The holo of the supervisor wagged its head, then looked away. I got the impression she was consulting something. “But why wouldn’t you wish for—”
“I’m comfortable in this booth, and I don’t wish to change,” I said, and infused my voice with that tone of I’m being unreasonable and prepared to make your life difficult that is the nightmare of anyone in a service position.
There was a long pause, then she said, “Very well. Is your account with us?”
I said no, and gave her the code for the bank in Liberte. I could have given her the name, but it was less likely she would remember what and where it was by the code, and I’d memorized the code, in case I ever needed to draw money elsewhere. Then I put my finger in the genlock, let it read it.
“Where would you like the money transferred and how much?” she asked.
“I would like it in to-go unmarked credigems,” I said. Simon had introduced me to these, and even given me a few, with instructions that I was to use them whenever I didn’t want the whole world to know about my purchases, since all the other records were tracked.
There was a silence. “We’d prefer to transfer it to an account in our bank,” she said. “We can offer you very competitive rates in—”
I repeated my request for pay-to-the-bearer gems. The hologram of the representative didn’t sigh, but gave the impression she wanted to; however presently, the little chute atop the machine ejected three glittering gems, while a slit in the machine spit out a receipt telling me the account in Liberte was now closed.
The hologram of the bank employee vanished with the suddenness of something turned off, and I opened the door to the booth and walked out.
Slipping the gems into the pocket of my pants, I started making a mental list of what I needed and where I could find it.
One thing was sure, either on Earth or in Eden. I wasn’t going to find the cheapest prices in the brightly lit streets, with the beautiful buildings and the shining shops. And I’d learned something about seacities, too. In seacities, the lower levels correlated with the cheaper properties and the less expensive shops.
I ambled to an area where there were stairs down, then took them. I needed a broomer suit, not expensive but good, because I intended to fly at high altitude and fast, and the cheaper suits might not be well insulated enough to prevent my losing appendages. I probably had enough money for a flyer, but it seemed to me that if I took one, I’d be painting a huge target on myself. Much easier to see a flyer land. A broom could take advantage of any little bit of beach, or even, for that matter, go underwater, if needed.
What I was wearing would do for under the suit. I was still a little worried about sticking out, or being memorable, but assumed I’d pass more easily in my present clothes than if I had been properly attired and—
And I careened into someone, stepped back, started to apologize, and stopped. Something about her—not very clear, but remembered, sparked my memory. She didn’t look like anyone I knew, but there was something to the way she narrowed her eyes, to her expression that was familiar. Her eyes too were familiar. Very dark and intent.
It clicked suddenly and I remembered I had met her, but in passing. She was Martha Remy, Nat Remy’s twin sister, a head shorter than he was and with mousy brown hair instead of his pale blond crop, but the eyes were the same.
I had a moment of confusion, the unreasonable feeling that I was “caught,” and then I stopped myself taking a deep breath, and told myself I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was an adult, with adult autonomy. Lucius Keeva might not want to render Simon assistance and help, but that didn’t mean I was forbidden from doing it. It just meant that I was on my own.
So I smiled graciously—a thing I’d learned to do from-the-lips-out in all sorts of embarrassing situations with people who expected me to know how to behave on Earth—and said, “I beg your pardon,” as I started to walk around her.
She grabbed my wrist. I just stopped myself from breaking her arm. In Eden you don’t grab strangers, you just don’t. And if you attempt to do it, you might find your arm broken or worse, you might find yourself taken to a traditional court for compensation. Sure, among family or friends there’s touching, but you simply don’t physically restrain someone you’ve barely been introduced to. And I was faster, stronger. Which is why I didn’t break her arm. You didn’t hurt normal people. I’d learned that early enough.
My checking of my own movement must have been noticeable because she took a little step back, startled. “You must let me talk to you,” she said. It was all in a rush, as though it came out impelled by some violent emotion. “You must. Luce is going to send you in there and—”
“The Good—Lieutenant Colonel Keeva is not sending me anywhere,” I said. “He has told me he’ll give what help he can, but in fact he can give no help, so I’m free to stay and will be sheltered but there’s no help for Simon.”
She stomped her foot, hard. “That,” she said, “is just what I mean. He’s sending you in there with no help at all, and you can’t go. You just can’t. If you do, you’ll end up dead, and Simon will end up dead and it won’t do anyone any good.”
I stared at her. “Something wrong with your hearing?” I asked. I rarely allowed myself to be rude. It’s an expensive luxury. But talking to Martha Remy was like howling at a hurricane. “He’s not sending me anywhere. He’s not interested. I can please myself and do what I wish.”
She narrowed her eyes, but not at me, more like she was trying to sort through something. My rudeness glanced off her as though she had an invisible shield. “That’s how he’d do it. Luce, I mean. Oh, I don’t want you to think badly of him. I rather like him, in a way, which is good since I think he’s permanently attached to our family through Nat—but that’s how he does things. He no longer has any power, objectively. He never had any power, in a way, because before his father died, he had none, but the thing is, he’s learned to get people to do what he wants. He wants you to go to Liberte and rescue Simon. And he doesn’t want his fingerprints on it. But he’s being so clever that he’s stupid, because you’d just get killed.”
“That’s exactly what he said,” I said. “That it would be suicide.”
“Yes,” she nodded. “He would. But I don’t think he realized that he was exactly right. He’s not, you see, very worldly. Not really. You can’t be when your entire life was artificial, and you spent fourteen years away from all human beings.” She rubbed her fist under her nose, in a reflexive gesture that looked like something a young child would do. “He wouldn’t realize how you stick out, how odd you are.”
“Beg your pardon?” I asked, wondering if she were paying me back with rudeness for rudeness.
She looked at me, but I still got the impression she wasn’t seeing me. Not as Zen Sienna, not as a person she was talking to, but as a problem, a cipher, something to be calculated and weighed. “How could you not be?” she said. “You’re not from here. And you stick out all over.” She sighed, and seemed to focus on me, really focus on me for the first time. “Are you determined to go and rescue Simon, one way or another?”
“Yes,” I said. “I think I have to.” This was not the place to explain to her how I’d been raised with the idea that I owed normal humans service, nor the load of unspoken guilt in my mind because I couldn’t save the one normal human who meant the most to me. Len had trusted me, and all I could give him was death. I was not going to have another death on my conscience.
This time she was looking at me, looking into my eyes, evaluating me. She sighed. “Well, then,” she said. “You’re going to need Royce.”
“Who?”
“Royce Allard,” she said. “You’ll see.”