“I see.” Vida steepled her fingers. “I suppose I may have. So much has happened since, it’s hard to recall exactly what I thought I was doing. Damage control for Fleet and family, but you’re right—I wasn’t particularly concerned with what happened to your people.”
“What I see,” Heris said, “in many Rejuvenants—civilian and military—is a kind of detachment from the present, and particularly from the unrejuvenated. They’re ephemerals; they don’t really matter unless they interfere in a plan, in which case they’re expendable.”
Vida frowned. “I don’t think that’s how I look at them, but—I can see where it looks like that.”
“If it’s the effect, what matters the intent?” That old saw came easily to Heris’s tongue; Vida’s frown became a fixed scowl.
“You know the dangers in inferring intent from effect—”
“And also the dangers of not doing so. But this is idle fencing, and what I need to know is whether you will reexamine your bias against Suiza and recognize the asset she is to us now.”
“Ignore the long view?”
“No. But prioritize. We have an ongoing mutiny; we have external enemies. We need every good officer we have, and she is one.”
“Was one,” Vida said. She leaned back in her chair. “Heris, she’s not on the list now; she thinks she was cashiered on my orders, and she’s now disappeared. The last we know is that she boarded a free trader, the Terakian Fortune. While that ship has a flight plan, it may or may not adhere to it.”
Heris said, through clenched teeth. “You cashiered her?”
“No, she thinks I cashiered her. The orders were presented as from Admiral Serrano. She thinks I am that Admiral Serrano.”
“And you claim you’re not?” Heris said.
“I’m not. Thanks to the wholesale idiocy of Hobart Conselline, we now have a confusion of admirals Serrano: those of us who were put on the shelf, those who were promoted as a result, and the total—both older and newer admirals—when we older ones came back to active duty. We Serranos didn’t pick up as many stars as other families—Conselline’s never favored Serranos—but there are at least five and perhaps as many as eight. Could be even more. I had no reason to ask for a list before someone ordered Suiza out, and what with the mutiny and the chaos at headquarters, I haven’t heard back from Personnel. I’m assuming one of them, hearing about my quarrel with Suiza, decided to curry favor by dumping her.”
“Or someone forged the name, and it was believable because your quarrel was known,” Heris said. She looked at her aunt. “Damn—I was ready to be really angry with you for a very long time.”
“I know.” Vida sighed. “If we hadn’t been interrupted . . . if there’d been time to talk it over, Suiza could probably have convinced me to at least consider what she was talking about. I know—objectively I know—that she’s not a social-climbing sneak. I realize that my rage then makes no sense now, anyway. If treachery were actually heritable, I can’t think of anyone I’d trust, including myself. That’s why I got in touch with her family, after she married Barin . . .”
“You did what?”
“I sent word to them about the marriage. I didn’t know what she’d told them about the quarrel, so I mentioned it and said I was convinced whatever it was could be worked out.”
“And?”
“And . . . that’s not their view at all.”
“What—that they’re guilty of all those heinous things, or that it can be worked out?”
Vida took a data cube out of the rack beside her desk and put it in the cube reader. “Take a look at this. Her family sent it.”
Heris looked at a picture of a young woman in a brilliantly colored costume.
“That’s the Landbride,” Vida said. “Look closely.” She touched the controls, and zoomed in to the face.
“Esmay Suiza?” Heris said.
“Yes. And now I know what a Landbride is.” Vida touched the controls again, and two fields came up, one clearly an old document—faded ink on some surface that had discolored, and one in crisp black print on white. “That’s the Landbride’s Charter, on the right, one of the oldest surviving documents on Altiplano. Suiza’s family provided the translation and typescript. You did know that our regulations, Fleet regulations, prohibited relationships and marriages with Altiplano Landbrides, didn’t you?”
“No,” Heris said, skimming down the closely-typed pages. The phrasing, even in translation, seemed archaic and stilted: “—and for the honor of the land, and the land’s health, she shall not be alienated from her own, for any cause whatever . . .”
“Before I read this, I’d have assumed it was the Altiplano mutiny . . . and maybe it was . . . but the duties of the Landbride are just not consistent with the duties of Fleet personnel.”
“It’s—primitive,” Heris said finally. Vida pursed her lips.
“I don’t think primitive’s quite right, though it is old. It’s far more complex than I thought, based on a sophisticated—though to me very odd—theology. And it is a theology, because they do seriously believe in the existence of one or more gods. I’m not entirely sure if the invocations imply multiples or not. They are, however, strict Ageists, though they don’t use the term.”
“Opposed to rejuvenation?”
“Yes. In any form, for any reason. Some of what they call the Old Believers were even opposed to regen tanks for bone fracture repair, and a few considered that no one should receive medical care past age sixty in their years—probably seventy Standard. They’re also committed to population control and consider free-birthers to be immoral.”
“So . . . you don’t think the Suizas are villains anymore?”
“I don’t think Esmay Suiza, or her father, are directly responsible for the massacre of our patrons. However, I do think there’s a problem with her marrying Barin, quite apart from what happened historically. She’s sworn, as a Landbride, to a religious duty that requires her to put the welfare of the land—the Suiza land, to be specific—above every other consideration.”
“But she wouldn’t—”
“It’s a conflict, Heris, however you look at it. Her oath to the Regular Space Service, the oath she swore when she accepted a commission, requires her to put the welfare of the service ahead of everything else. It’s clear to her family, and to me, that her Landbride oath conflicts. Her family is being criticized for letting their Landbride go offplanet.”
“Why did she take it, then?”
“The position passes from one Landbride to another by direct appointment—her great-grandmother had chosen her, for some reason, and didn’t change the appointment even after she left to join Fleet. When her great-grandmother died, she became the Landbride-elect automatically. And, since she was in some disgrace with Fleet at the time, she accepted it and went through the ritual.”
“Has she appointed a successor?”
“Her father thinks she’ll appoint a cousin of hers, a younger woman. But to transfer the duties from a living Landbride to another, they both have to be in the ceremony. Now she’s disappeared . . . Terakian & Sons are a respectable firm, and I’m sure she’ll show up somewhere, but I don’t know where.”
Heris thought a moment. “Wait—I can see why being Landbride is in conflict with being a Fleet officer, but not with being Barin’s wife.”
“The regulations,” Vida said. “Remember?”
Heris choked back Damn the fool regulations, and nodded. “They could be changed, surely?”
“When we’ve beaten back the mutiny and made sure the Benignity doesn’t come romping across the borders, nor the Bloodhorde pirates disrupt shipping, certainly. In the meantime . . . there’s every chance that Fleet will annul the marriage, and Barin will get a black mark in his record. As for Suiza . . . she’d get one too, if she were still in the system, but she’s not.”