“I’m not sure what…”
“I mean did Rostov have some kind of final say on mission-critical decisions?”
“No.” Arkady grimaced. “The Aziz A’s did.” That had been the first fatal error the joint steering committee had inflicted on them.
“And what’s the communications lag between Novalis and the nearest Bose-Einstein relay?”
Arkady looked at Moshe, thought about lying, and decided it wasn’t worth it. “Six hundred and twelve days if you hit the short trajectory launch window.”
“Which would mean the closest BE-relay has to be…let’s see, somewhere offshore of Kurzet’s star? Don’t worry,” Moshe said in reply to Arkady’s stricken look. “I’m sure UNSec would care, but we don’t tell them everything. Actually, we don’t tell them shit unless they really lean on us. Still, I would have thought the Syndicates were seeding thicker out there.”
“Bose-Einstein relays cost money. And the kind of people who are willing to sell to the Syndicates want cash.”
“Thought you clones were making money hand over fist since peace broke out.”
“Not BE-relay kind of money.”
Moshe acknowledged this truth with a rueful nod that made Arkady realize tech poverty must be a daily fact of life on Earth, just as it was in the Syndicates. “So you guys were real old-time explorers, huh? Alone in the Deep with no one on the other end of the comm but a two-year-gone ghost. What was supposed to happen if you ran into real-time trouble?”
“We had a tactical unit on ice we could wake up. If we had to.”
“And you were going to keep them under for three years plus travel time? Haven’t you people ever heard of fair labor practices?”
Arkady guessed this must be a joke, so he smiled.
“Seriously, though. Why didn’t you thaw them out as soon as things started to go sour?”
Arkady repressed a shudder. “You’ve never met tacticals.”
“Weren’t the Ahmeds tacticals?”
“The Ahmeds are A’s. Military, yes. But not tacticals.” Not by a long shot. And the fact that Moshe could confuse the two things suddenly seemed like a measure of the profound hopelessness of ever coming to an understanding with humans.
Moshe must have sensed Arkady’s dismay, because he backed off suddenly. When he spoke again his voice was casual, almost companionable.
“Do you mind if I ask a personal question? It’s silly, really. But let’s just say I’m curious.”
“Okay,” Arkady said cautiously, the memory of the last time he’d failed to answer one of Moshe’s little questions still throbbing in his gut.
“Why is Korchow so ugly? By Syndicate standards, I mean. By human standards he’s perfectly decent-looking.”
“Dishy,” Osnat drawled.
Arkady practically jumped out of his skin. When had she come in? And how in God’s name had she done it without his seeing her?
She looked like she’d just woken up. She’d swapped her civilian clothes for a faded but carefully ironed T-shirt, desert drab fatigues, and brown leather paratrooper’s boots. The boots were run-down at the heel, but they had that glassy sheen that can only be achieved by years of spit and parade wax. And the short sleeves of her T-shirt rode up over her biceps to reveal a tattoo on one arm that Arkady hadn’t seen before: a flying tiger, its bared fangs and unsheathed claws neatly framed by long-pinioned eagle’s wings.
“The Knowles A’s are meant to look human,” Arkady explained, speaking to both of them. “It makes their work easier.”
“But it must make life difficult for them back home.”
“No. They…they look the way they’re meant to look. A Knowles construct who looked any other way would be norm-deviant.”
Moshe laughed. “And what about you, Arkady? How do you norm out? You’re quite the pretty boy. Osnat’s been making calf eyes at you ever since she marched you through the airlock. Was Arkasha a pretty boy too? Or was he a deviant?”
“Arkasha’s nota deviant!”
“Then how come Korchow threw him in a euth ward? Because he tried to defect, like you? Let’s face it, Arkady, the only Syndicate constructs who defect to UN space are spies, perverts, and deviants. Which one was Arkasha? And which are you?”
But Arkady couldn’t answer. Moshe’s first sentence had raked through his mind and left it too raw and tattered to comprehend the rest.
“Who told you…how do you know that Arkasha’s in a renorming center?”
“Come on, Arkady. You know I can’t tell you that.”
“Then at least tell me how old the information is. You can tell me that, can’t you?”
“Our last news from your side of the Line is about a month old.”
“Then we have to hurry,” Arkady said urgently. “You have to make up your minds fast.”
“Why? It’s not like Arkasha has a date with the hangman. All he has to do is act normal and he’s out. And even if he can’t do that…well, what about that famous poet, what’s his name? People can sit on the euth wards for years.”
“Arkasha won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because he told me if he was ever sent for renorming again he’d kill himself.”
Moshe made a sceptical face. “Very convenient. I start to balk and you pull a potential suicide out of your hat to make sure I gulp down the bait without taking the time to look at it too closely. Nicely done…for an amateur.”
“I’m not making it up! And I wasn’t ordered here either, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“Don’t play word games with me, Arkady. You people don’t have to be ordered to throw away your lives. That’s why you’re the next step on the evolutionary ladder, isn’t that right? That’s why you’re going to wipe us out and usher in a brave new world without humans.”
“We don’t want to wipe you out,” Arkady whispered. “We just want to be left alone.”
Moshe stood up, circled the room, went to the porthole, and stared out at the sharp silver night. “Did you fight in the war, Arkady?”
No need to say which war. The struggle between the UN and the Syndicates had subsided to a lethal simmer, but it was still the axis along which every other conflict lined up. Even on lonely backward Earth.
“I was too young.”
“Too young to remember it, or just too young to fight in it?”
Visions of burnt-out crèches. Visions of the once-vibrant rings of ZhangSyndicate gutted to hard vac. Visions of shooting stars that were dying ships and pilots…but, hush, don’t tell the crèchelings. “Just too young to fight,” he said at last.
Arkady had been six when the shooting started. The official fighting between the UN and Syndicate armies had been bloody beyond the imagination of a spacefaring age, but the riots had been worse. Posthuman populations all along the Periphery had revolted, whether because they supported the Breakaway or merely because it thinned out the omnipresent UN Peacekeepers enough for them to make a bid for their own independence. The UN had met violence with violence, and Peacekeepers had fired on demonstrating crowds in eight of the fifteen trusteeships. The shootings touched off riots throughout the Periphery, forcing the UN to fight a war on two fronts…a war that many people had come to see not as a political conflict but as a struggle to the death between two species battling for possession of the same ecological niche.
Arkady eyed Moshe, taking in the clever resolute face, the thin yet strong body. “Did youfight in the War for Independence?”
“If you’re going to talk about it to humans, you might want to consider calling it something else. But no, I didn’t. Earthers aren’t required to make troop contributions for off-world Peacekeeping missions.” Moshe sat down again and leaned forward to stare at Arkady. “But I saw the war on the evening spins. You fought like ants. You died and died and died until the Peacekeepers had nervous breakdowns from having to shoot so many of you. What do your officers threaten you with to make you fight like that?”
“We have no officers.”