“But weapons are illegal,” Sandra Wong was saying. She was in one of the apartments—Conrad’s, apparently—standing primly while Conrad and Xmary, Eustace and Feck sprawled on the bed. A dozen of the kids, whom Xmary had identified as potential leaders, sat on the tables and chairs and floor, watching the exchange with interest. Sandra gestured at the small fax machine built into one of the walls. “This thing won’t even print them for you. And why should it?”
“Anything can be a weapon,” Feck pointed out reasonably. And Conrad had to smile, because Yinebeb Fecre—aka Feck the Facilitator—had improvised his way through more sudden skirmishes than Sandra could possibly imagine. Like Conrad, he had sent his share of bodies to the Cryoleum, and to the even more final crematorium of Barnard’s stellar furnace. “We could stage an impromptu golf tournament. I don’t know about you, but my aim with a golf ball is pretty good. I suspect our collective aim, with hundreds of golf balls, is even better.”
“But why would you do such a thing?” Sandra wanted to know.
“To stay alive?” Feck suggested.
“But your patterns have been safely archived. Everyone’s have. All you’d be doing is disturbing the crime scene, making it harder for the authorities to determine what happened.”
“We’re supposed to let them kill us?” Eustace Faxborn asked, more in confusion than genuine horror. “We’re supposed to trust our lives to a backup system that we haven’t personally tested? I’m sorry, miss, that’s nonsense.”
Eustace had spent virtually her entire life aboard Newhope, trusting nothing, testing everything, and fixing whatever she could. She was a no-nonsense kind of gal; when their nav solutions were corrupted and they’d suddenly realized they were drifting into a dust shoal, she’d hardly batted an eye. When the nav lasers were overwhelmed, and then damaged, and then ground to dust themselves, she’d shrugged and run diagnostics on the ertial shield. And when the ship was holed and tumbled and coming apart, she’d simply called out, “Cryo tubes,” because that was the final backup. When all else fails, leave a good-looking corpse.
“There’s no law against self-defense,” Xmary told Sandra Wong. “I looked it up. In fact, under maritime law, which applies here, you’re even allowed to defend a stranger’s life ‘with all necessary force and means.’”
“But that’s crazy,” Sandra said. Like Eustace, she seemed more perplexed than upset at the misunderstanding. “I think each one of you needs to consult with your own caseworker and hash out an activity path that leads away from violence.”
Xmary was about to object, but really, Sandra Wong was the ranking authority here. And while Conrad had no particular awe for authority—he’d led his share of mutinies and rebellions over the years—he did at least know enough to work with them, until such time as you were working against them.
“That’s probably wise,” he said to Sandra, and was satisfied with the surprise on her face. “Could I trouble you to send for them? We have no intention of breaking the letter or spirit of the law; we just want to present our enemies with a discouraging target.”
He sat up and looked at the kids assembled here, feeling for a moment that he could barely tell them apart. Here in the Queendom, modifying your mind or body required an alteration permit, and those were hard to get. As a result, these were some of the purest humans he could recall ever seeing.
It was too bad, in a way; Conrad was used to reading people’s character in their bodyforms. Troll? Centaur? Self-created jumble of anatomical talents and handicaps? Gorgeous human of near-mathematical perfection? Here they were all just kids, and to the extent he could read them at all, it was in their clothing and posture, their coloration and adornment, their facial expressions and manners of speech. And these things were easily changed, easily imitated. They didn’t require the bodily commitment that even, say, backward-bending knees would require.
More or less at random, he singled out one of the young men seated on the table. Like many of his fellows, the kid was shirtless—clad only in a pair of loose trousers and a thrice-looped wellgold necklace that flashed improbably in the room’s dim light. But his skin was chlorophyll green, lightly striped with darker tones, and Conrad liked that, taking it as a sign of personality.
“You,” he said, “what’s your name?”
“Raoul Handsome Green,” the kid answered.
“Handsome Green? Really?”
“Yes, sir. That’s the name my parents gave me.”
“Hmm. Good one. And when did they give it to you? How old are you?”
“Fifty-one, sir.”
“Do you have a specialty?”
“I do. I’m an art appreciator. Mostly Late Modern photography, although I admire the painting and sculpture of that period as well.”
“Hmm. I see. But you have other skills, right? Can you swim?”
“Yes.”
“Hold your breath?”
“Sure. For five minutes, maybe… I dunno, maybe six or seven minutes.”
“Really? Good,” Conrad said. “Very good. Why don’t you find some other swimmers and go print up some gill-diving gear? If we’re attacked, I’ll bet you four-to-one it comes from underneath.”
Raoul Handsome Green had no response to that.
“Is something wrong?” Conrad asked him.
At least Raoul’s face was expressive; his look combined the sullenness of a frown, the helplessness of a shrug, and the pointed amusement of a smirk. “I don’t know how to do those things, sir. Who do you think I am? Who do you think you are? We don’t become interstellar heroes just because you walk into a room.”
There were scattered sniggers at this from the other kids.
“You’re all staying here illegally,” Feck pointed out, fluttering his hand in annoyance. “What I would say is, who’s taking care of you if not yourself?”
“There are libraries here,” Conrad said, “right? You can pick up a block of wellstone and start asking questions. They still teach that in the schools, I assume? Research?”
Raoul shrugged. He wasn’t going to commit to an answer one way or the other.
“Anyone else?” Conrad tried.
It went on like that for a while, and Conrad eventually decided there were three separate problems here. First there was the obvious ignorance of these people. He found this personally disgusting and offensive—how could they look themselves in the mirror?—but in all fairness they simply had no practical experience. Doing anything. Nor did they need any in the eternal lives the Queendom had mapped out for them.
They were drowning in knowledge, but actually absorbing some, actually learning a skill, was something they did for amusement, not for money or survival. Their minds simply didn’t work that way. Of course, they’d all been born on Earth. If this conversation were taking place in a Lunar dome or asteroid warren, a planette or a spin-gee city in interplanetary space, he might have better luck. Presumably, ignorance could still be fatal in places like that, and would be discouraged.
Secondly, though, there was the problem of authority. Conrad and Xmary didn’t have any. They had surprised the crowd with their leaping and prancing, and yes, their status as returning star voyagers did carry a certain shock value. These kids had never met anyone like them; nobody had. They were clearly impressed. But it didn’t mean they would listen.
And there was a third problem which perhaps overshadowed the other two.