Grimspace

Furthermore, those five class-P worlds? They’re the ones where I made first contact, but I can’t imagine myself going back to claim sons and daughters, taking them away to the sky. How in the hell can I rationalize that? Culture shock might kill them, let alone grimspace.

“I don’t think you grasp the scope of what Mair wanted to do,” March says then.

“So tell me.”

“We aren’t interested in spiriting away a couple adventurous souls here and there,” Saul explains. “We’re looking to relocate whole villages—we’ll cull them from remote areas where their disappearance simply goes unsolved. Certain anomalies in Old Terra history make me believe this may have occurred before. Ever heard of Roanoke?” I shake my head and he adds, “No matter. You needn’t examine all the evidence as I have. But this is why Gunnar-Dahlgren needs to be fixed to support a surge in population. We’re not simply starting an academy, although that’s part of it.”

“A colony of jumpers.”

It’s a mammoth undertaking. I don’t ask if they have transport ships. Surely they must have passenger freighters somewhere on this rock, if they’re serious. I don’t know how I feel about that. Part of me thinks any breeding experiment is doomed to failure, and Mary knows we’ve seen bad results from this kind of thing, time and again. Purpose becomes twisted, and even a scientist with the best intentions, like Doc, gets swept up in the trappings of godhood. People shouldn’t be pushed to mate to produce a certain type of child; I feel strongly about that.

“Nobody will be forced to do anything,” March says with a disgusted sigh. “Doc’s isolated something that the Corp never saw. He’s been going through medical records for years.” Which doesn’t quite explain how he found it, but maybe he’s simply smarter than the average Corp scientist. Given that they’re mostly bureaucrats these days, that hypothesis doesn’t stretch my imagination much. “So there’s another factor that determines how long someone can handle grimspace, and it’s tied to the genotype.”

He pauses, and we stare at each other. I feel as if he’s willing me to make a mental leap, like he’ll be disappointed in me if I can’t put it together on my own. Then it dawns on me, a feeling of astonishment and awe—sunrise on Ielos. I sat in the thermal rooms with Kai once, watching slow red-orange break of light refracted over the glaciers. That’s how I feel now.

“Not a bloodline,” I say slowly. “You’re looking to engineer a new species. You want human recruits from class-P worlds with strong J-gene strains. Alien DNA provides for longevity—compensates for burnout.”

March watches me, probably tracking my mental processes. He knows when I work it out. I dub that unknown factor the L-gene, whatever allows inhuman navigators to withstand grimspace better than we do. A number of alien races can sense the beacons, but many despise us for our conquistador attitude, and the rest consider us food.

I say it aloud for the benefit of the others. “You’re going to make something new from mingling alien and human DNA. I’m right, aren’t I?”

Dina crams the last of a sweetbread into her mouth and says through the crumbs, “Hey, you’re not as dumb as you look after all.”

Maybe I really was better off in my cell.

CHAPTER 16

So we’re going to Marakeq.

I wish I could say I enjoyed my time on Lachion, but with Lex and Keri growling like a pair of Anduvian ice otters in mating season, the rest of us just lay low. Barely, I manage to restrain a wince when I see that they’re hauling crates of the nutri-paste, presumably to replenish our stores.

Great. We’ll survive any emergency. We’ll just wish we hadn’t.

The morning of our departure, I run into Keri outside the training facility. I’ve spent a lot of time in there because it gets the blood pumping, and pure physical exertion means I don’t have to think. Something in her face tells me I’m not going to like what’s coming, and I brace myself instinctively. It’s a wonder she hasn’t confronted me before now; I feel responsible for a lot of her problems.

She doesn’t say hello, merely looking me up and down with an air of indefinable scorn. I know what she sees, a woman past her prime with burn scars raying out from the edges of my workout gear, but I don’t shift beneath the weight of her eyes. I just wait.

“I don’t like you,” she says at last. “But you’re necessary to bring my grandmother’s vision to fruition. Make no mistake, that’s the only reason you’re alive.”

A bitchy reply springs to my tongue, but I swallow it down. I started trouble on this planet without knowing the rules. If I’d made a habit of being that careless on other worlds, I’d have died long before now, and this time, her family paid the price for my unsteady impulses. So I owe her, and she’s entitled to hate me as much as she wants. Right now, I’m none too fond of myself, either. I have to look at myself in the mirror, knowing I lived where eighty-two died, one of whom was the man I loved. Not to mention the loss of Miriam Jocasta, a diplomat of incredible eloquence and grace; she had been instrumental in achieving peace during the Axis Wars. The woman was an icon, and I killed her. Maybe. From the line of their questioning, the Psychs had certainly been inclined to think so, at any rate.

Frag, I wish I could remember.

“You want to go a few rounds with me?” I blot away the sweat and head back to the training mat without waiting for an answer.

Since she was Mair’s pupil, she’ll probably kick my ass ten ways from sunrise, given she’s younger and faster and probably stronger, too. I’ll take whatever she dishes out, but I won’t hand it to her on a plate. She’ll enjoy my beating more if she works for it.

Her smile seems tight somehow, wicked with anticipation. “Gladly. And should there ever come a day when I need you no longer, I’ll see you dead.”

There’s no more talk after that. She positions herself in a half crouch that I’ve never seen before. No big surprise—my combat training was purely perfunctory, augmented by a propensity for starting trouble in spaceport bars. Mary, she’s fast. She’s clocked me between the eyes with the heel of her hand before I hardly register the movement, and while I’m reeling, she sweeps my legs out from under me.

I land hard on my back, exhaling with a huff, but I roll before she can smash her foot into my stomach. With a mental shrug, I grab her ankle and yank, thinking we’ll take this fight to the ground, but she executes a neat maneuver that breaks my hold. The girl is good. After that, I submit to my beating; my fighting is clumsy as hell compared to hers. Sweat pours off me in rivers by the time she seems satisfied, maybe an hour later. I’m aching in places where I didn’t even know I had muscles, and there’s a deep bruise forming where she kicked me in the hip.

“If you’d wanted to, you could have taken those Gunnars by yourself.”

She shakes her head. How I hate the fact that her perfect cheeks are simply flushed with a rosy glow. “I’d have needed Grandmother’s help, but it was the height of stupidity to fight in the open. There’s a reason we use ammunition that disables vehicles instead of causing bodily harm. There’s a reason we fight our battles inside, safely in the confines of the clan arena.”

“I didn’t know,” I say, humbled. “I’m sorry about your father. And your grandmother. As for seeing me dead, well. Give it time. This ten-jump journey might do the trick.”

She seems torn between pleasure in that prospect and chagrin. Finally, she responds, “I hope not, for we’ll still need you to head up our training academy when the program progresses to that point.”

“Essentially then, you came to tell me that you are resigned to working with me to honor your grandmother’s wishes.”

For a moment, there is something regal in her young face, the set of her shoulders. I can imagine condemned princesses facing down their executioners with the same blend of fatality and poise. Maybe I don’t entirely like Keri, but I respect her now.

And I think she knows that because a smile flickers at the edges of her mouth like a corrupt holo-file. “Kicking your ass was a nice bonus, though. I have too much business here to accompany you, but I wish you luck. Not that I think you’ll need it with March heading the expedition.”

Maybe she doesn’t intend it so, but that feels like a barb, so I answer, “Yeah. At least you’ll have Lex with you to get things done.”

Her sharp inhalation sounds like a hiss. Yeah, I know. I’m lucky she doesn’t punch me in the face again. I probably deserve another black eye, but I’ve never been good at the antiquated doctrine of turning the other cheek. Why give them the chance to hit you a second time? I say knock them out the first time they swing, a combative philosophy that probably explains my current situation.

But she surprises me by laughing. “Much as I hate the bastard, he does have a certain personal force.”

“He’s a mountain.”

“Has his own gravity,” Keri quips, and I realize we’re smiling at each other.

Life goes on whether we want it to or not. And laughter is a constant.

“Good luck rebuilding things,” I tell her. “Going to clean up, then go get a good seat in the rover. I want to see what it’s like all the way in back.”

“I wish…” She seems hesitant, and I pause, letting her assemble what she wants to say. “That is, Grandmother had all these ideas, tactics you were supposed to use, approaches for the different worlds. She’d done extensive research on culture, traditions, both primitive and alien…”

“That’s why she wanted to meet with me,” I guess aloud. “To go over this stuff before we set out.”

Keri nods. “But most of it was inside her head. Not long ago, she started to get suspicious of standard datapads and sys-terminals. She said the Corp could probably mine what you stored somehow or what you were searching for.”

Once I’d have dismissed that as the paranoid delusion of an old woman who’d missed a few too many antiaging treatments. Now I consider the prospect for a moment before allowing, “It’s possible. Do you have any of her research, at least? The info she unearthed regarding our target ten would save me retracing her steps.”

“I’ll give you her PA. Anything she stored would be in there. She wouldn’t use standard datapads or sys-terms any longer. Just a moment.”

Maybe five minutes later, Keri returns with a smooth silver sphere. I’ve seen these before, although I’ve never even held one. They’re ridiculously expensive, closed to any other system, and require three levels of encryption confirmation before they will relinquish their data.

“I hope you have her codes. Don’t know anybody who can hack one of these.”

She leans in and whispers.

“Thanks.” Nodding, I commit that to memory and pocket the device.

With a wave, I head off to the san-shower in my lodgings, which are substantially nicer than anywhere else I’ve stayed. There’s a sterile quality to any Corp quarters, regardless of locale, like they don’t want you to feel at home. It’s practical, choosing furnishings that are easy to clean and maintain with the constant rotation of crewmen in and out. But the end result remains unchanged; people don’t want to stay.