A Door Into Ocean (39 page)

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Authors: Joan Slonczewski

BOOK: A Door Into Ocean
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“Usha,” Siderite asked, “how can you hope for mercy from the Guard, after all that has happened?”
Usha frowned over the Valan words. “I'm not sure what ‘mercy' is, but sharing is what we want. Sharing works something like this: Think of those living molecules which you know so well. As molecules grow colder, very cold, fewer levels of energy remain that can bridge the
barrier between them. But no matter how cold it gets, molecules never lose the lowest level, the zero-point energy. At zero point, they tunnel through the barrier to share electrons. Sharing between souls works like that; there is always a last door to tunnel through.”
Siderite might have known what Usha was getting at, but Spinel had only vaguely heard of “energy levels,” in atoms of stone where they absorbed light and spat it out again in colors. He scratched his toe on the raft and wished that Usha knew as much about stone atoms as she did about “living” ones. Then maybe he would get less trouble for his starstone.
“A last door,” Siderite repeated to himself. “Do you realize that the Commander now has a ‘last chance' policy? That is, it's your last chance to give up before you all die.”
“Each of us dies someday,” Usha said. “Like most children, Valans tend to forget this.”
Siderite opened his mouth to add something, then changed his mind and switched tongues. “Usha, we must share parting. Many thanks for all the learning we have shared; but it must end, before this learning can be used against you.”
Usha nodded. “Perhaps that is best. Some learning is too dangerous for children. But you could still stay with us, and learn whitetrance, and take a selfname.”
“And end as Nisi did?”
For long minutes they contemplated each other, then Siderite turned and plodded heavily back toward his tent.
Spinel watched in dismay. I won't end like Nisi, he insisted to himself. Yet how can I know what I'll do when the soldiers come for me, or for Lystra.
AT HEADQUARTERS EVERYTHING was under control. Siderite's plague cure had done the trick, quarantine was lifted, and most of the troublesome Iridians and Dolomites had been sent home, replaced by Sards. On the home front, news of the attack had ignited public sentiment. Talion's councilors called for a stunning counterattack: “Boil off their ocean,” said one. In fact, twenty Sardish divisions had been promised, of which eight had already arrived.
There were enough troops and submarines now to cover every woman and child on every raft, around the clock. Once the new regime settled in, every raft would become a prison.
Of course, it was ridiculous to keep a hundred thousand troops to guard a prison camp. Realgar's staff was devising a plan to concentrate the natives in a more convenient facility, once their spirits were broken. That was bound to happen, sooner or later; around the planet, hundreds were dying daily, just for getting caught away from their home rafts. The Sardish machine was in control.
After the public executions on Raia-el, two prisoners had been taken, of whom one had died in whitetrance the first night. So much for the future guerrilla leader of Shora. Protector Merwen, however, was still alive. Realgar had her put on critical life support and made Doctor Nathan personally responsible for her survival.
Within a week of the new regime, a response developed, if one could call it that. Each day, two or three natives from one of the Per-elion rafts would swim out to Headquarters, from deep underwater to postpone detection until they climbed onto the deck to be gunned down. Their motive would have been opaque, except for the clickfly missives that spread their purpose everywhere. They intended, quite simply, to convince the soldiers to stop killing and go home.
Realgar started to laugh but caught himself. Whatever else Sharers were, they were not stupid. He had to watch out for their ways of seduction and stamp out the first signs. At least his Sardish troops would not put up with nonsense.
Still, it was such a murky business to deal with Sharers. Even Berenice had barely begun to figure them out. Berenice remained under guard at Satellite Amber, available for interrogation, though Realgar
had persuaded himself that Jade would have little to gain from it. Berenice …
“You know, Jade,” he reflected, “if she had not pulled that trick last week, we'd be back in Iridis by now.”
Jade shrugged. “As I see it, she only saved us the trouble of staging an incident.”
Perhaps Jade was right. It would have saved time and lives if he had staged an incident at the start. At any rate, he was back on course, with a corps of Sards behind him. Nothing could stop him now.
 
Siderite asked to see the general, for the first time since the crackdown. Realgar could guess what was coming. It was time to pull out the diplomatic stops again.
“You're looking well, Doctor,” Realgar told him, though Siderite had perversely kept a purple cast to his skin, long after his curative formula had been adopted by the entire Valan corps. Siderite accepted the chair that slid up from the floor. “Your recent work is remarkable. I'm greatly impressed.” That is, Doctor Nathan was impressed. Realgar himself comprehended less and less of Siderite's findings, but he considered this a sign of scientific progress. “So tell me, what can I do for you?”
Siderite cleared his throat. “General, I regret to inform you that I am resigning as Research Director of Operation Amethyst.”
Realgar was angry at first, then just annoyed. “Siderite, I'm as sorry as you are about the recent turn of events, but what can I do?”
“You agreed to pull out.”
“Circumstances have changed, beyond my control. Now tell me, Siderite, is Usha stalling again? Does she refuse to—”
“No.” After that firm word, Siderite added, “I find present conditions intolerable for my work.”
“Indeed.” It was clear that Siderite had let the natives seduce him, just as Berenice had. This time Realgar would come down hard. “You're here to do a job, Doctor, not to set conditions. You will stay here and do it, until you're discharged.” He paused. “Or stay here and not do it, and suffer the consequences.”
Siderite's gaze defocused as he stretched back in his chair. “Circumstances have changed, have they,” he muttered and clasped his hands behind his head. “Beyond your control, and mine. Who controls them, I wonder?”
Realgar's hands tensed on his desk. “What are you getting at?”
“General, have you noticed how often the natives call us ‘sick' 01 even ‘living dead'?”
“What of it?”
Siderite stared up at the ceiling, then down at his toes. “Just speculation, of course, but—”
“
Enough speculation
.” Realgar paused, regretting the lapse. Somehow this pudgy civilian could touch his nerve every time.
“Very well, sir. Am I dismissed?”
“No.”
With a shrug Siderite sat up. “Call it a thought experiment. Let us suppose that you, sir, are an immensely powerful entity, powerful as a Torran Envoy, for example. You face a pair of planets isolated in space. One of the pair is familiar, predictable, snug under your thumb, so long as you snuff out a city once in a while. The other is unknown and uncontrollable, with potentially lethal powers. What action do you take?”
Realgar said carefully, “The danger is not immediate.”
“For the sake of argument, let's assume the opposite.”
Realgar showed no outward sign, but a wall of denial was crashing down. If he went on, it was to admit that his worst fear might come true. “Send a deathship from Torr,” he said, barely moving his lips.
“As a general, yes, you would do that. But a Torran Envoy is a statesman as well as a general, and even a scientist too.”
“A statesman would at the very least have to quarantine the planet, isolate the contagion before destroying it.”
“But Shora is isolated. Except for Valedon. What would the scientist do?”
“What would you do?” Realgar asked ironically.
“I'd set up an experiment, of course. I wouldn't want to destroy the people until I had analyzed their powers and acquired them for myself. So, put them in a test tube with the ‘reference' planet, Valedon, boil them up together, and check back after ten years.”
Realgar's thoughts raced. “Do you dare to say Malachite lied to us?”
Siderite shrugged noncommittally. “It is standard practice to mislead experimental subjects so that they can't prejudice the results.”
“Where's your evidence to back this up?”
“Only my own estimate of Sharer abilities. And the ‘Purple Plague,' of course.”
“Sharers themselves carry breathmicrobes,” said Realgar. “They don't consider it a plague.”
“And it's about time you realized that. Sharers never take
any
action toward you which they would not gladly accept for themselves.”
This turn of logic confused him. “If they can make lethal strains, why don't they use them to retaliate?”
“They retaliate, in their own way. Why else were you all set to pull out, last week?”
Realgar frowned. “Because they're a damned nuisance, that's why. Off the record, they're not worth wasting good money and troops on.”
“And why is that? Bloodless ‘invasions,' fraternization with troops, ‘haunting' Dolomites—those natives work hard at being a nuisance. Alternative methods: alternatives to killing. Now, what sort of people are likely to develop methods of confrontation which exclude violence?”
“People who have no weapons.”
Siderite waved an impatient hand. “The first tools man invented were knives and arrows. Think again.”
Who were the Sharers? Vestigial Primes, whose empire had collapsed centuries ago. Some of the dead planets were radioactive, others not, though all were shunned today. Except Shora. “A people whose weapons are too deadly to be used.”
“Quite possibly.” Siderite was vexingly offhand.
Realgar shook himself. “It's absurd. If Malachite had known that, he would have blasted the planet on sight.”
“Not if he wants it badly enough. Though it's true, the Patriarch has tended to steer clear of advanced life-science: it's too hard to control, as I keep telling you. You can't just snoop around with a Geiger counter to check what's going on.” Siderite leaned forward and rubbed his hands together. “Now comes the ‘living dead' part. Suppose that Sharers take our threats seriously. They could spread an infection which would lie dormant within us for years, only to mushroom into disease and wipe us out—unless Sharers are still around to halt it. Or the latency period could be generations; then we'll live, but our children's children will share their extinction.”
Alive, with his grandchildren doomed? Realgar's flesh crawled as his
worst fears multiplied. “Impossible,” he barked. “If natives could do that to us, then—then why didn't they get rid of seaswallowers and fleshborers long ago?”
“Those are too useful. Swallowers keep the raft population in check, so the ocean doesn't turn into a swamp. Fleshborers keep down the swallowers. And both take their toll of Sharers, whose numbers remain level without an overload of oldsters.”
Realgar blinked. “They really think like that?”
“Sharers see themselves as part of the web. Every creature has its niche, its function, but what are we trollheads good for?”
Now Realgar saw Merwen's challenge in a new light.
When none are left to die
… . Merwen had warned him of a fear that would not die with the last of the Sharers. “Why in Torr's name would Malachite want us to provoke them?” he wondered.
“The experiment, remember. Force their hand. Try to make them show what they can do—now, not a generation from now.”
“To loyal Valan citizens.” Realgar looked hard at Siderite. “You realize, of course, that you speak treason.”
“I was waiting for that.” Siderite sighed. “You always end up calling me a traitor.”
“This time I'm serious. I'll turn you over to Jade.”
For a moment Siderite looked faint, then his eyelids fluttered and he relaxed. “Yes, it had to come to that. A bearer of bad news, and all that. A fool shares gold with a stranger. What of it? I've nothing to hide.”
Already Realgar was thinking that even if Siderite were on the level, Realgar himself could not know how valid his speculations were. Only Sharers knew. Merwen knew. He would wrest the truth from her. He had won the first round by getting her to speak at all. Once talking, Sharers were not very good at deception.
WHEN MERWEN FIRST arrived, she had been thrown into a cramped, dry prison cell, with no light, no water, and no change to break the tedium except for the flames that rose ever higher in her feverish imagination. Then fire receded to leave a maelstrom of despair, swirling deeper than any she had ever known. To flee those sucking waters she passed into whitetrance and for the first time felt drawn to stay there. The physical universe left behind seemed one immense boulder, bigger even than the cliffs outside Spinel's home on Valedon, a rock of emptiness, a vacuum of life. Though somewhere a stone might yet have a star in it—perhaps every stone, if one looked hard enough. Merwen was tired of looking.
Still, there was that strand of life she had snatched from death, for herself and Yinevra. That silken strand tied her to Usha, and Lystra, and Spinel, with his tantalizing promise of hope. Merwen was far from giving that up yet.
She was rescued by Nathan, the primitive lifeshaper. Nathan's place was at least well ventilated, and amply lit with a cold white light. Salves were put to her peeling skin and edible food was shared. Curious odors passed her nose, some bitter, others fresh. Merwen was expected to lie on a platform of spongy material, disconcertingly raised off the floor so she had to remind herself not to roll off. One time she did get off and wandered among the bizarrely furnished rooms, but then the primitive lifeshapers were greatly upset, gesticulating quaintly with their limbs whose white drapery exaggerated every gesture.
Nathan warned her about the medical instruments, which she had not recognized as such. She tried to figure them out: boxes in rhomboid array, with lighted dots like scattered pearls; a shelf with a roll of loosewoven bleached material, next to a canister of long metal sticks with curved points.
“The boxes,” Nathan explained, “are intracorporal monitors to show what goes on inside you. On the shelf are surgical scalpels and bandages.”
Merwen was confused. “What is ‘surgical'?”
“For precise incision, to repair internal organs.”
“Cutting? To repair?” Merwen saw that he was serious; his forehead was wrinkled as deeply as the creases of cloth at his elbows. “Why not program a virus to tell the cells how to heal?”
Nathan looked away. “You don't use bandages either, do you.”
“Oh, yes, we do. A gash must be bound and contained, and then—” Her impatient fingers danced in the air. “You know. The kind of fungus that spreads a protective shield around the wound while secreting growth factors.”
“Siderite tells me.” Abruptly Nathan left the room. As for Merwen, she wondered if she might actually be safer cramped in the prison cell.
The next morning, Nathan told her she was to see Realgar again. Her pulse quickened; perhaps she could go home?
“Don't remove the electrodes,” Nathan reminded her, pointing to the bits of colored tape stuck to her head and chest, related somehow to the “intracorporal monitors.” “And please, Merwen, don't try anything … rash. If anything happens to you, it will go badly for me. Do you understand?”
So Nathan's life was yet another linked to hers. Merwen squeezed her eyes shut against anguish. “I will try not to earn my name.”
In the office, Merwen sat herself down at the side, on the soft carpet with its fantastical animal shapes. She looked up at Realgar. He sat in a chair apart from the desk, so that he faced her unhidden except by his clothing. His legs were crossed above the knee, and a wide boot jutted at an angle. Merwen could not help thinking of long toes bound up excruciatingly inside, although she knew that Valans had stunted toes. She forced herself to look farther up, into his blue eyes as distant as polar icecaps. Distant, but perhaps not unreachable.
“Greetings, Protector,” Realgar said. “Will you not have a chair?”
Annoyed, Merwen asked him, “Why do you call me that, ‘Protector'?” The unearned title had pricked at her for a long time.
“Are you not the Protector of Shora?”
“You say that I am.” Merwen paused. “I share protection as far as I can, as does any Sharer. My proper selfname is Impatient One. It is your privilege to remind me of this failing.”
“Very well, Impatient One. Why do you never sit on the chair?”
Merwen glanced aside to the molded seat that extended from the floor. “It is wise to sit as close as possible to the ocean, to be reminded
of Her wisdom. It is impolite to sit on a work stool, unless there is manual work to be shared: spinning or carding, perhaps.”
“Among Valans, Impatient One, it is never polite to sit on the floor.”
If this Valan would share words better, Merwen thought, she might as well sit on the chair. She got up and lowered herself into it, feeling highly selfconscious. Her toes twitched nervously, and her fingers itched to hold a spindle or the oars of a boat.
Realgar asked conversationally, “Impatient One, why is it that you have remained alive, whereas Yinevra has not?”
Yinevra. Gone after the others, spindrift on the wind. Bright streaks crossed her retina, and Merwen found herself sitting down on the hard floor, her head clearing as blood rushed back.
My next day in Valan hands will be my last
, Yinevra had said.
“Why, Impatient One? Are you afraid of death?”
“I swim a different stream. Do you suppose that all Sharers think alike, just because we smell the same when we burn?”
“Of course not. Now you're talking sense, Merwen. You know what's at stake better than most of your sisters do. Why don't you accept the Patriarch and live in peace? Hundreds of diverse planets have accepted his rule. Pay taxes, a mere token for people of common means, and follow some basic regulations, and in return you earn the universal protection of the Patriarch.”
“Protection from what?”
“From yourselves. From the irrational forces which inevitably corrupt all peoples. And from foreign invaders like myself.”
“I doubt I can protect this Patriarch from you, and from Sharers there is no need. I tried to share this with Malachite the Dead One. Malachite was afraid, but we refuse to share that fear.”
Realgar's hand stilled, though his face stayed calm. “And why was Malachite afraid? What have you done to us?”
“What have we done?” Merwen echoed. “We try to share healing.” And failed, dismally.
“And will the next generation of Valans die out, from a disease you spread among us?”
“You are dying already inside, from the sickness you call ‘killing.' If you would only stop trying to share death, which can't be done, then we could help you learn to share life. Then you wouldn't need fear any more.”
Realgar seemed caught up in his own thoughts, as he rose from his chair and paced across the room, then back, his boots clicking on the floor.
“Do you trust this Malachite so much?” Merwen asked. “Malachite told us that Valans would come, to share learning and pain. Pain there has been in abundance, but when will the learning begin?”
Realgar stopped in midstride. “What was that? ‘Share learning'—is that what the Envoy told you?”
“I have shared as hard as I can, but it takes two to try.”
“Then you must learn from us,” Realgar said slowly. “What would become of Sharers if we taught you to kill?”
Merwen blinked. At first she did not understand; then she realized what he must have meant. “We would be like animals again.” She nearly added, Like you.
“Humans are animals, with animal needs.”
“Humans are that, and more. Humans are aware of the universe, and self-aware.”
“You still have to survive. Your sisters are dying hundreds every day. They break our rules, swim to our boats and our bases, and they are executed. How can you let this go on?”
“My sisters know what they are doing.” But she was thinking,
Hundreds hastened
. Who would house the next souls to be born?
“You know that we will go on killing your sisters, until you obey—or until you kill us.”
This was what Nisi had learned from her lovesharer. Merwen was struck with a rage so full that some minutes passed before she could speak. She flexed her swollen tongue and said in a monotone, “If we kill, we lose our will to choose, our shared protection of Shora, our ability to shape life. Our humanity would slip away, beyond even your own.” Her patience had evaporated, and she let her fingers bleach. Fortunately Realgar put up no fuss but let Nathan lead her away. As she lay again upon the elevated sleeping-place, she stared numbly past the primitive medical implements, and her eyes defocused as she thought, If only I had died many years before at the hand of Virien rather than live to see Shora die a slow death.
And yet, this Valan wordweaver had left Merwen her life once for a word; and of words, Merwen had plenty more. Alerted, now, she would not lose patience again.

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