Generation Warriors (11 page)

One of the men—the Lieutenant Governor, she noted as she was introduced and put her hand into his massive fist—had also opted for lightweight high fashion. And if there was anything sillier than a massive heavyworlder leg with a knot of hot pink and lime-green ribbons at the knee, she could not imagine it. The full shirt with voluminous sleeves made more sense, but those tight short pants! Lunzie controlled herself with an effort and moved on down the line. The Governor himself wore more conservative dark blue, the sort of coverall that she'd seen so much of since she arrived.

Refreshments covered two long tables angled across the upper corners of the great hall. Lunzie accepted a massive silver goblet of pale liquid from a servant and sipped it cautiously. She'd have to be careful, nurse it along, but she didn't think it was potent enough to drop her in her tracks. She took a cracker with a bit of something orange on it and two green nubbins that she hoped were candy, and passed on, smiling and nodding to the heavyworlders around her. Besides the medical team, the only lightweights were the FSP consul and a few consulate staff.

She recognized some of the heavyworlders: scientists and doctors from the medical center where they'd been working. These clumped together to talk shop, while the political guests—high government officials, members of the Diplo Parliament (which Lunzie had heard was firmly under the Governor's broad thumb)—did a great deal of "mingling."

The green nubbins turned out to be salty, not sweet, and the orange dollop on the cracker was not cheese at all, but some kind of fruit. Across the room a premonitory squawk from an elevated platform warned of music to come. Lunzie could not see over the taller shoulders around her. As the room filled, she felt more and more like a child who had sneaked into a grownup party.

"Lunzie!" That was the Lieutenant Governor, his wide white sleeves billowing, the ribbons at his knee jiggling. He took her free hand in his. "Let me introduce you to my niece, Colgara."

Colgara was not as tall as her uncle, but still taller than Lunzie, and built along the usual massive lines. Her pale yellow dress had rows of apricot ruffles down both sides and a flounce of apricot at the hem. She bowed over Lunzie's hand. The Lieutenant Governor went on, patting his niece on the shoulder.

"She wants to be a doctor, but of course that's just adolescent enthusiasm. She'll marry the Governor's son in a year, when he's back from..." His voice trailed away as someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned away, and the two men began to talk.

Lunzie smiled at the girl who towered over her. "So? You're interested in medicine?"

"Yes. I have done very well at my studies." Colgara swiped at the ruffles down the side of her dress, a nervous gesture that made her seem a true adolescent. "I—I wanted to come see your team at work, but you are too busy, I know. Uncle said you must not be bothered, and besides I am not to go to medical school." She glowered at that, clearly not through fighting for it. Lunzie was not sure how to handle this. The last thing she needed was to get involved in a family quarrel, particularly a family of this rank. But the girl looked so miserable.

"Perhaps you could do both," she said, "Go to school
and
marry?"

Colgara stared. "But I must have children. I couldn't go to school and have babies."

Lunzie chuckled. "People do," she said. "Happens all the time."

"Not here." Colgara lowered her voice. "You don't understand how it is with us. It's so difficult, with our genes and this environment."

Before Lunzie realized it, she was being treated to a blow-by-blow account of heavyworlder pregnancy: Colgara's mother's experience, and then her aunt's, and then her older sister's. It would have been interesting, somewhere else, but not at a formal reception, with all the gory details mingling with other overheard conversations about politics, agricultural production, light and heavy industry, trade relations. Finally, at great length, Colgara ended up with "So you see, I couldn't possibly go to medical school and have babies."

"I see your point," said Lunzie, wondering how to escape. The Lieutenant Governor had disappeared into a sea of tall heavy shoulders and broad backs. She saw no one she knew and no one she could claim a need to speak to.

"I've bored you, haven't I?" Colgara's voice was mournful; her lower lip stuck out in a pout.

Lunzie struggled for tact, and came up short. "Not really, I just..." She could not say,
just want to get away from you.

"I thought since you were a doctor you'd be interested in all the medical problems..."

"Well, I am, but..." Inspiration came. "You see, obstetrics is really not my field. I don't have the background to appreciate a lot of what you told me." That seemed to work; Colgara's pouting lower lip went back in place. "Most of my work is in occupational rehab. That's why I focus on making it possible to do the work you want to do. People always have reasons why they can't. We look for ways to make it possible."

Colgara nodded slowly, smiling now. Lunzie wasn't sure which of the things she'd said had done the trick, but at least the girl wasn't glowering at her. Colgara leaned closer.

"This is my first formal reception—I begged and begged Uncle, and he finally let me come because his wife's sick." Lunzie braced herself for another detailed medical recitation but fortunately Colgara was now on a different tack. "He insisted that I had to wear offworld styles. This is really my cousin Jayce's dress. I think it's awful but I suppose you're used to it."

"Not really." Lunzie didn't want to explain to this innocent that she'd been forty-three years in one suit of workclothes, coldsleeping longer than Colgara had been alive. "I have few formal clothes. Doctors generally don't have time to be social."

She could not resist looking around, hoping to find something—someone, anything—in that mass of shoulders and backs, to give her an excuse to move away.

"Want something more to eat?" asked Colgara. "I'm starved." Without waiting for Lunzie's response, she turned and headed for the refreshment tables.

Lunzie followed in her wake. At least on this side of the room, people were sitting down at tables and she could see around. Then Lunzie was caught up by the ornate center arrangement on the nearest table, pink and red whorls surrounded by flowers and fruit. Surely it wasn't? But her nose confirmed that it was and some was uncooked. She glanced at Colgara. The girl had reached across and was filling her plate with the whorls. Didn't she know? Or was it deliberate insult? Slightly nauseated by such a blatant display, Lunzie fastidiously took a few slices of some yellowish fruit, more crackers, and moved away.

"Is it true you lightweights can't eat meat?" asked Colgara. Her tone held no hidden contempt, only curiosity. Lunzie wondered how to answer
that
one.

"It's a philosophical viewpoint," she said finally. Colgara, her mouth stuffed with what had to be slices of meat, looked confused. Lunzie sighed, and said "We don't think it's right to eat creatures that might be sentient."

Colgara looked even more confused as she chewed and swallowed. "But... but muskies aren't people. They're animals and not even smart ones. They don't talk, or anything." She put another slice of meat into her mouth and talked through it. "Besides, we need the complex proteins. It's part of our adaptation."

Lunzie opened her mouth to say that any protein compound could be synthesized without the need to kill and eat sentient creatures, but realized it would do no good. She forced a smile. "My dear, it's a philosophical position, as I said. Enjoy your... uh... muskie."

She turned away and found herself face to face with a white-haired man whose great bulk had twisted with age, bringing his massive face almost down to her level. For a moment she simply saw him as he was, exceptionally old for a heavyworlder in high-G conditions, someone of obvious intelligence and wit (for his eyes twinkled at her), and then her memory retrieved his younger face.

"Zebara!"

It was half joy and half shock. She had halfway wanted to find him, had not wanted to search the databases and find that he'd died while she slept, had not wanted to see what was now before her: a vigorous man aged to weakness. He smiled, the same warm smile.

"Lunzie! I saw your name on the list, and hardly dared believe it was you. And then there you were on the cameras! I had to come down and see you."

Conflicting thoughts cluttered her mind. She wanted to ask him what he'd done in the years she'd lost. She wanted to tell him all that had happened to her. But she had no time for a long, leisurely chat, even if he'd been able to join her. She was here with two missions already, and at the moment, she had to concentrate on Sassinak's needs.

"You're looking surprisingly... well..." he was saying.

"Another forty-three years of coldsleep," said Lunzie, wondering why he didn't know already, when some of the heavyworlders certainly did. "And you, you look..."

"Old," said Zebara, chuckling. "Don't try to flatter me. I'm lucky to be alive but I've changed a lot. It's been an interesting life and I wish we had time to discuss it." Lunzie looked a question at him and one of his heavy eyebrows went up. "You know we don't, dear girl. And yes, I can condescend to you because I have
lived
those forty-three years." He reached out and took the plate from her hand. "Come here."

Lunzie looked around, seeing only the same roomful of massive bodies, none of the other lightweights in sight. Across the serving table, one of the servants was watching her with a smirk.

"Come on," said Zebara, with a touch of impatience. "You don't really think I'm going to rape you."

She didn't, of course. But she wished she could find someone, a lightweight on the Team, to let them know she was going with him. She managed not to flinch when Zebara took her wrist and led her along the serving table toward the short end of the hall. The servant was still smirking, grinning openly finally, as Zebara led her through a double doorway into a wide, carpeted passage. Here the crush was less, but still heavyworlder men and women walked by in both directions.

"Restrooms," said Zebara, still holding her wrist and leading her right along a side corridor, then left along another. He opened a door, and pulled Lunzie into a room lined with glass-fronted shelves. Broad, heavy couches clustered around a massive glass-topped table. "Here! Sit down and we'll have a chat,"

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Lunzie began, as Zebara turned to look around the room, his eyelids drooping. He waved a hand, which she took as a signal for silence.

The couch was too deep for her comfort; her feet did not reach the floor if she relaxed against the backrest. She felt like a child in an adult's room. Zebara walked around the room slowly, obviously intent on something Lunzie could neither see nor hear. She could not relax while he was so tense. Finally he sighed, shrugged, and came to sit beside her.

"We must take the chance. If anyone comes, Lunzie, pretend to be struggling with me. They'll understand
that.
They know I was fond of you, that I considered you a 'pet' lightweight. That is their term for it."

"But..."

"Don't argue that with me. We haven't time." He kept scanning the room. This close, Lunzie could recognize the slight tremor that age had imposed on him; she grieved for the man he had been. "I know about Ireta, though I didn't know beforehand, and couldn't have stopped it anyway. Please believe that."

"I do, of course. You aren't the kind..."

"I don't know what kind I am any more." That stopped her cold, not only the words but the deadly quiet tone of voice. "I am a heavyworlder, I am dying. Yes, within the year, they tell me, and nothing to be done. I've been luckier than most. My children and grandchildren are heavyworlders, who face the same constraints I do. So while I agree that mutiny is wrong, and piracy is wrong, that we must not make enemies of all you lightweights, I wish the Federation would face facts about us. We are not dumb animals, just as you say that the subhuman animals that all once ate are not 'dumb animals.' How can I convince my children that they should watch their children starve, just to preserve the sensitivities, the 'philosophical viewpoint' of those who don't
need
meat but do want our strength to serve them?"

Shaken, Lunzie could only stare at him. She had been so sure, for so long, that Zebara was the best example of a good heavyworlder: trustworthy, idealistic, selfless. Had she been wrong?

"You didn't mistake me," Zebara said, as if she'd spoken aloud. Was her expression that obvious? But he wasn't really looking at her; he was staring across the room. "Back then, I was what you saw. I tried! You can't know how hard, to change others to my viewpoint. But you don't know what else I've seen since, while you were sleeping the years away. I don't want war, Lunzie, as much because my people would lose it as because I think it is wrong." He sighed, heavily, and patted her arm as a grandfather might pat a child. "And I don't like being that way. I don't like thinking that way."

"I'm sorry," said Lunzie. It was all she could think of. She had trusted Zebara; he had been a good man. If something had changed him, it must have been a powerful force. She let herself think it might have convinced her if she'd been exposed to it.

"No,
I'm
sorry," said Zebara, smiling directly at her again. "I often wished to talk with you, share my feelings. You would have understood and helped me stay true to my ideals. So here I've poisoned our meeting, a meeting I dreamed of, with my doubts and senile fears, and you're sitting there vibrating like a harp-string, afraid of me. And no wonder. I always knew you were a brave woman, but to come to Diplo when you'd had such vicious treatment from heavyworlders? That's incredible, Lunzie."

"You taught me that all heavyworlders were not alike," said Lunzie, managing a smile in return.

He mimed a flinch and grinned. "A palpable hit! My dear, if trusting me let you be hurt by others, I'm sorry indeed. But if you mean that it helped you gather courage to come here and help our people, after what you'd been through, I'm flattered." His face sobered. "But seriously, I need your help on something, and it may be dangerous."