Heritage of Flight (38 page)

Shaking his head, he scrolled back and forward in the text. Here were the words of a man who had been guard and officer at one such trial: “The Nuremberg Tribunal established for once and for all what had never been established before—that a person who committed an unlawful criminal act, even if he had done so while occupying an official position, was still responsible personally for what he had done."

How must she have felt upon reading that line? There was no denying that Yeager and her associates felt personally responsible for the elimination of the Cynthians. He could hear that hoarse, matter-of-fact voice raised in outrage. “Elimination, Commissioner? That's a fine euphemism for murder, isn't it?"

He could dismiss this entire case as irregular. God knows, it was, and God knew even better, he wanted to. Or he could cast about to find extenuating circumstances, including the one Yeager and her colleagues had dismissed: they had been charged with the protection of a colony.

"What about it?” she had asked. “It doesn't matter that I must protect people, or that as an officer, my job is to obey orders. All lawful orders. I was a pilot, Commissioner. In a scramble, I could have taken out a ... Secess’ pilot,” Yeager paused, her eyes suddenly pained ... “assuming I was fast enough. That would have been all in a day's work. But there is a difference between that and exterminating the Cynthians. I
know
the difference. That's what makes me guilty."

Had
all the Cynthians been wiped out? The survey of this world was flawed—God knows, with every report Neave read, he realized that more and more fully. Already he had detached some of his younger crew to explore the continents that the colonists had lacked aircraft to visit. Would that matter?

"What if some Cynthians survive?” He had asked Pauli Yeager that when he visited her in the dome that she and Rafe Adams lived in, and that was now their “prison.” A prison including children, friends, visitors—and accomplices.

For a moment, hope flickered in Yeager's eyes, then subsided.

"We cannot know that,” she told him.

"In any case, does that matter?” countered the grizzled, barrel-chested man Neave had seen earlier talking with his daughter. “If we didn't kill them all, it was by the grace of God. Because we were desperate, and we might have tried. Probably would have tried. Besides, can you imagine looking at a Cynthian now, and knowing what we had done?"

"When we first planned the idea, when we first thought of it...” Rafe let his words trail off, and Pauli had shaken her head emphatically.

"We can never be free of it,” she said. “But I would like to"—she shrugged—"be clean again, if I can. To pay. To finish payment.” She shook her head. “After the last Cynthians died, I wanted to die too. I'm sorry, Rafe, but I did. It had nothing to do with you. But I didn't think I deserved to die, so I sentenced myself to life. Worse than that, I had to stay alive in such a way that the kids, all of them, would think of me as someone to admire. But it's over now, Commissioner. You're here, and I will not submit to this charade a moment longer."

Here it was in her report, that same awareness of guilt that made a genocide hanged centuries ago declare, “It will take Germany one thousand years to repay its guilt."

"It will take us forever,” Yeager had written in dark capital letters across the margin, “but is that any reason to avoid repayment or whine about its terms?"

Neave buried his head in his hands. He had not wanted authority, much less authority over a case that, if referred back to Earth as some damnable regulation or other must surely demand, could shred the fragile accord between Alliance and Secessionists—very well, they called themselves the Republic—as easily as he could shred Yeager's report. He had only to watch the faces of his crewmembers. Becker walked small these days, his desire to bury the whole wretched matter obvious to anyone who had ever sat in on negotiations. He had, Neave knew, a career to rehabilitate.

Just how far would
he
go to bury it? Neave wondered idly. There was no silence like the grave. And he knew Becker had a more pragmatic, therefore less ethical, bent than he.

He massaged his temples with long, well-cared for fingers so unlike those of the woman who had produced this damnable mess. Becker probably wouldn't go that far, but Neave had a legal—hell, he had an ethical—responsibility to make certain. Yeager and her friends were guarded by Earth crew, men and women he had chosen and could trust. Factions. Neave shook his head at his own action. Factions led to secrecy, to dissension; they
were
dissension. He schemed where he feared to persuade.

Becker wasn't the only one among his staff he didn't trust. There was also the woman from Abendstem, Elisabeth von Bulow. She had been some sort of minor governor there and had been chill in her criticisms of the colony. “Wallowing in sentimental guilt” and “democracy verging on the anarchic” were some of her milder observations.

What would von Bulow have made of some of the “governed” on Cynthia? Like the man ben Yehuda, a civilian engineer who had violently refused repatriation to his native Ararat just that afternoon. “I left Ararat because I felt angry and disgraced when it refused to accept my family. It seemed to me that I, not Ararat, was true to its reasons for existing. Now you ask me to return and ask them to accept me, a criminal? A genocide—on Ararat? Better they think we died in the war.” His eyes had been red and swollen, and he had covered them with his hands.

Have him watched
, Pauli Yeager had mouthed at Amory Neave. Prisoner and commander their roles might be, but he had obeyed.

And then there was the xenobotanist, Beneatha Angelou, who had shouted at Becker. “I'm not going to accuse myself,” she told him forthrightly. “I opposed killing the Cynthians. You can say that since I'm alive, I'm an accomplice; and I'll reply that that's unjust.” A minute afterward, her face softened remarkably. “I've got to say though, that if you try me with them, I'd be in good company. I've never known any better. Surely you have to take that into consideration too?"

All of them agreed, however: the children had to be shielded from the consequences of their elders’ acts. Granted, it was hard to see in the set jaws and angry eyes of people like Lohr and Ayelet the starved, feral “littlests” described in the colony's records, but ... but ... the children's welfare had remained the colony's chief concern.

Neave cast further for, ways out of this maze. What about a statute of limitations? The oldest Earth law on the books declared that there was no statute of limitations on genocide charges. The crime carried the death penalty. Now, that opened up possibilities. According to the rules governing courts-martial (at least as far as Neave's hasty study of them could confirm), all sentences involving the death penalty had to be referred offworld. To avoid the embarrassment of a trial, Neave could simply refuse to refer the case offworld. That would protect the fragile union that Earth, Alliance, and Secess’ now enjoyed. It would be logical, simple—but would it be just?

He had a good idea of how Yeager would react to the idea.

He sighed and had turned back to her report again when his desk communicator buzzed. With relief, he slapped the circuit open. It was his chief medical officer, temporarily stationed in the colony's crude medcenter.

"Commissioner, you'd better get over here."

"Dr. Pryor's dying, is that it?” The physician had reported that the colonists’ medical officer had collapsed from a massive stroke, the last of several, all of which had been complicated by age and overwork.

"She's
been
dying since we made planetfall here,” the physician said. “It's remarkable that she hung on this long. That's not what you have to see, though. It's about that ‘Thorn’ that they called in."

"Her son,” Neave agreed. He prided himself on his memory for detail.

"Some son!” A commotion rose from the other end of the line. When the physician spoke again, his voice was hushed and chastened. “Only by adoption. His name is Halgerd, Thorn Halgerd. It sounded Frekan to me. So I consulted von Bulow, who turned white, then told me to mind my own goddamned business..."

Neave's door annunciator blared into a demand for attention, admission, action—"I think she just came to tell me herself,” said Neave.

"Well, I don't envy you sir. Apparently, this Halgerd is Secess'..."

"Republic,” corrected Neave.

"And Marshal Becker thinks he's probably a war criminal."

Neave suppressed an impulse to groan. There seemed to be entirely too many people on Cynthia who could be shoved into that category already.

"But this is what's odd, Commissioner."

What was odd? Aside, of course, from how long his annunciator could continue at full blare without something breaking—aside, of course, from Neave's head. “Go on, Doctor,” he said, resigned.

"Von Bulow's just as eager as Becker to have the man killed."

It was full dark when Amory Neave started down the ramp of his ship again. Outside milled any of his crew who were off-duty, and many members of Cynthia colony, most of them young. Among them were the former “littlests” Lohr and Ayelet, whom the others consulted as authorities.

"Ayelet, you were on comm duty. What did Thorn say?” The woman speaking was tall, black-haired, and possibly fifteen years older than the woman who answered her.

"Lohr was the one who called him in when Dr. Pryor took such a downturn,” Ayelet said. “Lohr, did Thorn say anything else to you but that he'd come back as quickly as he could?"

Lohr shook his head, then raised macrobinoculars.

"You know how fast he flies,” said the dark-haired woman. “If she dies before he gets here, I'm afraid he won't forgive himself."

"There ... I've spotted him!” Lohr cried.

Around him, the
Amherst II'
s crew suddenly tensed. What did they know about Halgerd that he didn't?

"For one thing, he's a pilot,” a crewmember told him. “A Secess'..."

"Republic,” snapped Elisabeth von Bulow.

"Pilot,” the man finished. “We always heard in the Alliance that they were married to their ships, or hard-wired, or something."

"Rumors,” said von Bulow. “Pilots’ rumors, designed to save face."

Neave held up one hand. That type of argument could get out of hand so quickly that he forbade it whenever possible. He had seen classified reports on the Republic's pilots, who were, apparently, successful applications of now-proscribed cloning technology. Publicly, of course, officials like von Bulow disavowed such reports.

Now he found considerable interest in observing the Abendsterner. Her pale face acquired two splotches of color high upon her cheekbones. “On Freki, they did manage to clone a few pilots,” she conceded. Her voice was chill, dissociating herself from such goings-on. “How can you expect a clone to observe the protocols of war? The Frekan pilots were unstable. Those who didn't die in combat suicided, most of them."

What protocols are those?
Neave stifled the question before it could escape him.

Lohr whistled in admiration. “Just look at him!"

Neave gestured imperiously for young Lohr to hand over the macros. Yes ... here came the controversial Thorn, in what looked like an ultralight construction halfway between a glider and an aircraft. He flew magnificently, flamboyantly, swooping, banking, and dipping with superb disdain for the laws of gravity, if not those of wind currents.

He gasped as the man took one particularly risky dive, then caught himself and rose on an updraft. The moons’ light glinted off his aircraft, sparkles of silver and violet, and he had a sudden, poignant recollection of one of the holos in Yeager's report: Cynthians with ten-meter wing-spans dancing on the night winds, the galaxies on their wings glowing in the moonlight. No wonder the colonists clung to their gliders, unwilling to give up the beauty of flight, as well as its use.

"Shoot him
now!"
hissed von Bulow. He gestured her to silence and watched in admiration as the man touched down, leapt from his craft, and dashed toward the dome that housed medcenter.

"Get him!” the woman cried and started forward.

"Thorn, move it!” Lohr shouted, and threw himself at the Abendsterner. Ayelet, moving far more slowly, stepped into what would have been the crewmembers’ line of fire. No one obeyed von Bulow.

"My God, look at that man run,” one man muttered. “He's a filthy construct!” spat von Bulow. “Cloned, augmented ... Freki never scrupled to use proscribed technology."

At another time, Neave might have enjoyed the irony of an official criticizing the successful work of her alleged allies. Now, he found himself hypnotized by the man he had seen, taller than most pilots, his hair, flight suit, and pale skin all gleaming in the metallic colors of the moonlight. He was almost inhumanly fast and graceful.

For an instant, he turned his face toward Lohr, and Neave was struck both by the regular features and the anguish that twisted them.

Lohr launched himself after Thorn, and Neave, shamelessly, eavesdropped.

"She didn't want to see me, is that it?” Halgerd wasn't even winded by his flight and his run.

"She wants to protect you, idiot!” Lohr snapped. “Didn't you see the ship when you touched down? Apparently the war's over, and now the place is crawling with guns and bureaucrats."