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CHAPTER EIGHT

The teams divided up in the morning. Jaka and the bird conferred and assigned search territories. They also established a shared network so that the teams could see each other’s virtual tags and stay in touch.

“My team has run into some booby traps about the hab,” the bird said. “It would be safer if we work in pairs.”

“Great idea!” said Jaka. “We can mix and match from both teams, get to know each other better. Build trust and teamwork.”

Anton wound up paired with the bird, Atmin. On Jaka’s instructions, he left the laser backpack behind that day. “If you get into trouble, see what the bird can do. And don’t disappoint me again.”

They suited up and left the medical center. The bird’s travel sphere hovered about four meters up, behind Anton and to the right as they headed up the main street of the rim toward their search area.

“Do you know what happened here?” Anton asked, gesturing at a pair of blackened mummies.

“My friends and I have theorized that some vile group of evil folk did somehow manage to get into Safdaghar, and then they slew all here within. The reason for such butchery remains unknown.”

“You mentioned traps.”

“I did. On three occasions that I know some members of my team have triggered snares. One of them was crudely made, but only one. The other was a cunning mine which might have maimed or killed had not Solana used her tools and skill to disengage the trap. Be wary where you place your feet.”

The two of them walked in silence for a hundred meters or so. Then Anton asked, “What kind of salvage are we looking for?”

“Old Safdaghar did not have vaults of heavy elements, nor cutting-edge technology. It was a simple hab, autonomous in energy and mass. Its people got their food as much from gardens as from print. What wealth they had was in their brains and hands—for Safdaghar exported art, and crafts, and perfect meals, and suchlike goods that other living things would buy. Of course, they mostly sold the printer scans of what they made, so on a given day across the Billion Worlds a million people dine on meals created here, or decorate a room with art from Safdaghar. A tiny group of mighty wealth might even own originals from here, identical in every way to prints, except in provenance and price.”

“I know a fair bit about art,” said Anton. “Main Swarm contemporary stuff, anyway.”

“A mech or even bot could say the same. That does no good, for art that’s known is art that someone owns. No, we are here to find the unknown gems—items never scanned which we can claim. Your knowledge is irrelevant, but have you taste?”

Before his fall from favor Anton had spent two standard years evaluating works in terms of how well they fit Fratecea’s ruling ideology, not caring whether they were good. “I might have a remnant.”

“Then let me be the brain, and you the hands. From all that I have seen of Jaka’s crew, the role is one you can put on with ease.”

They reached the day’s search area, a lower-density sector. The blocks were larger, and each had just a single house surrounded by vegetable gardens and fishponds. The watering systems had kept working for a while after the temperature in the hab dropped below freezing, and all the plants were encased in glossy ice. Mold or pests had consumed most of them, but here and there a green sprig or even a whole fruit showed bright color.

The sector had few trees, so it was easy for both of them to notice one house which was very different from the others. The structure itself was unremarkable, a two-story building with the usual broad galleries and a flat roof. But the gardens around it had been hacked down and the house itself was heavily damaged. Windows were shattered, walls were pocked with bullet holes, and the roof had a crude parapet of bricks and sandbags around the edge.

“I think we should begin our search with that one,” said Atmin, and his travel sphere buzzed over toward the damaged house.

Anton followed on foot. The gardens around it had been cut down deliberately, and in a great hurry, bushes and plants hacked off and left where they lay. The stakes supporting tomato and squash plants had been pulled up and tossed down. As near as Anton could tell, someone—several someones, most likely—had cut down everything standing more than about half a meter above the ground. It didn’t fit anything Anton knew about growing vegetables.

Then he looked at the house and understood. They had cleared the ground to defend it. No enemy could use the gardens for concealment. Guards on the roof would have an unobstructed shot at anyone or anything approaching the house.

Not that it had helped. As he stepped up onto the wide porch surrounding the house he could see the bullet holes in the walls. Most were single shots, with a few perfect little equilateral triangles of holes.

Atmin entered through a shattered window. Anton slid the door open and went into the main room of the house. It extended all the way through, with smaller rooms opening onto it on the sides. He counted a dozen bodies in the room, all wearing combat suits marked with the sword-and-wheel emblem of Safdaghar’s militia.

Most had been shot in the face, but he could see a few who had suffered limb injuries. Their suits’ first-aid systems had inflated tourniquets to keep them from bleeding to death, and squirted medical foam all over the wounds. The injured men had kept fighting until hits to the head or heart had finished them.

The main room was empty of furniture. It had all been shoved into side rooms, blocking the windows. Most of it looked intact, except for one room where a barrage of hypervelocity needles had turned everything into a pile of fragments.

Atmin’s travel sphere touched down in the center of the main room, where two uniformed corpses lay atop the body of a third. “Lend a hand to move the two atop this man,” said Atmin.

Anton dragged the two militia soldiers away, revealing the dried mummy of a man in a Martian-style tunic and tights, lying on his back. He had a small hole in the left side of his head, and a much bigger hole on the right.

Atmin extended two flexible arms from his travel sphere and began searching the body.

“What are you looking for?” asked Anton.

“I search for sheets of paper bearing poems written down in strokes of ink.” Atmin opened the tunic and rummaged in an inside pocket. He pulled a dried-out brush and a palette carved from Martian redwood. “No pages here.”

“Who is he?” asked Anton.

“I think it is a man who used the name of Pasquin Tiu in life. A Martian known for loving Mars, and mocking Deimos to the point he had to flee to stay alive.”

“Looks like he didn’t flee far enough.”

“Too true. Now help me search the house. Leave nothing unexamined in this place. A single scrap of writing may be worth—” The bird paused and cocked an eye at Anton. “I cannot tell its value ’til I see. To work!”

The two of them searched every room, opened every drawer and case, and even looked for loose panels in walls, ceilings, and floors where something might have been hidden. Anton found a ream of handmade rice paper, blank except for some spots of mildew. Atmin uncovered a steel box inlaid with thin slices of Martian basalt forming the arrowheaded phi sigil of Phobos—their lost moon was a hugely significant cultural icon for Martians. The box held a set of self-inking brushes ranging from micron-thin to one as wide as Anton’s hand. But nowhere did they find so much as a lone character written down.

After three hours in the fortified house the bird gave up. “If Pasquin wrote a single verse in Safdaghar I do not see it here.”

“Maybe he just wrote normal text, instead of fooling with paper and ink.”

“He never did before—but then, on Mars he wrote in secret, pasting sheets to doors or putting paint on walls while cameras were blind. In Safdaghar he may have thought it safe to save his thoughts as insecure electrons in a net.”

Anton sipped water from his helmet’s funny-tasting reservoir. The dust they’d raised inside the house made his throat feel dry despite his suit.

“If I may ask, why are you here?” said Atmin. “You seem to be an educated man, unlike the ruder members of your team. How did you come to work with them?”

“No choice,” said Anton, tapping his faceplate over his forehead. “I’ve got a compliance implant. Jaka’s got the codes. When it’s active I’m a puppet.”

“A dreadful situation, to be sure. Who put that implant in your head—and can it be removed?”

Anton straightened a little. “I’m a criminal. Guilty of memetic sabotage against Fratecea habitat.”

“What sabotage did you perform?”

“I told a joke.” He felt his face getting hot inside his helmet. “I got kicked out of the Party, lost my citizen rights, and wound up in the work dormitories with other enemies of the hab. Because I’m a fool I thought it was all just a mistake. If the Party leadership only understood what I was saying they’d realize that and let me out. So I didn’t shut up. I filed protests, I complained to the guards, I smuggled out a description of what it was like in the dorms, and I tried to organize protests among the other politicas. I got beat up, I got stuck in solitary, I got screamed at and humiliated in reeducation sessions, but I was stubborn and didn’t give up. I believed in the Transfigurance Movement and wanted to help. Finally I got results: they stuck an implant in my head and sold me out of the hab.”

“This implant which enslaves you is a thing which someone might remove, unlike Solana’s traitor brain. Cannot you take it from your head?”

“Pulling it out would turn my brain to slurry. I may do that someday, when I can’t stand it any longer.”

“Then I suggest you leave with us. Whatever signal Jaka sends cannot reach out across the gulf of space. As soon as you are out of range—”

“If I get too far from Jaka—and I don’t know how far that is—the implant will stimulate my pain center until I die. That’s also why I can’t harm her.”

“This implant—does it speak to her?”

“When she activates it she can see and hear with my eyes and ears. When it’s off I don’t think she can eavesdrop.” Anton thought for a moment, wondering. At times Jaka did have an uncanny way of knowing things. Was she spying on him without his knowledge? Daslakh had mentioned something like that. Or was she just good at figuring people out? “I’m not sure,” he added.

“I beg your pardon if the things I said may cause you future pain. I shall restrict my speech henceforth.” The bird rotated his travel sphere once more, looking around the room. “I sought to find a treasure here, but that was not to be, it seems. My hope of finding Pasquin’s verse to sell on Mars is lost. There still remains the loot of Safdaghar’s dead crafters and the systems of the hab itself. Come on.”

Atmin led the way out of the house with Anton following, and they crossed the killing zone around it, heading away from the main road.

Just then a commotion broke out on the comm system. “I’m hit, I’m hit!” cried Ulan.

“What’s happening?” Jaka and Atmin demanded at the same instant.

“A spread of darts punched through his armor,” said Pera, who had accompanied Ulan on that day’s sweep. “Torso. I’ll get him back to camp.”

Without any discussion, Atmin and Anton abandoned the day’s search and hurried back to the medical clinic. The low humming sound of the lift fans on the bird’s travel sphere rose to a sustained soprano’s high note as Atmin sped off. Anton had to jog behind in his clumsy antique suit, so that he was sweaty and winded when he finally got to the clinic.

He got there just as Pera helped Ulan into the emergency airlock. Anton could see a cluster of darts sticking out of Ulan’s torso, and his own stomach tensed in sympathy.

When he got inside everyone was gathered in the downstairs atrium. Ulan lay on the floor in the center of the room, moaning and writhing. Solana and Daslakh were cutting off his armor while Pera slapped stabilizer drug patches on his neck. Jaka and Atmin watched tensely and Tanaca sat huddled against the wall. Only Adelmar and the cyborg Utsuro were missing.

Seven darts had pierced Ulan’s armored suit, marking the corners and center of a perfect hexagon centered roughly on his breastbone. “I can feel them, I can feel them,” said Ulan. “Aah! It hurts! I’m all torn up.” His face was gray and slick with sweat, and he was breathing shallowly and very fast. Anton disliked Ulan, with good reason, but for a moment he felt a pang of pity to see the man so helpless and afraid.

Working as quickly as they dared, Daslakh and Solana cut a circle out of the suit’s armored breastplate around the darts. As soon as the cut was complete the woman lifted away the entire front of Ulan’s suit, leaving the darts pinning a disk of layered armor and fabric to his body. His exposed skin looked grayish and he was sweating.

Daslakh slid a couple of its limbs between the surface of the disk and Ulan’s skin to look around. “Not much bleeding,” it said.

“Which one looks the worst?” asked Solana. “We should get that one first.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” said Daslakh. In a single swift motion it yanked the disk and all seven darts off of Ulan.

Ulan screamed. Everyone froze.

Then Pera very deliberately smacked the side of his head. “Shut up, you fool.”

On Ulan’s bare, damp torso Anton could make out seven small cuts, oozing a little blood. The deepest might have been half a centimeter. The tips of the darts barely protruded from the inside of the armor.

“Pera, do not hit the man but check his wounds for any trace of chemicals, or nanotech, or deadly bioforms,” said Atmin.

“Scanner says he’s clean. Nothing on the darts.”

Ulan raised his head, trying to see over his own bulky chest without bending his body. “How bad is it? Am I gonna die?”

Jaka gave a bark of laughter. “You big baby. Hold still and let Solana fix you up.”

“Don’t worry,” said Solana, and ran a wipe over the cuts before gluing them shut.

“Pera, please, inform us all of what befell poor Ulan and yourself. Leave nothing out, no matter if it seems too small to tell,” said Atmin.

“You told us to search around the genetics lab, two klicks spinward. I already did a quick sweep of the lab, but I didn’t get into any of the apartments or the test gardens. There’s a circular plaza in front of the lab campus, with some three- and four-story buildings around it. Ulan and I checked those first. Not much—one apartment had an ornamental vine that isn’t in Yanai’s library, so I took samples.” She dug in a pocket on her suit and held up some leaves that refracted the light from the ceiling in abstract patterns.

“Nice,” said Jaka. “Be sure to put it with the rest of our stuff.”

“Continue, if you please, and tell us where and how poor Ulan was struck down.”

“After the apartments we crossed the plaza to the lab campus. Right at the entrance there’s an arch, a double helix made of glass, about ten meters high. Ulan went ahead of me—”

“Why?” asked Jaka, sounding suspicious. “Did you send him in first?”

The dino lashed her tail, thumping against a couch. “No, the idiot went charging in even though I told him to be careful. As soon as he passed through the arch the dart launcher fired. After that I was too busy getting patches on him and lugging his worthless sweaty ass back here to look around much.”

“Hang on,” said Daslakh, the little spider mech, who moved to stand directly in front of Pera. Its outer shell was now high-visibility orange. “This trap was at the entrance to the lab campus, right?”

“Yes. I don’t know if it was a tripwire or a switch under the pavement. I’ll go back and check—you can help.”

“I’ll hang back and record everything when you get killed. But I thought you said you’d already visited the genetics lab. Did you go in the same way?”

Pera cocked her head to one side, for a moment looking oddly like Atmin. “Yes…” she said slowly. “Pretty sure I did.”

“No darts in your face?”

“No. Probably not a tripwire, then.”

“My question is, was it there before?”

“Are you attempting to accuse good Pera here of setting up a trap herself, in order to waylay Ulan? It makes no sense—she saved his life,” said Atmin. “Or would have done, had he been truly hurt.”

“No, no,” said the mech. “That’s ridiculous. I think I would have noticed a half-ton dino sneaking out while the rest of you were snoring. No, I’m wondering if there’s something else in the hab.”

“We thought of that when we arrived,” Atmin replied. “But nothing biological could stand the cold and dark for sixteen years—and if a mech remained, why would it hide at all?”

“I can think of about half a million reasons, and that’s without using my full processing power. Maybe it thinks we’re all a gang of pirates, come to loot the place? I mean, we are, after all.”

“Even if a mech believes that we are villains come to rob and kill, the hab is now on course for Jupiter to fling it out into the Kuiper dark. What mech would rather spend four decades here alone, when it might strike a deal with us to leave?”

“A mech with a functioning brain, who doesn’t trust a bunch of greedy biologicals? Or maybe one who’s loyal to this hab and doesn’t like to see you looting it? Or—I don’t know—maybe one who thinks it would be easier to just kill you and take your ship.”

“That would be unwise,” said Yanai, who had been listening over the comm net.

“Might not be able to hijack you, but a competent machine could steal our shuttle. Point is, you can’t rule it out.”

“If there is something else in the hab…” Jaka began, then switched to comm. “Adelmar, check in. Where are you and the cyborg?”

“Main avenue, half a klick west. North side, third floor. How’s Ulan?”

“He’s recovering from his ordeal. Situation?”

“He found some bio traces.”

“The highest concentration of my DNA yet!” Utsuro cut in. “A very good match, better than any other traces I have found.”

“I think the two of you should come with haste back here to camp. The DNA can wait another day,” said Atmin.

They bandaged Ulan’s chest—more to salve his feelings than for any medical reason. Once Adelmar and Utsuro arrived, Pera briefed the assembled company on how to look for booby traps, how to avoid them, and what to do if they discovered one.

“Simplest and best advice: get away,” she concluded. “So far everything we’ve found has been short-range or contact. One explosive, the rest were mechanical. That dart launcher sounded like compressed gas. Distance is the best protection for all of those. Hard cover as soon as you can reach it—put a building or a wall between you and the device. Soon as you’re safe call it in. I’ll try to deactivate the device, or mark it. Yanai, a couple of extra bots would be a big help.”

“I am already printing some. I’ll send them down as soon as they’re cool.”

“A couple dozen paint grenades would be nice, too, if you can print them. I can make shields out of materials down here. We should all carry them.”

“Maybe you big squishy people need them, but I’m not lugging a sheet of graphene around. It would only slow me down,” said Daslakh.

“My travel sphere is tough as any shield might be,” added Atmin, “and belike Utsuro’s hide is tougher still. But, yes, I see the need.”

“Excellent!” said Jaka. She smiled at Pera. “You get to work making them. Daslakh, you help her. Anton, get dinner ready for everyone. I’ll assign teams for tomorrow.”


Anton went to do his job. The two groups shared the little kitchenette on the ground floor, though their food supplies were rigorously separate. Certainly Anton had no desire to sample either the dinosaur’s gory food or the corvid’s carrion-scented rations.

As he was working Jaka stuck her head in. “Solana will be joining the rest of us for dinner. Make some extra for her.”

He was improvising a soup from the ration packs Jaka had bought to fill the shuttle’s supply bins, so it wasn’t hard to stretch it. He used protein chips for soup stock, carb sticks to thicken the broth, and vegetable cubes for flavor. A little salt, one scrap of pork jerky finely minced, and a generous dash of fish sauce and you had a meal fit for…well, a gang of shady salvagers and occasional hijackers who were used to getting by on far worse. A little more salt and half a liter of water did the trick.

“Can you use some extra ingredients?” said Solana as she entered the kitchenette. She rummaged in her group’s half of the refrigerator and took out a package of a dozen peanut dumplings. “Will these go with what you’re making?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll put them in right at the end. Don’t want them to get overdone.”

She stood watching as he stirred the pot. “I’ve never seen anyone cook before. Don’t you have a printer?”

“Jaka got the shuttle from a salvager who was getting ready to scrap it. No food printer, no oxygen recycler, and no power plant. She could only afford two of the three. So instead we have a hundred kilos of Trojan Empire emergency rations, only thirty years older than I am.”

“Where did you learn to cook? Did you create templates?”

“No,” he said. “Back in my home hab everyone learned how. We grew wine, too. And I used to cook for the other people in the dormitory.”

He didn’t explain that he’d learned in order to stretch the meager food provided. Pooling rations and making soups or stews let everyone feel as though they’d had a real meal. What he cooked back then had been even more watery and a lot more bland than what he was making now, of course. Printer templates were allocated on the basis of service to the Transfigurance Movement, and the politicas, by definition, were of no value at all.

Jaka bustled in again. “There you are! Solana, dear, I’ve got a question for you. Be honest: do you trust the dinosaur?”

“Pera? Yes, absolutely. She can be kind of gruff but she keeps her word.”

“Mm. Because it occurs to me that Atmin and Yanai might be trying to scare my team away with these stories of traps and something lurking in the darkness. Tell me, do you know anything about that?”

“No. That’s just not like either of them. Besides, Atmin and Utsuro both ran into traps before you even got here.”

“Did you actually see them?”

“I was right there when Utsuro stepped on a mine! I kept it from going off so that he could get away. I was there!”

Jaka put up her hands, palms out, and laughed. “Now, now. Don’t get excited. It’s just so hard to trust anyone nowadays.” She glanced over Solana’s shoulder at Anton, saw that he was watching, and smiled. “See you at dinner.”

The six of them—Jaka, Tanaca, Anton, Ulan, Adelmar, and Solana—squeezed into the little dining area to share the soup and dumplings. Ulan sat a little apart from the others and said nothing. After some prodding from Jaka, Adelmar described what the cyborg had discovered.

“Checking an apartment. Second floor, good view of the main road. No bodies, nothing worth taking. Utsuro scans the place, gets excited. Says it’s full of his DNA. Checks bathroom and gets quiet. I ask, he says frozen shit in toilet full of his DNA. His shit, he says.”

“That’s bizarre,” said Jaka. “Solana, tell me why is the cyborg doing these DNA scans at all?”

“He came from here,” said Solana. “Utsuro was found in space by some mechs, who rebuilt him. He can’t remember anything before that. His orbital path intersected this hab at the time of the disaster. That’s why he joined Yanai’s crew for this job, to see if he could learn who he really is.”

“And now he’s found proof. Interesting. Whose apartment was it?” asked Jaka. “Any way to find out?”

“We toss the place good,” said Adelmar. “Looks like a herm couple live there. Pics, some clothes, personal stuff. Pics don’t look like him, none of his DNA on the clothes. Not his place, he figures.”

“Wait,” said Daslakh, who had been sitting quietly on the ceiling with its shell matching the beige panels. “How could his feces last for sixteen years?”

“Frozen,” said Adelmar. “Toilet full of ice and frozen shit on top.”

“What color was it?”

“Do we have to talk about this while I’m trying to eat?” asked Jaka. “By the way, Anton, good job with the soup. And thank you, Solana, for the dumplings.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact we do have to talk about it,” snapped Daslakh. “Adelmar, was it brown?” Daslakh’s shell turned a convincing shit color. “Or was it black with mold like every other gram of organic matter inside this hab?” As it spoke a web of black spots and lines covered it until only a few visible flecks of brown remained.

“Brown,” said Adelmar.

“Fresh,” said Daslakh, reverting to safety green.

Nobody said anything for a moment.

“Intriguing,” said Jaka, looking gleeful. “Let’s all keep this quiet, okay? If the others don’t figure it out, this might be useful as a bargaining chip. Solana, that means you, too. Understand? Do not tell any of Yanai’s crew about this.”

Solana didn’t look happy, but she nodded. She had no choice.

“One more thing, dear. I think it would help all of us be less suspicious if you would join us downstairs tonight. Separate quarters seems so standoffish, don’t you think.”

“I like my room upstairs.”

Jaka looked directly into her eyes and spoke clearly and slowly. “Solana, from now on you will sleep downstairs with us. Understand?”

“I understand.”

“Good! You can be over with me and Tanaca. Just us three girls.” She caught Anton’s eye as she said it, and gave an exaggerated wink.


Ten years earlier…

Anton composed himself as the bots brought in the next prisoner. Just before dawn a raid on a subversive meeting had netted more than a dozen enemies of the community. As centro of Fratecea’s Memetic Safety Committee, it fell to Anton to judge them.

His eyes met those of the prisoner and he barely kept himself from flinching. It was Dejan. Anton hadn’t seen him in months, not since joining the Committee. Dejan’s hair was still a mess, and his mouth still bore a trace of his mocking smile, but the eyes in between looked older and sadder.

Anton didn’t waste time with formalities. An image appeared in the air between them, of Dejan sprawled on some cushions in a converted storage space. He held an unlabeled bottle of red wine in one hand and his other arm was draped around a shirtless young subversive named Jovan.

Jovan had not yet been sentenced.

In the image Dejan took a long pull from his bottle and then called out in his wonderfully penetrating baritone. “I heard a good one yesterday! The Transfigurance Movement had a party to celebrate four years of Fratecea’s new society. Anton Verac gets up and proposes a toast. He says, ‘The Movement isn’t just about changing society, it’s about changing all of us! Look at Dina—she used to be a basic biotech, looking for algae and fungus. Now she’s an administrator, writing reports about contamination!’ The whole room claps. Anton continues, ‘Or Milan here—before the Movement he worked as a musician, playing at parties for the rich Board families. Now he is a Protector, ready to lay down his life to defend our hab!’ More clapping, but Anton’s not finished. ‘Or Osiv Cismar! Once he was a drunk, a liar, a bully, and a thief, but look at him now: the leader of the Movement!’” The room erupted in laughter, and then Anton froze the image.

Dejan chuckled quietly.

“You can’t say things like that,” said Anton.

“I’m sorry I used your name,” said Dejan.

“It’s not that. You can’t insult the leader of the Movement.”

Dejan raised his chin a fraction of a centimeter. “It’s all true. That’s why it’s so funny. How can the truth be an insult?”

“You know it can. Back when the Board families ran everything you used to joke about them.”

“What’s got twenty-one dicks but no balls? The Board of Directors,” said Dejan. “You laughed at that one.”

“And a year later the Board were out of power. Words can be weapons. Weapons must be regulated.”

Dejan’s eyes looked sadder. “What’s it going to be? Chip in my head? Recycle my biomass?”

“We aren’t monsters. You’ll spend a year in the work dorm. Show that you can be a good citizen and you’ll be released.”

“Gosh, that sounds simple enough!” For a moment Dejan’s face had its old impish look. “Thanks, Anton!”

He allowed the bots to lead him out, but just as he reached the door Dejan looked over his shoulder, still smiling. “See you soon!”


Anton walked home that afternoon. He still lived in his parents’ house, but there had been some adjustments. His mother and father kept to their quarters on the second floor when they were home. Anton needed the entire first floor. The main room had become his office, and nowadays the front steps always had a dozen people waiting, hoping to speak with him.

He got past them by not stopping, not meeting any eyes, not responding to their pleas. They knew better than to touch him.

But inside he was confronted with a visitor. Sari, Dejan’s mother. She sat at the dining table which he now used as a desk. His father sat beside her, holding her hand.

“Anton,” said his father.

“No. He made a memetic attack on the Movement. I can’t give him special treatment just because our families are friends.”

“Must it be the dormitory? Can’t he stay at home?” said Sari. She was crying.

“That’s impossible. He’s spreading harmful ideas. He has to be isolated. You wouldn’t leave a vine covered in mold with the healthy ones, would you?”

“It was just a joke!” said Sari. “Can’t he tell a joke?”

“He’s a grown man. He knows what is and isn’t appropriate. What’s funny to some people is hurtful and dangerous to others.”

“Maybe you could just give him a warning. He’s smart, he’ll keep quiet,” said Anton’s father.

“It’s too late for that. I can’t change my decision.”

“This Movement is worse than the old Board!” said Sari. “They cheated the growers and hogged all the export credits, but they didn’t have work dormitories or compliance implants. If they’d thrown you and Osiv and the rest of your Movement out the airlock we’d all be happier!”

“Sari, don’t get excited,” said Anton’s father, with a panicked look at Anton. “She’s just upset. She doesn’t mean it.”

“She should be more careful. Now I’ve got a lot to do before dinner. If you don’t mind?” Anton gestured at the door.

“Come on. I’ll take you home,” said his father, and led the sobbing Sari out.


Anton was always an early riser. He liked to be the first one at work in the Safety Center. There wasn’t really any reason for him to work in a room in the building, but being there meant everyone could see him. He could set an example for the others.

But this morning he wasn’t the first in the building. Renzo stood by Anton’s workspace, looking about. “Can we have privacy?” he asked before Anton could say anything.

“Do we need it?”

“Oh, yes. Both of us need it.”

Anton used his implant to impose privacy on them. The hab’s eyes and ears could still sense them, but only someone with higher-level clearance than Anton—and a need to know—could get access.

“All right. What’s up?”

Renzo stared at the floor, working his lips silently for a moment, then took a deep breath and met Anton’s eyes. “I know someone on the Justice and Redress Committee. Your mother helped develop the Ruby 22 strain.”

“Yes. Everyone knows that. It’s a popular variety. A big seller off-hab. The whole community benefits from her work.”

“She gets a percentage.”

“A quarter percent! Same as the rest of the team.”

“Justice and Redress decided that all royalty holders are complicit in the crimes of the old Board. And their families.”

Anton’s throat was suddenly dry. “What’s the redress?”

“It’s being decided case by case.”

Anton knew what that meant. The Justice and Redress Committee could use it as a weapon: settle old scores, blackmail rivals into cooperating, destroy enemies.

“Thank you,” said Anton.

“Good luck,” said Renzo, and then hurried away.

He needed to move fast, Anton realized. Get himself protected before J&R could move. And there was really only one person who could do that. He requested a meeting with Osiv Cismar. He spent ten minutes on the verge of panic before a reply came: in six hours he could have five minutes of the leader’s time. He hoped it would be enough.

During one of his personal breaks that morning he did contact his mother, under a privacy seal which was almost certainly unethical. “You have to get rid of your royalties now.”

“Which ones? I worked on dozens of strains.”

“All of them. And any credits you got. Donate it all to the hab now.”

“That’s all our savings! What’s going on?”

“Do it. Right now. Empty all your accounts. I’ll explain later.”

It might help or it might not. The credits would be forfeit sooner or later anyway.

The six hours felt like weeks passed before Anton hurried to see Osiv. He arrived fifteen minutes early for his five-minute appointment—and wound up cooling his heels for nearly an hour in an anteroom.

The leader of Fratecea’s Transfigurance Movement was a short, bouncy man with a wide toothy smile. “Anton! Good to see you, brother! Work keeps us too busy—I haven’t seen you in weeks!”

Anton’s implant started a five-minute countdown as soon as he was called, so he didn’t waste any time. “It’s wonderful to see you again. Osiv, I heard some disturbing news this morning. Justice and Redress is moving against royalty holders. Is that true?”

“Yes, yes. Necessary. Board families used to hand out fractional shares to their clients and supporters. Buying their loyalty. Some stayed bought. We have to root them out.”

“But many people earned their shares by service to the hab—developing strains or vintages which still bring in credits from off-hab.”

“Your parents,” said Osiv, looking Anton right in the eyes, no longer smiling. “They did well under the old system.”

“Yes, among many others. I can assure you they’re loyal. And consider: this new policy of J&R is a memetic hazard. Transfigurance is all about a new start, not holding on to old grudges. When you abolished the Board you said, ‘The past is gone. It has no power.’ Punishing people for complicity gives the past power again—especially if the Committee has to judge what people did and why. It’s an inconsistency. It makes the Movement look like hypocrites. We can’t afford that.”

Osiv studied Anton’s face, as if looking at a sculpture. “I remember you hated that the Board made rules that didn’t apply to themselves.”

“It’s inconsistent. Unjust. For them and for us.”

Osiv looked off beyond Anton’s shoulder for a couple of seconds, then met his eyes and smiled again. “You’re right. I’ll tell the Committee they have to adopt a single uniform policy on fractional shares and enforce it equally. That good for you?”

Anton hadn’t realized how nervous he was until he felt himself relax. Osiv would fix this terrible mistake. All was well. He smiled, really smiled for the first time in—how long?—and gave Osiv an old-fashioned bow of respect. “Thank you, Osiv. I knew you’d understand.”

“Goodbye, Anton,” was all Osiv replied.


When Anton got back to the Safety Center half a dozen Protectors in full gear were standing idly by the entrance. He didn’t give them much thought until one moved to block his path to the door. The others formed a ring around him.

“Anton Verac, you are charged with being complicit in the system of repression perpetrated by the former Board of Proprietors. Come with us.” They had a privacy bubble around them; the hab wouldn’t relay any signals from his implant. He knew better than to offer resistance.

They had a little van with windows set to opaque. Anton felt the gaze of passersby as the Protectors led him to the van. He found himself blushing with embarrassment. Arrest by Protectors was something that happened to enemies of the Movement, to the stupid and corrupt who refused to transform themselves. Not to him! It was almost a relief when they shoved him into the back seat and shut the door.

Justice and Redress met in what had once been the house of the Oseminte family, one of the richest of the Board. It was directly across the street from the medical center the Osemintes had endowed, now renamed simply Main Medical Center.

One tenet of the Transfigurance Movement was that formal laws and procedures were all expressions of oppression. Consequently the Justice and Redress Committee didn’t bother with any nonsense about lawyers. Anton stood in a room, with a couple of others awaiting their hearings. The seven members of the Committee sat casually on couches and comfortable chairs, as if they had simply managed to get to the room first and grabbed all the seats. The bots hovering behind the prisoners made sure nobody approached closer than five meters to the Committee members.

He knew them all, and he knew that only two of them mattered: Adina Catran and Toma Penaj. The other five were ciphers, who seldom spoke and always voted along with Adina and Toma. Adina’s parents had worked with his own in the viticulture labs, but they hadn’t developed any lucrative strains. He and she had played together as children.

Toma was an older man, one of Osiv’s cronies from before the Movement. Everyone assumed he was Osiv’s mouthpiece on the Committee. When he began speaking, Anton’s heart sank.

“Anton Verac. Your mother owned partial royalty rights to sixteen wine-grape strains controlled by the Tarm family, nine strains controlled by the Scutrosa family, and one controlled by the Zana family. She spent the revenues resulting from those royalty shares on goods and services for you and your father as well as herself. She directly transferred funds to you which were derived in part or entirely from those shares. Therefore your entire family was complicit in the system of exploitation and oppression perpetrated by the Board of Proprietors.”

“Some of those strains brought wealth from other habs. The whole community—”

“In addition,” said Toma, not stopping, “you have recently taken steps to conceal your family’s participation in a repressive system, and abused your position as an official of the Movement to influence official policy in order to avoid the consequences.”

Anton looked at them. Toma’s expression was slightly contemptuous. Adina kept her eyes on something above and behind Anton the whole time, never meeting his eyes. The other five spent their time looking back and forth between Toma, Anton, and the floor.

Toma waited. Anton opened his mouth to begin a defense, a justification, and then stopped. It was useless. He knew it was useless, they certainly knew it was useless.

He swallowed, and then looked directly at Toma and made himself smile. “I heard a joke the other day. The Movement had a party to celebrate four years in power. Osiv Cismar stood to make a toast. He said, ‘The Transfigurance Movement didn’t just change society, it has changed all of us! Dina was once a simple biotech but now she’s an administrator.’ The whole room clapped. Osiv went on. ‘Or Milan—before the Movement he was a musician, playing for the rich, but now he is a Protector, defending Fratecea!’ They all clapped some more but Osiv went on. ‘Or Toma Penaj! Before he joined the Movement he was a liar, a crook, and a chronic masturbator, but look at him now: he’s on the Justice and Redress Committee!’”

Did Adina’s mouth twitch just a little? Anton wasn’t sure. He would have to work on his delivery of the joke. He was going to have plenty of time to practice.


Anton was not prudish. His time in the work dormitory had ground any modesty or squeamishness out of him. And he knew that Jaka had an exhibitionistic streak. Making people uncomfortable was a source of power, one she enjoyed using.

But her performance—and there was really no other word for it—after lights out was more blatant than anything he had seen since she had bought his control codes. Not only was she on display but she compelled Solana to do likewise. There was no attempt at quiet or concealment. Jaka wanted to make sure everyone knew what was going on, as if daring Yanai’s crew to object.

Anton’s spot that night was next to Ulan, and he had orders to keep the big guy from trying anything. He couldn’t stop Ulan from peeking through the crude partition of chairs and planters separating them from the “girls,” but he himself kept his back to it and watched Ulan.

“Daaamn,” muttered Ulan. “That Solana’s hot. Fusion hot. Makes Jaka look like a Europan or something.”

Anton gave a disapproving sigh.

“Don’t know why she’s wasting her time with Jaka and a buncha toys when there’s plenty of hot meat right here.”

“Just ignore them,” Anton murmured.

“Listen to ’em, man!” Ulan whispered, almost groaning. “That girl is off the tether.” After a minute’s silence broken only by the gasps and giggles from the other side of the partition, he asked, “So is it true? About her? She’s a Qarina?”

“Evidently so.”

“I did an entertainment once. Really hot. It was a hab fulla Qarinas. All of ’em hot and ready. Never thought I’d see one for real. You think it’s true? They do whatever you tell ’em?”

“Best not to think about it. Get some sleep.”

“I don’t wanna get some sleep. I wanna get some of that.”

“Please be quiet.”

“I don’t have to listen to you,” muttered Ulan, but he did quiet down. Shortly after Jaka bought control of Anton, Ulan had tried to push him around. He was big, with lots of boosted muscle, but Ulan had never done hard time. He’d been a guest, briefly, at a detention facility in a hab where prisoners still had rights and the guards carried only tanglers or sonics. By contrast, Anton had been in work dorms where the deaths of political prisoners was considered a feature of the system, not a problem. The one time they had come to blows, Ulan had broken two of Anton’s ribs and smashed his nose—but Anton had gotten one of Ulan’s eyes out before Adelmar pulled them apart. After that Ulan left Anton alone.

Anton closed his eyes and did his best to ignore Jaka’s noisy grunts from one side of him and the sound of Ulan stimulating himself from the other. The thought of finding a grip tool and ripping out his implant was very tempting, but sheer fatigue won and he dropped off to sleep.

He woke a few hours later. Everyone else was still asleep, except for Daslakh, who sat on Anton’s chest, gently prodding the tip of his nose with one limb. “Get up and keep quiet. There’s something I want to show you before these other idiots.”

Anton got silently to his feet and followed the softly glowing mech to the front door of the clinic. He looked through the frost-webbed diamondoid doors but didn’t see anything. “What’s up?”

“The window, stupid.”

He refocused on the pane a meter in front of his eyes and then he saw it: opaque lines on the clear material, spelling out words.


GET OUT NOW


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